Dear readers, I’ve been trying so hard not to write any more Kathleen Parker is a Shithead tinged articles. It appears it has all been in vain. One of these days, I will collect all the Kathleen Parker articles I’ve not been publishing and throw them up here. It will be horrible, and I hope that you will forgive me when that day comes.
But I can’t help it, out of all the editorials I’m exposed to on a daily basis, I see her the most. I’m compelled to read them simply out of an insane hope that she will eventually pick a side rhetorically and stay there or actually start writing good articles. That she will one of these days buck the status quo and actually write foreword thinking pieces. That she will become more like George Will in that matter: they don’t have to be correct, cogent or topical articles, but at least they’re something different than the seemingly endless, lazy, talking point memo induced columns that choke up our newspapers.
In my opinion the most egregious writing style, and the apex of most Ms. Parker’s columns, is the cowards way of backing up a weak article with “facts”. These facts are typically in the shape of polls, which by now, everyone is keenly aware are mostly contextual of the exact moment in time the question was asked, and when we’re talking political leanings are NEVER proof positive of any trend or held belief. Yet, to the right-wing writers who use them, they are the manna from heaven with which they bake all their lie bread.
In Ms. Parker’s case she always front loads her articles with them because 90% of the time her thesis’ are so weak they need to be braced by polls or weak rhetoric. Even a razor thin toothpick of a poll result is good enough. Problem is, as is the case most of the time with any article held up by polls, by the end of the article the writer will always start sliding in their rhetoric and “polls” that back up their point. But there’s no names or percentages like the polls referenced at the beginning of the piece. It’s a shell game, and only those of us who are most diligent even realize this nasty trick.
Perhaps it’s a tad ironic that Ms. Parker’s recent column about how these presidential campaigns are essentially high school popularity contests, is so full of immature snark and bite. Oh, it’s all aimed at Obama. Since she’s finally done with writing the “Seriously guys, Romney” Romney harlequin short fictions about the presumptive republican presidential nominee, she’s gone after Obama with a ham-handed ferocity. Not one to wander too far off the status quo reservation, she continues to run with the idea that Obama isn’t nearly as popular with the ladies as he’d want you to believe.
The first thought is, who the fuck cares anymore? I mean really…the GOP and right-wing have burned more than enough ladies with their anti-woman policies. In fact, when Rick Santorum was having his moment a few months back, Obama was looking REAL good to pretty much everyone, ladies included. The second thought is one that I’ve stated before, there’s more than enough evidence to show that the right-wing and GOP on every level of government is attempting to subvert the constitutional rights of women. This is no longer a battle of rhetoric, as it was at points in the past. The GOP is acting on a lot of it’s regressive agenda before it overreaches too far yet again, and get’s the boot.
The key thing I realized, and what propelled me to publish this piece is the shitty way Ms. Parker slides in her bullshit. (The emphasis is mine)“…[a] poll showed women tilting toward Mitt and voters overall favoring him by 46%.” She follows it up with another poll showing it was higher a month ago, so it’s doubly insulting. It’s using that right-wing regressive idea that women are irrational about their politics AND that readers of this articles won’t happen to notice that “voters overall” and women are being poorly lumped together. The poll didn’t read women are favoring Romney by 46%, it says voters OVERALL. Ms. Parker is abstracting the women part, because she desperately needs to make her point.
I’m also surprised at amount of surprise that the right-wing writers have about Romney’s past transgressions seemingly always popping up to bite his campaign in the ass. The GOP establishment aren’t surprised by this at all. This is where you can see the clear differentiation between the establishment writers and the status quo followers. I wouldn’t even be surprised if right up to the election that people like Ms. Parker will keep being astonished by Romney’s flip-flop-ness, Crategate, and so on. Whereas the establishment long ago accepted that Romney was a weak candidate and that the focus should return to filling the congress with republicans.
About the middle of the article Ms. Parker whips out the rhetoric with a “poll” that showed that four in ten voters think Obama’s policies will tank their financial situation if he’s re-elected. Where’s the source, Ms. Parker? You had zero problem laying out where the first few polls came from, yet here, it’s just slid out there for the reader to absorb. Towards the end of the piece another gem about the recent announcement Obama supported gay marriage: “…but polls show that the broader voting audience isn’t strongly swayed one way or the other…” She opens with two thirds of voters think the announcement was politically motivated, while 57% (arguably could also be closer to two-thirds) say it would have no affect on their vote. So her point is moot. As it should be, as again, we need to focus on the real issues that are facing this nation.
Oddly, she puts this sentence in to the piece after saying that Romney running Bain Capital that “sometimes” profited from failed businesses that resulted in job losses is capitalism: “For likeability, see auto bailout.” It’s unclear whether Ms. Parker is playing in to the recent Romney led history re-write where he says the auto bailout was his idea that Obama used, when in fact, and there’s a New York Times editorial to back this up, he suggested that the auto industry go bankrupt. Which sure, is indeed capitalism at it’s finest, but shows (along with "Crategate", or his “prank” on a long-haired classmate) that Romney is heartless and incapable of compassion in the face of oblivion. That he lacks the pragmatism to solve problems without doing great harm to those that may not matter to him. He’s a cutthroat businessman through and through and that’s not going to tilt the likeability meter to him ever.
But this idea that Obama isn’t going to embrace his record and attempt to bamboozle the voters with charisma is absurd. The Romney campaign is going to flagellate the shit out of the talking point that Obama’s record is poor. The “likeability” and reliability issue that needs to be addressed is purely a Romney problem.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Saturday, May 12, 2012
The Bored Games of Bill O'Reilly
Bill O'Reilly is bored. It’s part of his “I’m just a blue collar, hard workin’ guy” candor that I actually do enjoy about him. I enjoy it the same way I enjoy the seriousness in which grown ass men in the WWE unfurl their “drama” every week on television…with utter irony. Bill O'Reilly isn’t bored. It’s clear something may be the matter however, with the utter shortness of his old man shaking his fist at a cloud disguised as an “editorial”.
First of all the presidential campaign has become “…boring. Tedious. Painfully insipid.” Bill O'Reilly is knee-deep in the media landscape, has a nightly primetime show, and somehow he’s become bored? If you don’t like the conversation Mr. O’ change to the topic, right? I understand that maybe he’s trapped, deep in the Fox News buildings basement, where his studio resides, he has to keep flogging a dead horse in the republican presidential campaign. It was assumed Romney was going to win from the start, yet those in the media had a time with it and it kind of took on a life of it’s own. But, did Bill ever stop it? No. Not one time. To his credit, I suppose being bored doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t just go through the motions.
In keeping with his boredom with it all he begins with something my sixth grade English teacher admonished, and has been loathed by everyone who comments on the media. “[“At the end of the day“ is] Overused by pundits and politicians alike, those words are now making my ears bleed. Lights out on this one, please.” Bill O'Reilly says please? Is this condemnation aimed more at his Fox News compatriots? From the times I’ve accidentally watched a fair bit of any of that channel, and have been exposed to their clips in my various left wing media shows, the pundits on Fox News have the smallest vocabulary out of any of the pundits or politicians that feature on any news show. To be fair, it’s a worn adage, just like “it is what it is”, but lazy metaphors and simile are paramount on Fox News, where else do these people that call in to their right-wing radio shows get their limited vocabulary? Did this shortened vocabulary trickle up? Hardly.
Next, Bill O'Reilly says there is no war on women. It was just made up by the left. Of course it was, there’s no recent empirical evidence otherwise! And even so, according to Bill O'Reilly American women have more “opportunity” than anywhere else on the planet. Keyword here is “opportunity”, it’s that tired GOP/right-wing optimism for you. You see, we’re a nation not of haves and have not’s, we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves! So of course women have all the “opportunity” in the world! But this has zero to do with opportunity and more to do with the real fact that the GOP in federal and state governments are passing regressive legislation that’s anti-women. Because it’s boring, and Bill O'Reilly just squashed all that beef, it’s time to knock it off.
I would hate Bill O'Reilly on face value alone if he didn’t occasionally embrace some populism on topics. In his next paragraph he admonishes those who call Obama a Muslim. Of course he’s not, he’s a Christian, and it’s boring to keep talking about it. Yet didn’t Bill O'Reilly fan the flames for a time on his Fox News show, of course. But it’s boring now, and people who are bored don’t have time to look back! It’s key to not that he does say that if Obama was Muslim he would damned just for that. But isn’t the mere idea that MAYBE he was a Muslim was fodder enough for the right-wing? The fact that it’s still a mitigating factor in a lot of right-wing opinion and news say enough to that effect? Sure, to Bill O'Reilly you’re insane if you think Obama was a Muslim, whether or not it effects your vote is another matter that won’t be discussed…it’s boring!
Global warming, according to Bill O'Reilly, is a hoax because Al Gore got rich off of it. It also may be because we’re going through a warm spot. But, no one knows except God. I do agree with him on those stupid bulbs that supposedly save you energy, I don’t know what he’s talking about wit h $60 variety. What kind of bulb is that? Anyways, the fact that they are very dim and when they break you have a small hazardous waste issue on your hands and need to quarantine your house and family so you don’t mutate or die from changing a broken bulb. It’s also boring…moving on.
Bill O'Reilly covers the current pundit distract-o-topic of dogs in this years election campaigns. While, I agree to Bill O'Reilly’s point that it’s indeed boring, the general takeaway from Romney’s “Crategate” is that it actually shows Romney having a genuine human emotion: asshole. Only an asshole would strap his dog, in crate to the top of the car, pull over when it shits all over the roof, hose the dog and crate off, then put it BACK on to the roof of the car to finish the trip! It’s why, pun intended, that talking point still has legs. Should we somehow glean a human element out of the stilted, karaoke renditions of “America the Beautiful”? It’s boring that pundits like Bill O'Reilly will put up a weak-armed defense of both Romney and Obama, yet won’t ever perhaps delve in to just why a thirty year old story about the time he strapped the family dog to the car is still bugging the Romney campaign. It’s boring!
Next we have the other right-wing distraction topic of “illegal’s”. Somehow, we’re confusing the illegal aliens that Bill O'Reilly knows. The left-wing states that if you call an illegal alien “illegal” then you’re committing a hate crime. But, to Bill O'Reilly, that’s what they are. What are you supposed to call a human being who’s here illegally being paid pennies on the dollar doing a job that no one wants to do? Somehow, on top of being boring, it’s also amazingly tedious to Bill O'Reilly! These illegal aliens that Bill O'Reilly is friends with are also demanding to know what their status is. So is Bill O'Reilly complicit in this whole scheme by hiring illegal aliens? How does he have such intimate knowledge of how they feel about a topic that’s supposedly boring to Bill O'Reilly, yet has no problems trotting it out only to level it with his tough guy nonsense? Bill O'Reilly, I need names!
Medical Marijuana is next on the list of boring topics. He tells us to mellow out (but if we’re so bored, are we not already in a “mellow” state?). Everyone knows that it’s a con. Is he talking about his illegal aliens confidants again when he says “Everyone”, or is he talking about everyone that resides in the Fox News building at any given moment? Because if the latter is the case, then everyone also agrees that global warming is a hoax, Obama is actually a socialist Muslim, who wants to outlaw all guns, and he’s raising prices on gas to fuel a green agenda…and so on and so forth. Also you seemingly get a prescription for medical marijuana in a back alley scheme where you pay a doctor $200 (so cheap!) and he hooks you up. Is the $200 just a co-pay to buy out the doctor, and the prescription for the drug is a moot point? Since the symptoms to get prescribed a drug are “made up”, that invalidates the reason for going to the doctor and you’re just a bong-ripping, hacky-sack playing hippy who’s gaming the system?
Bill O'Reilly next tells the Occupy Wall Street protesters that the movement is over. That’s odd, I never read or saw him declare the TEA Party movement dead. And from what I gather, it’s over for those patriots. Occupy Wall Street is also moving us toward a Cuban style government, which of course Bill O'Reilly doesn’t want to live in. It’s not boring, it’s just over.
I lambaste this article because it makes my point that the pundit class is out of touch. In some cases it’s willful, and often times it’s not. I don’t expect a corporatist, center-right blowhard like Bill O'Reilly to ever betray his overlords. In fact he called the Occupy Wall Street movement dead in the water mere days after it sprung up in New York. But what’s notable is that he was part of a Fox News chorus that was chanting it’s demise. Hoping to influence the mainstream media in to not covering Occupy Wall Street, which they for the most part obliged. Then Bill O'Reilly kept going and going until Bloomberg had them shut down forcibly. All that jazz did get a degree of coverage.
To speak truth to power isn’t in Bill O'Reilly’s wheelhouse. This bullet point list of topics that are boring may as well be a list of talking point for the week that any right-wing pundit could harp on ad nauseam in a column space. The week this article was published every single one of those points had a corresponding article by a pundit. What’s interesting is that the general citizen would never recognize this, and why would they care? The real issues aren’t even on Bill O'Reilly’s list, there are ALL non-starters to common folks. Perhaps even they were much too boring to even be bothered with by Bill O'Reilly.
More to my constant point on this blog is that when the pundit class openly sticks it’s finger in the eye of the readers. This article may as well not have been published. It’s still a tiny bit of print, but it’s still taking up spaced better suited for something else…anything else really. This sullen bullshit article about being “bored” is essentially the current mind state of the American public. Where’s the spice, the passion the flame of this political drama? The pundit class dare not speak to the systemic problem inherent to the boredom: a protracted primary season with weak politicians. Of course, Obama’s 2008 campaign run was a huge hit of that hard, sweet stuff, and no substitute is ever going to match that level of both pundit and public fervor. Why would anyone not be bored?
I’m not saying that Obama has a home run campaign on his hands and that he’s just going to be re-elected, but I am saying that Romney is a weak candidate that barely won his own party’s primary. To the pundit world, there’s things that Obama CAN’T run on, and that’s all fine and good, but what does Romney have to run on ? If he’s still beleaguered by a three decades old “dog shitting all over his car” story, then what can he say or do to prove an electorate he’s got something different than that other guy with a similar political bent. Obama is a essentially the populist, republican we as a public are supposedly always pining for. Until we can reanimate Ronald Reagan‘s corpse, it’s the best we can do!
More importantly, why doesn’t Bill O'Reilly just step down from the half-assed editorial writing, or get a stooge to fill in for him when he’s so bored?
First of all the presidential campaign has become “…boring. Tedious. Painfully insipid.” Bill O'Reilly is knee-deep in the media landscape, has a nightly primetime show, and somehow he’s become bored? If you don’t like the conversation Mr. O’ change to the topic, right? I understand that maybe he’s trapped, deep in the Fox News buildings basement, where his studio resides, he has to keep flogging a dead horse in the republican presidential campaign. It was assumed Romney was going to win from the start, yet those in the media had a time with it and it kind of took on a life of it’s own. But, did Bill ever stop it? No. Not one time. To his credit, I suppose being bored doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t just go through the motions.
In keeping with his boredom with it all he begins with something my sixth grade English teacher admonished, and has been loathed by everyone who comments on the media. “[“At the end of the day“ is] Overused by pundits and politicians alike, those words are now making my ears bleed. Lights out on this one, please.” Bill O'Reilly says please? Is this condemnation aimed more at his Fox News compatriots? From the times I’ve accidentally watched a fair bit of any of that channel, and have been exposed to their clips in my various left wing media shows, the pundits on Fox News have the smallest vocabulary out of any of the pundits or politicians that feature on any news show. To be fair, it’s a worn adage, just like “it is what it is”, but lazy metaphors and simile are paramount on Fox News, where else do these people that call in to their right-wing radio shows get their limited vocabulary? Did this shortened vocabulary trickle up? Hardly.
Next, Bill O'Reilly says there is no war on women. It was just made up by the left. Of course it was, there’s no recent empirical evidence otherwise! And even so, according to Bill O'Reilly American women have more “opportunity” than anywhere else on the planet. Keyword here is “opportunity”, it’s that tired GOP/right-wing optimism for you. You see, we’re a nation not of haves and have not’s, we are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves! So of course women have all the “opportunity” in the world! But this has zero to do with opportunity and more to do with the real fact that the GOP in federal and state governments are passing regressive legislation that’s anti-women. Because it’s boring, and Bill O'Reilly just squashed all that beef, it’s time to knock it off.
I would hate Bill O'Reilly on face value alone if he didn’t occasionally embrace some populism on topics. In his next paragraph he admonishes those who call Obama a Muslim. Of course he’s not, he’s a Christian, and it’s boring to keep talking about it. Yet didn’t Bill O'Reilly fan the flames for a time on his Fox News show, of course. But it’s boring now, and people who are bored don’t have time to look back! It’s key to not that he does say that if Obama was Muslim he would damned just for that. But isn’t the mere idea that MAYBE he was a Muslim was fodder enough for the right-wing? The fact that it’s still a mitigating factor in a lot of right-wing opinion and news say enough to that effect? Sure, to Bill O'Reilly you’re insane if you think Obama was a Muslim, whether or not it effects your vote is another matter that won’t be discussed…it’s boring!
Global warming, according to Bill O'Reilly, is a hoax because Al Gore got rich off of it. It also may be because we’re going through a warm spot. But, no one knows except God. I do agree with him on those stupid bulbs that supposedly save you energy, I don’t know what he’s talking about wit h $60 variety. What kind of bulb is that? Anyways, the fact that they are very dim and when they break you have a small hazardous waste issue on your hands and need to quarantine your house and family so you don’t mutate or die from changing a broken bulb. It’s also boring…moving on.
Bill O'Reilly covers the current pundit distract-o-topic of dogs in this years election campaigns. While, I agree to Bill O'Reilly’s point that it’s indeed boring, the general takeaway from Romney’s “Crategate” is that it actually shows Romney having a genuine human emotion: asshole. Only an asshole would strap his dog, in crate to the top of the car, pull over when it shits all over the roof, hose the dog and crate off, then put it BACK on to the roof of the car to finish the trip! It’s why, pun intended, that talking point still has legs. Should we somehow glean a human element out of the stilted, karaoke renditions of “America the Beautiful”? It’s boring that pundits like Bill O'Reilly will put up a weak-armed defense of both Romney and Obama, yet won’t ever perhaps delve in to just why a thirty year old story about the time he strapped the family dog to the car is still bugging the Romney campaign. It’s boring!
Next we have the other right-wing distraction topic of “illegal’s”. Somehow, we’re confusing the illegal aliens that Bill O'Reilly knows. The left-wing states that if you call an illegal alien “illegal” then you’re committing a hate crime. But, to Bill O'Reilly, that’s what they are. What are you supposed to call a human being who’s here illegally being paid pennies on the dollar doing a job that no one wants to do? Somehow, on top of being boring, it’s also amazingly tedious to Bill O'Reilly! These illegal aliens that Bill O'Reilly is friends with are also demanding to know what their status is. So is Bill O'Reilly complicit in this whole scheme by hiring illegal aliens? How does he have such intimate knowledge of how they feel about a topic that’s supposedly boring to Bill O'Reilly, yet has no problems trotting it out only to level it with his tough guy nonsense? Bill O'Reilly, I need names!
Medical Marijuana is next on the list of boring topics. He tells us to mellow out (but if we’re so bored, are we not already in a “mellow” state?). Everyone knows that it’s a con. Is he talking about his illegal aliens confidants again when he says “Everyone”, or is he talking about everyone that resides in the Fox News building at any given moment? Because if the latter is the case, then everyone also agrees that global warming is a hoax, Obama is actually a socialist Muslim, who wants to outlaw all guns, and he’s raising prices on gas to fuel a green agenda…and so on and so forth. Also you seemingly get a prescription for medical marijuana in a back alley scheme where you pay a doctor $200 (so cheap!) and he hooks you up. Is the $200 just a co-pay to buy out the doctor, and the prescription for the drug is a moot point? Since the symptoms to get prescribed a drug are “made up”, that invalidates the reason for going to the doctor and you’re just a bong-ripping, hacky-sack playing hippy who’s gaming the system?
Bill O'Reilly next tells the Occupy Wall Street protesters that the movement is over. That’s odd, I never read or saw him declare the TEA Party movement dead. And from what I gather, it’s over for those patriots. Occupy Wall Street is also moving us toward a Cuban style government, which of course Bill O'Reilly doesn’t want to live in. It’s not boring, it’s just over.
I lambaste this article because it makes my point that the pundit class is out of touch. In some cases it’s willful, and often times it’s not. I don’t expect a corporatist, center-right blowhard like Bill O'Reilly to ever betray his overlords. In fact he called the Occupy Wall Street movement dead in the water mere days after it sprung up in New York. But what’s notable is that he was part of a Fox News chorus that was chanting it’s demise. Hoping to influence the mainstream media in to not covering Occupy Wall Street, which they for the most part obliged. Then Bill O'Reilly kept going and going until Bloomberg had them shut down forcibly. All that jazz did get a degree of coverage.
To speak truth to power isn’t in Bill O'Reilly’s wheelhouse. This bullet point list of topics that are boring may as well be a list of talking point for the week that any right-wing pundit could harp on ad nauseam in a column space. The week this article was published every single one of those points had a corresponding article by a pundit. What’s interesting is that the general citizen would never recognize this, and why would they care? The real issues aren’t even on Bill O'Reilly’s list, there are ALL non-starters to common folks. Perhaps even they were much too boring to even be bothered with by Bill O'Reilly.
More to my constant point on this blog is that when the pundit class openly sticks it’s finger in the eye of the readers. This article may as well not have been published. It’s still a tiny bit of print, but it’s still taking up spaced better suited for something else…anything else really. This sullen bullshit article about being “bored” is essentially the current mind state of the American public. Where’s the spice, the passion the flame of this political drama? The pundit class dare not speak to the systemic problem inherent to the boredom: a protracted primary season with weak politicians. Of course, Obama’s 2008 campaign run was a huge hit of that hard, sweet stuff, and no substitute is ever going to match that level of both pundit and public fervor. Why would anyone not be bored?
I’m not saying that Obama has a home run campaign on his hands and that he’s just going to be re-elected, but I am saying that Romney is a weak candidate that barely won his own party’s primary. To the pundit world, there’s things that Obama CAN’T run on, and that’s all fine and good, but what does Romney have to run on ? If he’s still beleaguered by a three decades old “dog shitting all over his car” story, then what can he say or do to prove an electorate he’s got something different than that other guy with a similar political bent. Obama is a essentially the populist, republican we as a public are supposedly always pining for. Until we can reanimate Ronald Reagan‘s corpse, it’s the best we can do!
More importantly, why doesn’t Bill O'Reilly just step down from the half-assed editorial writing, or get a stooge to fill in for him when he’s so bored?
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