Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Dial It In

Kos has created a great database of Sinclair affiliate information so that you can conveniently call and write your local station and its advertisers. It’s best is you are actually a local to make an impact on local businesses. Kos also has a convenient list of natinal advertisers for all of us to contact.

I would suggest calling instead of writing, although a snail mail letter is very powerful too. To that end I’ve prepared a couple of introductory talking points to get you started if you aren’t comfortable with doing stuff like this.

First, don’t get mad. These people are very far away from the corporate decision and it serves no purpose to take out our anger on them. Tell them what you think and what you plan to do. Don’t get bogged down in talking about your feelings or how upset you are by this. Make sure you mention that you will not buy their product or patronize their business if they support this thing and tell them that you are planning to talk about this with others to spread the word.

Calling the station managers and telling them that you are going to call advertisers is a good first step. I imagine that they are no longer talking calls today, but you can leave a message. Then call your local advertisers and tell them what you think. Use words like “controversy”, “cheating”, “unfair”,”unbusinesslike”, “scam”, “fraud” — words with which businesses don’t like to be associated.

Stay calm and make your case. These businesses don’t want to deal with this crap and there’s no reason to preemptively punish them for the acts of Sinclair. Speak more in sorrow than in anger “that it’s come to this.”

Here are a few phrases you might find will help you get started. Write in more in the comments section if you think of them and I’ll pick the best ones and put them up too.

Sales managers:

Broadcast television stations have a unique responsibility to be guardians of the democratic process. You will not watch, nor will you patronize businesses that do not respect the rules and the law when it comes to fairness in elections.

You are going to call local advertisers and tell them that as long as they support this station’s controversial intention of showing a political advertisement as news, you are not going to buy their product or patronize their business. Sinclair is cheating and you don’t think that’s fair. This is too important.

Corporate headquarters coming in and telling local news departments what they have to call news is just wrong. You are going to tell the local advertisers how you feel about that too. Local communities should have a say in what is shown on their own television stations. This is a scam on the good people of ____.

Local advertisers:

You don’t care who somebody plans to vote for, but you think it’s cheating for stations to run controversial political advertisements for one candidate and call it news.

You won’t be able to support businesses that fund this kind of fraudulent and unbalanced partisanship.

After 2000, you realize that every vote counts and you think that elections are important enough to get involved with. You have a lot of friends who think the same way. This is something you feel strongly enough about to change your shopping habits over. This is unbusinesslike behavior and you don’t think you can trust people who are so partisan.

You think that local communities letting corporations from out of state come in and tell local stations what they have to run us just wrong and you can’t support that.

Josh Marshall says that station affiliates are asking callers to call Sinclair headquarters instead of advertisers.

Nice try, but we’re not Republicans.

Pouty Press Tarts

Atrios has posted an excerpt from this article in which McCurry discusses Bush’s obvious insecurity, an observation with which I concur. Everything about the man oozes insecurity and immaturity, always has.

This same article contains an interesting observation about the press corpse which I also think deserves some analysis:

In late september, i spent a week on the Kerry plane. Unlike the 2000 Bush plane, which became notorious for its party atmosphere — margaritas flowed at the end of the day and affairs among the press corps were widely rumored — the feeling on the Kerry plane is professional and businesslike. It soon became apparent that many members of Kerry’s traveling press make no attempt to hide their open dislike of the candidate. The morning after Kerry had addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala on the evening of September 15th, two members of the press corps were talking on a campaign bus. “That event was stupid,” one said, referring to the previous night’s occasion — one of the largest Hispanic galas of its type. “A waste of time,” the other said.

Other reporters were just as dismissive. Kerry had gotten a series of impassioned standing ovations during his speech. But when Elisabeth Bumiller described the event in the New York Times, she said, referring to a moment when Kerry spoke an entire paragraph in flawless Spanish, “Kerry’s audience . . . listened in startled silence, then broke out into cheers and applause when he made his way through [the paragraph].”

But to report on these events accurately would mean you had to say something unqualified and positive about Kerry. This is something his traveling press corps has been — and still is — loath to do. On the evening of September 21st, outside an auditorium in Orlando, where inside more than 7,500 people were screaming wildly as Kerry spoke, Candy Crowley stood next to the venue and reported on CNN that Kerry was “trying . . . to rev up the crowd.” The implication was unmistakable: Kerry’s supporters in Florida were resistant, even standoffish. Just to make sure Crowley was able to get away with downplaying the event as she was, CNN never showed a wide shot of the large, cheering crowd.

As a result of the media bias against Kerry, there is an unmistakable disconnect between what you see on the trail when you travel with him and the way he is depicted in the media. On Mike McCurry’s first trips on the plane, the Thursday and Friday after Labor Day, he immediately identified the animosity that existed between Kerry and the press corps. Specifically, the traveling press were mad because Kerry had not given a press conference since August 9th, five days into the SBVT controversy. McCurry realized he needed to fix the problem at once.

But, that can’t be it. Bush never gives press conferences and he treats reporters like shit, yet the press has been fawning toward him since 2000. Why is it that the press corpse persists in treating Democratic candidates this way?

I don’t think it’s political. I think it’s an institutional habit of mind that they are too lazy or too self-absorbed to challenge. “The Democrat” is an object of derision and mistrust, no matter who he or she is. Like so many others in this country, the media have absorbed and internalized the right wing propaganda about the Democratic Party and their subconscious attitudes and behaviors are a reflection of that. It’s not an ideological or even a political bias. It’s a personal bias born of right wing cant. Reporters need to take a good hard look at themselves and recognize that they’ve been spun in the worst way possible and they need to unwind themselves from the bullshit.

It is quite a testament to Kerry’s political acumen and Bush’s ineptitude that we have managed to stay so close in the last two elections considering this pervasive media bias against Democratic politicians.

Kos discusses today the necessity of keeping up the fight even after we win this November — it’s a long slog, as Rummy memorably said. Trying to unspin the press from their toxic habits of mind is part of that process.

Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni

Via First Draft and Hesiod, here are the Sinclair online polls. Take just a moment to stop impending fascism, won’t you folks?

Las Vegas

Minneapolis

Flint

Buffalo

Las Vegas (second station)

Milwaukee

Oklahoma City

Pittsburgh

Raleigh

Rochester

Tampa

Update: Check out this post by Josh Marshall if you haven’t already. Airing your complaints to the local advertisers is a powerful way to put pressure on these stations.

Not Into Nuisances

Ezra wonders Why Does George W. Bush Hate Brent Scowcroft?

He must hate lil’ Davy Horowitz’s favorite tin soldier, Ralph Peters too:

The security environment will improve as Saddam, Osama and their most virulent supporters are killed. Eliminating terrorist operatives, masterminds and supportive dictators brings vital results. But we will never reduce Islamic terrorism to nuisance level unless we address the greater evil behind the deadly strikes.

This respected Fox News terrorism analyst has similar heretical ideas.

Why on earth would anyone ever think that the tactic of terrorism could be reduced to nuisance levels when it is the ultimate battle between good ‘n evul? My God, there has never been a threat as grave as this in the entire history of the world. It cannot just be reduced, we must kill all the bad guys and spread freedom and goodness and puppies and ice cream! Don’t these people know anything?

Rocking Chair Babies

Of all modern popular culture touchstones, I have to say that the South Park phenomenon interests me about the least. I find Stone and Parker’s alleged iconoclasm pretty boring. That’s just me.

This morning I watched an exchange on Fox News between two vacuous talking heads, though, that made me realize that they really are a couple of useful idiots for the right. The gasbags were going on and on about how silly it was for Sean Penn to get angry about a purported message in their new puppet movie in which they tell young people not to vote. It sounded like typical FOX blather, and I assumed that Penn was being his usual wingnut bait. But, the gasbags then took the South Park silliness and applied it to an indictment of Rock the Vote and other youth outreach groups in general by condemning the youth vote in general as uninformed, mostly by using liberal arguments as examples. It became apparent that there is a subtle GOP youth suppression campaign going on, for reasons that are obvious.

Here’s Parker and Stone’s response to Sean Penn’s letter in today’s Salon.

According to Stone, “when you read it, the letter comes from such a high place of arrogance, you know, [deep, serious voice] ‘You guys are young guys! If you don’t have children, you can’t say anything about anything!’ And the whole voting thing. All we ever said was that we thought that uninformed people should not vote — on either side of the political spectrum. It doesn’t matter who you’re gonna vote for. If you really don’t know who you’re gonna vote for, or are uninformed, or haven’t really thought about it? Just stay home. Don’t let people fucking shame you into going to the polls.”

Added Parker: “If you have absolutely no idea, fuck it.”

“If you really don’t know or you’re just going to vote for George Bush because he’s already in office, or you’re gonna vote for John Kerry because he’s on the cover of Rolling Stone, don’t do that,” Stone said. “That’s lame. Just stay home. That’s all we ever said.”

An irreverent attitude that one might expect from ones so young. That 44 year old asshole Sean Penn is being a mean old man.

But, Parker is 35 and Stone is 33. Getting a little long in tooth to be protesting on the basis of their youthful impudence, don’t you think?

Et tu Russert?

Chris Bowers has a number of helpful links in this post on MYDD, if you would like to protest the Sinclair nonsense. I would imagine that Sinclair, since it is openly and proudly partisan, actually believes that this is good for their cause. (They may just be surprised to find that their stations start screaming bloody murder, however, if they are harrassed day after day over this thing.)

I suspect that this will ultimately be decided by lawyers as Steve Soto and ex-commissioner Reed Hundt indicate. It may also be interesting to see what the FCC has to say about it in a general sense, although I have no hope that they would necessarily step in for the common good.

There is another avenue, to which Soto alludes in his post, that may be worth pursuing. Sinclair is insisting that this be shown as a “news” program and is offering Kerry some free airtime to respond on a panel or a call-in show in order to satisfy the McCain-Feingold law. They apparently believe that they can simply tell their stations to “call it news” without any sort of repurcussions from the news divisions of these stations or, more importantly, the network news divisions that air their nightly programs on those stations. Why is that?

This is an advertisement that is done in vitually the same format as the Swift Boat ads and even featuring many of the same sad old men who are stuck in a time warp. The local news divisions of those stations should scream bloody murder, but there are so few notions of journalistic integrity in local news left that I wouldn’t expect much. (It may be worth trying to cause dissension in those newsrooms, however, by writing some letters and calling the stations and asking the news managers and reporters about their journalistic ethics.) But, this is beyond those local stations. By insisting that this program be aired as news, Sinclair is also implicating the national news networks in their act.

ABC, CBS and NBC have a stake in this. This isn’t a local story; it involves a national election and it will be aired on a large number of their affiliate channels that also air the national news shows that are identified with those stations. It will likely be seen as having their impramatur even if they have nothing to do with it.

Will what is left of the national broadcast news media step up and use their clout to protest the corporate owners of their affiliate stations using their network’s hard won news credibility to pass off a George W. Bush campaign commercial as a news event? They really should because if they sit back and say nothing, the last shred of their independence and journalistic integrity will have been tossed into the garbage can.

It’s been a rough year for the mainstream news organizations. Maybe it’s time they spoke up for what’s right and redeemed a little bit of their honor. Unless they like being nothing but lackeys and whores, this may be one of their last chances to stand up for journalistic integrity. They won’t have too many more chances.

Partisan Gamers

Campaign Desk prints a warning from one of its readers about the Iowa Electronic markets that I think should be flooded to any news organization that decides it would be fun to write about its miraculous predictive powers in past elections:

“Once you get past the lack of acuity [of] markets … in general, there are simply too many additional problems with these minute exchanges” such as the Iowa Electronics Markets. “They are too small, have too little money at stake, and are therefore readily susceptible to undue ‘influence'” by mischief makers.

The fact is that in past elections nobody paid attention to them so there wasn’t the likelihood that anyone would think they would be worth gaming as they are this year.

Therefore, the IEM is best seen now as an unscientific online poll. The money is pretty inconsequential so it’s not very risky to make the numbers move and that’s exactly what’s happening.

There are a couple of ways to deal with this. One is to attempt to educate the media, as this piece does, about how easy it is to manipulate such a small market. The other is to fight fire with fire and put our own cash on the barrelhead.

I’m not sure how effective the first option would be since it’s never worked before. But, it might just be worth opening an account to trade in these last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s not a big enough deal to worry about, though. Still, for those with a lot of disposable income, this might be a place to wager a couple of bucks.

R.I.P. Christopher Reeve

He was a good guy who inspired us all when his previously charmed life threw him a terrible curveball. One would think that Americans, no matter the political party or religion, would all mourn a man who showed such courage and determination in the face of adversity and spoke so eloquently for others with similar disabilities. It seems almost inhuman that some people can’t feel any empathy for someone who had been a celebrated movie superhero one moment and in the next became a fragile corporeal being facing the most fundamental and difficult challenges a person can face — and who then became an inspiration and spokeman for others with the catastrophic disability he lived with from that moment on. But there are such people.

Evidently, over on Free Republic quite a few people got out of hand and made some ugly remarks about Reeve and the moderator had to remove the threads. Here are some examples of the perfectly acceptable ones that remain:

Wouldn’t rule out that Kerry might have spoke with Reeve before the last debate. Reeve might have had an idea the end was near for him and told Kerry to play up the emotional angle with stem cell research and Reeve’s own paralyzed circumstance.

Wonder if Hell is handicapped accessible..

The willingness to sacrifice another life to save his own was not worthy of the Man of Steel.

I’m sorry, but I have no compassion for this man. He suffered a terrible injury through his own fault and, instead of accepting it, he lashes out in anger against Bush.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Kerry got the news of Reeve’s death. Did he hang up and shout “YES!”? Did he dance a little jig? Did he excitedly phone McAuliffe with the news? Noone but Mama T knows…

Reeve? Is this the guy who, his picture-perfect Hollywood life having been tragically altered by an accident, spent the remainder of his life advocating the killing of unborn children so that he might walk again?

He was a 3rd-rate actor (Ever see him in any movie besides Superman? When playing a real human being, he was dreadful!). When injured living a life of luxury and leisure, he fought for vain, desperate hopes for what might keep him alive, even if it caused the deaths of millions. Contrary to mythology, he sunk into bitter, violent anger, pouring every ounce of derision he possibly could on Christianity and America. And then he simply died.

I’m sorry for Reeve’s family…his wife has stood by him for several tragic years. However, to have liberals (Ron Reagan will probably be leading the charge) milk this is disgusting. And let’s be honest…Christopher Reeve WAS doing something that was very dangerous when he broke his neck. A lot of us common folks are living with situations that just happened…beyond our control and not our fault. That’s what life is about, and we don’t have wealthy friends helping support an extravagant lifestyle.

I have a feeling that Kerry was tipped off about Reeve’s condition prior to the 2nd debate, which is why he mentioned him along with Michael J. Fox. You can bet Kerry will again mention Reeve at the 3rd debate. It is this crude, blatant exploitation of the disabled and afflicted, which make the Dems so despicable. They provide false hope in order to win debating points and votes. The implication will be that GWB caused the death of Reeve.

You could make an argument that the first implemention of “Political Correctness” was the custom of speaking better about someone after their death than while they were living. But I won’t try to make that argument here. I will say this: if it were demonstrated that Reeve, knowing the seriousness of his condition, actually made an explicit request that his possible death be used to help the Kerry campaign, all subsequent scorn would be deserved.

Oh, this is going to be disgusting. Bitter twst of fate that Reeve is mentioned by Kerry and then he dies. Or perhaps did Kerry know in advance Reeve was ill/on his deathbed?

Is there no level of filth to which these Dems won’t sink?

The main gist of the dem line is: we need to keep legal the ability to take growing humans and detroy them through abortion so we can use their body parts to help other people like Chris Reeve (potentially) live better. The bloodlust is positively demonic.

I am just not happy hearing about this this AM.

Ahh… reminds me of the Paul Wellstone rally err memorial service. Always trying to work in a political advantage over a death, aren’t they.

You think you’re cynical? I am wondering if Clark Kent would possibly pull the plug on himself in a desperate attempt to “matyrize” the stem-cell issue and help Kerry?

Reeve seemed like a nice chap until he got involved with the pro-death wing of the democrat party. We can’t always get what we want, but we often get what we deserve.

The fact is, Mr. Reeve spent his last days using his fame and access to champion the murder of unborn children.

The fact is, Mr. Reeve took very clear and very selfish political stands and used his medical condition to gin up sympathy for murder.

My point is that some people spend their entire lives breaking down traditional morality and then when they die they are eulogized as if they did as much for the world as Mother Theresa.

Reeves spent his last few years advocating the destruction of human life in order to find a cure for what ailed HIM. It may have seemed selfless to some, but in reality and objectively, it was selfish. He was looking for a cure and if it meant the destruction of unborn children to acheive that end, then too bad for them. He was not willing to let a fetus stand between him and his goalpost.

Sure hope he was a saved man. Otherwise right now he is roasting in hell.

I shudder to think what the deleted threads contained…

Reeve was a better man on his worst day in Hollywood than these solipsistic little morons could ever hope to be.

Speaking Of Unseemly Bulges

As we watch the distressing spectacle of the cable shows shilling for Junior in these last three weeks, I think it might be helpful to take a trip down memory lane. It was once much, much worse. There was a time not so long ago when the boys and girls in the press were panting and moaning and fidgeting in their seats at the mere mention of the TopGun in his Chippendale’s costume.

May 3, 2003:

MATTHEWS: Let’s go to this sub–what happened to this week, which was to me was astounding as a student of politics, like all of us. Lights, camera, action. This week the president landed the best photo of in a very long time. Other great visuals: Ronald Reagan at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, Bill Clinton on horseback in Wyoming. Nothing compared to this, I’ve got to say.

Katty, for visual, the president of the United States arriving in an F-18, looking like he flew it in himself. The GIs, the women on–onboard that ship loved this guy.

Ms. KAY: He looked great. Look, I’m not a Bush man. I mean, he doesn’t do it for me personally, especially not when he’s in a suit, but he arrived there…

MATTHEWS: No one would call you a Bush man, by the way.

Ms. KAY: …he arrived there in his flight suit, in a jumpsuit. He should wear that all the time. Why doesn’t he do all his campaign speeches in that jumpsuit? He just looks so great.

MATTHEWS: I want him to wa–I want to see him debate somebody like John Kerry or Lieberman or somebody wearing that jumpsuit.

Mr. DOBBS: Well, it was just–I can’t think of any, any stunt by the White House–and I’ll call it a stunt–that has come close. I mean, this is not only a home run; the ball is still flying out beyond the park.

MATTHEWS: Well, you know what, it was like throwing that strike in Yankee Stadium a while back after 9/11. It’s not a stunt if it works and it’s real. And I felt the faces of those guys–I thought most of our guys were looking up like they were looking at Bob Hope and John Wayne combined on that ship.

Mr. GIGOT: The reason it works is because of–the reason it works is because Bush looks authentic and he felt that he–you could feel the connection with the troops. He looked like he was sincere. People trust him. That’s what he has going for him.

MATTHEWS: Fareed, you’re watching that from–say you were over in the Middle East watching the president of the United States on this humongous aircraft carrier. It looks like it could take down Syria just one boat, right, and the president of the United States is pointing a finger and saying, `You people with the weapons of mass destruction, you people backing terrorism, look out. We’re coming.’ Do you think that picture mattered over there?

Mr. ZAKARIA: Oh yeah. Look, this is a part of the war where we have not–we’ve allowed a lot of states to do some very nasty stuff, traffic with nasty people and nasty material, and I think it’s time to tell them, you know what, `You’re going to be help accountable for this.’

MATTHEWS: Well, it was a powerful statement and picture as well.

After the segment, Chris handed out cigarettes and ice cold bottles of evian to the panel. But they had rolled over and gone to sleep.

If there has ever been a more embarrassing display of repressed erotic longing on national television, I haven’t seen it. Oh, wait:

From May 13, 2003, Via The Daily Howler:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?

LIDDY: Well, I– in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man [Official Naomi Wolf Spin-Point]. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know — and I’ve worn those because I parachute — and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those, run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

“You know, it’s funny. I shouldn’t talk about ratings,” he [Matthews] said, also gazing at Bush’s crotch. “But last night was a riot because … these pictures were showing last night, and everybody’s tuning in to see these pictures again.”

I plan to make it my life’s work to remind Chris Matthews of these little exchanges. It was the day that Matthews revealed that he and the other mediawhores were not just shilling for the GOP for professional reasons, but that they actually had a barely contained (and inexplicable) sexual attraction to George W. Bush. It explained so very much. Today, when you see him and Mrs Greenspan rushing to proclaim Cheney a big winner,for instance, perhaps it is best understood as a way of distancing themselves from an unrequited love while leaving the door open in case there is still a chance for a passionate encounter, for old time’s sake.

If there is one question that I would love to see somebody ask any member of the Bush administration, it is how come they are fighting for their lives when less than eighteen short months ago they not only had a 90% approval rating, they had the entire US press corpse on its knees, quivering and drooling in anticipation of a mere taste of the manly presidential life force. Seems to me that’s the real story of this election. How in the hell did they fall so far, so fast?

As Ye Sew…

It appears that the the latest presidential bulge pictures — the one in the middle of his back, this time — are making their way into the major news media. And the White House has no decent explanation for them. Indeed, they seem to be in a bit of a tizzy.

First they said that pictures showing the bulge might have been doctored. But then, when the bulge turned out to be clearly visible in the television footage of the evening, they offered a different explanation.

“There was nothing under his suit jacket,” said Nicolle Devenish, a campaign spokeswoman.

“It was most likely a rumpling of that portion of his suit jacket, or a wrinkle in the fabric.”

Ms. Devenish could not say why the “rumpling” was rectangular.

Nor was the bulge from a bulletproof vest, according to campaign and White House officials; they said Mr. Bush was not wearing one.

This article on the BBC web-site, hilariously headlined “Bush’s bulge stirs media rumours” is equally skeptical of the explanations, but they go the extra mile and interview the president’s tailor, who says that it was simply a pucker. A perfectly rectangular pucker.

I believe that the identity of Hopalong Bushie’s tailor … a man profiled here on Hillnews.com named Georges de Paris, provides the answer to the mystery of the bulge:

Georges de Paris — that’s his real name — is a household name at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., where he is regularly summoned these days from his cluttered shop two blocks away to measure and fit President Bush, just as he did his father and every other president of the last 40 years.

[…]

de Paris, who became a U.S. citizen in 1969, met the current president while altering slacks for his father. Shortly after the younger Bush was declared the winner of the contested 2000 election, the White House called again.

[…]

Since then, de Paris has made numerous visits to the White House, often on a crash basis, to add a suit or sport coat to the president’s wardrobe or to measure and fit aides like Chief of Staff Andrew Card for custom-made suits that cost between $2,000 and $3,000.

Oooh la la. Monsieur de Paris charges quite the pretty penny for his creations, doesn’t he?

I hate to say it, but of I were a NASCAR dad or a security mom, I’d be more than a little bit concerned that this french “tailor” may have put that perfectly rectangular bulge in the preznit’s suit to spy for Chirac. It’s just the kind of thing those old Europeans do…

And just what in the heck is our manly preznit doing letting some man named Georges, (“Zhorzh — that’s what everyone, including the president, calls him”) touch his bulges in a time of war, anyway? Couldn’t they find a tailor from one of the allied countries like Uzbekhistan or Poland?

At the very least, it is more than a little unwise to allow nefarious french tailors to undermine the president’s credibility by placing suspicious rectangular “puckers” in his clothing. Georges de Paris is obviously an unlawful combatant. Send him to Gitmo and force him to wear one of those horrid bright orange jumpsuits. We’ll find out the truth soon enough.