Category Archives: Journalism

CNN Halloween Ghoul Gloria Borger: Can She Be Humanized?!

Ethics, Gender, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Objectivism, Propaganda, Reason

In anticipation of Mitt Romney’s last major speech delivered on Friday, in Iowa, the voter was expected to endure the analysis of one of the most banal brains on TV (and that takes an effort, given the competition):

Gloria Borger.

This bitch (and yes, I’ve not been mincing words lately) has not stopped maligning Romney’s character. As I’ve said repeatedly, Romney’s political philosophy is situated on a continuum of statism, and, as such, is of a piece with Obama’s.

But in his personal life, Mitt’s a lovely man. That is unless the stupid hos who monopolize discourse in the USA no loner like the silent, tall, capable, hard-working, over-achiever.

Romney’s funny too.

Yet Borger, a member of the Bitches for Obama Brigade at CNN, has not shut up about the need to “humanize” Mr. Romney, the premise of which it that the man is inhuman.

Romney’s public persona is a fictitious construct invented by the characters on the liberal cable news stations, with some acquiescence from Republican women. All agree about his stiffness.

Stiff? Sure, Romney is as rigid as the “Mad Man” Don Draper of the eponymous HBO period drama. The good type of rigid.

So here’s what Borger disgorged about the role, in particular, of Ann Romney in rehabilitating her rogue husband:

BALDWIN: “I want to bring back Gloria Borger, because here we are, strategy wise, 11 days left. We’re counting every day. The Romney camp, you know, seems to be featuring more of Mitt Romney, you know, Mitt Romney the man. And you’ve spent quite a bit of time with the woman who’s been instrumental in that, Ann Romney.”

BORGER: “Right.”

BALDWIN: “Tell me more about that.”

BORGER: “Well, Ann Romney has kind of become their secret weapon here. You know that Mitt Romney has a large problem with women voters. Ann Romney is out there now trying to appeal to women.
She’s also sort of been Mitt Romney’s character witness. Because his big problem has been that average voters say he doesn’t care about my problems. He doesn’t understand my problems. He’s too rich. He’s too out of touch. He doesn’t get it.
So Ann Romney’s job, and she’s been pushing for this in the campaign, is to kind of humanize him, open Mitt Romney up and kind of say to people, you know, actually he does care about you. She pushed for more of that. You heard a little bit more of that at the convention. You heard some of that in the debates.
So now his message is two-pronged. Yes, I can talk about the economy, but, yes, I also understand your problems. And we’ll see if more and more people believe that he does, because he runs substantially behind the president when it comes to economic empathy, if you will. And she’s part of that plan to get people to think that he does get it.”

UPDATED: Benghazigate And The Media (Who Are Seasonal Defenders Of D.C. )

Democrats, Foreign Policy, Journalism, libertarianism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Republicans, War

“Barack Obama is a despicable man.” These are the words of the always outspoken and interesting Michael Scheuer (a staunch, pro-military Old Rightist, whose patriotism often leads him to conspiratorial anti-Israelism).

Scheuer was on Fox Business discussing Benghazigate.

Fox News is covering the Benghazi story wall-to-wall; the other cable news stations not at all.

This reportorial bifurcation is pretty typical of mainstream media, which includes Fox, of course. In the ramp-up to a Republican president’s unjust war on Iraq, Fox gave the Shrub and his administration a complete pass, while The Other Cable TV stations exposed the corrupt Republicans quite well.

“Reporters who slept with their sources,” “PRESSTITUTES,“ bobble-heads who were “TUNED-OUT, TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR”: These were some of the terms I used in 2003 and onward for Fox News:

“… to watch these women doing the Countdown to Obliterating Iraq segments was like watching bitches on heat. One anchorwoman’s memorable Freudian slip was to express disappointment that there was as yet no “evidence that’ll give us an excuse [her words] to attack Iraq.” On and on. (Collated in Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With a Corrupt Culture.)

Most of my information about Iraqi civilian casualties came from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. American mainstream media was generally missing in action on that front.

“ON PIMPS AND ‘PRESSTITUTES’” encapsulates the US media’s reporting during the invasion of Iraq, RIP:

…The monolithic quality of the reporting/cheerleading coming from the networks was and still is proof of the slutty sell-out. Practically all network embeds focused exclusively on the pentagon’s version of who did what, when, and how. Logistics usurped real issues; spectacle replaced substance, as the viewer was subjected to a perspective as monochromatic as the green of the night vision optics. …
…Reporting hearsay as truth and failing to verify stories has also been part of the networks’ war effort. A Geiger counter that went off in the inexpert hands of a marine was broadcast as possible evidence of weapons-grade plutonium. Every bottle of Cipro tablets became a likely precursor to an anthrax factory. Anchormen and women somberly seconded these “finds,” seldom bothering to issue retractions for misinforming the viewing public.

Then the guard changed. To American pundits (libertarians excepted), the changing of the guard in D.C. simply means a change of positions. Whereas MSNBC and CNN were more likely to expose the Bush Administration, they quickly assumed the position previously occupied by the Fox News network during the Bush years: defenders of D.C.

The pundits you follow, libertarains excepted, are all seasonal defenders of D.C.

To sum, Benghazi is a scandal. Fox News has been reporting (diligently, since their guy is NOT in D.C.) that: “…an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Try to remember: The White House Situation Room, the State Department, CIA and Pentagon were just as good at forsaking Americans during the other bastard’s reign of terror.

For example, “Under ‘W,’ ordinary Americans were regularly beheaded in the theaters of war Genghis Bush launched. None of their representatives stateside bargained for their lives or staged showy Congressional hearings to probe their forsaken security.”

My hope is that the same readers who tried to have me dismissed from WND, during the Republican occupation of America, will elevate themselves above their current political preference and see the thing for what it is.

UPDATE (Oct. 27): If not for RT, we’d be as deaf and dumb (as ex-Facebook Friend, HJ) about the humanitarian disaster unfolding, a la Iraq, in Lebanon. Another Syria. Or rather, another Iraq. Read about the “Siege of Bani Walid.” Watch the visuals of the maimed and dead. Babies too.

Fareed Zakaria Plagiarizer Is Back

Ethics, Journalism, Media, Morality

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria is back from purgatory. Zakaria had been exposed for the second-hander I’ve long claimed he was—and worse. Front-and-center tonight—opining on the final presidential debate at Boca Raton, Fla.—Zakaria was found to have plagiarized another journalist’s work: the New Yorker’s Jill Lepore.

What’s more, plagiarism is a pattern for Fareed. Dan Amira provides a Zakaria background check, and with it evidence that “… this isn’t even the first time that Zakaria has been accused of taking ownership of another writer’s work.

If you’d imagined that a pathetic excuse for a writer, as is Zakaria, would be run out of town for his transgression—you’d be wrong. You’d be making a dodgy presumption of standards—moral and other.

Despite a pattern of plagiarisms, Zakaria’s employers were content to merely suspend his column for a month. (Someone called Tunku Varadarajan accuses everyone baying for Fareed’s journalistic blood of envy.)

Zombie Zakaria joins another by now infamous CNN friend, Candy Crowley, who helped tilt last week’s presidential debate in BHO’s favor.

What a lineup.

UPDATE II: Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half-Wit (The Vicarious Pleasure Principle)

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Democrats, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Liberty, Republicans, The State

The current column, now on WND, is “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit.” An excerpt:

“It was hard not to feel sorry for President Barack Obama during what was the first of three presidential debates. The dejected demeanor and the perpetually lowered gaze conjured an unprepared student peppered by a pedantic teacher with questions he could not possibly answer.

The president’s pose spoke to the beating he was receiving at the hands of his opponent, Gov. Mitt Romney.

Obama campaigner Chris Matthews—a proxy for this president, who cloaks himself in the raiment of a newsman—demanded to know: Why was Obama staring down at his “notes” and scribbling? What was he waiting for?

To describe what Gov. Romney had done in the course of the 90-minute debate, Matthews, who possesses a nimble intelligence his candidate is without, reached for wild man Charlie Sheen’s zinger: ‘What was Romney doing? Winning!’

Moderator Jim Lehrer is an old-school newsman who has never in the course of a long and distinguished career revealed his own political bias. Now the pack men of the media were piling on the PBS anchor for not controlling the debate’s outcome, and for allowing a free to-and-fro between the men.

And since Mitt won hands down; the moderator must have been bad. Or so goes the loser’s lackluster logic. Never mind that reasoning backward is an error in logic. So how does post hoc ergo propter hoc work? Had Obama won the debate under the same emcee’s minimal intervention, Lehrer would have been lauded. …

… Also at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow provided the ultimate rationalization which her co-hosts on the network and elsewhere quickly embraced. ‘The presidency spoils your ability to be a good debater.’

‘In psychology and logic, rationalization (also known as making excuses) is an unconscious defense mechanism,’ writes Wikipedia. It is intended to shield the fragile ego from reality.

Like Maddow, presidential hagiographer Douglas Brinkley took cover from real life on Fox News’ ‘Cavuto.’ The yang to Lincoln idolator Doris Kearns Goodwin’s yin, Brinkley diminished Romney’s intellectual victory by applying that most stringent historical test to the governor’s performance: It was without a Reaganesque zinger. Obama, however, had not damaged his brand, claimed Brinkley. He was still a gifted ‘retail politician.’ (Read community organizer.) …

… Make no mistake; should he succeed in vanquishing Obama, come Nov. 6, Romney’s brand of “repeal-and-replace statism”—not to mention maniacal militarism and Sinophobia—will be no victory for liberty. …

Read the complete column, “Winning A Battle Of Wits With A Half Wit,” on WND.

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UPDATED I: The Vicarious Pleasure Principle. Even if you dislike the philosophy of both men (which exists on the same illiberal continuum), there is some vicarious pleasure in watching the one who has caused you such unhappiness whipped good and proper.

UPDATE II: IN HIS excellent column about Romney’s creaming of Obama, Pat Buchanan also draws on the boxing and school teacher metaphors.

Pat calls Obama’s “performance one of the worst in debate history,” and Romney’s “the finest debate performance of any candidate of either party in the 52 years since Richard Nixon faced John F. Kennedy, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.”