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/
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.
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!
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.
Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
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
Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
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.
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.
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?
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/
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.
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!
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.
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!"
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 yearn for a time when the GreeneBoebertLake contingent will be put out of OUR misery...
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.]
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?
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….