Almost Live From New York
September 28, 2008
September 27, 2008
September 24, 2008
Letterman Tonight
I take it that McCain cancelled an appearance with Letterman tonight, telling Letterman he was flying back to Washington to save America. But Letterman realized that as he was taping tonight’s show, McCain actually was in the CBS building being interviewed by Katie Couric. Olbermann said Letterman, um, reacts to this in the program tonight. Could be fun. I may stay up and watch.
Update: Letterman quote —
“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”
This will be on Letterman tonight. McCain may have just screwed the pooch.
Spotlight
April 11, 2008
February 5, 2008
February 3, 2008
December 4, 2007
Mike Gravel ad: Power to the People
Some are calling it the best political ad ever (they probably never saw the “Daisy” ad). While I think it hits some high notes, it is weird to see my favorite cranky old man - Mike Gravel, hammering the words out - while surrounded by images and music inspired by the 1960s. (Is that how I look to the young people around me?). Enjoy.
Spotlight
November 26, 2007
November 14, 2007
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
Spotlight
November 6, 2007
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
Spotlight
— Next Page »
September 24, 2008
Letterman Tonight
I take it that McCain cancelled an appearance with Letterman tonight, telling Letterman he was flying back to Washington to save America. But Letterman realized that as he was taping tonight’s show, McCain actually was in the CBS building being interviewed by Katie Couric. Olbermann said Letterman, um, reacts to this in the program tonight. Could be fun. I may stay up and watch.
Update: Letterman quote —
“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”
This will be on Letterman tonight. McCain may have just screwed the pooch.
Spotlight
April 11, 2008
February 5, 2008
February 3, 2008
December 4, 2007
Mike Gravel ad: Power to the People
Some are calling it the best political ad ever (they probably never saw the “Daisy” ad). While I think it hits some high notes, it is weird to see my favorite cranky old man - Mike Gravel, hammering the words out - while surrounded by images and music inspired by the 1960s. (Is that how I look to the young people around me?). Enjoy.
Spotlight
November 26, 2007
November 14, 2007
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
Spotlight
November 6, 2007
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
Spotlight
— Next Page »
Letterman Tonight
I take it that McCain cancelled an appearance with Letterman tonight, telling Letterman he was flying back to Washington to save America. But Letterman realized that as he was taping tonight’s show, McCain actually was in the CBS building being interviewed by Katie Couric. Olbermann said Letterman, um, reacts to this in the program tonight. Could be fun. I may stay up and watch.
Update: Letterman quote —
“What are you going to do if you’re elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We’ve got a guy like that now!”
This will be on Letterman tonight. McCain may have just screwed the pooch.
February 5, 2008
February 3, 2008
December 4, 2007
Mike Gravel ad: Power to the People
Some are calling it the best political ad ever (they probably never saw the “Daisy” ad). While I think it hits some high notes, it is weird to see my favorite cranky old man - Mike Gravel, hammering the words out - while surrounded by images and music inspired by the 1960s. (Is that how I look to the young people around me?). Enjoy.
Spotlight
November 26, 2007
November 14, 2007
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
Spotlight
November 6, 2007
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
Spotlight
— Next Page »
December 4, 2007
Mike Gravel ad: Power to the People
Some are calling it the best political ad ever (they probably never saw the “Daisy” ad). While I think it hits some high notes, it is weird to see my favorite cranky old man - Mike Gravel, hammering the words out - while surrounded by images and music inspired by the 1960s. (Is that how I look to the young people around me?). Enjoy.
Spotlight
November 26, 2007
November 14, 2007
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
Spotlight
November 6, 2007
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
Spotlight
— Next Page »
Mike Gravel ad: Power to the People
Some are calling it the best political ad ever (they probably never saw the “Daisy” ad). While I think it hits some high notes, it is weird to see my favorite cranky old man - Mike Gravel, hammering the words out - while surrounded by images and music inspired by the 1960s. (Is that how I look to the young people around me?). Enjoy.
November 14, 2007
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
Spotlight
November 6, 2007
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
Spotlight
— Next Page »
Why You Have To Be Brave To Live Here
Stephanie Strom writes for the New York Times:
In the genteel world of bridge, disputes are usually handled quietly and rarely involve issues of national policy. But in a fight reminiscent of the brouhaha over an anti-Bush statement by Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks in 2003, a team of women who represented the United States at the world bridge championships in Shanghai last month is facing sanctions, including a yearlong ban from competition, for a spur-of-the-moment protest.
At issue is a crudely lettered sign, scribbled on the back of a menu, that was held up at an awards dinner and read, “We did not vote for Bush.”
By e-mail, angry bridge players have accused the women of “treason” and “sedition.”
Judging by Memeorandum, this is the hottest news item on the blogosphere right now. The wingnuts are spewing about Bush Derangement Syndrome. “Shut up and play cards” is a common suggestion.
The players have been stunned by the reaction to what they saw as a spontaneous gesture, “a moment of levity,” said Gail Greenberg, the team’s nonplaying captain and winner of 11 world championships.
“What we were trying to say, not to Americans but to our friends from other countries, was that we understand that they are questioning and critical of what our country is doing these days, and we want you to know that we, too, are critical,” Ms. Greenberg said, stressing that she was speaking for herself and not her six teammates.
The controversy has gone global, with the French team offering support for its American counterparts.
“By trying to address these issues in a nonviolent, nonthreatening and lighthearted manner,” the French team wrote in by e-mail to the federation’s board and others, “you were doing only what women of the world have always tried to do when opposing the folly of men who have lost their perspective of reality.”
Jimmie at the Sundries Shack disagrees.
What these ladies should have done is reminded the Bush-haters that they were at a bridge tournament and not a political convention and that good manners prohibit the discussion of politics at a table where it is not welcome. I’m fairly sure that reminding your fellow bridge players of their manners would have solved the problem.
Then you beat the stuffing out of them and taunt them relentlessly from the winners’ podium. Maybe you even stack the losers up in a pyramid and have one of your team point at them and laugh while you take pictures.
I assume that last bit was another attempt at levity. But what this tells me is that wingnuts don’t get out much. These days, for Americans, to go abroad is to be treated with, at the very least, caution. We may look normal on the surface, but at the least provocation we may grow tusks and root up the shrubberies.
But these ladies appear to have run into some outright hostility, and they were trying to diffuse the situation. Any emotionally mature person might have done the same thing, which is why wingnuts don’t understand it.
Did they not notice they were playing cards in Communist China?
China- The same country that harvests prisoner’s body organs- The same country that jails Christians and people of faith- The same country that murdered 30-40 million of its own citizens less than 50 years ago.
Do these pampered loons have any perspective of history?
Standard wingnut moral relativism — whatever we do is OK, because China is worse. But in the real world, people who claim a higher standard had better live up to it or face the snarking.
The bridge lady might have written this on her menu instead:
It is not fair for bridge players to criticize GWB. He exemplifies something essential to playing every hand of bridge.
The dummy.
But what does it say about a nation that allows a dummy to be its head of state for eight years?
MSNBC: Going Our Way?
Jacques Steinberg (great name!) writes in today’s New York Times that MSNBC wants to create a nightime lineup that liberals can love. I’m not sure they’ve figured out how to do this, however.
Riding a ratings wave from “Countdown With Keith Olbermann,” a program that takes strong issue with the Bush administration, MSNBC is increasingly seeking to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for viewers of a similar mind.
Lest there be any doubt that the cable channel believes there is ratings gold in shows that criticize the administration with the same vigor with which Fox News’s hosts often champion it, two NBC executives acknowledged yesterday that they were talking to Rosie O’Donnell about a prime-time show on MSNBC.
Um, Rosie O’Donnell? She raised viewership while she was on “The View,” Steinberg says. Yeah, but that was daytime. I agree with Jeralyn that Rosie would be a huge mistake. One of Jeralyn’s commenters suggested either David Schuster or Rachel Maddow. My only objection is that if David Schuster becomes a regular program host he’ll have less time for reporting.
But even without Ms. O’Donnell, MSNBC already presents a three-hour block of nighttime talk — Chris Matthews’s “Hardball” at 7, Mr. Olbermann at 8, and “Live With Dan Abrams” at 9 — in which the White House takes a regular beating. The one early-evening program on MSNBC that is often most sympathetic to the administration, “Tucker” with Tucker Carlson at 6 p.m., is in real danger of being canceled, said one NBC executive, who, like those who spoke of Ms. O’Donnell, would do so only on condition of anonymity.
Well, OK, Carlson is a complete waste of time. That’s the one time slot O’Donnell might improve.
Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.
Note that Faux News, which is nothing but the propaganda arm of the GOP, doesn’t have to worry about legislation and regulation.
The NBC executive in charge of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, says that the cable channel didn’t set out to favor any political position. He implies the apparent move to the left is being driven by ratings. I suspect that’s true. For years they tried to compete with Faux News by being Faux News Lite. Olbermann has showed them the real way to compete is offering viewers something they can’t see on Faux News. Like, you know, truth and facts and stuff.
MSNBC’s other evening stars, Chris “Tweety” Matthews and Dan Abrams, are hardly fellow travelers of Noam Chomsky, and both still give plenty of time to right-wing mouthpieces. I find Abrams less annoying than Matthews, however. Those of you who miss Joe Scarborough (anybody?) probably already know he moved to mornings awhile back.
Meanwhile, at the Los Angeles Times Jonah Goldberg laments that “fake news,” a la Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, is becoming the new standard in news reporting.
Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what’s going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It’s no longer funny because it’s true. It’s true because it’s funny.
He had it right the first time — it’s funny because it’s true. Great satire functions by cutting through sugar-coatings and qualifiers to find the absurdities inherent in unvarnished truth. Satirists don’t make up jokes. They reveal The Joke.
For example, in the next paragraph, Jonah blames the problems of modern journalism on the old TV sitcom “Murphy Brown.”
When Brown had a baby out of wedlock, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the writers of the show. Liberals then reacted as though Quayle had insulted a real person. Ever since, journalists and politicians have been playing themselves in movies and TV series, perhaps trying to disprove the cliche that Washington is Hollywood for ugly people.
He’s serious, mind you, and there’s The Joke. You can’t make this shit up. I couldn’t, anyway.
