Taibbi: MSM hypocrisy on Charlie Hebdo? 'Je ne suis pas Charlie!'

I'm gonna have to go ahead and kind of disagree with Taibbi on this one. And I'm gonna do it, first, by describing a Charlie Hebdo cartoon, not showing it to you, which is what annoys Taibbi in the first place:

So, imagine a cartoonish "congo" line of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (the latter depicted, quite humorously, I admit, as a Triangle with an All-Seeing Eye in it, a la the U.S. dollar), in that order, each sodomizing the one in front of Him. The cartoon was supposed to lampoon, I suppose, those Christians who were opposed to gay marriage.

Oh, OK, if you must see it, look here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/charlie-hebdo-front-covers#.ydRWyo7Rb

Besides that, Charlie Hebdo seems fond of depicting Arabs as big-nosed, towel-headed oafs and Jews as, well, pretty much the same, except with black hats and squiggly sideburns.  And black people as monkeys. This goes to show, says the lib'rul media, that CH are equal-opportunity offenders. Which not only gets them off the hook, but somehow exalts them. ... Wait, what?

My cultural bona fides: I am not a reverent person; and I possess an above-average sense of humor, even a love of dark and inappropriate jokes. But this stuff just isn't that funny. Still I doubt myself, because of cultural differences. Is it just me? Because all I keep hearing is how much of an institution this caricature magazine is in France; how it represents a quintessentially French irreverence that cuts across the political spectrum, class, education and age groups. It would be as if -- don't laugh! -- Mad Magazine were on every American's night stand. 

OK, if that's really the case, then I call a no-call. A truce. I won't judge Charlie Hebdo out of ignorance. But I'm certainly not going to say, "Je Suis Charlie." Because I'm not. I don't get it. Je ne comprends pas! I don't get this irreverent brand of 14-year-old fart and dick humor that is, the media assures me, in fact very clever, and very French. 

The medieval forebears of Charlie Hebdo?

And now on to Taibbi's main argument, that the Western press were hypocritical pussies for not publishing some offending Charlie Hebdo cartoons for their readers to give them a flavor of what they publish.

First, it's important to note: We don't know exactly which cartoons offended the alleged terrorist murderers. That's not a small detail. Were western editors supposed to select and publish a bunch (and how many?) of anti-Muslim or -Arab cartoons to, like, give their readers context? 

Second, related to that, the story here is not Charlie Hebdo's cartoons. If that were a story worthy of the Western press, we would have heard about them already. The story is how alleged Arab-Muslim terrorists allegedly murdered Charlie Hebdo staff and an Arab-Muslim police guard.  

Third, Taibbi cries "hypocrisy" and "double standard" that some U.S. papers once published (and have maintained in their archives) photos of the offensive-to-Christians Piss Christ art installation, but not any anti-Muslim Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Taibbi's assumed reasoning being, the media isn't afraid to piss off prudish Christians, (and probably enjoys it, too), but it is scared to offend scary hard-line Muslims who might shoot them.

So here's the difference: Piss Christ was a legitimate national news story; and whatever some obscure French caricature magazine published one week (certainly more of the same) is not. (I've seen similar cartoons in British lads mags -- NYT, get the republishing rights, and don't skip the tits!)  Back to point #2. The story is not the cartoons, it's the murders.

Fourth, in this age of the Internet, does Taibbi actually think that readers of the New York Times really can't find, in about 2 seconds, examples of Charlie Hebdo cartoons if they really want to? This isn't 1975 anymore, when the NYT and Washington Post held the keys to the nation's information. The NYT Ed's. simply decided they weren't going to be one of the ones to show us this stuff. Is that really so cowardly and hypocritical?   

Finally, I just don't agree that these cartoons are striking a blow against terrorism, or for freedom. Yes, Charlie Hebdo enjoys the right, the freedom to publish their puerile French fart humor... But an Aegis missile in the heart of global Islamism Charlie Hebdo is not. It's just not. I'm sorry.

On a personal note, even though he's wrong this time, it's good to see Taibbi back where he belongs, at Rolling Stone, after playing at media start-ups with dickhead billionaires.

UPDATE: Here's an op-ed saying much the same thing: "#JeSuisCharlie? No, I'm Really Not Charlie Hebdo--And Here's Why."  

Cartoons Are Worth Fighting For

By Matt Taibbi

January 8, 2015 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/yes-virginia-cartoons-are-worth-fighting-for-20150108

TSA agent: We must laugh at underwear and toothpaste terrorists

This one deserves to be reposted in full, because too many Americans are susceptible to the craven U.S. media's attempts to spur us to support military action (and an anti-civil rights intelligence apparatus) ostensibly meant to keep us safe from non-existent threats -- bumbling terrorists with soggy shoes, crotches on fire, and the like.

And as a frequent international traveler let me say, I'm sick of it!  It's all because of unaccountable, CYA, security-apparatus bureaucrats in DHS and TSA whose only concern is, "Not on my watch!", statistics, facts and our comfort be damned.

Read on!

Take it from an airport security agent: it's OK to laugh at toothpaste terror threats

By Jason Edward Harrington

September 28, 2014 | Guardian

The other day in Syria, the US conducted air strikes on a relatively unknown and possibly non-existent entity called the Khorasan group, which sounds more like a job-killing consulting firm than a people-killing al-Qaida spinoff. It was a surprise plot point in the campaign against Isis that left the kind of Strangelovian headlines that have become par for the course in the War on Terror. Take this one, from the Independent: “Syria air strikes: Khorasan Group ‘were working to make toothpaste bombs and explosives that could pass through airport security’”. Or this one: “Khorasan Group plotted attack against US with explosive clothes”.

This isn’t the first time the plane-flying public has gotten word of cavity-fighting and/or sartorial threats to international airliners: the concept of the toothpaste bomb first surfaced during the Sochi Olympics earlier this year, and the clothes-dipped-in-liquid-explosives menace came to attention back in August 2013. And of course, just a few months ago, there was speculation about the need for airline passengers to fear an iBomb. The only thing that changed between then and now is that anonymous officials slapped a name on the alleged masterminds behind these absurd plots, and then dropped bombs on them.

Now that the global aviation system has been menaced by a shoe bomber, an underwear bomber, a hypothetical “Frankenbomber” and even ecologically friendly bombers, pretty much any western government could conceivably spout the results of a terror plot-generating algorithm and successfully sell it to the public as casus belli:

Common item + bomb + plot = justified military action and hassle at airports. Deodorant bomb plot? Sure, why the hell not? Sounds scary. Send in the drones, confiscate all the Old Spice.

There have been conflicting reports as to how “imminent” the Khorasan group’s aviation attack really was. But regardless of whether these alleged terrorist masterminds had their favorite sweaters weaponized and ready to blow, or were just sort of thinking about it, exactly what are we supposed to feel when confronted with news of such counter-terror campaigns carried out on our behalf? Relief and fear? Relief that our military may have neutralized a tube of toothpaste, and fear that the next Hollywood-ready plot is still imminently lurking out there?

Having worked for the Transportation Security Administration for six years, I actually think laughter is one appropriate response. It’s hard not to see the funny facets of a never-ending campaign against a nebulous enemy (Axis of Evil a decade ago, Network of Death today) in which you are issued a terror intelligence memorandum detailing the standard operating procedure for the confiscation of cupcakes. (“Cupcakes have got to have a reasonable level of icing to be allowed onto a plane,” one TSA manager advised us.)

My former co-workers and I are not the only ones who found some of this stuff funny. In 2012, the international relations scholar Charlotte Heath-Kelly argued in a paper in the European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research that the War on Terror can be viewed as the lovechild of Franz Kafka and Monty Python as much as that of any vice president and foreign minister.

“The War on Terror undermines itself by narrating a liminal space where its claims of security appear ridiculous,” Heath-Kelly writes. “A failure to laugh consolidates the War on Terror discourse and the joke it is playing on us by taking it seriously.”

If we could get Catch 22 out of World War II, and Dr Strangelove out of the Cold War, it should come as no surprise if the more skeptical among us laugh when our governments inform us, with a straight face, that we just launched a unilateral air strike so as to eliminate a guy who maybe had explosives in his dopp kit. Perhaps the best way to show our leaders that we’re no longer buying the chimerical terror threats sold to us as justifications for war is by laughing those claims right out of the room.

As Thomas Jefferson said long before the TSA made you walk around barefoot and beltless with a bunch of strangers, “Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

Many would say the plots of the supposedly deadly and ingenious terrorists upon whom we’re dropping bombs would be no laughing matter if brought to fruition. But a few people bearing analogues to these hypothetical threats have actually made it aboard planes in the past, and the results comprised a relative comedy of errors:

• In 2001, Richard Reid attempted to bring down a plane by igniting his shoes, but his foot perspiration rendered his amateur IED’s fuse soggy.

• On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a flight to Detroit with a bomb sewn into his underwear, but managed instead to burn his genitals.

• Security experts still argue whether the liquids plot of 2006 – the reason we’re not allowed to bring a container filled with more than 3.4 ounces of liquid aboard planes in the US – was even plausible: Turns out, mixing hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and acetone is difficult even in the calm of a science lab, let alone an airplane lavatory. 

Real-life, successful terrorist plots tend to be too mundane to fit the narratives of big-budget Hollywood thrillers. Attempts at the movie-level terrorist plot end up playing out more like Benny Hill than Sergeant Brody.

I believe that it’s healthy to openly ridicule politically expedient, overblown terror threats such as this Khorasan group – that known unknowns, fashion menaces, underwear bombers and other political hobgoblins should be feared about as much, if not less, than a cab ride to the airport. But there is at least one deadly serious aspect to odd new turns and mysterious enemies in the War on Terror: real people die when missiles go flying in retaliation for absurd, hypothetical threats, and from the rubble of those missile strikes rise new waves of anti-western sentiment. The aspirations of the terrorists we bomb into existence may be grounded in gritty realism, as opposed to slapstick comedy.

And that may turn out to be no laughing matter.

Russian gov't. calls last independent TV channel 'fascist'

It's a definite pattern now: whomever Putin dislikes he calls "fascist."

Russia's Independent Media All But Silenced

By Scott Simon

May 10, 2014 | NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/10/311276075/russias-independent-media-all-but-silenced?sc=18&f=1001

Russian harbinger: 'Russian Facebook' founder flees country

I don't harbor any affection for the founder of Facebook knock-off VKontakte (VK, for short) Pavel Durov -- I noted back in May 2012 how he was a spoiled rich a-hole. Yet undoubtedly, Durov's fleeing Russia is a harbinger of an even more despotic rule to come under Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

VK, which largely resembles an older version of Facebook, attracts about 60 million users daily, primarily from countries in the former Soviet Union, vastly outstripping Facebook's reach in the region. It played an instrumental role in bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets in late 2011 in the wake of widely manipulated parliamentary elections, and it has played a part in drawing crowds to the Kiev protest movement that helped oust Ukraine's pro-Russian president in February.

As many others have predicted, Putin's strong-armed adventures abroad must certainly coincide with a stronger hand at home against Russian dissidents, journalists, academics, ethnic and other minorities, and entrepreneurs.  Putin simply cannot allow a version of reality that isn't his own.

As AP noted:

On Tuesday, the Russian parliament passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at least half a year. The same law, which will go into effect in August if signed by Putin, gave bloggers the same legal status — and responsibilities — as media outlets, making them more vulnerable to accusations of libel or extremism.

Durov said "we held out for seven and a half years," meaning VK held some semblance of freedom despite Putin. But a threat to autocracy anywhere is a threat to autocracy everywhere; and threats cannot be tolerated.

Russian Social Media CEO Quits, Flees Country

By Laura Mills and Alexander Roslyakov

April 23, 2014 | AP

URL: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/russian-social-media-ceo-quits-flees-country

Putin's war rhetoric reeks of fascism

These are the characteristics of fascism: 

• claims that ethnic kinship supersedes sovereign national boundaries; 
• (and correspondingly) claims on other countries' sovereign territory;
• control of private media; 
• constant pro-state propaganda; 
• cult of the leader; 
• persecution of minorities (gays and Caucasians); 
• overt militarism; 
• corporatism (control by the state and its cronies of key industries); 
• active and untouchable secret police; 
• an army of "brownshirt" thugs that can be used to stir up trouble; 
• disappearance and imprisonment of dissidents and political opponents.

All these things exist in Russia today. Putin has set Russia on a dangerous path toward toward expansionism and fascism.

Putin wins in Russia only by escalating his war rhetoric

By Masha Gessen

March 14, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1eBXIMp

The myth of Obama's part-time workforce

Here's a graph from Derek Thompson that shows how U.S. part-time employment rises and falls, historically, in perfect sync with recessions and recoveries:

That's right.  No negative Obamacare effect at all.  Zilch.  In fact, Thompson notes that, "in the last year, new full-time jobs outnumbered part-time jobs by 1.8 million to 8,000. For every new part-time job, we're creating 225 full-time positions."  

Here's how Thompson sums how badly many journalists are skewing economic reality:

It is a free country, and journalists have every constitutional right to claim that we're moving toward a Part-Time America. They will, however, be in the uncomfortable position of making a falsifiable statement that has been relentlessly falsified by every available statistic. The entire increase in part-time employment happened before Obamacare became a law.

Wherefore the dastardly lib'rul media when we need them?

The Spectacular Myth of Obama's Part-Time America—in 5 Graphs

By Derek Thomson

February 7, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/the-spectacular-myth-of-obamas-part-time-america-in-5-graphs/283674/

Media ignored Iceland's people's revolution

(HT: Valery).  This summary of the little-known peaceful revolution in Iceland is must-read material for anybody fed up with bailed-out Wall Street banks behaving badly, and the rich corporations and wealthy donors that own our media and buy our politicians.

This gives us hope that People Power can prevail, if we are united, determined and won't take "No" for an answer!

Why Did The Media Keep The Recent Peaceful Icelandic Revolution Quiet?

By Joe Martino

January 11, 2013 | Collective Evolution

URL: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/01/11/why-did-media-keep-the-recent-peaceful-icelandic-revolution-quiet/#!

Smith: We can't handle the truth (overseas)

I like the cut of Patrick Smith's jib. This is the second time this year he's caught the scouts' eye, this time on America's Iran policy and the "liberal" U.S. media that supports it:

The adage among properly cynical diplomats used to be that they were sent abroad to lie for their country. During the Cold War, as Washington’s sponsored atrocities grew evident, the thought took a turn: Diplomats were sent abroad to lie to their country.

Consider it a template and apply it to our press folk.

Correspondents used to be sent abroad to keep the country informed (in theory, at least). Now correspondents go forth to send home a simulacrum of truth, a semblance, while keeping their country misinformed.

So why is all this lying necessary? It's our fault. We don't want to know. We don't want to know what's being done in our name, ostensibly in "the interests of peace," or the interests of the world. Wrote Smith succinctly:

We cannot bear to see things as they are because things as they are constitute a refutation of our dearest mythologies, but we must see things as they are if we are to make sense of ourselves in the 21st century.

This is what I was getting at when I said the U.S. needs a moral foreign policy. Our leaders' actions abroad don't support our moral myths at home -- life, liberty, equality, tolerance, etc. -- and what with the Internet and pesky mushrooming terrorists popping up all the time reminding us what we're really up to, it's becoming increasingly hard for us average Americans to ignore the disconnect between over here and over there. Still our politicians and media do their loyal best to iron out the wrinkles in our brains.

Chomsky’s right: The New York Times’ latest big lie

By Patrick L. Smith

November 15, 2013 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chomskys_right_the_new_york_times_latest_big_lie/

Media myths of Obamacare's 'failure'

I've been seeing different figures for the private insurance market, and those "losing" their private insurance because of Obamacare. Yesterday I quoted the figure of 19 million Americans who have individual, private health plans. Here Michael Hiltzik sets us straight [emphasis mine]:

[T]he market for individual policies is about 30 million people. Of those, more than 20 million are uninsured.For virtually all of them, Obamacare is an unalloyed blessing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about 81% of all individual policy-holders will be eligible for income-based insurance subsidies. The uninsured population skews poorer than the total individual market, so an even higher proportion of them are likely to be subsidized. The Affordable Care Act also forbids insurers to base the cost and availability of insurance on pre-existing conditions, which has kept millions of people out of the individual market.

What about individual policy-holders? They number somewhere between 8.5 million and 9.5 million. The vast majority of these customers - two-thirds - spend less than a year in the individual market, according to a 2004 study published in Health Affairs. The study found that most people use individual insurance to bridge between periods of coverage from employers or public programs like Medicaid. If three-quarters of the individual customers will be eligible for insurance subsidies, that leaves 2.1 million to 2.4 million Americans paying the full freight.

The last piece of the puzzle, and the murkiest, is how many of this last group will be paying higher prices for lesser coverage - the emblematic Obamacare "victims." Even if it's all of them, at most they account for less than 1% of the country.

But plainly they're not all paying more for less. We know this because the individual market is where people have been getting ripped off by overpaying for inadequate coverage - "junk" insurance in many cases. It's where premiums are driven up and coverage constrained by pre-existing conditions. Those practices are eradicated by the Affordable Care Act.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones posits that one-third of these customers may be charged more for less, which sounds reasonable, if perhaps a little high. I've heard from dozens of readers who claim to be in that group. But my experience, which I'd guess is matched by most of my journalistic colleagues, is that most of them aren't examining their options very well. They're not calculating their costs beyond their premiums - the free services mandated by Obamacare they're not getting today, for instance. They're not factoring in the rate increases on their existing plans they've been hit with in the past, and would face again, but will be limited under Obamacare.

As I said before, what's fueling a lot of this public disappointment with Obamacare is the 149 million Americans who aren't affected by it all, who don't need the exchanges right now, yet who pass judgment on it based on ignorant or biased media reports. Also, as Hiltzik notes above, a majority of the folks in the individual market only use private insurance as a "bridge;" so they rarely keep their plans very long. And most private health plans are offered with terms of only one year anyway, then prices and conditions always change.

Hiltzik describes the group who is indeed being affected, sometimes for the worst: those whose private insurers chose not to renew their old plans with the same prices and conditions to comply with the ACA grandfathering rules, i.e. those infamous "cancelled" plans:

The bottom line is that we're down to about one-quarter of one-percent of the country being paraded around to set the agenda for everyone else - fewer than 2 million people. Compare that with the number of people who are being denied health insurance in 21 states that have refused to expand Medicaid, as the Affordable Care Act allows them to do largely at federal expense. (Four other states are still thinking it over.)

This group numbers about 5 million, and in every case they're being deprived of health coverage by Republican governors or legislatures, or both. That should tell you that the Republicans who are carrying on about Obamacare's "failure" really don't have your welfare in mind, any more than the characters hawking diet plans on late-night TV really want you to get thin.

Regardless of the political fallout, 2014 midterm elections, or Obama's popularity, Hiltzik's conclusion is spot-on:

The fact is that Obamacare is here to stay. Its customer protections are worth real money to tens of millions of consumers, and it's vastly expanding the insurance market. The politicians claiming that they're only out to "fix" a broken program are playing you for suckers, and not for the first time.

The myths of Obamacare's 'failure'

By Michael Hiltzik

November 19, 2013 | Los Angeles Times

URL: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/nov/18/business/la-fi-mh-obamacares-failure-20131118

Six Things the Media Doesn't Understand About Obamacare

By Jonathan Cohn

November 18, 2013 | New Republic

URL: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115625/obamacare-policy-cancellations-media-mythology-republican-spin

Obamacare Hyperventilation to Continue Forever!

By Jonathan Chait

November 18, 2013 | New York Magazine

URL: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/11/obamacare-hyperventilation-to-continue-forever.html

Pitts: Black crime not a racial statement

Right on time, my man Leonard Pitts nailed it:

No, what is meant is that even when violence is done against you [as a black person], you may automatically be considered the “suspect” and your killer set free. What is meant is that judges are harder on you, doctors less aggressive in treating you, banks more apt to deny you, landlords less likely to show you apartments, hiring officers more likely to round-file your application. What is meant is good luck hailing a cab in midtown Manhattan. What is meant is that other people will airily dismiss the reality of those things, or, as has many times happened to me, admit the reality but advise that you should accept your lot in silence.

Then in the next breath, those same people will ask you to empathize with how racially victimized they are. The sheer, blind gall of it beggars imagination.

We poor, oppressed white people!  Oh Lord, deliver us from this reverse racism!  

Hey, here's an idea: let's all overdose on tanning pills like C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man and then we'll be living on easy street... right? Right?  [Crickets chirping].

This white guy figured out how to beat reverse racism back in 1986.

Killing of Christopher Lane not a racial statement

By Leodard Pitts

August 27, 2013 | Miami Herald

I have nothing to say about the murder of Christopher Lane.

Except this:

The killing of this Australian man, allegedly by a group of boys who were bored and could think of nothing better to do, suggests chilling amorality and a sociopathic estrangement from the sacredness of life. The fact that these teenagers were able to get their hands on a gun with which to shoot the 22-year-old student in the back on Aug. 16 as he was jogging in the small Oklahoma town of Duncan, leaves me embarrassed for my country — and thankful I am not the one who has to explain to his country how such a thing can happen.

None of this will satisfy the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who have written me emails demanding (it is always interesting when people think they can demand a column) that I write about this drive-by shooting as an act of  racial bigotry, an inverse of the Trayvon Martin killing, if you will. There is a numbing repetitiveness to these screeds: Where is Jesse Jackson, they demand. Where is Al Sharpton? Where are you? Or as one subject line puts it: “Why no outrage!”

Actually, I have plenty outrage. Just not the flavor of outrage they would like me to have.

It is, for some people, a foregone conclusion that any time violent crime crosses racial lines, some kind of racial statement is intended. But violent criminals are not sociopolitical theoreticians, and violent crime is not usually a social manifesto. With relatively rare exceptions — we call them hate crimes — the fact is, if a thug shoots you, it is not because you are white, black, gay or Muslim, but because you are there.

So is Lane’s shooting one of those exceptions? A case can be made that it is. One of the young black suspects, after all, tweeted his anti-white bigotry back in April. The hashtag: HATE THEM.

But a case can also be made that it isn’t. Of the remaining two suspects, one is reportedly white and the other, the alleged shooter, apparently has a white mother. The prosecutor told the Duncan Banner newspaper there’s no evidence Lane was targeted because of his race, and in any event, bringing hate-crime charges is a moot point. In Oklahoma, hate crimes are misdemeanors; the boys are already facing felonies.

Again, none of this will satisfy those dozens, if not hundreds, of email writers, not to mention the authors of similar screeds on right-wing websites. What they’re doing is simple. They are using tragedy to play a cynical game of tit-for-tat: “I’ll see your Trayvon Martin and raise you a Christopher Lane.” In other words, they want to use this tragedy to validate their view that white people are victims of black racism.

And if all that was meant when African Americans decry racism is that sometimes white people do violence against you, then the email writers and right-wing pundits might have a point. But it isn’t and they don’t.

No, what is meant is that even when violence is done against you, you may automatically be considered the “suspect” and your killer set free. What is meant is that judges are harder on you, doctors less aggressive in treating you, banks more apt to deny you, landlords less likely to show you apartments, hiring officers more likely to round-file your application. What is meant is good luck hailing a cab in midtown Manhattan. What is meant is that other people will airily dismiss the reality of those things, or, as has many times happened to me, admit the reality but advise that you should accept your lot in silence.

Then in the next breath, those same people will ask you to empathize with how racially victimized they are. The sheer, blind gall of it beggars imagination.

Last week, Christopher Lane was killed for no good reason, apparently by three morally defective boys.

Sorry, but he’s the victim here. White America is not.

Taibbi: All journalists are 'advocacy journalists'

Yes, yes, yes!  Taibbi makes a great point about "objective" journalists, in the context of Glenn Greenwald's scoops on the NSA domestic spying story [emphasis mine]:

... because all reporters are advocates. If we're only talking about people like Glenn Greenwald, who are open about their advocacy, that's a crazy thing to say. People should be skeptical of everything they read. In fact, people should be more skeptical of reporters who claim not to be advocates, because those people are almost always lying, whether they know it or not.

[...] That's what makes this new debate about Greenwald and advocacy journalism so insidious. Journalists of all kinds have long enjoyed certain legal protections, and those protections are essential to a functioning free press. The easiest way around those protections is simply to declare some people "not journalists." Ten years ago, I would have thought the idea is crazy, but now any journalist would be nuts not to worry about it. Who are these people to decide who's a journalist and who isn't? Is there anything more obnoxious than a priesthood?

Journalists are supposed to be fair, not objective.  "Objectivity" is impossible, so let's not set the bar there.  I would much rather have a journalist be honest with me about his convictions (aka biases), then I can filter his reporting as I like, instead of looking for his "hidden" messages.  

This is similar, yet also unrelated, to my personal practice of prefacing any discussion of politics with strangers with, "I'm a big lefty liberal who voted for Obama twice."  Why do I do that?  Because why not?  It's the truth, and I have nothing to hide.  Surprisingly, things go much better after that.  At least my interlocutor knows where I'm coming from.  Then it's all about the merit or weight of my arguments.  Plus people just appreciate honesty.  People are funny that way.  

Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism

By Matt Taibbi

June 27, 2013 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-all-journalism-is-advocacy-journalism-20130627

Taibbi: MSM misses the point of Bradley Manning trial

Matt Taibbi argues that the MSM is missing the point of Bradley Manning's public release of classified documents. The U.S. media has made it all about HIM, and whether he's a hero or a traitor:

[T]his case does not have anything to do with who Bradley Manning is, or even, really, what his motives were. This case is entirely about the "classified" materials Manning had access to, and whether or not they contained widespread evidence of war crimes.

This whole thing, this trial, it all comes down to one simple equation. If you can be punished for making public a crime, then the government doing the punishing is itself criminal.

Manning, by whatever means, stumbled into a massive archive of evidence of state-sponsored murder and torture, and for whatever reason, he released it. The debate we should be having is over whether as a people we approve of the acts he uncovered that were being done in our names.

As Bradley Manning Trial Begins, Press Predictably Misses the Point

By Matt Taibbi

June 6, 2013 | Rolling Stone

URL: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/as-bradley-manning-trial-begins-press-predictably-misses-the-point-20130605#ixzz2W1lAjKC9

Historic TV moment: 'I'm actually an atheist'

Someday, somebody's going to look back at this moment on CNN and draw a "before and after" line in the history of the U.S. and religion.

All I can say is, thank God for this lady.  Oh wait, woops!  I mean, just thank this lady for being honest about the good fortune of her decision, but with tolerance and a sense of humor for those who want to chalk it up to an invisible, all-powerful ghost.  If only religious folks would show the same tolerance when faced with those who don't share their "wrong" beliefs!  





I'll say it again, I can't stand people saying, "Thank God," or "Thank the Lord" when they've survived some tragedy while many others died. That makes no fucking sense. Do they think God wanted them to live and everybody else to die, or what? What makes them so fucking special, do you think?  Or is it all just part of God's mysterious plan that they got lucky? [Spiritual shrug of the shoulders].  

Same deal with those killed in a tragedy.  Believers say, "It was God's will," or "It was their time to go," or "They're in a better place now."  Oh really?  Are you sure?  Has anybody ever managed to interview the dead people flattened by debris in tornadoes, drowned by floods, swept away by tsunamis, or swallowed by earthquakes, where they're actually at (besides a grave) and if indeed it's better than where we're at, alive?  The dead tell no tales, they say.  That's OK, we tell spiritual fairy tales for them.  

Well, I'm glad more & more folks are realizing how self-serving and presumptuous our rationalizing really is.

UPDATE: A friend of mine replied:

You are irritated at religious people who are intolerant, yet you go off in your blog about hating it when people thank God for not being killed when some kind of natural disaster happens.  Practice what you preach a little.

Besides, what people mean when they use phrases like "thank God", or "due to the grace of God", what they doing is acknowledging that it could have just as easily been them that were killed.  If they had the attitude you want to believe they did about being "special", they wouldn't be thankful for anything.

Stop being so intolerant and judgmental.  You like this lady because she is a brave atheist.  Great, be happy for her.  To use it as an opportunity to kind of give a middle finger to those people who lost their homes, but survived and who happen to believe in God, is pretty low class.  Coexist.

To which I replied:

Wolf Blitzer, who is allegedly part of the liberal media axis, pushed this woman whom he didn't know to thank the Lord she was alive.  That has been considered a normal, even appropriate reaction to tragic events. However she didn't cooperate. On live TV. That was historic.   

Imagine if the Blitzer had said, "It wasn't God or fate that saved you, but your own quick thinking!  Right?  Right??"  You and all the conservatives would be up in arms about the lib'rul media and the degradation and godlessness of modern culture.   

Just have a bit of honesty and admit that your side dominates the conversation, and it's a rare person who has the courage to stand up to people like you, for fear of offending your precious half-thought-out beliefs and being ostracized. 

I am precisely criticizing the thoughtlessness in the phrase "thank God!"  It means something!  It applies not only to the person saying it, if you follow it to its logical conclusion.  But no, you choose to leave it at that.  It's brainless.  I can and do coexist with thoughtless people, I have no choice, but I'm not going to ignore their flawed thinking.  If they -- you -- can't take my pointing out the crazy logic in their beliefs, it's not my problem, it's a problem with their logic.  Don't blame the messenger.

IRS 501(c)(4) 'social welfare' my ass!

This is a case where our stupid tax laws make us dumber. If we let them.  This is also an example of the logical fallacy of argument from authority, as in, the law says it is so, therefore it is so.

Does anybody think that 501(c)(4) Tea Party groups (or a much smaller number of liberal groups) are not primarily engaged in politics?

My mom is in a Tea Party group.  I get her alerts and chain e-mails.  When this Cincinnati-IRS "scandal" came out, I asked her, "What do you guys do, trade recipes and sing folks songs?"  Silence. Crickets chirping.  No, it's more like, "Obama hates America and wants to kill and enslave us all!"  That's what they're really about.

If you ask me, every 501(c)(4) organization should be audited, every year!  No party, no politics -- the IRS should look at what they really do and say!

And yet Republicans and the lamestream media would have us believe that we should give these partisan political groups tax-exempt status.  There's winking at something, there's putting on blinders, there's closing your eyes to the truth, and then there's being Helen Keller. 

The media and GOP are asking us to be Helen Keller and ignore what we all really know to be the truth: what these 501(c)(4) groups (Civic Leagues, Social Welfare Organizations, and Local Associations of Employees) are really doing, which is mostly to spew anti-Obama, anti-Democratic bile.  And they are demanding a tax break while they're at it.  

Here's a quick the IRS's definition of a 501(c)(4) organization:

• Social welfare organizations: Civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, and

• Local associations of employees, the membership of which is limited to the employees of designated person(s) in a particular municipality, and the net earnings of which are devoted exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.

Here's how the Washington Post sums it up: "These groups are allowed to to participate in politics, so long as politics do not become their primary focus. What that means in practice is that they must spend less than 50 percent of their money on politics." Neither do 501(c)(4) groups have to disclose their donors.

Gee, well, the evil Koch brothers spend less than 50 percent of their money on politics, so they must be interested only in social welfare.  Right? Wrong. Obviously wrong. We know this.

Indeed, our internal bullshit detectors immediately know what's what.  And yet our tax laws don't.  And yet because our IRS auditors in Cincinnati noted a more than 150% increase in applications for 501(c)(4) status among Tea Party groups year-on-year, and tried to find out why, (albeit clumsily), and yet did not deny a single application, this behavior by the IRS constitutes a "scandal." 

Forgive me if I refuse to participate in, or sanction, this political charade, but the problem is not the IRS, or even these Tea Party groups taking advantage of our stupid laws, the problem is our Supreme Court that made the wrong decision on "Citizens United," and our U.S. Congress.  

Meanwhile, do not ask me to forget what I know and fake outrage at the inconveniences imposed on fake social-welfare organizations.  I'm not a fool.  I hope you're not either.

UPDATE (05.16.2013): Peter Goodman at HuffPo agrees with me that the IRS, by noticing something odd was happening and taking steps to check it out, was doing what auditors are supposed to do: "The IRS Was Dead Right To Scrutinize Tea Party."  Auditors can never check everything and everybody; they have to trouble-spot and exercise judgment.

The bullshit artists of distraction: Exhibit B(enghazi)

It just hit me, the absurdity.  Here Rush Limbaugh is complaining and alleging once again that Democrats and of course the media don't care about the four people who were killed in the attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.  

Now the GOP House is having hearings about Benghazi.  They're out to prove the Obama Admin. perpetrated a big cover up of... something.  I'm still not sure what.  (Usually the best way to trip up any conspiracy theorist is to ask him to describe to you, in less than four sentences, what the conspiracy was about.)

That's also absurd, but that's not what I meant.  I meant that Republicans all over our country are outraged -- OUTRAGED! -- that four career government employees who signed up voluntarily for a dangerous job were killed in a chaotic post-Qaddafi environment, and yet, and yet... these same Republicans don't get angry enough to do anything after 20 six- and seven-year-old kids were gunned down in one of America's "safest" public schools.  (Public schools are always safe until they're not.)  In fact, when we mention stats such as, from 2007 to 2010 America suffered 121,084 firearm fatalities, they immediately go on the defensive, clinging to their guns and religion.  

We have Republicans in the House holding hearings on Benghazi; meanwhile they call for teachers to carry guns; meanwhile, Congress doesn't allow anybody except law enforcement to carry firearms into the Capitol Building.  (Hey, Congressional Republicans may be crazy but they're not stupid.)

How absurdly absurd!  This is exactly what I meant the other day when I talked about the cable-radio media trying to distract and divide us by shouting endlessly about stupid shit.  This is Exhibit B right here, folks.  

There's stuff that matters and stuff that doesn't.  Can't we tell the difference anymore?

It's Simple: What the Left Believes Explains the Regime's Inaction on Benghazi

May 7, 2013 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

URL: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/05/07/it_s_simple_what_the_left_believes_explains_the_regime_s_inaction_on_benghazi

Does Russia still need Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty?

Here's the main argument:

Unlike Voice of America, which exists to promote U.S. culture and values to the world, RFE/RL’s mandate is “surrogate broadcasting” — the provision of objective journalism, diverse commentary and open political debate to societies whose local media, because of censorship or state pressure, cannot provide it.

For decades during the Cold War, the radios did this job superbly, attracting an audience throughout the Soviet Bloc and becoming the go-to medium in times of crisis. Since 1991, however, they have been subjected to serial attempts to revamp their programming, supposedly to accommodate a post-Cold War or post-Internet era. The idea, often peddled by board members and executives drawn from the entertainment industry, is that the audience needs to be broadened, radio downplayed in favor of digital offerings and ratings boosted. Hard-core journalism and political discussions should be leavened with lifestyle features, cultural offerings — or maybe just pop music.

The problem with this, as Radio Liberty is finding in Moscow, is that Russians — like Iranians or Belarusans — don’t need or want another Internet site pushing a mix of fluff and social commentary. They crave what’s missing on state media — serious journalism that offers a clear picture of what is happening in the Kremlin, the economy and the regions, and a forum for uncensored debates by Russians on those issues. Sure, the audience is often a small elite. But when political crisis comes to Moscow, as it did in late 2011 and surely will again, Russians will flock to the service, if they believe it to be credible.

I have met several people in the former Soviet Union who listened to Radio Liberty when it was something dangerous and subversive. I asked one person, "But did you believe it? Without knowing what was happening outside the Soviet Union, didn't you worry it was just propaganda from our side?" Absolutely not, he said, he believed it. 

That's still hard for me to understand. Maybe people trust the news when they hear in it dissenting views, tolerance, and room for uncertainty. They say people have an inborn bullshit detector. 

Anyway, the point is that people in Russia especially don't hear very much other than the state media line. Russian news on the Internet is alive and kicking... but also full of deliberate disinformation, stupid ads, aggressive forum trawlers, and vulgarity. There is a niche for RFE/RL in Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia Today (RT) channel is spreading the Kremlin's worldview in English all over the globe via satellite and the web. And our answer is... CNN? FOX? 

Static at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

By Jackson Diehl

February 4, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/11FeUtC