Category: Media Bias

Dear God, Not Huckabee, Please

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At MSNBC, Chuck Todd is doing cartwheels in his Team Obama cheerleader skirt over a poll showing a spike in the president’s approval. What ought to have Republicans calling the suicide hotline is the poll’s numbers showing Mike Huckabee ahead of the GOP 2012 pack:

Looking ahead to the 2012 presidential race, the NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama leading Mike Huckabee by 10 points (51%-41%) and Newt Gingrich by 19 points (54%-35%). The December poll had him leading Mitt Romney by seven (47%-40%) and Sarah Palin by 22 (55%-33%). But keep in mind: At this stage of the 1996 cycle, McInturff says, Bob Dole was leading Bill Clinton in the NBC/WSJ poll. That tells us one of two things: Either these polls aren’t that reliable this far out, or that Obama enters the 2012 in a much stronger position than Clinton did in ’96. For the first time, our poll also handicapped the ’12 GOP field. Leading the pack are Romney (the first choice of 19% of Republicans and independents) and Huckabee (18%) — followed by Palin (14%), Gingrich (10%), Ron Paul (8%), and Tim Pawlenty (at 5%). We also asked “second choice,” and if you take Palin out, the person who benefits the most is Huckabee. He would lead a Palin-less GOP primary, not Romney.

Before you swallow that bottle of sleeping pills, slash your wrists and stick your head in the oven, however, let me remind you that these are nationwide numbers, that the poll’s methodology looks screwy — Da Tech Guy thinks the sample is not exacfly random — and that the results of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary will not be determined by such craptastic media trickery. Actual people have to cast actual votes, and the Iowa caucuses are still a year away.

P.S.: Apologies for the mental image of Chuck Todd doing cartwheels in a cheerleader skirt.

The MSM’s Peculiar Silence on Zeitgeist (Guess Which Network the Progressive Award-Winning New Age 9/11 ‘Truther’ Film Suggests Is ‘Manipulating’ News)

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“The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public . . .”
— Zeitgeist (2007)

“If conservativism is defined as standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’ Zeitgeist is looking the other way yelling ‘Go!’ Have you seen any major media reports on Zeitgeist? Why is that?”
— John Saxton, “Three Exculpatory Facts the MSM Continues to Overlook in the Arizona Shootings,” Hot Air

Which is the drum I’ve been beating since last Thursday: It is truly astonishing that, after ABC News broke the story of Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist obsession on Jan. 12, there was no substantial follow-up reporting by any major national news organization.

The Washington Post did a 2,700-word profile of Loughner on Thursday and the New York Times did a 5,000-word profile of the accused gunman Sunday, and neither story so much as mentioned Zeitgeist. We got some more reporting in a Sunday story by the Arizona Republic, but the rest of the major media seem determined to ignore this clue to Loughner’s lunacy. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers have begun digging into this two-hour conspiracy cult film and calling attention to crucial elements of Zeitgeist that point away from the absurd claim that director Peter Joseph was pushing a “right-wing” paranoia. 

In addition to its 9/11 “Truther” orientation, Zeitgeist won a progressive film award and the movie’s key sources are associated with the New Age movement. And now Maggie’s Notebook points to another telltale clue of the movie’s political orientation:

After listening to every word, along the way it came to Fox News. Eight frames showing Fox anchors and Fox news-talkers – in the context of television “lying” to the people and “manipulating” the news. . . .
Added to everything else we know, is there still anyone out there willing to stand up and say Zeitgeist is a product of the “right-wing?”

In analyzing Zeitgeist, it is important to look at the way the film uses imagery to convey meaning, a point to which I alluded Monday in my American Spectator column:

“They do not want you to think too much. … You had better wake up and understand that there are people guiding your life, and you don’t even know it,” says one of the film’s “experts,” anti-Masonic conspiracy theorist Jordan Maxwell, near the end of Zeitgeist . . . A few minutes later, while images including Jesus Christ, Bill O’Reilly and Saddam Hussein flash across the screen, the narrator says: “The last thing the men behind the curtain want is a conscious, informed public, capable of critical thinking, which is why a continually fraudulent zeitgeist is output via religion, the mass media and the educational system.”

Wake up and smell the Bush Derangement Syndrome, people.

‘The Pack of Right-Wing Polemicists Who Make Big Bucks Spewing Rage . . .’

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That’s Joe Scarborough talking about . . . whom? The comment in Scarborough’s Politico column is directed at Glenn Beck, but who are the rest of these right-wingers he’s talking about?

Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Laura Ingraham?

From there, Scarborough pivots to indict 2012 Republican presidential candidates:

We know Palin won’t call out irresponsible language or lead the discussion back to civility, but who will?
Where was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who covets the moral authority to lead his party in 2012? Is there anything — anything at all — a member of his own party can say that offends this man?
Or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who refused to call out his state’s best-known congresswoman, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, for saying that the best way to oppose energy legislation is to be “armed and dangerous.”
Or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich? Oh, wait. Never mind.
From their defensive crouch, these candidates are clearly scared to do the right thing by calling out reckless rhetoric. . . .
It’s time to grow up, act responsibly and start planning for the 2012 election.

Very easy to say, I suppose, from the studios at 30 Rock.

Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’

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Kudos to the Arizona Republic for this follow-up reporting:

Loughner began fixating on a documentary: “Zeitgeist: The Movie.”
The movie is a bramble of conspiracy theories involving Sept. 11, the international monetary system, and Christianity.
“There are people guiding your life and you don’t even know it,” the trailer for the movie intones.
“He wanted to watch it all the time,” Osler said. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
Loughner developed a seeming obsession with currency, grammar and literacy rates. They were becoming the objects of his rants and screeds. Those around him didn’t understand.

OK, so on Wednesday, ABC News was first to report on Loughner’s obsession with this conspiracy-theory cult flick:

“I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.”
– Zach Osler, friend of Tucson gunman

Four days later, the Arizona Republic finally follows up on this angle and we learn how intensely involved with this movie the killer became. Loughner already had serious problems — drugs, alchohol, dropping out of high school — but it seems to have been the “profound impact” of Zeitgeist that signaled his descent into deadly schizophrenic madness.

In their haste to shift blame onto Sarah Palin, Fox News, talk radio and the Tea Party movement, the elite media have overlooked what appears to be a major clue to the motive of the Tucson massacre.

As of noon Sunday, there were 39 search results on Google News for “Loughner+Zeitgeist.” Most of those were passing mentions. Meanwhile, a Google News search for “Loughner+Palin” returned 10,395 results. There were 595 results for “Loughner+Limbaugh.” Continue reading Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’ →

Tucson, Zeitgeist and Madness: The Obsolete Politics of Jared Loughner UPDATE: Another E-Mail From a Zeitgeist Follower; Movement Leader Issues ‘Message to Members’

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In the comments of a previous post, the blogger at 24Ahead.com elbowed me as a “Tea Party enabler” — an epithet that he would also apparently apply to Glenn Reynolds — and I think it’s time to clarify a few points about why I’ve spent the past four days digging into the Zeitgeist angle on the Tucson massacre.

Remember that I am a newsman by profession, and learned that trade on the job under the tutelage of Old School editors. So when I saw Jared Loughner’s friend Zach Osler tell ABC News that Zeitgeist had a “profound” impact on Loughner’s worldview, and then Ashleigh Banfield failed to follow-up with more questions, it pissed me off.

It appears quite possible that Zeitgeist was to Loughner what the Beatles’ “White Album” was to Charles Manson. And here was Banfield who, when confronted with what looked like the equivalent of “Helter Skelter” written in blood, utterly dropped the ball as a reporter.

The director of Zeitgeist has threatened legal action against ABC News, and now Zach Osler is turning down interview requests from other reporters. So the opportunity fumbled away by Banfield may be difficult to recover.

Meanwhile, it seems, the major media have turned their attention to covering reaction to the Tucson massacre as a political volleyball game. And this, too, is pissing me off. Continue reading Tucson, Zeitgeist and Madness: The Obsolete Politics of Jared Loughner UPDATE: Another E-Mail From a Zeitgeist Follower; Movement Leader Issues ‘Message to Members’ →

Obligatory: Video in Which Tucson Killer Jabbers About ‘Illegal Wars’ Like Your Average DKos Diarist or Cindy Sheehan

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UPDATE: Someone has finally re-uploaded the video to YouTube:

PREVIOUSLY: It was taken down by YouTube, but those greedy bastards at the Los Angeles Times got it through an open-records request and “embed disabled” it so you have to go to their Web site to see it.

However, unlike Jared Lee Loughner, I’m cool with the whole capitalist greed thing, so I guess I’ll just “tone down the rhetoric” before they take out a restraining order and get me locked up in a loony bin. Anyway, the takeaway from this creepy video is:

  1. Jared Lee Loughner didn’t like “illegal wars,” which are “unconstitutional,” an opinion you might have heard a lot circa 2002-2006 if you were hanging out with smelly peaceniks at International A.N.S.W.E.R. marches or Ned Lamont rallies.
  2. Jared Lee Loughner habitually used the term “genocide” to describe anything he was against — “Mom, this broccoli-and-cheese casserole tastes like genocide!” — just like every Chomsky-spouting punk who ever protested an Ann Coulter speech on a college campus.
  3. Jared Lee Loughner’s interpretation of the Constitution is nearly as crazy as the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas.
  4. Jared Lee Loughner hates cops, considers grammar a form of “mind control,” and felt that getting a “B” in class was a violation of his First Amendment rights. If he hadn’t become a mass murderer, he might have had a promising future as an ACLU lawyer.
  5. Jared Lee Loughner is bonkers, wacko, schizoid, daft, zany, deranged, demented and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he’s batshit crazy and also quite likely nucking futz.

Unfortunately, Jared Lee Loughner didn’t have a Harvard diploma and a blog at The Atlantic Monthly. So when Loughner wanted to destroy a female politician with whom he was pathologically obsessed . . .

What? Too soon?

UPDATE: ABC News also has the video:

Meanwhile, Brian at Red Dog Report wonders why a key connection is being ignored:

The Media has completely ignored the impact that conspiracy movie “Zeitgeist” had on Jared Loughner’s psyche. . . . Most likely, it is because Loughner’s Zeitgeist conspiracies do not fit the media’s narrative. . . . They have decided to just write him off as a lone wolf lunatic. And have moved on; awaiting the next Palin “scandal.”

What’s annoying as all hell is that it was ABC News that broke the “Zeitgeist” exclusive on Wednesday and yet they haven’t followed up on their own scoop.

Either they’re too stupid to understand the connection or else . . . Look, I hate to use the word “conspiracy” in this context, but if Loughner’s friend had told ABC News that Mark Levin or Michael Savage or Glenn Beck had a “profound impact” on the gunman’s worldview, don’t you think we would have seen some follow-up reporting by now?

  • Zeitgeist: Watch the Conspiracy Movie That Had a ‘Profound Impact’ on Tucson Mass Murder Suspect Jared Loughner

    • UPDATE II: Speaking of Cindy Sheehan, Da Tech Guy sees the media playing the “absolute moral authority” card.

    ‘Somebody Has to Stand Up’

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    So says Mark Levin:

    [H]e offered $100,000 to Chris Matthews to find any example where Sarah Palin or Levin himself had “promoted the murder of anybody.”
    The direct challenge to Matthews took place shortly after Levin had played clips of Matthews suggesting Levin’s passionate radio shows were “angry” and apparently implying that Levin’s shows and those of talker Michael Savage had some responsibility for the Tucson murders. The allegation came on the heels of a specific allegation by left-wing Pima County Sheriff insisting Rush Limbaugh was at fault, while MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann demanded Palin “repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics.”
    Said Levin, who is also a considerable lawyer in his role as head of the landmark Legal Foundation:
    “I challenge Chris Matthews, I’ll put $100,000 on the table, to find any example where Sarah Palin has promoted the murder of anybody,” said Levin — specifically excluding terrorists and the Taliban.
    Levin went on: “A hundred thousand on the table if Chris Matthews can find anywhere Mark Levin has urged the murder of people who have different political viewpoints. That’s the murder of politicians …where I said go out there and kill X,Y,Z…go out there and kill A,B,C. I challenge him right now. Sarah Palin. Me. Go ahead.”

    Matthews is a gutless faggot Canadian. Meanwhile, the “Lean Forward” network has now made a graphic out of its counterfactual guilt-by-association, prompting Radley Balko to say:

    It’s a powerful image. . . . It’s also complete bullsh*t.

    And when are people going to start talking about the influence of Zeitgeist on Tucson shooter Jared Loughner?

    They Only Have to Be Right Once

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    “Here we go,” says William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, after a Democrat decides that applying the phrase “job killing” to ObamaCare is an incitement to violence:

    A good place to start a more civil dialog would be for my Republican colleagues in the House to change the name of the bill they have introduced to repeal health care reform. The bill, titled the “Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act,” was set to come up for a vote this week, but in the wake of Gabby’s shooting, it has been postponed at least until next week.
    Don’t get me wrong — I’m not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend — but is it really necessary to put the word “killing” in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don’t think that word is in there by accident — my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation’s history, it’s not the message we should be sending.

    This is yet another example of how liberals routinely claim Republicans are engaging in “dog whistle” rhetoric — supposedly sending coded messages — when only liberals seem able to hear the whistle. How many times have we been told by liberals that various criticisms of the Obama administration’s agenda are inherently racist?

    Assuming the pose of high-minded arbiters of civility, liberals arrogate to themselves the ability to decide what are and are not legitimate arguments and — surprise, surprise! — any argument made by conservatives is immediately ruled out of order. The more effective a conservative argument, the more success any particular strategy, tactic or rhetorical method has in defeating liberalism, the more likely it is to be attacked as an expression of “hate.”

    Day in and day out for nearly two years, liberals have repeatedly claimed that the Tea Party movement is a hate-filled aggregation of violent bigots. (April will mark the two-year anniversary of the infamous DHS “Rightwing Extremism” report, issued just days before the 2009 Tax Day Tea Party rallies.) Why do they keep saying this, without any credible evidence? Because, as Da Tech Guy says, they only have to be right once:

    Simple mathematics suggest that if you bet on a a particular number on a roulette wheel continually sooner or later it will come up, however if it comes up after you have lost over and over again, it is not proof of your gambling prowess.

    Having spent some time in Vegas, I can attest to the truth of that. But words are cheaper than casino chips, and liberals had been betting the mortgage on the “Tea Party extremist” meme for so long that, when gunfire erupted in Tucson, they instantly leaped to the conclusion that their lucky number had finally hit.

    Alas, they bet wrong again. Continue reading They Only Have to Be Right Once →