Impostor

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Beyond the usual pleasure of reading one of Digby's dispatches, I was happy to read this morning's anecdote about the Hillary supporter who was ready to work hard to get Barack Obama elected.

Though I've been greatly annoyed by the relentless reporting of the "rift" in the party, when Hillary gave her fantastic speech last night, I started to wonder if the media's inflation of the magnitude of the perceived internal war might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Clinton so skillfully connected this election and its consequences to the history, sacrifice and struggle of American women for equality and fairness, I began to think maybe John McCain did the Democrats a favor with his ads fanning those flames. Clinton's Harriett Tubman reference last night was brilliant.

I also thought about Hillary's campaign and how different the outcome might have been had she taken Rachel Maddow's advice early on and focused her attention on John McCain and the GOP, instead of trying to take down Obama.

But, as Digby wrote this morning, the media narrative is like a piece of Ikea furniture. The holes are already drilled, the dowels already measured out and there's only one way to put it together, no matter how painful it is to assemble it into its catalog-photo orientation. And in the end, of course, there are obviously a few screws loose.

For the loosest screws, we can always turn to Fox News, where they set the bar low yesterday, explaining that Michele Obama's speech actually re-enforced her negative image -- that is, when you replace her words with completely different words. This will be fun to do with McCain next week. ("The glimmerings of democracy are very faint in Russia America today, and so I would be very harsh.")

Steve Benen notices today that other media outlets aren't replacing Clinton's words with their own, they're just ignoring them completely and inviting "body language experts" to demonstrate that she was essentially lying.

On the evening of June 28, a few hours after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared together in Unity, N.H., for their first post-primary joint appearance, CNN devoted quite a bit of airtime to "body-language experts."

At one point, one of the "experts" argued that the position of Hillary Clinton's navel carries great political significance: "She angles her belly button toward him. She's treating him with respect. She has her hands in a fig leaf position, which tends to be a passive position, really turning the power over to Obama. We face our belly buttons and the core of our body to people we like, have affinity toward and people we respect. And she's doing it."

It was, to my mind, some of the worst on-air political "journalism" -- I use the word loosely -- I've ever seen from a major news outlet. And yet, CBS News this morning did the exact same thing.

I'm disappointed. I was expecting to wake up and learn that anonymous sources leaked word that wasn't even Hillary last night, but an impostor. Maybe even Barack Obama in a Hillary costume.

I have the undeniable proof right here:

Where there's smoke, there's Segretti

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

Digby and dday are in the Mile High City, but here's a view of the convention coverage from closer to sea level. When the news broke last week that the Clinton's formed a "whip team" to handle troublemakers, I immediately realized that any disturbance, no matter how insignificant, would be elevated to a top story. It's kind of like when there's an earthquake and all the helicopters swarm over a burning shack somewhere and people across America get the impression that all of California is engulfed in flames.

The McCain campaign is smart to put out these otherwise ridiculous Hillary Clinton ads this week. The ads may be easy to mock if you are an Obama supporter (they are easy to mock), but McCain's real target audience is his base, which means the tire-swinging press corps.

Naturally, FOX News is already leading the way by not just reporting that it's 1968 all over again, but trying to actually stir up trouble for their broadcasts. But the rest of the media appears to be receiving the message perfectly. CNN is spending most of their time this morning talking about the attempts to "paper over" the big divisions in the party. MSNBC just ran a clip of Teddy Kennedy standing with Jimmy Carter in 1980 as NBC's David Brinkley cooed, "This is awkward."

It's a well-rehearsed GOP strategy and it's going to be monumentally difficult to keep this convention from being turned into a Clinton-Obama civil war -- at least as far as it appears to everybody outside Denver this week.

UPDATE: As soon as I hit 'publish' for this post, Chuck Todd said the Clinton-Obama story "is like catnip for us." He then explained that the media will get over it soon. Yeah, right.

LATE UPDATE: In fairness to Todd, as the convention opened, he dumped cold water all over the topic by telling Chris Matthews that it's not a real story and reporters will likely look back and wonder why they wasted time on it. But wasting time, they are.

You can also do other things

Words of wisdom from Bob Novak at the 29th annual Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference held at George Washington University on July 31:

If you really want to be a professional journalist, if you want to be a reporter, you want to be in the news business, or television, not the press person for the National Rifle Association, don't tell anybody you're a conservative. Don't tell 'em.

The news media is filled with liberals. It's dominated much more by liberal executives than it was when I first came here 50 years ago and, therefore, it's harder to break in. What you've got to be, you've got to be, like in the old days, a communist. Infiltrating something. You're a conservative and you can do certain things that help your cause. Just telling the truth is helping the cause. But you can also do other things.

And eventually you may be as outspoken as I am, but when you're at your age, don't walk into NBC and say "I want to go on the air as a conservative." They'll kick you right out.

Now, let me give you an example. How many of you know Brit Hume? You all know Brit Hume because he's a big talking head at FOX. He's the managing editor in Washington and he's a conservative. You know he's a conservative.

I first met Brit Hume when he was a leg man, a reporter for the Jack Anderson column, not a conservative column. He was a leg man for Jack Anderson and I sat next to him at some basketball games. He's a great friend of Fred Barnes'. Fred Barnes and I had tickets next to each other at the old Washington Bullets games. We still have tickets next to each other at the Wizards games. And he used to bring... Brit Hume was a guest once in a while. I had some conversations. When you watched the Washington Bullets, you had to talk about something besides basketball.

I said, you know, this guy sounds a little bit like a conservative, you know? Not much, but a little bit. He was a big conservative but he was in the closet. He left Jack Anderson and he got a job with ABC News, no idea of his reporting that he was a conservative, becomes a White House correspondent for ABC. So, he's rising up the food chain and, suddenly, I see an article by him in The American Spectator. A conservative article. So, wow, he's starting, at least in print, to come out of the closet.

That's the model. Be smart. Don't impale yourself on the horns of liberalism.

Our supporters are becoming more mature

Steve at Crooks and Liars spots the ever-more-desperate Brit Hume and Co. consoling themselves by pointing out how cultivated they are:

“What we have is a situation where some people seem to be reading the newspapers every day, and if there’s a big episode it shows that the strategy is failing. That’s not a mature way to look at it. And we desperately need some people looking at this in a mature way right now.” (emphasis added)

Good to know. If there’s less violence in Iraq, it’s progress. If there’s more violence, it’s still progress because the mature grown-ups say so.

If we disagree, the problem isn’t just that we’re wrong, it’s that we’re childish. It’s as if the right is rewriting the rules for stages of grief — start with denial (”last throes”), move on to demagoguery (”critics are emboldening the terrorists”), and end up at misplaced, condescending arrogance (”That’s not a mature way to look at it”).

Clearly, America's response to the threats of the world has been mature. And naturally, if you're looking for sophistication, look no further than Fox News Sunday and Special Report with Brit Hume:

Nancy Pelosi is the Wicked Witch of the West.

"[W]omen with their breasts exposed are a matter of public interest to some people."

Dick Cheney did the "manly thing" by withholding the news that he shot a man in the face.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is not unlike Eva Peron.

The Isley Brothers are more familiar than the Black Eyed Peas, whose lyrics "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" are "popular in the swing states."

War critic John Murtha has "never been a big thinker."

Yes, it's only the strongest swimmers who brave the deepest waters. That's Hume we're talking about. It kind of reminds me of something...

Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they where, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they're being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh...the popularity of the group is waning?

Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no...no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.

Attack everybody

ThinkProgress reports today:

Fox News chief Roger Ailes said Wednesday that President Clinton's response to Chris Wallace's question about going after bin Laden represents "an assault on all journalists." "If you can't sit there and answer a question from a professional, mild-mannered, respectful reporter like Chris Wallace, then the hatred for journalists is showing," Ailes said.

How interesting. In the annals of television history what example of a politician "assaulting a journalist" could possibly compare with Clinton's recent interview?

The gold standard, of course, was when Vice President George H. W. Bush went after Dan Rather in 1988.

DAN RATHER: I don't want to be argumentative, Mr. Vice President.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH: You do, Dan.

RATHER: No... no, sir, I don't.

BUSH: This is not a great night, because I want to talk about why I want to be president, why those 41 percent of the people are supporting me. And I don't think it's fair...

RATHER: And Mr. Vice President, if these questions are...

BUSH: ...to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?

RATHER: Well, Mr...

BUSH: ... Would you like that?

RATHER: Mr. Vice President...

BUSH: I have respect for you, but I don't have respect for what you're doing here tonight.

Not only did Bush evade the issue of Iran-Contra, he forever shed his "wimp" image and turned a large part of the nation against "rude" questions from journalists. Even other journalists sided with Bush. Mike Wallace, father of Clinton's target, Chris, said "the style was wrong. Dan lost his cool."

In his book "Attack the Messenger," Craig Crawford writes about the incident and how it signified a milestone in political history -- the reporter became the enemy. But Crawford also enlightens us to another detail...

"How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?"

It was not an offhand remark. It was on a cue card.

Bush's campaign manager, Roger Ailes -- a burly force of nature who would go on to revolutionize television news at the helm of FOX News Channel -- was holding the cue card. And he had to write the card in fist-sized letters.

Longtime CBS camera operator George Christian, who ran the camera on Bush that day, was surprised to see an aide prompting answers with a cue card during a live news interview. "I had never seen that before," Christian said.

Christian said that CBS producers instructed him to place his camera unusually far away from Bush for the interview. Producers expected that the vice president might walk out. They wanted their camera operator to be able to air any walkout live on the broadcast.

Ailes stood next to the camera operator, some thirty feet away from Bush. At the moment he wanted Bush to go on the attack, he held up a poster with a handwritten message. "NOW ASK," the homemade cue card began. It went on to prompt Bush to refer to an incident when Rather walked off his own set.

Never before has there been such a prime example of "hatred for journalists" and it was penned by Ailes, himself. But now that his own stooge has been on the receiving end, here's his big stand for principle.

Not buying it, Roger.

Lying Duck

What a lying little mallard Chris Wallace is. This is how Wallace describes his interview with Bill Clinton:

We started off fine, talking about the initiatives and his efforts and then I said, because I've gotten a lot of emails, "People want to know why didn't you do more to bring bin Laden to justice? Why didn't you, in your eight years in office, go after al-Qaeda?" And I gotta say, Brian... and you figure he would have been prepared to deal with that... he went off. He just... he wanted to go back to Somalia in '93 and the USS Cole.

He just wanted to go back, eh? Let's look at the actual question Wallace asked:

When we announced that you were going to be on FOX News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaeda out of business when you were President. There's a new book out which I suspect you've read called "The Looming Tower." And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said 'I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.' Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

Wallace asked him specifically about those events and is acting surprised about the fact that Clinton answered him. As if only an unprepared lunatic would discuss the events Wallace asked about. He actually brought the Cole up a second time halfway through the interview. Perhaps it did surprise him to learn that if you actually ask somebody about the Cole, you might get an answer. Or it might surprise him to learn that there are people who aren't paid shills and when you ask them about something, they won't talk about something entirely different. Some people don't need to dissemble, Chris.

Wallace also tries to frame the interview as though Clinton has some sort of paranoia:

He says this is all basically an effort by right-wing critics to diminish his administration and that George W. Bush isn't held to the same account. That he did a heck of a lot better job in the two-to-three months after the Cole than George Bush did in the eight months that he had after the Cole as president before 9/11 happened.

What does Wallace mean by "He says this is all?" What is "this?" It sounds like Clinton is freaking about a conspiracy when he was talking specifically about the "context" of the questions coming out of Wallace's smirky little grill. Here's the first thing out of Clinton's mouth on the subject:

OK, let's talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits, but I want to talk about the context of which this... arises. I'm being asked this on the FOX network... ABC just had a right-wing conservative on "The Path to 9/11" falsely claim that it was falsely based on the 9/11 Commission Report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission Report. I think it's very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn't do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with bin Laden.

As if Clinton weren't justified in wondering why out of his entire media tour only FOX was asking him why he failed to capture bin Laden? The same FOX network that falsely reported that the ratings for "The Path to 9/11" were excellent.

Finally, Wallace tosses out this line of crap:

And the interesting thing is that I was mindful of the 15 minutes and the 50-50 rule and I kept on trying to bring him back. He wanted to get into it and we ended up doing 22 minutes.

I guess that's why he said this towards the end of the interview:

I know we're over but can I ask you two political questions. Let's talk some politics.

He certainly was mindful of it all. But he's lying when he says that it was Clinton who was taking the interview off the topic of the Clinton Global Initiative. He's just flat-out lying.

These jokers at FOX News cannot even report the truth about a completely-recorded situation they themselves were in only a day before. It's hard to understand why any Democrat -- except maybe Joe Lieberman -- would ever agree to spend half a second talking to the stooges at FOX.

GOP: We think Christians are stupid

Crooks & Liars has the screen grab of the week from Fox News, with a crawler begging the had-to-be-asked question: "ECONOMIC DISASTER IF LIBERALS WIN THE 'WAR ON CHRISTMAS'?"

Here's what Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's partner (and former Tom DeLay aide) Michael Scanlon wrote in an email, as reported last month by Salon.com:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

Vote Republican, wackos, or Christmas will be lost forever!

DB is hopefully just one of millions of Americans who is sick of these greedy, lying, corrupt SOB's coming into our homes and churches to trick good, honest people into thinking they share our decency.

Prove me right, America. I beg you.

UPDATE: DB forgot to mention that this topic will not appear here again. Debating a war on Christmas is exactly what the GOP wants all the news shows to be doing.

• Instead of talking about the actual war they have lied us into.
  
• Instead of talking about the soldiers who will never celebrate another Christmas.
  
• Instead of talking about the residents of New Orleans, who will no doubt have an awfully difficult Christmas.
  
• Instead of talking about the Republicans who are asking Santa to put a get-out-of-jail free card in their stockings.