MRCWatch Dept. - Anyone of any prominence threatening the nut-right’s caricature of
President Obama as a far-left socialist kinda' guy in an election year
can certainly be expected to get kicked around a bit by Newsbusters.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said President Obama's speech last night to the
Democratic National Convention demonstrated that the Democrats "are not
a left-wing party" but are, instead, a "center-left" one and that
Obama is "something of a moderate, not a lefty here--certainly not a
socialist..." For Matt Vespa, them's fightin' words but his attempted take-down of Matthews today doesn’t have a lot of fight in it.
"Chris Matthews must be living in an alternate reality.
The stimulus, ObamaCare, the autoworkers union bailout, the green energy
executive order, the watered-down Dream Act enacted by presidential
fiat weren't actions of limited government."
In this reality, it's true that every Republican in the U.S.
House and all but three Republicans in the U.S. Senate voted against
the Obama stimulus package. It’s also true that immediately after the
vote, most of those same conservative Republicans began demanding a
piece of the pie go to their states and districts and, having voted
"no," returned home to take credit for all the money the stimulus was
bringing in. Of 219 Republican members of congress at the time, 114 of
them--over half the delegation--did this little dance.
Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan was among them; in a
story that received virtually no coverage in the corporate press that so
regularly fawns over him, he lobbied the government for millions of
dollars for a pair of companies in his home state.[1] Obama's support
for the stimulus only makes him some uber-leftist in a world in which
conservative Republicans are as well.
Similarly, "Obamacare" was a Republican health care plan created in
the 1990s as an alternative to the Clinton health plan (itself derived
from a Republican original). Republicans had intermittently advocated it
for 15 years before Obama adopted it as his own and one of the "mitts"
in that "intermittently" was Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney, who, as governor of Massachusetts, implemented that very plan
in his state. Obama chose it--a conservative plan aimed at propping up
the failed insurance industry--in preference to the single-payer approach
favored by the liberals. One of the only major progressive elements he
included in his own was the "public option," which, in a back-room deal he cut with industry
lobbyists, he then agreed, at the beginning of the health care debate,
to abandon.
Vespa's "autoworkers union bailout" is what is known, in the real
world, as the bailout of the auto industry. That wasn’t an invention of
Barack "Kenyan socialist" Obama but of George Bush Jr., the most
conservative Republican to ever occupy the U.S. presidency. It was
before congress in Dec. 2008, before Obama had even become president,
and again, Republican vp candidate Ryan voted for it.
The original Dream Act was authored way back in 2001 by left-wing
nutjob Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)--in the real world, one of the most
conservative members of the U.S. Senate. It has been introduced
repeatedly over the last 11 years and the Bolshevist Bush administration
incorporated major elements of it into its own comprehensive
immigration reform package in 2007 (which failed).
Vespa complains about "$5 trillion added to the national debt" but
$1.2 trillion of that was actually signed into law by Bush and as the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented,
policies initiated by Bush, rather than Obama, have been responsible
for nearly all of the present and projected U.S. annual deficits. Obama
certainly earns abuse for what has happened on his watch but his sin
was in continuing to follow the policies of his conservative Republican
predecessor, not in being, himself, any sort of big spender. Contrary to
the Tax-And-Spend caricature Vespa seeks to invoke by raising this
issue, around 70% of the present U.S. debt was incurred under Republican, rather than Democratic, administrations.
Vespa mentions elements of the poor economic performance of the Obama
administration but none that touch on the Matthews assertions he's
trying to refute. No one disputes the Bush-era economic collapse has
been hard on the U.S. The Bush administration itself was hard on it.
That’s pretty much Vespa's case. If anything, it suggests that
Matthews only erred by calling the Obama administration "center-left,"
when "center-right" would be more accurate.
--j.
---
[1] Ryan did this in writing then lied about it on at least two separate occasions before finally having to fess up.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Kyle Drennen on the Liberal Bias of Joe Scarborough
MRCWatch Dept. - Last year, over on my own blog, I wrote a series of articles called "Newsbusters & Me" wherein I outlined parts of the MRC gang’s modus operandi. In one, I noted that, in their usage, the word “liberal” is
In another, I noted that
When I just punched up Newsbusters, the first article to appear was an example of both: Kyle Drennen devoting an article to throwing a spotlight on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s comparative analysis of the Repulican and Democratic conventions. Scarborough, appearing on NBC’s Today, was asked by host Savannah Guthrie, "Pound for pound, speech for speech, night for night, make a call, who had the better convention and who the most riding on it?" He replied:
"Oh, good lord, if we’re going pound for pound, round for round, this wasn’t Ali versus Frasier, this was Muhammed Ali versus Chuck Wepner. It was ugly."
Drennen didn’t like that very much.[1] He said Scarborough was "gushing over Democrats," noted that "the liberal crowd assembled around Scarborough at a bar in Charlotte all cheered and applauded" his words, and compared Sarborough’s analysis to Newsbusters "liberal" hate-figure Chuck Todd.
In the real world, Joe Scarborough is an extremely conservative former congressman from Florida. In his time in the House of Representatives, he racked up a career rating of 95% by the American Conservative Union.[2] That for offering his honest opinion he’s targeted by Newsbusters and held up as an example of liberal bias in the press says nothing about him and everything about Newsbusters.
--j.
---
[1] For the younglings out there who may not get the references, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were very evenly matched and fought one another in three incredibly brutal contests in the ’70s; by contrast, Ali fought Chuck Wepner in 1975 and, for the most part, beat the stuffings out of him, winning by a TKO in the final round. Though mostly a one-sided massacre, Wepner did at least manage to put Ali on the canvass once, so perhaps Scarborugh is overstating the Republicans’ effectiveness.
[2] Interest-group ratings can be a tricky business--such groups typically only rate candidates on a handful of issues, and, being aligned with one or the other party, stack the deck in order to make their team come out on top but Scarborough’s very high rating--it puts him among those rated the most conservative--is enough to dispel any notion he is to be regarded as a "liberal."
"the default designation for anyone who isn’t identifiably of the far right on every conceivable issue–those so tagged are often, in reality, conservatives whom outlets like the MRC just decided aren’t conservative enough, or aren’t conservative in the right ways."
In another, I noted that
"Of the articles that appear on the Center’s Newsbusters blog, a large portion are devoted to simply complaining about the fact that someone somewhere offered a “liberal” (as they use the word) point of view, the implication being that this shouldn’t happen."
When I just punched up Newsbusters, the first article to appear was an example of both: Kyle Drennen devoting an article to throwing a spotlight on MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s comparative analysis of the Repulican and Democratic conventions. Scarborough, appearing on NBC’s Today, was asked by host Savannah Guthrie, "Pound for pound, speech for speech, night for night, make a call, who had the better convention and who the most riding on it?" He replied:
"Oh, good lord, if we’re going pound for pound, round for round, this wasn’t Ali versus Frasier, this was Muhammed Ali versus Chuck Wepner. It was ugly."
Drennen didn’t like that very much.[1] He said Scarborough was "gushing over Democrats," noted that "the liberal crowd assembled around Scarborough at a bar in Charlotte all cheered and applauded" his words, and compared Sarborough’s analysis to Newsbusters "liberal" hate-figure Chuck Todd.
In the real world, Joe Scarborough is an extremely conservative former congressman from Florida. In his time in the House of Representatives, he racked up a career rating of 95% by the American Conservative Union.[2] That for offering his honest opinion he’s targeted by Newsbusters and held up as an example of liberal bias in the press says nothing about him and everything about Newsbusters.
--j.
---
[1] For the younglings out there who may not get the references, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were very evenly matched and fought one another in three incredibly brutal contests in the ’70s; by contrast, Ali fought Chuck Wepner in 1975 and, for the most part, beat the stuffings out of him, winning by a TKO in the final round. Though mostly a one-sided massacre, Wepner did at least manage to put Ali on the canvass once, so perhaps Scarborugh is overstating the Republicans’ effectiveness.
[2] Interest-group ratings can be a tricky business--such groups typically only rate candidates on a handful of issues, and, being aligned with one or the other party, stack the deck in order to make their team come out on top but Scarborough’s very high rating--it puts him among those rated the most conservative--is enough to dispel any notion he is to be regarded as a "liberal."
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Washington Post Presents Democrats, Republicans As They Are, Tim Graham Objects
MRCWatch Dept. - Tim Graham, today, makes an effort at taking issue with a pair of
Washington Post articles detailing the evolution of the respective
platforms of the Democratic and Republican
parties over the last 52 years but though he puts on the standard
Newsbusters show of being Angry And Offended by them, he doesn’t offer
any real basis for this reaction.
The core of his complaint is that Marc Fisher, who authored both articles, gave disparate treatment to the evolution of the two platforms:
"But last Wednesday’s piece on the GOP was headlined 'Over the past half-century, a strong shift to to the right.' And for the Democrats, a strong shift to the left since 1960? The headline today was 'In search of a balance between ideals and realities.'" (bolding by Graham)
Has there been any "strong shift to the left" by the Democrats though? The idea forms the core of Graham’s objection, but Fisher's article on the Democrats does a fairly solid job of debunking this notion, showing how the party has shifted back and forth between liberal and more conservative language on issues over the years. By contrast, Fisher writes, Republicans "moved in fairly linear fashion to ever-more conservative stances" on a broad range of issues. Both the Fisher articles offer a broad overview of the evolution of the two parties but to support his own premise about a sharp Democratic turn to he left, Graham singles out only a few right-wing hot-button issues: abortion, gay marriage, "bringing 'undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.'"
After mentioning that last one, Graham doesn’t touch it again, from which we can assume Newsbusters readers are simply supposed to understand that brown-looking foreigners with funny accents but without proper paperwork are supposed to be regarded with contempt by anyone except extremist liberals.
Fisher detailed the Democratic evolution on the issue of abortion rights; the party has always supported them but, consistent with the back-and-forth evolution Fisher documents (and that Graham is challenging), has sometimes included language acknowledging it's a difficult ethical issue for some and at other times hasn't. The present party platform's position on the issue isn't a majority one in the U.S. but it's much closer to the view of most Americans than the Republican platform, which calls for a "human life" amendment to the constitution itself, one that would ban all abortions under every circumstance, along with in vitro procedures for the infertile, embryonic stem-cell research, most contraceptives (if given the reading the reactionaries behind the proposal prefer) and would, in effect, require a federal murder investigation of every reported miscarriage.. A view so extreme that even Republicans reject it by overwhelmingly margins,[1] yet it has been included in the party platform for 28 years.[2]
Graham singles out "gay issues" as an area where, he complains, Fisher’s "contrast is especially egregious." He asserts the Democrats, this year, "lurch left" on such issues and quotes Fisher’s handling of this:
"This year’s plank breaks little new ground, although for the first time, its support for legalizing same-sex marriage is definitive and clear, and it commits to combating anti-gay activity around the world."
This burns Graham’s eyes! "When the Democrats embrace a new extreme, it's 'definitive and clear,'" he whines. The Democrats were hardly embracing any "new extreme" on this issue though, or any extreme at all. Polling has shown majority public support for gay marriage for a couple years now; for at least eight, overwhelming majorities--including overwhelming majorities of Republicans--have supported some form of legal recognition for homosexual relationships. The Democrats' position isn’t some strong turn to the left; it reflects the mainstream view within the U.S. It isn’t "extreme" but Graham complains that while Fisher doesn’t falsely present it as such, Fisher notes that the Republican platform position against gay marriage "grows longer and more strident every four years" after 1992. If there's any way in which this is unfair, Graham makes no case for it.
Graham, in fact, makes absolutely no case for any strong Democratic turn to the left and in essence, his complaint seems to be that Fisher presented the Democratic party as it is, rather than as the extremist caricature Graham wants it to be. The handful of issues he mentions support Fisher's thesis that Republicans have more-or-less consistently become more conservative while Democrats have evolved much less evenly. Though Graham doesn't seem to realize it, his last objection to Fisher also reinforces that thesis. Fisher had noted that the 2008 Democratic platform had "the strongest statement on civil liberties since the ’70s." Graham interjects:
"Fisher ignores that Democrats promised to close Guantanamo in 2008, and walked back from that in the 2012 platform, and doesn’t notice, as leftists have, that there’s no explicit reference in the new platform to Obama’s use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists. We don’t torture terror suspects, we kill them without interrogation? Fisher, like the rest of the media, doesn't notice Obama has been very forceful in using 'inherent' presidential power."
Even if Fisher ignores it, what this shows is, once again, that Democrats moved to the left then moved to the right. Just as Fisher said they do.
--j.
---
[1] An effort to implement such an amendment via a ballot initiative in one of the most conservative states in the U.S. (Mississippi) went down in flames by double-digits earlier this year.
[2] Update (Thurs., 6 Sept.) – And consistent with Fisher's narrative about the GOP moving ever further rightward, this year's platform includes, for the first time, language about abortion being bad for women's "health and well-being." This is an allusion to well-circulated--and patently false--right-wing claims about abortion causing cancer, infertility and mental illness.
The core of his complaint is that Marc Fisher, who authored both articles, gave disparate treatment to the evolution of the two platforms:
"But last Wednesday’s piece on the GOP was headlined 'Over the past half-century, a strong shift to to the right.' And for the Democrats, a strong shift to the left since 1960? The headline today was 'In search of a balance between ideals and realities.'" (bolding by Graham)
Has there been any "strong shift to the left" by the Democrats though? The idea forms the core of Graham’s objection, but Fisher's article on the Democrats does a fairly solid job of debunking this notion, showing how the party has shifted back and forth between liberal and more conservative language on issues over the years. By contrast, Fisher writes, Republicans "moved in fairly linear fashion to ever-more conservative stances" on a broad range of issues. Both the Fisher articles offer a broad overview of the evolution of the two parties but to support his own premise about a sharp Democratic turn to he left, Graham singles out only a few right-wing hot-button issues: abortion, gay marriage, "bringing 'undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.'"
After mentioning that last one, Graham doesn’t touch it again, from which we can assume Newsbusters readers are simply supposed to understand that brown-looking foreigners with funny accents but without proper paperwork are supposed to be regarded with contempt by anyone except extremist liberals.
Fisher detailed the Democratic evolution on the issue of abortion rights; the party has always supported them but, consistent with the back-and-forth evolution Fisher documents (and that Graham is challenging), has sometimes included language acknowledging it's a difficult ethical issue for some and at other times hasn't. The present party platform's position on the issue isn't a majority one in the U.S. but it's much closer to the view of most Americans than the Republican platform, which calls for a "human life" amendment to the constitution itself, one that would ban all abortions under every circumstance, along with in vitro procedures for the infertile, embryonic stem-cell research, most contraceptives (if given the reading the reactionaries behind the proposal prefer) and would, in effect, require a federal murder investigation of every reported miscarriage.. A view so extreme that even Republicans reject it by overwhelmingly margins,[1] yet it has been included in the party platform for 28 years.[2]
Graham singles out "gay issues" as an area where, he complains, Fisher’s "contrast is especially egregious." He asserts the Democrats, this year, "lurch left" on such issues and quotes Fisher’s handling of this:
"This year’s plank breaks little new ground, although for the first time, its support for legalizing same-sex marriage is definitive and clear, and it commits to combating anti-gay activity around the world."
This burns Graham’s eyes! "When the Democrats embrace a new extreme, it's 'definitive and clear,'" he whines. The Democrats were hardly embracing any "new extreme" on this issue though, or any extreme at all. Polling has shown majority public support for gay marriage for a couple years now; for at least eight, overwhelming majorities--including overwhelming majorities of Republicans--have supported some form of legal recognition for homosexual relationships. The Democrats' position isn’t some strong turn to the left; it reflects the mainstream view within the U.S. It isn’t "extreme" but Graham complains that while Fisher doesn’t falsely present it as such, Fisher notes that the Republican platform position against gay marriage "grows longer and more strident every four years" after 1992. If there's any way in which this is unfair, Graham makes no case for it.
Graham, in fact, makes absolutely no case for any strong Democratic turn to the left and in essence, his complaint seems to be that Fisher presented the Democratic party as it is, rather than as the extremist caricature Graham wants it to be. The handful of issues he mentions support Fisher's thesis that Republicans have more-or-less consistently become more conservative while Democrats have evolved much less evenly. Though Graham doesn't seem to realize it, his last objection to Fisher also reinforces that thesis. Fisher had noted that the 2008 Democratic platform had "the strongest statement on civil liberties since the ’70s." Graham interjects:
"Fisher ignores that Democrats promised to close Guantanamo in 2008, and walked back from that in the 2012 platform, and doesn’t notice, as leftists have, that there’s no explicit reference in the new platform to Obama’s use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists. We don’t torture terror suspects, we kill them without interrogation? Fisher, like the rest of the media, doesn't notice Obama has been very forceful in using 'inherent' presidential power."
Even if Fisher ignores it, what this shows is, once again, that Democrats moved to the left then moved to the right. Just as Fisher said they do.
--j.
---
[1] An effort to implement such an amendment via a ballot initiative in one of the most conservative states in the U.S. (Mississippi) went down in flames by double-digits earlier this year.
[2] Update (Thurs., 6 Sept.) – And consistent with Fisher's narrative about the GOP moving ever further rightward, this year's platform includes, for the first time, language about abortion being bad for women's "health and well-being." This is an allusion to well-circulated--and patently false--right-wing claims about abortion causing cancer, infertility and mental illness.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Ryan Invents New Janesville Narrative, Newsbusters’ Kyle Drennen Fails To Keep Up
MRCWatch Dept. - Kyle Drennen continued Newsbusters' defense of the indefensible Paul Ryan today, falsely claiming that NBC’s “Today” falsely claimed the Republican candidate had “played fast and loose with the truth” in his speech to the RNC.
Drennen’s subject was an interview of Ryan conducted on the morning program by Matt Lauer. The host’s first question:
"There are some people who are claiming that you played a little fast and loose with the truth on certain key elements. And I’m not just talking about Democratic analysts, I’m talking about some independent fact checkers. Would you concede that while many of the things you said were effective, some were not completely accurate?"
Ryan replied:
"No, not in the least, actually. What they're trying to suggest is that I said that Barack Obama was responsible for our plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying. Read the speech. What I was saying is the President ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After our plant was shut down he said that he would lead an effort to retool plants like the Janesville plant to get people back to work. It’s still idle, people are still not working there... So my point was not to lay blame on the plant shutdown, it was, this is yet another example of the President's broken promises. In 2008, he traveled all around the country making promises that he broke, just like the one in Janesville."
Lauer said that, in his opinion, “it seemed like you were unmistakably trying to link the President's promise with the closing of that plant, which you know obviously, closed before he became president.” Ryan was having none of that:
"The promise was that he was going to open the plant. The promise was he was going to lead an effort to retool the plant so that people go back to work and it would be open for another hundred years, he said. So the point is, he filled people with all this hope as he traveled around the country running for president, making grandiose statements and promises, which are just not true... I know they don't like the fact that we point these facts out that they made a lot of promises that did not materialize. Janesville was just yet one more example of that."
Some facts: In his RNC speech, Ryan was discussing a campaign visit Obama, as a presidential candidate, made to the Janesville plant in February 2008. Contrary to Ryan's present assertion--which is a new claim--that was not "after our plant was shut down." It was, in fact, before GM had even decided to close the plant. That decision came months later, in June, with the plant-closing following in December. Obama made no "promise" that "he was going to open the plant"; at the time of his visit, the plant was open for business. Obama did, indeed, say that as president, he "would lead an effort to retool" plants like Janesville to produce the more fuel-efficient cars of the future but far from being a "broken promise," he has, in fact, done so. Paul Ryan knows this--while he trashes Obama for "broken promises" on this issue, his own now-infamous budget eliminates all funding for the largest program aimed at assisting this retooling. And while it's true, as Ryan said, that he didn't, in his RNC speech, claim Obama "was responsible for our plant shutdown," he did, in fact, make that charge two weeks prior to the Republican convention at a campaign stop in Ohio, as I detailed, here, last week. In that earlier piece, I noted that Ryan, in his convention remarks, was essentially walking back his earlier false charges; on "Today," this morning, he made this explicit.
In short, Ryan was questioned about his dishonesty and, in reply, simply lied some more.
Drennen offers a very different "interpretation." He quotes portions of this part of the exchange with Lauer, and characterizes Ryan's remarks thusly: "Ryan dismantled Lauer’s baseless claim."
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Expanding those volumes to an encyclopedia, Drennen asserts that the fact-checkers who had challenged Ryan "actually left out several key facts, and yet, the media continues to run with the dishonest attack on Ryan’s accurate statements." To support this, he links to an editorial in the Washington Examiner but though this editorial misrepresents the Janesville issue in its own way,[1] it actually refutes the all-new narrative Ryan offered the Today audience. While Ryan’s new tale is that Obama visited the plant after it closed and promised to open it, the editorial correctly notes that both GM’s decision to close the plant and the actual plant closure happened long after Obama's campaign visit.
Since Drennen is asserting that Lauer made false attacks on Ryan in the context of Newsbusters' larger thesis--the false notion that the national corporate press is "liberal"--it's worth noting that Lauer allowed Ryan to get away with this, to sit before a national television audience of millions and weave a narrative that was fundamentally false in every respect.
Continuing, Drennen recounts:
"Lauer again tried to portray Ryan as dishonest in another part of the speech: 'Let’s talk about the example using the Simpson-Bowles recommendations… you voted against sending those recommendations to the Senate, basically killing any further action on them. Didn't you owe it to the people in that room to say that as well?'
"Ryan refuted: 'But if you read the next paragraph, I said Republicans offered alternatives... The President didn't do that. The President didn't offer a budget to fix the problem. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget in three years.'"
This is Ryan blatantly misrepresenting his own speech. Here, from it, are his remarks on the debt commission:
“He [Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”
As Lauer suggested, the degree to which Ryan, in real time, regarded this report as "urgent" is made rather plain by the fact that he, himself, opposed it and voted against it. These remarks, in context, weren't a preface to comments about Republican "alternatives," either; they were a charge in a list of charges.[2] Lauer had, in his question, quoted Ryan's exact remark from the speech but Drennen, in his article, removed the quote, leaving only ellipses. I’ll leave it to the reader to speculate as to why.
--j.
---
[1] Actually, in the way in which the righty blogosphere has misrepresented it.
[2] As had been Ryan’s previous paragraph and as was his next: "Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions equal to the problems. How did the president respond? By doing nothing--nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue."
Drennen’s subject was an interview of Ryan conducted on the morning program by Matt Lauer. The host’s first question:
"There are some people who are claiming that you played a little fast and loose with the truth on certain key elements. And I’m not just talking about Democratic analysts, I’m talking about some independent fact checkers. Would you concede that while many of the things you said were effective, some were not completely accurate?"
Ryan replied:
"No, not in the least, actually. What they're trying to suggest is that I said that Barack Obama was responsible for our plant shutdown in Janesville. That is not what I was saying. Read the speech. What I was saying is the President ought to be held to account for his broken promises. After our plant was shut down he said that he would lead an effort to retool plants like the Janesville plant to get people back to work. It’s still idle, people are still not working there... So my point was not to lay blame on the plant shutdown, it was, this is yet another example of the President's broken promises. In 2008, he traveled all around the country making promises that he broke, just like the one in Janesville."
Lauer said that, in his opinion, “it seemed like you were unmistakably trying to link the President's promise with the closing of that plant, which you know obviously, closed before he became president.” Ryan was having none of that:
"The promise was that he was going to open the plant. The promise was he was going to lead an effort to retool the plant so that people go back to work and it would be open for another hundred years, he said. So the point is, he filled people with all this hope as he traveled around the country running for president, making grandiose statements and promises, which are just not true... I know they don't like the fact that we point these facts out that they made a lot of promises that did not materialize. Janesville was just yet one more example of that."
Some facts: In his RNC speech, Ryan was discussing a campaign visit Obama, as a presidential candidate, made to the Janesville plant in February 2008. Contrary to Ryan's present assertion--which is a new claim--that was not "after our plant was shut down." It was, in fact, before GM had even decided to close the plant. That decision came months later, in June, with the plant-closing following in December. Obama made no "promise" that "he was going to open the plant"; at the time of his visit, the plant was open for business. Obama did, indeed, say that as president, he "would lead an effort to retool" plants like Janesville to produce the more fuel-efficient cars of the future but far from being a "broken promise," he has, in fact, done so. Paul Ryan knows this--while he trashes Obama for "broken promises" on this issue, his own now-infamous budget eliminates all funding for the largest program aimed at assisting this retooling. And while it's true, as Ryan said, that he didn't, in his RNC speech, claim Obama "was responsible for our plant shutdown," he did, in fact, make that charge two weeks prior to the Republican convention at a campaign stop in Ohio, as I detailed, here, last week. In that earlier piece, I noted that Ryan, in his convention remarks, was essentially walking back his earlier false charges; on "Today," this morning, he made this explicit.
In short, Ryan was questioned about his dishonesty and, in reply, simply lied some more.
Drennen offers a very different "interpretation." He quotes portions of this part of the exchange with Lauer, and characterizes Ryan's remarks thusly: "Ryan dismantled Lauer’s baseless claim."
Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Expanding those volumes to an encyclopedia, Drennen asserts that the fact-checkers who had challenged Ryan "actually left out several key facts, and yet, the media continues to run with the dishonest attack on Ryan’s accurate statements." To support this, he links to an editorial in the Washington Examiner but though this editorial misrepresents the Janesville issue in its own way,[1] it actually refutes the all-new narrative Ryan offered the Today audience. While Ryan’s new tale is that Obama visited the plant after it closed and promised to open it, the editorial correctly notes that both GM’s decision to close the plant and the actual plant closure happened long after Obama's campaign visit.
Since Drennen is asserting that Lauer made false attacks on Ryan in the context of Newsbusters' larger thesis--the false notion that the national corporate press is "liberal"--it's worth noting that Lauer allowed Ryan to get away with this, to sit before a national television audience of millions and weave a narrative that was fundamentally false in every respect.
Continuing, Drennen recounts:
"Lauer again tried to portray Ryan as dishonest in another part of the speech: 'Let’s talk about the example using the Simpson-Bowles recommendations… you voted against sending those recommendations to the Senate, basically killing any further action on them. Didn't you owe it to the people in that room to say that as well?'
"Ryan refuted: 'But if you read the next paragraph, I said Republicans offered alternatives... The President didn't do that. The President didn't offer a budget to fix the problem. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget in three years.'"
This is Ryan blatantly misrepresenting his own speech. Here, from it, are his remarks on the debt commission:
“He [Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”
As Lauer suggested, the degree to which Ryan, in real time, regarded this report as "urgent" is made rather plain by the fact that he, himself, opposed it and voted against it. These remarks, in context, weren't a preface to comments about Republican "alternatives," either; they were a charge in a list of charges.[2] Lauer had, in his question, quoted Ryan's exact remark from the speech but Drennen, in his article, removed the quote, leaving only ellipses. I’ll leave it to the reader to speculate as to why.
--j.
---
[1] Actually, in the way in which the righty blogosphere has misrepresented it.
[2] As had been Ryan’s previous paragraph and as was his next: "Republicans stepped up with good-faith reforms and solutions equal to the problems. How did the president respond? By doing nothing--nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue."
Friday, August 31, 2012
Ed Morrissey Offers Hot Air About Janesville Plant
My first contribution to "MRCWatch" yesterday dealt with NB's Matt Vespa and a brief piece he penned about
matters related to the now-shuttered General Motors plant in Janesville,
Wisconsin. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had said
some things about it that weren't true, some MSNBC hosts had objected
and Vespa attempted to take them to task but only succeeded in making a
first-rate mess of the issue. I noted that every fact-checking operation had refuted Ryan's remarks but that the righty blogosphere was defending them. One such defense comes from Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air. The venue is appropriate. Morrissey's conclusions are not.
Ryan had trashed the Obama for promising, during a visit he made to the Janseville plant as a presidential candidate, to keep the plant open then allowing it to close in 2009. Obama never made any such promise though, and GM decided to close the plant before he ever became president. The plant was essentially closed in December '08--its main line was discontinued, its workforce (thousands of employees) was fired and only a skeleton crew of a few dozen people were kept on for a few more months to finish a last pending order by Isuzu.
Morrissey concedes the decision to close the plant was made in '08--that, alone, puts him a head over some of the clowns who have attempted to defend Ryan--but while insulting Ryan's critics as being without research skills, he, himself, makes a complete mess of the basic facts of what happened and when.
Morrissey flushes any hint of intellectual honesty right up front by playing the same game as the rest of Ryan's defenders, pretending as if that skeleton crew finishing that final order meant the plant was still open for business in 2009 and that Obama made a "promise" to keep it that way. He quotes Ryan from the RNC speech:
"Ryan acknowledged that the plant had already been slated for shutdown in 2008. That was his point. People voted for him [Obama] because they thought Obama represented hope to get the plant back in operation. In fact, that had been known since at least February 2008, when Obama came to Janesville to speak, and specifically addressed the plant closure in his remarks, delivered at the plant itself--and promised to keep it and other plants like it open 'for the next hundred years'." [emphasis by Morrissey]
Here, Morrissey has been snagged by one of Ryan's lies. While Ryan directly implies, in the part Morrissey bolded, exactly what Morrissey said--that it was known at the time of Obama's campaign stop that the plant was going to shut down--that is, in fact, false. Obama's visit to the plant occurred in Feb., 2008; GM's decision to close it was first made and announced four months later, in June. Obama, lacking a time-machine, never addressed the plant closing in his remarks at that stop. So where did Morrissey get that notion? Well, after insulting the reading comprehension skills of Ryan's critics, he either completely misreads what Obama said or chose to misrepresent it. The former is the most likely explanation because the poor fool quotes Obama very noticeably not saying what Morrissey attributes to him:
He concludes:
"Ryan had it exactly right, and the fact checkers have made a mockery of their own profession by stepping all over their own biases to refute Ryan."
In Morrisey's defense, at least he can honestly say facts are definitely not his own profession.
--j.
Ryan had trashed the Obama for promising, during a visit he made to the Janseville plant as a presidential candidate, to keep the plant open then allowing it to close in 2009. Obama never made any such promise though, and GM decided to close the plant before he ever became president. The plant was essentially closed in December '08--its main line was discontinued, its workforce (thousands of employees) was fired and only a skeleton crew of a few dozen people were kept on for a few more months to finish a last pending order by Isuzu.
Morrissey concedes the decision to close the plant was made in '08--that, alone, puts him a head over some of the clowns who have attempted to defend Ryan--but while insulting Ryan's critics as being without research skills, he, himself, makes a complete mess of the basic facts of what happened and when.
Morrissey flushes any hint of intellectual honesty right up front by playing the same game as the rest of Ryan's defenders, pretending as if that skeleton crew finishing that final order meant the plant was still open for business in 2009 and that Obama made a "promise" to keep it that way. He quotes Ryan from the RNC speech:
"President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.The bolding there was by Morrissey. Continuing from this quote, he writes:
"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.
"Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
"Ryan acknowledged that the plant had already been slated for shutdown in 2008. That was his point. People voted for him [Obama] because they thought Obama represented hope to get the plant back in operation. In fact, that had been known since at least February 2008, when Obama came to Janesville to speak, and specifically addressed the plant closure in his remarks, delivered at the plant itself--and promised to keep it and other plants like it open 'for the next hundred years'." [emphasis by Morrissey]
Here, Morrissey has been snagged by one of Ryan's lies. While Ryan directly implies, in the part Morrissey bolded, exactly what Morrissey said--that it was known at the time of Obama's campaign stop that the plant was going to shut down--that is, in fact, false. Obama's visit to the plant occurred in Feb., 2008; GM's decision to close it was first made and announced four months later, in June. Obama, lacking a time-machine, never addressed the plant closing in his remarks at that stop. So where did Morrissey get that notion? Well, after insulting the reading comprehension skills of Ryan's critics, he either completely misreads what Obama said or chose to misrepresent it. The former is the most likely explanation because the poor fool quotes Obama very noticeably not saying what Morrissey attributes to him:
"It was nearly a century ago that the first tractor rolled off the assembly line at this plant. The achievement didn’t just create a product to sell or profits for General Motors. It led to a shared prosperity enjoyed by all of Janesville. Homes and businesses began to sprout up along Milwaukee and Main Streets. Jobs were plentiful, with wages that could raise a family and benefits you could count on.That's the full portion of the Obama remarks quoted by Morrissey and it's Morrissey's bolding as well. Obama refers to a point in the past when the plant shut down, talks about steps that can be taken to make sure that never happens again and Morrissey decides this is a reference to a coming plant shut-down, one that had neither been announced nor even decided until months after these remarks.
"Prosperity hasn’t always come easily. The plant shut down for a period during the height of the Depression, and major shifts in production have been required to meet the changing times. Tractors became automobiles. Automobiles became artillery shells. SUVs are becoming hybrids as we speak, and the cost of transition has always been greatest for the workers and their families.
"But through hard times and good, great challenge and great change, the promise of Janesville has been the promise of America--that our prosperity can and must be the tide that lifts every boat; that we rise or fall as one nation; that our economy is strongest when our middle-class grows and opportunity is spread as widely as possible. And when it’s not – when opportunity is uneven or unequal--it is our responsibility to restore balance, and fairness, and keep that promise alive for the next generation. That is the responsibility we face right now, and that is the responsibility I intend to meet as President of the United States. …
"Those are the steps we can take to ease the cost crisis facing working families. But we still need to make sure that families are working. We need to maintain our competitive edge in a global by ensuring that plants like this one stay open for another hundred years, and shuttered factories re-open as new industries that promise new jobs. And we need to put more Americans to work doing jobs that need to be done right here in America.
He concludes:
"Ryan had it exactly right, and the fact checkers have made a mockery of their own profession by stepping all over their own biases to refute Ryan."
In Morrisey's defense, at least he can honestly say facts are definitely not his own profession.
--j.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Matt Vespa Makes A Hash Of It
MRCWatch Dept. - In an effort to slam MSNBC hosts Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton, Newsbusters’ Matt Vespa managed, in only a few short paragraphs,
to make an incredible mess of just about everything regarding a matter
addressed by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan last night
in his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention. The
issue causing all the fuss is the now-shuttered General Motors plant in
Janesville, Wisconsin. The background:
Two weeks ago (Aug. 16) at a campaign stop in Ohio, Ryan said:
"That plant was shut down in 2009. I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise. We used to build Tahoes and Suburbans. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president’s terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."
...which was a fictitious narrative. Candidate Obama did indeed visit the Janseville plant in February 2008 but he made no promise to "keep that plant open,"[1] nor, setting aside the fact that presidents have no power to dictate such decisions, would there have been any need for any such promise--at the time of Obama’s campaign stop, GM hadn’t yet decided the plant would be closing. That only happened four months later. In June, 2008, GM announced it would be shutting down production of medium-sized trucks at the plant by the end of 2009 and SUVs by 2010 or sooner, shuttering the plant. As it turned out, the plant didn’t even make it to the end of the year. In October, 2008 came reports that GM may close the plant earlier than expected. Candidate Obama called it "a painful reminder of the tough economic times facing working families across this country," and
"also a reminder that Washington needs to finally live up to its promise to help our automakers compete in our global economy. As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America."[2]
On December 23, 2008, a month before Obama became president and well before he could enact "terrible energy policies" or any other policy, the plant essentially shut down, giving the sack to thousands of employees.
Only a skeleton crew of a few dozen were maintained beyond that and only to complete an outstanding order of vehicles for Isuzu, work which concluded a few months later in April. Ryan’s narrative was nonsense but became a well-circulated talking-point in right-wing circles.
In his speech to the RNC last night, Ryan talked about the Janesville plant again, significantly modifying his earlier remarks:
"When he [Obama] talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory… Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you… this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
During MSNBCs post-speech coverage, hosts Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton took issue with Ryan’s false narrative, pointing out that the plant was closed during the Bush administration, before Obama had even become president.
Newsbusters’ Matt Vespa was having none of that: he asserts that, in last night’s speech, Ryan "reiterated that President Barack Obama promised to keep the plant open, but then shut it down." But, in fact, Ryan dropped any overt reference to this claim from his RNC speech.[3] Where did Vespa get the idea Ryan had "reiterated" it? Vespa links to a right-wing blog, which does, indeed, say:
"During Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech, he talked about a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin that he said closed down after President Obama made a promise that it would remain open."
Vespa apparently interpreted this as meaning Ryan had reiterated his earlier claim and never bothered to listen to the actual Ryan speech.
In his zeal to bash Schultz and Sharpton, Vespa doesn’t even get straight his own charges against them. In response to Ryan’s comments, he writes, "the left-wingers went rabid, and supported the false narrative that the plant was closed by George W. Bush." As Vespa’s own video clips show though, neither Schultz nor Sharpton claimed "the plant was closed by George W. Bush." They, instead, noted--correctly--that the plant had been closed during the Bush administration.
Vespa characterizes their comments as "patently false remarks" and asserts that "in actuality, the plant closed in June of 2009." To support this, he quotes and links to an article from the Janesville Gazette, but in neither the portion he quotes nor in the longer article is there any claim that "the plant closed in June 2009." Instead, the article notes that "General Motors will end medium-duty truck production in Janesville on April 23, four months to the day after the plant stopped building full-size sport utility vehicles." And that’s exactly what happened. Today, the righty blogosphere, in an effort to defend Ryan, has widely circulated the notion that the skeleton-crew held over to finish up that last order meant the plant was still open for business until April '09. That’s apparently where Vespa picked it up; the right-wing blog to which he links offers that particular spin. By any fair analysis, that spin is a fundamental misrepresentation of reality, while what Vespa calls 'patently false remarks' and a 'false narrative' by those 'left-wingers'--the 'rabid' ones--were correct.
Vespa concludes this mess by asserting "it appears that Mr. Schultz and Mr. Sharpton are, unsurprisingly, wrong. It was closed under the Obama administration." In the real world, every fact-checking outlet under the sun has refuted Ryan’s remarks.[4]
--j.
---
[1] In the relevant remarks, Obama, speaking of the transition to clean energy autos, said: "…I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your president."
[2] Something Obama has, in fact, done as president. GM has so far chosen not to make use of these incentives to retool the Janesville plant but in another twist on this story, Paul Ryan’s infamous budget proposal, which nearly every Republican in both houses of congress voted to pass, completely eliminates the biggest of the programs offering these incentives. That’s certainly no way to get Janseville retooled and running again and no ground on which to stand while accusing someone else of failing to make it happen.
[3] Though he transformed his earlier claim into a more general one about the failure to deliver a promised recovery, Ryan’s inclusion of the Obama comment was clearly a coded reference to that earlier claim, an inference aimed at the Republican base among whom that claim had circulated.
[4] Some of those fact-checkers have gotten various elements of the story wrong but their conclusion is correct.
Two weeks ago (Aug. 16) at a campaign stop in Ohio, Ryan said:
"That plant was shut down in 2009. I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise. We used to build Tahoes and Suburbans. One of the reasons that plant got shut down was $4 gasoline. You see, this costs jobs. The president’s terrible energy policies are costing us jobs."
...which was a fictitious narrative. Candidate Obama did indeed visit the Janseville plant in February 2008 but he made no promise to "keep that plant open,"[1] nor, setting aside the fact that presidents have no power to dictate such decisions, would there have been any need for any such promise--at the time of Obama’s campaign stop, GM hadn’t yet decided the plant would be closing. That only happened four months later. In June, 2008, GM announced it would be shutting down production of medium-sized trucks at the plant by the end of 2009 and SUVs by 2010 or sooner, shuttering the plant. As it turned out, the plant didn’t even make it to the end of the year. In October, 2008 came reports that GM may close the plant earlier than expected. Candidate Obama called it "a painful reminder of the tough economic times facing working families across this country," and
"also a reminder that Washington needs to finally live up to its promise to help our automakers compete in our global economy. As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America."[2]
On December 23, 2008, a month before Obama became president and well before he could enact "terrible energy policies" or any other policy, the plant essentially shut down, giving the sack to thousands of employees.
 | |
| Janesville Autoworkers Pose with the Last Vehicle Off the Line, 23 Dec., 2008 |
Only a skeleton crew of a few dozen were maintained beyond that and only to complete an outstanding order of vehicles for Isuzu, work which concluded a few months later in April. Ryan’s narrative was nonsense but became a well-circulated talking-point in right-wing circles.
In his speech to the RNC last night, Ryan talked about the Janesville plant again, significantly modifying his earlier remarks:
"When he [Obama] talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory… Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you… this plant will be here for another hundred years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight."
During MSNBCs post-speech coverage, hosts Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton took issue with Ryan’s false narrative, pointing out that the plant was closed during the Bush administration, before Obama had even become president.
Newsbusters’ Matt Vespa was having none of that: he asserts that, in last night’s speech, Ryan "reiterated that President Barack Obama promised to keep the plant open, but then shut it down." But, in fact, Ryan dropped any overt reference to this claim from his RNC speech.[3] Where did Vespa get the idea Ryan had "reiterated" it? Vespa links to a right-wing blog, which does, indeed, say:
"During Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech, he talked about a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin that he said closed down after President Obama made a promise that it would remain open."
Vespa apparently interpreted this as meaning Ryan had reiterated his earlier claim and never bothered to listen to the actual Ryan speech.
In his zeal to bash Schultz and Sharpton, Vespa doesn’t even get straight his own charges against them. In response to Ryan’s comments, he writes, "the left-wingers went rabid, and supported the false narrative that the plant was closed by George W. Bush." As Vespa’s own video clips show though, neither Schultz nor Sharpton claimed "the plant was closed by George W. Bush." They, instead, noted--correctly--that the plant had been closed during the Bush administration.
Vespa characterizes their comments as "patently false remarks" and asserts that "in actuality, the plant closed in June of 2009." To support this, he quotes and links to an article from the Janesville Gazette, but in neither the portion he quotes nor in the longer article is there any claim that "the plant closed in June 2009." Instead, the article notes that "General Motors will end medium-duty truck production in Janesville on April 23, four months to the day after the plant stopped building full-size sport utility vehicles." And that’s exactly what happened. Today, the righty blogosphere, in an effort to defend Ryan, has widely circulated the notion that the skeleton-crew held over to finish up that last order meant the plant was still open for business until April '09. That’s apparently where Vespa picked it up; the right-wing blog to which he links offers that particular spin. By any fair analysis, that spin is a fundamental misrepresentation of reality, while what Vespa calls 'patently false remarks' and a 'false narrative' by those 'left-wingers'--the 'rabid' ones--were correct.
Vespa concludes this mess by asserting "it appears that Mr. Schultz and Mr. Sharpton are, unsurprisingly, wrong. It was closed under the Obama administration." In the real world, every fact-checking outlet under the sun has refuted Ryan’s remarks.[4]
--j.
---
[1] In the relevant remarks, Obama, speaking of the transition to clean energy autos, said: "…I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your president."
[2] Something Obama has, in fact, done as president. GM has so far chosen not to make use of these incentives to retool the Janesville plant but in another twist on this story, Paul Ryan’s infamous budget proposal, which nearly every Republican in both houses of congress voted to pass, completely eliminates the biggest of the programs offering these incentives. That’s certainly no way to get Janseville retooled and running again and no ground on which to stand while accusing someone else of failing to make it happen.
[3] Though he transformed his earlier claim into a more general one about the failure to deliver a promised recovery, Ryan’s inclusion of the Obama comment was clearly a coded reference to that earlier claim, an inference aimed at the Republican base among whom that claim had circulated.
[4] Some of those fact-checkers have gotten various elements of the story wrong but their conclusion is correct.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Looks Like Media Only Matter Until You Criticize Media Matters (UPDATED below)
"Since its inception, MMFA has done a lot of good work. I've promoted that work over the years, praised it, expanded on some of it. Maybe half-a-dozen MMFA articles in earlier years were the result of tips I provided. Sometimes, when I've thought the work fell short, I've criticized it. Not, I think, unfairly, though readers will certainly judge that on their own."
This month, I've had occasion to offer up some more of that criticism, more of that criticism, principally that MMFA has become overly fixated on Fox News in the last few years and that, as a consequence, coverage of Fox is consuming MMFA's output to the point that the org is ignoring the real giants of the press, the major vehicles by which right-wing misinformation is disseminated to the public. I conducted a little survey of MMFA's total output for a 13-day period and showed that over 60% of it was directed at Fox News, while very little had been devoted to the largest press outlets in the U.S. Yesterday morning, to further this point, I made a count of Monday's output and posted it in MMFA's comment section:
Mon., 27 Aug., 2012
Total MMFA items: 21
Fox News items - 13 (nearly 66% of total)
Rush Limbaugh items - 2
Items on Cable News Channels:
1 about CNN and Current (also included in Fox count)
CNN - 1
Items on the Major News Networks:
CBS - 0
NBC - 0
ABC - 0
Items on 5 Biggest Papers in the U.S.:
Wall Street Journal - 0
USA Today - 0
New York Times - 0
Los Angeles Times - 0
San Jose Mercury News - 0
MMFA Self-Promotional Items - 2
I have to reproduce this count here rather than linking to the one I posted at MMFA because the one I posted there has been deleted. And based on it, I was, yesterday, entirely banned from posting comments on MMFA.
I've been banned from a lot of sites over the years. I'm a born contrarian, outspoken and a lefty who makes it a point to challenge conservatives on their own turf. In a world in which serious dissidents are increasingly regarded as merely party-poopers, this gets me tagged as a troublemaker. I consider it a matter of personal pride that I've been thrown off Newsbusters not once but twice, for no other violation of their terms of use than holding left views, being somewhat articulate in expressing them and refusing to back down from nonsense. I expect that sort of behavior from a vile, reactionary Ministry of Truth like Newsbusters. That this is how much of the right handles dissent is part of why I write this blog. I do not expect this sort of behavior from liberals and particularly not from Media Matters.
In my Monday article, I suggested that MMFA's obsession with Fox News inadvertently fuels one of the very notions MMFA exists to counter, the idea that the national corporate press are "liberal media." Spending so much time on a single outlet everyone acknowledges as conservative implies that even a liberal press watchdog that claims it "comprehensively" monitors media can find very little in the rest of the press about which to complain. Monday, another commentator on MMFA suggested to me that in offering what I'd hoped would be some constructive criticism, I could be doing the work of Fox News--tearing down MMFA--a fundamentally wrongheaded notion (and I said so). I find myself wondering what that fellow would think of what's happened with this situation. I haven't just been banned; most of my comments from the last few days were flagged and have now been removed by MMFA mods.[1] It's a well-circulated conservative caricature of liberals that they're intolerant of dissent. MMFA's actions in this matter couldn't have more entirely played into that if the caricature's author himself had been behind them.[2] Banning people from MMFA for offering criticism treats the world to the spectacle of an allegedly liberal organization that behaves in this most illiberal manner. I've slammed Newsbusters for being an org devoted to criticizing the work of the press that will not, itself, tolerate criticism of its own work. It seems it ins't alone in this.
And if you're out there, who is doing the work of who?
--j.
---
[1] In recent days, I attracted the attention of a first-rate asswipe who posts on MMFA under the name of "montanabuddha." He was in such a hurry to pour bile over anything that would be critical of MMFA that he didn't even bother to look at the criticism itself and thought my perspective was that of a right-wing apologist for Fox News. I believe him to be responsible for most of the flagging of my comments.
[2] UPDATE (3 Sept., 2012) - An article at the right-wing Daily Caller from as recently as 17 June recounts a speech Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had just given in which he singled out Media Matters, describing it as "a left-wing organization in Washington whose stated purpose is to track conservative media voices, seize on potentially offensive content and then use it to mount corporate intimidation campaigns aimed at driving these voices clear out of the public square." MMFA, of course, does not have that as its "stated purpose" and McConnell made other ludicrous comments about the org as well but while the speech itself, as recounted in the article, is nonsense, it is an example of conservatives crafting that caricature.
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