from a powerful woman

a tense phone conversation between a reporter for the washington examiner and white house senior counselor kellyanne conway was published by the newspaper on thursday.

in the conversation, conway objected that a story written by the reporter, caitlin yilek, mentioned that her husband george conway is a fierce critic of president trump on twitter.

... after the reporter said she would be happy to allow conway to talk to her editor, conway replied: “let me tell you something, from a powerful woman. don’t pull the crap where you’re trying to undercut another woman based on who she’s married to.

"he gets his power through me, if you haven’t noticed," conway said. "not the other way around.

... “you don’t have to rely upon the men in your life and pretend somehow by way of reporting that i rely on the men in my life, which clearly isn’t the case," conway shot back.

(inspired by real twitter account president supervillain, who puts real trumpSpeak into real comics. art by tony s. daniel, sandu florea & norm rapmund, from batman #696)

ya gotta kill some pigs

if FOX news were a liberal outfit ...

At Iowa's "Freedom Summit", Mike Huckabee declared war on the police

des moines, iowa — folksy former arkansas governor and faux news commentator and current 2016 presidential potential mike huckabee dropped a bombshell during the closeout speech of saturday's republican party "freedom summit" in iowa. outlining the principles of his radical agenda for the country, huckabee exhorted his talibangelical legions everywhere to massacre law-enforcement officials in washington and beyond.

"we need to do some pig-killing!" huckabee declared, pumping his fists in a gang-salute to a boisterous crowd, where nevada cattle rancher cliven bundy was overhead saying: "we're about ready to take the country over with force!"

however, not everyone at the summit agreed with huckabee. fellow speaker, new jersey governor, rival contender and perennial porcine punchline chris christie nervously called the plan "a solution in search of a problem."

police officers quickly voiced their displeasure with huckabee. "what police officers felt yesterday after that speech is that they were thrown under the bus," said new york police union president patrick lynch. "that they were out there doing a difficult job in the middle of the night, protecting the rights of those to stump, protecting romney's sons and dollars, and huckabee was behind microphones like this throwing them under the bus."

despite some resistance among traditional conservative ranks, huckabee remained committed to pushing the GOP down a new and militant path. "ya gotta kill some pigs," he said. "and folks, there are a lotta people ... that don't wanna kill any pigs."

stir of ethics

every once in a while, even faux news remembers what the rules are:

angry fox news executives ordered host sean hannity to abandon plans to broadcast his nightly show as part of a tea party rally in cincinnati on thursday after top executives learned that he was set to headline the event, proceeds from which would benefit the local tea party organization. rally organizers had listed hannity, who is on a book tour, as the headliner of the four-hour tax day event at the university of cincinnati. the rally, expected to draw as many as 13,000 people, was set feature speakers such as "liberal facism" author jonah goldberg and local tea party leaders. participants were being charged a minimum of $5, with seats near hannity's set going for $20, according to the cincinnati enquirer, which reported that any profits would go to future tea party events. media matters for america noted that hannity's personal website directed supporters to a link to buy tickets for the cincinnati rally. but senior fox news executives said they were not aware hannity was being billed as the centerpiece of the event or that tea party organizers were charging for admission to hannity's show as part of the rally. they first learned of it thursday morning from john finley, hannity's executive producer, who was in cincinnati to produce hannity's show. furious, top officials recalled hannity back to new york to do his show in his regular studio. the network plans to do an extensive post-mortem about the incident with finley and hannity's staff. "fox news never agreed to allow the cincinnati tea party organizers to use sean hannity's television program to profit from broadcasting his show from the event," said bill shine, the network's executive vice president of programming. "when senior executives in new york were made aware of this, we changed our plans for tonight's show." critics of fox news have accused the network of promoting tea party even as it covers the political movement as a news story. a spokeswoman for the network said that neil cavuto was the only host other than hannity at a tea party event thursday, stressing that cavuto was covering the atlanta event for both fox news and fox business channel, not attending as a participant. carl cameron provided news coverage of the tea party events around the country out of washington.

smackdown

i have a video that i like to indulge myself with on occasion. it helps remind me not only that incidents of real television journalism are still technically possible under the present administration but also that incidents of real television journalism have in fact occurred.

too often on today's talking heads programs are guests allowed to distort, obfuscate, propagandize and outright lie without any meaningful challenge from the host. often the simplest follow-up question would suffice.

in this video, a too-rare instance of how real interviews should be conducted, secretary of defense donald rumsfeld makes an appearance on march 14, 2004 with new york times columnist thomas friedman on cbs' face the nation, hosted by bob schieffer.

the interview proceeds unremarkably until schieffer brings up the administration's claims that iraq posed an "immediate threat" to the nation — a threat that of course proved spectacularly hollow when no wmds were found.

rumsfeld then not only flatly denies that the white house had ever made any such claims but also blithely accuses his critics of spreading "folklore" and smugly invites schieffer to produce evidence of any of such statements from the white house. clearly this is a man who knows that he is not about to be challenged.

boy, was he wrong!

friedman: we have one here. it says "some have argued that the nu-" — this is you speaking — "that the nuclear threat from iraq is not imminent, that saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. i would not be so certain."

just the sight of rumsfeld's crag collapsing like cheap plaster is well worth the price of admission. but little did rummy know that friedman was just warming up.

just as rumsfeld drifts off into a catatonic ralph kramden stammer, friedman admits that the phrasing is "close" (i.e., "imminent" is not "immediate") — and rummy gladly runs with the bait. the change in his demeanor, his relief at being handed such a welcome exit, is both immediate (no pun intended) and undisguised and is just as quickly replaced with his familiar smirk as he glibly relaxes back into the interview. no harm done — all in good fun, really ...

rumsfeld: i've tried to be precise, and i've tried to be accurate ...

hold on now — i ain't done with you yet, sucka!

friedman: "no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of saddam hussein in iraq."

smackdown!

what more priceless theater than rummy reduced to blubbering incoherence on national television, hoist high on his baldface lies like a prize halibut?

this type of "gotcha!" journalism, however, is very easy to accomplish. statements by officials like rumsfeld are a matter of public record — any research intern could do the work that these over-priced celebrity news personalities are supposed to be doing. so why aren't we seeing more of these public figures being held with their feet to the fire?

the answer, i believe, at least in part, is access. television journalists and their network sponsors (and by extension the media as a whole) know that the continued success of their venue depends on their access to the movers and the shakers. what politician, pundit or priest would risk entering the studio just to run a gauntlet of their own deceit? programs like face the nation would quickly become ghost towns populated by faceless and impotent nth-level bureaucrats.

but would that be so bad — the closing of their precious access to the liars and the spinners — if it also meant that the liars' and the spinners' access to the eyes and ears of the masses were also consequentially closed? after all, access is a two-way street — the liars need these venues for the peddling of their noxious wares as much as, if not more than, their network enablers.

the sad reality, however, is that as long as disreputable networks like fox exist to serve as a ready rostrum for the sultans of spin, other stations will remain at a competitive disadvantage if they desire to both attract powerful guests and maintain any semblance of credibility and responsibility. unfortunately, in the marketplace of ideas, fact is no more valuable than fiction.

rumsfeld: we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to lie to the world to attempt to further their case. and to the extent people lie, ultimately, they are caught lying and they lose their credibility, and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this. — remarks on al qaeda, the taliban and the aljazeera news network, october 28, 2001

"on the ground"

i have a small request.

i would prefer that folks refrain from using the expression "on the ground" since it is a bushism that adds zero information to whatever statement it is added. the term is a kind of rhetorical olestra; it imparts a dubious flavor to the discourse without any benefit of nutritional value. and, quite frankly, abuse of the phrase is starting to drive me a little batty — consider this quote from white house press secretary scott mcclellan during a recent press conference:

well, i think that general casey and the vice president talked about that very issue yesterday. they talked about their views of the situation on the ground. general casey is someone who is on the ground and has a firsthand account of what is taking place, as is our ambassador, ambassador khalilzad and they've expressed their views of the situation on the ground. — white house briefing, march 20, 2006

i believe that the bush administration has strategically adopted the use of this expression to short-circuit criticism of its spin on events in iraq, by implicitly bestowing an unearned authenticity to its deployed personnel that stateside critics cannot claim.

certainly authenticity is more a function of accuracy and transparency than of mere location. certainly credibility has more to do with whether one is a responsible journalist (or any other type of news source), who presumably would be just as credible from wherever "on the planet" he reports.

would we imagine a report by bill o'reilly or brit hume to be any more credible were they to choose to broadcast from iraq — admittedly a not very likely scenario — rather than from the safety of their comfortable studios in new york? one might hope, but not if they and their ilk simply choose to shovel more of the same distortion and propaganda that their networks substitute for honest news.

"on the ground" however has become no longer exclusively the administration's favorite press whip. quite ironically, as the white house in march stepped up its campaign to blame the messenger for the bleak news coming from iraq, reporters in iraq to their credit quickly took up the gauntlet, throwing the expression right back in the president's face:

gregory: do we miss the overall story about what's going on in iraq, or does security remain the overall story? engel: i think the security problem is the overall story and most iraqi's i speak to say — actually most reporters get it wrong — it's the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television. — nbc today, march 22, 2006

unfortunately the occurence of the expression has metastasized, its use now reflexively employed to convey any sort of authenticity, even when physical location is completely irrelevant to the issue, as blogger jonathan singer does in his recent article on the senate fight over the now-defunct immigration bill:

in his weekly radio address today, george w. bush strenuously worked to spin his own party's immigration bill disaster by pinning blame for the legislation's downfall on harry reid. unfortunately for the president the facts on the ground do not support his claims, as is often the case. — "bush wrongly tries to shift blame ...", april 8, 2006

i doubt any meaning would have been lost on us if singer had instead written:

unfortunately for the president the facts do not support his claims, as is often the case.

my continued sanity may soon depend upon it.

changing the storyline

abc news washington correspondent jake tapper discussing charges of media bias in the persistently bleak coverage of iraq with howard kurtz, host of cnn reliable sources, march 19 2006:

kurtz: jake tapper, in this morning's washington post, donald rumsfeld, the defense secretary, has an op-ed pieces which says, in part, "history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on web sites, or the latest sensational attack. history is a bigger picture." now, since you are just back from iraq, do you believe the journalists provided a distorted picture, or did it seem different to you when you got there than you might have expected? tapper: it's a very complicated question, obviously. what journalists, when, who, what are you talking about specifically? i think that there is a lot of violence still in iraq, and i think that if you listen to commanders on the ground and if you go to iraq, you'll see that that security situation is an incredibly important one. and as much as the pentagon may not want to talk about it or may want to talk about the positive, the parliament and the elections and the things that are being achieved, which are tangible achievements, the violence makes it very difficult to get past, you know, the daily boom. let me just — one quick story. we wanted to do a story about the freedom of the press in iraq, and we went to the set of a new iraqi sitcom that they're filming, because there's been — there's all this entertainment now, and it's one of the things that the ambassador there has trumpeted. kurtz: so what happened? tapper: we got there, and the guy who had set it up with us — we shot — we shot for a little while, and the guy who had helped us arrange it was assassinated the very morning while we were there on the set. and so our cameras were rolling while the director and the producer and the cast and crew found out that the guy that had green-lit the show and the guy that had set up our being there was killed. so no matter how hard we try to cover the positive, the violence has a way of rearing its head. kurtz: talk about changing your storyline.