Wolf Blitzer, the face and droning monotonous voice of CNN’s breaking news coverage, has written the finest blog post of the year, so far. Blitzer has penned “A salute to politicians,” because, really, someone had to.
“I know it will probably sound weird,” Blitzer begins, “but I admire these politicians who put themselves out there before the American public knowing full well that all their warts will be exposed big time.” We have a breaking news alert for you here in the Situation Room: Situation Room anchor Wolf Blitzer admires members of the political ruling elite.
Politicians, you see, should be admired, because even though they are by and large rich, they still work very hard, every couple years. So says Wolf Blitzer in his essay on politicians, “I admire politicians, by Wolf Blitzer.”
Most of them already have lots of money. They could easily coast at this point in their lives and sit back and relax.
Instead, they are working hard on the campaign trail.
Sometimes people have to do stuff they don’t want to do, unless they have a lot of money. Usually people with a lot of money like to play golf, because playing golf is more fun than going to work. If a person with a lot of money goes to work, he must like work a lot. Even though sometimes work is hard:
I’ve seen them in action, and it’s tough. They get up early in the morning and go to sleep late at night. They have to deliver the same stump speech over and over and over again, and then answer an endless amount of often annoying questions at town hall meetings, at diners and from reporters such as me.
Next time you think about criticizing a politician, step back and think about how early he woke up this morning, and how many times he had to give a boring speech. He might have even had to deal with Wolf Blitzer! Now don’t you feel guilty?
Blitzer hits his main theme — it’s admirable that politicians actually get out of bed and do things even though they are rich — once more and names the politicians he is specifically saluting:
Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul and Rick Perry could have taken the easy path and relaxed and enjoyed life. Instead of playing golf and hanging out with their children and grandchildren, they are working hard trying to get the Republican presidential nomination. In the process, they are bitterly attacked – often for good reason.
In their pursuit of more power these already powerful men have allowed themselves to be scrutinized and even occasionally criticized, which is quite a sacrifice.
This salute to politicians even ends in the most perfectly CNN-y way possible, by presenting two vague and conflicting viewpoints and refusing to adjudicate between them:
Why do they do it?
I know what they say. They say they are interested in public service and want to help the American people. They say they believe in what they are trying to achieve.
The cynics say they have huge egos and are simply seeking power and glory.
That is certainly true of some politicians.
But having covered many of them over the years, I also know some are trying to do the right thing, and I salute them.
“Some say politicians are power-hungry narcissists, others say they are noble public servants. Both sides could be part right, some of the time, most likely.”
The sole disappointing aspect of Blitzer’s salute is that it includes no musical tribute.
It’s been six months since a Florida jury found Casey Anthony not guilty in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Since then, the woman who spent three years awaiting trial behind bars — and in the glare of the news spotlight – has kept a low profile. Considering the lingering questions about her innocence, the intense public resentment over the verdict, and a steady stream of death threats, her hibernation is hardly a surprise. But perhaps some part of Casey Anthony has missed the attention.
In a new video — ostensibly recorded in October but which did not emerge until Thursday — a now blond, bobbed and bespectacled Anthony narrates a four-minute “diary” entry about her new life. She says she’s “extremely excited” about her future and new computer – being able to Skype, take pictures, and “finally have something that I can finally call mine.” What she doesn’t mention? The child she used to call her own.
Though Anthony, still on probation in Florida, makes no mention of her exact location, her parents said Thursday they were “concerned” the video might endanger her. It has definitely stirred up the usual outrage from the most predictable mouthpieces. In other words, CNN is stoked. For Nancy Grace, the video has been like a late Christmas present, an opportunity to froth like she hasn’t frothed about “two-year old Caylee’s decomposing body” since last summer. Trotting out her favorite nickname for Anthony, Grace opined that “I think this is very simply Tot Mom Casey Anthony and her lawyers, possibly, injecting themselves back in the national media because nobody’s touching her offer for a paid-for interview with a 10-foot pole.” She added that: “It’s all about Tot Mom… generating interest in herself.” Dr. Drew Pinsky, meanwhile, eagerly pointed out her “narcissism and … issues of judgment.”
Out in the wider world, meanwhile, the public reaction has been mostly an excuse for another outpouring of revulsion against the lady one MSNBC commenter called “the most hated person in the U.S.A.” Also unsurprising — and straight-up gross — is that Anthony has her fair share of rabid admirers. On the shudderingly self-proclaimed “#1 Casey Anthony Fan site,” reaction toward the “smokin’ hottie” and her video has been considerably warmer. Or, as one commenter put it, “I would love to rock your world sometime.”
But why did the video emerge now, and who is Anthony really communicating with? Is this a public statement or truly a private “diary”? Anthony’s lawyers told a Florida Fox affiliate that “Casey has maintained some notes on her thoughts for personal use, especially for counseling. She did not release this video to YouTube and does not know how they got it. It could not have been legally obtained and was not authorized.” And John Riley, the man who runs a “Boycott Casey Anthony” Facebook group and first posted the clip, told Nancy Grace Thursday that he found the clip on a few pay-per-view sites and “kept looking and looking and looking” until he found it for free. He says he posted it “so there would be no money made off it.” Try to get your head around the idea of someone clawing doggedly around the Internet for four minutes of what Anthony promises “will be as tedious as my audio recordings have been” and you begin to appreciate the apparently endless fascination this woman still holds.
Anthony’s “tedious” four minutes don’t reveal much about the inner workings of someone found not guilty of killing her daughter. They do seem in line with thoughts of someone recently released from jail – the simple relief of having one’s own possessions, the pleasure of having a dog. And she might well be circumspect about talking about her child and her trial, even on a supposedly private “video log,” if her lawyers have coached her to be. So is her video a case study in narcissism, a private moment from a “smokin’ hottie,” or just personal thoughts before a counseling session? The answer is simple. It’s whatever you already thought. Though Casey Anthony says, “Things can only get better,” minds aren’t changed as easily as hair color. “It’s surreal how things have changed since July,” she declares at one point in the clip. Then she adds, as if speaking for both herself and everyone watching, “and how many things haven’t.”
Minor British media personality host Piers Morgan was called to give evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, the British government’s ongoing inquiry into the occasionally criminal newsgathering practices of the British tabloid press. Morgan appeared via satellite from the United States, where he is inexplicably employed as a talk show host by CNN.
Morgan edited the Daily Mirror, a competitor to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and the Sun, from 1995-2004, when he was sacked for printing fake photographs and a hoax story on the front page of the paper. No one alleges that phone-hacking was as widespread at Morgan’s Mirror as it was at the News Corp. papers, but Morgan has written of listening to a voice-mail message left by Paul McCartney on his ex-wife Heather Mills’ phone, and said, in past statements, that basically “everyone” in the British press listened to celebrity voice mails.
I don’t know. Because I was never directly involved, this was dealt with through the news desk or features desk … Certainly all journalists knew they had to act within the confines of the law.
Questioned about the legality of using “rubbish” thrown out by private citizens as material for stories, Morgan said he thought it legal but “on the cusp of the unethical.”
Asked about a diary entry in which he explained how “phone-hacking” works, Morgan again played dumb, claiming not to remember who explained it to him. Morgan was questioned about a man “who went to the Daily Mirror more than 10 years ago with a story about mobile phone voicemail security being compromised.” Morgan said he doesn’t remember ever hearing about the man, and said the story would’ve been too boring to print, but the man was paid 100 pounds for the tip.
From the Guardian liveblog:
Morgan says he has “studied this man’s testimony”. “He seems to me one sandwich short of a picnic,” he adds.
He continues: “This was a complete non-event, it never got supressed for the reason he’s trying to …”
Sherborne asks why Nott was paid £100 for the story.
Morgan says “loads” of people get paid £100 for stories that are not used.
Nice work if you can get it.
And that was about it. The inquiry was never going to “nail” Morgan on anything other than generally being simultaneously amoral and sanctimonious. While he engaged in loads of completely unethical behavior, and almost certainly skirted the law, it’s clear that the Mirror wasn’t acting in blatant violation of the law as often or as brazenly as the Sun and News of the World.
Morgan finished off with a defensive and petulant closing statement, complaining that the inquiry lawyers only asked him about the bad stuff he did in his years in British tabloids. “It’s like a rock star having an album coming out with all his worst-ever hits,” Morgan said.
Erin Burnett was a perfect fit at CNBC, a business news network that interprets its mission as reporting for business leaders and the finance industry and not on them. A former Goldman Sachs analyst who also did a stint at Citigroup (business journalism might be worse than political reporting when it comes to team-switching and fraternizing among “sources” and “journalists”), Burnett epitomizes the CNBC worldview, where the ideal business journalist is a levelheaded interpreter of the omniscient market and ally of the wise men who’ve been enriched by it. Making the switch to being a news program host for us regular folk, on CNN, has not been without a couple of hitches for Ms. Burnett. Turns out, regular people don’t naturally perceive CEOs and bankers as heroic figures, especially in the midst of a mass employment and consumer debt crisis that the wealthy have escaped unscathed.
Burnett, despite her youth, is a relic of a bygone age. She embodies ’90s “market populism,” to use Thomas Frank’s phrase, now still surviving on our airwaves as a zombie idea. The idea of America as a mass “shareholder society” is a sick joke in a nation currently sharply divided between struggling debtors and bailed-out creditors, but the dream is popular enough among the well-off professionals in charge of our news networks that CNN pinned its prime-time hopes on Burnett appealing to a mass audience. (If ratings are any indication, it’s not working.)
CNN, the network that refuses to take a side on anything, naturally assumes that being objectively pro-finance is the same thing as being objective. Hence her parroting the Wall Street party line that “everybody” (meaning “everybody” in the sense of American citizens and not financial professionals) was “responsible” for the massive financial crisis that plunged us unto a recession. This came after her revisionist claim, on Bill Maher’s show, that “everyone in this country knew there was a housing bubble,” an attempt to excuse the blinkered cheerleading of pre-crash CNBC. (She followed up with a line treating a hypothetical “soak the rich” tax as an objectively bad idea, asserting that Wall Street had already lost too much in the crisis to require such a draconian measure.)
And there was her amazing response to Donny Deutsch’s 2009 suggestion that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs give some minuscule percentage of their obscene profits to Haiti. “Hold on, Donny,” she shouted. “What would they do with all that money down there in Haiti?” I’m sure they could think of something.
Finally, I have no problem with professional entertainers playing make-believe on Donald Trump’s asinine “reality” show, but it’s embarrassing for a supposed journalist to pretend to be the fake-billionaire’s “advisor,” a part Burnett played on “The Apprentice” before she left the NBC family.
HACKIEST 2011 MOMENT:
Clearly, her confused, confrontational response to Occupy Wall Street. She saw “bongos” and “a clown,” but these stupid fools didn’t know how wonderful Wall Street was, and how much it helps all of us, every day! One person didn’t even realize that TARP was an unalloyed positive thing for the nation as a whole! Burnett’s refusal or inability to understand what could possibly outrage people about the extraordinary actions involved in rescuing Wall Street from its colossal mistakes as the rest of us muddle through a protracted non-recovery was only improved by her hostile and dismissive treatment of regular people actually endeavoring to make the country a slightly fairer place. If you want snide, condescending apologism for powerful people you should rightfully worship as your betters, CNN’s got the show for you!
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(Read the introduction here. Read the 2010 Salon Hack 30 List here.)
Erick Erickson is a generic right-wing blogger whose only notable quality as a commentator is his cowardly unwillingness to stand behind the various vitriolic things he says and writes. He’s not a good writer or interesting thinker or particularly funny or savvy. His idea of a good gag is calling David Souter a “goat-fucking child molester” and then deleting that tweet and then hastily rewriting it when he got called on it and then crying to Howard Kurtz that he regretted ever writing it.
Even the many vile and stupid things he says are repetitive and predictable. He’s called Barack Obama a Nazi on multiple occasions, for crimes like “criticizing the insurance industry” and “wanting to host the Olympics.” Who can forget the time he idly wondered when citizens would “march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp” over a Washington state proposal to regulate phosphates in dishwasher detergent? That’s quality political analysis right there! No wonder CNN hired him!
And it gets no lamer or wronger than the “We are the 53% movement,” a stillborn, inadvertently hilarious right-wing response to Occupy Wall Street involving self-proclaimed members of the producer class crowing about their Randian productivity while decrying everyone else as leeches. The name was taken from the premise that “only” 53 percent of Americans pay taxes, which is true only of federal income taxes, and is true only because there are a lot of poor Americans, and a few lucky Americans who are skilled at taking advantage of Republican-supported tax loopholes.
Erickson led off the “53%” movement by declaring that he “works three jobs,” at least two of which are simply spewing a never-ending stream of risible bullshit. Other contributors to the “We are the 53%” site included a number of people who were clearly not in the 53 percent, being apparently unaware that they were clear beneficiaries of government social spending, or in one instance, being a dog.
HACKIEST 2011 MOMENT:
Surprisingly, not his 53 percent activism. The hackiest thing Erick Erickson did all year was withdraw support from an insurgent GOP candidate because his rich bosses are personal friends of George Allen.That’s the sign of a true careerist hack right there.
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(Read the introduction here. Read the 2010 Salon Hack 30 List here.)
Let’s be honest: Larry King wasn’t much of a journalist. He was a lovable character, but he managed to get the big interviews because he lobbed softballs. But as I said, at least he was lovable. I’m not sure anyone besides a toxic celebrity’s public relations team could love Mr. Morgan, who alternates between fawning sycophancy and obvious contempt. Nothing about the man seems remotely sincere besides his self-regard.
And it’s odd that he even still has a career in what we’ll charitably refer to as journalism. As a talent show judge, a history of awful editorial decisions doesn’t much matter. But I’d argue that a news interview show host ought not to have been fired from the tabloid newspaper he ran for being credulous and sloppy enough to put a massive hoax on the front page, as Morgan famously did at the Daily Mirror.
Then there’s the fact that one former Mirror reporter has said phone-hacking was an “accepted technique” at Morgan’s paper, and Morgan has written of listening to a celebrity’s voice-mail message that was most likely obtained through the practice that’s landed other British tabloids in serious legal trouble. Morgan has issued a series of increasingly carefully worded denials.
Of course, even if he never condoned the hacking of a single phone, he’d still be an unctuous, unpleasant misogynist.
Avoid Stress 
Amateur Political Analysis of Nevada GOP Caucus 
The GOP’s Assault Upon Economic Reality 
Demi’s last night out 
One day you’re in 
Pitch and catch 
Whip-it 
U.S., China need a green peace, not a trade war 
Santorum mangles the Founding Fathers 
Chris Christie’s gay marriage headache 
Joan Walsh on NPR’s On Point 
Do we still need Black History Month? 
Trench warfare rages over Keystone pipeline 
