NBC's gross out show Fear Factor has network brass in a tizzy over an upcoming episode where contestants must drink donkey semen.
I am mystified as to why this is a big deal all of a sudden. Haven't the news and cable divisions of NBC been practicing this exact same act on their donkey friends in the Democrat party for the past five decades? And they weren't even drinking it from a glass!
All jokes aside, this post dovetails nicely with my last one. What the Hell is wrong with our culture today? Who would willingly subject themselves to something like this privately, much less on a worldwide TV broadcast? Is there no shame?
Folks, do we want to defeat Obama in 2012 or not? Do we want to run a safe candidate, or a successful one? Do we want to be Mr. Nice Guy, or Mr. President?
In order to defeat Obama, his billion dollars of campaign cash, and the 95% of TV and print media that is chomping at the bit to tilt the news coverage in the favor of Democrats, we'll need to do something in 2012 that no other GOP candidate has done in decades... kick ass.
Now, I've got nothing against Mitt Romney. If he ends up winning the nomination I will strongly support him; however, I don't believe Romney is different enough from previous GOP candidates to really take the fight to Obama & Co. Romney is Mr. Nice Guy. Romney is safe. We don't need nice and safe, we need to a champion, and Newt Gingrich is a rhetorical gladiator of the highest order.
Nice and safe Republicans try to make the media their friends, like McCain did. How'd that work out for us?
Nice and safe Republicans accept Democrat mischaracterizations and try to turn them to our advantage, like Bush's "compassionate conservatism" meme. Wow, was that a dumb move, you could almost hear America saying "Well I guess those other conservatives really were heartless like the Democrats said."
Nice and safe Republicans meekly follow the lead of the liberal media and step right into their bear traps, like Sarah Palin. You think Newt would have answered that question about what papers he reads? He'd have looked the reporter in his face and told him to stop asking such stupid questions.
Here's a great example of what I'm talking about, the "pious baloney" moment from the New Hampshire debate. Can anyone find me a clip of Romney going for the jugular like this? Or Santorum? Or Ron Paul?
This is like Reagan turning the table on Mondale over the age issue. One knockout punch turned the MSM/DNC cabal's narrative on it's head, made the Democrat look like a fool, and the GOP won a landslide victory.
The debates are our chance to get past the filter of the liberal media bias and speak directly to the American people. The debates are our chance to take down a President so buoyed by the willful ignorance of his followers that he maintains a 44% approval rating despite presiding over the worst debt and unemployment rates in decades.
Newt excels at this stuff. Here he is making ABC News look like chumps:
If Sarah Palin would have done something like this her political career would be soaring right now, instead she's still trying to combat America's first impression of her, which courtesy the MSM/DNC cabal was that of a bimbo unqualified to hold office. We can't afford to keep making those kinds of mistakes folks.
Newt Gingrich is the only candidate I see who has the skills to rhetorically kick the ass of Obama, the entire Democrat party, and their allies in the media. This is how we can turn back the tide and start a new movement like Reagan did in the 80's, or Gingrich (hey, look at that!) did in the 90's. Nice and safe won't cut it next year. Nice and safe means Obama pulls out a win and we spend four more years being painted as the party of No.
It's the Chicago Way folks, you don't bring a Romney to a Gingrich fight.
This is getting to be so routine I'm not even sure why I'm posting it... Oh yeah, it's four in the morning, I can't sleep, and I have nothing better to do. That's why.
"...as candidate Obama said, adding 20,000 men and women would improve the security situation" -White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs 2010
"This surge concept is, in fact, no different from what we have repeatedly tried, but with 20,000 troops we will not -- in any imaginable way be able to accomplish any new progress." -Barack Obama 2007
"I am absolutely confident that Iraq will form a national unity government that will be able to sustain that country." -Joe Biden 2010
"Not in our lifetime [...] will there be a unity government in Baghdad that has the confidence of all the Iraqi people, able to maintain security, provide opportunity and have a stable unity government. It will not happen." -Joe Biden 2007
When the liberal media let's their mask slip you call their shot. You don't play nice with the media. If you do, you lose. Don't believe me? Ask John McCain.
CAMPBELL BROWN: (music) ...vicious, racist imagery attacking our first African-American president.
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: (newsroom noise) Gentleman Joe Wilson has done much to make the racist history of South Carolina jump back into our present consciousness.
CANDY CROWLEY: (b-roll) Critics think this is about resistance to a black man as president.
JAMES CARVILLE: People are upset with President Obama because of the color of his skin. Who cannot believe that?
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Could there be a refusal to accept the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president because of his race?
WOLF BLITZER: A small but disturbing minority within the tea party movement is also blatantly anti-black.
JOHN RIDLEY: When you talk about racial image, this is not just standard debate.
ELAINE QUIJANO: (b-roll) A small but passionate minority is also voicing what some see as racist rhetoric.
JOHN AVLON: Hitler. Communism. Racism. All this ugliness is bubbling up.
ANDERSON COOPER: There is an undercurrent of racism in some of the criticism of the president.
JUAN WILLIAMS: An attack on somebody because you really don't like the fact that they are president or because of their race.
ROSS DOUTHAT: Clearly Barack Obama's race plays some role in the kind of anxieties that are roiling the political right.
CLARENCE PAGE: (outdoor noise) People are not just mad at Obama. They are mad at Jesse Jackson. They are mad at Reverend Wright. They are mad at Al Sharpton. They are mad at people who have nothing to do with Obama except they all happen to be black.
I swiped this idea from Glenn Beck's show, but I wanted to include it here on my blog for future reference, since media bias and the MSM/DNC Cabal are such pet peeves of mine.
NUMBER OF REPORTS ON ACORN'S CHILD PROSTITUTION SCANDAL AS OF SEPT 11, 2009:
FOX NEWS
CNN
MSNBC
ABC NEWS
CBS NEWS
NBC NEWS
NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON POST
WALL ST JOURNAL
Wow... you'd figure two seperate instances of a group with close ties to the Obama White House and millions (soon to be billions) in funding from the Federal Government encouraging child prostitution, tax evasion and money laundering would be big news, but the silence is deafening.
I guess this is par for the course after their complete boycott of the Van Jones scandal last week, and their synchronized retreat from covering Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA deliberately misled Congress. Just mere coincidences? Not on your life...
From Byron York, as of the evening of Friday September 4th:
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0. Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.
Now ask yourself, if Karl Rove had called the entire Democratic party "assholes" would there have been silence from the media?
If Tony Snow had joined a political group that accused former President Clinton of complicity in the deaths of thousands of American citizens would there be silence from the media?
If President Bush had appointed a "czar" who was a convicted criminal, and whatever the right wing equivalent of an open communist is would there be silence from the media?
When the identity of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame was released to a reporter the MSM/DNC Cabal went apeshit, and the "scandal" was given priority coverage for months on end, even though Valerie Plame was NOT covert, and the information was given to a member of the press.
Now we have the identites and perhaps home addresses of covert CIA agents released to the enemy, in fact the very terrorists who planned the attacks of September 11th.
The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.
[...] government investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.
I have a hard time truly expressing how f-ed up this is. Liberals have no shame.
The big question of course is will the MSM/DNC Cabal give this even a fraction the publicity they gave to the so-called scandal of "Plamegate"?
Hmm... a liberal Democrat is President... and there's no chance Cheney can be blamed... nah, nothing to see here folks, move along.
If the terrorists murder one of the CIA agents and their family in their home then will it be newsworthy Mr. "Journalist"?
This is a great little film from the 70's illustrating just how media bias works to advance an agenda, and warning us of the dangers of the decision makers in the media and the political elite having a common ideology, thereby turning the media into a propaganda machine.
Unfortunately we did not heed Dr. Schaeffer's warning... The MSM/DNC Cabal is now well entrenched and has been succesfully using this manipulation technique for decades now.
Reagan is President? Let's do lot's of stories on the homeless, and let's all portray this as the decade of greed.
Clinton is President now? No more homeless "crisis", and even though people are spending their dot com stock returns on Hummers and McMansions let's drop that whole greed meme m'kay?
The cumulative effect of all the cabal's manipulations is truly devastating to our Republic. For example, if the American people were truly informed, would they have elected the people who caused the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression to lead the country? No, they would not.... yet that's exactly what happened. The community organizer who once pressured banks to loan more and more money to people who couldn't afford to repay it is now President, and the Congress that blocked every effort to head off this recession is rewarded by the voters with a supermajority.
"To me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias."
He is correct. The MSM/DNC Cabal is a greater threat to America than Osama Bin Laden's terrorists or Obama Bin President's defecits.
It's funny, of course, but very telling as well. Why should an independent unbiased journalist be hoping for any particular response? Shouldn't an independent unbiased journalist just be searching for the truth? In this case the truth clearly doesn't fit his agenda, and he doesn't even try to hide the fact that he has an agenda.
Yes, Paul, bad move on your part... You have exposed yourself as a member of the MSM/DNC Cabal.
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off the record, non-confrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health-care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
The offer—which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters—is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.
I'm not sure I agree with that characterization. I take this as a sign of just how incestuous the links between the press and the Administration have gotten. For them to be so bold shows us just how smitten they are. Like Governor Sanford and his Argentinian mistress, they've finally met their "soul mate" and they just don't care what anybody thinks anymore.
Ed Morissey at Hot Air poses the most important question:
OK, OK, perhaps it isn’t fair to call the Washington Post a pimp for the White House. Maybe it would be better to call this what it is — prostitution of the press in order to gain cash and sell itself out for access, both for itself and for its clients. After all, with the Post grabbing between $25K-$250K for these soirees, it won’t do to risk its cash flow by being too critical of the White House and its occupants, would it?
Journalistic integrity? Yeah right.
This is just the latest sighting of the mythical MSM/DNC Cabal. Like the Loch Ness monster, many choose not believe in it's existence, but all these ripples in the water and long necks popping up out of the waves aren't just my imagination. It's real, it's out there hiding in plain sight, and it's up to no good... I just know it.
UPDATE: The pimp party's been called off, but Powerline sees through the Post's attempt to spin this as an innocent mistake.
The Post, embarrassed by disclosure of its cozy, profitable relationships with lobbyists and the Obama administration, has repudiated the "salon" program. Given that their publisher was the program's host and the paper's "news executives" were set to participate, the paper's suddenly discovering its ethical standards rings rather hollow.
Yeah, pretty much. The MSM/DNC Cabal can't risk something so exposed, so they'll spike this one just to maintain plausible deniability.
Exceeds all the expectations from Team Obama that is... ABC plugged Obamacare all day long yesterday, then gave Obama his free hour long prime time infomercial to sell his plan. No Republican reponse was allowed, and no other plans were discussed, just Obama and his plan.
With the very first question of its prime time special, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America", ABC set the tone that essentially confirmed for viewers that the president was right in his desire to radically remake America's healthcare system. As the infomercial began, "moderator" Charles Gibson asked a seminal question of the doctors and other participants that were about to hear the president speak: "How many of you agree with the president that we need to change our healthcare system?" Naturally they all raised their hands.
Imagine that? This handpicked crowd all agreed with ABC and Obama that "change" was paramount. Surprised? Hardly.
So, as the viewer is introduced to the infomercial, they start off with the unanimous affirmation that the president is right, radical changes have to be made. The premise is set and even the sharp questions to the president later in the show are blunted by the assumption that some major change is needed. And since the president is the only person allowed to offer any plan during this ABC special, the further assumption promulgated is that he is the one that must affect that change.
[...] The problem with the "change" question is, what sort of change are we talking about? Why is Obama's change the only plan on the table, here? Is there no other plan for change out there? ABC's viewers sure won't know from what they got Wednesday night.
Granted, ABC did throw some pointed questions at the president. But, sadly, his non-answers were rarely challenged and Obama was allowed to dole out his talking points without opposition. [...]
[...] without any strong, intelligent counter voices, this ABC special was all Obama. It did not do much to advance the education of the audience or better inform those at home watching and left anyone viewing with the impression that the only "solutions" are coming from Obama.
Yesterday, as part of their public relations effort, ABC broadcast a FOURTEEN minute long interview of Obama by Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer. In contrast, today GMA featured a so-called "Republican Response" that was about TWO minutes long, with rambling questions from Diane and ALL of Representative Paul Ryan's responses truncated, litterally cutting off his argument.
This entire shameful episode perfectly illustrates why I describe our biased news media as the MSM/DNC Cabal. They pretend to be fair and impartial, but it's all just a facade, a deception... a LIE. In reality they are secretly working hand in hand to advance their shared left wing agenda day after day, year after year.
Doubt me? Follow the money and you'll see where ABC's loyalties lie.
A dozen House Republicans are forming a caucus to fight liberal media bias.
Headed by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the Media Fairness Caucus will point out unfair stories, meet with members of the media, and write op-eds and letters to the editor to highlight media bias.
For the past two years, Smith has conducted his own campaign against unfair coverage in weekly one-minute speeches on the House floor. The caucus is intended to broaden and fortify the effort.
In a Newsmax interview, Smith said media bias is the “greatest threat to our democracy today.”
It is a bigger threat to the nation than a terrorist attack or a depression “because, if the American people can’t get good information, can’t get the facts, and can’t make good decisions, then we simply don’t have a viable democracy,” Smith says. “Right now I think they are not getting the facts and therefore it’s hard to make good decisions, and therefore our democracy is threatened.”
He's right, but not likely to make much headway in the short run. The MSM/DNC Cabal is the most powerful organization on the planet right now, running the entire federal government, a majority of state governments, all unions, all public schools, most colleges, 95% of all news media, and Hollywood. Who the heck will even hear about this caucus or it's opinions besides bloggers and talk radio listeners?
Well, at least future historians examining the official Congressional record will be able to see that SOMEBODY tried to stop the econopocalypse, but for now the majority of our citizens will remain asleep at the wheel and won't wake up until after the crash.
Here's Good Morning America's Diane Sawyer being interviewed by Howard Kurtz on CNN's Reliable Sources (an oxymoron, I know) about ABC's weeklong promotion of Obamacare.
Well, you've heard Diane's dissembling, now here's the truth:
"We're doing something that we'd like to see a lot more airtime dedicated to."
Promoting a liberal agenda item in prime time? Yes, I'm sure she does want more airtime for that. This is the most transparency she offers in the entire exchange.
"What is more important that a dialog about healthcare."
Yes, this IS an historic opportunity with Democrats controlling the White House and BOTH houses of Congress. What could possibly be more important than further hypeing of the healthcare "crisis" before Obama loses his approval ratings and before the Democrats lose any seats in the midterm elections?
I'm betteing a dialog about preserving the best healthcare system the world has ever known, and NOT turning into the medical equivalent of the BMV is out of the question for Diane.
"It is not an infomercial; ABC News does not do that."
"These people in this room are going to be able to ask questions from every single vantage point, and they are going to challenge the President many of them."
Yes, we'll carefully select a few hayseeds to "challenge" the President, but we'll make sure they are a little on the dumb side and easily defeated or persuaded. We certainly won't let any well informed politicians on the other side of the issue be there to stand up to Obama, and we won't even accept advertising from groups opposing the President's (and evidently ABC's) agenda.
"I don't think Republicans or Democrats can argue that only people on Capitol Hill should be addressing this issue. We should have a great debate about these issues with people on the front lines as well."
Yes, especially prescreened people who have heart wrenching stories that will make the viewer more sympathetic to Obama's cause.
"Our job is to have a serious conversation."
No, your job is to pretend to be impartial while moving the ball forward for your allies, the Democrats.
"ABC News has done town halls before. We did one on guns with Bill Clinton."
Sure, ABC pulls out all the stops when a big piece of the liberal utopia like banning guns or healthcare nationalization is going to be voted on. That's really NO SURPRISE Diane.
When has ABC ever done a town hall or "news special" on something that WASN'T a liberal agenda item? You see, only things the Democrats want to promote are "important" to ABC.
I hear her talking about being spurned by the Bush White House, but if you were team Bush would you trust ABC? I'm not surprised Rove didn't want to send Bush into your "kill zone" Diane.
"Bringing people in who can bring first hand experience to bear sometimes creates the most effective and educational forum of all."
So you'll have some Americans with their horror stories of slipping through the cracks of our medical system, but will you have some Canadians on to talk about waiting so long for care that their easily treatable conditions became life threatening? How about some British person who was judged by some bureaucrat or computer program to be too old for their treatment to be cost effective? Nah, didn't think so...
This isn't dialogue, it's a monologue.
P.S. Here's video of Dianne Sawyer appearing drunk on Good Morning America. Now, what could possibly cause this seasoned professional to lose her mind and get drunk the night before a live nationwide TV broadcast? Why, the inauguration of Barack Obama of course. Apparently she wasn't there "covering the story", she was there celebrating the victory.
The people at the Media Research Center wondered why ABC News would be going to such unprecedented extremes in media bias to help Team Obama push their healthcare reform takeover legislation next week, so they did some digging. The old addage "follow the money" turns out to be true here, as according to political contributions, ABC employees favored Obama over McCain by a whopping 35:1 in the last Presidential election.
Barack Obama $160,813 John McCain $4,500
And since I love charts:
So it should be no surprise then that the entire ABC infotainment empire would be put at Obama's disposal for this lynchpin in the left's plan to move America from Capitalism to Socialism.
Next week ABC News will be promoting a special program entitled "Prescription For America". The program will culminate in a "town hall" with President Obama to be broadcast live from the White House. The special will undoubtedly be plugged all week long across the various ABC News and infotainment venues such as Good Morning America, World News, Nightline, The View et cetera. Early indicators are that opposing views will be excluded altogether, or relegated to a very minor prescence in video segments.
This amounts to a weeklong bombing campaign by ABC to soften up the opposition for Team Obama before they storm the cliffs of Capitol Hill to finally get their healthcare "reform" plan enacted.
If you've ever doubted the existence of the MSM/DNC Cabal here is just one more glaring example of the cooperative spirit between two supposedly indpendent parts of our society. Watchdog press my ass.
Oh, did I mention the "town hall" will be hosted by ABC's Charles Gibson, whose daughter worked for the Clinton White House? Nah. No possibility he could be biased towards the Democrats or a government run healthcare plan... I'm sure he'll be totally fair.
Riiiiight...
If Charlie was a true independent journalist he'd play this clip and ask the President some tough questions, but I'm not holding my breath. That would shoot down the "you can keep your existing plan, period" lie that Obama's been peddling at every speech on the subject, and too much is riding on the public buying his crap.
Yeah, we can keep our existing plan, but only until the public sector plan runs our insurer out of business. Then we'll be left with single payer public healthcare. Once the government is the single player AND the regulator, the nationalization of the entire healthcare system will be an easy sell. As that video clip makes clear, single payer has been their TRUE goal all along, even while they pretend to offer us the "freedom to choose".
Which is more newsworthy — the murder of an abortion doctor in Wichita, Kan., by an alleged anti-abortion activist or the murder of an Army recruiter and the wounding of another in Little Rock, Ark., by an alleged Muslim convert who is said to hate the U.S. military?
[...] According to the way the two stories were played last week in the American mainstream news media, the shooting of the abortion doctor was far more newsworthy than the shooting of the two young soldiers [...]
Here’s how the media played the two stories:
Murder of abortion doctor on Sunday — front-page news in most major newspapers and a lead story on network TV news shows on Sunday and Monday
Murder of one Army recruiter and wounding of another on Monday — buried inside the same papers and newscasts on Tuesday
Meanwhile, follow-up stories and columns on the abortion doctor still got bigger play in at least four major newspapers — The Washington Post, USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal — than the shooting of the soldiers got on its first day.
The Wall Street Journal had at least one story or column on each of the first four days following the abortion doctor’s shooting. It made no mention in its print edition and only two on its website of the Army recruiter’s murder in the first four days after it occurred.
Yes, this certainly is a tidy little study in contrasts isn't it? It makes clear (once again) that the MSM/DNC Cabal gives preference only to the stories that fit their template. Stories counter to the agenda are ignored or given minimal attention.
Another great example would be the media frenzy over most any black suspect being roughed up by white cops, but near silence when a white suspect is beaten by black officers (it HAS happened, but can you recall seeing the video on the TV news?). If it doesn't fit the "oppression of minorities" template, the story just goes away. The same is true of "global warming" (a.k.a. the biggest hoax in the history of mankind). Anytime there is a heat wave the media usually rush out to do stories on "climate change", but let there be a cool snap and where's the other side of that coin? Nowhere. It doesn't move the ball for their Democratic friends, so it's a non-story in their eyes.
The end result of all this manipulation is a warped populace that is deliberately misinformed in order to herd them ever leftward, further weakening the nation and corroding our culture. It's little surprise that many people feel liberal media bias is a greater threat to the Republic than the recession or terrorism. Terrorism or an economic downturn is a challenge we can take head on and defeat, but media bias is a constant perfidious threat from within.
Politico continues:
These obvious, big differences in media play of the two incidents raise questions about not only news judgment but also, and more important, media bias. Abortion rights have long been a signature issue for the liberal left. A strong military has largely been a bedrock issue of the conservative right.
One might conclude that news editors, the gatekeepers who choose how to play stories, are more attuned or more sympathetic to the views of the liberal left than the conservative right and make news placements accordingly.
Moreover, many news stories, editorials, columns and TV talk shows last week were devoted to trying to place blame for the abortion killing on Christian extremists and conservative commentators who condemned late-term abortions performed by the murdered doctor. There was little similar media finger-pointing at militant Muslims for the shooting of the Army recruiters.
The fact that Politico and others are covering this along with other recent blatant examples of bias in the press (Newsweek editor says Obama is "sort of God") may cause some in the MSM/DNC Cabal to backtrack a bit so they can pretend their alliance doesn't exist, but it will only be a short while before they are back to their old tricks.
Iowahawk has successfully hacked into JournoList and intercepted some of the top secret "off the record" conversations between left wing bloggers, left wing professors and totally ubiased mainstream media reporters that the secretive invitation only board is known for. Here is an excerpt:
EZRA KLEIN: So what should we post for 1st period blog tomorrow???
MATTHEW YGLESIAS: how about what olbermann said about o'reilly last nite
JESSE SINGAL: zzzzzz
ERIC ALTERMAN: ITA its boring..... plus olbermann is teh ghey
BRAD DELONG: ita,,, oreilly sucks but i m not giving that hysterical choad olbermann another reason to text me
KATHA POLLITT has entered the room
JOSH MARSHALL: IKWYM that fucker already texts me 20x a day for talking points,,, like we r BFFs
ERIC ALTERMAN: ya last weekend I was at the mall and olbermann came up to me in hot topic and is all like 'HI Eric!!! hows it goin!!! Did you watch me on teh COUNTDOWN?!?!?
BRAD DELONG: gross lol
ERIC ALTERMAN: and then the cool kids from the Nation and Vanity Fair came in
JOSH MARSHALL: OMG how embarrassing. I cant believe you invited him to JournoList Ezra
EZRA KLEIN: i told you i was sorry. he just kept bugging me. i tried changing his password but he keeps hacking back on
Be sure to click over and read the rest. It's teh major funny.
I've been using the term MSM/DNC Cabal to describe the "mainstream media" off and on for a few years now. It started back in 2005 on The Cassandra Page where MSM and DNC were merged into a singular noun since their cooperation was blatantly obvious, then I felt the need to add the cabal descriptor, since they try to keep their coordination secret in order to appear impartial and responsible.
For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.
The story goes on to cite members of this secret list saying it's not a conspiracy, just a conversation. Yeah right... a conversation about what you will teach, write, and broadcast and how it all fits together, hosted on a private invitaion-only network, with all conversations kept secret. NO, THAT'S NOTHING AT ALL LIKE A CONSPIRACY.
We also recently learned about the DAILY conference calls between Obama's Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel, ABC's George Stephonopolous, and CNN commentators James Carville and Paul Begala. It's just coffee talk, I'm sure! There's NO coordination or plotting to advance a political agenda going on between these old Democratic colleagues.
The incestuous ties between Democrats and the media go on and on. Here's just a few that come to mind:
MSNBC's Chris Matthews worked for many Democratic Senators and has campaigned for office as a Democrat.
ABC's Charlie Gibson's daughter worked in the Clinton White House.
CBS News and Dan Rather tried to smear President George W. Bush with fake documents supplied to them by a Democratic operative, all the while Rather's producer Mary Mapes keeps senior Kerry campaign officials in the loop.
ABC's Chris Cuomo's father is long time New York Democrat Mario Cuomo, and his brother served in the Clinton White House.
Clinton staffer George Stephonopolous found a home at ABC News after his stint in the White House.
ABC News correspondent Linda Douglas became Director of Communications for the Obama White House Office of Health Reform.
Time Magazine's Washington Bureau Chief went to work as Director Of Communications for Vice President Biden.
Los Angeles Times Washington correspondent Peter Gosslein became Tim Geithner's speechwriter.
Chicago Tribune Washington correspondent Jill zuckman became Director of Public Affairs for the Obama Dept. of Transportation.
ABC News's Justice Department correspondent Beverly Lumpkin became Press Secretary for... you guessed it, Obama's Justice Department.
And the list goes on and on and on. To pretend that this is all some kind of coincidence is just ridiculous.
You may (or may not) recall that during the last Presidential election Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit got an e-mail from someone in the news business that made the bias of the media clear as day (emphasis added):
"Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into Obama is derided or flat out ignored. THE FIX IS IN, AND IT'S WORKING."
As I recall this was swept under the rug pretty quickly. The media were quick to relay unsubstantiated rumours about Sarah Palin's family life, but ingored the skeletons in their own closet.
So, I guess there's no better time than the present for me to revive my use of the term, and to use this post to explain it to readers here on my new blog.
MSM: Mainstream media. CNN, CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, MSNBC, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The Early Show, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times etc. etc.
DNC: Democratic National Committee, but here it's just a reference to the Democrat party in general.
CABAL: A group plotting in secret to advance a hidden agenda.
Hence we have the MSM/DNC Cabal. I will be using it frequently, and will link back to this post for clarity's sake. I encourage my readers to adopt it as well. We cannot trust the media to be impartial, and we need to constantly remind ourselves and those around us of this fact, lest we fall back into a trance and accept the media's distortions at face value.
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