On The Turning Away

The “Martin Eisenstadt” show writes itself. David Shuster/MSNBC and MSM in general are the gift that keeps on giving. Gawker has the blow-by-blow account.

What does it say about the “shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere”? It’s “not that some in the media don’t check stuff on the web. It’s that they’re prepared to believe - and write - anything about Sarah Palin.”

Crossposted.

Well, if you paid any attention to the increasingly heated political rhetoric from both parties, you would’ve heard ad infinitum, and justifiably impressed by, Sen. Obama’s “tax cut” for “95% of Americans”. Republicans, predictably, take issues with how the Obama camp define “middle class”, be it income below 65k or 43k.

It might be futile handwringing figuring out whether you fall into the lucky 95% bracket, The Economist provides a handy fact check.

[A]ccording to [Obama’s] written plans, he really means 95% of families with children, not 95% of Americans. But his real sleight-of-hand is to count handouts administered through the tax code as “tax cuts”. You might think that a tax cut means keeping more of what you earn. The way Mr Obama uses the phrase, however, it can also mean being given a chunk of money that someone else has earned. That is how he is able to offer “tax cuts” to “95% of Americans” when about a third of American households already pay no federal income tax.

Crossposted.

We chanced upon this interesting ‘discourse’ and thought it illustrates the “sanctimonious fatigue” from the anti-hicks with what they call “reverse snobbery”, aka culture war.

Self-styled liberal blogger: “Some of us, in fact, don’t give a rat’s ass where she [Ed: Gov. Palin] comes from.”

Commenter: “Really? Did you support Obama over Clinton and Edwards because you liked where Obama wants to take us all next. or because you liked where he comes from?”

Not over the markets, mind you. But we love nothing more than the hysteria from the uppity.

Crossposted.

If anything, the glee of a sewing circle over the paroxysms underway in the financial market presents a splendid bit of irony in an otherwise tumultuous week.

On the heels of de facto nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, venerable Lehman Brothers fell on its sword, dying an ignominious death, followed by an eleventh-hour rescue of AIG that “brings on bloodbath”, as investors fear more shoes may drop.

Continued at the other blog.

We were alerted to the fact that someone hacked this blog and removed the June 10 post, “Deranged Hillary-Hatred”. Once it’s published, it’s in Google’s hands, as they say. We repost it here.

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Perhaps the specter of credit crunch has got into the heads of political pundits in the media, otherwise how can you explain the popularity of CDS, aka Clinton Derangement Syndrome? The US editor of UK’s New Statesman, Andrew Stephen, eviscerates media’s hideous Hillary coverage in the Dems primaries.

Hillary Clinton (along with her husband) is being universally depicted as a loathsome racist and negative campaigner, not so much because of anything she has said or done, but because the overwhelmingly pro-Obama media - consciously or unconsciously - are following the agenda of Senator Barack Obama and his chief strategist, David Axelrod, to tear to pieces the first serious female US presidential candidate in history.

Not to mention maniacal Obama supporters who seem nonchalant at best, happy at worst, with the way Hillary was treated. Her any action, no matter how innocuous, was “proof of evil intent”. Paul Krugman, NYT columnist, believes that most of the “venom” in the campaign “is coming from supporters of Obama”.
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Now that their preferred candidate is the de facto nominee, what do progressives, in particular men who spewed vitriol at Hillary and her supporters, feel amid the postmortem frenzy? Perhaps better late than never - they have come to realize that they cannot “brush aside” sexism after all.

It’s more a sop than mea culpa. Were they so swept off their feet by the maelstrom that they lost their head? “[T]he discourse we all engage in sometimes explicitly, and more often tacitly, reinforces” sexism and misogyny. But a Pyrrhic victory is a victory nonetheless - only it sets back progressive movement for decades.
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