An open letter to CNN: Stop letting Republicans play you like fools

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CNN: "Biden stands by Obama on 'hot mic' controversy."

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Dear CNN,

Please excuse the language, but there is no fucking controversy. All Obama told President Medvedev was that he'd have more flexibility to work on a nuclear arms deal after the election.

And so Biden was completely right: "The idea that in this election year we're going to be able to deal with an agreement with the Russians on further reducing our nuclear arsenals... is difficult.

Actually, I'd say that's an understatement. It's next to impossible.

Republicans are trying to score political points off the president's remark -- including Romney, who used it, pathetically, to try to deflect attention away from releasing his tax returns.

They're trying to turn this into a controversy. Do you not see that?

And you, like so many in the mainstream media, are playing right along. Or, rather, right into their hands, making something out of nothing and being the mouthpiece for their anti-Obama narratives.

And it really is nothing. All the president was acknowledging was a pretty obvious political reality. In any election season, you just can't get things done, particularly important things like an arms agreement.

I explained all this in a post I wrote in response to how Republicans were making a big deal of it, using it to smear the president as anti-American, as prepared to sell America out after the election:

Winning an election means pandering, at least to some degree, to the electorate, and on national security issues, particularly complicated international ones, Americans are, by and large, deeply ignorant and prone to prolonged spasms of jingoism. Particularly on the national state, you need to be "tough," or at least to appear to be, and for the jingoistically ignorant that means saber-rattling. Republicans have been successful on the national state in large part by playing directly to this jingoistic ignorance and so by appearing to be tough (e.g., torture detainees! bomb Iran! flaunt America's nukes like a massive national hard-on!). All President Obama is doing is recognizing this unfortunate political reality...

President Obama, far more than pretty much every Republican, understands the complexity of international relations. What he is saying is not that he will capitulate, that he will give Russia whatever it wants, but that he will work with Russia on long-term solutions to these challenging problems, that he will treat Russia as a partner for peace.

Republicans are just vomiting up their usual partisan outrage. If they don't believe it, they're cynical. If they do, they're just plain stupid.

As for you and the rest of the media, you'd do well to stop letting them play you for fools.

Enough already.

Somewhat less than best regards,

Michael Stickings

Whitney Houston and our fucked up priorities

By Michael J.W. Stickings

UPDATE: And, seriously, lowering the flags in New Jersey? Ridiculous. You have fucked up priorities as well, Chris Christie, and not just with your anti-gay bigotry.

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As you may have heard, Whitney Houston's funeral on Saturday will be broadcast on TV and the Web. No doubt it will be on CNN. (Could Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan be milking her death any more shamelessly, particularly the latter? Cooper, at least, seems to be a genuinely sincere guy, while Morgan is a smug, smarmy, dim-witted hack.)

In not unrelated news, a new study shows that five children die every minute as a result of malnutrition. (via)

This is exactly what I was getting at the other night in writing about Whitney's death and its coverage in the media.

And it's captured in this image someone sent me the other day -- share it, and do let me know if you know where it came from:

Yes, we do have our priorities all fucked up. And fucked up beyond any hope of fixing the problem -- and of dealing with the world's real problems.

(I would just note that the image significantly understates the problem. How many millions are crying over Whitney? And how many millions of children, how many millions of people generally, are dying?)

Sarah Palin says Newt will "soar," but will his ex-wife's allegations finally be his undoing?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

***UPDATED BELOW***

I'm beginning to think this may be the most important single day of the 2012 Republican presidential race so far, with the race tightening in South Carolina, key conservatives backing Newt, the Marianne Gingrich interview later, another debate (possibly meaning a boost for Newt, who does so well in debates), a retro victory for Santorum in Iowa...

It may certainly be the wildest day.

Romney is still the frontrunner and likely nominee, but today may prove, in retrospect, to have been a turning point, one way or the other.

Read on...

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Via twitter: 

Palin: Ex-wife's allegations will help Newt "soar" (link) (story)

-- Talking Points Memo (@TPM)

Palin may be right that a lot of what Marianne Gingrich has to say is "old news," and I was thinking earlier today that the damage to Newt might be minimal if she avoided the more sordid details -- in part because those who like Newt do so not because they think he's a saint but because they think he'll punch President Obama in the face (figuratively but maybe also literally) and in part because Newt has already owned up to much of his bad behavior, "found God," and been largely absolved by conservatives.

But now I'm not so sure. The talk all day in the media is about the "open" marriage Newt wanted as a way of enabling his cheating, and basically about his self-righteous, egomaniacal bullying of his wife, about how he was out to get what he wanted, largely disregarded her, and ruined her life. This wasn't just bad behavior. This was abuse.

There are still many who will excuse him his ugly transgressions, like Palin and Dear Leader Rush (who thinks Newt's a victim), but there are surely a lot more, even among Republicans, who will recoil in disgust.

There may yet be a way for him to get out of this -- by admitting again to some things, denying others; by saying he really is a different and better person now; by using it as an occasion to bash the media (always a favotite Newt deflectional tactic); by taking the high road with respect to his wife (I loved her, she's a great person, but we had our problems, common to many married couples) while implying that she's crazy, a liar, or both; by alleging that Romney's behind this "attack" somehow, just days before the South Carolina primary -- but it's getting more and more difficult to see how this doesn't hurt him badly, if not destroy what's left of his campaign.

And somewhere, whether he's behind this or not, Romney, who otherwise has been having a terrible day (Santorum certified the winner in Iowa; Perry dropping out and endorsing Newt; new polls showing his lead dwindling rapidly in South Carolina, and even Newt ahead; Newt getting a big-time Tea Party endorsement; another debate coming up tonight, another occasion for Newt to shine), must surely be thinking he's one of the luckiest people in the world.

If he isn't, he should be. As terribly weak as he is, everything seems to be breaking his way, with the nomination all but his by default.

UPDATES:

I see Jon Chait has a post up on Romney's run of incredible luck (or incredible run of luck, however you want to look at it):

Everything has gone Romney’s way. A slew of credible opponents all declined to run, or dropped out prematurely (poor, poor Tim Pawlenty.) He was mistakenly credited with winning the Iowa caucuses. The opponents who have challenged him all self-destructed, and when persistent unease with Romney resurrected them, they self-destructed again.

Yup.

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Here's the full Palin quote, via ThinkProgress:

I call them dumbarses. They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview that's old news — and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign — all it does, Sean, is incentive conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it’s played so selectively by media, that their target, in this case Newt, he’s now going to soar even more. Because we know the game now, and we just won't put up with it.

So, good call media! Way to go to covertly hype this, even Gingrich opponents, for being so brilliant they sure are dumb. 

Ah, yes, when in doubt, attack the media. But even if the media is guilty of taking advantage of a salacious story, Marianne Gingrich isn't the media. She has every right to be heard.

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ABC News reports on the interview:

Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President, his second ex-wife Marianne told ABC News, saying his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage.

In her first television interview since the 1999 divorce, to be broadcast tonight on Nightline, Marianne Gingrich, a self-described conservative Republican, said she is coming forward now so voters can know what she knows about Gingrich. 

As I suggest above in how Newt can effectively respond to all this, he is indeed taking the high road, with his two daughters from his first marriage providing useful cover:

Gingrich declined to comment to ABC News for this report, but told NBC's Today Show Thursday morning he would not "say anything negative about Marianne."

"Now, I'll let my daughters speak for it... I'm not going to comment beyond that because I'm focused on the big issues that concern the American people, which are the current challenges we have, largely because of the failure of the Obama presidency," he said.

It's not terribly responsible of him to let his daughters be his surrogates on such a deeply personal matter, but he's obviously doing what he can to minimize the likely negative impact of the story. And you can see how he's trying to minimize the importance of the story and trying to position himself as above it all, and trying to guilt the media into not taking it seriously -- what do his past marital problems matter compared to "the big issues that concern the American people"?

I'm not sure it'll work, but it's all he's got.

Reporting truth, exposing lies: The New York Times and the responsibility of journalism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Arthur Brisbane, the Times's public editor, writes:

I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge "facts" that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had "misunderstood" a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife's earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas "misunderstood," and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

Another example: on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches "apologizing for America," a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the "post-truth" stage.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

Well, I'm a reader, so here's my answer:

Do you even have to ask this question? Of course reporters at the Times, and every other "news" publication with any credibility at all, should call out lies. And not just because Republicans happen to lie a lot. The Times should expose the lies of Democrats as well -- in fact of anyone it wishes to quote, cite, or report on.

As Joe Romm puts it at ThinkProgress: "Obviously any paper, but most especially the New York Times, has little value to society if it knowingly prints lies — or if it fails to do the minimal investigative reporting and fact-checking needed to determine if a statement by a newsmaker or, say, a global warming denier, is false."

Sure, there may occasionally be good reasons for not doing this, such as the need to cultivate good sources (as Booman notes). But it's really just about being accurate, as Steve Benen says. And while "neutrality" might be a good idea in some utopia where everyone tells the truth or has equally credible opinions, it seems to me that the consumers of news (i.e., us) deserve more, and better:

If an article is supposed to provide news consumers with the something more meaningful — offering context, scrutiny, and analysis that helps make sense of the arguments, giving the public a sense, not only of what the arguments are, but whether they're accurate — then media professionals, including beat reporters and their editors, have a broader responsibility to help the public separate fact from fiction.

And more often than not, they don't even try.

This generally draws howls from the right, in part because Republicans seem to lie more frequently and shamelessly, and in part because reality has a well-known liberal bias. Indeed, the constant, baseless accusations about "the liberal media" helped create the forced-neutrality dynamic in the first place.

But the result is a media that fails the public. By publishing falsehoods without scrutiny, for fear of being accused of "bias," the media is effectively leaving news consumers with the impression that lies and the truth deserve equal footing, which is ultimately untenable.

There you go. Now, New York Times, if you have any self-respect at all, go out and do something about it. In a democracy especially, where the rulers (i.e., the people) must be able to make informed decisions, is it essential that the media function not as a mouthpiece for competing spin but as a vehicle for truth. And to do that, they must tell you who's lying.

The ugly truth about Ron Paul

By Michael J.W. Stickings

One of the good things about the craziness that has been, and remains, the race to be the Republican nominee for president is the fact that with each new surging anti-Romney, and with each new "frontrunner," the media have finally been required to do their jobs and look into what these leading Republicans, and indeed much of their party, are actually all about.

For example, while many of us knew full well (and had known for a long time) that Michele Bachmann was insane, her high-profile opposition to the HPV vaccine, wrapped up in her usual conspiracy-theorizing, pushed her insanity further into public view. Similarly, her (and her "cure 'em" husband's) anti-gay views revealed her to be an unabashed bigot. And because she was, for a time, the hottest Republican candidate going, the media could not help but do some probing.

The same has been true of the others, and we're seeing this now with Ron Paul, who has long been seen as a principled libertarian who speaks truth to power in the GOP (and who even has his admirers on the left) but who, while certainly a sort of libertarian, has throughout his long political career held and advanced despicable views and revealed himself to be an ugly racist. Put on the spot, Paul has responded with denials and general "no comment"s. But again, and to their credit, the media are doing what they ought to be doing and digging a little deeper than usual (in this case encouraged and cheered on by Republicans appalled with Paul and fearful of the damage he's doing to their party). And more and more ugliness is coming out:

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has distanced himself from a series of controversial newsletters from the 1980s and 1990s that bore his name and included inflammatory and racially charged language.

As the newsletters burst into view, first during his 2008 presidential bid and again in recent weeks after he climbed to the front of the Republican race in Iowa, Paul has blamed the writings on ghostwriters. He said he was not aware of the "bad stuff," as he described it.

But one of Paul's own books, published solely under his name, contains several passages that could be problematic as he attempts to push his libertarian message into the political mainstream.

In his 1987 manifesto "Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution after 200-Plus Years," Paul wrote that AIDS patients were victims of their own lifestyle, questioned the rights of minorities and argued that people who are sexually harassed at work should quit their jobs.

The slim, 157-page volume was published ahead of Paul's 1988 Libertarian Party presidential bid and touches on many of the themes he continues to hammer on the stump.

Returning again and again to the of concept of "liberty," he hails the virtues of the gold standard, attacks the Federal Reserve and defends the rights of gun-owners.

But the book, re-issued in 2007 during Paul's last presidential bid with a cover photograph of an ominous SWAT Team, has so far escaped scrutiny amid the latest furor over his newsletters.

Well, now that he's doing so well in Iowa, with a strong showing expected, that scrutiny is happening. Now. And not a moment too soon.

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What's interesting is that Romney has, for the most part, escaped such scrutiny. Sure, his opponents have brought up his various inconsistencies and tried to focus (the media's and Republican voters') attention on Romneycare, but no one has been able to stay on top long enough to keep up a sustained attack -- in part because the pro-Romney Republican elites have been knocking them off one by one. And so we've basically spent most of our time tracking the dramatic rises and falls of these anti-Romneys while Romney himself has been able to skate by largely untarnished.

That will change if and when Romney really does solidify himself as the frontrunner and likely winner. Then, one hopes, the media will do to him what they've done to his Republican competitors (helped along by those Republican elites, of course) and what they always do to Democrats (with Republicans driving the dominant media narratives, as always).