Giant Bomb vs. Samantha Allen

The greatest trick Giant Bomb ever pulled was convincing regular people they could get hired at their site.

Samantha Allen, a trans writer “activist” known for her provocateur nature writing on gender politics and videogames, had a point: Giant Bomb hired two white guys they already knew? Yawn.

If only it was constructed that way.

Initially, Ms. Allen had my sympathies in the great shitstorm on the internets that arose over her disappointment in Giant Bomb hiring to white males to their staff and her nascent need to comment on it as a trans woman. In the ensuing hours and days after her twitter post, it was nigh impossible to get a clear picture of what just instigated Giant Bomb’s “community” to spew hot trash and vitriol someone just speaking their mind. Giant Bomb’s staff were on twitter vaguely commenting towards the assholery and telling those in the “community” to stop and that they didn’t represent the site and so on. It wasn’t helping matters. Then Jeff Gerstmann wrote a vague editorial admonishing those who would attacks critics of the site.

But after reading Ms. Allen’s work, I find that my sympathies have greatly diminished for her. While I don’t condone the insults and harassment she received, I do believe she brought in on herself with how shittily she handled the entire situation. I think she knew what she was doing when she expressed her opinions, she just wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of push back she received.

It’s been over a week since the debacle, and it’s been interesting to see so little of those in the videogames press attempt to discuss the Giant Bomb debacle, as most of them are white males, with any clarity. Aside from the “we need more women in videogames” and the “oh you…the internets…up to no good again!” comments, nothing’s really being discussed in depth. This topic needs to be treated with respect and honesty.

Giant Bomb’s staff, aside from the editorial, has said nothing else on the subject. Which is pretty disappointing, as again, I think this a topic worth discussing. Of course, it’s a minefield, both as Giant Bomb being owned by CBS and the very real notion that Ms. Allen was indeed the instigator in the hot mess that everyone found themselves in. 

I’m of the mind that the harassment Ms. Allen experienced may have been fueled by Giant Bomb’s “community”’s disappointment at not getting hired at the site, and they couldn’t really lash out at the staff. Ms. Allen was a perfect target to focus this communal rage at not gaining access to the promised land of games journalism. She apparently looked to be starting a fight, and the internets being the internets, obliged her.

Let’s be honest: “games journalism” is a shallow, tiny pool. Giant Bomb itself and past hiring practices have been one of friends and known entities to the various staff members of the site. It should’ve been a foregone conclusion that Giant Bomb was going to hire someone everyone knew, for maximum awesome and general site personality cohesion. It was ALWAYS going to be a white male.

Ms. Allen initially had a point: Giant Bomb could’ve hired ANYONE else. The tired argument goes “It is 2014 after all“, and while it is indeed a small minority (no pun intended), there are a lot of other people besides 30 something white males that have opinions on videogames. But Ms. Allen handled her point inelegantly, and because of her “activist” nature, swung a mighty feminist cudgel when none was necessary.

But my biggest question about all of this: why white trans women like Ms. Allen (and to a lesser extent Caorlyn Petit), are pushing such a hard-line feminist agenda? In addition why do they insist on doing so in the low hanging fruit venue of videogame websites? This same subculture has allowed man-children the ability to whine and scream about videogames and their corporate overlords doing them injustices AND getting paid to do so! Predominantly overweight white men to boot. It’s a subculture of man-babies creating content for fifteen year old boys.

Reading most of Ms. Allen’s writings, there is a clear thread of provocation. Which she has never been unclear about. She’s an unapologetic misandrist. Which makes her wading in to the videogame’s press sphere a tad insidious. When you’re a hammer everything seems to be a nail, and so it explains when a fellow twitter writer wrote that maybe Giant Bomb’s new white male hire’s were the most qualified she replied “Go Fuck Yourself”. Unfortunately, those tweets were deleted from her feed, in a move to probably appear more victimized than initially observed. But the bulk of her misandry and views on videogames press is still present in her twitter feed.

To be fair, after everything was said and done Ms. Allen appeared to lament her knee jerk reaction that inevitably lead to the shitstorm she found herself in and made her vacate twitter for a week. I hope this becomes a teachable lesson for her, and any young “activists” that think provoking people is a viable method of converting the masses to your cause. Too often young activists just don’t understand how long it takes to actually affect real change.

But this fiery attitude is immeasurably useful to any movement. The fire and brimstone nature of youth gives any change movement the energy it needs in the long cold months when it seems like nothing is ever going to change for the better. But the sexiness of activism wears off quickly for young people, and they soon abandon their “principles” once they realize that revolution has not taken hold overnight.

This fiery attitude can also lead to the Giant Bomb/Samantha Allen fiasco as well. It should be noted that Ms. Allen is knee deep in academia at Emory University. So I believe she should know better than to entertain the kind of firebrand proactive baloney she keeps finding herself in.  She has some good things to say, and her activist bent is going to be an evergreen one as our country itself begins to understand and accept sexualities that may confuse and scare them. But the last place she needs to couch some of it is in the videogames press. Enthusiast press of all sorts isn’t really the venue for ANY kind of political activism, it’s existence is based on true escapism from the “real world”.

I’m of the mindset that the videogames enthusiast press isn’t going to change any time soon. I’m less concerned with the diversity of it’s ranks and more concerned with the toddler tantrum nature that seems to be the entire foundation of it’s being. I would love if videogames could be taken seriously as an art form, but it is still shackled to the notion by and large that it’s still a toy for children. Videogames themselves have a long way to go, and “gamers” themselves have even further. I would enjoy the notion that we could discuss the topics Ms. Allen and others bringing up in the videogames press with some maturity, but for now that is largely absent from the proceedings.

Jonah Goldberg: Running Scared from a Hilary Clinton Presidency

Republicans are scared of a Hilary Clinton presidential run. They just need to come out and say it already. They know full well whatever clown crawls out of the wreckage of next year’s GOP Presidential Candidate Clown Car Rally™ is going to lose to her. It won’t be pretty, and so now you see the GOP/right-wing at it’s best: trying to fire up the base with some good old fashioned Clinton bashing!

The GOP/right-wing know people as a whole aren’t paying attention. It’s why they can cycle through their boogeyman at a pretty good clip and no one really notices. It’s no surprise that the lack of Obamacare failure gave rise to renewed Benghazi inquests. Never mind the over a dozen congressional investigations that if they had turned up something scandal worthy, we would never hear the end of it out of Fox News and right-wing pundits.

But what is so bad about another democrat president? Haven’t the GOP/right-wing had field day driving a centrist corporate democrat president further to the right with obstinacy and general “do-nothing”-ness? Time and time again have they not gotten almost everything they’ve wanted out of Obama? Is this all a sick ploy to actually get Hilary elected in 2016?

The reason I bring up the whole "GOP/right-wing know people don’t pay attention" is because Jonah Goldberg riffs on a common political tactic and twists it around as some sort of bellwether to Hilary’s certain defeat. That tactic: distancing yourself from your political counterparts.

But first, some clarification on the recent history. Mr. Goldberg asserts that candidate Obama “pandered to liberal hopes”. This is juvenile wordplay on Mr. Goldberg’s part, but isn’t accurate. Candidate Obama, and most mainstream candidates, pander to most EVERYONE, even during the respective party primaries. He also goes on to say that Obama “promised miracles and magic”, which again, isn’t true. Again, I'd like some sort of context or examples, of said miracles and magic. However, he did propel "Hope" and "Change", but I don't know how magical or miraculous those things are.

Perhaps in the ass lined cave that Jonah Goldberg keeps his head in, Obama-come-Savior was the case. But what both candidate Obama and candidate Hilary were doing was distancing themselves from each other and also W. Who at the time was the veiled political Satan and chief driver of our country's economy in to the ditch. It should be noted that John McCain certainly wasn’t touting just how much like W. he would if he got in office (well…aside from that ridiculous foreign policy of skullfucking “The Terrorists”).

It could be said that in 2008 Americans got wrapped up in Obamamania. But Mr. Goldberg blames “liberals” for voting with their hearts and not their heads for why Obama came to power, and why the government is now suddenly being run by a boob. And to be fair, I have no real defense on the way Obama is running the executive, because it doesn’t matter to me. What was clear that Americans wanted something different, and being pandered to by a really old white man and an illiterate hockey mom was not the answer they were looking for. Then in 2012 they staunchly defended themselves from being presided over by a literal manifestation of "The Man".

When Mr. Goldberg runs with Obama’s handling of the VA “scandal” as some sort of proof that democrats are really regretting that whole “hopey changey thing”, I have to wonder if that’s just wishful thinking on his ideology and behalf. Time and time again, actual scandals worth being scandalized over pop up, and the GOP/right-wing do nothing. This VA scandal isn’t being pushed too hard by the right-wing pundit class because the GOP/right-wing are the most responsible for it. They would rather harp on something like Benghazi which isn’t nearly so tied in to GOP/right-wing congressional malfeasance wagon.

Mr. Goldberg surmises that Hilary is distancing herself from Obama because of his perceived failures, and is attempting to run from it. Of course she is! This is how it’s been done since the founding of this nation! Every candidate to a “T” has distanced themselves from the previous occupant in order to get in said occupants place! That Hilary won’t dare run on any of her time in the Obama administration because that will tank her chances, is ludicrous. Any politician worth their salt is going to downplay fault or perceived “failures”. It isn’t like Hilary doesn’t know Benghazi isn’t going to hound her during her run. Hell, that’s why the GOP/right-wing is still pushing it as if it’s something.

Mr. Goldberg asserts: “Americans almost never reward a party with a third consecutive term in the White House, and when they do, it’s because they want more of the same. Anyone want to wager on how much of a “more of the same” mood America will be in come 2016?” Oddly enough, that depends. I don’t think most Americans are buying what the current GOP/right-wing is selling, that’s for sure. And while Obama’s numbers may be going down, it isn’t because he’s mired in scandal and inept as the right-wing would attest, they’re just getting bored with him.

To end his column Mr. Goldberg insults Hilary’s time as Secretary of State. The manner in which he does show is a really good primer in the GOP/right-wing’s strategy in trying to either dissuade her from running, or what they will harp on when she does. It’s bad enough that they’re insinuating that she might have brain damage (after ravenously proclaiming at the time of her concussion she was faking it to get out of Benghazi investigations), but that she also might be too old to run for office. This coming from the same party that is THE de facto party for propelling old white men presidential candidates! Ronald Reagan was 69, John McCain was 72, Bob Dole was 73 and we’re really going to take Hilary to task on age?

It’s odd that once again Jonah Goldberg uses a construct, in the case the “Hilary-Industrial Complex“, to lambaste “liberals” while rigidly maintaining the GOP/right-wing groupthink that anything that isn’t staunchly conservative is THE EVIL. Does he not even see the irony in this? The right-wing “bubble” is largely to blame for their inability to maintain executive or congressional power very long? 

And “liberals” are still the ideology who votes with their hearts and not their heads?

The GOP/right-wing are clearly afraid of a Hilary Clinton presidential run. It’s apparent just from Jonah Goldberg’s column that this is true. All those conservative presidential darlings of a few months back? Chris Christie, Jeb Bush…where are they now? And while Sheldon Adelson and the other moneyed interest hasn’t quite publicly declared a victor in the GOP “Blunder Games”, you can expect that the “defeat Hilary at all costs playbook” is being written at this moment.

Cal Thomas is Dumb!

Pundits like Cal Thomas,  and others such as George Will and Charles Krauthammer, puzzle me. These old white men are often treated like wizened men of yore, what spake truth with every utterance. They go on panel shows and fart and belch nonsense, then go home and shit out umpteen columns about their chosen bugaboos. I don’t understand the deference from literally EVERYONE in the media. Can we just grab any old doddering fool and have them blubber in to a hot microphone for twenty minutes and be utterly wrong? It surely would be much cheaper.

Cal Thomas predominantly writes about religion and the culture wars therein. Like a black sportswriter, his chosen topic is unfortunately evergreen. Mr. Thomas is constantly couching the topic du jour through his bullshit lens of “truth” and since he’s a seemingly tenured syndicated columnist, never answers for anything. Every topic he’s covered, and the very words he farts, are always thoroughly debunked with common sense before he gets around to his point. Like clockwork, you’ll see him provide some argument that has clearly been done away with. His current topic “redistribution of wealth”…more importantly, his wealth, and the wealth of the catholic church.

It’s clear that those of the more evangelical right-wing catholic mindset don’t care much for Pope Francis. For some odd reason, their prayers for Benedict to keep Pope-ing around, disenfranchising catholics the world over with his hyper-dated worldview and pedophile cover ups, fell on deaf ears. To the rest of the world, Pope Francis has been a unbelievable breath of fresh air.

As a non-catholic I’m a big fan of a populist pope. I mean, we don’t have too many types of world leaders with the peaceful reign longevity or worldwide reach of a pope.  Ideally, the pope sets the religious standards for the entire world. Saying things like “be excellent to yourselves and each other” and “give your money and time to those in need”. All that bullshit that bums out those evangelical right-wingers who use their faith as a cudgel to silence and get rid of things that make them feel icky inside.

Mr. Thomas uses that tired notion of “redistribution means they take ALL the money EVER and just GIVE it FREELY to all the OTHERS! (who have done nothing for society but TAKE!)”. Then couples that with the other tired notion of “redistribution didn’t work under the New Deal or War on Poverty it just went down 16%” Where did that figure come from? Who knows?!

His solution: The Pope should put his money where his mouth is and just start redistributing ALL the Vatican’s money if it‘s such a great idea! So…a silly non answer? Sounds about right from a right-wing pundit.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find Cal Thomas’ net worth on the internets. I’m assuming from the humble brag in his second paragraph he considers himself wealthy, and taxed enough already. He prattles on about how he gives to charity, and if the government started just outright taking his money, where would all the good his money does for his tiny tribe go? You see, he’s taken care of his money responsibly, unlike other people…you know…the others?

It’s this kind of insipid article writing that trickles down (hey a trickle down idea that actually works!) to the stooges of the GOP/right-wing. That wealthy people paying taxes is a punishment. That those tax monies aren’t being poured in to things THEY want, so they are being wasted on things like the OTHERS. Ironically, the right-wing stooges don’t give nearly enough to charity as say a Cal Thomas would, but assuming they tithe and give to charity, they do it under the guise of philanthropy from the tops of their noses. Which they both share in great amounts. Mr. Thomas acts as if he gives so much of his money to charity, that if he didn’t, the charity would fold up and blow away. Which is absurd. And so what if they did? It isn’t like those in need and those who provide charity are just going to end one day.

It’s in the hypothetical that Cal Thomas unveils the type of modern christian that everyone has grown to loathe. In their passive-aggressive actions, they have completely lost what their faith was founded on. Hell, even Mr. Thomas in a recent column about public prayer, extols the quiet reflection that is demanded of his very faith. So prayer, we should probably be hush hush, but when giving your time and money to those in need you can just blast it over the bullhorn? “LOOK AT ALL THE GOOD WORKS I AM DOING! THANK GOD FOR ME AND MY MONEY THAT I FREELY GIVE TO THESE OTHERS!” Give me a break!

The simplicity with which Mr. Thomas breaks down what causes poverty is laughable. Has this man ever known need, probably not, and his breakdown shows that in spades. Let‘s break them down:
1) a dictatorial governmental system that thwarts individual initiative and liberty. What the hell is he talking about? You have to wonder if this means some sort of third world situation or is a reference to the tyrannical ruler Obama. I’m more inclined to lean to the latter merely because it’s a staid talking point, and Cal Thomas has never met a tired talking point he didn’t like. Because of Obama’s tyrannical dictatorship both initiative and liberty have struggled. Which explains why the DOW is hitting record highs, and corporate profits are at an all time high! Somehow the liberty of the working class is getting squashed by all the liberty these overpaid CEO’s are getting, but who’s to parse the thwarting of liberty!?
2) a religious system that oppresses people, especially women, in the name of an angry deity who is ready to pounce on anyone having pleasurable experiences. Again, he may be flying too close to the sun on this one. I’m supposing he’s talking about the OTHER religions that oppress women in the name of an angry deity that’s NOT Christianity? Cal Thomas may be on to something if there is an ongoing problem about impoverished gays. I’m thinking this is a dig at the Vatican, which is the thesis of his article, but the vagueness is puzzling. Is he talking a theocracy, because Mr. Thomas’ articles tend to lead one to believe that ’s the only government system he’d really get behind?
3) the wrong economic system, which stifles growth and discourages risk-taking. This seems eerily similar to the first cause of poverty.  Also, an example of what a wrong economic system is would be beneficial to the reader. Once more, I assume this is a dog whistle “Obama is an evil tyrant” sort of thing and nothing more. I guess I’d say just put what I wrote under poverty cause number one under this one too. I mean, if he’s not even trying at this point…why should I?
4) Wrong lifestyle choices when it comes to education, sex, marriage and crime. Mr. Thomas must have a word count, because I really feel like these are more like poverty causes 4-7 or 8ish. More to the point, it’s also the veiled racist portion of Mr. Thomas’ article. As he’s done with the bulk of his column, he’s somehow married disparate concepts that exist in a simplistic wrongheaded worldview. You can’t "wrong lifestyle choices" education if you’re living in the slums and ghettos. You can’t "wrong lifestyle choices" who your parents are and how much money and stability they come with. It’s so easy to make smart decisions when you’re born into stability and means, like I assume Cal Thomas has.

In all these causes, Mr. Thomas offers no real solutions, which is all well and good and probably the most christian thing to do in this case. He just supplies this notion that attempting to fix social injustice has been a failure, so why even bother? Surely the benevolent charitable givers alone should be able to lift those unwashed masses out of their poverty! He talks about moving poor children to better educational opportunities, but who’s going to pay for that? The GOP/right-wing balk at this notion and only attempt to offer solutions that will only enrich their moneyed interests and still provide no better an education. In the grand false equivalency, he writes “[…] liberal politicians won't let them escape for fear of losing political contributions from teachers' unions.” What a crock of shit.

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.