JABbering Stooge

Gale Norton being investigated for corruption while she was serving as The Most Holy George W. Christ The Infallible’s Secretary of the Interior? *Yawn*

A few ACORN employees got played by conservative ideologues with an agenda (possibly illegally)? MOST IMPORTANT NEWS STORY IN THE HISTORY OF JOURNALISM EVAR!

Modern “Journalism” In America:

The perils of dashing off observations on the microblogging site were brought into sharp relief Monday when several overeager ABC News employees — including “Nightline” anchor Terry Moran — rushed to tweet that President Obama had called Kanye West a “jackass” for interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards on Monday.

The problem: Obama made the comment during off-the-record chatter as he was being miked for an interview with CNBC anchor John Harwood.

How exactly did ABC News get wind of it? The broadcast network’s Washington bureau shares a network fiber line with CNBC, and so ABC staffers in D.C. watching CNBC’s feed heard the exchange. What they didn’t hear, apparently, was the explicit agreement CNBC made with the White House that Obama’s chitchat was off the record.

The president weighing in on the biggest pop culture story of the day was too delicious to ignore. Soon, e-mails about Obama’s comment began circulating internally at ABC. Before news executives had determined whether the material was publishable, Moran and a handful of other ABC News staffers posted the remark on Twitter.

“Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at the VMAs when Taylor swift won,” Moran tweeted. [The offending tweet has since been deleted, but it lives forever on the Intertubes. — Ed.] “Now THAT’S presidential.”

So basically, ABC was “accidentally” listening in on an off-the-record interview with John Harwood of CNBC and, thinking they had just heard some juicy dirt to dump on the president with, rushed off to do the journalistic equivalent of tattling on him to the principal. Memo to Terry Moran — here’s what the dictionary has to say about the word “jackass:”

jackass — n.

1. A male ass or donkey.

2. A foolish or stupid person; a blockhead.

Example: Terry Moran was being a complete jackass in his tweet about President Obama’s comments on Kanye West.

Note that the definition is not labeled as “vulgar slang” the way words like “shit” or “fuck” are. Not that that matters to the jackasses at ABC.

If you want to know just how desperate the “librul” media is to appease wingnuts who won’t be appeased by any level of obeisance, be sure to check out Glenn Greenwald’s excellent post on Drudgico’s moronic “Dems have crazies that they embrace, too!” diatribe.

However, if you’re the type who frequently finds Greenwald’s posts to be of the Teal Deer™ variety, there’s always this recent This Modern World strip, which pretty much makes the same point more succinctly:

I’ve made comments to this effect a couple of times over at JJ’s place, but between this video and all the unhinged bullshit coming from the right lately, I’m just about ready to look for employment north of the 49th parallel.

David “Dean of the Beltway Press Corpse Corps” Broder, gleefully shoving the Overton Window* rightward on torture:

In times like these, the understandable desire to enforce individual accountability must be weighed against the consequences. This country is facing so many huge challenges at home and abroad that the president cannot afford to be drawn into what would undoubtedly be a major, bitter partisan battle over prosecution of Bush-era officials. The cost to the country would simply be too great.

When President Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974, I wrote one of the few columns endorsing his decision, which was made on the basis that it was more important for America to focus on the task of changing the way it would be governed and addressing the current problems. It took a full generation for the decision to be recognized by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and others as the act of courage that it had been.

I hope we can avoid another such lapse. The wheels are turning, but they can still be halted before irreparable damage is done.

Mind you, this is the same David Broder who called for Bill Clinton to resign during Monicagate. So now we have a glimpse of Broder’s moral calculus (such as it is): Oval Office hummers are worse crimes than flagrant human rights abuses. I wish I were making this up.

The cake is a lie!

* Cf.

Eric Boehlert has a must-read article on the “librul” media’s treatment of the DFH’s who wisely foresaw the disaster awaiting us in Iraq vs. its treatment of the Teabaggers over at Media Matters.

Check it out.

Ah, those Teabaggers. When they’re not infecting everyone around them with Stupid Cooties™, they’re taking up the role of Mafia enforcers:

ALEXANDRA FENWICK, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW: You mentioned the crowd taking control of the event. There have been memos circulated online from organizers on both the right and the left about trying to get into the news media lens and approaching reporters proactively. Were people media savvy at this event? Were they coming up to you?

DAMON WINTER, NEW YORK TIMES: I get the feeling that people at this point, this far into it, realize there’s a lot more media scrutiny at these events, and I think they’re much more aware that there are a lot of eyes on them and what was happening there. So I get the feeling that people were a little more careful. I don’t think we were necessarily warmly greeted as journalists covering the event. Especially a few times, once people found out I was working for The New York Times, I would get really kind of nasty remarks and these kind of things that were making assumptions that I myself or we as a newspaper had preconceived notions about them. Another photographer working for the times that day, a freelance photographer, Jessica Kourkounis, got pushed by an audience member once they realized she was working for The New York Times.

So tell me, “librul” media, how’s all that pandering to these far-right loons working out for you?

(h/t, TS at InstaPutz)

How Democrats And Republicans Exploit Emotion

• Silly libruls — thinking that having all the facts means that you meaningfully contributed to the debate, much less won it!

“Shorter” concept created by Daniel Davies, perfected by Elton Beard and given a beneficial mutation by the fine folks at Sadly, No!
I am aware of all Internet tradtions.™

If you want to get an insight into the origins of the teabaggers and their Town Hall Putsches, you can’t do much better than this column by Stephen Pizzo, who covered the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas (scene of Pat Buchanan’s infamous “Culture War” speech). I have reproduced the full text below the fold.**

New Yorker columnist Kelefa Sanneh, for legitimizing noted Birther Michael Savage.