When The U.S. Media Lost Its Collective Mind

[UPDATE]:

Connie Chung, serial offender.

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Glenn Greenwald has uncovered this 2002 interview which Connie Chung, then of CNN, did with tennis star/naturalized U.S. citizen Martina Navratilova.

It’s quite a thing to read, how our esteemed American “journalists” behaved in the aftermath of 9/11. It’s been 10 years and while I remember the U.S. media’s effective quashing of any voice that wasn’t full-bore flag-waving and Merka Fuck Yeah, reading this transcript brings it all back in stark relief:

NAVRATILOVA: Well, obviously, I’m not saying this is a communist system, but I think we’re having — after 9/11, there’s a big centralization of power. President Bush is having more and more power. John Ashcroft is having more and more power. Americans are losing their personal rights left and right. I mean, the ACLU is up in arms about all of the stuff that’s going on right now. . . .

CHUNG: Can I be honest with you? I can tell you that when I read this, I have to tell you that I thought it was un-American, unpatriotic. I wanted to say, go back to Czechoslovakia. You know, if you don’t like it here, this a country that gave you so much, gave you the freedom to do what you want.

NAVRATILOVA: And I’m giving it back. This is why I speak out. When I see something that I don’t like, I’m going to speak out because you can do that here. And again, I feel there are too many things happening that are taking our rights away.

CHUNG: But you know what? I think it is, OK, if you believe that, you know, then go ahead and think that at home. But why do you have to spill it out? You know, why do you have to talk about it as a celebrity so that people will write it down and talk about what you said?

NAVRATILOVA: I think athletes have a duty to speak out when there is something that’s not right, when they feel that perhaps social issues are not being paid attention to. As a woman, as a lesbian, as a woman athlete, there is a whole bunch of barriers that I’ve had to jump over, and we shouldn’t have to be jumping over them any more.

CHUNG: Got you. But sometimes, when you hear celebrities saying something, do you ever say to yourself, I don’t care what so and so thinks, you know. Yes, go ahead and say whatever you want to say. But you’re not a politician. You’re not in a position of government power or whatever.

NAVRATILOVA: No. And I just might do that. I may run for office one of these days and really do make a difference. But…

CHUNG: Are you kidding me?

NAVRATILOVA: No, I’m not. One of these days, hopefully. But when you say go back to Czech Republic, why are you sending me back there? I live here. I love this country. I’ve lived here 27 years. I’ve paid taxes here for 27 years. Do I not have a right to speak out? Why is that unpatriotic?

CHUNG: Well, you know the old line, love it or leave it.

Wow. Hey Connie Chung, why not tell Martina Navratilova to just keep her Commie yap shut and be done with it? What an astonishing breach of journalistic ethics. I’m sure Chung would just say she was playing Devil’s advocate.

Even more astonishing: do you even remember this interview? I don’t. Did all of this just happen and there was no push-back?

This was CNN. Not Fox News, not Glenn Beck TV, not Breitbart’s Big TV or whatever they call it. And people wonder how this nation got dragged into the war in Iraq? People wonder how the Dixie Chicks got destroyed? When this was how the “real” “journalists” behaved?

But, ya know, ask Sarah Palin what magazines she reads and that’s a “gotcha” question. Riiight.

You know what else? We on the left have always said the media bears a huge amount of responsibility for pulling us into an unjust war, and this is a perfect example of what we’re talking about. Few in the media have acknowledged it.

It wasn’t just Connie Chung on CNN, it was every fucking day, an endless stream of “shut up you dirty hippie WHY DON’T YOU LOVE AMERICA!” from our esteemed members of the press. It went on for months — years. The nation is still waiting for its apology too, I might add.

I’m glad Glenn Greenwald dug this bit up because even though I remembered it was bad, I’d forgotten exactly how bad.

Shh… Use Your Indoor Voice!

I dunno, but if there’s one thing this whole Joe Ricketts fiasco shows us it’s how much the Republican Party has lost its grip.

I’ve just started reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book The Conscience Of A Liberal (I know, I’m behind on my liberal canon) which is an excellent read. I was struck by this:

Today leading figures on the American right are masters of what the British call “dog-whistle politics”: they say things that appeal to certain groups in a way that only targeted groups can hear — and thereby avoid having the extremism of their positions become generally obvious. [...] But in the early days of the National Review, positions were stated more openly.

Thus in 1957 the magazine published an editorial celebrating a Senate vote that, it believed, would help the South continue the disenfranchisement of blacks:

The central question that emerges — and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal — is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being. it is the advanced race …

National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority, in which case it must give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of its violence.

The “catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal” dismissed by the editorial would, presumably, be the document known as the Constitution of the United States.

This is the National Review, circa 1957. Advocating white supremacy over blacks, because black people are “socially atavistic” and whites are “enlightened.” Whites must maintain control of society through policies like Jim Crow, they say, because society will regress if blacks are allowed a seat at the table. In 1957 it was perfectly acceptable for the intellectuals at the National Review to openly espouse such White Supremacist views.

Post Civil Rights era, such views have been pushed underground. They’re still there, of course, but you didn’t openly say such things. No, you spoke in code. You make reference to “welfare queens,” for example.

Until we got our first black president, that is. Not long ago National Review writer John Derbyshire was fired for a column (published in another magazine) basically espousing the same views as that 1957 editorial, and he’s since gone full-on white supremacist on the pages of Vdare. Pat Buchanan wrote an entire book espousing racist fearmongering about “the end of white America.” They aren’t hiding this stuff anymore. It’s out there.

So I have one question: what the hell happened? Republicans have ditched the dog whistles, they’re speaking in fucking tornado sirens. Birtherism and attacks on black churches and references to President Obama being “a Kenyan” and “a food stamp president,” not to mention the racist photos featured at conservative think tanks like the John Locke Foundation: they’ve ditched the code and are just letting it all hang out, and it doesn’t seem Karl Rove or other party apparatchiks have any control over it.

Is this what the Tea Party has done? Is it people like Rush Limbaugh who constantly rail against “political correctness” deciding, fuck it, I’m a racist bigot and I’m proud of it? Is it the internet giving more people a venue to spout their racist views?

Is it that the rest of us are more savvy to these dog whistles and see them for what they are?

When did the Republicans decide to ditch the dog whistles?

[UPDATE]:

Next time someone starts a sentence with, “I’m not racist…” think of this lady (h/t, John Cole):

Good News Friday

[UPDATES]:

There’s always good news on Fridays! Here’s some:

• Dr. Robert Spitzer, regarded as the “father of modern psychiatry,” has apologized for his 2003 study supporting the use of reparative therapy to “cure” gays.

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• California’s only known wolf in the wild, called OR7, has been photographed:

I Can Haz Girlfriend?

This is the only known color photograph of the animal. The photographer is Richard Shinn, a CA Dept. of Fish and Game employee. Quite a scoop!

• George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were all tried in absentia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and found guilty of war crimes, including torture and “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.” The trial included testimony from former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

• A plastic-eating fungi found in the Amazon could save us all from drowning in mountains of trash. Okay people this is why we saved the rainforest!

• Researchers at Harvard and Yale found that the average American is willing to pay a little more for clean energy, but not if the definition of “clean” includes natural gas and nuclear power. Interesting.

• A 9-year-old boy launched his own spontaneous counterprotest of the Westboro Baptist “Church” with his own “God Hates No One” sign. In so doing he became an overnight internet hero.

• Gay agenda alert! Ellen DeGeneres has been awarded the Mark Twain Prize For American Humor. The nation’s top humor prize, it is awarded by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Past recipients include Bill Cosby and Tina Fey.

• George Lucas is sticking it to his NIMBY neighbors who opposed his plans for a digital film production studio by opting to build low-income housing on his land instead. He stated:

“If everyone feels that housing is less impactful on the land, then we are hoping that people who need it the most will benefit.”

Oh, my.

• Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee signed an executive order recognizing out of state same-sex marriages, and again asked the state legislature to allow same sex marriage in Rhode Island.

• Sketchers will pay $40 million to settle false advertising claims that its ugly-assed shoes lead to weight loss, increase cardiovascular health, and improve muscle tone.

• Related: a judge has ruled that General Mills must defend its claim that Fruit Roll-Ups are made of real fruit, not the crap that’s listed on its label. Damn, I’m sick of this shit. Just be fucking honest already.

There was no good news out of Tennessee this week. None. Donna Summer died. Horse abuse was revealed. Nashville has issued its first air quality alert of the year today. Just beam me the hell up, already.

I leave you with this must-see video. It’ the TED Talk they didn’t want you to see, about income inequality and who the true job creators are. Watch and share with your friends and family:

If You’re A Horse Stay Out Of Tennessee

Tennessee is not a horse-friendly state. We’re just not. First we have some bizarre Republican jones to bring commercial horse slaughter to the state, I guess a sop to the local horse farms currently forced to send their horses to Mexico to be turned into steaks for hungry Belgians. Alrighty then.

Not sure how many people are aware that those picturesque horse farms outside Nashville are actually raising horses for food in countries where horsemeat is still on the menu. Ewww.

And then today the Humane Society released video showing a top Tennessee Walking Horse trainer engaged in the brutal form of abuse known as “soring,” prompting Pepsi to withdraw its sponsorship from the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration.

This on the heels of a bizarre story from last weekend where Arcadia, the winner of the Iroquois Steeplechase in Nashville, literally collapsed and died in the winner’s circle. Yes, this happened right here on Saturday.

Here he is as veterinarians and trainers tried to cool him down with ice packs:

He died not long after this photo was taken. And I’m sorry to show this to you but someone had to. I did not see this picture in the Nashville papers. I had to find it at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I wonder if The Tennessean didn’t want to run the risk of offending the bigwings who serve on the event committee?

And I don’t know why I’m fascinated with this story but I am. It’s just so full of irony. I guess it’s like that road-kill thing where you try to look away but you can’t. I just can’t stop thinking about Arcadia and all the fancy people who showed up for their big high society event, all dressed up in their designer clothes and the ladies in their big hats and the fancy box lunches prepared by celebrity chefs. This, after all, is Nashville’s Kentucky Derby. And it was a gorgeous day, it really was.

So you have all of those people feeling so good about their fancy selves and their fancy lives, and the star of the show fucking ruined it by dying.

It’s hard to feel good about the world when that happens. This isn’t schadenfreude I feel, not at all. It’s more like: man, what a great literary device! I swear, if I were writing a modern-day version of The Great Gatsby and needed a metaphor for the decline of high society, I think that scene would be it.

Incidentally, the Steeplechase website offers a heartwarming (cough*cough) tribute to this year’s fallen champion with a touching explanation that his loss was completely unavoidable, could have happened at any time, and totally wasn’t their fault. Don’t hate them, corporate sponsors!

And now the Walking Horse National Celebration, the other mega-event for our horsey set, faces yet more animal cruelty scandal. I tell ya, the irony here is overwhelming.

I don’t know what it means but Tennessee Republicans might want to lay off the horse slaughter thing for a while. Ya think?

When You’ve Got Nothing Else

[UPDATE]: 2

The plot thickens:

Joe Ricketts’s children, which include Obama bundler Laura Ricketts, bought the Chicago Cubs in 2009 and have been in talks with the city about renovating the team’s 98-year-old stadium, Wrigley Field.

That appears to be on hold now.

“The Mayor was livid when he read that the Ricketts were going to launch a $10 million campaign against President Obama – with the type of racially motivated ads that are insulting to the president and the presidential campaign,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation. “He is also livid with their blatant hypocrisy.”

[...]

The Ricketts family is seeking taxpayer funding for the renovations. Emanuel has reportedly sought to put $100 million in tax incentives into the deal.

Would love to be a fly on the wall at the next Ricketts family gathering.

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[UPDATE]:

Ricketts’ Super-PAC has rejected the Jeremiah Wright smear proposal. So, no go.

This whole thing is bizarre. I wonder if they put it “out there” so it could percolate beneath the radar of the “decent” discourse, instead to marinate in the sewer of right wing blogs and media outlets a la WingNut Daily. That way Mittens can pretend to stay above the fray.

God, who knows. This campaign is already giving me a headache.

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Republican Moneybags Joe Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs founder of TD Ameritrade whose children own the Chicago Cubs, has pledged $10 million on a smear campaign against President Obama using the old Rev. Jeremiah Wright stuff that didn’t work last time. The storyboard for the video was leaked to the New York Times and as you can see, it’s a pretty nasty piece of work.

Whenever I see stuff like this it helps to remember that negative campaigns are an attempt to compensate for a campaign’s inherent weakness through deception and distraction. Here they are trying to compensate for the fact that their candidate sucks and they have no ideas save the failed ones that everyone remembers all too well from the Bush years (deregulate, cut taxes, * poof * magic happens). We’re still seeing signs of that fallacy crashing down around everyone’s ears, such as JP Morgan’s now-$3 billion gambling loss which recently surfaced.

I don’t really see how this is supposed to work but there you have it. Distraction, it’s how we do stuff these days.

Republicans are trying to tell us that the President’s endorsement of marriage equality will undercut his support among more culturally-conservative religious African-Americans. I don’t know if that is true, but it doesn’t seem like attacking the black church is a good way to help that along if such a rift indeed exists.

American Morans, Video Edition

Via deep in comments, comes this gem from 2007, the great Sprinkler Rainbow Conspiracy! Stand up for your Constitutional Rights, people! No more fluoridated water!

WOLVERINES!

Original American Moran here, more American Morans here.

Technically True But Still Utter BS

Ah, our glorious mainstream media. Here’s wishing they’d actually provide information, not, ya know, troll for clicks with sensational headlines:

Wind Farms Cause Global Warming!

That was the headline of an article in Forbes Magazine from April 30, 2012. And how about this one: “Wind farms can cause climate change, finds new study” from the Telegraph. Or this one from Fox News where they remove the word ‘can:’ “New Research Shows that Wind Farms Cause Global Warming.”

All of these articles have glommed onto a study published in Nature Climate Change on April 29, 2012. The title of that article? “Impacts of wInd farms on land surface temperature.”

It’s amazing how the media can distort the truth when it wants to. The observational study looked at west-central Texas where four of the world’s largest wind farms are located. From 2003-2011, recorded measurements of the local surface temperatures in the vicinity increased by 0.72 degrees Celsius, particularly at night compared with nearby non-wind farm locations. As the authors point out, “These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.”

The proposed mechanism is attributed to a changing distribution of air, swapping warmer air above with cooler air below as a result of the rotating motion of the turbines. There’s no net increase in heat, just a change in where it’s located. But this may have the possibility have affecting the regional weather patterns and even regional climate, if the effect is substantial enough

Back in my day this is what we’d call “media bias.” Apparently these days that’s reserved for networks that hire Rachel Maddow. Go figure.

Dibble notes that Forbes actually did provide the accurate information … eventually. But most readers probably didn’t read that far down the article — if they did more than scan the headline, that is. And this is what makes me nuts about most science reporting geared for us uneducated masses: it’s little more than click-bait. That might be fine on a story like “sugar makes you stupid!” — hey, we all know sugar is bad for you. But on an issue like climate change, where manufactured “controversy” has been foisted on the public to the detriment of the health of the entire planet so some rich oil Daddies can get even richer, well, it’s downright irresponsible. People need real reporting on climate change, not sensationalism and click-bait. It’s a complete abrogation of journalistic duty.

Pfft.