JABbering Stooge

So, I had this totally awesome snarky post about the “librul” media’s reaction to the special election last night all ready to go, and I come home to find that Ed had already done it better than I ever could.

Damn you, Ed.

Shorter Howard Kurtz:

Fairfax County, Va.: Hi Howard, This Sunday, I read the editorials in The Post and The New York Times about the surprise Peace Prize. I liked the NYT editorial (which was pro), but like most of us, including Obama, I could certainly have handled an editorial that was anti this choice.

When I read the Washington Post editorial, I felt so sad for what this paper has become. Their whole idea was that the prize should have gone to Neda, the woman who was murdered by the Iranian police. Nobel Peace Prizes can’t be given posthumously. It’s a basic, easy factcheck. There are other fact problems, too (the protests hadn’t happened by the nomination date, Neda may not have been a protester).

So the idea that the committee made a careless or inappropriate choice is refuted by a slapdash editorial “choice” that nobody bothered to check? It just screamed out to me “we laid off almost all the copy editors.” I feel so sad for The Post I grew up with. It’s great to have an opinion. It’s bad to look dumb.

Howard Kurtz: I take your point about no posthumous awards, though by that standard Martin Luther King couldn’t have won after being assassinated (yes, I know he won the prize earlier). My reading of the piece was that Neda was being used more as a symbol (though the rule should have been mentioned). But it’s an editorial. It is by definition opinion. Of course some readers are going to disagree.

• Our opinion pieces are entitled to be unencumbered by those silly things you arrogantly call “facts!”

“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.™

That was the sound of millions of wingnut heads exploding at the news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is good news for the Republicans, sayeth the Village Idiots™.

* Cf.

I do not think it means what you think it means, Andrew Alexander.

Then again, given his column and blog post on the subject, it seems that this

or this

accurately represent the WaHoPo’s new ombudsman’s view of “ideological diversity.”

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:

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.

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.™

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