It is hard to read this article about media manipulation in Russia without worrying that we have started down the same path here in the US.
In Russia, journalists critical of the current administration, including popular political satirists and other humorists, have been all but banned from television. The media has gone so far as to digitally erase individuals from television programs already recorded, but before they are broadcast (this is reminiscent of the old Soviet practice of airbrushing out disgraced comrades from old photos). In one talk show the technicians erased someone who had said something less than flattering about Vladimir Putin, but clumsily left his disembodied legs in one shot.
What is really disturbing is that it is not the government itself who is telling the media who can appear and what can be said, the television networks themselves do the censoring using their understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes. The media claims that they are not censoring, only that dissenting voices “are not newsworthy”. This is despite the fact that they have cancelled popular shows.
So, technically, they have freedom of the press, since the media can show anything they want, but in practice they are so afraid of going against the administration that only voices that are pro-administration can possibly appear. Sound familiar?
A few days ago, Bill Clinton started placing blame for Hillary’s failing nomination bid on a number of “enemies”, powerful forces including a brazenly biased media, and the group MoveOn.org.
Speaking about the press, he said that Hillary faced a hostile and imbalanced media environment. But a new study by Harvard University says that from January 1 to March 9, the media stories about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone. And after that (and well before the Rev. Wright mess) media coverage turned against Obama.
What caused this change? According to the report, it happened precisely after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate!
Placing blame on MoveOn.org is even more bizarre. After all, MoveOn was founded in 1998 to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach Clinton himself.
With enemies like these — a media that you can easily turn against your opponent and an organization that was founded to support you — who needs friends?
Filed in Irony|Comments Off on With Enemies like Clinton’s, who needs Friends?
Richard Clarke appears on The Daily Show to promote his new book “Your Government Failed You”. But before they talk about that, Jon Stewart quotes the Bush administration’s response to Clarke’s previous book “Against All Enemies” from March 22, 2004:
Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.”
What makes this deliciously ironic is that the speaker is none other than Scott McClellan (when he was still the Press Secretary). Who, as you all know, has now come out with his own tell-all book critical of the Bush Administration and (as icing on the cake) has gotten almost exactly the same response from the Bush Administration to his book.
Emerging today from 3 1/2 hours of risky brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, Sen. Edward Kennedy remarked “I feel like a million bucks. I think I’ll do that again tomorrow.”
Today at the National Press Club, VP Cheney was asked about his wife Lynne’s claim that he was related to Barack Obama (eighth cousins). Then Dick put his foot in his mouth, when he explained that the same genealogical research turned up that there are Cheneys on both sides of the family tree, including a Richard Cheney on his mother’s side. “So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia,” joked Cheney.
Not surprisingly, this joke got a very cold reception from West Virginian politicians, including Rep. Nick Rahall, who responded “We may owe the vice president a debt of gratitude for yet another great West Virginia slogan: Dick Cheney is not from here.”
In a stunning triumph of spin over reality, the blogosphere is going crazy over a videotape — a tape that none of them have actually seen or heard, and might not even exist.
Reports have been circulated (conveniently enough on the eve of the last two democratic primaries) that there is a tape containing video of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” at Trinity United with Rev. Louis Farrakhan — a racist’s wet dream!
McCain has been losing campaign staff left and right since he decided he needed to get rid of all (current) lobbyists from his staff, but I’m not sure that the new replacements are any better.
Consider Michael Goldfarb, the newly appointed Deputy Commications Director for McCain. Goldfarb’s previous job was at Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard, “one of the most deceptive propaganda organs of the Bush years”. Last April, Goldfarb wrote that the framers of the constitution gave the president “near dictatorial power” with regards to foreign policy and war, and asserted that this power trumped Congress. When the Bush administration was accused of using torture, Goldfarb’s response was a sarcastic “boo hoo” (McCain claims to be against the use of torture).
With McCain’s new Deputy in charge of Propaganda Communications, we can say goodbye to straight talk.
The following photo from a previous trip to Iraq shows McCain walking around a market, wearing a bullet-proof vest, accompanied by 100 American soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships:
But where are the photos from his most recent trip last week? We managed to get ahold of one photo, which we share with our readers:
“According to a new poll, Barack Obama is doing particularly well with one important demographic: voters.” –Amy Poehler
“All three presidential candidates appeared on ‘American Idol.’ It was interesting. Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell looked at them and said, ‘Wait, there’s a black guy, a woman and a cranky white guy. You stole our formula!'” –Conan O’Brien
Now that the Democratic party has bent the rules for Clinton and seated the Florida and Michigan delegates, she now only needs 153% of the remaining delegates to win. Prior to the new rules, she needed to pick up 181% of the remaining delegates, so momentum is clearly in her favor!
