JABbering Stooge

For some reason that I can’t quite fathom, this Mallard Fillmore cartoon that appeared shortly after Chris Wallace’s ambush interview of President Clinton really irked me:

And the thing of it is, I can’t decide which pissed me off more - the fact that this bullshit has been thoroughly debunked before, by people far more eloquent than me, or the latest examples of how Bruce Tinsley is an utter lying sack of crap:

• Yes, that ABC docudrama propaganda drek known as Path to 9/11 Bill XXXlintoon’s Almighty Penis Grew To Ginormous Size and Sawed the WTC in Half, Then Jizzed on the Pentagon!!!!!!!1111!!!1111!!111!!11! is Exhibit A in the “What Librul Media” casefile. You know, the conservative porn snuff piece written and promoted by rabid wingnut activists that Scholastic, Inc. briefly promoted with “instructional material” (and conservatives complain about “indoctinating children” with the mere mention of evolution!). Believe me, if you thought Waco: The Rules of Engagement or The Clinton Chronicles were conspiracy nut wackeroonery, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

• Katie Couric’s “Free Speech” segment that’s anything but free. Check this out: in the first two months, the segment was given over to Pillz-E - who proceeded to assail the free speech rights of anyone even slightly critical of Operation Iraqi Liberation, Sean “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” Hannity - who projected his vicious partisan hatemongering onto Democrats, former NYC mayor Rudy Guliani - who meekly spouted the GOP talking points about 9/11, former Bush aide and speechwriter Michael Gerson - who lied that only America was doing anything to stop the violence in Darfur and that t3h 3vil U.N. was trying to stop us, and Brian Rohrbough, the father of a Columbine victim who blamed the most recent spate of school violence on, get this, evolution and abortion.

  Hell, the powers-that-be at CBS waited a whole two weeks before deigning to have even one liberal in the “Free Speech” segment. Meanwhile, Bill Maher was “invited” to participate, yet when he told CBS execs he wanted to talk about religion, he was told “No free speech for you! Come back - one year!” You see, CBS believes that wingnuts are so persecuted that they can have all the airtime they want to club liberals over the head, but when a liberal wants to respond - to call the wingnut out on hiding behind the shield of religion, it’s arbitrarily deemed too hot for TV.

  “Free Speech,” indeed - unless you’re to the left of Atilla the Hun.

  Ironically, in its September 18, 2006 report, Broadcasting & Cable wrote “If it doesn’t [evolve the way executives hope], “freeSpeech” may be dead at CBS News.” Looks like it was never alive there to begin with.

• In the runup to last week’s elections, the local fishwrap endorsed Republicans almost exclusively for statewide offices. Even worse, the endorsements had an “Incumbents, good! Challengers, bad!” tone to them in an election cycle where the general mood of the electorate was “throw the corrupt bums out!”

• Conservatives didn’t need any help from Paula Zahn spreading their talking points back in October, but she did it anyway on two separate occasions. The one that jumps most immediately to mind is when she had three liberal talk radio hosts (Stephanie Miller, Sam Seder and Joe Madison) on to discuss the Republicans’ chances in the recent elections back on October 16. Transcript here (Miller’s name is inexplicably transmuted to “Mitchell” shortly after the segment begins in the transcript). YouTube video here.

  All I can say is…wow. Zahn complained that Stephanie’s quip about Clinton “[getting] away with killing the Lindbergh baby and sinking the Titanic” was loaded, yet she spent the whole segment asking nothing but loaded questions of her guests (check the transcript if you don’t believe me). I seriously expected her to ask Sam when he stopped beating his wife.

  Fortunately for the sane, her guests were well prepared, and called her on her bullshit. Unforutnately, each time they did, she tried to cut them off or change the subject.

  But wait, there’s more! Back on October 10th, in the wake of North Korea’s partially-flubbed nuclear test, there was a report that Japanese officials suspected a second nuke test based on seismographic readings. It later turned out to be a 6.0 earthquake in northern Japan. All throughout the show, Zahn kept insisting that the reports were “very confusing,” that they were “trying to make sense” of the report and, most damning, that North Korea “may have” detnonated a second nuke. She continued to make these assertions in spite of mounting evidence - from South Korean and Japanese officials and the U.S. Freakin’ Geological Freakin’ Survey, no less - that there was no second test.

  And guess who benefits from this fearmongering even in the face of what all but the most ideologically blinkered will agree is unimpeachable evidence that K-to-the-J-to-the-I-L didn’t conduct a second test? That’s right.

  Paula, it’s time you handed in your journalism credentials - such as they were - and pick up your GOP Shill™-brand kneepads.

• And finally, there’s been the media reaction to the elections last Tuesday and the alleged in-fighting over House leadership positions. Frankly, I don’t think I can add much to it beyond what has already been said in other places.

Do I need to go on? Is it clear yet that the media is carrying the water for the GOP, not the other way around? Or do you need me to mention CNN scrubbing Bill Maher’s outing of former RNC-chair Ken Mehlman from the record?

Then again, I guess the veritable parade of contradictory evidence to Tinsley’s masturbatory fantasy is hardly surprising, given Mark Halperin’s blubbering cry for mercy to prominent right-wingers who aren’t satisfied with his verbal fellatio.

Oh, and a tip to James Carville - you might want to check out this cartoon before you go delivering hand-wrapped gifts to conservatives.