Confederacy of Dunce: Kathleen Parker

It was funny when I was going about doing what little research I do for these pieces that I happened upon this Kathleen Parker Washington Post page. That alone wasn’t the humorous bit, but the headline next to her very botoxed face was. “Taking the country’s pulse - and assessing it’s health. Twice a week.” Now, this doesn’t say whether she’s actually any good at taking a pulse OR assessing a health. Just as I assume no one ever proofs or edits her columns to make sure they have any ounce of credibility to them. Some form of editor would have been nice, if only to prevent her from a public display of her column prowess on Meet The Press a few weeks back.

Kathleen Parker kinda/sorta proclaimed that southerners are dumb...well, at least not "sophisticated" The clip doesn't really help her case either. She kind of just rambles through her talking point anxiously looking to hand it off to the guy to her left. Had it not been for a transcript, I wouldn't have a clue as to what she truly said. So you can kind of understand why people, especially Southerners, would be upset about this comment.

Well, never fear! She decided to do a little backtrack by proudly rolling out her Southern bona fides.

But how much damage control did she really expect to do? I mean millions or people purportedly watch Meet The Press every Sunday, I imagine a tiny fraction of those people actually READ a Kathleen Parker article.

The major bone I have to pick with Ms. Parker is mostly over her southern bona fides. I'm never surprised at anything she says anymore, and I'm more ashamed of the corporate media for tapping her for any sort of on opinion, knowing full well she's full of shit. Was she brought on to Meet The Press because the clip was Southern person adjacent, and the producers thought "Hey, do we know anybody remotely Southern?" Then some shaky handed intern typed in to the internets: "Pundit that claims to be Southern and Lives Withing 20 Miles of Studio" and up popped Kathleen Parker?

What's more, it's never clear how Ms. Parker delinates what makes her Southern. Is she a Southerner because she grew up in Florida, in a nearly 100% white population (which arguably could be a Southerner construct)? That she was also educated in Florida, and got degrees in Spanish Literature? She doesn't share any of that in her bona fides article. Instead, she leans back on the local flavor, and the fact that her family has been based in South Carolina since 1670!

My land! 1670 is a long time ago.

She begins her article by trying to rewrite history. Which I applaud her effort. If she could have just been as eleqouent on television as she is in this opening salvo, things could've been different. But she's Kathleen Parker. Also, she is a Southerner (her words). So she's using the "I have a black friend" argument to talk mess on fellow Southerners? On top of that, she's continuing her useless war against the internets by also asserting that "[...] at least one person with a laptop was offended [...]" and she was beset upon by ALL of social media.

At least she does admit she didn't really answer David Gregory's question on the ad and instead, tore off on her own by reacting to "[...] something that has irked me for years — the media stereotype of the Southerner as a befuddled hayseed [...]" To which no one was asking her to, A. And really didn't come across in that mumble/ramble that she assumes was a "reaction", B.

Funnily enough, she blames those who are unfamiliar with her "body" of "work" (defending Southerners?) for taking her out of context and being offended (on top of a failed "bird brained/flock mentality" dig). This coming from the same woman who armchair quarterback's 90% of her columns about the Beltway from her home office, in South Carolina. Most of her body of work is taking things people say out of context and just flip-flopping around on the topic until she runs out of column space. She's also a follower of the pundit class pack to the utmost. And she's taking people to task for doing the same to her?

Even if that was the case, you can tell it got to her enough that she felt compelled to roll out her bona fides, even though it does nothing to dispel her stupid "reaction" on Meet The Press. No one cares that you live in South Carolina, married a Southerner, that your great-great-great-grand pappy settled the land, and when compelled can speak with a Southern accent Kathleen Parker. Further, the self-deprecation isn't a flattering look on you either. No one's really buying it.

Well, she tried and failed. And as they say in the South: Well, bless your heart

Jonah Goldberg Uses Confirmation Bias to Prove Confirmation Bias!

Sometimes, odd things happen. Like a few of the pundit class will all happen to harp on one of the bullet points in the Talking Points Memo. Of course, it’s of varying quality, and overall, not quite worth the mass effort on all their fronts. The topic: the “radical left”. Oh, and that Mozilla guy that had to step down because liberals forced him. The usual suspects? Charles Krauthammer, Russ Douthat and Jonah Goldberg.

I’ve been meaning to write about this mythical radical left wing of the liberal party for some time. In the great false equivalency machine that is the pundit class, there HAS to be a mirror to the TEA Party patriots that are ruining things for everybody…right? There has to be some radical movement on the left that is punishing democrats for not supporting climate change, fighting for a fair wage, at-will abortions, and so on. Every single day we hear about shaky Democrats in Congress that are being primaried by even more liberal fellow Democrats. Right? Yeah, I thought so.

This is one of those topics that you kind can’t believe the GOP/right-wing still mess around with. There’s that continuing notion from them about the “War on Women” being false, yet time and again some republican is putting their foot in their mouth on women’s issues. This piece by Dana Milbank talks about the Heritage Foundation holding a shindig with women right-wing luminaries that you just can’t make up. That there’s some radical left is utterly false.

That all the author’s articles mentioned start from a place of attacking truth and facts is unsurprising. They’re trying to make a basic argument that at the very least the liberals are just as bad as the conservatives when it comes to certain topics. Krauthammer’s “thought police” is a more sinister way of saying “people are trying to make Charles Krauthammer feel bad for being a stooge”. Or better yet “Charles Krauthammer is an old white man who’s white knuckle grasp on culture wars is slipping and no one cares”. It’s Glenn Beckian in it’s “the left is destroying people for being anti-gay and anti-woman” when it’s more like times are changing and the general public are course correcting society again.

Now, the Krauthammer and Douthat articles about liberal overreach are at least passable as they at least stay on topic. But I was more drawn to Jonah Goldberg’s article because of not only it’s profound stupidity, but how it perfectly encapsulates the right-wing pundit’s viewpoint on the left is somehow equal to the right. Confirmation bias is a nasty thing. It’s on full display on the GOP/right-wing, so it’s a bit odd that Jonah Goldberg, who lives in a glorious glass house, would start chucking rocks about the topic.

It’s humorous that Mr. Goldberg’s article is about an assumed confirmation bias, when he’s actively contributing to bit of his ideology’s very own the week this was published. It becomes clear when you look at just the examples I gave. He also continues to show that conservatives are allergic to facts and truth with his article condemning liberals for being diabolically rigid when it comes to facts.

Ezra Klein’s got a website that is attempting “explanatory journalism” which Mr. Goldberg just outright mocks, doesn’t even bother trying to define what that might mean in the context of media. “Phooey! Facts!” And that liberals have confirmation bias too, not because of anything Jonah Goldberg relates in his article, but because Ezra Klein said so! Well, at least Mr. Goldberg is maintaining the lazy legacy of his pundit class.

Mr. Goldberg then goes on to rattle off from the Talking Points Memo about the scary liberal scourges who are looking to “purge” those who don’t think like they do! Thought police! Coming in the night, taking your bigotry and misogyny…probably your guns too…Bastards! Then hamhandedly tries to blame this “disinterested servants” idea on liberals? That these “servants” got in to government and were more keen on staying in power and expanding their reach than serving their constituency? What?!

Fearing that he’s losing his footing, Mr. Goldberg turns to the tried-and-true attack piece for help here. You see Klein makes the mistake of showing all kinds of conservative biases, but no liberal ones. Odd, I wonder why that would be? One ideology has majority control of talk radio, a pundit class that dominates the opinion page, a channel completely dedicated to it and its “news”. The other ideology? Well, they sort of have chunks of the internet that the libertarians have let them borrow, MSNBC…kind of, and Paul Krugman?

Mr. Goldberg, from reading Klein’s piece, assumes he didn’t make much effort to find liberal confirmation bias. How he comes to this conclusion he doesn’t elucidate on, which is his typical wont. But, since Klein does at least admit that there is SOME liberal confirmation bias, he doesn’t have to anyway. Then he goes on to attack Paul Krugman for thinking he‘s better than conservatives essentially.

After going through his hate Rolodex of right-wing boogeyman and shoe-horning in how they‘re mire in their own confirmation bias, Mr. Goldberg get’s back on track. You see, liberal confirmation bias had lead to “bad policies”. What policies are those? Nope, not here. But he does assert this grand assumption that liberals think that they have sole access to the Truth. Yes, he capitalized truth.

He abandons that notion, but it is worth exploring. Why would one ideology be so in to the Truth? When did that become such a bad word? Why did truth start having two sides to it in the wake of a GOP/right-wing resurgence with Fox News? When did insisting that people accept truth become a personal attack on their rights and freedoms?

Funnily enough, if you change all the words in this article to conservative, it starts to make a LOT more sense. I would love if liberals wielded the power that Krauthammer, Douthat and Goldberg mention in their articles. We would actually get things done as a nation.

Mr. Goldberg’s folly is that he uses up an entire article essentially proving just how deep confirmation bias is in the GOP/right-wing. It’s become so engrained in the ideology they can’t even see when they themselves are falling victim to it. His article is far less informative about the liberal confirmation bias as he is displaying right-wing group think buoyed by Fox News and talk radio. It’s the same bubble that has mired there message through the last decade. Remember when Dick Morris predicted a Romney landslide in the 2012 election? That’s just one example of the level of the group think bubble. I could go on for days.

It is time, however, to push back against the GOP/right-wing and their ideological rigidity. If they get this agitated over a little push back from a few liberal pundits, just think of what they’ll do when more of the general public start acting accordingly. We saw how they lost their minds in the in the midst of the Occupy Movement, and history has shown just how utterly on the wrong side of it the right-wing is. But liberals must also get away from trying to educate people to the facts and truths of news. For too long, they’ve wasted too much time trying to win debates with facts. The GOP/right-wing doesn’t trade in facts and truth, they trade on fears and prejudices. We need more pundits like Jesse Myerson, who satirize the self serious pundit class, and less cookie cutter Rachel Maddow’s, who make easy right-wing targets and get paid no mind because to the GOP/right-wing she’s an icky girl and a lesbian.

Movie Review: The Unknown Known

Movie Review: The Unknown Known

The Big Takeaway: Donald Rumsfeld narrates a documentary on his life in public office.

The Little Takeaway: A waste of time. The two men participating in a masturbatory game of “cat-and-also-cat” is never going to make as compelling a documentary as they think. This movie will please no one with any political bent.

At the end of the movie Donald Rumsfeld flatly says “I think you’re chasing the wrong rabbit.” And he’s right. I suppose director Errol Morris thought he might have something when he got Rumsfeld to agree to sit down and chat about his life, both private and public. To be fair, the first half-hour or so of the movie is indeed interesting, if not a little bit flat and uninformative as to how his circumstances developed Rumsfeld as a person. But that’s fine, you find Rumsfeld himself to be engaging and fun. As the film wears on, however, you begin to see just how utterly false, condescending and a tad horrifying that same posture becomes.

Immediately for me, as is no surprise, Rumsfeld reminded me of all the things I absolutely loathed about the Bush administration. The Frank Lutz-tization of vocabulary (it’s not torture it’s “advanced interrogation tactics” for example), that somehow people were making decisions but no one was taking theme blame. The sinister incompetence that seemed to infest the entire administration is on display in this film in fits and bursts. If you didn’t love the Bush years, this movie isn’t going to change your mind one bit.

But what if you’re one of those conservatives that thought W. was just one of the greatest presidents ever? Well, you’ll find nothing here really either. Rumsfeld himself seems uninterested in celebrating anything he did as secretary of defense, and rightfully so. All he really do was execute our nation getting in to two needles wars. Time and time again he repeats that history will ultimately decide if the administrations actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were wise. In addition to that, I don’t think we’ll need THAT much time to know what an utter failure the Bush administration was.

For a man that was so effusive with memo writing Rumsfeld doesn’t say much. The film time and time again touches on this notion of these myriad of memos resembling a blizzard. As the memos came be known as “snowflakes”. It’s through these memos that the bulk of the narrative heft is laid. You find out how Rumsfeld ran the Pentagon, how he dealt with his peers, and so on. He also narrates these memos, but never elucidates on them, believing them to speak for themselves.

Therein lies the problem: a documentary is only as good as the topic its covering. Rumsfeld is a shitty topic, and therefore the movie suffers for it. It’s not a bad film, per se, but by hanging it’s hat on Rumsfeld, it falls way short of anything approaching a compelling documentary. It’s just masturbatory and you get the notion that Morris thinks he’s doing more than what appears on the screen.

But you’d be hard pressed to find either Morris or Rumsfeld disagreeing with that notion. From time to time in the movie you can hear Morris’ voice pipe up with incredulity at something Rumsfeld says, or asking him to expound on something. He does the old trick of having the interviewee say something, then contradicting it with facts or figures to the contrary. And this being Rumsfeld, there is plenty of material. You have to wonder if it's a conscious choice on the part of Morris, or he just had so little to go on from Rumsfeld, he had to pad out the movie with this cliche garbage.

You get the idea that Morris thinks he’s playing a game of cat-and-mouse with Rumsfeld. But Rumsfeld is masterful at this kind of bullshit. The only time he shows any emotion is when he relates the story of visiting a soldier clinging to life at Walter Reed. He get teary-eyed, and that’s about it. The rest of the movie’s running time is Rumsfeld and his toothy-grin dodging questions and passing blame around to anyone else but himself.

It’s clear that Rumsfeld is doing a bit of legacy clean-up, which is why he chose to do this movie. On top of that you can palpably feel the arrogance and narcissism dictating that he do this film as well. But for all the effusiveness of the memos, his presence in the film doesn’t reconcile with that, so you’re obligated to go with what is already known about the man from his years in office. In fact, I would be surprised, stemming from this  if other members of the Bush Administration pop up and start doing a little chatting of their own, “correcting” the record.

The Unknown Known is a shitty documentary about a shitty man’s time in power. Even the title tips its hat to a perceived cleverness that just doesn’t exist in the movie itself. Men who have held great power are always going to come out of the woodwork and try to galvanize their legacy. It takes even greater men to humble them and show us how mortal they really are and have paved the road to their legacy with a great many mistakes. It’s going to take a lot more than Errol Morris’ cheeky barbs to clip Rumsfeld’s wings.

Final Verdict: Pass!

With Friends Like These: Your Good Friend Kathleen Parker!

First, read this.

Now that you’re done, hopefully, you are somewhat saddened at just how bad things are going to get for our political system. It’s awful  enough our pundit class is out of touch, it’s quite another when they’re just out and out defending the poisoning of our government. The cherry on top, well and the sprinkles to, shaming someone for speaking the truth.

I’m not surprised that Shithead Hall of Fame® Inductee™ Kathleen Parker wrote this in the slightest. I imagine that she’s currently giddily standing by her mailbox waiting for a fat paycheck from the Koch brothers, or more like, their myriad of subsidiaries, fists clinched, with a shit eating grin on her face. She’s hoping attached the check is a letter of thanks, and that the envelope is perfumed with the scent of money.

I think my favorite part of the article is near the beginning when she name drops the Koch brothers and then adds: “Who? Exactly.” Now, I’m not saying the Koch brothers are a fully known quantity, but they are known. Maybe not known is that they’re pouring vast amounts of their wealth in to right-wing think tanks and political action committees, and have essentially wrestled away one house of congress from the American people. But they’re known.

Ms. Parker nuzzles up to her corporate masters with the tried and true “they’re job creators”: what with noting that they employ a mere 60,000 people. Truly, and they are using their wealth for good: “they are spending gobs of their own money to sway politics toward free-market principles and away from current government expansionist trends.” Yeah, we’re not even in to the body of her “article” and this is the table she is setting.

What I enjoy more is the notion that she thinks Harry Reid “broke protocol” by calling out the Koch brothers and then labeling them “un-American”. It’s hyperbolic, to be sure, but the bigger news should be that at least ONE democrat is finally punching back with nonsense of his own!

I mean seriously, for over a decade we’ve had to listen to GOP/right-wing stooges assert all kinds of insanity and accuse myriads of people of all manner of things. We don’t even bat an eye anymore at someone calling Obama a tyrannical ruler. That’s on both sides of the aisles in this beautiful thing we call the “false equivalency”. Which Ms. Parker uses with a cudgel like grace throughout her Koch brothers commercial.

But her assertion that Democrats are trying to make the Koch brothers the “face” of the Republican party is wrong. You can’t make something that’s so apparently true. And while the Koch brothers may never be the “face” of the GOP/right-wing they are now the driving force behind the party, the “id” for lack of a better word. More to the point they continue to be the dank, dark underbelly of the whole party.

The cudgel of false equivalency swings wildly when Ms. Parker notes that “liberal commentators” are frequently admonishing the Koch brothers. Funnily enough, the article on her website links to a Washington Post (well played Washington Post Opinion Columnist Ms. Parker) piece about Rachel Maddow going after the Koch brothers on a near nightly basis. So…just a singular liberal commentator then? She asserts that although they aren’t nearly as powerful as Rush Limbaugh, they still have large followings. Enough so that they’ve shone a bright light on those dastardly Koch brothers…which "no one has heard of"? The Kathleen Parker amounts of horseshit that this article is, is indeed confounding.

To call what Harry Reid said as “McCarthyesque” is laughable. If there was indeed any stakes in calling a monolith such as the Koch brothers “un-American” it would be one thing. You can’t blacklist and ruin someone who’s already won. With limits on campaign financing essentially rendered moot by the United States Supreme Court, elections are now ONLY for the highest bidder. Running for political office was financially untenable already. It seems that now running for office means you’ll have to get corporate sponsorship, not unlike another red state favored past time: NASCAR.

Ms. Parker’s flip-flopping in this article is dizzying as she tries to stick the landing on her commercial. She laments that indeed having the super-wealthy “influence” political outcomes, the bigger issue is name calling? That one senator calling out one monolith is somehow the slippery slope that will lead to “A Senate committee investigating such un-American activities as advocating free-market principles or pursuing capitalist endeavors?” is ridiculous. But Ms. Parker assumes that this already has. She is beyond stupid.

The cherry on top? She finishes her “article” with this: “Yes, it was bad when right-wingers called Obama un-American, but Obama is the most powerful man in the world and the rabble is just that. Reid owes the Kochs — and the American people — an apology.” No, no he doesn’t.  Obama isn’t going to be in power forever. The Koch brothers aren’t suddenly going to lose billions of dollars or influence any time soon. The foothold they currently have on the political system is just a start. With friends like these in the pundit class, for those like Kathleen Parker who asserts that she is “center-right” (like most of America), the American people ought to be really afraid for the future.