Macho Nachos

Chequer Board

The inestimable Pejman Yousefzadeh has erected a new scoop blog here, which I will contribute to when I have time. Bookmark it in your favorites, Pejman is always worth a read.

Stupid and Insulting

I have read a lot of stupid and insulting editorials over the many years I have followed politics. Being a conservative, I have come to pretty much expect a bunch of small-minded demonization from most of the folks who write editorials in the major newspapers. This WaPo piece by Richard Cohen, however, may flat out take the cake. In a rambling screed that would have probably been rejected on the front page of Eschaton, Cohen recogitates the idiot-liberal smear that all of those who oppose gay marriage and preferential treatment for the homosexual lifestyle are, in fact, gay-haters and homophobes. If this is the best they can do when it comes to driving a wedge in the Republican base, their cause is lost:

John G. Roberts Jr. is out of the closet.

President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, on the basis of the available evidence and all we know about human behavior, is not -- and I emphasize not ! -- a bigot. Specifically, he seems to harbor no prejudice against gay men and lesbians, who are, as we all know, anathema to social conservatives, who are anti-gay and pro-Bush, in about equal measures. Roberts, amazingly and inexplicably, seems to be a man of tolerance.

Cohen, amazingly and inexplicably, seems to be a man of intolerance when it comes to the view of those who might have moral compunctions with homosexual behavior. Amazingly and inexplicably, in Richard Cohen's world, social conservatives are incapable of formulating thoughts more complex than "Bush good, gays bad." Perhaps some of us

have thought through our positions well enough to come to "gays bad, Bush good," but that's surely about the extent of our reasoning power.

Oh yes, and for some really fresh and unique political analysis, Cohen decides to blow the lid wide off a major conspiracy - it turns out that some liberals think that Pat Robertson runs our party! <sarcasm>This, personally is shocking to me, and is such a bold new claim that I will have to digest it for a few days before commenting, since I don't want to fly off the handle. </sarcasm>

Clearly, a lawyer who, say, agreed with the likes of the Rev. Pat Robertson or Rep. Tom DeLay (Rev., Rep., it's all the same nowadays) would not have taken the case.

Yes, how truly bold of Roberts to have defied the real leader of our party (as Cohen has shockingly discovered). Well, Mr. Cohen, it turns out that you're only half right. Robertson only controls our party on alternate days - the others are taken by Karl Rove. We have all taken electronic chips implanted into our brains that allow us to receive signals from the leader-for-the-day, provided that we are also wearing our tinfoil hats.

We are also, as you point out, dumb and unenlightened, and have no patience for moderation, and there's nothing we hate so much as reason:

The White House and its allies, understandably alarmed at implications of moderation and enlightenment, were quick to suggest that Roberts was not, as some might slander him, a reasonable man.

The further down this column one reads, the more degenerate and incomprehensible Cohen's conservative-bashing becomes:

Jay Sekulow, a leader in the movement to make the high court intellectually indistinguishable from the Inquisition, rushed to explain Roberts to his constituency. This was something lawyers did. "A lot of people are commenting who don't know about Supreme Court practice," Sekulow said. "There's a high degree of collegiality." In other words, it meant nothing. Still, maybe Roberts could prove himself by beating up some gays.

It goes without saying that this is second-grade name calling masquerading as political analysis. Let's grant Cohen's ridiculous assumption that Gay-Basher-in-Chief Pat Robertson runs our party - can Cohen find a single instance for us of the GBIC calling for the physical abuse of gays? What about Falwell, surely in thousands of hours of sermons, he would have slipped up and called for the "beating up of gays" at least once? No?

Okay, maybe he could use google, and search through the hundreds of prominent conservative blogs, and find a single one who cheered at the death of Matthew Sheppard? No? Not one?

The spectacle of conservative groups and the White House rushing to assure their constituencies that Roberts is not -- really and truly -- a tolerant man is both repulsive and absurd. In the end, this tethering of conservatism to the lost cause of homophobia will earn the rebuke of history.

The spectacle of Richard Cohen attempting to tether the conservative movement with homophobia will earn him the rebuke of anyone who pays enough attention to politics to actually vote. It's understandable that intolerant sods like Cohen would caricature their opponents and ascribe to them false positions, given that more reasonable debate and an honest portrayal of their own position has earned them a series of increasingly devastating losses at the polls.

However, if there's one thing that us unenlightened conservatives teach Mr. Cohen, it is that hysteria and name calling hurt your cause, rather than helping it (see 1998, 2000). It took us two elections to learn. Cohen and his cohorts are currently working on number three. You tell me who's more unenlightened.

The "Reality Based Community"

I swear, every time I hear that moniker, it makes me literally laugh out loud. It's every bit as Orwellian as the Ministry of Peace - except that it's hilarious, as opposed to being nightmarish. As proof that they deserve all the mockery we can muster, I offer you this from Armando at dKos:

I saw this ratings synopsis and it really impressed me that it looks like Olberman is really the biggest show on MSNBC now. Pretty impressive. Remember, Hardball was their signature show.

Now, I'll grant you, this is pretty hilarious in and of itself.  When you click on the link itself, the one thing you are ACTUALLY impressed with, when checking Olberman's ratings, is that he is consistently pummeled each and every single night by O'Reilly, Zahn, and usually (!) Grace. This, to the "Reality Based Community" is winning (which explains a lot about their current attempts to sabotage the candidacy of HRC in '08, God bless them). Let's put this in perspective, shall we?

On average, during the week in question, O'Reilly averaged 2,419,200 viewers. Zahn averaged 595,200, Grace 652,000. Olbermann? 385,000. So in other words, if you define "success" as getting 1/6th of the ratings share as your strongest competitor, and getting doubled up by CNN's second string, all the while coming in dead last, Olberman is doing great, and we sincerely wish that kind of "success" upon anything that the folks at dKos like (most especially the Democrats). Armando's assertion that Olberman is doing well simply because he is outdoing the rest of the garbage on MSNBC is simply due to the fact that he is unable to do a basic eyeballing of the rest of the time slots in the evening and notice that the 8pm time slot has the highest viewership across the board for cable news.

But the "Reality Based Community" isn't done!

Evidence that truly "fair and balanced" news is a ratings winner?

Again, we pause for a moment of mirth at the "Reality Based Community"'s defintion of "winner". And "truly fair and balanced." I swear, if it weren't for the Democrats, I'd almost never laugh.

Is it not time that these cable news networks stop trying to Out-Faux Faux?

Hopefully someone will see the light.

Oh please, oh please, that they will "see the light" indeed! May all the MSM outlets in the world strive to be more like Keith Olberman's Countdown in every single way, and may they all become as "successful" as he is!

Media Blasted by.. Nicholas Kristof?

With a hat tip to the Instapundit, we note that Nick Kristof is coming to understand the source of Media frustration:

More than two years have passed since the beginning of what Mr. Bush acknowledges is the first genocide of the 21st century, yet Mr. Bush barely manages to get the word "Darfur" out of his mouth. Still, it seems hypocritical of me to rage about Mr. Bush's negligence, when my own beloved institution - the American media - has been at least as passive as Mr. Bush.

Condi Rice finally showed up in Darfur a few days ago, and she went out of her way to talk to rape victims and spotlight the sexual violence used to terrorize civilians. Most American television networks and cable programs haven't done that much.

This is a column I don't want to write - we in the media business have so many critics already that I hardly need to pipe in as well. But after more than a year of seething frustration, I feel I have to...

[T]o sustain the idealism in journalism - and to rebut the widespread perception that journalists are just irresponsible gossips - we need to show more interest in the first genocide of the 21st century than in the "runaway bride."

I'm outraged that one of my Times colleagues, Judith Miller, is in jail for protecting her sources. But if we journalists are to demand a legal privilege to protect our sources, we need to show that we serve the public good - which means covering genocide as seriously as we cover, say, Tom Cruise.

It seems that Mr. Kristof has hit on at least one of the critical reasons that mainstream media is losing readership en masse these days: namely, that they are lazy and inclined to sell cheap stories for ratings rather than reporting on news. Seems like I've made this point somewhere before.

If he could also start taking his colleagues to task for pervasive liberal bias and unethical reporting practices, he'd be most of the way home to a complete picture of why nobody trusts them anymore.

We're Moving Beyond Bias

The Instapundit covers some Muslim anti-terror rallies and wonders why he's the only one doing it. He brings up a very interesting (and valid) point:

You know, if these people had blown something up, they'd be getting more press. Which suggests that if the press wants to help eliminate terrorism, it should adjust its priorities.

Bingo. You know, at some point we have to wonder when it stops being bias and starts being complicity.

Holding Molly Bingham accountable

Below is a copy of an email that I sent this morning to Pam Platt, news editor of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, KY, which carried this outrageous article, which we commented about here yesterday. If Ms. Platt responds, I am sure that I will have some follow-up questions, and so if you would like to add some of your own, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best.

Dear Ms. Platt,

I am writing to you concerning the May 8^th article by Molly Bingham, which is available on your website at the following address:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050508/OPINION04/505080346/1054/OPINION

This article is full of explosive claims that I am very interested in investigating. I am confident that before printing some of the potentially libelous material contained in this article, you thoroughly vetted all of Ms. Bingham’s claims, and so I am hoping that you will have some of this information handy for me.

I am most concerned with this sentence from the article:

“Recent actions indicate that the U.S. military will detain and/or kill any journalist who happens to be caught covering the Iraqi side of the militant resistance, and indeed a number of journalists have been killed by U.S. troops while working in Iraq.”

Surely your paper and Ms. Bingham are full aware of the seriousness of such an accusation, and are prepared to point to specific instances where the U. S. Military detained, or even more importantly, killed journalists for the sole offense of covering the insurgency in Iraq from the side of the insurgents. If you could please enumerate some of these specific instances for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

I am also interested to know whether your newspaper conducted any investigation into this claim beyond Ms. Bingham’s word, and specifically whether the soldiers under accusation were given any chance to respond. Were the division commanders involved, or at the very least their spokesmen, given the opportunity to respond? Was CENTCOM contacted in any way for verification, clarification, or denial? If so, will you please forward me copies of any correspondence between yourself and the appropriate military authorities?

Also, do you personally find that the second half of that sentence is misleading, in that it makes reference to the known accidental killings of journalists in combat zones, and uses that fact to bolster Ms. Bingham’s yet unsubstantiated claim that the U. S. Military is intentionally killing journalists for covering the Iraqi insurgency? If Ms. Bingham’s version of events cannot be verified, will your newspaper be willing to issue a retraction of this sentence?

I also have several questions that I would like to ask Ms. Bingham herself about her experience in Iraq, but I could not find her email address on your staff list. If I email these questions to you, can you forward them to her, or would she mind if you gave me her email address directly, if I solemnly swear never to spam or post it in a public place?

Thanks in advance for your attention.

Regards,

(insert my real name here)