They’ve been running headlines like this one from the Washington Post;
The Post writes:
Category: Media
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Fox News’ Atonement
During the Jackson funeral Tuesday, I shut off the news – and turned on the local salsa radio station instead. I understand salsa, I don’t understand why we were making uch a big deal over a guy who sings well who poisoned himself voluntarily.
Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette took this screen cap of Fox News’s front page during the funeral. It shows a picture of the late 1LT Brian Bradshaw who was killed in Afghanistan the same day that Michael Jackson and the story is about the Bradshaw family’s complaint of the endless coverage of the Jackson funeral, and nothing about the troops who had died during the same period. The banner above the story announces the arrival of the Jackson family at the cemetary – “Watch Live!”. I wonder if Fox noticed the hypocrisy like Greyhawk noticed.
So ever since the day of the funeral, Fox News has trotted out members of Bradshaw’s family to chastise the media for ignoring the war in Afghanistan so that they can squeeze in more Jackson coverage. Fox’ on air personalities join in the media bashing along with the Bradshaw family. They shake their heads and “tsk-tsk”. Apparently not recognizing the fact that Fox had at least as much, if not more, to do with the nauseating coverage of a dead pervert.
So, like I said, I’ve seen this Bradshaw family trotted out for nearly every show in the last three days. I’d show you the videos, but Fox hasn’t bothered to put any of the videos up. As if the issue no longer exists and Fox has atoned for poisoning the airways with their garbage.
The only thing I can find is Pete King on O’Reilly defending his remarks the other day on YouTube. That video is below the fold.
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Simon: The sins of Sarah Palin
BooRadley sent me a link to Roger Simon’s hillarious piece yesterday entitled “The Sins of Sarah Palin“. I hope Republicans are paying attention to the caricatures they’ve become. Here’s a sample;
The Republican Party likes to nominate the next guy in line. John McCain in 2008, George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole in 1996 were all the next guys in line. They had “earned” their place in the party hierarchy. (Or, in the case of George W. Bush, his father had earned it for him.)
Today, it is hard to see who the next guy in line is, but the party mandarins, the pooh-bahs, are agreed on one thing: Sarah Palin ain’t it.
She is a dumb hick, a nobody from nowhere. She hunts moose with a chainsaw from the back of a snowmobile or something. Just listen to her resignation speech. It was not slick or polished or written by somebody else. She appeared to deliver it off the top of her head as if she were a real person. What a doofus!
Doesn’t she know that the highest form of political communication today is to exactly regurgitate a speech written for you by a speechwriter who has crafted, vetted and polled every phrase, line and word?
Me? I’m pulling for Governor Palin. Not because she’s particularly electable, not because she’s a woman…but because the Republican Party needs to change. Is Sarah Palin the change we need? She can’t hurt. It’s time we started electing our own candidates instead of asking the media and Democrats who they support first.
Ronald Reagan was that kind of candidate. When he was defeated in the primaries by Gerald Ford (who the media told us we should run against Jimmy Carter), Reagan kept the pressure on Carter on every issue from the Panama Canal to the Iran hostages to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the boycott of the Moscow Olympics. He became the Anti-Carter. The media knew Reagan could win against Carter, so they discouraged us from voting for him by using the same tactic they used against Goldwater a decade and a half before – fear.
I’m not saying that Sarah Palin is the next Ronald Reagan – that remains to be seen, if we give her a shot at trying keeping our minds wide open.
If you look at Palin’s principles, she’s a conservative right down the line – the kind of candidate that we’d all vote for – if we could get the media and the Democrats to approve of her.
Um, but they won’t approve. They’d rather write crap like this from Fkstick Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post;
Meanwhile, getting real, can we stop pretending that Palin is interested in anything other than her own ambition?
Can we also stop nodding assent every time she says the media are to blame for her self-inflicted wounds? The media invented Sarah Palin. Before the media shined their light on those no-place-like-home slippers, does anyone recall ever wondering what a governor of Alaska was up to?
Show me one line in that paragraph that couldn’t be attributed to Barack Obama just as easily as Palin. But, Fkstick Parker wouldn’t dare pen lines like that about Barack Obama. Who runs our party anyway?
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Pete King vs. Code Pink
[Name removed by request], an IVAW refugee, wrote to me this morning about a local controversy in Long Island over Republican Congressman Pete King’s YouTube video in which King laments the excessive coverage of Michael Jackson’s inevitable demise. Here’s the video;
King (and [name removed by request]) says that our focus should be on the troops and their expanding and changing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan – that our media should be geared towards the folks who keep us comfortable rather than on “some pervert”.
Well, [Name removed by request] writes that Code Pink is mobilizing their drones on Facebook to spam a poll on Newsday that asks asks if King should apologize.
[Name removed by request] writes:
I’m losing my f*****g mind knowing that we’ve got a Soldier in Afghanistan who’s been captured and sold to the Taliban and meanwhile America doesn’t give two sh**s because they’re more concerned with Michael Jackson… So for me to see this in my facebook news feed today, I’m thinking the hippies need another reality check….
Now I’ve had my issues with King in the past, but f**k it, he had a lot more experience with the a$$holes I was surrounding myself with- so when he knew I was associated with IVAW and refused to talk to me, I forgive him for that. Being a professional politician, he knew better than I did.
Now the peace groups are massing to try to sway an online vote on Newsday’s website to condemn King for his words. I say f**k that, I support King in the idea of HONOR OUR F*****G TROOPS ON INDEPENDENCE DAY and not MJ.
To me, Code Pink is just grasping at straws here. They’ve gone goofy if they think Americans are going to take the side of Michael Jackson ahead of our troops, but, they’ve spammed the poll pretty well – as I’m looking at it, almost 60% are demanding an apology. So, if you’re inclined, click over at this link and let Code Pink know we can play that game, too.
While I was sitting in the waiting room at Walter Reed this morning, I was thinking the same thing while CNN was going gaa-gaa over the memorial in LA today. Then I get home, turn on Fox and see the same putrid crap – who cares what Jesse Jackson remembers about Michael Jackson – seriously.
Meanwhile, only the milblogs seem concerned about the missing soldier in Afghanistan. What’s up with that?
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Post flakking for Sotomayor
You’ve probably read that the Supreme Court overturned the lower appeals court decision against some New Haven, CT firefighters in what may turn out to be a landmark case. the best analysis I’ve seen of the decision is at Ace of Spades by Gabriel Malor here and here. The Washington Times describes why decision is important in the short term;
Judge Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to fill the seat of retiring Justice David Souter, was one of three judges who ruled in favor of New Haven and part of the majority that rejected a full hearing before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The ruling is already being seen as a hurdle Judge Sotomayor will have to overcome next month when she goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Tom Price, Georgia Republican and chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said the ruling is a reason to slow down her confirmation process and study her record.
The Washington Post Robert Barnes shows us what the next tactic to protect Sotomayor from Conservative charges that she’s out of touch with the Supreme Court and so doesn’t belong there.
The New Haven case, Ricci v. DeStefano, has become the ruling that Sotomayor’s critics most point to for evidence that she lets her background influence her decisions, even though her role has been somewhat inflated.
Her role was somewhat inflated? What does that even mean? If she voted on a panel of judges and she had the same number of votes as the other judges, how did Conservatives inflate her role?
Then Barnes writes;
The case then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, where Sotomayor and judges Robert Sack and Rosemary S. Pooler heard the appeal. Oral arguments lasted an hour, with Sotomayor leading the questioning, as is her reputation.
She was one third of a panel and lead the questioning. What’s to inflate about that? Stupid Washington Post.