I could not help but note a criticism of the White House Correspondent’s Dinner by former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin last week. Palin denounced the dinner as “pathetic” and a case of “DC assclowns” were throwing “themselves a #nerdprom” while “the rest of America is out there working our assess off.” This was a remarkable statement from a person who resigned from her governorship early to create a reality show and make millions being Sarah Palin. I am not sure that many Americans would see Palin as one of those “working out asses off.”
Others like Tom Brokaw who recently denounced the dinner as bad for journalism are a bit more credible on this subject. I have gone to various White House Correspondents dinners until I got tired of the event (and frankly most of the Washington social scene). I do find the close friendship and social ties between media elite and the ruling elite to be discomforting. The increasingly low opinion of the White House press corp (which is viewed as often soft and shallow in its questioning of the White House) is part of this problem.
Nevertheless, Palin is legitimately viewed as the personification of the dumbing down of American politics and turning our political discourse into little more than an extension of her reality show. Palin trademarked herself and has made millions feeding the public a slurpee of anti-intellectual and reactionary soundbites. It is particularly ironic given the criticism from McCain staffers that, once selected as their candidate for Vice President, Palin seemed more interested in shopping on the campaign credit card than actually working. The White House Correspondents could not have picked a better foil. Just as people were listening to the criticism of Brokaw, Palin stepped in to return the public discourse to the lowest common denominator.
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Elaine – funny, but Dancin’ Dave was exactly whom I pictured when I wrote “sycophants, lemmings and dictation secretaries”
Mike S.,
“The truth is that they are part of the 1% and as such have no real idea of how the 99% live.”
And that is the reason why we hear so many news media folks like Brokaw saying that cuts have to be made to programs like Social Security and Medicare. They have enough money so cutting benefits from such programs that benefit the great majority of Americans would have no real impact on their lives.
*****
David Gregory Continues to Advocate for Gutting Social Safety Nets
1/21/13
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/david-gregory-continues-advocate-gutting-s
“I am not sure that many Americans would see Palin as one of those “working out asses off.”
You mean like lawyers do. Is the going rate for the average Washington hack from the mega law firm $400 per hour or is it 500+ per hour now.
I’m not sure I would hold Brokaw in such high regard, since he is no more than the corporate mouthpiece for big media. And he seems to use the same stereotypes that are corporate media pervasive. About the Boston bombing: “You can’t get intel on the lone operators,” Brokaw elaborated, noting details about the suspect, adding, “He’s also a Muslim. The fact is, that Islamic rage is still out there.” He then turned toward the security aspect, mentioning the phrase we’ve seen plastered on many a poster: See something, say something. That means, he said, if you do something, someone will see it. “There is no privacy left in our society,” he asserted. As if it’s a given and we should all accept the invasion. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/meet-the-press-guests-question-new-era-of-the-suspicious-package-no-privacy-left-in-our-society/
Lotta – I remember that Bush “humor” all too well. These princes and princesses of DC found the idea that we were led to invade a country illegally under false pretenses HI-larious. I never liked Boy Blunder to start with but that episode proved he was an evil sociopath and the scum in the media that paved his way into the White House by ignoring who he actually was and then covered up for his lies leading into Iraq all deserve a very warm place inside the innermost ring of Dante’s inferno.
Mike S.,
I agree.
Although Palin is a clown, I don’t have much use for Tom Brokaw who always seems to be on some TV program promoting his books.
*****
Where Washington’s Paralysis Really Came From
By Charles P. Pierce
11/2/11
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/tom-brokaw-time-of-our-lives-6538453
Excerpt:
I can tell by my cable teevee programs that Tom Brokaw, the man who discovered World War II, has a new book full of homespun wisdom about the state of The American Dream, that extinct critter now mounted on the wall of the executive dining rooms of Wall Street. I know this because he was on with both Lawrence O’Donnell and Charlie Rose last night to plug his new book, and to deplore mournfully the state of our politics and our national discourse. I caught only his interview with O’Donnell, fearing that putting Brokaw and Rose at the same table might trigger a critical mass of sonorous banality, causing the world to end in an explosion of oatmeal. I did not want to witness that.
I am getting a terrible feeling these days that certain powerful media entities are going to try to make Tom Brokaw into some sort of replacement for the invaluable Bill Moyers as the Wise Old Head of journalism, as though trading one of the few genuinely progressive voices in all media for the Polonius of the Corn Palace wasn’t proof a’plenty in and of itself of the incontrovertible fact that elite political journalism has become a whorehouse with 500 piano players. Nevertheless, I fear the exchange is already well under way. I have scheduled projectile vomiting over this development for some time next March.
O’Donnell — whom I have known for a long time, and whose work I like a great deal — and Brokaw spent a good bit of time deploring the “polarization” that has come to afflict our land. O’Donnell cited Rush Limbaugh as an example, and Brokaw agreed, sort of, although he made a point of calling the plump junkie sex tourist in question “an original.” We then, of course, moved swiftly onto The Other Hand.
“Across the political spectrum, on the left, you’ll find a lot of people who don’t want to hear any ideas if they possibly come from right of center in some fashion,” Brokaw said, declining to name anyone in particular.
Then, as is his wont, Tom moved into a discussion of The Way It Used To Be. He told a lovely little tale of two “bright-eyed” young congressional staffers, one Democrat and one Republican, who, because their bosses wouldn’t even speak to each other, asked him to tell them about “the old days.”
“I think he meant 1996, by the way,” chuckled Tom.
(Ho, ho! Certainly wasn’t any “polarization” then, what with Newt Gingrich electing a congressional majority on the strength of a list of pejorative adjectives, and four investigations into the suicide of poor Vince Foster, and the beginning of a two-year search for the whereabouts of Bill Clinton’s penis. We continue.)
So Tom calls over some old Nixon hack of his acquaintance and they give the two youngsters a tour of the good old days:
Yeah, Nixon was hiring Gordon Liddy, who wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institute and kill Jack Anderson, and who actually did burglarize the Democratic National Committee and the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, and they were also bombing the daylights out of Cambodia, breaking the law and killing Christ alone knows how many Asian peasants who never did anything to anybody, and National Guardsmen were gunning down students on America’s campuses, but life was good because everybody still got together for happy hour. That is Tom Brokaw’s vision of democratic self-government: Babbitry with B-52’s.
(And, not for nothing, but that damned clubby attitude was the underlying social context for the pardon that kept Nixon, that criminal bastard, out of prison where he belonged.)
The roots of the polarization that so bothers Brokaw are simple enough to trace. One of our two political parties determined long ago that it would ally itself fully with the forces of bigotry, corporate greed, crackpot economics, retrograde religiosity, and anti-intellectualism on a grand scale. Because of a regrettable apathy on the part of the general citizenry, this party succeeded wildly through that alliance and it has sought, at one level or another, to bring all of those things into the government of the country. (For their part, the Democrats only allied themselves with the corporate-greed part, and not even fully at that.) They have refused to accept the right of two consecutive Democratic presidents to govern the country, and they have not been shy about proclaiming that very thing. This is somewhat unprecedented. It is also, yes, polarizing. It should be. People should be angry that their expressed desire for how the country should be governed continues to be thwarted by a bunch of county commissioners punching above their weight class.
Elaine et. al.,
The Corporate State has done well for Tom Brokaw and he has done the same for it. I have no respect for him as a reporter. He is a dyed in the wool member of the Washington punditocracy, which is a homogenized group of Beltway fat cats who think they understand this country. The truth is that they are part of the 1% and as such have no real idea of how the 99% live. It is typified by the anchor I saw during the Boston bombing two days out that asked a reporter on the street “What is the mood of the people of Boston”. How in hell could that be known by being on a random street in a large City anywhere? This is the type of pettifoggery done by the wise Beltway types as they project their own feelings onto others and delusionally believe that they understand anything.
Actually the quote the Professor posted above is IMO is correct, it’s only the source that degrades it. I recall the WHCD where Bush (spits) was making all those jokes about not finding WMD’s in Iraq and everybody was just laughing and laughing and laughing as it went through three or four iterations. Real funny inside joke and they were all in on it. The only people left out of the joke was the citizenry, and the dead and the wounded here and in Iraq and the possibly million or more displaced in Iraq. A**clowns don’t even begin to cover it, don’t even begin to.
The theme song from the enlightened reality show by Sarah Assclown:
Bob,
I’m not sure I agree that a system such as that makes the gun non-functional. While in general, complexity breed error, we aren’t discussing either mechanical complexity (a real bear I’ll agree) or even substantive electronic complexity (within the boundaries and context of potential electronic complexity). Also, read the article. The chips in this thing are capable of storing thousands of prints. All that would be required is your authorization for your friend and storing his/her prints. And although the article didn’t specify, I assume it has some kind of “open user” mode that can be enabled so any user can fire the weapon.
As far as legislation goes mandating the technology? Yeah, that’d be a hard sell in Congress, however, an easier sell might be encouraging something like discounts on home owners insurance for using such devices. Mandates are not the only way to encourage technological adoption and such a strategy would both encourage the use of such safety devices but leave the choice to the individual citizen.
Gene,
To paraphrase the horse from Ren and Stimpy…
No sir; I don’t like it.
Just another thing to make the gun non-functional. The more you complicate a mechanism, the more things will go wrong when firing it. This is why the AK-47 is favored in the field over an M-16 by people who shoot those types of guns. The AK is built simpler and is far more resistant to fouling.
Another problem, you can’t arm a trusted friend because of the biometrics.
I do see liberal gun grabbers (and yes, they do exist as I’ve seen recently) demanding this be on all guns and such legislation failing in congress.
*past*
Bob/Darren/Tony/OS,
This is completely OT, but it came across my feeds today and relates to a post topic of discussion: gun safety and better design. FWIW, I thought you guys might find it interesting.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238728/Smart_gun_company_aims_to_begin_production_soon
“has made millions feeding the public a slurpee of anti-intellectual and reactionary soundbites.”
Nice!
Actually kids, “assclown” was coined by the movie “Office Space” and is widely popular in the common vernacular today. That an actual assclown like Palin would attempt to apply it to the sycophants, lemmings and dictation secretaries that make up the national news media and the assorted political flotsam and jetsam that swirls though DC is funny in the same way that one street walker might try to insult another streetwalker by calling her a whore is funny.