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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Obama Channels 'W.' on Daily Show


HECK OF A JOB SUMMY?

click here for clip

Giving props to top economic advisor and Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, Pres. Barack Obama, appearing on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with John Stewart" conjured memories of George W. Bush, whose comments on camera during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina included a pat on the back for then FEMA director, Michael D. Brown followed by the now-notorious compliment: "You're doin' a heck of a job, Brownie."

That, of course, led to a nickname that will stick with Mr. Brown for the rest of his life. From Nantucket, to Nome, he's still referred to as Heck-of-a-job-Brownie--the tragic irony being that he was waxing conceitedly about his telegenic looks while elderly women died in the streets of New Orleans.

Shall we now call Larry Summers, Heck-of-a-job-Summy?

Friday, October 22, 2010

If you Love NPR Help Save it from a Full-Blown Attack by Sean Hannity and the other Nazis at Fox News NOW!

V.

DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH

Fox News Channel Sets its Sites on
Destroying NPR in Coming Days


NPR Has fired ever-crazier Juan Williams after Williams, a once-actual journalist, now a Fox news analyst and former NPR analyst, decided to proclaim that Muslims on airplanes scare the shit out of him while he waxed bigotedly while appearing on, you guessed it, Fox News Channel.

First, how stupid do you have to be to not be able to guess that the next time someone tries to bomb an airplane or execute some other horrible terrorist act, they're NOT going to "look Muslim?"

NPR is kind of old-fashioned about its reporting, its reporters, and its other journalist employees. You see, technically-scratch that-actually, you're not supposed to know if a reporter at a traditional news organization hates or loves babies, or hates or loves Muslims, or hates liberals, or conservatives or can't stand broccoli.

Really? Yes, really. A blog is different. It's not traditional. It's a bastard child of a perverse universe in which the wrongdoing right gets to act righteous and indignant while a left-lurching liberal like me gets to do the same online because there's so much frigging noise on the cable networks and the radio stations of America that all the gloves have come off and no one really does news any more!!! Except NPR.

Okay, there are a few others--but only a few. But, just about everyone who actually listens to NPR says the network is fair.

Now, because it doesn't allow its journalists to go around spewing forth lists of a few of their least-favoritist things, and has fired one for doing just that, the only major power on the side of obective news-gathering and reporting will be battling to survive in tact as that bastion of objectivity, which people who just want to know the facts and figure out their own opinion about an issue or an event after hearing the facts, so desperately need.

Fox will be trying to rally support to pull all of NPR's federal funding. They'll be surprised by, and won't share, the fact that NPR only gets two percent of its funding directly from the federal government. This ain't your grandfather's public radio.

So come on all of you smart people, call NPR, email NPR, Tweet NPR, Friend Request NPR, Become a Facebook Fan or Myspace Fan of NPR right now! And just give the editorial team, the management team and the ombudsperson's office the good word that you stand by their decision to can Juan Williams for basically making himself useless to a news organizaiton that requires objectivity in order to maintain credibility in its reportage. So far the right-wing whiners have been louder than you and me.

How could Williams ever do analysis objectively on anything terrorism- or Muslim-related and be considered objective? How, I ask, could he be considered a fair source about those issues after saying people who look Muslim are spooky when he sees them on airplanes? He may think that. You may think that; I may think that. But we don't work for NPR. Part of his job is to keep Juan Williams out of the story, unless it's a story about Juan Williams (in which case, he should recuse himself from the story).

Now the story is about him, and about Fox news, because not only have they started screaming and whining that NPR is mean, and liberal and spooky and mean and snobby and liberal and mean, it's also just given Juan Williams $2 million and a three-year contract. So there! Mean old liberal-pants NPR. Nanner-nanner na.

By the way, you don't hear Fox News complaining that NPR, last week, banned its reporters from attending as participants upcoming liberal events, such as Stephen Colbert's and John Stewart's "Restoring Sanity" event in Washington D.C.

No, you won't hear Fox point that out at all, because it would disprove the lie that Williams was fired because he's become a regular-old Fox News right-wing whack-job. That would prove that NPR expects all editorial staff, liberal or conservative, to keep their personal beliefs to themselves.


Here's how to Tweet regarding NPR (click me)

Here's where to send snail mail: NPR, 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001

Here's where to call by phone: NPR Listener Care (202) 513-3232, Hours: 10am to 5 pm ET, Monday through Friday

Click here to email.

You know how to friend and fan request on Facebook, I'm sure. If not, just email!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Ask God Why You Did It: Clarence Thomas' Wife to Anita Hill

"Who has put a pubic hair on my coke?"

Those were the words that echoed through the halls of congress in 1991 during Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearing. Justice Thomas confirmation was contested by a former employee named Anita Hill. Now a Brandeis University professor, Hill accused Thomas of having been a chronic harasser of the sexual variety when she served under him as head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But, as descriptions of a multi-behavioral pattern of inpropriety emerged from multiple witnesses, it was Ms. Hill's retelling of a situation where then Director Thomas allegedly proclaimed to an office full of women that someone had intentionally deposited a pubic hair upon the surface of the can of Coca-Cola he was enjoying.

So weird.

But now, even more weirdly, Thomas's wife, Virginia "Ginny" Thomas, has "reached across the airwaves and the years to implore Professor Hill to become chaste regarding her now nearly 20-year-old testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, recant it, apologize for it and ask her maker what made her do it.

ABC News has reported the content of a voicemail left to Prof. Hill by Mrs. Thomas as: “Good morning, Anita Hill, it’s Ginny Thomas,” she said, according to ABC News. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. Okay have a good day.”

Anita Hill has not yet made a public statement (it would really suck to typo the sixth word in the preceding phrase as I almost did by leaving out the letter "L"), but has apparently found it of enough concern regarding her own safety and wellbeing that she reported campus security at Brandeis, where the voicemail was left by the supreme court justice's wife. In turn, the university has turned it over to the FBI.

It's worth noting that Mrs. Thomas is a conserviative activist with ties to the Tea Party Movement. That may be what has scared Prof. Hill most, given the history of the Tea Party and the issue of racism among some of its ranks. Professor Hill is African American.