Month: November 2007

Saturday Night At The Movies

Ordinary people go to war

By Dennis Hartley

I’m a schoolboy. Teach me. Teach me.

There are three things I learned from watching Robert Redford’s new film “Lions for Lambs”. (1) The MSM is in bed with K Street spin doctors (2 ) War is hell, and (3) Apparently, the United States is currently embroiled in some kind of endless Vietnam-like quagmire in the Middle East (I didn’t say I learned anything NEW, did I?).

Redford casts himself as Vietnam vet/poly sci professor Stephen Malley, who strives to mentor his brightest and most promising students to “walk the walk” and commit themselves to affecting real political change through active civic involvement. Two of his recent graduate students, Arian Finch (Derek Luke) and Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) have not only accepted his challenge to “get involved”, but upped the ante by enlisting for combat duty in Afghanistan. Professor Malley feels conflicted; while he admires their integrity, he had secretly hoped the young men would be inspired to use their talents to help change the system that perpetuates the Vietnam and Afghanistan type conflicts, rather than volunteering to become cannon fodder themselves (“Gallipoli”, anyone?). His current concern this school year, however, is his latest star pupil, Todd Hayes (Andrew Hayes) who has sunk into apathy. Todd has been called into the office for a pep talk.

Unbeknownst to the professor, while he is sitting in his office chatting so amiably, his two ex-pupils are taking part in the first wave of a new military strategy to locate and destroy stubborn pockets of Taliban resistance in Afghanistan. Small units of Special Forces troops are being sent in to the most rugged mountain areas to bait the enemy into the open, so they can be easily taken out by technical air strikes. Cannon fodder, indeed.

The plan is the brainchild of an ambitious, ultra-hawkish conservative congressman, Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise, who also co-produced the film). As the film opens, he is sitting down for an interview with a hotshot TV journalist, Janine Roth (Meryl Streep). Irving is a rising star in the Republican Party, who is grooming himself for a presidential bid. The senator has cagily chosen Janine to receive the “exclusive” news on the new military strategy, because he credits some of her previous profile pieces on him as having played an instrumental part in building up his present cachet in Washington. Janine is apprehensive; she knows she’s being played, but on the other hand no reporter with a pulse can resist an exclusive story. A verbal cat-and-mouse game ensues.

The film is structured around these three scenarios; all the “action” (such as it is) takes place concurrently in a professor’s office, a senator’s office, and a remote mountain ridge in Afghanistan. And that is “Lions for Lambs” in a nutshell. While the stories are obviously tied together by characters and events, the overall effect is oddly stilted and dramatically flat. Redford’s character literally spends the entire film lecturing the relatively passive Todd (a transparent proxy for us, the hapless audience). The Afghanistan scenes are chock-a-block with clichéd “Blackhawk Down” movie heroics.

The only real acting sparks are ignited courtesy of la Streep, who has some spirited moments with Cruise. Cruise is OK, though basically playing himself, and in essence replaying a suspiciously similar scene he did in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”, where an arrogant, egotistical control freak of a media star sits down with a reporter and spins like a dervish. Full disclosure: I am not a huge Tom Cruise fan (there, I said it).

I really wanted to like this film, really I did. Historically, Redford has proven himself to be a thoughtful and intelligent filmmaker-but I can’t really recommend this one. I applaud his effort to snap our present generation of future leaders out of their videogame stupor, challenging them to think hard about what our government is really up to; but if you’re going to rip a story out of today’s headlines and turn it into a movie, you’ve got to give the kids something more exciting to watch than a glorified C-Span broadcast.

It’s a shame, really- because the audience he really needs to reach is going to stay away from this film in droves. At the sparsely attended Saturday matinée screening I attended here in Seattle, I glanced around and found myself essentially looking at fellow choir members, nodding sympathetically while thoughtfully stroking our salt-and-pepper goatees. But are any of us going to rush home and announce our candidacy? Not likely.

Maybe Cruise and Redford would get more mileage out of their film if they arrange showings for high school civics and poly sci college classes (no, I’m not being facetious). Otherwise, the only way you are going to successfully market a film with a socio-political message to the “Jackass” demographic is to follow Sacha Baron Cohen’s lead.

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Savvy Dems

by digby

As I wrote in a post the other day, the “savvy” Dem consultants are pushing their clients to go punitive on the Hispanic population so they can take immigration “off the table” and make the Republicans talk about something else. (I know … ) They are apparently determined not to take advantage of the huge opening the Republicans have made with their hysteria on the subject, to motivate and empower a huge new Democratic voting bloc.

Here’s reason number 5,899, why this is incredibly stupid:

Smith remains the most common surname in the United States, according to a new analysis released yesterday by the Census Bureau. But for the first time, two Hispanic surnames — Garcia and Rodriguez — are among the top 10 most common in the nation, and Martinez nearly edged out Wilson for 10th place.

The number of Hispanics living in the United States grew by 58 percent in the 1990s to nearly 13 percent of the total population, and cracking the list of top 10 names suggests just how pervasively the Latino migration has permeated everyday American culture.

One of the reasons Karl Rove was so anxious to get comprehensive immigration reform done was because he can count. It’s not just because he loves Mexican food (who doesn’t?) that he worked like a madman to claim some of that big pile of votes. He and his successors will reluctantly settle for vote suppression if that’s their only hope, but they know it’s pretty hard to suppress that many people if they are motivated and energized. That’s why they are now busily pimping the immigration issue and daring the Democrats to defy them. They need to make sure as many Latinos stay home next November as they can.

In our two party system, building coalitions is a fundamental necessity for both. Big new voting blocs don’t come along very often and the party that grabs it when it does is likely to be the party that gets a real mandate to enact its agenda. The Republicans empowered the previously politically unorganized Christian right 30 years ago and it was the key to their movement’s ascendancy:

“With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. ‘Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That’s it, Falwell exclaimed. That’s the name of the organization.’ [David Grann, “Robespierre of the Right,” New Republic, October 27, 1997]

They saw it again, with the growth of the Latino bloc. But they ran into a problem within their own coalition of racists and corporatists, who have radically different ideas of what kind of party they want. The corporatists don’t care about the Latino vote but they do care about cheap labor and the racists don’t want to be in any party includes a large number of racial minorities (a few are ok, just to prove they aren’t really racists.) Rove was going to try to appeal on social issues since Latinos are very family oriented and tend to be Catholics. But he couldn’t get past the Tancredo wing and he lost that battle. The only thing left is to try to hold back the tide and ensure that Hispanics feel as disenfranchised as possible by getting the Democrats on board with the immigrant bashing and cranking up the phony “vote fraud” machine.

Democrats need to figure out a way to address the underlying issues that have many American working people upset and feeling insecure while insuring Latinos are treated decently and with compassion and fairness, whether migrant or citizen. Harsh, enforcement-only crackdowns on undocumented workers sow fear and create havoc in immigrant communities and the daily lives of citizens and undocumented alike.

The Democratic party, if only for self interest, if not basic human decency, must resist efforts to fan the right wing flames on this issue and insist on comprehensive immigration reform instead of harsh legislation that will only benefit the Republicans. Everyone knows Republicans do this stuff. Democrats helping them do it is both immoral and stupid.

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Ombudsman/Comedian

by digby

This is the funniest thing I’ve read all week:

Post journalists — whether reporter, columnist, copy editor or critic — are private citizens. But they must not do anything that makes the paper look less than professional. In short, don’t embarrass The Post.

[…]

Post journalists can get angry. They can have thoughts as bad as any other human being. But they can’t say them in public or put them in writing and send them out into the world. That damages The Post’s credibility.

She’s killing me…

H/t to bb

Sharp Notes

by digby

Matthews had a body language expert on today. He was only interested in the interplay between Clinton and Obama so they didn’t look at anyone else. In a nutshell, the body language expert basically said that Obama didn’t seem all that comfortable in that format but that Hillary did. He also complimented Obama on being in control and knowing not to make the mistake of being too physically aggressive with Hillary, which Matthews implied was something his handlers had advised him to do, but Obama refused and so looked weak. (He should have walked up to her and screamed right in her face like Matthews does, I guess, and shown everybody what a real man is.) Chris also implied that it was somewhat unfair that Hillary was shorter than the men because it made them look churlish when they loomed over her in a threatening fashion. Whatever.

I would argue that all discussions of their body language are stupid, but we’re apparently going to be treated with this nonsense for as long as Chris Matthews is fixated on this gender issue so we might as well see what it reveals about him, if not the candidates.

This passage shows why some women react with such fury when Matthews and his ilk go on about it:

CM: … Here’s Hillary Clinton reacting to the attacks on her. I hear the sharp notes coming out of her mouth there. Is that bad for her? You know like in piano music, the notes seem a half a note too sharp. Is that gonna hurt?

BLE: There’s a little but of that going on. Whenever she raises her voice there’s a danger that she’ll start to sound a little bit shrill. But her whole body language and tone of voice there were basically saying “give me a break.” That was her basic message there.

CM: Yeah I think it working. Let’s take a look at another one. This is where she glares at the other guys. Look at that posture there John. [She standing with her hands loosely folded low in front of her body, watching Obama speak.] Again it’s the height difference. There’s a certain way of looking up at these guys. I guess there’s no way of avoiding it, but boy it looks … uh … judgmental, let’s put it that way.

Thrashing Through Cyberspace reminded me of an earlier Matthews comment:

We were watching Hillary Clinton earlier tonight and she was giving a campaign barn burner speech, which is harder to give for a women — it can grate on some men when they listen to it….fingernails on a blackboard perhaps….

You’ll notice that he’s talking about all women there, not Hillary Clinton specifically.He believes that when any woman raises her voice — as politicians must do on the stump — they sound like fingernails on a blackboard or a sharp unpleasant noise. He just can’t stand the sound of it. And he just can’t stop talking about it.

Matthews and the rest of the MSNBC varsity club don’t have any self-awareness, so I know they also don’t have a clue about what’s driving this pathetic show of misogyny, but these particular comments are not new to me. I suspect I’m not alone in having been told by men over the years to “correct” my voice — that it’s too strident, too shrill, too grating. That I was being “emotional” and a little bit “hysterical.” “Shhhh”, “Tone it down, you’re hurting my ears.” “Settle down.” I would guess that most opinionated, smart women who’ve worked in corporate America (or had a bad boyfriend) know what I’m talking about.

It took me a long time to realize that it tends to happen when I’m winning an argument and that it’s actually a bit of misdirection which often, depending on your personality and self-confidence, results in either getting spitting mad or wilting. It can be extremely effective at derailing a good point — and infantalizing women, particularly when it’s done in public.

I don’t think Matthews and his posse are necessarily trying to distract Hillary, of course. They’re trying to distract the voters. Their attitude is reflexive and not conscious at all, as far as I can tell. Some of these people obviously have personal issues with women in authority while others are just lazy, I think, and fall back on stereotypes to end an argument or express more complex emotions. (Or maybe they’re just assholes, which is how I usually categorize them in my own life.) They automatically recoil at the sound of a woman’s voice raised in passionate argument (or humor), whether political or personal. I’ve seen it many times.

I wonder if Chris Matthews realizes that every time he or one of his fellow gasbags blithely reveal their sexist lizard brains like this, another little feminist gets her (or his) wings.

Update: Oh Jesus. It’s one thing for some rude McCain supporter to do this. This is quite another:

Politico chief political columnist Roger Simon began his November 16 column by asserting, “The (rhymes with rich) is back.” Simon began his column with that phrase just two days after his colleague, Politico chief political writer Mike Allen, responded to a question about referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) as a “bitch” by saying, “All right. But what Republican voter hasn’t thought that? What voter in general hasn’t thought that?” Allen made his comment on the November 14 edition of CNN’s American Morning while discussing a recent campaign event in Hilton Head, South Carolina, during which a questioner asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), “How do we beat the bitch?” — presumably referring to Clinton. McCain called the question an “excellent” one, later adding, “I respect Senator Clinton. I respect anyone who gets the nomination of the Democrat [sic] Party.”

Here’s the Mike Allen exchange:

CHETRY: All right Mike, does that hurt McCain?

ALLEN: Oh, give me a break. Of course not. First of all, I think it’s kind of funny. You watch that tape, it’s clear to him who she was referring to. He could have said, whoever were you talking about? Which might have been the deftest way to handle it.

CHETRY: But he said that’s an excellent question.

ALLEN: All right. But what Republican voter hasn’t thought that? What voter in general hasn’t thought that?

And what people like about McCain is his straight talk, his candor, and if he had folded or buckled under that question, that would have looked ridiculous.

No, straight talking McCain, the war hero, who talks incessantly about honor and sacrifice and patriotism could have politely and humorously said, “Senator Clinton is a colleague of mine and I would never use that word to describe her. Besides, my 95 year old mother would kill me …” Instead, he laughed like a silly schoolboy, just as all these people do, right before they start lecturing us on decorum and civility.

I was inclined to ignore this. Supporters say what they will say and John McCain has long shown a very nasty sense of humor. But clearly, it’s a problem now that the Village little league team is giggling and snorting over it like Beavis and Butthead on steroids, and deciding that it’s perfectly ok to call Hillary Clinton “the bitch.”

As Charles Pierce says:

The other night, talking with my man Olbermann, greasily hiding behind what was the living definition of a s**t-eating grin, Milbank explained his take on the “How do we beat the bitch?” controversy currently plaguing John McCain, who is not, Milbank was quick to point out, running for “knighthood in some order of chivalry.” He further explained that McCain was smart enough to realize that it would “be suicide to quarrel with this phraseology.”

So now it is not only politically permissible — but the very essence of shrewd politics — to go along with calling Senator Hillary Clinton almost anything. Why stop here? Why not just call her a “c**t”? That’d be a brilliant tactical maneuver, wouldn’t it, Dana? Go for the gold, boys.

Yeah, keep it up fellas. The bitches are, like, totally loving it.

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“And The Gladiators Enter The Arena”

by digby

Before we leave the tedious subject of last night’s debate behind, I did want to highlight what was the single most embarrassing exchange of the night:

BLITZER: While they continue the photo-op over here, I want to bring in some of our reporters and analysts to give us a sense of what we can expect tonight.

We have the best political team watching all of this unfold.

Gloria Borger, what are you going to be looking for as we get ready? This debate is about to begin.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we know that tonight is going to be a really tough night for Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama and John Edwards are going to challenge her, not only on her position on immigration, but on all kinds of issues. They have to break through, one of them, as the alternative to Hillary Clinton here tonight.

We are also going to be watching to see how she handles their attacks. Wolf, I think she has to engage tonight. She can’t just float above it all. She has to take them on as well. And I expect her to do it.

BLITZER: John King, what are you looking for?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think Gloria is dead on. The pressure is most of all on Senator Clinton, who has to reassert her command of this race, after a tough few weeks.

But, also, Wolf, there are significant policy disagreements. The Democrats agree for the most part on the big issues. But there are some significant policy disagreements on immigration, and also on what would the role of U.S. troops be in Iraq. All of the Democrats say they would get out as soon as possible.

But they do have disagreements about whether the troops remaining during that pullout would say, block Iranian influence. That’s a disagreement between Obama and Clinton. As we get closer and closer to Iowa, the voters are tuned in, paying much more close attention to the details. And there’s a great opportunity for them tonight.

BLITZER: Campbell Brown and John Roberts are going to be joining me in the questioning during this first hour of this debate. Campbell, give us a sense of what you’re looking at.

CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I think, to just follow up a little bit on what Gloria said, it will be interesting to watch Senator Clinton. And, obviously, she’s under a lot of pressure tonight, given her performance at the last debate.

But what I think will be more interesting is whether she decides, as some have suggested she should, to go after her opponents, not only to aggressively defend herself, but to really get in there and mix it up with Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have been most aggressive in going after her. Or will she do what she has tended to do in the previous debates, which is sort of take the high road , to try to stay focused on the issues, and to continue to sort of portray herself as the inevitable candidate to be?

BLITZER: And, John, a quick thought from you, John Roberts.

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR Well, it will be interesting to watch how John Edwards and Barack Obama comport themselves tonight.

They know that there’s a crack in Hillary Clinton’s suit of armor. Can they get inside there and wedge it open just a little bit more? It’s natural for John Edwards to go in and try to do that. Barack Obama, he’s got a different personality, tends to shy away from direct conflict like that. We will see how strong he can be tonight.

BLITZER: Our Emmy Award-winning best political team on television, they’re standing by. We will have complete analysis, all that coming up.

Have you ever heard anything this vapid in your lives? It’s like Howard Cosell on valium.

If you didn’t know better you would have thought it was a Saturday Night Live sketch. And to make it even more ludicrous, they were speaking in hushed tones, as if they didn’t want to “disturb the play” like at a golfing tournament.

John King is the only one out of all of them who said anything substantive at all, and that was after making the obligatory, “I think Gloria is dead on, Hillary has to reassert command, blah,blah,blah,” like a trained seal. But at least he thinks the actual issues of disagreement among some of the candidates are worth mentioning.

Sadly, I think it’s pretty clear that the reason for that is that he’s the only who knows anything about them. The others are just repeating what they’ve been hearing at the Village pundit circle jerk society meetings for the past two weeks and have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. (And somebody needs to talk to John Roberts about his metaphors.)

Update: No sorry, this wasn’t the most embarrassing moment of the night, after all. Apparently CNN forced that college student to ask that stupid diamonds or pearls question. That’s really rich, considering they have been mercilessly pimping the Hillary question controversy even going so far as to call it “plant-gate.”

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Standing Up For His Service

by digby

…not his comment.

Think Progress has the moving moment of the debate posted at their site:

At tonight’s CNN Democratic debate, the candidates heard a strong warning against U.S. military action against Iran from Christopher Jackson, a Marine who served three tours of duty in Iraq:

I feel that if we continue on the path we’re at, that’s where we’re going to end up — in Iran. And that’s not what our troops need. Our troops need to come home now.

The entire audience, including the candidates, stood and gave Jackson a rousing ovation.

But that’s not exactly right. The standing ovation came before he asked the question, in a spontaneous show of gratitude for his service. It was after that when he asked the question. All those Democrats in the place stood for him without knowing what he was going to say.

It’s an important distinction, sadly. Limbaugh will undoubtedly be calling him a phony soldier first thing tomorrow for having the temerity to speak out against the war and the various screamers will be freaking out about the crazed Las Vegas hippies in that stadium, (just like the Wellstone funeral.)

Update: Apparently this post is unclear. I thought it was a nice thing that everyone stood for him based on his service, not that I thought there was anything wrong with it. It would have been fine with me if they’d stood for his statement as well.

Immigration Debate

by digby

Blitzer: Driver’s licenses! Yes or No!

Obama: It’s not so simple. We need comprehensive immigration reform and I think …

Blitzer: Yes or no! What about the driver’s licenses?!

Richardson: The congress has failed to act. It’s a matter of public safety…

Blitzer: Yes or no! Yes or no! Yes or no!

Edwards: It’s a complicated problem…

Blitzer: Huh? Driver’s licenses! Yes or No!

Kucinich: There is no such thing as an illegal human being. I would repeal Nafta.

Blitzer: NAFTA??? WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING??? DRIVER’S LICENSES! YES OR NO!!!

Biden: No

* Not a real transcript. More of an impressionistic collage.

Blitzer refused to let any of them explain their positions on immigration but rather insisted on this ridiculous, parochial question about driver’s licenses as if the fate of the world depended on getting a yes or no answer. He particularly dogged Obama who has a nuanced and reasonable position that requires explication, just as Russert did to Hillary Clinton last week on the same stupid topic. (She just caved, which is being touted by the gasbags as a very savvy move.)

Only bumper sticker slogans are allowed in American politic, which explains why George W. Bush has been president for seven long years.

Disclosure

by digby

The CNN roundtable analyzing the upcoming Democratic debate features Campbell Brown making her debut with CNN. It’s funny though. I didn’t hear any disclosure that she is married to someone who worked for the Bush administration and is now on the Romney campaign.

Ron Brownstein quit the LA Times when they told him he couldn’t cover the presidential race since his wife works for the McCain campaign. But no harm, no foul:

Ronald Brownstein, who joins the Atlantic Media Company as political director next week, is the type of reporter who reads the 1994 CBO score of the Clinton health care plan. For fun.

He is the political reporter who takes policy seriously, honing his craft at National Journal, after all, before becoming the chief political correspondent at the Los Angeles Times and then its national affairs columnist after the paper objected to the woman he fell in love with. [emphasis mine]

He is the political reporter who other political reporters secretly envy because he is so damn smart and so damn perceptive. (He was a Pulitzer finalist, twice.)

It’s just wrong to assume journalists’ marriages might influence their coverage. They’re are objective and unbiased by definition. Pulitzer Prize winners! They have jobs to do. Like determining whether Hillary’s husband is going to be secretly running the country. 0r whether Mrs Obama is a detriment or an asset to her husband’s campaign. Or whether it’s appropriate for John Edwards to continue running for president when his wife has a cancer diagnosis.

Or writing a new book which essentially says that now that the Republicans have completely spent themselves in a decades long orgy of rhetorically violent partisanship, it’s time for the Democrats to let bygones be bygones.

It’s just nobody’s business if reporters have biases or conflicts of interest. They will rise above them because they are professionals. Certainly there’s no need to know if they are married to someone who is working on a Republican presidential campaign. Why ever would anyone ever think so?

Update: James Carville, married to a Fred Thompson operative, was on the post debate show and failed to discolose his relationship with the Clinton campaign when he declared her the winner.

The Village is an incestuous little berg, isn’t it?

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More Taser Torture

by digby

Did anyone see that Stephen Spielberg Tom Hanks movie called The Terminal, where a non-English speaking eastern European traveler got caught in an airport nightmare?

In real life it isn’t such a jolly story:

The video was shot by Canadian traveller Paul Pritchard and handed over to police, and has only just been returned to him.

It starts before the police arrive, with Mr Dziekanski seen through a glass wall in a customs area. He appears agitated, sweating and breathing heavily. Airport security officials and passengers watch from the other side.

Having landed 10 hours earlier, he is seen pacing back and forth through an automatic door, standing briefly in the doorway with a small folding table, and then later with a chair.

At one point, he takes what looks like a laptop computer off a counter and throws it to the ground, and then throws the small table against the glass wall.

Four policemen then walk into view. They walk through the glass doors towards Mr Dziekanski, who turns his back on them. Witnesses say he appeared to pick up a stapler.

Seconds later, Mr Dziekanski is stunned by a Taser and falls down screaming and convulsing.

He is stunned a second time, and then the police officers restrain him on the floor. Mr Dziekanski’s screams die down, and he is seen lying still.

A voice is heard saying “code red”, which is code for a medical emergency.

An autopsy found no sign of drugs or alcohol in Mr Dziekanski’s system, and failed to pinpoint the cause of death.

Airport mix-up

Walter Kosteckyj, the victim’s family lawyer, said Mr Dziekanski’s mother had seen portions of the video and had approved its release to the public.

“She had a son in distress, he was looking for help, he was frightened, and he didn’t get that help,” Mr Kosteckyj said.

He said he was disturbed by the video because Mr Dziekanski was not violent.

“I was expecting to see a confrontation, a discussion and things go sideways, then the tasering… That’s not what you see,” he said.

Mr Dziekanski was coming to Canada to be with his mother, Zofia

Mr Dziekanski, who had not flown before, had boarded a plane a day earlier in Germany, and arranged to meet his mother at the baggage carousel in the international terminal.

Neither of them knew the baggage carousel was inside a secure area, with no view of the public arrivals hall area, except for a short distance through sliding glass doors, Mr Kosteckyj said.

No airport, customs or security employees at the airport apparently tried to help either of them, he added.

Eventually Mr Dziekanski emerged into the public area, but his mother had left after six hours and Mr Dziekanski apparently panicked, the lawyer said.

The man had a panic attack (maybe a heart attack) when he got stuck in a no-mans land at the airport. The police decided in less than 30 seconds to put him on the ground with excruciating pain. they did it again when he lunged out the door screaming in pain. And then he died.

You can see the video at the link. It will make you sick.

Tasers are torture, not that different from America’s favorite technique for getting people to cooperate: waterboarding. It’s only a matter of degree.

Apparently, if it doesn’t leave any marks or any lasting damage (other than being deathly afraid that the authorities will do it to you again if you make a wrong move) torture is just fine. If a few losers aren’t tough enough to take it, well, you can’t make an omelette without cracking a few heads.

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Taunting With A Tire Iron

by digby

So Limbaugh has been pimping a bogus Drudge story that somebody has been threatening Wolf Blitzer not to “pull a Russert” on Hillary Clinton in tonight’s debate, and go easy on her. (I’m not kidding.)

Wolf laughed it off and said that nobody had threatened him. Limbaugh and others are still at it:

LIMBAUGH: You know what Wolf ought to do at that debate on Thursday night? He ought to have a disclaimer prior to every question. “This question approved by Ann Lewis. This question approved by Bill Clinton. This question approved by Howard Wolfson. This question approved by Hillary Clinton herself. This question planted by Hillary Clinton herself.”

Here’s the only safe line of questions for Wolf Blitzer to ask Hillary Clinton at the debate on Thursday night: “Mrs. Clinton, what points would you like to make this evening? Mrs. Clinton, do you need more time to make your points? Mrs. Clinton, what would you like to be asked about now, as we’re nearing the end of the debate? Mrs. Clinton, have we asked the right questions to help you get your points across? Because frankly, we haven’t understood a thing you’ve said tonight.” Well, better not throw that in there. We know Wolf’s already got a reservation he’s not aware of to Fort Marcy Park.

This is what’s called working the refs. Limbaugh and the boyz are basically calling Blitzer a chickenshit and daring him to prove them wrong. The “pulling-a-Russert part is so absurd that it makes me wonder if the wingnuts aren’t losing their touch.

Blitzer, needless to say, will work very hard to show that none ‘o them bitches told him to say anything. He won’t even know he’s doing it.

Update: If you haven’t been reading the series Somerby is doing on Chris Matthews this week, you are really missing the boat. I confess that until recently, I hadn’t paid close enough attention to Matthews’ misogyny. I was well aware of his worship for the “manly characteristic,” and have written about it extensively. But I failed to see just how much he has been focused on this idea over the years that women are a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty, particularly as voters. Somerby has it all documented and it’s really, really revolting:

But yes—that July 29 [1999] program was pretty much like other Hardballs. Except for what happened when Mary Boyle tried to defend Gore’s performance—when we got to see, as we saw last week, Matthews’ familiar loathing of women, especially liberal women.

In fairness, Boyle made a mistake on this show. A first-time guest, she tried to offer sensible commentary about Gore’s actual Cleveland speech, which she had actually witnessed. As noted above, when she said that Gore hadn’t seemed like a sci-fi monster—when she even tried to list the issues he had discussed—Boyle quickly found herself confronted with Matthews’ standard lunacy. Here’s a slightly fuller excerpt, so you can drink it in:

MATTHEWS: Mary Boyle, who ran for the Senate out there. Go ahead, Mary.

BOYLE: Listen, the vice president was in Cleveland today. I want to tell you just very briefly about it, because you probably would like covering the news.

MATTHEWS: What mode was he in? Was he in—was he in the quiet mode, or that sort of—

SCARBOROUGH: Did he scream?

MATTHEWS: —Clutch Cargo craziness he gets into, or was he—

BOYLE: No, no, but he was—

MATTHEWS: —or was he in the “Altered States” where the head starts to bubble? What state was he in today?

That was the way this sick, disturbed kook was covering your White House election.

At any rate, Boyle was on the wrong program. “I want to tell you just very briefly about [Gore’s speech],” she said, “because you probably would like covering the news.” Condescendingly saying, “Can I give you a chance here?” Matthews quickly took the discussion back into dumber waters. But when Boyle spoke up in a later segment, the full force of her host’s scorn was unleashed. He told his guest he would speak very slowly so she could get what he was saying:

MATTHEWS: Mary—Mary, let me explain—

BOYLE: OK, Chris.

MATTHEWS: —why we’re doing this now.

BOYLE: All right.

MATTHEWS: The reason we’re doing this now, to give you a little bit of history, Mary—

BOYLE: Yes.

MATTHEWS: And I say this to a fellow Irish-American. The reason I’m telling you this very clearly—I’m speaking like Al Gore now, very slowly—

BOYLE: Very slowly.

MATTHEWS: —like, like, like Mr. Rogers—

SUSAN MOLINARI: There’s still a little too much passion there.

MATTHEWS (overt condescension): The reason we’re doing this, Mary, is because in the last election, if only men had gotten to vote, we would have President Dole right now. Men voted for Dole, after running the—good guy, worst campaign in history. Men still hated Clinton so much, they voted for Dole.

Somerby wonders why nobody has done a serious profile of Matthews. That’s a really good question, isn’t it? You’d think he’d have been done in Vanity Fair or Esquire or even the NY Times Magazine. Nope.

It’s funny how the nasty, crazy Village gasbags who populate the political cable world never seem to get that kind of treatment, isn’t it?

Update II: Here’s a little bit of that amazing bit from Hardball last night regarding the Judith Regan allegation that FOX News president Roger Ailes told her not to reveal her relationship to Bernard Kerik because it might hurt Rudy Giuliani:

MATTHEWS: Well, then why are we talking about it? Why is it an issue if we don‘t even know what the hell she‘s saying? Is this just—is she just holding them up for money? What‘s she up to here? …

MATTHEWS: You know what it strikes me as? A media echo chamber here. You have got her lawyered up to the hilt suing for $100 million. Whatever that means, it makes a headline. You know, I could sue for a billion dollars…

MATTHEWS: … If you wanted to shut her up, you wouldn‘t have fired her and kicked her out the door and humiliated her, because that guarantees a lawsuit. You have got to figure that somebody like Judith Regan is litigious as hell. Why would they set her up as a main enemy? It makes no sense to me why they would do that…

And, number two, then they come back with Howard Rubenstein, the number-one P.R. guy in New York, to say it‘s preposterous. You know, it does seem like “Bonfire of the Vanities” to me, this whole thing.

CARTER: Well, it does appear to be shaky on the merits, when you look at it.

But—but, again, the point is that—OK, here‘s my point. It‘s been page-one news in almost every major newspaper around the country.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

CARTER: And Judith Regan knew, by making these allegations, exactly what she was doing.

MATTHEWS: I know.

CARTER: And, so, Giuliani finds himself in a position—and he did this, Chris, quite a bit in New York City as mayor. Again, I want to be very clear, cleaned up the city of New York.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

CARTER: But, on topics that he didn‘t feel comfortable with, like most politicians, he tried to defer and deflect and not answer the question.

MATTHEWS: Can I ask you really a New York City question?

CARTER: Go for it, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Does Rupert Murdoch have to write a big check to Judith Regan to shut this down?

Scooter Libby’s biggest mistake, apparently, was in failing to offer Matthews and Russert a big enough bribe. This is what passes for journalistic integrity in the year 2007.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget that Hillary Clinton claps her hands like a communist Chinese illegal immigrant.

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