Why CNN sucks

Greetings from the Buffalo Niagra International Airport. Just put Ali Akbar on his plane back home and, with deadline looming for the December issue of The American Spectator -- subscribe now -- the National Desk has been set up at the airport bar for a few hours.

I'm being forced to watch CNN, where the host of "American Morning" just finished interrogating (not interviewing) Rep. Michelle Bachmann. CNN's John Roberts did his assigned job, reading from DNC talking points and forcing Bachmann to respond point-by-point to the liberal argument -- which, however, was not presented as a liberal argument, but rather as "some critics say" or, simply, as facts.

At one point, Roberts raked Bachmann over the coals for calling ObamaCare "socialized medicine." That is to say, he was spinning for the Democrats, who know that "socialized medicine" has negative connotations compared to "health care reform."

This rhetorical battle is, however, only about politics, and has nothing to do with the policy at dispute. In terms of policy -- what will it cost taxpayers? how will it affect delivery of health care services? et cetera -- it doesn't matter if you call it Super Duper Rainbows And Unicorns Sexy Delicious Health Care Paradise. The policy is the policy is the policy.

John Roberts made no acknowledgment of this underlying reality. His job was to pretend to be objective while striving to depict Bachman and all other opponents of ObamaCare as extremist fringe kooks: "Socialized medicine! How dare you call it socialized medicine!" And he did that dishonest work with transparent enthusiasm.

This segment was followed, a few minutes later, by a puff-piece profile of Valerie Jarrett, who was given the kind of tough, aggressive, critical treatment that the Jonas Brothers get from the editors of Tiger Beat.

It is CNN's pseudo-objectivity -- a liberal perspective presented as The Way It Is -- that annoys the informed viewer.

The White House has waged a propaganda campaign against Fox News (which frankly presents a conservative perspective as The Way It Is) while Fox's two cable rivals (both liberal) slide into Nielsen irrelevance, unable to attract a mass audience. And the geniuses at CNN can't seem to figure out why this is.

'Chicago is out? . . . Chicago is out?'

Like Allah says, "Comedy gold."

Me on Twitter:

I'm thinking the influence of the Vlaams Belang-dominated Belgian delegation to the IOC was decisive.

Between the Flemish Menace and ultranationalist fascist sympathizers like Pamela Geller, Chicago was doomed.

If you don't get that joke, don't worry. If you do get that joke, I apologize for the coffee spew all over your computer.

UPDATE: The suspiciously Flemish-looking Michelle Malkin says to "prepare for recriminations." Yeah, liberals are already trying to blame Republicans, but if I live to be 56, I'll be enjoying the recriminations with bikini-clad cuties on the beach in Rio, covering the 2016 Olympics. (Just warning regular readers, so you can get ready for the Mother Of All Tip-Jar Rattles.)

Speaking of bikini-clad cuties, Dan Riehl advises, "Next time, send Sarah Palin." Or, as the former Alaska governor is now known to Charles Johnson, Sharmuta and the LGF gang, "a close associate of Vlaams Belang sympathizer Stacy McCain."

How do you not re-post this riposte?

by Smitty (h/t HotAir via Gateway Pundit)

CNN deploys a reporter, who tries to do a spot on that terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad Congressman Joe Wilson, who had the temerity to yell truth in a crowded fiction. The Tea Party crowd initially yells "Tell the truth" over the report. After a pause, they chant "Glenn Beck". When the reporter finally asks for the opinion of Wilson, the crowd is wholly enthusiastic in its support.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the next White House staff meeting. Maybe Iowahawk can envision that for us.

Bozo the CNN Stringer

All Dennis Zaki needs is a red nose and floppy shoes:

Having touted these "multiple sources" in his lede, Zaki neither quotes, paraphrases nor describes them at any later point in the item. Nor is there so much as a "could not be reached for comment" indicating that he had attempted to get the Palins to verify what he heard from these mysterious "multiple sources" (who for all we know are his wife's hairdresser, the shoeshine man at the bus station and a night-shift clerk at the second-largest convenience store in Wasilla.)
Ask any newspaper editor in the country whether he would dare publish a story that alleged so much on the basis of so little. Among the Old School editors for whom I worked was the legendary Wes Pruden of The Washington Times. Wes would have personally fired any reporter who ever turned in such a smelly pile of steaming nonsense, which wouldn't have gotten past any assistant metro-desk editor who valued his paycheck. . . .

Please read the whole thing, Mrs. Palin. Even the jokes have been "confirmed by multiple sources."

Thanks for the earlier linkage from Carol at No Sheeples Here, Wizbang, Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom, Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack, TigerHawk, Fishersville Mike, and Dan Riehl. And go give a big blog-birthday hug to Pat at And So It Goes In Shreveport.

UPDATE: Thanks to Tim Lindell of Conservatives For Palin, serving as the blogospheric equivalent of the copy desk. If I'm going to rip this clown a new one, I guess it probably helps to spell his name right, huh?

Tim also has the complete roundup, including smackdowns of Politico's Jonathan Martin, who actually blamed Palin for denying Zaki's smear.

So vicious smear artists like Zaki and his buddy Gryphen can post any calumny they want, puff it up with talk about their "sources," get linked all over the left-wing blogsphere, and if Palin bothers to deny it, she's the bad guy?

We are grateful to Jonathan Martin for providing this clarification of the Politico's ethical standards.

URGENT UPDATE 2:14 a.m. 8/2: This just in -- "multiple sources confirm" that Jonathan Martin recently raped a chihuahua.

No criminal charges were filed, because the chihuaua didn't even notice . . .

They Say 49 Out of 50 Liberals Don't Understand Statistics

by DJ Smitty (1 ea.)
That is the startling conclusion of the Political Castaway Blog.
PCB picks up the thread on a CNN "Report: 1 in 50 U.S. Children Face Homelessness." Homelessness isn't a joke, but you might not say the same of the methodology in use.
Apparently, some people are much more happy with math as a qualitative thing. The idea that it should be, you know, quantitative, just hurts their feelings to much.

Now, what good is a DJ if he doesn't drop some ear candy?
You are free to substitute "Liberal" for "Lover" in the following:

'Ed, you're a butt boy'

Yesterday, I was driving from the Heritage Foundation over to my current part-time day gig as a video editor and listened to the second hour of Rush Limbaugh's show, in which he was talking about a particularly idiotic question that CNN's Ed Henry asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs:

The question is from Ed Henry, CNN, of Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman: "The president has spoken a lot about bringing the country together. . . ."
Ed, you're a butt boy.

That caused me to laugh out loud. You have to hear the audio to appreciate the way Rush delivered that line. He started to read the entire question from Henry, preparatory to playing a sound-bite of Gibbs's response. As he began to do so, however, he halted, evidently struck by the total tee-ball nature of the question, which had zero to do with White House policy or the real work of the governing process.

That set Rush off on a memorable monologue, and understandably so. Henry was simply giving Gibbs an easy shot at Limbaugh. Here's the complete question:

"Bob, the president has spoken a lot about bringing the country together. And after the stimulus fight, there was a lot of pandering in both parties about bipartisanship. What's the White House's reaction to Rush Limbaugh saying again that he wants the president to fail, specifically on his economic plans, and how does that bode for bipartisanship in the future working with the Republicans?"

Henry asked Gibbs to give "the White House's reaction" not to any legislation in Congress or economic development on Wall Street, but rather to something said by a radio talk-show host. Imagine Ed Henry asking a White House spokesman to something said by, inter alia, Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews. Never gonna happen.

Butt Boy Ed is not engaged in journalism. Rather, he is promoting a Democratic Party propaganda objective, to set up this "controversial" statement by Limbaugh in order to use Rush as a proxy for the Republican Party. It's a little game for Butt Boy Ed, to get the White House to officially condemn Limbaugh, so that Republican leaders in Congress can in turn be asked whether they side with the now-denounced radio host.

Butt Boy Ed is doing hammer-and-wedge work intended to divide and/or discredit the GOP, to render the conservative movement's most influential spokesman persona non grata among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Butt Boy Ed thinks ordinary Americans are too stupid to see what it is he is doing, and that he is not engaged in genuine news reporting, but is in fact a partisan political operative propagandizing CNN viewers on behalf of the Democratic Party.

If Butt Boy Ed quit his job at CNN and went to work for the Obama administration, the first thing he'd do is collect back pay.

Dept. of Bad Media Relations

The McCain campaign canceled the candidate's scheduled appearance on "Larry King Live" because of campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds' Monday meltdown in an interview with CNN's Campbell Brown:



Granted, Brown was hostile and badgering in her treatment of Bounds, but no more so than Sean Hannity would be if some Democratic spokesman came on "Hannity & Colmes" and was as stupidly unresponsive as Bounds was.

The audience for "Larry King Live" was not responsible for either Brown's hostility or for Bounds' ineptitude, and it was a bad decision to pass up a primetime TV appearance because of what happened Monday night on another show. This is no time for the cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face approach.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)