Froma Harrop's Cabaret of Professional Newswomen!

After a rigorous campaign season, I have bested my opponent and have retained my mayoralty of Haterville for another term! Hooray!

In all seriousness, there was just no way I was going to maintain a writing schedule around the Presidential campaign. Sure, there was a few nuggets of gold from our vaunted pundit class, but it was the same nonsense you’d see almost anywhere. I was also gallivanting across the internets writing about things more interesting than this past election cycle.

So I’m back, and what better way to start than with an article about how women are oppressed on talks news programs, by being forced to dress provocatively and wear make up! Written by Kathleen Parker…wait a minute…this isn’t a Kathleen Parker authored article at all…this is Froma Harrop! This is impossible!

Surely, she and Kathleen Parker are friends, and while Ms. Harrop was making tea or a light lunch for the two as they chatted about being women pundits, Ms. Parker tore off towards Ms. Harrop’s office when her back was turned and wrote this incredibly stupid article. It’s the only possibility!

Let it be said now that in my second term as Mayor Of Haterville®, I’m going to broaden my ire towards anyone…not just right-wing blowhards, or “center-right” pundit stooges, or talking points memo written as though they're an independent thought housed by a singular author. No, I’m going after anything insipid that wanders the realm!

It pains me to have to do this to Ms. Harrop, I actually like her writing for the most part. She tends to not do these kind of “Oh, hey I’m a woman, I should write something about women!”, that’s mostly the ply and trade of any white woman pundit and seemingly monopolized by Kathleen Parker during these cold winter months where a pundit doesn’t feel like writing anything of substance. Even your local newspaper’s village idiots are carving out tepid lists of baloney culled from their litany of forwarded e-mails.

Perhaps Ms. Harrop, like a lot of her colleagues in the old-white man pundit class, is feeling a bit put out to pasture. As a middle-aged woman, she just can’t compete with the models that can read a teleprompter and chain together two sentences to form a talking point to regurgitate on a talk news show. Even a well educated, whip smart gal like Ms. Harrop can be a little jealous of her younger, more beautiful peers that she has to pretend are making salient points on these said shows.

It’s also odd that she uses Ann Curry and Mika Brzezinski as these vaunted classy women who have somehow transcended this sorority of vapidity and have become professional newswomen of honor. Except that nine months ago I wrote about this very kind of topic, somewhat. These two women absolutely do not represent a professional newswoman who’s somehow beat back the hard news dolls that have become the scourge of any woman over the age of thirty!

Ms. Harrop uses an Ann Curry quote about being pressed to wear high heels by her bosses. In said interview, Ms. Curry surmises that she was let go from The Today Show mostly because she didn’t want to play dress up, as she was a serious journalist! Not that she wasn’t a very good lead host or that, indeed she did dress up and wear the “ridiculously high-heeled shoes” commanded to her by her NBC overlords regardless of her bona fides. She was a company man…erm…woman all the way to the bank and back with her multimillion dollar contract. How is this somehow suppressing her? She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to, and she literally spent fifteen years at NBC, on the Today Show in her oppressive designer wardrobe.

Laughably, Mika is brought to the fore with her complaining that when she first started working on Morning Joe she too was “pushed” in to clothes that where “short, skimpy, tight”. But Ms. Harrop tells of how she escaped and that she now wears freedom incarnate in the form of “sweaters and collared shirts, which is what Joe wears.”

What?!

Obviously, and commenters of the online article also verify, Ms. Harrop hasn’t watched Morning Joe…ever. Even a cursory internet search of Mika Brzezinski provides ample evidence of the exact opposite of the point Ms. Harrop is trying to make. Mika’s wardrobe seems to be primarily those “form-fitting dresses, arms naked to the world” items!

I kid you not:

And this is somehow Froma Harrop's idea of a professional newswoman?

What’s even more insulting, had Ms. Harrop continued her Mika Brzezinski internet search in earnest she would see that every time one Donny Deutsch “wronged” her, he would apologize by giving her a pair of Christian Louboutin heels, which she then coos over and so on and so forth. She’s literally lets men treat her like dirt on Morning Joe, then goes oohing and aahing over heels! What a wonderfully professional newswoman! She’s transcended the doll mentality so hard, she must be ironically enjoying getting shoes from a man!

Ms. Harrop’s claim that perhaps news executives are “Ron Burgundys stuck in the age of disco” with their forcing their females news anchors to “tart up” to deliver the news. But it’s in her odd choices of Mika and Curry that torpedoes her entire argument. These are two women who are holding BACK women from progressing in the news world. It’s been noted that the journalism is indeed a bloodsport full of men, where women have had to fight just to get on air. Progress has been slow, and many, many women have transcended the boys club to be respected journalists. Mika Brzezinski and Ann Curry are not those women, not even in the slightest. They have dutifully been “the skirt” on their respective programs and any respect they get is given in empty platitudes and pats on the heads by their bosses.

Unfortunately for all of this, I don’t empathize in the slightest for the plights of any millionaire news “journalist” that complains that they’re being oppressed by their “chauvinistic” bosses. I’m fairly certain both women have been offered more respectable position in other news operations, but probably for less money. What’s easier, wearing a skirt and heels then being all oppressed on the side, or doing the real yeoman’s journalistic work for peanuts, but more respect amongst your colleagues? It’s clear that Curry and Brzezinski took the easier route, for that they deserve no sympathy from women who do work in deplorable, boys clubs in the hopes of even being that vaunted “skirt” on a news show.

Thankfully, future generations of newswomen are rising up and will indeed use Curry and Brzezinski as a battering ram to smash that glass ceiling and garner true respect for their fields and themselves. Of course, they will pay these women respect, but it will all be lip service, as they, on top of their tanned, short skirted peers on Fox News, have done nothing to advance the cause for women’s right’s in a male dominated career path.

Libertarian's Are Dumb!

“If you say you’ll be pulling the lever for the libertarians or any other third party come November? Cue the chorus from both sides of the aisle: “Go ahead, throw your vote away” But that ‘s advice best ignored.” So says Newsday’s Lane Filler, I suppose who’s a libertarian? Who assumes there’s going to be an “any third party” candidate come election time. If they just so happen to get on the ballot in time, which the libertarian party has been lax to do in the past few elections. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s not impossible, because it has become increasingly difficult since Ross Perot’s third party candidacy to get mainstream coverage. There’s just never going to be enough support for a supremely disjointed party amongst an increasingly disjointed voting bloc.

You can find bits and pieces of the Libertarian ideology in either party, and not really have your “independently minded” bonafides tested or mocked. But when Mr. Filler argues both sides’ bad policies are non-starters for most Libertarians, how do they expect to gain traction? “You can only change the Democrats and Republicans by defeating them.[…] Third parties must pursue guerrilla politics.” First of all, if you can’t even propel a strong enough candidate to get on a ballot in ALL 50 states, how can you hope to topple the two-party system? I don’t disagree in Mr. Filler’s notion that the game is “rigged”, but if you can’t even field a competent team to play the game and have to resort to buffoonish political figures that just pay lip service to the Libertarian cause, as it relates to a Republican ideology, then you are wasting your vote. Next, his shining example of guerrilla politics? Ron Paul. “[He] seems to have figured out how to use the Republicans, rather than being used. Paul claims to be GOP, while voting against his party mates’ bills.” You know what would be great here? Some actual evidence to back this up! Granted, column space and all, but if the Libertarian cause is trying to rally troops and bring in new converts pointing to Ron Paul and saying “This Guy!” isn’t going to help, especially when he’s just as regressive and obstinate as his housing party the GOP.

“Since he’s a “Republican” and has support, he gets to participate in debates and the media runs stories about him.” Ah, a delicious right-wing idiotic mind meld of a point! So whether or not the “stories” the media run are bad or not doesn’t hold any water to a voter? Any news is good news eh?

To even further this disjointed third party nonsense Mr. Filler name drops four of the “party’s”(for lack of a better term) would be ideal candidates from 2008 that Ron Paul wasted his endorsement on: The Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party…and Ralph Nader (Independent). Because Ron Paul didn’t agree with any of McCain’s policies, this is the route he chose.

The game analogy is apt because it sadly needs to be played in this day and age. Unfortunately for “third party’s” their lack of a recent serious candidate of any ilk isn’t going make the game change itself. Using vague notions like “guerrilla politics” or Manchurian Candidate-ing either of the two political parties, then yeah, the critique of wasting your vote is very cogent. Honestly, you’re also obstructing people’s right to chose a candidate that would best serve the country. Not one candidate is ever going to be the “perfect” guy for the job, and that’s just the way the game is played.

The third party/Libertarian “movement” must also come to grips with the very real danger their ideology promotes. Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election in 2000 and opened the door for W. to get in. I don’t think you’ll find very many ground floor Libertarians that are plussed by the eight years of that Bush presidency. That is the real danger of wasting your vote.

Is that a reductive argument? Sure. But so is pretending that by being a giant asshole and voting for a Unicorn is the voice of change.

“If change is what you want, you can’t keep voting for the status quo when November rolls around. As things stand right now, the third-patty votes, not matter which off-rand ticket they go to, are the only ballots that won’t be wasted.” Thanks for making my point for me Mr. Filler. It doesn’t really fit too good on a bumper sticker, but the idea that wasting your vote could propel anything is absurd. The voting booth is where representative change is enacted, but that’s not where it takes place. If the third-party’s are serious they have to change the mind of the people and there’s plenty of evidence to do so. They are lazy, obviously unfocused, and would rather backseat drive our political system than actually promote a real change to our country.

Suggesting that if the voters refused to vote for a major party, that the total number would shock and the in the next election cycle people would recognize this…and then what? Is Mr. Filler riding a Unicorn whacked out on his mind when he wrote this? You would have to assume that an actual viable third-party candidate would be able to pull all these voters together to vote for him. But if the previous points in the article show that four different people could represent third-party ideals, then voters are even more out of luck then when it was just “this guy or this guy”.

It is usually about this time of year that my political bullshit canister tops off and I just stop caring about all of it. I loathe to read anything the pundit class writes, because it’s the most obviously cyclical at this time of year, as the echo chamber starts to heat up for the end of year elections. But what I have found to rest my ire on is this unbelievable notion that has sprouted the longest legs in recent memory: the both sides are doing it argument.

Oh, it’s true both sides are to blame for it, or one side started doing it so the other side had to do something back. It’s amazing to hear this day in and day out as politicians belly up to the Sunday talk shows and spout nonsense. Because it is nonsense. The culture of victimization is at the heart of what ails this “Do-Nothing-Congress 2.0”, and I don’t even think an infusion of new blood will help the matter.

Look at the last batch of fresh blood that entered office in 2010. They’re politically inert individuals that are only learning how to play the game. Yet they have this ability to whine and point fingers already down pat. For reference of this, watch Marco Rubio’s 6/25 Daily Show interview. He waves the victimization card so hard, that I thought his arm was going to snap off. It’s pathetic how this is what our representatives are beginning to look like. As the both side argument would concur: both sides are playing victims to one another’s shenanigans. But not only does the GOP not have any ideas to the ones they wish to lambaste, they don’t have the fortitude to perhaps “man up” and stop the “both sides” chicanery.

It would be a political/societal boon for them if they just stopped being the “Party of NO” and actually sacked up and started owning their regressive political ideologies. Most of the GOP establishment has been on record with there anti-Obama anything. They’ve vaguely hinted at an idea that would replace and improve upon a repealed Obamacare, what is that idea: oh well you know vague notions, free capital, some sort of voucher whatchamacallit, states’ rights/problem.

Their single-minded ideological approach is all fine and good. David Brooks asserted weeks ago that the GOP isn’t partisan and crazy as it seems: they just have a viewpoint…that no one else sane shares with them. But that linear ideology is only served with a corresponding viewpoint, wherein the two shall meet and compromise to form our collective wishes. Being rigid isn’t a viewpoint, or acceptable in a day and age where things are so supposedly dire.

If we are to believe the right-wing ONE of these days we’re going to turn in to Greece, one of these days. They’ve been crowing about it for nigh on four years, and for some reason we don’t seem any closer to Greece’s economy than we were three years ago.

“First let’s be clear. All argument that the court is a far right cudgel hovering over our delightful, evenhanded, fair-minded nonpartisan democratic Republic are off the table. And celebrants of the court as just and true and lovely only when it suits their personal agenda should put up their bumper stickers…” This is by America’s Treasure™ Kathleen Parker and what is my most recent evidence of this “both sides” nonsense that chokes our Democracy right now. Firstly the Citizens United ruling will have a far more greater impact on our country than Obamacare. Elections are now up for the highest bidder. If you thought that running for office was fiscally prohibitive before, it’s only going to get worse as Citizens United finds it’s footing. On Obamacare, what is really so horrible to the GOP when their corporate backed Healthcare money is going to get a giant financial goose from all the new people that are now required by law to have health insurance? “We don’t know what’s in the law!” They scream, but it’s all playing to the crowd.

That’s been my biggest aggravation thus far with The Beltway and it’s actors: a serious lack of sincerity in governance. It’s all for show, it’s for the next election cycle, it’s pandering ignorance as hard as humanly possible. If it’s not that, then it’s the tired moral issues that we should be over with by now. What would we rather have go in to the history books: our economy came back harder and awesome than ever, or instead of dealing with the economy we legislated abortion clinics into oblivion and argued over whether the President was a natural citizen or not?

Watching Marco Rubio on the Daily Show was mighty informative to me. That even after all his pro-growth nonsense, sensible immigration policy, and trying to find compromise amongst the two parties, he had the audacity to tip his hand and reveal a dreadfully partisan GOP card. He began this whole flat-tax, growth in small business, pro-growth through innovation spiel that flew in the face of everything he was successfully selling in the first part of the interview. That somehow the GOP was going to establish certainty to an completely uncertain economy/world should have led to him being laughed out of the studio, down the street and off the face of the earth. It may as well be wizardry economics. Certainty is going to lead the rich to invest in the economy? That the rich are going to invest in new innovation and that yet another bubble is all we need? It sounds less like sound economic policy and more like a junkie looking for another hit of the good stuff.

Rubio steadfastly argued that the reason he disagrees with the Democrats is because they have “bad ideas”. But I’d honestly rather have a bunch of bad ideas that are workable than just the House GOP’s “ideas” that are purely partisan and are just begging to be ignored by the Senate. The GOP is playing to the stands and they should be called on it by the media as a whole.

Marco Rubio’s victimization story is great and all until you give it context. He’s a freshman senator, a majority of his bills aren’t going to see the light of day, regardless of who controls the House majority and he knows it. So he can write all kinds of baloney legislation and run on that pretending he’s just trying so damn hard for the people. It’s the same logic that the GOP used when they pushed Paul Ryan’s budget around congress. The bill was dead and politically inert as soon as it was born, they know that. The American public must begin to recognize this context and understand that any (bad) idea and a workable (good) idea are two very separate things.

So you’re David Brooks, pundit/columnist who’s contribution to the status quo is Thomas Friedman quantities of vagueness that pepper your columns. So afraid of biting the hand that feeds, that you refuse to acknowledge the very vague notions you are presenting in your articles. Mr. Brooks has tried to break down our current economic nightmare in to economic “tribes” trying to find their way, has wondered aloud where all the liberals are, poorly peddles the notion that the GOP is really the party of the working class, and now claims that “our generation” has borrowed from the future like no other generation before.

Firstly, what is Mr. Brooks’ “our generation”? The vague notion is key to his status quo clutching baloney of an article, but I think if it was given parameters would definitely allow this article to be more substantive than it ultimately turns out to be.

Like most of his columns, Mr. Brooks spends an inordinate amount of time selling you a bill of goods you must buy or his entire article don’t make sense…relatively speaking. They’re all boiler-plate, run-of-the-mill, status quo maintaining non-articles generally, but the amount of slack you have to cut the articles so the ideas can even be taken seriously is pretty ridiculous.

Because older generations didn’t have the luxuries of modern technology and were so often one misstep away from utter catastrophe that they remained insecure. “[the older generations] developed a moral abhorrence about things like excessive debt, which would further magnify their vulnerability.” So if you completely ignore American history where expansionism and risk are inherently the “American way“, sure this makes some sense. If you believe, like Mr. Brooks seemingly does, that indebtedness is a modern trope, and that peaks and valley’s in our economy didn’t occur with such veracity until the late 20th century, then sure Mr. Brooks is on to something.

Because modern generations are more secure, we’ve become complacent with debt, according to Mr. Brooks. Which, arguably, the point can be made to this. But I think it’s less compliancy with debt, and more that debt is utterly necessary in this day and age. The standard of living has gone up, while the wages that are paid have plateau-ed and stagnated for decades so that some debt is necessary to the modern nuclear family, even if both parents are working.

It seems Mr. Brooks is making the argument that people just take on debt because they don’t see any harm in it. That people are so stupid as to be tricked by credit card companies to accumulate more debit, or to take out student loans to pay for college and view it less as debt and more as an investment in the future, which is the general line that is used when attempting to pursue higher education. This right-wing ideal that the blame for America’s larger economic ills rest squarely on the general public is old and tired and who’s refutation must become louder and known to all.

That’s not to say there isn’t some truth to “the general public is over entitled and spoiled”, but it doesn’t rest on the general public who’ve paid their taxes and spent their money like the good citizens they are. These citizens were told by the older generations that if they did so they needn’t worry when it was their turn to rest and depend on the next generation. Meanwhile that older generation misrepresented their lessers and filled our “entitlements” with IOU’s that must be paid back more than the government needs to diminish it’s deficits.

The center right and GOP want to keep painting their plan of economic recovery as “we’re all in this together”. It’s utter bullshit, and slowly but surely the voting public must become aware of this, as history has shown, it takes entirely too long to figure this out. In the meantime, the very pundits of status quo that peddle this shared sacrifice narrative are attempting to chain the current economic climate on to a new boogeyman.

Also, what do we have to make of the “We’re not a nation of have and have nots, but a nation of have’s and soon to have’s”? Perhaps this could be related to the tolerance of indebitude that Mr. Brooks seems to think is the major problem our nation is facing at this moment. Is it not inconceivable that an optimistic citizen would view taking on loans or accrue a large credit card debt, if they think that eventually their number will be pulled and their wildest dreams and riches will be at hand?

Mr. Brooks refuses to use this because it would show the sham of that right-wing rhetorical device. Can’t tip the status quo boat, so it’s best to just assume that the American dream has a price tag that many of it’s citizenry can no longer afford on their own because it’s tolerance for debt is soo great.

What the general public is to blame for is being a schizophrenic, ill-informed voting bloc. This constant notion that if that one guy with the “D” next to his name isn’t getting it done, that we may as well get that guy with the “R” next to his name in there is what is truly fueling this continued political strife. That our political parties are becoming more and more similar isn’t helping either, but I believe that is more the fault of a disjointed voting public and the political class evolving to pander to it.

This is why when Mr. Brooks mentions in his article that states are struggling with pensions promises that should never have been made, you have to, as a reader see that he’s pissing on your back and telling you it’s raining. That unions and their desires are crippling our states economies is utterly false. It’s when these Republicans governors are trying to please their corporate overlords with generous tax cuts, subsides and incentives coupled with previous “pension promises” that you have the current deficit debacle that states are supposedly going through. Not even to mention the regressive legislative agendas towards women’s rights, the educational system and public works.

Unfortunately, states can’t run the deficits that the federal government can. So when a republican governor passes a regressive economic agenda, he knows full well he won’t have to deal with the fiscal fall out that will occur long after they have left office. The short term political gain is ALWAYS the prime agenda of the right-wing and GOP, because they are so ideologically bankrupt that they can’t even fathom nuanced, pragmatic policy of any kind.

Mr. Brooks article then switches to the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. According to him Scott Walker turning a $3.6 billion deficit into a $150 million surplus. What David Brooks doesn’t’ relate is that Scott Walker was the chief agent of the $3.6 billion deficit when he propelled a regressive tax plan furl of corporate subsides through the republican dominated legislature. His attempt to fix the deficit he created was to gut the public unions of Wisconsin.

According to pollster Scott Rasmussen that Scott Walker keeps his job will be proof that voters do value deficit reduction and will vote for people who accomplish it. There is no truth in that whatsoever. It proves that voters only turn out for the big elections (your senators, presidents, and governors), and that their ambivalence is not complicit agreement to anything set forth. It also refuses to acknowledge that Tom Barrett, the man running against Scott Walker was limited by campaign rules and only had about $3.9million to campaign with, whilst Scott Walker had $45.6 million dollars, was not confined by rules, which allowed him to collect more than state regulated $10,000 per donor, due to a loop-hole for incumbents. Three-fourths of the funds for Walker came from out of state donors. It’s an unfair fight, and one that laissez-faire “independent” voters will be completely oblivious to. It’s also kind of shows that unions aren’t nearly as powerful and government killing as the right-wing would like you to believe.

Mr. Brooks assertion that a move to populism is what will fix our economic ills is also a right-wing tale as old as time. It’s about as close to “remember how awesome Ronald Reagan was (so awesome)" that you can get without being yet another Ronald Reagan myth fellating right-wing blowhard. And honestly just how much more populist can Obama get and still be tagged with the liberal socialist banner by the right-wing? If by populist we’re referring to kowtowing or caving to House republicans on most of his “liberal socialist” agenda.

The shift back to economic awesomeness isn’t going to be lead by a cultural shift. It’s going to happen after our society reclaims it’s equilibrium and we can tip back to a sort of political pragmatism that’s sorely been lacking. Sadly, it’s just not going to happen any time soon, and maybe not even in MY generation. The conclusion that the current generations need to come to is that the boomers and their ilk have let us all down, and they’re too delusional to admit to as much. The art of kicking the can down the road and “borrowing from the future” was an idea mostly held by them, and sure as hell wasn’t brought on by any insecurity born of a classical age. At a certain point they must be held accountable for the current trend of our politics and socio-cultural trajectory.

If there’s one thing I love more than anything else about Bill O’Reilly it’s his never ending supply of blue collar platitudes that “form” his world-view. You’d think that by now, someone who’s spent predominantly more of his life as a millionaire than a blue collar fella, he’d can it with the “tough guy” business.

In his article "Are teenagers really Americans?” starts off by commenting that he knows one of the great challenges in education is getting teenagers interested in their country. He knows this because he was once a high school teacher. For two years. 40 years ago. He doesn’t relate the length of his tenure as a teacher or how long ago it was presumably because it’s boring. But I think it speaks volumes as to why some old white guy insists that teenagers aren’t interested in their country and that only he has the answers. Teenagers according to Bill O’ Reilly “…are too busy keeping up wit the Kardashians to absorb John Adams.”

What’s exactly so wrong with that? The right-wing is always pooh-poohing young voters for making poor voting decisions. The decisions are poor because that don’t involve much support for right-wing agenda, and the republican party may as well be an old white man factory of utter uncool to young voters. So why now is it so important that teenagers learn how to be “real Americans”? Does “real American” mean that the voter is informed has their own opinions on the things they are about to vote on. More likely “real American” means conservative, all republican voting, and ill-informed.

Bill O’Reilly then takes it upon himself a new project: teaching a 13 year old girl how to care about being an American. I hope that this is some sort of satire, and not a real project. I think there’s Geneva Convention stipulations against this sort of thing. Also, he doesn’t appear to say whether or not this 13-year-old girl is relation or not. Did Bill O’Reilly kidnap a 13-year-old girl, take her to a sub-basement on his compound/lair, and attempt some odd psychological experimentation on how to care about being an American? Is the Department of Justice following up on this? Where’s the law enforcement community in all this or are they being complicit in a kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl?

His first lesson: Obey the rules. This is definitely a kidnapping scenario if he’s dealing in “lessons” and “rules”. The enforcement of such involves all doors being open, “unless there is a dressing situation”. So I guess bath time isn’t covered in that rules, sorry young lady. If Bill O’Reilly wishes to engage in conversation, you’re going to have to hide in the shower with the curtain drawn, or be in a constant state of “dressing situation”. Bill O’Reilly’s reasoning for the “open door” policy: “To discourage internet chicanery and encourage lively conversation”. Has Bill O’Reilly raised any children, in the last decade, or ever? There are computer programs that you can use to stop “internet chicanery”. And I think Bill O’Reilly is using chicanery wrong. How exactly is this 13-year-old girls clever manipulation of language. If he’s being literal, then he shouldn’t allow this 13-year-old girl on the internet at all! It’s chock full of chicanery, and not even to mention things like messenger services, or e-mail, or social networking sites. Also, the internet is full of informative information. Does reading Huffington Post count as chicanery, if the 13 year-old isn’t on BillOReilly.com? What if she doesn’t want to sign up for his e-mail list?

Lesson 2: Discuss Intelligent things - not just reality shows and music maniacs. First of, music maniacs? What is this, the town of Bomont? I can understand things like The Black Eyed Peas or LMFAO being considered “music maniacs” as I do believe they are terrorizing our young people with some sort of noise and light chicanery. And that by it’s very nature would frighten an old white man like Bill O’Reilly. But really, how far would a conversation involving “music maniacs” go between Bill O’Reilly and a 13-year-old girl?

13-year-old girl: Uhh, ummm so have you seen “Party Rock Anthem” By LMFAO
Bill O’Reilly: A what?
13-year-old: NO…it’s a group called LMFAO, they’re pretty cool.
Bill O’Reilly: A what? You know, when I was growing up in the tough streets of Levittown, we beat up LMFAO’s all the time. They were punks and burnouts…and they even asked me to join them, because I was so cool. But I didn’t because they were "hoodlums".
13-year-old: What’s that go to do with anything?
Scene

The greatest thing about lesson 2, aside from the “music maniacs” portion, is that in his scene the 13-year-old girl says “Nobody wants to talk about politics. That’s boring!” To which later in the scene he replies “I do just fine talking about them. Millions of people listen.” It’s phenomenally awesome to read that scene not even two weeks after he went on an entire bender about politics being boring. Is Bill O’Reilly having his Factor writing staff just write his editorials? I mean, it wouldn’t be the hardest thing to do. But to not even have the wherewithal to notice that he literally had a 13-year-old girl tantrum-read-column that said the exact same thing is delicious! I also love the classic Bill O’Reilly “how awesome am I? so awesome” of dropping his “millions of people listen” right in the middle of this column. He’s not done with that stuff either.

Suddenly, the lessons fall away and “rules” begin! This has to be a hostage situation, as this is a classic psychological turn. The ole’ switcheroo! Caring benevolent caretaker, suddenly becomes cruel dominator! Rule 3: Learn about your country’s past. Doesn’t it kind of seem odd that Bill O’Reilly would reach for this when so much about his politics and the very channel “millions of people listen” to him on a nightly basis are revisionist historians and sheer ignorance/fear based ideology? As a former teacher, wouldn’t Bill O’Reilly also remember just how poorly written and fallacious history books can be? Especially in America, where the “history” books we give our children should just be titles “White Guys: Yup, we sure did kick some ass! Oh and we wrote most of history because most brown people are liars. Volume One: How Hard Columbus Kicked Ass!”

The Bill O’Reilly fun zone doesn’t stop there. This 13-year-old girl has just been assigned to read over the summer Bill O’Reilly’s (with "historian" Martin Dugard as co-author) new book "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever”! Whoa! Even the education system is complicit in this hostage situation, having to assign something like that AND make the child buy the book (he actually has the temerity to say the book is $20). Surely this material is a bit over the head of a 13-year-old?

The disdain that Bill O’Reilly shows this 13-year-old girl, doesn’t just stop at his young hostage, it spills out onto all today’s young people. He calls them urchins that need to be forced or bribed to pay attention to “important things”. Sadly, I don’t think the 13-year-old girl really thought that paying $20 for “Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever” was a bribe of any kind. And this idea that kids today just need book learning, is absurd. Bill O’Reilly says in his article that as a child you had to read to fight off boredom. Yet, he’s a part of such a monolithic entity that preys on peoples ignorance, and buoys itself on rhetoric and misinformation.

What exactly is so important about learning about the value your country? I thought the idea was to be a “real American”, not being informed about your country’s value? It seems rather vague right? At least he didn’t actually say “Hey, watch The O’Reilly Factor every night at 8pm EST on the Fox News Channel and be a “real American!”

Apparently Bill O’Reilly thinks the lessons and rule in his article are a successful way of educating America’s youth about the value of their country. He also tosses in that current right-wing gem of how this election is a battle for the souls of the next generations. It’s kind of sickening that the very thing Bill O’Reilly represents is the chief agent in darkening those souls, and poisoning generations further down the road as well. That he thinks his teaching plan would somehow be approved by Abe Lincoln would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. The right-wing is literally turning our history and politicians in to those whacky animatronic monstrosities that resides in museums and amusement parks. The bullet point list of achievements that white wash away the context and human nature that actually surrounded those men. While I can’t argue that they need to be eradicated from existence, as I do think they have some place in helping to inform children under the age of six, the idea that these caricatures are made mythological and important should be terrifying to those of us who do know our history.

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.

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?