...Blogger is still bloggered, as it was for awhile this morning, I'm using Firefox's Performacing add-on to write and save this link-heavy post:
• Justin would like, Colbert-style, to coin the term equivalating, to describe the habit the mainstream corporate media has of ascribing false equivalence to Republican crimes and Democratic misdeeds. Just as murder isn't the same as jaywalking even though they're both technically illegal, saying "a guy like Rush Limbaugh is every bit as bad as all those Democrats who went out to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of the Daily Kos" serves not only to needlessly inflate Markos' cult-of-personality but to downplay both Limbaugh's influence and his actual words of hatred (in this case, his misinformed tirade against Parkinson's sufferer Michael J. Fox because Fox did ads supporting Democrats this time even though he's supported Republicans in the past). Hilzoy has another good example, the pre-emptive strike that predicts "the left will likely unleash its garbage" even though (1) the "left", such as it is (and by "the left" the far-right actually means "the center" or possibly "liberals" or "Democrats" who are hardly leftists), can't even get a Dixie Chicks movie preview about censorship to run on NBC and CW; (2) Democrats' ads tend to attack opponents' political positions and actions rather than smearing their personal lives; and (3) there's no evidence that "garbage" will ever appear, it's just a made-up prediction! Because if you're looking at the world from a radical regressive viewpoint, you know you're sleazy so you naturally assume everyone else is. Billmon has more, in a lovely essay about the current state of the mainstream corporate media. I wish someone with more time and energy than me would start a clearinghouse site listing all the examples of equivalation the Republican-owned media and pundits have foisted upon us in the past half dozen years.
• I should also mention Justin has a nice review of Julia Sweeney's new show, which I'd love to have on CD.
• Kai mentioned how much he hated "yellowface" "chinky" music, which doesn't sound like any actual Chinese music he knows, so I asked him to provide examples of authentic Chinese music and he obliged. I think I've heard the first two before, and they're pretty much what springs to my mind when I think of Chinese music, so I'm glad I was right. He has another good post up about liberal hypocrisy when it comes to racism. Forgive me if I'm engaging in equivalation, but we have no moral high ground from which to criticize the "other side" when we can't even acknowledge our own shortcomings in this area. (And yes, in a way this is still about the all-white-blogger luncheon with Clinton in Harlem; if other folks can still discuss the feminism aspect of it vis a vis Amanda's burqa Photoshopping, I can still wonder what would have happened if someone had done a Photoshop blackfacing of the Firedoglake bloggers.)
• That said, the lefty blogosphere is pretty darn cool when they want to be, and they've generated much happiness for Mary Beth & family in their time of need.
• Part IV of Paul Henry's War of the Words mockumentary is out.
• Via Alan Sepinwall, TV writer Ken Levine imagines an Aaron Sorkin-written show about baseball.
• Lastly, Mo Rocca charts November Madness.
Off to turn the clocks back, which doubtless means Datsa will be waking us up at 4 AM instead of his usual 5 AM...
• Justin would like, Colbert-style, to coin the term equivalating, to describe the habit the mainstream corporate media has of ascribing false equivalence to Republican crimes and Democratic misdeeds. Just as murder isn't the same as jaywalking even though they're both technically illegal, saying "a guy like Rush Limbaugh is every bit as bad as all those Democrats who went out to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of the Daily Kos" serves not only to needlessly inflate Markos' cult-of-personality but to downplay both Limbaugh's influence and his actual words of hatred (in this case, his misinformed tirade against Parkinson's sufferer Michael J. Fox because Fox did ads supporting Democrats this time even though he's supported Republicans in the past). Hilzoy has another good example, the pre-emptive strike that predicts "the left will likely unleash its garbage" even though (1) the "left", such as it is (and by "the left" the far-right actually means "the center" or possibly "liberals" or "Democrats" who are hardly leftists), can't even get a Dixie Chicks movie preview about censorship to run on NBC and CW; (2) Democrats' ads tend to attack opponents' political positions and actions rather than smearing their personal lives; and (3) there's no evidence that "garbage" will ever appear, it's just a made-up prediction! Because if you're looking at the world from a radical regressive viewpoint, you know you're sleazy so you naturally assume everyone else is. Billmon has more, in a lovely essay about the current state of the mainstream corporate media. I wish someone with more time and energy than me would start a clearinghouse site listing all the examples of equivalation the Republican-owned media and pundits have foisted upon us in the past half dozen years.
• I should also mention Justin has a nice review of Julia Sweeney's new show, which I'd love to have on CD.
• Kai mentioned how much he hated "yellowface" "chinky" music, which doesn't sound like any actual Chinese music he knows, so I asked him to provide examples of authentic Chinese music and he obliged. I think I've heard the first two before, and they're pretty much what springs to my mind when I think of Chinese music, so I'm glad I was right. He has another good post up about liberal hypocrisy when it comes to racism. Forgive me if I'm engaging in equivalation, but we have no moral high ground from which to criticize the "other side" when we can't even acknowledge our own shortcomings in this area. (And yes, in a way this is still about the all-white-blogger luncheon with Clinton in Harlem; if other folks can still discuss the feminism aspect of it vis a vis Amanda's burqa Photoshopping, I can still wonder what would have happened if someone had done a Photoshop blackfacing of the Firedoglake bloggers.)
• That said, the lefty blogosphere is pretty darn cool when they want to be, and they've generated much happiness for Mary Beth & family in their time of need.
• Part IV of Paul Henry's War of the Words mockumentary is out.
• Via Alan Sepinwall, TV writer Ken Levine imagines an Aaron Sorkin-written show about baseball.
• Lastly, Mo Rocca charts November Madness.
Off to turn the clocks back, which doubtless means Datsa will be waking us up at 4 AM instead of his usual 5 AM...
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