Sunday, January 17, 2016

The week in media

Last week was not a good week for media.  Let's survey a bright spot or two and the week's worst as well.




tv





Among the few bright spots?

Alisyn Camerota interviewing Hillary Clinton for CNN and asking a very uncomfortable and awkward Hillary about Vice President Joe Biden's praise for Senator Bernie Sanders.

Telling moment?

Alisyn Camerota: So you didn't take Biden's comments as a slight?


Hillary Clinton:  No.  Not at all.

The dry response, the thin lips, the undisguised hatred.

Camerota even asked about Bill Clinton's past behaviors (allegedly raped Juanita Broadderick, harassed Paula Jones, allegedly harassed Katharine Wiley, his affair with Monica Lewinsky, etc) and when Hillary insisted she did not have to respond to that, Camerota wondered, "But when someone accuses you of being an enabler of sexual assault, don't you need to respond to it?  I mean particularly since this an issue that you wanted to talk about on the campaign trail?  Campus sexual assault?  You say that-that survivors need to be believed and they need to be heard.  So when he's accusing you of doing something that is the antithesis of what you want to talk about, don't you need to address it?"

Hillary's response?

That she'd "let the voters decide what's relevant" -- what a cute little out for her whenever she doesn't want to answer a question.


Another Hillary moment earns praise for MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.  When Hillary appeared on Rachel's show Thursday and tried to offer her myth of good campaigning on issues, Rachel pointed out that Hillary had been attacking her opponent Bernie Sanders.

Hillary insisted that Democrats, other than Sanders (apparently), "engage on substantive differences."

Rachel didn't let it slide.  She pointed out that it was one thing to run against someone but another to make him "an enemy in the world in the Democratic Party."

She pointed out, "He's a very well-respected figure.  Your campaign is essentially fighting with him now in a way that is casting aspersions on his character, calling him dishonest."

Hillary Clinton: No, no.

Rachel Maddow: [Your charge that] He won't level with the American people?

Hillary Clinton: Let's parse this out.

Which means she stalls and she changes the subject.

But mainly it means she lies.

She lies and she lies again.

Over and over.

Assault matters, she insists, victims must be believed . . . until it's her husband being accused (again).

She respects Bernie, she insists, but he can't be honest with the American people . . . which isn't an attack, she insists and "he hasn't laid out a plan" for single-payer and . . .

She's a liar.

And she lied repeatedly last week.

She wasn't the only one.

The worst media moment of the week took place on NPR Friday.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED featured . . .

We're not sure what.


Discussing the GOP presidential nominee debate on Thursday, sex worker Ari Shapiro asked MSNBC's failed talk show host Joy Reid the following:

SHAPIRO: Joy, there were a couple of lines in the debate last night about president Obama that rankled a lot of people. Chris Christie called the president a petulant child, and Ted Cruz said, we're going to kick your rear end out of the White House. And some observers said, you'd never make that remark about a white president. What do you think?



REID: Well, I think that gets to the kernel of one of the many ironies of the situation that the establishment of the Republican Party finds itself in because right - so Chris Christie is a part of that establishment wing, but he speaks about the president in such a degrading way as if the president is a child and not the commander in chief of the United States - such a disrespectful way. That's suborned the kind of rage and the kind of paranoia, frankly, that you see among the base of the Republican Party. The problem for the establishment is that they've lost control of it. They suborned things quietly like birtherism. They winked and nodded at ideas like death panels. They have sort of allowed this kind of fury and paranoia to help them win midterm elections, but it's now out of control. So they've both locked themselves out of even the possibility of reaching out, particularly to African-American voters, who read the entire Republican Party - not just Donald Trump, but all of it, every single part of it - as being essentially sowing hatred of the president based at least in part on race. And that bleeds over to Hispanics, it bleeds over to Asian-Americans. It creates a vibe that the Republican Party can't fix, and Donald Trump is just better at them at exploiting it.


Shapiro might have thought he was still tied up in his bondage den and that he'd forgotten his safe word -- that might explain why he brought Ted Cruz in on the issue (Christie called Barack a "petulant child" and also made the "rear end" remark).

Joy Reid needs no excuses to mangle the facts.

Nor does she need any proof of anything.

She just whines like the spoiled brat that she is,


In America, anyone can criticize a president.


But we do know in the history of America, presidents have been called children and far worse.

We also realize that Barack will leave office younger than any two-term president in modern history.

Most importantly, unlike ignorant fool Joy Reid, we know what a commander in chief is.

Someone school the moron.

Barack Obama is not commander in chief of the United States.

There is no such position.

Barack is commander in chief of the military.

That is not a minor point or a minor role.

If the Constitution is too damn hard for Joy Reid, maybe NPR shouldn't treat the blathering fool as a respected guest.

The president is in charge of the military why?

Because we have civilian control of the military in a democracy.


Democracy.

Joy forgets what democracy is as she rushes to fall to her knees in supplication before this US president (and only this one -- she's just a partial whore, you understand, not a full on whore).

Democracy is the people are in charge.

That's democracy.

And in a democracy, no matter how it upsets a failed talk show host like Joy, any American can insult any president or any ruler.



RNC's Holland Redfield declared last week of the GOP nominees, If your child was doing that, you would put that child over your knee and spank them."


And guess what?

He can say that too.

That's democracy as well.

And should Donald Trump or any other GOP nominee become US president?

Redfield can continue to make remarks like that.

It's hard to know who to blame more?

Joy for her stupidity or Ari for his failure to correct it.








































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