There are a few reasons for this, that seem transparent, and perhaps, others, more veiled.  We don’t know.

First, as documented frequently, this website is not a fan of the one time Pulitzer prize winning and now seemingly vacuous, vague, stereotpying, false balancing Dowd. Nor is this rather well researched, and written site here (by a former college roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, Eric Siegel, and Al Gore).  Although that is a decidedly liberal site, whereas Donkasaurus Post is decidedly neutral (with due note that in today’s world’s, the facts themselves, are decidedly not) a snapshot look as to the reasons why that site is also not a fan of Dowd’s, is illuminating.

And we know — or at least it seems — that Dowd’s site carefully monitors to protect her from overly critical assessments of her work.

And third, we imagine that despite the inanity, and borderline sexual indulgence of some of Dowd’s columns, the Times does not want to encourage links to what it must surely (and somewhat ironically), view as puerile meanderings.

Today, Dowd wrote yet another somewhat inane, fanciful column.  In it, she tried to make the point about extreme Cheney was. At the same time, she also played into some of Cheney’s arguments, and seemed to make the questionable assertion that Cheney had no right to criticize Obama’s approach to our “counter terrorism” efforts. (We refuse to use the idiotic “war on terror,” “war” “enemy combatants” or “battlefield,” all of which play right into these psychotic terrorist criminals recruitment and proselytizing efforts as something other than the simple, lowly, depraved common murderers that they are, and which they absolutely do not want to think of themselves as, or be perceived as.  Newt Gingrich doesn’t get this point either.)  And of course she played into the pure spin argument, while seemingly trying (ineffectively) to mock it, that Obama is “weak” on terrorism because he does not use five time military deferrer Cheney’s constant drumbeat of war rhetoric.

Thus, it was, that in response, the following comment was of course blocked from all fair readers potential considerations.  As submitted in comment form to the Dowd’s column today, unedited, unabridged, and unaltered from it’s original puerile fulsomeness:

Well, you hit a lot of stereotypes Maureen, and played into a lot of misleading framing, but did so in a ‘balanced’ way.

But were you just afraid it was going too far?

Or was there some other reason that you left out that in addition to being weak — and afraid to use the manly words “war” and “enemy combatants” even though this plays right into our lowly, common murderous psychotic enemy criminals’ hands (and recruitment) that they are in some sort of grander “war” and are instead the more noble “combatants” in a war — how in addition to being weak, Obama is also prejudiced?

How’d you miss this clearly also relevant nugget. Weak and prejudiced. What kind of leader is that?

If Obama won’t frequently and constantly use “architect against terrorism” Dick Cheney’s manly war words and make our enemies all goose bumply thereby, couldn’t he at least cease from being prejudiced against homosexual fish, also?

It seems fair to ask.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSrtMPIqoaY&feature=related

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/15/obama-calls-kanye-west-jackass/

http://donkasauruspost.com/2009/09/15/beck-half-correct-president-obama-is-prejudiced-after-all-hates-gay-fish/

Dick could have pointed that out too, in the above fireside chat, don’t you think?

I’m just askin.’

What a pity that the Times readers could not revel in the sophomoric-ness and juvenile-ness of it all, while reading about how Obama is “weak” on terrorism because he relies less upon grandiose sweeping battlefield phrasing, and how Obama should tell Cheney to be quiet because THAT emboldens our enemy. (When it seems to us that both are likely wrong. The only thing that emboldens our enemy is their irrational hatred of the U.S., and culturally psychotic approach to visualizing it, along with our turning them into something they are not. That is, combatants, rather than lowly murderous criminals, and playing up to them publicly in some big game of rhetoric, rather than quietly and powerfully framing the effort so as to lessen recruitment appeal, and finding, minimizing, and where applicable, wiping them out.)

Today, Dowd wrote a column in the NY Times very space limited op ed pages, essentially saying that 3d movies are cool, or might be cool, or that people like them, or some such. In response to the column, one of our 82,000 or so Deputy Editors happened to witness the posting of the following comment to Dowd’s post. In full:

Times’ op-eds have nothing better to cover than 3d movies??

Why don’t you write about this — good update to a NY times comment on the issue, too.

Or this.

Nah. Bring us movie talk on the oped page. Maybe Entertainment magazine’s editorial pages can cover the substantive stuff.

Who knows who monitors these, but the comment was blocked from readers’ gentle thought considerations. Unlike the one just below that makes a small fraction of the same point, while taking two ridiculous shots at President Obama for using a teleprompter (similar to essentially every other president ever since teleprompters have been in existence), and more. Or perhaps it was double reverse sophisticated satire, that few readers would ever get. We don’t know:

I wondered what compelling issues you would write about with the departure of the Bush administration. Movies, how fascinating! There is plenty of farce to be found in the Obama administration and the Democrat lead Congress. Tell us what you think about the teleprompter President please. No sarcasm needed, just the facts, and we can weep or laugh as prompted by his deeds.

The links from the blocked comment — the one that was too thoughtful to actually allow in examples by way of contrast — go to substantive pieces regarding critical issues that go to what our country is all about. Yawn, snooze, ready?:

One on a subject that has been occasionally covered; the undue influence of corporations now, in addition to everything else, upon our election process in the wake of the abysmal decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. (Some more analysis on Citizens that misses the point and paints a false paradox, with good commentary following).

The other on something that has not been very well covered; clandestine government infiltration into non governmental speech, influence and information activities, and its parallels to the anti Constitutional theories upon some of the Bush Administration’s unchecked and clandestine actions to set aside Congressional Statutes — and even potentially set aside provisions of the Bill of Rights — were based.

Maybe this stuff is too highfalutin for Dowd. Fair enough. But entertainment merging as news is not what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he said the given the choice between newspapers and government itself, he should take newspapers. And it was not because of their official op ed page opinions on 3d movies.

But then again, this is the NY Times. It’s not like it’s a leading newspaper or anything. How could it be with op ed pieces like this?

Talking head and blogger Sarah Palin spoke out on Fox News saying that Alito’s “Wilson moment” was OK, and that Justice Alito was just “calling him out.” She based her careful judgment on her longstanding and intimate knowledge of Supreme Court protocol. Oh, wait.

In other deep layer of Palin analysis, she went on to discuss health care “mandation.” What’s “mandation” you ask? According to Dictionary.com it means “No dictionary results.” Strange…

And finally, she described the entire state of the union from President Obama as being like “a lecture.” And we all know how she feels about lectures. Maybe that’s why she went through five different colleges.

Palin was also basing her support of Justice Alito’s “calling out” the President on the history of the law and the Supreme Court,  upon her intimate knowledge of Supreme Court cases.  Where it appeared she couldn’t name a single Supreme Court case.

Note, however, that after the aforelinked debacle, Palin crammed for a crash course, and got to pimp some misleading political spin at the same time, all while Fox’s  Carl Cameron did his magician like “Fair and Balanced” act, craftily veiling his two minute TV rehabilitation commercial for her even while,  rather emphatically, getting in Palin (and Fox’s) anti mainstream media message at the end.

The mainstream media is poor, as Cameron, and Palin, subtly, and not so subtly, imply.  But not because it is unfair to Palin;  but because of quite the opposite.  As an example, the ideologically fervent, and almost always incorrect, misleading, or simply rhetoric stuffed Palin is treated with kid gloves relative to the facts.  And the media has done a better job covering Palin than many other things, in fact, and it still has not covered Palin correctly.

Notice that at the same time Cameron also renovated this snafu on Palin’s part as well — where Palin apparently could not name a single source of news she routinely read. Now, according to her and her fair and balanced mouthpiece Cameron, easily explained by how ”annoyed” she was at that same media, even though in the video itself (just linked to), Palin expresses her “great appreciation for” that very same media.

If Palin was thus acting sycophantic here by telling the world her “great appreciation for the same media” she would later tell her rehabilitator Cameron that she was so annoyed at she would not answer critical questions, wouldn’t it have made far more sense to have simply name some sources (if she really dutifully reads them) and some Supreme Court cases (if she really knew any) rather than come off as looking extremely uninformed when that was already a chief concern to begin with? And then make her point about media annoyance?

You betcha.  Palin didn’t because she froze. And she froze because, as evidenced by her constant misleading rhetoric, it is unlikely that she really had read very much of substance, or knew much about the Supreme Court or its decisions at all.

But that’s nothing that spinmeisters Fox and Palin (and now back, naturally on the “Fair and Balanced” station, together again), couldn’t cobble back together, as the link of  Cameron and Palin above, aptly illustrates.  (Just not to active hard core Democrats perhaps, who sometimes don’t seem to want to grasp that just because they think something is purely empty, doesn’t mean everyone else is not being somewhat influenced by it on some level, or that being the most watched cable “news” source is not just coincidental with the movement of this country that past ten plus years. But then it’s not clear that Democrats see the movement of this country the past ten years, either. )

As noted in the Anchorage Daily News piece just linked to, also consider Palin’s suggestion from her recent book  that the media is “worthless as a source of factual information anymore.”

This is sometimes true. But mainly because they will publish wildly misleading and incredibly ill informed pieces like this one by Palin herself, and play to the same propaganda as a legitimate “side’ to a ‘factual debate” that Palin repeatedly, and erroneously, promotes herself.

The irony is unbounded.

]]> http://donkasauruspost.com/2010/01/28/worth-repeating-palins-expertise/feed/ 2 http://donkasauruspost.com/2010/01/19/abraham-lincoln-and-raging-freedom-boners/ http://donkasauruspost.com/2010/01/19/abraham-lincoln-and-raging-freedom-boners/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:55:45 +0000 admin http://donkasauruspost.com/?p=422

As their presence would risk giving Lincoln a raging freedom boner. Who dares awaken the great Emancipenis

Seriously (see minute 2:00), who is this guy?

Oh, that’s right. He’s the guy who the liberal Leaning American Prospect blog expected would “school” constitutional scholar and Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, on a subject on which Yoo wrote the definitive brief.

And he can make raging boner jokes at the same time.

Full Disclosure:  We are not fans of Michael Moore.  Some on the left may likely get angry with that statement, and dismiss what we are trying to do (somewhat comically, since there are millions of blogs out here and few see this one).

But what is important to point out — and even more important to understand (aside from the fact that people can have different perspectives over the same set of facts) is that the fact that a website like this that actually supports a number of positions that the left happens to support, carries far more credibility, because it can not be simply dismissed by or attributed to irrelevant but typically common assertions of “well, that’s just the left talking,” and a presumption of bias and spin immediately read right in. Because, here, it is not, and there is none. Rather, we are looking at the issue objectively, and dispassionately, trying to share facts as reasonably as possible, and when our perspective intermingles (which is not often the case), we try to give the reason why, when it is relevant.

That is what gets people to listen, and to bridge divides. Not necessarily in changing positions or even “compromising” things that don’t need to be or even should not be compromised on, but in helping open up actual debate, improving the level of information,and making disinformation into a much bigger issue that it currently is.

Now back to that disinformation, and the intense media bias that continues to play into the framing of the right. Part of the reason the media does this is because — well, for reasons discussed in other posts, and on more serious, lengthy sites, this is what the media does. And part of the reason why is because Democrats allow them to do it, Democrats do not use the often misleading framing of the far right to define the far right, Democrats allow the far right to define Democrats, and Democrats often play into the framing of the far right. This makes it easier — no offense media — for the media to do the lousy job that they do. (Many reporters have privately acknowledged that the wish Democrats would sometimes just freakin’ make an effective case, so they could cover it without immediately being accused by the far right of bias simply by virtue of covering the facts — but this seems to be a notion that, when shared, many active Democrats online scoff at. Which is too bad.)

Briefly, with the Michael Moore example:  Here is the news headline, on its user account home page, that greeted millions of Americans today (emphasis added):

Michael Moore Defends Beliefs. Filmmaker reacts to suggestions he leave the country:  Why he won’t go

This is rather incredible in its presentation.  Moore had to “defend” rather than simply “express” his beliefs?  Then there is the absurd suggestion that Michael Moore leave the country.  Why is AOL even parroting this?   For quick headline appeal, most likely. But the effect is the same.

“Jim” is famous.  Jim doesn’t think the way we are doing things is the best way, so Jim complains about what he thinks is not the best way.  He might spin his facts, as many do, and exaggerate a bit, but he doesn’t even wildly mislead, as some very promiment commentators in America do. And we say “Jim should just leave the country.”  Because our country is not founded upon the notion of the right to disagree, but instead, the idea that those whose perspectives we don’t like (not those who continually, and repeatedly, wildly mislead — and even they have a right to be here) should just leave.

Ha ha. We were just kidding. Of course our country is founded upon the right to disagree — and in fact the necessity for it. But maybe a few other people take up our call for Jim to leave the country.  “Jim, just get the hell out.” It has a nice, real emotionally base, and very easily appealing (and pithy!) ring to it. It’s even fun to say.

It is absurd, of course.  But AOL in its news feed, to millions, decides to run a headline;  ”Jim responds to suggestions that he leave the country.” The idea, even if Jim’s response is wonderful, is now legitimized.

But AOL,here, does something much worse. AOL now actually gives credence not just to the idea that the suggestion is at least reasonable, but to the idea that Jim “should get the hell out” itself, by telling its readers and account holders “Why Jim Won’t Go” is reasonable.

This is sensationalism at its worse.  We may dislike Moore, but at the moment we dislike AOL “more.”  Maybe AOL should “get the hell out!”

Heck, that is appealing!!  And it is fine, we are not castigating those who make this very misguided (and darest we say, perhaps on some absrtract level, “unAmerican”? suggestion), BUT WE ARE CASTIGATING AOL FOR BLATANTLY LEGITIMIZING IT, AND PLAYING RIGHT INTO IT.

It’s shameless. It’s clueless. And it is extremely biased.  And it’s being manipulated by the far right.  But as we noted above, Democrats are not helping, either.

Yet the media has covered the story quite a bit. As they have covered ACORN for quite some time now, on the continued rantings of those who think ACORN is the biggest thing in America.

But still, why hasn’t the media covered this latest “pimp” scandal even more?  Salon Columnist Glenn Greenwald, clearly, wonders as well why the media has not covered the  huge, enormous ACORN scandal as the very huge, enormous, once in several years type scandal that it quite clearly is.  Some hyperbole aside, his piece is well worth reading.

But even if the media “ignored” this HUGE story — which according to the far right means not making it one of the bigger stories in ages –Congress didn’t, and promptly passed a bill to address the situation. (As Congress often does, most particularly this decade, to address “situations.”)

However, there was a little problem.

So a few days ago Greenwald “interviewed”  Florida Representative Alan Grayson on just exactly this problem was.  Grayson, it should be noted, is a pretty formidable attorney.  (Here, he is lovingly described by Rolling Stone reporter and latest “in” commentator guy Matt Taibbi, in a pretty hilarious and entertaining post that describes Taibbi’s “personal experience” with him.  The video of Grayson grilling the Chief Counsel for the Federal Reserve, embedded at the bottom), gives a pretty good indication of Grayson’s skill set.)

Glenn Greenwald: You discovered that there was a potential consequence in this bill that was probably not intended by the bill’s sponsors. Can you talk about [that]?…

Alan Grayson: Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I will say that it is true that 10 out of the 10 biggest defense contractors have been convicted of fraud at one time or another in the past few years, and ACORN hasn’t, it’s difficult to frame any bill, whatever one’s intent, to punish ACORN and keep ACORN from being funded by fed contracts…[and] This bill, taken literally, at its words, actually forbids and prohibits fed funding of virtually every large defense contractor in America.

Glenn Greenwald:Why couldn’t the bill just have simply said we will defund ACORN, and left it at that?…

Alan Grayson: The Constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder; bills of attainder are actions by Congress that are directed toward one individual or one organization. And the reason for that is that Congress is a law-making body, not a judicial body. We [Congress] don’t actually decide guilt or innocence; we don’t decide liability, and therefore the Constitution understandably forbids a law that singles out ACORN or any other organization for punishment.

Glenn Greenwald: …Before you got to Congress, one of the things you were known for was working on fraud and abuse among contractors in Iraq. Can you put, in terms of the cost to the taxpayer of funding ACORN versus, say, the waste and abuse that comes from fraud on the part of military and defense contractors in Iraq [in context]?….

Alan Grayson: AG: …The amount of money that ACORN received in the past 20 years, all together, is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day, during the war in Iraq.

We  agree that the ACORN scandal bears looking into.  But it also seems fair to ask the far right, if some dime store low level employees of already scandal ridden ACORN, engaging in some two bit, and somewhat hilarious, if not disturbing, ”free” pimp and prostitute and income sheltering advice is a national scandal of such epic proportions as to warrant a full court press of ongoing national news coverage; where was the same cry for more glaring media coverage, with respect to the far more significant — from a taxpayer standpoint – fraud convictions of each of our nation’s top defense contractors?

True, the ACORN story is more salacious.   But from a taxpayer standpoint, as Grayson points out, Halliburton – which has already been convicted of fraud with respect to expenditure of Taxpayer funds (awarded via not bid contracts, as well, upping the price to taxpayers considerably) – received from taxpayers each and every single day, roughly the same amount that ACORN had over 20 years. (The far right is also calling out for an investigation of Obama, as if he has been ACORN’s CEO just before becoming president;  Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO.)

If we are talking about taxpayer support of fraud and improper purpose, it seems like Congress was focused on making an issue out of a pretty small ACORN, that fell from the mighty Oak tree of taxpayer funded fraud and abuse, instead of also going after, say, an actual mighty tree of fraud and abuse itself.  Wouldn’t all those Independent, anti Big Government, anti Fraud and Abuse, anti Waste of Taxpayers’ Money Tea Partiers agree with this?

Probably not. And therein lies the political problem that America is facing today.