Trump Refers to Haiti and African Nations as "Shitholes"; MSNBC reports this as "S-holes"

Something continues to be seriously wrong with our cable media.  On Sunday, NBC bleeped Frances McDormand's speech at the Golden Globes, because they didn't like what "Fox Searchlight" may have sounded like.  Today, MSNBC informed us that Trump referred to Haiti and unspecified African nations as "s-holes".

In fact, as The Washington Post and numerous other media reported, Trump called those countries "shit holes".   So why is MSNBC afraid to report exactly that?

Do they think that their viewers are too young to hear such language?  Do they think anyone who hears "s-holes" won't know it stands for "shitholes"?

I suppose there may be some people who don't get what "s-hole" means.  As my wife astutely pointed out, some people might hear that as "asshole" countries.

But that's the point.  Why should there be even the slightest confusion about what our vulgar, despicable President said about these countries?  Whose feelings and sensitivities are being protected?  The FCC's?

In times like this, with a President who as no one before him expresses such contempt for immigrants, women, the poor, Americans who don't look like him, don't the media owe us, owe America, the reporting of what he says as accurately as possible?

The time for euphemisms and abbreviations has long since ended.  MSNBC ought to wake up, and realize what the year 2018 and Donald Trump in office calls for:  complete, unabbreviated reporting.

*Note added a little after 10pm: Kudos to Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell for speaking the word.

A Tale of Two Tickers

I didn't bother to take photos of this, but I couldn't help notice the slightly different headlines or tickers MSNBC and CNN attached to their coverage of  Republicans bowing and scraping around Trump about his "leadership" in getting the destructive new tax bill done:

MSNBC: "GOP lavishes praise on Trump"

CNN:  "GOP heaps praise on Trump"

Since when did MSNBC become so genteel? CNN is probably more entitled to be angry at Trump than is MSNBC - after all, CNN was the first to be called out as fake news by Trump bellowing at a news conference, almost  a year ago in January 2017 - but I'd give the edge on the more accurate headline to CNN anyway.

I left the TV screen before I had a chance to see how Fox characterized this. Anyone know? Maybe, "GOP gives long overdue praise to President"?

.

MSNBC Still Getting Its (Post) Election Coverage Wrong

I know this may be beating a dead horse, but I couldn't help noticing the following in the past few days -

MSNBC offered extensive analysis of the verbal confrontation at Harvard University earlier this week between leaders of the Clinton and Trump presidential campaigns.   There's no video available available, but plenty of audio, and in case you haven't heard it, here's four minutes of it.

The exchange has been aptly described by MSNBC and everyone as "raw" and unprecedentedly acrimonious, which it certainly was.

MSNBC commentators further noted that both sides were defensive, it was too soon after such a contested election for a courteous discussion of what happened and why, etc - in other words, a continuation MSNBC of the equivalence of the Trump and Clinton candidacies, which typified its coverage of the campaign and now apparently its aftermath.  That's unfortunate, since the two candidacies were in almost no sense equivalent.

Missing from MSNBC's assessment of the Harvard panel was a discussion - even an acknowledgment - of the horror that the Clinton campaign now feels at the electoral college results of this election, in which someone with the least experience for the job in our history has been elected President - someone who has said all the things Trump has said about immigrants, women, and minorities - someone with white supremacist ties so strong that he's appointed Steve Bannon to a powerful White House position - and the list of frightening and outrageous statements and now appointments which go on and on.

There are many reasons why Clinton lost the electoral vote (and still a tiny chance that the recounts will change that), but the poor media coverage, which deliberately or not boosted Trump to legitimacy by presenting him as an equivalent candidate to Clinton when he was not on any level, is certainly one of the contributing factors.

I can only hope that this changes - at least in progressive media such as MSNBC - when Trump assumes the office in January.  There's never been a time in our nation's history when we required an aggressive, watchdog press, as envisioned by our founders, more than we do now.


another reason Trump got so many votes

Metaphors, Skittles, and Free Speech

Earlier today on MSNBC, conservative radio host and Trump supporter Hugh Hewitt championed "metaphor" in his response to the criticism Donald Trump, Jr. (the candidate's son) has received for his comparison of US immigration policy regarding children to ingesting a handful of Skittles candy, some of which may be poisoned.

We don't want to live in a society, Hewitt nobly proclaimed, in which politically-correct thought police ban use of metaphors.

Now that's something which I, and I would bet any rational person, would strongly support.  A world without metaphor would be dull and dismal and limited indeed - because, as Marshall McLuhan liked to say, punning on the poet Robert Browning, one's reach must exceed one's grasp, or what's a metaphor?

But Hewitt's proclamation is incomplete, to the point of being disingenuous.  For surely Hewitt would agree that we must be free to criticize and denounce metaphors, when we find them dehumanizing. Surely Hewitt is not saying that sons of Presidential candidates, or anyone for that matter, should be able to tweet whatever they want in some kind of zone that protects them from scathing criticism?

As repulsive as so much of the Trump campaign has been, I would never advocate or even imply that he and his ilk should be silenced.   I agree with Louis Brandeis that "the remedy to be applied [to falsehoods and fallacies] is more speech, not enforced silence".  Surely that applies to demeaning metaphors.

Why Hillary Clinton Is Telling the Truth about Her Emails

Here's the situation: Hillary has said repeatedly that she didn't send or receive any classified emails via her private server when she was Secretary of State.  FBI Director Comey has said she did.   He also said she didn't lie to the FBI about this.

All of these statements are true.

Here's why:

1. A hundred out of the 30+ thousand emails Hillary sent on her private server were marked "classified" after she had sent them.  Therefore, Hillary could not have knowingly sent out or received such retroactively classified emails.  Comey may have been right to chastise her for using a private server, but that's a different issue (and, as been noted by everyone except Republicans, Hillary's predecessor Colin Powell sent private emails, as did Condoleezza Rice's staff.

2. Three of the emails on Hillary's private server were indeed marked classified - but the markings on two were incorrect.  So, in fact, these cannot be counted as classified emails that Hillary had on her private server.

3.  The marking on the third was correct - on 1 out of more than 30,000 emails - but it was not listed at the top. So although Hillary did have that one classified email on her private server, it's reasonable to conclude that she did not know it was classified.

And that's it.  No one is lying - neither Hillary Clinton nor the FBI Director. For some reason, the media today - including, unsurprisingly now, some of the geniuses at MSNBC, specifically Howard Fineman and Chris Cillizza - were saying that Hillary was not clear, was too defensive today, when she explained what happened.  But, in fact, it's not the least bit unclear, and I'm finding the media opacity on this issue no help at all, to the point of not doing their jobs.

Suggestion to MSNBC: Stop Taking Money for Scurrilous GOP Ads

I said this on Twitter earlier tonight, but thought it deserved a slightly longer screed here on my blog: Suggestion to MSNBC: why don't you stop being so greedy, and stop taking money for scurrilous anti-Hillary Clinton GOP ads.

The ad that occasioned this tweet aired on MSNBC right after Rachel Maddow's superb interview of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and her endorsement of Hillary for President.  You likely have seen it, and I'm not going to give it any more currency by posting it or a link to it here.  But in case you haven't, it's been around for a little while, and intercuts Bill Clinton dissembling about Monica Lewinsky and Hillary explaining what happened with her email when she was Secretary of State.

The ad is classic false association propaganda, a term first introduced by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis to explain what happened in Nazi Germany more than half a century ago.  What Bill Clinton did and said about Monica literally has nothing whatsoever in common with Hillary's explanation of her private email server (and, by the way, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice's staff also used private mail when they were Secretaries of State).  The only thing that Bill's very nuanced explanation about his sexual activity has to do with Hillary's straightforward explanation of her email server is the two people in question were and are married.

So why did MSNBC take money for and play this textbook example of propaganda?  My colleague Bob Blechman provided the historical explanation in response to my tweet: he pointed out that CBS shifted its news operation from a cost- to a profit-making division decades ago, and all other commercial broadcast media followed suit.

I think it would be a very healthy development for our body politic if news media stopped doing that. Either that, or maybe I'll resort to DVR'ing all the news I see on TV, watch it a minute after it's been broadcast, and delete any Republican garbage in the form of lying ads that may appear.

PS - Some people may say that refusing to broadcast a given ad is a violation of the First Amendment, or, more generally, freedom of speech.  It's not.  The First Amendment guarantees the right of media and any individual from broadcasting, printing, or saying whatever they want.  It does not insist that media or the press must broadcast a given ad - a decision that is entirely the press's prerogative.

Is MSNBC Losing Its Mind?

For the second time in as many weeks, right in the middle of a late hour with its election night coverage, MSNBC suddenly switched from live coverage to reruns of earlier coverage.

What's going on?   Why suddenly knock out coverage - in tonight's case, before the returns from Alaska were even complete - without so much as an announcement that live coverage would be ending?

The switch felt so abrupt that it almost felt as if a plug had been pulled, or a switch turned off, accidentally.   But how could that have happened twice?  Sabotage by a disgruntled employee?

The sad thing is that MSNBC has been struggling to move up from its third place behind Fox News and CNN, and it offers a savvy line-up of political analysts.

I can only hope the culprit or whatever or whoever is causing this is discovered, and rooted out of this operation.   In the meantime, for the rest of this exciting political night, I'll be watching CNN.

I'm Glad Brian Williams Will Be Back on Television

That's right, I'm glad Brian Williams will be back on MSNBC, where he started, rather than being exiled from news reporting and anchoring forever.

I get that he did something wrong in his braggadocio misremembering of several news events of which he was not a part.  But that wasn't as bad, as, say, the racist comments made by Imus on the radio a decade ago, or even Dan Rather's misreporting of the George W. Bush evasion-of-the-draft story, if indeed that was misreporting.  But Brian Williams' exaggerations were not a misreporting of a news story, just of his own direct involvement in it.  And although people who tell us the news should be held to a higher standard of truth-telling than the average person, it's worth noting that exaggerations of personal experiences are as common as saying you loved a popular movie when you slept through it, as in fact at least one famous movie critic was reported as frequently having done.

As for MSNBC, they can use all the help they can get.  Despite their highly intelligent and articulate anchors - especially in the evening - they've been consistently in last place in the Fox, CNN, MSNBC lineup for a while now.  They were outrightly dumb to get rid of Keith Olbermann, the most energetic, iconoclastic person ever on their air.  And the tick-like constant reference to their "Pulse" statistics - to show what their viewers are thinking - is a drag on more than one of their shows.   But whatever its problem, MSNBC will be well-served with Brian Williams and his sage, incisive, sometimes satirical analysis -- especially with the 2016 Presidential campaign already in gear, and William's astute political sense.

Rachel Maddow, the best person on MSNBC and for that matter on any news network, last night took a point of personal privilege and said how happy she was that Brian Williams was returning and being given a second chance.  I couldn't agree more. Now, if MSNBC got back Olbermann, I'd bet at least even money that they'd overtake at least CNN once again,

Further Thoughts on Charlie Hebdo: Where We Go From Here

Usually, governments have been the worst opponents of journalists, satirists, and those who not only believe but daily practice freedom of expression.   In the case of totalitarian governments in the 20th century and dictatorships throughout the ages, those in power often imprisoned and killed those who dared to criticize them in print or any medium. Democracies have been a little better, but even Turkey recently arrested and imprisoned a journalist.  The United States has been known to do the same - certainly numerous journalists were arrested here during Occupy Wall Street, in blatant violation of our First Amendment.

Recently, corporations have engaged in a kind of self-censorship, which has been destructive of the public's right to know.  Sony's initial pulling of The Interview out of movie theaters is a recent regrettable example. And even last night, in the reporting of the Charlie Hebdo attack, progressive stalwarts such as MSNBC refused to show some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons deemed so offensive by the murderers in Paris.   But not showing those cartoons is an offense to those who died, and everyone who believes in freedom of expression.

The world changed yesterday.  Journalists have long been in danger on the front lines of war reporting.  Now they are in danger in their very offices.   Now more than ever, governments and corporations need to give those brave guardians of our democracy their maximum support.



my comments yesterday about the Charlie Hebdo attack

world response last month to Turkish media crackdowns



Sony media hack fiasco

Lawrence O'Donnell's Disappointing Performance regarding the Rolling Stone Tsarnaev cover

With the media still in full discussion mode about Rolling Stone's Dzhokar Tsarnaev cover story and photo - a discussion which I think is a good thing - I have to note the surprisingly poor performance of Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC last night in a segment he did about this issue.

Angered by the apparent last-minute cancelation by Rolling Stone or Janet Reitman (who wrote the cover story) of Reitman's scheduled appearance on his show, O'Donnell proceeded to lambast not only the cover photo but the content of Reitman's article, declaring "If you miss this issue of Rolling Stone, you will miss nothing." He ostentatiously refused to show the controversial cover on his air.

I don't blame O'Donnell for being annoyed and even angry about the cancellation, which I think was not a good move by Rolling Stone or whoever said no to Reitman's being on the show.  It's always better to confront and engage your critics, rather than giving them the last word.

But this is now especially and manifestly the case for "The Last Word," the name of O'Donnell's MSNBC show.  Rather than presenting a reasoned critique, O'Donnell allowed his anger to cloud his judgement and demeaned himself and his show by making statements that are palpably false.  A pro like O'Donnell should have known and done better.

I happen to think that Reitman's article is an outstanding report - a story that encompasses the best in journalism in research and evocative writing. But even if I didn't have that opinion, I would be hard pressed to the point of being utterly unable to say I would "miss nothing" if I hadn't read the lengthy story  - even a quick reading provides a wealth of significant details in Tsarnaev's life which I and I'd wager most people hadn't seen before.

Further, O'Donnell's diatribe against the article and Rolling Stone empowers the most reactive and regressive elements of our society.   Rolling Stone has received death threats - will O'Donnell denounce those?   CVS, Stop & Shop, and other stores have pulled this issue of Rolling Stone from their shelves. Is that the kind of America we want, where media are pulled from shelves, where words are withheld, so people cannot decide on their own whether their contents are of value?

What I would have expected from O'Donnell, as combatant in many wars against censorship himself, is, yes, a critique of Rolling Stone and this article if that is what he believes, but a defense of its right to publish this article as it saw fit, and a call for people to read the article, look at the photo, and decide for themselves.

See also Why the Rolling Stone cover with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is Helpful

PS - And this excellent analysis - especially the final paragraph - by Ian Crouch in The New Yorker

David Gregory vs. Glenn Greenwald: Lessons about So-Called Progressives

David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald on Meet the Press today why Greenwald "shouldn't be charged with a crime" for publishing Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA snooping on American phone calls and Internet activities.   So this is how far we've come: a journalist doing precisely the job intended by the First Amendment, being a watchdog on the American government, is asked why he shouldn't be considered a criminal - and, most pathetically, by another so-called journalist.  John Adams, who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts that threw journalists into jail who criticized the President in the 1790s, would likely have approved of the question and answered it in the affirmative.  Thomas Jefferson no doubt would not.

But we shouldn't be surprised, and certainly not that this demonization of the press is going on in a Democratic, so-called progressive administration.   After all, Democrats as well as Republicans have sent our nation to war in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, twice in Iraq, and once in Afghanistan, without the Declaration of War required by our Constitution.   We're on the road to doing that again in Syria.  And Democrats as well as Republicans have trampled on the First Amendment for almost a hundred years, fining radio and television stations for broadcasting "objectionable" content, and arresting reporters trying to do their job during Occupy Wall Street.

You have but to look at MSNBC, the so-called progressive voice, to see how far and badly we've come.   In prime time, only Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes have been strongly and unambiguously supportive of Greenwald.  Lawrence O'Donnell, acknowledging the damage wiretapping did to Martin Luther King, Jr., says he's not too worried about the damage that can do today.   Chris Matthews is typically on all sides of this issue.

Only Ron Paul and Ran Paul - whom I wouldn't vote for because of their fiscal policies and positions on women's issues and immigration and other reasons - have come down hard on the right side of this issue.

Whatever happens, I hope no one votes for a Democrat as the lesser of two evils in the next election, because the evil they pose to our freedom and rights is too much to bear.   We can fight terrorists and totalitarians without becoming them ourselves.

See also The Fraudulent Hunt for Snowden

Evaluating Traditional and Social Media in Boston Bombing Reporting

I was interviewed this morning on KNX1070 Radio and earlier in the week by AP and USA Today and college radio stations about the media coverage - including errors - of the Boston bombings and the hunt for suspects, and thought I'd share what I said in the interviews here.

First, we need to distinguish between traditional mass media and social media (or what I call new new media) and the intersecting ways in which they covered the story.

The big flub in traditional media was the reporting on Wednesday by CNN and other outlets that the two suspects had been arrested.  This turned out to be false.  And since some news operations - such as MSNBC - refrained from reporting this, CNN and the others came in for much criticism.

At least three points, however, need to be kept in mind regarding what happened with the traditional media.

One, the media are always caught between the conflicting goals of getting the news out as quickly as possible and making sure the news reported is accurate.  The public wants both, and is entitled to both.  Further, people in times of crisis do better with more information - being kept in the dark, or feeling you don't know what's going on in life-and-death situations, is a prescription for high anxiety and jumping to all kinds of wrong conclusions.

The second is that John King on CNN who first went public with the wrong information that arrests were made obviously didn't just make this up.  He reported what he had been told by law enforcement.  So, the blame for this incorrect reporting resides at least as much as with law enforcement, which gave King the erroneous information.

And third, and most important, the incorrect reporting in no way impeded the bringing of the two brothers to justice.  

How did social media do in the past week?

The big error occurred on Reddit, and its crowd-sourced identification, based on the photos of the suspects, of two people as the bombers who in fact had nothing to do with the bombing.  This error was compounded by the unfortunate fact that one of the two people wrongly identified was a student missing from Brown University, whose family was already worried about him.   And the error was technologically compounded by its dissemination on Twitter.

On the other hand, crowd-sourcing was crucial in bringing the real bombers to justice, as the public responded with their own photos after the FBI's somewhat blurry photos released on Thursday.   The ubiquity of cameras in phones is making it increasingly impossible for criminals who strike in public to remain anonymous.

So social media, like traditional media, get less than perfect grades for their performance in the past week.  But, on the whole, both helped far more than they hurt.  Traditional media did for the most part keep the public accurately informed during this crucial time, and social media crowd-sourcing played a crucial role in apprehending the suspects.

And regarding the wrong information, we were made aware once again of a truth about all reporting, traditional as well as social media, that we should always keep in mind:  don't believe everything you see and hear from any journalist, whether professional or citizen, whether on CNN or MSNBC or Reddit or Wikipedia.   Take everything with a grain of salt.   Don't accept it as truth unless and until it is confirmed by all sources.   In that way, a wrong report's damage can be limited, and we can reap the benefits of being the best informed people in history, as did this past week with the reporting from Boston.

MSNBC's Olympic Gamble

MSNBC has already begun its Olympic programming, with pre-Olympic coverage for most of the day prior to 6pm this week.  When the actual games start, there will be no regular MSNBC programming until Rev. Al Sharpton at 6pm and then continuing with Hardball, Ed, Rachel Maddow, and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell for the rest of the evening.

Why is MSNBC putting its regular daytime programming - and the superb Up With Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris Perry on weekends as well - on the shelf?  MSNBC expects the Olympics to draw big audiences, as they have in the past.  That's a safe bet.  But MSNBC also has a long range strategy at play here - they're hoping that some of the new viewers who come by to see the Olympics will stay for Rev. Al, Hardball, and the rest of evening.

This could happen.  But the reverse is also already at play.  The Cycle, struggling to find its footing in the afternoon, has not been on MSNBC the past few days.  I watched whatever was on CNN.  How many other news junkies, accustomed to leaning forward on MSNBC, will lean away to another news source during MSNBC's daytime Olympic coverage?   And will those people equal or outnumber the new viewers who come for the Olympics and stay?

It's a gamble.  And were I calling the shots, I wouldn't take it.  MSNBC has struggled long and hard to surpass CNN and get in second place in the 24/7 cable news races.  I would double down on the news, and leave the daytime Olympic coverage to some other NBC division, like NBC itself.

Why CNN and Fox Wrongly Reported the Supreme Court Health Care Ruling

The initially incorrect reporting by Fox and CNN of the US Supreme Court health care ruling yesterday will go down in history and long be cited in journalism courses along with Dewey beating Truman in 1948 according to the infamous Chicago Tribune banner headline and other examples of premature breaking news.  It was the most enjoyable part of the ruling other than the ruling itself.

But why did this happen?  The superficial answer, true enough, is that neither Fox nor CNN read far enough in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion to see he was upholding the mandate in the Affordable Health Care law as a tax, after rejecting its constitutionality under the commerce clause.

But there are deeper reasons.

CNN has fallen to a weak third place in the 24/7 all-news cable line-up.  It attracts not only the lowest number of viewers but likely staff and interns at all levels who would rather be someplace else.  Marshall McLuhan observed this sinking ship phenomenon in media when major newspapers began going on strike in the 1960s - they were going on strike, temporarily shutting down, McLuhan noted, as prelude to their permanent shut down, because fewer people were reading them, anyway.  Lack of audience and lack of production acumen feed one another in a vicious, downward, mutually destructive cycle. McLuhan not only saw the decline of newspapers in response to the screens of television, but accurately foresaw their decline in response to 21st century social media, which are now also challenging cable.

CNN is not about to shut down, but it is already in this cycle of decline, and needs to take special care not to feed it.

Fox, still in first place in cable news land, made the miscall for a very different reason.   Fox, despite its "fair and balanced" moniker, has long seen and reported the world through right-wing glasses.   Its top talent - Shep Smith, Bret Baier, and even Bill O'Reilly - can and do have independent views.  But its staff at all levels wears ideological blinders.  Fox not only misread the Supreme Court decision by stopping too soon in its reading, but likely did that because that's what the Fox people who did the reading wanted it to say.   They read as much as they needed to confirm their hopes.  Seeing support for one's views can be a powerful source of distortion when encountering new material.

I suppose the same could be said for MSNBC, which didn't want to see the ruling strike down Obamacare and reported the ruling correctly.   On the other hand, Pete Williams, who brought the opinion to MSNBC air, is one of the sharpest legal reporters in the business.  Given the decline of CNN and the ideology of Fox, it is unlikely he'd be anywhere other than reporting for MSNBC.

MSNBC Cuts Away from Zimmermam Attorney Resignation

Unbelievably, MSNBC cut away from George Zimmerman's attorneys, as they were explaining to a press conference why they were resigning from the case.  Back to Dylan Ratigan and his planned concluding segment.  Fortunately, CNN provided continuing coverage (I didn't check about Fox).

MSNBC is thus continuing its amateuristic approach to news programming.   When news of the Mumbai massacre broke on the Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, MSNBC offered canned documentaries about prison life.  They still switch to prison coverage at 10pm every Friday - as if no real news happens after that time.

Two bright spots are the four new hours of sharp, intelligent commentary by Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris Perry every Saturday and Sunday.  But as today's poor performance in covering a live press conference about one of the most important stories of the year shows, MSNBC still has a ways a to go.

MSNBC Up to Its Old Tricks: Fires Cenk Uygur

The news broke this past week that Cenk Uygur was going the way of Keith Olbermann, at least insofar as being shown the door at MSNBC.   Al Sharpton is now on in Uygur's 6 pm hour, and is said to be Uygur's likely permanent replacement.

I like Sharpton, but am once again dismayed at the short shrift MSNBC gives to its hard-working, passionate anchors.   Uygur, though sharing a strong progressive perspective with Olbermann (which I generally share as well) actually ran a show which had little in common with Countdown on MSNBC.   Uygur happily interrogated Republicans (Olbermann by and large only had guests who agreed with him) and dished out plainspoken logic in contrast to Olbermann's often florid hyperbole.

But what both also had in common was a stubborn, refreshing insistence on calling events and issues as they see them, including criticizing the President, even though he's obviously part of the party the two usually support.   And this, apparently, was too much too much for the frightened, shallow people who call the shots at MSNBC.

But that's ok.  We now have Olbermann on Current TV, and Uygur will no doubt show up there or somewhere else, and if Current TV would only get itself into a few more cable lineups, there would be even less reason to watch MSNBC than there is now.

First Presidential Twitter press conference

Just watched the first Presidential Twitter press conference - mostly on MSNBC, which stopped its live coverage about 10 minutes before the press conference was over.  I saw the rest on the more reliable Twitter site.

Like all firsts - such as the first YouTube Presidential debate, back in the 2008 campaign - the Twitter event was as much show as substance.   But there were some good questions and answers, and I think the event was therefore worthwhile.

Herewith a few helpful, friendly criticisms:

• The "curation" or screening of questions gets in the way of the democratizing point of this kind of event.  Obviously, no President or any one person could answer or even read the multitude of Tweets.   My suggestion is randomly select the Tweets that the President will see and respond to.
• Along these same lines, the inclusion of Tweets from House Speaker Boehner and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof only get in the way of a Twitter press conference being a real expression of the people.  Neither Boehner nor Kristof need Twitter to get their ideas in front of President Obama.  Most other Americans do.
• Obama needs to work on his pronunciation.  The funniest part of the press conference was when he pronounced a Tweeter named "Schnapps" or "Shnapps" as "Shnepps" (apparently Obama has never had a schnapps?  Oy!)

But, all in all, a good first effort the President and the Twitter sector of new new media.  I hope we'll see more.  And this will be the first lesson in my "Politics and New Media" graduate class which I begin teaching at Fordham University tonight.

 

Keith Olbermann back on Countdown - Now on Current TV

Great to see Keith Olbermann back on Countdown - on Current TV.  Agree or not with his views and stylings, his return proves that a spineless, often brainless network - in this case, MSNBC - does not necessarily get the last word, when it tires for whatever reasons of its vibrant, provocative talent.

To the content of tonight's Countdown -

• Excellent discussion of the unconstitutionality of our war in Libya, with Michael Moore. I agree completely that the pursuit of this military action - or war - without  Congressional approval (not to mention Declaration of War) is one of the most disheartening, dangerous activities of the Obama administration.
• John Dean talking about the Supreme Court decision - 5-4 - upholding Walmart.  I agree that this was a bad decision.  But, unlike Olbermann and Dean, I don't think everything this court has done regarding corporations is bad.  For example, I agree with the Court that corporations are entitled to all the protections of the First Amendment - speech is speech, and government should steer clear of regulating it.
• "Time Marches On" - replacement segment for "Oddball" on the original Countdown, the title of which was a take-off on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" on MSNBC.   The new version with the new title is as funny as the original - meaning, evoking smiles to occasional chuckles and sometimes more.
• Good expose with Politico's Ken Vogel about conservative radio talkshow hosts promoting political positions for advertising revenue on their shows.  (But Keith, this compares to payola in 1950s radio in no significant way - payola was a classic victimless "crime," and its prosecution by the Feds was motivated by a discomfort with rock 'n' roll.)
• Good "Worst Persons in the World" - my favorite was the runner-up, in which Fox edited out Jon Stewart's mention of Fox exec Bill Sammon giving ideological "marching orders" to news commentators (from Chris Wallace's Sunday show).
• Bombshell closer with Markos Moulitsas - founder and publisher of the Daily Kos - in which he explains his absence from MSNBC for more than a year: he antagonized morning anchor Joe Scarborough, who pressured MSNBC to keep Moulitsas off Olbermann's and every other evening show on MSNBC.  If true, MSNBC is even lamer than I thought, and owes its viewers and Moulitsas an apology.

Hey, I rarely if ever review cable news shows as such, so don't expect many more posts like this, for the new Countdown or any other news shows.  But I expect to keep watching it - as well as, yes, MSNBC - and I'm certainly glad that the progressive voice has a new, additional home.  Our democracy is best served by as many progressive, conservative, and in-between voices on the air as possible.

Looking Forward to Olbermann's Return to Countdown on Al Gore's Current TV

Great interview with Keith Olbermann posted in Rolling Stone a few days ago.

As I've written here often over the years, I was no constant fan of Olbermann on MSNBC.  I often found him abrasive, over the top, even trivial (for example, in his critique of 24 as Bush-driven, and in his incessant lampooning of Bill O'Reilly).  But I also found him refreshing, surprising, original, and, at his best, a most needed passionate voice for the progressive point of view.   As he says in the Rolling Stone interview, Olbermann was responsible for putting MSNBC on the map as the progressive counterpoint to Fox's conservativism.

I was therefore not happy when Olbermann was suddenly shown the door at MSNBC earlier this year, by the same or equivalent tone-deaf corporate execs he had dragged kicking and screaming into relevance and eloquence.   And I'm therefore eagerly awaiting Olbermann's return to Countdown on Al Gore's Current TV on June 20.

As Olbermann makes clear in the interview, he does not see Countdown on Current as a graceful swan song - even though Current TV now has at best no more than 10% of any cable all-news audience - but rather as a no holds-barred challenge to Fox, CNN, and MSNBC.   Olbermann's new Countdown will be on at the same time as the old one - 8pm Eastern - which means he'll not only be competing against Bill O'Reilly on Fox, and but against his incisive, keenly rational replacement on MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell.

In many ways, I like O'Donnell more than Olbermann, in particular O'Donnell's targeted logic and real political experience, in place of Olbermann's passionate showmanship.   But if only to punish slow-witted MSNBC for its treatment of Olbermann, and, more, because I think the progressive view can be well served by another powerful voice on another station (Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly still outnumber the progressives on the air), I will be watching and rooting for Olbermann to shake up television, once again, as hold forth from the station run by the man who at very least won the popular vote for President in 2000, and has himself carved out a unique place for himself in our history.

The Event 1.11-12: Hardball in Fiction

The Event just finished its 2-hour return on the East Coast - Episode 1.11-12.   It's been a while since the previous episode was aired at the end of November.   I thought the new two hours were the best so far in this series, which still feels like 24 meets Flashforward, high praise in my book.

One point is definitively settled tonight:  The "aliens" are truly from outer space.   They may have come from Earth at some point, and/or time travelled - their DNA is 99% the same as ours - but as Leila's father Michael (himself an alien) explains, his people come from a planet way out in space (with a star number and everything).  In addition, we also get more confirmation that Thomas's plan is to bring a lot more or maybe even the rest of all of his people to this, our, planet, and make it their own.

As a first step, Thomas launches an attack on Inostranka, with a view towards freeing all of the aliens held there, so they can help him prepare the way for the aliens from outer space.  He's a pretty vicious alien guy, that Thomas, slaughtering the aliens who don't want to join him, and torturing Sterling to get a code to help in their escape.   (A nice twist on 24, with bad guys torturing the good guy - though, come to think of it, Jack Bauer was as often a victim as a practitioner of torture.)

Sterling - played by the ubiquitous on television Željko Ivanek (but it's always good to see him) - has a great night, almost saving the day in a torrent of fine action scenes.   Badly wounded, Sterling seemed likely to die before he was forced to give up the code.  But neither happens - Sterling neither dies nor divulges the code.  Alas, a soldier who doesn't want to see Sterling die does give up the code, and Maya is killed, as Thomas escapes with a fair number of his people.

While this is going on, Michael tries to convince Leila to go with him, but not take Sean along.  Leila doesn't want this, but honorable Sean leaves early the next morning, while Leila sleeps, after the two sleep together one last time.  I'd have liked to see Sean do something more dynamic, like insist on going along with Michael.

And the third piece of tonight's story takes place in Washington, DC, as Alaska Senator Catherine Lewis (played by Virginia Madsen) in effect blackmails the President to tell her what's really going in that prison in her state.   Part of this features Sen. Lewis on MSNBC's Hardball, with Chris Matthews playing himself.  He does a pretty good job, but he was not quite as nasty as he is when a guest suddenly starts to snow him on the air.  He should have interrupted more, and started wondering if Sen. Lewis was reading from a script, or in "a trance".   But, hey, it's the second time MSNBC has made it on to NBC drama television - just a few weeks ago, it was Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, and Tamron Hall on Law and Order: SUV (and last night, Lawrence O'Donnell played a lawyer on Big Love).   Who knows what choice guest gigs Keith Olbermann might have had, had MSNBC not foolishly canned him.

There was also one soft spot in the plot - Sen. Lewis should have not gained such easy access to her husband's office (the office of a former Senator, recently deceased, now sealed on orders from the President).  But The Event has returned with some powerful turns, and I'm looking forward to more.



See also The Event Debuts on NBC ... The Event 1.2: Aliens! ... The Event 1.4: 24 Back in Action! ... The Event 1.6: Not Only Aliens, Immortals! ... The Event 1.7: The Portal and its Implications  ... The Event 1.8: The "Republican" VP and the Anti-24 ... The Event 1.9: "Native Populations, Indigenous People" ... The Event 1.10: Satellite

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book