Elvis Has Left The Blogosphere

by digby

This one covers just about every piece of braindead conventional wisdom, smug dismissive elitism and shallow political insights it’s possible to hit in one short cable TV segment. And it’s done with a blatant rightwing slant that obviously feels so natural and comfortable to these bobble heads they aren’t even aware of what they’re saying. From CNN’s “money” show:

SERWER: The blogosphere is always an interesting place to go for a wacky and sometimes wise commentary on major stories. CNNMONEY.com managing editor Allen Wastler joins us now with a closer look on what the bloggers are saying about this new terror threat.

Allen lay it on us.

ALLEN WASTLER, CNNMONEY.COM: This is the blogosphere you just got to love it. People shoot from the hip and go at it. Politics we were talking about earlier in the show, it just boils right in this. It’s like distilled for you. And of course the right wing is making the most noise. Check out one of the guess bloggers. Check out this comment. “If you want to believe that George W. Bush and the Patriot Act are the greatest threats to our way of life, you won’t have much trouble finding a professor on a nearby college campus to buttress your theory. But its past time we face the facts and realize this is our new normal.” That was the position taken by a lot of the right wing siders.

Hey, people want to hurt us. There are terrorists out there, and this is a manifestation of that effect. Now of course, you got the other side, OK. Now the other side was basically, well, the threats out there. But you haven’t really been acting that entire well about it. Check this out from America blog. “Bush was briefed about the attack days ago while he was on vacation. And guess what, he stayed on vacation. Sound familiar?” Of course, referencing previous Katrina oops. So you know, they are coming from that point of view and trying to hammer it.

And of course they always accuse the other side. And you can change right and left wing interchangeably here. Because they always accuse the other side of oh, you are playing politics. Now this time it’s the left again also from Americablogs. That referencing remembers Dick Cheney commented on the Lieberman/Lamont election before the London plot was revealed to the public. And said that basically Lamont’s win would give aid to the al Qaeda types. Here’s a comment from Americablog. “Knowing that this story was about to break, Cheney invoked al Qaeda in purely political terms. Once again, Cheney is using terrorism for political purposes.”

But, I put it to you, OK. If the administration had messed up and not caught something, would the left wing be putting it to political purposes?

HARRIS: Very good.

WASTLER: You know? It can go either way. And that’s what you are seeing on the Internet here. It’s sort of distilling this argument.

HARRIS: Allen, I have to ask you, one of the treats sometimes about going to the blogosphere is that you hear all manner of conspiracy theory.

WASTLER: Of course there are always the Republicans. Maybe they released this the going into November elections. I sort of dismissed the conspiracy theory. Just because the conspiracy theory comes out so often, it’s kind of like status quo now.

HARRIS: Right.

VALLIERE: If things are so poisonous right now to come full circle. We talked earlier about 1968. This may be the most poisonous political environment since the late ’60s. So I’ve given up. I just look at the economic fundamentals. Don’t you guys think that one of the big stories this summer is that interest rates had peaked. Whether you look at housing rate is sensitive, my sense is the worst is over on interest rates.

WASTLER: You get that sense, but I think the Feds will go back to hiking. We haven’t seen the interest rate game play out yet. If you look at some of the latest figures, the “Wall Street Journal” surveys this week showing that costs are going up out of the commerce department. You have some of these things I think the Feds are taking a little pause right now, but I think they will have to jump back in maybe one or two more hikes.

VALLIERE: I think Ben Bernanke are pretty dubbes (ph), I think they are going to dominate.

WASTLER: We got a bet, Greg.

SERWER: Of course you can always find a blog who would link Ben Bernanke into some sort of plot tied into something going on in the Middle East that would make Syriana look perfectly sane.

WASTLER: Elvis is always at the center.

I think I just understood something I’ve previously been unaware of. The financial media are even more stupid and even more blissfully unaware of their stupidity than the political media. It explains a lot.

.