The 4th Estate Thread Has Surrendered

[Jaymann]

There are people who watch TV on Sunday mornings. Huh. Who knew?

Show business kids making movies
Of themselves you know they
Don't give a fuck about anybody else

[stessier]

There are people who watch TV on Sunday mornings. Huh. Who knew?

My wife watches CBS Sunday Morning - or The Old Man Show as the rest of us refer to it.

[malchior]

Woke Me When It’s Over

In the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny and the statute of limitations never expires, even when it comes to hamantaschen.

FN - Hamantaschen are traditional fruit filled cookies served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. It’s the closest thing Jews have to Halloween. They are triangular cookies (they take the shape of the hat worn by the Purim villain, Haman) that are too often dried out and pretty bad.

Brett Stephens actually nails it here in taking on Woke culture. Easy target, but still . . .

He hits the mark. Still, I'd ask him to look in the mirror and think about the time he went mental and tried to get someone fired for calling him a bedbug.

[hepcat]

Woke Me When It’s Over

In the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny and the statute of limitations never expires, even when it comes to hamantaschen.

FN - Hamantaschen are traditional fruit filled cookies served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. It’s the closest thing Jews have to Halloween. They are triangular cookies (they take the shape of the hat worn by the Purim villain, Haman) that are too often dried out and pretty bad.

Brett Stephens actually nails it here in taking on Woke culture. Easy target, but still . . .

He hits the mark. Still, I'd ask him to look in the mirror and think about the time he went mental and tried to get someone fired for calling him a bedbug.

[Kurth]

Woke Me When It’s Over

In the humorless world of Woke, the satire is never funny and the statute of limitations never expires, even when it comes to hamantaschen.

FN - Hamantaschen are traditional fruit filled cookies served during the Jewish holiday of Purim. It’s the closest thing Jews have to Halloween. They are triangular cookies (they take the shape of the hat worn by the Purim villain, Haman) that are too often dried out and pretty bad.

Brett Stephens actually nails it here in taking on Woke culture. Easy target, but still . . .

He hits the mark. Still, I'd ask him to look in the mirror and think about the time he went mental and tried to get someone fired for calling him a bedbug.

I remember that! Good point. Solid message, imperfect messenger.

[Isgrimnur]

For the western half of the country, NFL Sunday starts before noon.

[Defiant]

[malchior]

Ugly as hell

[Carpet_pissr]

Off her meds again I see.

She sounds desperate, honestly, like she’s on the verge of totally losing it. Like her husky/smoky voice is about to go up an octave at any minute.

Now imagine millions of viewers at home “quarantining” on the internet/TV just soaking in hours of her frothed-up, crazy garbage.

[El Guapo]

Was Rivera pushing back on her?

[malchior]

Was Rivera pushing back on her?

I assume - he sounded really upset trying to interject. The clip was really cut to show what she was saying though and that was flat out statements of the sort that a Nazi party member could have said in the 30s. It's way out there.

[El Guapo]

Was Rivera pushing back on her?

I assume - he sounded really upset trying to interject. The clip was really cut to show what she was saying though and that was flat out statements of the sort that a Nazi party member could have said in the 30s. It's way out there.

Just pondering Rivera as the voice of reason. But yeah, I mean Trump established an office of immigrant crime - hard to get more fascist than that.

[Jaymann]

Was Rivera pushing back on her?

Yeah, the guy who wanted to name the Covid vaccine after Florida Man.

[Pyperkub]

Fox News is unclear on the concept of a "News" Organization:

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday it is the job of Fox News to serve as the opposition to the Biden administration

While I can't say for certain whether MSNBC has said that its job was to be the "opposition" to Trump, though it can appear that way, if one is so inclined, I think this is a huge factor in the death of the 4th estate.

[Carpet_pissr]

Was Rivera pushing back on her?

Yeah, the guy who wanted to name the Covid vaccine after Florida Man.

A Trump vaccine?!? SIGN. ME. UP. We need 330 million doses, STAT.

[malchior]

NY Times - declares bipartisanship is dead. Welcome to 2012 bucko. This piece is ... something special in its ability to lay out facts in a way that totally misleads about what is happening in DC. Also, it's like just 2 months ago they didn't vote to overturn an election or have their President incite an insurrection. Down the NY Times VSP memory hole apparently.

Mr. Biden, a six-term veteran of the Senate, had trumpeted his deep Capitol Hill experience as one of his top selling points, telling voters that he was the singular man able to unite the fractious Congress and even come to terms with his old bargaining partner, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader.

But congressional Democrats, highly familiar with Mr. McConnell’s tactics, held no such illusions. Now, they worry that voters would punish them more harshly in the 2022 midterm elections for failing to take advantage of their power to enact sweeping policy changes than for failing to work with Republicans and strike bipartisan deals.

Congressional Democrats want far more than Republicans are willing to accept. Anticipating the Republican recalcitrance to come, Democrats are increasingly coalescing around the idea of weakening or destroying the filibuster to deny Republicans their best weapon for thwarting the Democratic agenda. Democrats believe their control of the House, Senate and White House entitles them to push for all they can get, not settle for less out of a sense of obligation to an outdated concept of bipartisanship that does not reflect the reality of today’s polarized politics.

“Looking at the behavior of the Republican Party here in Washington, it’s fair to conclude that it is going to be very difficult, particularly the way leadership has positioned itself, to get meaningful cooperation from that side of the aisle on things that matter,” said Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland.

But the internal Democratic disagreement that stalled passage of the stimulus bill for hours late into Friday night illustrated both the precariousness of the thinnest possible Democratic majority and the hurdles to eliminating the filibuster, a step that can happen only if moderates now deeply opposed agree to do so.

It also showed that, even if the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster were wiped away, there would be no guarantee that Democrats could push their priorities through the 50-50 Senate, since one breakaway member can bring down an entire bill.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning any pretext of bipartisanship to advance a far-left agenda and jam through a liberal wish list disguised as a coronavirus rescue bill, stuffed with hundreds of billions of extraneous dollars as the pandemic is beginning to ebb. They noted that when they were in charge of the Senate and President Donald J. Trump was in office, they were able to deliver a series of costly coronavirus relief bills negotiated between the two parties.

“It is really unfortunate that at a time when a president who came into office suggesting that he wanted to work with Republicans and create solutions in a bipartisan way and try to bring the country together and unify, the first the thing out of the gate is a piece of legislation that simply is done with one-party rule,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican.

At their private lunch recently, Republican senators were handed a card emblazoned with a quotation from Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, calling the coronavirus bill the “most progressive domestic legislation in a generation,” a phrase that party strategists quickly began featuring in a video taking aim at the stimulus measure.

[Daehawk]

GOP - We are ignoring you for 4 years.
GOP 5 years later - Why are you ignoring us? You're horrible people.

[Kurth]

NY Times - declares bipartisanship is dead. Welcome to 2012 bucko. This piece is ... something special in its ability to lay out facts in a way that totally misleads about what is happening in DC. Also, it's like just 2 months ago they didn't vote to overturn an election or have their President incite an insurrection. Down the NY Times VSP memory hole apparently.

I don’t follow you on this one. I read the excerpt and the whole article. I didn’t see either as misleading. My take on the article was that the Dems are stuck between a rock and a hard place: While they see the benefits and the ideal of bipartisanship, they are compelled to follow through with an agenda that has wide popular support, and the McConnell-led GOP has been clear that they are taking up their familiar blocking position.

Given the facts in DC right now, the article suggested to me that weakening the filibuster may be the only path if Dems want to push their agenda forward. This party line vote on the stimulus bill is exhibit 1 in support of that notion.

[malchior]

NY Times - declares bipartisanship is dead. Welcome to 2012 bucko. This piece is ... something special in its ability to lay out facts in a way that totally misleads about what is happening in DC. Also, it's like just 2 months ago they didn't vote to overturn an election or have their President incite an insurrection. Down the NY Times VSP memory hole apparently.

I don’t follow you on this one. I read the excerpt and the whole article. I didn’t see either as misleading. My take on the article was that the Dems are stuck between a rock and a hard place: While they see the benefits and the ideal of bipartisanship, they are compelled to follow through with an agenda that has wide popular support, and the McConnell-led GOP has been clear that they are taking up their familiar blocking position.

That is how I see it too but that isn't how the article reads to me. In other words, you can get there but early on you have to fill in the gaps via outside knowledge.

The mentions of Republican all-out obstructionism is scant - an example is the first quote below. That line is dropped in towards the beginning with no other context. Other further examples are all very passive - like the second quote below - it reads like was something happening versus it being a key component of the Republican strategy for grinding government business to a halt. He doesn't really point out the Republican strategy until far into the piece.

But congressional Democrats, highly familiar with Mr. McConnell’s tactics, held no such illusions.

“Looking at the behavior of the Republican Party here in Washington, it’s fair to conclude that it is going to be very difficult, particularly the way leadership has positioned itself, to get meaningful cooperation from that side of the aisle on things that matter,” said Representative John Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland.

Meanwhile the deliberations on the Democratic side are active and detailed. That is why I find it misleading. If you don't know what *we know* you can come to the conclusion that Biden and the Democrats are failing at what they set out to do instead of being opposed actively. The context around it is circumspect and weakly described in my opinion. He bothered to link out several Biden/Democratic party claims of striving for unity. Why not link out to examples of the GOP's or McConnell's obstructionism? It also ignores the elephant in the room on bipartisanship which is the insurrection. It's subtle but the construction and what is left out makes this out of balance IMO and a disservice.

[Smoove_B]

The NYT credits Trump for Biden's vaccine victory:

Leaning hard into the Both Sides narrative, the Times generously headlined its piece, "Biden Got the Vaccine Rollout Humming, With Trump’s Help."

What the article lacked however, was any compelling evidence that Trump deserves vaccine credit, after having spent all of 2020 completely indifferent to the deadly pandemic, and spreading nonstop public health lies. Fully 60 percent of Americans over the age of 60 have received their first Covid vaccine today, compared to just eight percent under Trump. Biden should rightly take bows for that remarkable trend, after the previous administration showcased its vaccine incompetence.

I mean really.

[Smoove_B]

Also today

President Joe Biden has spent three of the eight weekends since his inauguration in his home state of Delaware. The White House defends those visits at a time when the administration is urging the public to avoid unnecessary travel.

Are they serious with this? For real?

[malchior]

The NYT credits Trump for Biden's vaccine victory:

Leaning hard into the Both Sides narrative, the Times generously headlined its piece, "Biden Got the Vaccine Rollout Humming, With Trump’s Help."

What the article lacked however, was any compelling evidence that Trump deserves vaccine credit, after having spent all of 2020 completely indifferent to the deadly pandemic, and spreading nonstop public health lies. Fully 60 percent of Americans over the age of 60 have received their first Covid vaccine today, compared to just eight percent under Trump. Biden should rightly take bows for that remarkable trend, after the previous administration showcased its vaccine incompetence.

I mean really.

Heh. I was just preparing a post about this. There is something wrong at the NY Times. In a post above I said that their voicing is subtle. And here is another example of it. They are now talking out both sides of their mouth and not just in a bothsides way. Unless you bring along context you can read different things into their reports and in completely differently ways at different times. In the referenced NY Times article we have this line,

The Biden administration has taken two major steps that helped hasten vaccine production in the near term. Even before Mr. Biden was inaugurated, his aides determined that by invoking the Korean War-era Defense Production Act, the federal government could help Pfizer obtain the heavy machinery it needed to expand its plant in Kalamazoo, Mich. The Trump administration had repeatedly invoked that law, but its order for Pfizer only covered single-use supplies like plastic liners, not durable factory equipment.

"Repeatedly invoked that law" which strictly means more than once but here is an article in the same paper under this headline a *month ago*, "Despite Claims, Trump Rarely Uses Wartime Law in Battle Against Covid". What's the deal here? It isn't fake news but it sure as hell isn't honest. The above quote definitely doesn't read to me like that piece does.

[Smoove_B]

Do we need to send a cult-interventionist to the NYT?

At this point in office, Trump had given five news conferences. Obama had given two, George W. Bush three and Clinton five. Biden so far has given zero.

[malchior]

The media is in a major attention deficit moment. They aren't all agents of knowledge. They somewhat need outrage. They need division. Unsurprisingly the composition of the piece shows that this is possibly intentional. They drop in some crucial context about 2/3 of the way through the piece - they call it an asterisk.

Those President's as well as Trump took questions as part of a 'Working Visit' by a foreign leader. This President hasn't had a foreign visit yet...for obvious reasons. The piece talks about this towards the end. So mental exercise here, re-arrange the context about the lack of foreign visits after the first couple of paragraphs and the tone of the piece completely changes.

Then the quotes they dropped in from Kayleigh McEnany (for real btw) are read a different way. Anyway, media criticism is definitely my bag and this may seem tetchy but in the end this stuff is dumb and lightly corrosive but it could be a lot worse.

The bigger problem IMO is most the noise about this comes from the right-wing disinformation sphere where it is all conspiracy theory shit about how they want to hide how addled he is. Which is why I'm kinda bent about the McEnany quote. And as usual, the big players are all too happy to be their megaphone even if they pull the punch. They just likely sourced quotes until they found one that softened it to be about avoiding gaffes.

[noxiousdog]

Isn't it a fair criticism though, especially considering the pandemic?

Biden should be compared to real presidents, not to Trump.

[YellowKing]

Biden's playing the same game that got him elected. Stay out of the spotlight, quietly get things done behind the scenes. He knows that staying in the spotlight will only rile up half the country, so it's best to lay low and let his policies do the talking. I have zero problem with that strategy.

If the media wants to ding him for it, I have no problem with that either. I am absolutely thrilled that the biggest scandal of the current President is how many news conferences he gave, and not that he is giving confidential info to Russians/paying off hookers/putting kids in cages/praising racists/<insert some other batshit thing Trump did every week>

[malchior]

Isn't it a fair criticism though, especially considering the pandemic?

Biden should be compared to real presidents, not to Trump.

I don't think so. Most of the other President's also had their first press conferences with foreign leaders. That is delayed *because of the pandemic*. He addressed his plan with the pandemic directly to the public. Beyond that if you are going to be a critic you have to present a balanced story. The story isn't a story unless you can make it seem abnormal. It's mostly abnormal because of the pandemic. That's the point of criticizing this type of piece. It's mostly made up bluster.

Edit: What's more interesting to me is that Psaki does regular press briefings. Mostly non-combatively especially comparted to her predecessors. They give the WH Press Corp access to ask him questions. More than Trump did to be sure. They are essentially complaining that it isn't in the *exact* format they like.

And I'll underline my point above. This issue was born in the right-wing infosphere. This wasn't something the press was complaining about. They picked it up from the people who just encouraged an insurrection against the United States, sold the big lie, and have dumped mountains of disinformation on the American people. It is an indicator that the press still is locked into destructive patterns against the public good. They think balance is picking up on the voices from the right who are generally public poison and taking their issue to the people. That is not a good sign.

[El Guapo]

Will this thread ever become fully official?

[coopasonic]

Will this thread ever become fully official?

Probably, but we really hope not.

[noxiousdog]

I don't think so. Most of the other President's also had their first press conferences with foreign leaders. That is delayed *because of the pandemic*. He addressed his plan with the pandemic directly to the public. Beyond that if you are going to be a critic you have to present a balanced story. The story isn't a story unless you can make it seem abnormal. It's mostly abnormal because of the pandemic. That's the point of criticizing this type of piece. It's mostly made up bluster.

I want to make sure I'm following. You are saying that the president should only host press conferences when he's visiting with a foreign leader or other major situation and that a pandemic that makes that time schedule elongated doesn't count?

[El Guapo]

I don't think so. Most of the other President's also had their first press conferences with foreign leaders. That is delayed *because of the pandemic*. He addressed his plan with the pandemic directly to the public. Beyond that if you are going to be a critic you have to present a balanced story. The story isn't a story unless you can make it seem abnormal. It's mostly abnormal because of the pandemic. That's the point of criticizing this type of piece. It's mostly made up bluster.

I want to make sure I'm following. You are saying that the president should only host press conferences when he's visiting with a foreign leader or other major situation and that a pandemic that makes that time schedule elongated doesn't count?

No, the point is that the NYT is saying that Biden has had unusually few press conferences at this point in his presidency. Malchior is saying that the reason for that is that almost all presidential press conferences at this point in other presidential terms have been one with foreign leaders. Those foreign leader visits haven't been happening due to the pandemic. So that when you factor in that context, it's not meaningful that Biden has had fewer press conferences than other presidents.

Honestly I don't think this really matters all that much either way. As NYT bothsides-isms go, they've done a lot worse than this, and I don't think anyone will remember this two weeks from now.

[malchior]

Honestly I don't think this really matters all that much either way. As NYT bothsides-isms go, they've done a lot worse than this, and I don't think anyone will remember this two weeks from now.

I agree - that's why I was talking big picture on this and never really got too focused on the details here because this a page filler. What was more interesting is the indication that these guys are so desperate to be 'even-handed' that they are trolling right-wing talking points and building paper thin articles around them. And that's the problem, they are they boosting the signal on nonsense. Just because the other side is in disarray or treasonous doesn't mean they are the 'balance'. The story should be that Biden doesn't face any real sane opposition.

[malchior]

And this is who they cater to in their quest for "balance". Amoral jackasses who intentionally misrepresent integrity for lying. The right is going crazy about this correction. The story got corrected because the original audio was found and it was originally based on sourced quotes. The Post was provided inaccurate quotes. FWIW these jackasses also don't recognize that the actual audio confirms he called which was the problem to begin with.

[malchior]

Opinion: Biden excels at his first news conference. The media embarrass themselves.

The media did not distinguish themselves. By asking about immigration multiple times and echoing the false narrative that Biden had created a “surge," they showed they were more interested in sound bites than actual news. Their failure to ask about the pandemic, the recession, anti-Asian violence, climate change or even infrastructure (Biden had to bring it up himself) was nothing short of irresponsible. They pleaded for a news conference and then showed themselves to be unserious. They never laid a glove on Biden; they did, however, make the case for why these events are an utter waste of the president’s time.

[malchior]

Seems legit.

[Smoove_B]

The news media doesn't know what to do anymore now that Trump isn't President, eh?

Reporter: VP Harris was seen at a bakery in Chicago, is she still working on immigration?

Psaki: ‘The VP was visiting Chicago to talk about COVID … while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack. I think she’s allowed to do that.’

[Alefroth]

Do I even need to look up who asked the question?

[Kraken]

I hope Psaki likes her job well enough to stick with it for the long haul, because she's really good at it.

[malchior]

Does the only way to "work on immigration" involve sitting at the border and negotiating with each person trying to cross?

[Alefroth]

She got German chocolate cake. Maybe she WAS working on immigration.