A moral of that book is that the mainstream media loves its scenarios. Maybe, when one gets down to it, the great example is the Kitty Genovese. In that case, it's used to repeat the riff that as someone gets raped and killed in their flat, witnesses do nothing. The funny thing is that that moral, so to speak, is bullshit based on bullshit reporting by young Abe Rosenthal at the Times.
So again, once the fuckers get a grip on a scenario, even facts don't matter.
So here with today's post: If one subscribes to the idea that mainstream reporting tends to be bullshit -- minimal context, dishonest framing -- nothing in today's rant from Roy is surprising.
And the fuckers have already proven it. The week after an election cycle that showed mainstream reporting to be nearly all crap (such exceptions as there are proving the rule), they started the idiocy all over again, mostly by puffing up Ron DeSantis as the pol who will finally put Trump down. Left out is what the GOP primary voters think so, you know, there's a huge black hole of dishonesty there. See FWIW https://uncouthreflections.com/2022/12/22/note-to-r-about-trump-and-desantis/
Re: the media's scenarios, I recommend a wonderful podcast called "You're Wrong About", which researches beloved media storie like Kitty Genovese, the McDonald's hot coffee incident, and exploding Ford Pintos, and shows how what we "know" about such stories is inevitably false, often due to someone with an agenda massaging the facts.
Absolutely and without question one of the Democrats’ greatest assets is GOP extremism and the necessity of feeding bloodier and redder meat to their base. As I said on the blog, you have to be very, very far down the MAGA rabbit hole of resentful grievance and Owning The Libs to believe the stunt Abbott pulled -- sending desperate men, women, and children thousands of miles in crowded buses only to dump them in the street in sub-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve -- is effective point-scoring, to not realize most people will recoil in disgust, to not realize you are in fact showing your entire ass.
Roy posted earlier about DC's Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, they were there to meet the buses and care for the people on them. I went looking for a donation link, but haven't found one yet, so if anyone knows how to send a few bucks to these folks, please let us all know.
Thanks! I donated, I wonder how many right-wingers see the title, "Support Migrants Being Bused to DC from Texas!" and donate thinking it's supporting the busing.
Abbott is The Cruelty Is The Point (TM Adam Serwer) on wheels.
(In my opinion Abbott has Presidential ambitions, and is hoping for DeSantis and Trump to destroy each other, whereupon he will emerge as a "compromise" candidate.)
I am most impressed by how far the regular media went to promote Republican fortunes in 2022. Way back in April, places like NBC and PBS began crowing about the coming recession that would OBVIOUSLY be Biden's fault. In April, the recession (which was going to make 2008 look mild) was just a month or two away. Here we are in late December, and the recession is just a month or two away.
And then were was the amped reporting on crime. The cities were overrun, and "regular people" couldn't even go out for groceries without being mugged, panhandled, or stepping in mounds of excrement from the violent homeless.
And the breathless coverage of how catastrophic our withdrawal from Afghanistan was, and how we should have just stayed there another couple of decades, and how Biden just ran from the conflict--with nary a word about how Trump "negotiated" the surrender.
In all my life, I have never seen reporting so obviously slanted toward producing a particular political outcome. Yet, despite this, people looked at the world and said "no thanks!" to Republicans. Well done, people!
When you're watching a sports game, and the score is really lopsided, the announcers have to work so hard to keep you from changing the channel, inventing all kinds of scenarios to make you believe the losers who are losers will any second show themselves to be winners. Same thing.
Completely agree about the announcers, but that's just for the casual fan. The diehards will watch until the bitter end, hope springing eternal (hockey fan here!). You'll also notice that (in hockey, at least!), you'll hear stuff like, "Well, Jack, I know the Bruins are ahead 7-0 and there's only a couple of minutes left, but this is no time to let up!" It's like there's a sports equivalent of Hillary's emails or something
Somehow I think road hockey (is/would be?) more civilized than any form of polo, which is historically a sport of a dominating class. You've got a horse? Not my problem if you fall off. I fall off my bicycle, I'm a strain on the healthcare system or some such bullshit
For years, now, networks have acknowledged this, and often interrupt a drubbing with, "The outcome of this looks pretty certain, so we're going to take you to something more competitive," and cut away to an entirely different game. Maybe the MSM should do that, too. NYT: "The Republicans are insane, the Dems seem to have a handle on this, so we're going to focus our coverage on a local by-election in Wales..."
Also, so many games are blacked out these days, you couldn’t switch to another game if you wanted to—especially if it’s in your “home market.” So instead they minimize the actual game in a frame on the right, while putting three talking heads on the left so we can hear Stephen A Smith YELLING NONSTOP about nothing in particular—certainly nothing relating to the play-by-play of the game they’re ostensibly showing .
I wonder how our press will cover Jim Jordan’s Committee hearings on Fauci, Hunter Biden and Afghanistan. If they’re honest, it will all be hilarious highlights of Jim’s armpit sweat rings while he’s pantsed repeatedly by witnesses smarter than he. Unfortunately, relentless both-siderism will result in many, many narratives about the questionable validity of masking and vaccines, the possibility that Papa Joe benefited somehow from Hunter’s dick pics, and much hand-wringing by Republican misogynists about the Taliban’s treatment of women. All that will pale, however, from the media’s reaction to Trump’s indictment, should that ever come. “Dems destroy election hopes with unprecedented presidential indictment!” Strap in, friends, it’s gonna be a helluva two years.
The one that most interests me is the planned Twitter hearings, anticipation of which is all over the conservative babbleverse and seems based on the idea that due diligence to remove hate speech from a private social media platform is censorship.
This will apparently entail portraying the removal of various Nazis and Donald Trump from said platform as a First Amendment catastrophe and promoting Elon Musk, Bari Weiss, and Matt Taibbi as heroes. Try to imagine normal people going for this.
"The Biden campaign asking Twitter to remove tweets that violated Twitter's TOS and the FBI asking Twitter to maybe stop boosting people who tweet a fake date for the election is gOVernMenT CenSorsHiP!!!"
--not to mention the release of the George Clooney-produced documentary about Jordan and the high school wrestlers. Clooney and his gang must have viewed the House results with pleasure: Not enough to threaten actual GOP effectiveness, but just enough to put Jordan and his allies front and center. I bet it affected their release date.
You know, Doom-walk( like a duckwalk but more of a shamble, with the head hung distinctly down) was pretty pervasive on our side of the fence. Who among us didn't write a " he's a good man but maybe Joe Biden is just a bit too old"
comment or column. * We beat back the greatest threat to Democracy and Freedom anybody can remember with truth and hard work. We beat back the Plague and not only rescued the economy, we supercharged it. We passed the first meaningful climate program ever and everyday we correct a host of civil rights, criminal justice and business abuses that have needed corrected since forever. We're beating Putin's evil ass like drum with badass freedom loving proxies. Mid-terms come around and the accepted conventional wisdom was we were going to get our asses beat like stepchildren. I get that part of that is no one is ever going to buy a newspaper with a headline " Things Are Fine - Have a Nice Day!" Media will say whatever for the clicks. That resulted in a relentlessly grim drumbeat. Hard to resist but we didn't even really try. Anyway. Cheer up. Legal weed is either here for you or coming soon. The House antics will provide endless amusement and REBID columns and most of us are on track to survive Trump.
*Not me
On edit : I just saw this and as someone who loves Leonard Cohen doesn't love " Hallelujah " at all( not at all) I had to share '
"You pick a phrase, you pick a rhyme, repeat the sound another time,
Five iambs, then an extra beat will do ya.
Another rhyme, a rising note - congratulations, you just wrote
Also, about "pretty pervasive on our side of the fence", that's right, because NOBODY wants to be Hillary Clinton circa 2016 ("They picked DONALD TRUMP? I can't lose!"). And in our new attention-based economy, "We're fucked!" always attracts more clicks then "Eh, maybe it won't be as bad as you thought."
“Extra beat?” “Hallelujah” is in 3/4, is there a measure of 4/4 in there? Didn’t think so, so that part of the mockery doesn’t land for me. The rest of it does, even though I like the song. The formula for the verses is obvious, but I think each verse has a gem in it.
As somebody who wanted Anybody But Biden (short of Marianne Williamson or Tulsi Gabbard) in 2020, I have been pleasantly surprised that Dark Brandon has been as good as has. Not perfect, but then, no Democrat in my lifetime has been.
Also, speaking of Hallelujah, I have not yet had the courage to click on this link to see what they actually did to the song, but Cohen's grave spinning is probably generating more energy than Niagra Falls right now: https://twitter.com/BadFoxGraphics/status/1607026238530486284?s=20
I think what might be more instrumental in restoring GOP fortunes in the next two years is if the GOP-penned bill passes banning the use of Tiktok, a bill that has significant bipartisan support (I hear). How many non-Tiktok users are following the massive protests underway in Iran? Tiktok is a great way also for realtively-poorly-funded candidates to gain exposure, and for media stories to remain in view that would otherwise downplayed or ignored by the big outlets.
I wonder, does every new social media platform go through an initial phase where it's actually a force for good, for liberation and community, before it gets taken over by bots and trolls and marketers?
Really hoping that 2022 marked the death of the Republicans totally undeserved reputation for fiscal competence, which must date back to the days when accountants actually did wear green eyeshades, and miraculously survived both Reagan and George W. Bush. But, as they say, Everything Trump Touches Dies, so let's drive a stake through its heart and bury it under a concrete slab.
My colleagues at the factory produced a kid who no only knew the lyrics and the tune to "St James Infirmary" by the time he was 3, he also would storm into the roadhouse in front of their, shall we say, 'rustic' apartment and sing the song while tromping around on top of the piano.
"Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She will search this wide world over,
But she'll never find another sweet man like me."
The piano player was no fool – he immediately jumped in to accompany him. That kid is pushing 50 now – wonder what he's up to...
Everything I know about the news business comes from The Front Page, Broadcast News, Network, and maybe a few episodes of Superman, but it seems a Buddhist focus on the eternal Now doesn't lead to much introspection. And Buddah knows there's not much introspection in the Right Wing Freakout. Who could imagine, they would freak out, in Washington D. C.? Maybe, as Allen Funt taught us long ago, we need to see ourselves as other people do. How's your sense of humor?
Never watched it. Did watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but not many plots based on getting scoops there. Probably should have included Citizen Kane: Vote Fraud!
Great piece, and the fact that that weirdo Hillbilly Whisperer JD Vance won, I believe, and more to do with Dem candidate Tim Ryan running against Biden and his own party (he boasted about voting WITH Trump on trade, for chrissakes), and pretended that Republicans wanted to engage in kumbaya with Democrats, as long as Dems "listened" to their views (you know the ones). Maybe a lefty Dem would have lost Ohio anyway, but running against your pwn party has never really worked, as far as I know, and it's what Claire McCaskill did in 2018, when she had her ass handed to her by execrable human being and future insurrectionist Josh Hawley.
I love that Elise Stefanik "Red Wave" headline, too, since she and Republicans owe the slight majority they now hold to amazing frauds like George Santos, who still proudly includes Stefani's endorsement on his Twitter profile, as he continues to formulate a new story about why he totally made up all the old stories.
I can't be too harsh on the prognosticators because I, too, overestimated the number of fanatics and underestimated the number of real centrists who actually voted. As it was, it was still a near thing, and still near in the wrong direction, though maybe if the Republican leadership cause enough outrage to get some of their representatives in close districts to switch….
So thousands of years ago, I read this:
https://books.google.com/books/about/Virgin_Or_Vamp.html?id=O1E_d54kK94C
A moral of that book is that the mainstream media loves its scenarios. Maybe, when one gets down to it, the great example is the Kitty Genovese. In that case, it's used to repeat the riff that as someone gets raped and killed in their flat, witnesses do nothing. The funny thing is that that moral, so to speak, is bullshit based on bullshit reporting by young Abe Rosenthal at the Times.
So again, once the fuckers get a grip on a scenario, even facts don't matter.
So here with today's post: If one subscribes to the idea that mainstream reporting tends to be bullshit -- minimal context, dishonest framing -- nothing in today's rant from Roy is surprising.
And the fuckers have already proven it. The week after an election cycle that showed mainstream reporting to be nearly all crap (such exceptions as there are proving the rule), they started the idiocy all over again, mostly by puffing up Ron DeSantis as the pol who will finally put Trump down. Left out is what the GOP primary voters think so, you know, there's a huge black hole of dishonesty there. See FWIW https://uncouthreflections.com/2022/12/22/note-to-r-about-trump-and-desantis/
Re: the media's scenarios, I recommend a wonderful podcast called "You're Wrong About", which researches beloved media storie like Kitty Genovese, the McDonald's hot coffee incident, and exploding Ford Pintos, and shows how what we "know" about such stories is inevitably false, often due to someone with an agenda massaging the facts.
Isn’t it mainstream reporters’ jobs to cut through the massaging?
Depends on how much aromatherapy oil they used...
Absolutely and without question one of the Democrats’ greatest assets is GOP extremism and the necessity of feeding bloodier and redder meat to their base. As I said on the blog, you have to be very, very far down the MAGA rabbit hole of resentful grievance and Owning The Libs to believe the stunt Abbott pulled -- sending desperate men, women, and children thousands of miles in crowded buses only to dump them in the street in sub-freezing temperatures on Christmas Eve -- is effective point-scoring, to not realize most people will recoil in disgust, to not realize you are in fact showing your entire ass.
JustDon'tCare-ism is THE under-reported virus of the century.
Roy posted earlier about DC's Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, they were there to meet the buses and care for the people on them. I went looking for a donation link, but haven't found one yet, so if anyone knows how to send a few bucks to these folks, please let us all know.
There's this link - https://linktr.ee/dctxsolidarity22
Seems to be about donating through Venmo or GoFundMe.
Thanks! I donated, I wonder how many right-wingers see the title, "Support Migrants Being Bused to DC from Texas!" and donate thinking it's supporting the busing.
One can only hope...
Abbott is The Cruelty Is The Point (TM Adam Serwer) on wheels.
(In my opinion Abbott has Presidential ambitions, and is hoping for DeSantis and Trump to destroy each other, whereupon he will emerge as a "compromise" candidate.)
Yes, Abbot is a compromise, an exact average of Trump and DeSantis if you do the math:
(awful + awful)/2 = awful
If only we could squeeze the Awful 3 all inside those parentheses and then hit 'delete'
Showoff. We KNOW you're a math teacher.
I just realized there's an unanswered question in that equation, to wit:
Does Abbot divide Trump & DeSantis lengthwise or crosswise?
"No time now, I'VE GOT A CLASS TO TEACH!"
"Don't taunt the box!"
You could have countered with 'Diagonal!'
I am most impressed by how far the regular media went to promote Republican fortunes in 2022. Way back in April, places like NBC and PBS began crowing about the coming recession that would OBVIOUSLY be Biden's fault. In April, the recession (which was going to make 2008 look mild) was just a month or two away. Here we are in late December, and the recession is just a month or two away.
And then were was the amped reporting on crime. The cities were overrun, and "regular people" couldn't even go out for groceries without being mugged, panhandled, or stepping in mounds of excrement from the violent homeless.
And the breathless coverage of how catastrophic our withdrawal from Afghanistan was, and how we should have just stayed there another couple of decades, and how Biden just ran from the conflict--with nary a word about how Trump "negotiated" the surrender.
In all my life, I have never seen reporting so obviously slanted toward producing a particular political outcome. Yet, despite this, people looked at the world and said "no thanks!" to Republicans. Well done, people!
Recess can't come a moment too soon...
When you're watching a sports game, and the score is really lopsided, the announcers have to work so hard to keep you from changing the channel, inventing all kinds of scenarios to make you believe the losers who are losers will any second show themselves to be winners. Same thing.
Completely agree about the announcers, but that's just for the casual fan. The diehards will watch until the bitter end, hope springing eternal (hockey fan here!). You'll also notice that (in hockey, at least!), you'll hear stuff like, "Well, Jack, I know the Bruins are ahead 7-0 and there's only a couple of minutes left, but this is no time to let up!" It's like there's a sports equivalent of Hillary's emails or something
"hope springing eternal (hockey fan here!)"
?? I thought spring thawed the rink...
Haha, road hockey!!
Ah. Like bicycle polo only less civilized...
Somehow I think road hockey (is/would be?) more civilized than any form of polo, which is historically a sport of a dominating class. You've got a horse? Not my problem if you fall off. I fall off my bicycle, I'm a strain on the healthcare system or some such bullshit
Sabres fan, so, yeah. We'll root for our team to tank so we can get the next great generational player in the upcoming draft.
Winnipeg Jets fan here. I must have a thing for pain, because I’m also a Minnesota Vikings fan.
For years, now, networks have acknowledged this, and often interrupt a drubbing with, "The outcome of this looks pretty certain, so we're going to take you to something more competitive," and cut away to an entirely different game. Maybe the MSM should do that, too. NYT: "The Republicans are insane, the Dems seem to have a handle on this, so we're going to focus our coverage on a local by-election in Wales..."
If you're talkin' Wales, you're REALLY talkin':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHxO0UdpoxM
(Regional networks can't, or won't, do that, 'cause contractual reasons. They're stuck broadcasting every inning of a rain-delayed 11-2 blowout.)
Also, so many games are blacked out these days, you couldn’t switch to another game if you wanted to—especially if it’s in your “home market.” So instead they minimize the actual game in a frame on the right, while putting three talking heads on the left so we can hear Stephen A Smith YELLING NONSTOP about nothing in particular—certainly nothing relating to the play-by-play of the game they’re ostensibly showing .
I wonder how our press will cover Jim Jordan’s Committee hearings on Fauci, Hunter Biden and Afghanistan. If they’re honest, it will all be hilarious highlights of Jim’s armpit sweat rings while he’s pantsed repeatedly by witnesses smarter than he. Unfortunately, relentless both-siderism will result in many, many narratives about the questionable validity of masking and vaccines, the possibility that Papa Joe benefited somehow from Hunter’s dick pics, and much hand-wringing by Republican misogynists about the Taliban’s treatment of women. All that will pale, however, from the media’s reaction to Trump’s indictment, should that ever come. “Dems destroy election hopes with unprecedented presidential indictment!” Strap in, friends, it’s gonna be a helluva two years.
The one that most interests me is the planned Twitter hearings, anticipation of which is all over the conservative babbleverse and seems based on the idea that due diligence to remove hate speech from a private social media platform is censorship.
This will apparently entail portraying the removal of various Nazis and Donald Trump from said platform as a First Amendment catastrophe and promoting Elon Musk, Bari Weiss, and Matt Taibbi as heroes. Try to imagine normal people going for this.
Hearted w/caveat: define 'normal person, 2023 version'
Someone with common sense. America still breeds a lot of them.
True, suckers are born every minute, but the blessed-with-common-sense are born approximately every 59 seconds, so we've got a narrow lead.
I wonder how many normies actually know who Elon Musk, Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi are.
They're gonna find out whether they want to or not.
Never underestimate the ability of the American people to ignore things when they want to.
"The Biden campaign asking Twitter to remove tweets that violated Twitter's TOS and the FBI asking Twitter to maybe stop boosting people who tweet a fake date for the election is gOVernMenT CenSorsHiP!!!"
"I was a Democrat until the Trump indictment, now I'm outraged by Chappaquiddick" - NY Times op-ed, mid-2023.
(Op-ed aimed at people who think "Chappaquiddick" is from the Harry Potter series.)
What happens when you've been ridin' that broom too long, out in the cold.
Hearted for "ridin' that broom" – euphemism of the day!
Ridin' that broom,
Alone in my room
Casey Jones you better watch your speed
I cannot believe you left off the next line...the one about the trouble ahead, troubled behind...
--not to mention the release of the George Clooney-produced documentary about Jordan and the high school wrestlers. Clooney and his gang must have viewed the House results with pleasure: Not enough to threaten actual GOP effectiveness, but just enough to put Jordan and his allies front and center. I bet it affected their release date.
You know, Doom-walk( like a duckwalk but more of a shamble, with the head hung distinctly down) was pretty pervasive on our side of the fence. Who among us didn't write a " he's a good man but maybe Joe Biden is just a bit too old"
comment or column. * We beat back the greatest threat to Democracy and Freedom anybody can remember with truth and hard work. We beat back the Plague and not only rescued the economy, we supercharged it. We passed the first meaningful climate program ever and everyday we correct a host of civil rights, criminal justice and business abuses that have needed corrected since forever. We're beating Putin's evil ass like drum with badass freedom loving proxies. Mid-terms come around and the accepted conventional wisdom was we were going to get our asses beat like stepchildren. I get that part of that is no one is ever going to buy a newspaper with a headline " Things Are Fine - Have a Nice Day!" Media will say whatever for the clicks. That resulted in a relentlessly grim drumbeat. Hard to resist but we didn't even really try. Anyway. Cheer up. Legal weed is either here for you or coming soon. The House antics will provide endless amusement and REBID columns and most of us are on track to survive Trump.
*Not me
On edit : I just saw this and as someone who loves Leonard Cohen doesn't love " Hallelujah " at all( not at all) I had to share '
"You pick a phrase, you pick a rhyme, repeat the sound another time,
Five iambs, then an extra beat will do ya.
Another rhyme, a rising note - congratulations, you just wrote
Another goddamn verse to Hallelujah!"
You can make 'em stop playin' Hallelujah once we take Berlin.
Anyway, to whomever it was cranked out that little verse, 2 marks!
Good points, all, but I was a little shocked by:
"most of us are on track to survive Trump.
*Not me"
Darn asterisks, how do they work?
Also, about "pretty pervasive on our side of the fence", that's right, because NOBODY wants to be Hillary Clinton circa 2016 ("They picked DONALD TRUMP? I can't lose!"). And in our new attention-based economy, "We're fucked!" always attracts more clicks then "Eh, maybe it won't be as bad as you thought."
“Extra beat?” “Hallelujah” is in 3/4, is there a measure of 4/4 in there? Didn’t think so, so that part of the mockery doesn’t land for me. The rest of it does, even though I like the song. The formula for the verses is obvious, but I think each verse has a gem in it.
As somebody who wanted Anybody But Biden (short of Marianne Williamson or Tulsi Gabbard) in 2020, I have been pleasantly surprised that Dark Brandon has been as good as has. Not perfect, but then, no Democrat in my lifetime has been.
Also, speaking of Hallelujah, I have not yet had the courage to click on this link to see what they actually did to the song, but Cohen's grave spinning is probably generating more energy than Niagra Falls right now: https://twitter.com/BadFoxGraphics/status/1607026238530486284?s=20
I think what might be more instrumental in restoring GOP fortunes in the next two years is if the GOP-penned bill passes banning the use of Tiktok, a bill that has significant bipartisan support (I hear). How many non-Tiktok users are following the massive protests underway in Iran? Tiktok is a great way also for realtively-poorly-funded candidates to gain exposure, and for media stories to remain in view that would otherwise downplayed or ignored by the big outlets.
<snappin' fingers>
It's a cool new drumbeat, I tell ya!
I wonder, does every new social media platform go through an initial phase where it's actually a force for good, for liberation and community, before it gets taken over by bots and trolls and marketers?
I yearn for a time when the GreeneBoebertLake contingent will be put out of OUR misery...
The Green Boebert Lake is a real place in Minnesota...
In Mist County?
Mist it by *that* much.
Really hoping that 2022 marked the death of the Republicans totally undeserved reputation for fiscal competence, which must date back to the days when accountants actually did wear green eyeshades, and miraculously survived both Reagan and George W. Bush. But, as they say, Everything Trump Touches Dies, so let's drive a stake through its heart and bury it under a concrete slab.
I managed to squirt out a little tribute to Kari Lake on Saturday. An added verse to "Losers", by Dave Van Ronk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7KzpMf3Ric
Kari Lake wanted to be the gov.
Had no ability to speak of.
Reminded people of Dr. Strangelove
Now she's just another loser like Trump.
Loser. Loser.
Not enough would choose her.
She and her posse all crazy-ass nazis
a bunch of other losers like Trump
[ Worriedman, I don't know if this scans like "Hallelujah", since I've managed to avoid hearing it for the past few years.]
I do love that my grandkids knew all the words to a Leonard Cohen song before they started school.
My colleagues at the factory produced a kid who no only knew the lyrics and the tune to "St James Infirmary" by the time he was 3, he also would storm into the roadhouse in front of their, shall we say, 'rustic' apartment and sing the song while tromping around on top of the piano.
"Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Wherever she may be,
She will search this wide world over,
But she'll never find another sweet man like me."
The piano player was no fool – he immediately jumped in to accompany him. That kid is pushing 50 now – wonder what he's up to...
Could do worse.
2 marks for Dave link.
Since Steve B asked, this is the group that responded to Abbot’s unspeakable, shameless act:
https://linktr.ee/sanctuarydmv
Everything I know about the news business comes from The Front Page, Broadcast News, Network, and maybe a few episodes of Superman, but it seems a Buddhist focus on the eternal Now doesn't lead to much introspection. And Buddah knows there's not much introspection in the Right Wing Freakout. Who could imagine, they would freak out, in Washington D. C.? Maybe, as Allen Funt taught us long ago, we need to see ourselves as other people do. How's your sense of humor?
You forgot Lou Grant...
Never watched it. Did watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but not many plots based on getting scoops there. Probably should have included Citizen Kane: Vote Fraud!
Laughter's on its way!
Great piece, and the fact that that weirdo Hillbilly Whisperer JD Vance won, I believe, and more to do with Dem candidate Tim Ryan running against Biden and his own party (he boasted about voting WITH Trump on trade, for chrissakes), and pretended that Republicans wanted to engage in kumbaya with Democrats, as long as Dems "listened" to their views (you know the ones). Maybe a lefty Dem would have lost Ohio anyway, but running against your pwn party has never really worked, as far as I know, and it's what Claire McCaskill did in 2018, when she had her ass handed to her by execrable human being and future insurrectionist Josh Hawley.
I love that Elise Stefanik "Red Wave" headline, too, since she and Republicans owe the slight majority they now hold to amazing frauds like George Santos, who still proudly includes Stefani's endorsement on his Twitter profile, as he continues to formulate a new story about why he totally made up all the old stories.
https://twitter.com/Santos4Congress
TIm Russert might have played Queen Elizabeth in Brexit: Do You Have Any Idea How Serious This Is?
I can't be too harsh on the prognosticators because I, too, overestimated the number of fanatics and underestimated the number of real centrists who actually voted. As it was, it was still a near thing, and still near in the wrong direction, though maybe if the Republican leadership cause enough outrage to get some of their representatives in close districts to switch….