ThisIsNotANewMediaThing
It’sHappenedAllBeforeVille
How?
Just call them to account for their codswallop.
And then, if they insist on spouting serial codswallop over and over, just cut them off.
Because a debate built on lies is not a debate at all.
****
In the case of the screaming and strutting male/rooster TeaParty book-end to Michele Bachman, Joe (
not that guy) Walsh, it started with….
It didn’t just wander out of the woods one day, or land here from another planet. The Wingnut Base — whatever teabagger, Colonial Williamsburg camouflage they’re sporting this week, and however hard the media tries to pretend they aren’t who we know they are — was manufactured by the Conservative Movement to win elections. Made right here in the U S of A out of spare parts left over from the Segregationist South, Right-wing fundamentalism, Bircher paranoia and general Archie Bunker pig-ignorance…..
….it is time for a new Pledge; a beneficent mirror-image of Grover Norquist’s odious “Americas for Tax Reform” Party of God loyalty oath. A pledge where the signer promises they will not book guests on their radio or teevee show who are liars. Not link to websites that feature liars except to excoriate them. Will not buy from, advertise on or patronize media that hires and promotes liars. That they will not reference lying Centerists at all except to mete out to them the scorn they deserve.
As much as I like Lawrence O’Donnell, a couple of nights ago when he trundled Marcia Blackburn and Joe Walsh and David Frum out in front of the cameras, I turned his program off. I did it because I am not interested in what liars have to say.
I am not interested in watching a “debate” that isn’t a debate at all….
And has now reached its zenith with wordsmith extraordinare, (notsojersey) James Wolcott….
Perhaps inspired by a post by Driftglass or just plain fed-up or both, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell boots a congenitally lying Tea Party Republican phony (a multiple redundancy, I know) from his program’s guest list. A policy more hosts and bookers should follow.
This week O’Donnell also had a clinical analysis that every Beltway-media John McCain maverick mouseketeer should have been forced to watch involving a segment on Sean Hannity’s Fox show in which the POW hero cravenly bowed to Hannity’s badgering. On the Senate floor, McCain still trots out his lion in winter roar now and then, the way Sinatra wowed audiences at the end by managing to hit the right note now and then without his toupee falling off, but put him in a Fox News studio, as O’Donnell pointed out, and he starts dribbling oatmeal. When did Sean Hannity get elected to anything and become the cryptkeeper of the Reagan legacy?
As Driftglass says, “This nation can no longer survive half-Fox and half-free.”…
Seriously, that’s all that needs to be done.
OK?
.
