Headlines You Won't Ever See

WHITE HOUSE LOCKS GATES ON CHILDREN
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Kindergartners arrive 10 minutes late
for scheduled White House tour and
are turned away because of Steelers
meeting with President Obama
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White House seemingly says: What's the
matter with the Lincoln Memorial? Why
do they have to bother us? We're busy
preparing for the Super Bowl Champs.

Actual headline and story here.

Headlines You Won't Ever See

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION UPS UNEMPLOYMENT BY 100,000
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With GM and Chrysler firmly under government
control, Obama administration prioritizes Union
contracts and Green agenda over American jobs
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Insider says, "Closing 2,000 dealerships
in the midst of the worst recession since
1981? This will be tough to pin on Bush"

(Actual Major Media headline and story may be found here.)

All posts in this series may be found here.

Headlines You Won't Ever See

OBAMA REPLACES DEFENSE SECRETARY
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In a surprise move President Obama names
William Gates, former CEO and founder of
Microsoft Corp, as his Secretary of Defense
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The former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates,
appeared surprised by the announcement.
Washington wonders: Was he out of the loop?

Read the actual Major Media headline and story here.

Then imagine what the MM headline and story would have been if President Bush had made such an inexplicable mistake.

Mealy-Mouthed

An interesting term. The American Heritage Dictionary courtesy of Bartleyby.com tells us mealy-mouthed means literally to have meal in one's mouth, and therefore to be "unwilling to state facts or opinions simply and directly." Martin Luther, that most simple and direct of men, coined the phrase, or at least used it extensively.

This phrase keeps popping into my head as I read conservative commentary on the AIG fiasco. Superb commentators like Mona Charen, Rich Lowry, Larry Kudlow, Jonah Goldberg, and many others have written some cracker-jack critiques of the government's handling of the AIG bonuses. But in far too many cases these commentators seem to feel a need to assure the reading public that they, too, are adamantly opposed to the AIG bonuses.

Larry Kudlow: "This is being done in the name of AIG outrage, and nobody wants to defend the insurance company — including me." Rich Lowry: "AIG's top seven executives are forgoing bonuses this year, a nice gesture but an insufficient one, when $165 million is going to employees in the financial-products unit whose recklessness brought AIG ... to its knees." Mona Charen: "Shamelessness is the order of the day. If I were an AIG executive entitled by law to a large "retention" bonus negotiated before the taxpayers had bailed out my company, I hope I would have the decency to refuse it." And even Jonah Goldberg: "From what I can tell, the bonuses do stink."

The fact is, with respect to AIG it is government actions (the original bailout) and reactions (the demagoguery on bonus payments) that have produced the current outrageous state of affairs (cross reference your humble blogger's posts in these columns). The retention bonuses themselves are irrelevant to the issues, especially given the fact that WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER THE BONUSES WERE GOOD OR BAD. That is because executive compensation is a complex affair. Executive compensation is salary plus contingent income (commissions, profit-sharing, bonuses, etc.). What is the right mix? Well, what are the purposes the enterprise is trying to accomplish? Does the company need executives with a stake in the success or failure of the enterprise, or do they need employees content with the certainty of a (lesser) salary regardless of how well the company does? And how much of total profit, or desired profit, should be devoted to compensation of any kind? Jim Manzi makes this point well, although here again, he felt the need to intersperse his reasoning with assurances that he, himself, disliked the idea of executives actually being paid for their work when it is the taxpayer footing the bill. Tell that to the large (and growing) mass of bureaucrats in Washington.

It's as if John Adams, upon hearing about the Boston Tea Party, had pronounced it "magnificent," "bold," "daring," "firm [and] intrepid" but before he concluded that it was an "epoch in history," made sure to say that he was personally aghast at the shameless waste of good tea, the dishonorable attempt to lay the blame on defenseless American Indians, and the shoddy anti-intellectual jingoism of the participants.

Come on, people. Spit the food out of your mouths. Now, more than ever, we need simple, direct clarity in the public debate.

via email.

Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here and here.

Well, well, well, well. In some previous posts I stated that " ... the level of congruence b/t the editorial decisions of the Media and the Dems political strategies since 2000 can only be described as active coordination." I then went on to note that "I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media communicate and coordinate their actions but I submit that if evidence is found about this relationship that it will be a scandal of major proportion. The Major Media are entitled to support any candidate they want, but to use their media power surreptitiously for a candidate while pretending to be a standard news outlet is at a minimum a violation of campaign contribution laws, and at the maximum a betrayal of a fundamental public trust." Apparently, we are now getting some information on how this Democrat Media coordination is done. At the end of January Politico published a story that ABC's George Stephanopoulos has had morning strategy chats with various Democrats for more than 10 years, including the President's current Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. WorldNetDaily has a nice summary of the article and the controversy it has generated. Exhibiting the ability to compose under pressure a talking point coming to a media outlet near you, an ABC spokesman told WorldNetDaily that " ... George speaks to Rahm, but he speaks to plenty of conservatives and Republicans every single day – that's part of his job. The idea that there is some daily conference call that he hops on is just nonsense and not true." But talking points alone just won't do. As I said in my previous posts, it has been clear that active coordination has been going on between the Democrats and the Major Media for at least eight years and probably longer. The only question is how they do it, and the Politico has given us the evidence " ... of at least one major tributary of Washington politics." But only one such tributary. Georgie is only the tip of the iceberg. Where and how are the political consultants posing as reporters at CBS, NBC and MSNBC meeting and coordinating with their clients? And what about the print media; how deeply are they involved in all of this? The net of this scandal could get very large indeed. My previous thoughts were that such active coordination by the Media with a political party could possibly be serious breaches of federal campaign laws (haven't some people gone to jail for such things?). Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center thinks the issue is one of journalistic ethics. I can go either way; I just want the degenerating distortion of the American political culture by partisans masquerading as objective news reporters to stop. via email

Talking Points and the Major Media

This Post continued from here.

It is common wisdom that those who are quick to recognise the sins of others do so because they are themselves subject to those same weaknesses. And this, I think, might explain the curious charge that Fox News is following Republican talking points: because the Democrats have just this kind of a relationship with the Major Media, and cannot conceive that the Republicans aren't doing it too.

And this is born out, I think, by the political battles of the last few years. The Major Media has always been sympathetic to the Democrats political agenda, but the level of congruence b/t the editorial decisions of the Media and the Dems political strategies since 2000 can only be described as active coordination. It is not my function to go into such matters, but I would submit that a thorough review of the massive help the Major Media gave John Kerry's Presidential campaign alone would convince any reasonable person w/ an open mind. I will mention one well known example: The infamous charge by Dan Rather that Bush had received special treatment in his natioal Guard service. It has been a mystery to some as to why a news man of the stature of Dan Rather would involve himself w/ such an obviously fraudulent report. Well if we assume that he (or more likely his staff) were actively coordinating an 'October Surprise' against Bush, then it all seems to make more sense. The damning 'news' report was integral to the Kerry campaign and had to be rushed onto the evening news asap. And both the timing and the substance of this 'news'report could not have been more beneficial for the Kerry campaign if it had been produced by his own campaign staff.

I don't know exactly how the Dems and the Media commonicate and coordinate their actions but I submit that if evidence is found about this relationship that it will be a scandal of major proportion. The Major Media are entitled to support any candidate they want, but to use their media power surreptitiously for a candidate while pretending to be a standard news outlet is at a minimum a violation of campaign contribution laws, and at the maximum a betrayal of a fundamental public trust.

Talking Points and the Major Media

I note a charge against Fox News leveled by Democrats recently: that it routinely regurgitates Republican talking points as news.

Now this is curious on 2 levels:

(1) Republicans don't use talking points. Talking points are memos issued by the Democrats to the troops so that whenever an issue comes up the main Democratic points will be repeated almost verbatim by every Democrat who can get themselves quoted in the Major Media. The idea is that if the public keeps hearing the same thing over and over from many different media sources, then through sheer volume and repetition, it will come to be believed as true (e.g. the phrase 'Bush lied us into war,' a patently and demonstrably false accusation that is believed by large segments of the public simply because the Democrats have repeated the phrase over and over and over and over ... ).

The disarray of the Republican party the last few years by itself shows that the Republicans do not use this talking points tactic. But further, it is just a fact that there is no concerted effort among the GOP to dictate what all Republicans must say on any given issue. At most, there are conservative think tanks, magazines and commentators promulgating position papers, articles and opinions on any given issue, and some of these can be quite influential among Republicans. But there is certainly nothing like a single mandated script that every Republican must follow.

(2) If there is no script for the party faithful to follow, it is beyond silly to suppose that Fox News is taking its marching orders from Republicans.

Now if all this is true, then why would the Democrats make such a charge?

To be continued

via email