;)
The Commentariat -- Feb. 24, 2015
Internal links & defunct videos removed.
Paul Kane & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Congressional Republicans remained sharply divided Monday over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security, prompting White House officials to begin preparations for a potential shutdown of the agency this weekend.... Late Monday, Senate Democrats again filibustered a Republican funding proposal for DHS because the money is tied to a repeal of President Obama's executive actions on immigration.... The Monday vote marked Republicans' fourth attempt to move the House bill.... Now, with four days before the security agency's budget lapses, senior Republicans are pushing for a new strategy that does not directly link Obama's actions on immigration to funding for DHS."
... President Obama, in a Hill opinion piece: "... much recent attention has focused on a single court decision in Texas in response to a partisan lawsuit that delays some of these lawful, common-sense steps.... But make no mistake, I disagree with this judge's ruling. Just yesterday, the Department of Justice asked the court for an emergency stay of this misguided decision, and it has already filed a notice of appeal. My administration will fight this ruling with every tool at our disposal, and I have full confidence that these actions will ultimately be upheld.... We've even heard irresponsible threats to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, the very agency tasked with securing our borders and keeping Americans safe in a time of new threats, for no reason other than partisan disagreement over my actions." ...
Katie Zezima of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration Monday appealed a ruling by a Texas judge that temporarily blocked the president's executive actions on immigration. The Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal and motion to stay the decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen of Texas."
Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "The Senate's chief referee has dealt a significant setback to conservatives who want to send an ObamaCare repeal bill to the president's desk this year. GOP sources say Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has raised red flags in response to queries about whether it's possible to use a special budgetary procedure to repeal the controversial law 'root and branch,' as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said."
Patrick Temple-West, et al., of Politico: Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared with President Obama yesterday at an AARP meeting in which Obama who called for regulation to police "financial advisors" who scam clients. "'If your business model rests on taking advantage -- bilking -- hard-working Americans out of their retirement money, then you shouldn't be in business,' Obama said.... 'I am happy to be here with the president of the United States to say it's about time to do something we should have done long ago,' Warren said before the president arrived. The issue has pitted the investment industry against consumer groups in a heated lobbying battle for years, while the White House maintained a low profile on the issue... Now, the president is jumping in aggressively...."
Philip Ewing of Politico: Secretary of Defense "Ash Carter has quietly thrown down the gauntlet in a lingering dispute with Russia: If President Vladimir Putin continues to violate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the U.S. could respond in kind."
David Wood of the Huffington Post: "Robert McDonald, the secretary of veterans affairs, wrongly claimed in a videotaped comment earlier this year that he served in special operations forces, the most elite units in the armed forces, when his military service of five years was spent almost entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division during the late 1970s.... 'I have no excuse,' McDonald told The Huffington Post, when contacted to explain his claim. 'I was not in special forces.'"
AP: "Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois, a rising Republican star already facing an ethics inquiry, has spent taxpayer and campaign funds on flights aboard private planes owned by some of his key donors, the Associated Press has found. There also have been other expensive travel and entertainment charges, including for a massage company and music concerts." CW: It is unclear from the story whether or not you & I have the privilege of paying for Schock's massages. ...
... Funny, last August Schock was concerned about the "waste, fraud and abuse" of, by and for a few poor people who had obtained vouchers to live in upscale Chicago apartment buildings. Good government: providing Aaron Schock with massages, concert tickets & other luxuries. Bad government: allowing a few of the undeserving poor to live in luxury buildings.
Al Jazeera: "A digital leak to Al Jazeera of hundreds of secret intelligence documents from the world's spy agencies has offered an unprecedented insight into operational dealings of the shadowy and highly politicised realm of global espionage. Over the coming days, Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit is publishing The Spy Cables, in collaboration with The Guardian newspaper." ...
Netanyahu: even fakier than a crude cartoon.... Seumas Milne, et al., of the Guardian: "Binyamin Netanyahu's dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document. It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world's major intelligence services -- one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times." ...
... Seumus Milne & Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian: "The CIA tried to gain access to Hamas through backchannels despite a US government ban on contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement, the spy cables show. They suggest US intelligence has been anxious to make inroads with Hamas, or recruit agents, inside the Gaza Strip."
CW: Here is the best defense I've read of Rudy Giuliani's complaint that he isn't feeling President Obama's love. The post is by Ed Rogers, a Republican party operative who writes for the Washington Post. It contains a laundry list of right-wing "evidence" that President Obama isn't "pro-America," all of it debunked &/or ignorant &/or twisted. ...
... AND, yes, Rogers is still aggrieved over President Obama's "latte salute," (or as Karl Rove explained, it was really a "chai tea" salute just to remind you Obama is a foreign Muslim guy.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd.
Emily Steel & Ravi Somaiya of the New York Times: "The Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Monday stepped up his defense against reports that he embellished stories about his war reporting earlier in his career, while some former colleagues continued to say he had exaggerated his experiences. Mr. O'Reilly is contesting an article in the magazine Mother Jones and subsequent interviews with former journalists at CBS News that accuse him of misrepresenting his coverage of the Falklands war in 1982 as a young correspondent for CBS News. The central dispute is whether Mr. O'Reilly reported from active war zones, as he has repeatedly said on the air and in his 2001 book.... During a phone conversation, he told a reporter for The New York Times that there would be repercussions if he felt any of the reporter's coverage was inappropriate. 'I am coming after you with everything I have,' Mr. O'Reilly said. 'You can take it as a threat.'" Emphasis added. ...
... Dylan Byers of Politico: "Steel confirmed on Twitter that she was the reporter in question." CW: And this after Steel's previous report on the O'Reilly controversy (linked yesterday) was a love letter to O'Reilly. ...
... David Corn & Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones: "CBS News today posted its reports from Buenos Aires at the end of the Falklands war, in response to a request from Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who has been seeking to counter reports that he mischaracterized his wartime reporting experience. But rather than bolstering O'Reilly's description of the anti-government protest he says he covered as a 'combat situation,' the tape corroborates the accounts of other journalists who were there and who have described it as simply a chaotic, violent protest." Includes video. ...
... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Bill O'Reilly has declared himself vindicated by newly unearthed footage of a 1982 riot in Argentina, despite the archive tapes failing to support his disputed claims that he reported from a war zone massacre as a young correspondent." ...
... Michael Walsh of Yahoo! News: "More journalists have come forward to dispute Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's description of Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a 'combat situation' during the 1982 Falklands War." ...
... Joe Strupp of Media Matters: "Another one of Bill O'Reilly's former colleagues at CBS News is casting doubt on his claims that he reported from a 'combat situation' in Buenos Aires during the Falklands War. Charles Krause, a CBS News correspondent from 1980 to 1983 who reported from Buenos Aires during the same period as O'Reilly, is the latest to contradict the Fox News host. In an interview with Media Matters, Krause called O'Reilly's descriptions of his reporting 'absurd.' He also recalls O'Reilly being there for a short period of time and not having 'any significant role in our coverage of the war.... He wasn't a team player and people thought he was grandstanding, basically.'" ...
... Joe Strupp: "Revelations that Bill O'Reilly may have misled viewers about his reporting from the Falklands War back in 1982 are drawing fire from veteran war correspondents who contend apparent embellishments like O'Reilly's hurt the credibility of all combat journalists." ...
... David Folkenflik of NPR: O'Reilly's "behavior is of a piece with our political age, but it stands at great odds with the journalistic pursuit of fact and truth that is supposed to undergird even the opinions ventured through major media outlets.... We should care about what O'Reilly's response says about him -- and about Fox News. The channel's chairman, Roger Ailes, prizes tribal loyalty over journalistic precision." ...
... Jim Naureckas of FAIR: Dylan Byers of Politico is helping Bill O'Reilly get away with making up stuff. "Byers totally swallows O'Reilly's spin that when he said he was "in the Falklands," he didn't think anyone would think he meant he was IN the FALKLANDS." ...
... Tom Scocca of Gawker: "Dylan Byers, the dumbest media reporter alive, has typed up some thoughts at The Politico about, as his headline puts it, "Why the Bill O'Reilly charges aren't sticking.... As Byers explains, the reason Bill O'Reilly isn't being held accountable for bullshitting about his war-reporter heroics is that the Mother Jones reporters who broke the news were the wrong people to do the story, and they did the story wrong. They 'weren't war veterans' but 'liberal reporters at an admittedly liberal magazine.' And they failed to 'deliver conclusive evidence of Choppergate-level sins.'... So what if [O'Reilly's] experience in the Falklands war was bogus? So is his experience in the War on Christmas. The fact that people are calling him dishonest simply proves, from Fox's point of view, that he's doing his job.... Byers blames Mother Jones for coming after O'Reilly with a story that 'could be argued away on semantics.'" ...
... CW: In fairness to O'Reilly, he is on the frontlines of the War on Journalism. ...
... CW: Anyways, this all reminds me of my perilous experiences in the Viet Nam War. I was working for the ABC network at the time, & my boss sent me, unarmed, right into the then-most dangerous war zone in the world. Others would say that my boss sent me on an errand to downtown Los Angeles, where I had to walk thru a Viet Nam War protest, & that the actual war zone was thousands of miles away. But That's Semantics.
Another "Journalist" in a Life-Threatening Danger Zone. From the right-wing "media watchdog" Truth Revolt: "Conservative journalist filmmaker James O'Keefe on Saturday tweeted an ominous message to those who follow him and his influential work. 'We have a story we're going to release this coming week and I've never thought about this before but I am afraid for my life on this one,' O'Keefe announced Saturday afternoon. What the story is one can only speculate, but for this one to be particularly risky in O'Keefe's estimation is saying something."
Dear Fox "News": Here is why you don't hire someone to co-anchor the morning news who "is a beauty queen from Springfield, Missouri who has competed in the Miss USA pageant": Rich Juzwiak of Gawker: "Fox 8's Kristi Capel marveled over Lady Gaga's Oscar performance by saying that generally, 'It's hard to hear her voice with all the jigaboo music...that she...whatever you want to call it...jigaboo, haha!'... Later, when she was called out for using a derogatory term for black people to describe Lady Gaga's music, she apologized on Twitter, explaining, 'I had no idea it was a word or what it meant.'"
Presidential Race
Kate Zernicke of the New York Times: "In a major blow to Gov. Chris Christie, a New Jersey judge ruled on Monday that he violated state law when he declined to make the full payment into the state's pension system for public employees last year and ordered him to find a way to fund it now. The decision further complicates Mr. Christie's hopes of reviving his presidential ambitions, which have suffered in recent weeks as his approval ratings in New Jersey have sunk to the lowest point of his tenure, and Republican donors have moved to other contenders for the party's nomination." ...
... Matt Arco of NJ.com: "Gov. Chris Christie [Monday] lashed out against a state judge who ruled the governor violated the contractual rights of public workers by cutting $1.57 billion from pension payments in New Jersey's current budget. The governor's office decried the ruling of Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson as 'liberal judicial activism' in a statement after she ruled against the administration. Christie will appeal the ruling...."
Frank Rich on the "Ben Carson for President!" charade. Thanks to MAG for the link.
Dana Milbank: Scott Walker's refusal to acknowledge President Obama's Christianity "is insidious, and goes beyond last week's questioning of Obama's patriotism, because it allows Walker to wink and nod at the far-right fringe where people really believe that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya who hates America.... Beyond that, Walker's technique shuts down all debate, because there's no way to have a constructive argument once you've disqualified your opponent as unpatriotic, un-Christian and anti-American."
William Booth of the Washington Post: For "$5,250, including round-trip airfare from New York [to Israel], five-star hotel accommodations, all meals, deluxe motor-coach transport, licensed guides and all fees, tips and taxes," you can tour supposed Christian sites in Israel. And there's an extra-special bonus: your tour guide will be Mike Huckabee. "Though busy preparing for another run for the White House, Huckabee is currently shepherding his flock of 253 paying guests around Israel for 10 days." It gets worse: "The Huckabeeans also heard from Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, who explained to the group, according to Huckabee, that there's really no such thing as the 'Palestinians.'"
Beyond the Beltway
Kate Mather of the Los Angeles Times: "Prosecutors have declined to file criminal charges against three Los Angeles police officers who shot and killed an unarmed man at the end of a televised pursuit in 2013.... Late last year, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck determined the officers violated department rules in the shooting, rejecting their claims that they had opened fire because they felt their lives were in danger."
Chuck Lindell of the Austin Statesman: "The state's highest criminal court Monday evening halted the planned execution of Rodney Reed 10 days before the Bastrop man was to have been put to death for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. In a 6-2 ruling, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Reed's execution based on a recently filed petition claiming that a new look at old forensic evidence shows Reed was innocent of the crime."
Juan Lozano of the AP: "Evidence from more than 6,600 rape kits that went untested for years in Houston have turned up 850 hits in the FBI's nationwide database of DNA profiles, marking a major step in the city's $6 million effort to address the backlog, officials announced Monday. Charges have been filed against 29 people, six of whom have been convicted, since the city launched an effort in 2013 to test 6,663 rape kits -- some of which dated back nearly three decades."
Mommy Has a Baby in Her Tummy. Kimberly Kruesi of the AP: "An Idaho lawmaker received a brief lesson on female anatomy after asking if a woman can swallow a small camera for doctors to conduct a remote gynecological exam. The question Monday from Republican state Rep. Vito Barbieri [R] came as the House State Affairs Committee heard nearly three hours of testimony on a bill that would ban doctors from prescribing abortion-inducing medication through telemedicine." When the doctor who was testifying "replied that would be impossible because swallowed pills do not end up in the vagina" Barbieri said, "'Fascinating. That makes sense,' ... amid the crowd's laughter." Barbieri later claimed he was "being rhetorical." ...
... Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Revised Standard Edition: "rhetorical. adjective: [1] of, relating to, or concerned with the art of speaking or writing formally and effectively especially as a way to persuade or influence people; [2] of a question: asked in order to make a statement rather than to get an answer"; [3] of a question: asked in order to demonstrate one is ignorant beyond belief. ...
... CW: Never forget this, oh Women of Idaho: Vito Barbieri is a man who thinks he is qualified to decide what you can do with your body. And damned if he isn't acting on that belief: "Monday afternoon Barbieri told The Spokesman-Review that he adamantly supports the bill" which further limits a woman's right to choose. In addition (you won't want to read this if you have an upset vagina because you might puke), Barbieri "sits on the board of a crisis pregnancy center in northern Idaho."
News Ledes
USA Today: "Eddie Ray Routh, the former Marine and Iraq War vet struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, was found guilty of capital murder Tuesday night in the shooting deaths of American Sniper Chris Kyle and his friend Chad Littlefield."
Washington Post: "Islamic State militants in eastern Syria have captured at least 70 Assyrian Christians -- including many women and children -- in one of the largest recent abductions against religious minorities by the extremists, watchdog groups said Tuesday."
New York Times: "As European diplomats labored to patch up a flagging peace agreement in Ukraine on Tuesday, Russia warned the Ukrainians that they could run out of natural gas within two days because of a dispute over payments."
Washington Post: Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, "the book that once served as a kind of Nazi bible and that was banned from domestic reprints since the end of World War II will soon be returning to German bookstores from the Alps to the Baltic Sea. The prohibition on reissue for years was upheld by the state of Bavaria, which owns the German copyright and legally blocked attempts to duplicate it. But those rights expire in December, and the first new print run here since Hitler's death is due out early next year."
"ABC News has learned [that Trayvon] Martin's family will soon be notified that the Justice Department will not be filing charges against George Zimmerman, who shot the 17-year-old after a confrontation in 2012. Thursday marks three years to the day since Martin was killed." ...
... The New York Times story is here.
Politico: "The chairman of a key global climate change panel has resigned following an investigation into a researcher's claims of sexual harassment against him. India's Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, stepped down this morning in a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, adding that he had intended to leave after the release of a major report last August. Pachauri had chaired the committee since 2002, and shared in its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize."
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Reader Comments (17)
And, Ms. Liberal Activist Judge, what's wrong with that? Just why couldn't esteemed Governor Christie underfund promised pensions? Who did he think he was? The CEO and official Beancounter of a typical American corporation? They've been doing that for years. The precedent is clear.
Wonder who'll pay this time. When corporations duck pension responsibilities, American taxpayers rush to fill the breach, at about 30 cents on the dollar. Who'll pony up for New Jersey? I'm guessing schools and any social programs that remain; likely not anyone who contributes large bucks to the Guv's political campaigns. But maybe I'm wrong. Could be Jerry Jones, now that he's had time to recover from The Hug, is already writing the check.
Nothing like running a government like a business, I say.
Huh, my Merriam-Webster must be out of date, it was missing (3.), but it did include this:
"Related to RHETORICAL ....Synonyms
bombastic, flatulent, fustian, gaseous, gassy, grandiloquent, oratorical, orotund, windy"
Must say, appears equally apropos to CW's found definition!
The idea that Chris Christie is legally obligated to follow the rules of the law he wrote and signed is absurd! He is so special that the law simply does not apply to him. And don't forget that Christie's claim of his most important accomplishment as governor is pension reform.
The fun part is the timing. Today is his presentation of the annual budget.
I've checked the three papers in Buenos Aires to see what they had to say about the O'Reilly flack. Lot's of coverage on the Nisman and everything else, but not a word on Bill.
Saw that they are going to issue a new 50-peso bill [that] will be available in March paying tribute to Argentina’s sovereignty over the resource-rich archipelago, under the slogan “Malvinas Islands. A sovereign love.” The next thing you know Bill will be saying it's dedicated to him and his "war"-time coverage.
In Spanish - La Nación and Clarín.
In English - Buenos Aires Herald.
@Ken,
Thank you for your enlightening post. I now understand that Chris Christie is running for precedent.
Re; In the hand basket with luggage headed to hell, just wondering if BO jumped on Huck's bandwagon excellent vacation to The Middle East would he send back missives from the combat zone?
The idiot from Idaho, Ah,biology 101. Turns out the stomach bone is connected to the vagina bone, who knew? Film at eleven.
It appears that we have a series of communication problems of late with certain males claiming that badge of honor in non-existant combat zones and on the other hand we have those that want to be President of this country declining to comment on Rudy's G's offensive statement about our president. So apropos of all this lack of truth telling I'm linking a piece from the NYRB about Alan Turing featured in the film, "The Imitation Game." When I see a film about an actual person or/ and the history of an era, war, etc. I expect it to be accurate. Naturally dramatic license can be taken for length and other minor alterations, but to deliberately distort the facts or change the character of the person featured is verboten––in my view. Recall the irritation many felt as I did about LBJ's treatment in "Selma." So if you are so inclined take a peek at the problems with this film and see what you think.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/feb/05/saving-alan-turing-his-friends/?insrc=toc
Jigaboo music? Really?
I get that Fox affiliates, taking the lead from Roger (Sexual Predator) Ailes and Rupert (Page Three) Murdoch think that beauty queens make the best female anchors, but I'm thinking there must be a way to find good looking women who also have functioning brains. Oops...but there it is right there: "Fox" and "functioning brains" don't play nice together.
But jigaboo music? Even apart from the racial slur, I'm not sure anyone has ever referred to the score from "The Sound of Music" as "jigaboo music", which makes her a cultural illiterate as well. I guess that Christian education Kristi Capel got really put her on the right path.
Bimbo.
Oh...wait a minute. I didn't even know what that word meant. I just made it up....sorry....
Oh, and Marie, I can just imagine all the facepalms up in the control room that morning. In fact, facepalms all over Cleveland
Gee, willikers, it looks like The Decider is not the only world "leader" who makes shit up after ignoring intelligence reports that say the exact opposite of what he wants to hear.
Gotta love that picture of Bibi with the cartoon bomb. It looks more like something you'd see being held up by Wile E. Coyote, an ACME Bomb Kit purchased to get that rascally Roadrunner.
On one hand it's funny (he looks like an idiot with that picture--I mean did he think his little cartoon bomb was convincing? He should at least have had a little cartoon picture of an evil looking Iranian guy lighting the fuse) but on the other, it's about as dangerous as it gets. Ignoring facts on the ground and the considered opinions of the people whose job it is to figure this stuff out in order to start wars for political and ideological gain is some evil shit.
I wonder if he'll bring his little cartoons with him when he visits President Cheeto Man?
I think they should play this when he's introduced before congress.
@Akhilleus: Not that Capel isn't completely articulate, but I think in context (and the context is hard to decipher) when she refers to "jigaboo music," she means the music & dance backup for Lady Gaga's performances of her own stuff. So this would be what Capel means.
"The Sound of Music" score, by contrast, is white people's wholesome music. And it was in hearing Lady Gaga sing old Broadway show tunes that Capel discovered the singer could sing.
Oh, crap, they took down the video "
due to a copyright claim" abject embarrassment.Marie
So a reporter, miraculously, caught Scott Walker momentarily outside of his protection bubble. She had to run to keep up with him because he began to sprint as soon as she started asking him questions. Here's all she could get out of the Kochs' Great White Hope:
Reporter: Governor Walker, would you call "My Favorite Things" "jigaboo" music?
SW: I don't listen to music. Any music. Don't you remember? People were singing in my state house. I had them arrested.
Reporter: Do you agree with the House Speaker inviting Netanyahu, and isn't this an insult to President Obama?
SW: President who?
Reporter: Do you believe doctors can have a woman swallow a camera and image her vagina?
SW: I don't know. That's a question for my wife.
Reporter: What do you think of Mike Huckabee's claim that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people.
SW: What does the Bible say? Sorry, my armored car is here. No more questions.
Marie,
Possibly, in which case her use of "jigaboo" was intentional and aimed at what she considered black sounding music, because really, who just makes up a word like "jigaboo"?
My previous reference to her educational background wasn't incidental. She was educated at schools operated by the Assemblies of God pentecostal ministries. She graduated from Evengel College with a degree in Broadcasting and Public Relations (!) (musta done well in that one). A past president of Evangel was John Ashcroft's father. None of this points necessarily to a lack of racial sensitivity, but many of these schools tend to be highly controlled and isolated from the mainstream so that she actually may not have thought that referring to "jigaboo" music was any big deal until the Twitter storm caught her by surprise.
Yes, this is all supposition on my part, but I don't think anyone can say, in all seriousness, that fundamental Christianity does not pose a problem to a pluralist, secular, democratic society.
(Just a side note about Richard Rodgers' white bread "Sound of Music". With the huge exception of John Coltrane's reworking of "My Favorite Things"--which went on to become a primary influence for Ray Manzarek when he was writing the music for the Doors' "Light My Fire"--bet you never thought you could draw a line connecting Julie Andrews with Jim Morrison)--Rodgers' music, after the death of his first collaborator Larry Hart, moved steadily away from material ripe for jazz improvisation. The stuff he wrote with Hart slid easily into the repertoires of jazz musicians and remained a staple there for decades. The stuff he did with Oscar Hammerstein not so much. You can picture Count Basie or Oscar Peterson doing a work up of "The Blue Room" but "Surrey With a Fringe on Top"? Just an observation about the appeal of the later stuff to a mostly white audience.)
Don't imagine that my unwillingness to acknowledge that Scott Walker is sane is insidious but I'm unwilling, nonetheless.
NiskyGuy: Wish I'd thought of it.
@Akhilleus: My best guess is that Capel used the term "jigaboo music" because it was a term she had heard to describe some genre of music primarily developed by black Americans. Maybe she heard it often; maybe she heard it once & thought it was clever; maybe she thought it was a word like "jitterbug."
Upon hearing it, Capel may have generalized the term to encompass any form of music she considered counterculture or loud or something, so that she herself may not have specifically associated it with black or black-derivative music. So, contra numerous outraged commentators, I don't think her motive was racist at all -- I don't think she would have made the comment if she'd known better, especially since she made it to a black person (and everybody else in the Cleveland market).
This is the kind of slip that is bound to happen when a person isolates herself in a world of Christian fundamentalists, FoxBots & Crazy Uncle Rudy. In future, Capel may be extra-careful to have a basic understanding of the words she utters on air, but there are plenty of other Capels out there, & some are bound to end up on-air & in positions of authority (like long-time Congressman Don Young [R-Alaska] who thought it was quite all right to refer to Mexican immigrants as "wetbacks").
Marie
The Ed Rogers gibberish in the WaPo (home for unemployable ex-Decider speechwriters and neocon war criminal enablers) demonstrates again the amazing flexibility of wingnuts and Koch Party apparatchiks and their successful strategy of taking a completely irrelevant and totally subjective opinion and raising it to the point where it trumps serious discussions about the current state and operational integrity of the nation.
Thus, the "Obama Doesn't Love America (enough, or like us, or like white people) Meme takes precedence over consideration of the enormous problems and challenges we face on immigration, healthcare, defense, energy, education. Nope, all of those pale when the wingnuts scream "HE's NOT LIKE US, GODDAM IT".
Rudy Giuliani, owner of a collosal mother lode of ignorant racist stupidity opened his trap and said something insulting and idiotic. But all of a sudden, HE'S the victim. And even more interestingly, Ed Rogers, who now races to support "America's Mayor" in his time of trials as a pitiful piñata boy for the bloodthirsty "liberal press" (a thing that doesn't even exist. It would be like saying you were afraid Bigfoot was casing your house) back in 2006, ripped Giuliani as unclean because he once shared the same breathing space with a couple of gay guys. But of course, the liberals are attacking him because he's telling the truth. Ed, of course, doesn't exactly say he agrees because, as he puts it, he scares easily and even though Giuliani is "probably" right, he won't say so because the evil liberals will burn him at the stake.
So the guy who used to think of Giuliani as the GOP Jonah is now his best friend because it gives him another chance to whack the president over something of far less importance than dirt dished at a middle school slumber party.
This is the guy, remember, who made it fashionable, back in the early days of the 2008 race, of never saying Obama's name without prefacing it with a great big Barack HUUUUSSEEEEIIINNNN.
What is the proof that the president hates America? He doesn't hate the same people Ed Rogers hates. He refuses to bomb Russia--right the fuck now! He talks to Cubans, fer crissakes! And he wants to PUT THINGS IN CONTEXT! How the fuck can we roll around in our stinking ideological pig mud if we have to consider context?? What's next? Rational thought?
At one point Rogers complains that the president isn't demonstrating, with sufficiently convincing thespian chops, that he can act like some (white) guy in a right-wing TV movie of the week (tearing up at the National Anthem, raring to go stab some Rooskies in the heart). Seriously. This is beyond stupid.
But how many times have I typed that phrase? These people have thoroughly polluted the public discourse with demented drivel, subjective paranoia, and bug-eyed hatred.
But the Washington Post is thrilled to let small, mendacious rat bastard creeps like Ed Rogers puke his bilious twaddle from their pages.
Thanks ever so much. The nation is in your debt.
Marie,
Quite.
As a public service, and to put to rest (one of )the current right-wing mania(s), I've uncovered a surefire way for wingnuts to determine the love quotient of President Obama:
It's in his kiss.