Despite the big dust-up over “moderate” or “mainstream” reporters spewing RNC talking points, Chris Matthews spewed them anyway. Maybe he wasn’t aware that people were getting sick and tired of it. Maybe he just didn’t care.

Whatever the reason, his decision led to the creation of a website called “Open Letter to Chris Matthews” that wants accountability from the Media in general and from Chris Matthews in particular. It is hard to imagine that by the time he recorded today’s show, in this day and age, that he was oblivious to this online community.

So it came as a surprise to me that when I turned on TV a few minutes before five on a Friday afternoon, there he was, not spewing crap himself but letting his guest, Joe Scarborough, do it for him.

What was the topic? The James Frey Incident. If you’ve been living under a rock, James wrote a supposedly autobiographical book about his drug addiction and recovery. Almost the entire thing was made up. Oprah was embarrassed after recommending it, which led to her verbally flogging him on her show Thursday. (Note: that links to the fifth of a five-part series of video clips of Oprah tsk-tsking Frey.)

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, nothing.

What does it have to do with moronic talking head pundits? One would be excused for not seeing the obvious link.

According to Joe Scarborough, James Frey isn’t a product of his making. No. James is simply a product of a culture of dishonesty created during the 90s by, you guessed it, Bill Clinton. You see, James’ lies are all because Clinton got a blowjob almost a decade ago. Apparently he wasn’t able to cope with the President lying about the blowjob and his only recourse was to become a pathological liar, write a book and sell it to millions.

Repeat this to yourself: the Republican party is responsible for all that is good and right in the world. Bill Clinton is responsible for all that is bad and wrong in the world (including things that happened before he was born).

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Title says it all. If there are any hiccups, that’s the cause.

Update: I’ve switched to a theme designed by Denis Somar. It doesn’t validate. It’s somewhat antithetical to my beliefs about web design. It’s only temporary.

The “design” that had been up for the last six months was just something I threw together to see what was involved in creating a Wordpress theme. Just as soon as I have time, I’m going to create something nicer. In the meantime, this design suited me aesthetically.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Peter Daou has an elegant explanation of how the right-wing media is slandering the political left (although he as much a victim as anybody else — he can’t quite bring himself to call them right-wing). This article is required reading for anyone interested in the truth.

In response to the article, Peter received a lot of comments asking “what needs to happen?” I’d like to offer a few suggestions here:

First, everybody should boycott Fox News. That includes Democratic politicians. They should openly boycott the channel for being a Republican party mouthpiece. That would go a long way towards opening up the discussion about the responsibility the media has.

Second, our leadership needs to aggressively respond to the press. Not to the talking points or the Republican narrative–those can be addressed as part of the response to the press. The responses will vary, but they should have a common narrative of their own that questions why the reporter is spouting Republican talking points or repeating negative memes ad naseum.

In the case of untruths or inaccuracies (since nobody seems to be able to say “lies” anymore) the reporter needs to be called out for not knowing what the hell he or she is talking about. It’s their job to know the facts regarding a given situation before they start spouting off on it. So they’re either misrepresenting things to their audience or they haven’t done their job and are uniformed. They should have that pointed out to them at every opportunity.

Third, some of the Democrats need to start shifting the conversation radically to the left. Sitting in the middle arguing with the Right redefines the middle towards the right. The Republicans know this. They each have moderate positions for one or two legislative items and far-right positions for others. The pattern is too regular not to be largely coordinated.

A group of Democratic legislators should start calling for the impeachment of Bush. Now. Today. Get that meme out there and let it start playing out. Then they need to aggressively challenge anybody who slanders the position. The more “moderate” Democrats can say they don’t have an opinion on impeachment or that “it’s too soon to talk about impeachment” but at the same time reinforce the idea by saying “but he/she raises a good point — and if the warrantless spying turns out to be illegal he should be impeached.”

In other words, the Democrats need to start playing the same game that the media and the Republican party have been playing for years. Done aggressively enough, and with enough of the Democratic leadership participating, the situation could be corrected in short order. Ultimately it comes down to what I’ve said over and over, the Democrats need to a) pay attention to this issue and b) fucking grow a pair of balls.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

To: viewerservices@msnbc.com, hardball@msnbc.com

MSNBC,

Fox News is so right-wing it gives me a headache to watch it (although Fox & Friends gets my blood going in the early morning). I find CNN to be a bit dry. That leaves MSNBC, which I watch frequently. I work from home and I usually have the channel on in the background for all or part of each day.

The last week has seriously damaged my faith in the network and that can largely be attributed to Chris Matthews. First came the homophobic slurs that he traded with Imus. I’m heterosexual and I was deeply offended by both hosts’ comments.

Then he went on to compare a liberal filmmaker to Osama bin Laden on his own show. I’m no fan of Michael Moore, but I am a liberal. I wear that term with pride — it shares the same root as another word: liberty. I felt as though I was personally being compared to Osama bin Laden.

Chris Matthews isn’t the only one on your network to make that comparison either, which is in part why it felt like a personal attack. Other hosts on your network have made similar comments and they are causing me to lose faith in the network as well.

It should go without saying that Imus isn’t helping. Tim Russert seems to be linking black congressmen with anything crazy said by a black citizen, which is either blatantly racist or just an attempt to smear them by association. Or both. And the fact that Tucker Carlson even has a job on your network is cause for consternation.

I’m not sure where I’m going to turn to for my news at this point, but if I wanted to watch Fox, I’d watch Fox. I don’t think it is in the best interests of your network to try and become “Fox Lite.”

Regards, Chat Clussman

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

You have a talent to put words on a page that can conjure images. That talent is far better than my own, which is why you have a contract to do that for a living and I don’t.

With that contract and those words comes a certain responsibility. Not just to the truth but to the accuracy of the image you conjure. Factually I can find nothing amiss in your article. However, after reading it, I’m left with an image that, somehow, Democrats are still implicated in this whole sordid lobbying affair.

I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that the word I was looking for was “misleading“. It is entirely possible to give certain facts while omitting others and create a false image of something while still telling the truth.

Because of your previous article, which started the furor, I cannot dismiss the misleading nature of this article as an accident or mere happenstance.

You mention the numbers that are most likely to create an image that this is a bipartisan scandal (that 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats have received money from Abramoff’s Indian clients) but omit so many other facts that surrounding those numbers that would put them in context, including:

- How much smaller the Democratic donations were.
- The fact that the Indian tribes in question actually donated less to Democrats once they became Abramoff clients.
- That the other top Indian tribes (in terms of political dollars donated) all gave far more to Democrats than Abramoff’s clients.

All of which indicate a trend of discrimination (in terms of dollars) towards Democrats.

Moving beyond that one damning number that you placed, out-of-context, in your article, is whether or not receiving money from a client of Abramoff matters in any way at all.

Suppose that, year after year, I, as a public citizen, give $20 to local Democratic candidates. One day I receive a letter from Jack Abramoff directing me to give $10 to the same Democratic candidates. After receiving that letter, I continue to donate to Democratic candidates. What, on God’s green earth, does Abramoff have to do with it?

Do you not see how misleading it is when you fail to put facts in context? I have some hope that, after the firestorm you’ve just been through, that you will take this message and messages like it to heart. I hope that your next column will provide a context for the facts that are in it. I have no doubt that the facts themselves will be accurate.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I am. I’m sick and tired of waiting for someone to stand up to the Republicans on issues of morality, equality, hell, even religion. Maybe in twenty years we’ll have a real party again. There has clearly been no soul-searching. The leadership still plays it close to the polls and shifts with the polls like leaves in the wind.

Younger blood, like Obama, who is still a politician, and Hackett, who is clearly not, offer us some hope for the future of our party. They speak like they believe the words they are saying and the stand firm by their choices.

For a long time I blamed the Republicans and the media for making the Democrats cower. The media has played to the right for so long I honestly can’t remember a time when they didn’t. Of course, at 32, I’m not all that old. You can only blame others for so long though. I have a strong belief in the need to defend yourself — to stand up for yourself. And if you can’t do that, you don’t deserve to be in office.

How on earth can you defend the rights of millions of Americans if you can’t even stand up for yourself? That is today’s Democratic party.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I just read the following over on Salon’s “The Fix“:

The secret profanity of “40-Year-Old Virgin” revealed: Screen It, a Web site ostensibly devoted to parents concerned about the content of Hollywood movies, bills itself as “an unbiased, easy to use, yet heavily detailed and complete look at popular entertainment your kids might see, rent, or buy.” But in protecting kids from smut, the people behind Screen It have had to learn to wallow in it. See their painstaking assessment of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” for an example of just what “heavily detailed” means. Their rundown of the film’s profanity: “At least 68 ‘f’ words (2 used with ‘mother,’ 16 used sexually as are phrases such as ‘laid,’ ‘nail,’ ’screw,’ ‘do it,’ ‘get it on’ and ‘tap’), 29 ’s’ words, 19 slang terms using female genitals (’p*ssy,’ variations of that word and ‘poon,’ and ‘tw*t’), 15 using male ones (’d*ck,’ ‘c*ck,’ ‘c*cks*cker’ and ‘pogo stick’), 4 slang terms for breasts (variation of ‘t*tty’), 17 asses (2 used with ‘hole’), 4 hells, 3 damns, 1 S.O.B., 15 uses of ‘Oh my God,’ 8 of ‘God,’ 4 of ‘Oh God,’ 3 of ‘My God,’ 2 each of ‘G-damn’ and ‘Swear to God’ and 1 use each of ‘For God’s sakes’ and ‘Oh Jesus Christ.’ ” Oddly, the site also includes a number of possibly imitative phrases to watch out for that range from “F*ck your mother” to the seemingly innocuous (or laden with hidden meaning?) “Forty is the new twenty.” For even more awkwardly precise descriptions, see the “Sex/Nudity” section of the site’s “Brokeback Mountain” review. (Screen It)

Now I really want to see this movie. I’m a bad, bad boy.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I had been wondering why I read Daring Fireball for about a week now when this post popped up in my news reader: iLife ’06 From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal Interface.

If you’re not a designer and you don’t use Apple products, it might not be that funny to you. If you are a designer and/or you use Apple products, try not to spew whatever you’re drinking all over your keyboard. Especially if it’s a laptop. That can really damage it…

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Been a while since I posted anything because I’ve been “re-educating” myself to focus on design, web design, and web development instead of politics, politics, and politics.

Today, my RSS reader popped up with a quick note about Lightbox JS. This is a cool, simple, and standards-compliant script to “pop-up” images without using a pop-up winndow or leaving the page. It was written by Lokesh Dhakar and he explains it, with examples, much better than I can. I just want to add that it took me less than two minutes to install the script on my site and implement it on my desktop art page.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.