Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

The Referees Are Not Just Biased, They’re Bigots.

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If any institution has failed America, it has been the televised media, especially in discussing political news.  There’s no excuse for the litany of prejudiced behavior from our media personalities in this compilation by The Women’s Media Center.  

What really is frightening is that one of the worst voices in our nation’s discourse, Nantucket weekend resident Chris Matthews, is considering running for Senate as a Democrat.  I don’t know how the Democratic Party could continue to work for women’s equality with a braying sexist like Matthews in the Senate actually voting on legislation and Federal Judges & Justices.  

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  1. the case is very compelling.

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    p>How many other distinct demographics can be represented as victimized by such clips? Immigrants come to mind. They have been good scapegoats for all that ails America lately.

    • The best answer is not to let Chris Matthews win the primary.  Pennsylvania has some good progressive Democrats who could beat Matthews–and the way to do it would be with a TV ad of Chris Matthews slobbering over George W. Bush in a flight suit.

      MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically […], the president deserves everything he’s doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief?

  3. he is not afraid to say he likes women. Repubs however act like they don’t have sex. Then they have freaky sex scandals.

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    p>This is somewhat of a reach.

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    p>and a bella abzurg quote from 1970 is worthless in 2008.

  4. a woman.

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    p>A Democrat?  I don’t think so.  Really, I can’t stomach Matthews.  He is a total . . . can I say “bitch”?  No?  Okay.  Spittle-spewing toadie, then.  

  5. but I really, really can’t stand Arlen Specter.

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    p>However, that video is a great indictment against the entire media, most especially MSNBC (which, for whatever reason I can’t understand, has been absolutely horrible to Hillary… and I include the beloved liberal Keith Olbermann in that condemnation).  

    • I believe – I could be wrong – that Matthews has said he voted for Bush in 2000…That won’t do him any good in a Democratic Primary.

      • Is did he vote for Bush in 2004? I remember him calling Kerry a loser repeatedly and implicitly implying that he didn’t switch horses in mid stride in 04 as well.

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        p>I know a few reasonable people that voted for Dubya in 2000. A history teacher of mine, my prof John Mearsheimer, I mean looking at what he ran for-health care savings accounts, a humble foreign policy that had no nation building and followed our constitution, restoring morality and dignity to the oval office, he did have a better education plan than Gore, so I cant blame some people for voting for him. I mean the tax cut was moronic any which way you look at it and he clearly looked like a dumbass during the debates-but in 2004 its inexcusable.

  7. People have to make up their own mind, and that includes being able to recognize when a commentator is being an ass.

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    p>Groupthink by the American public is what brought us Iraq and Bush’s second term.

    • are not referees.  We aren’t required to be objective, nor fair, nor balanced (as the Fox taunt  line goes), so voters and viewers aren’t the referees.

  8. that Ds had moved past interest-group orthodoxy, but I guess it just went into hibernation.  See also the response in some quarters to Webb or Nunn as Veep…

  9. Corporate media is expected to make one thing and one thing only-profit. LBJ in one of his smarter moves established PBS and NPR as independent and objective conveyors of the news.

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    p>Sadly the days of Cronkite and hell even Peter Jennings are now gone. Just compare Youtube footage showing mainstream coverage of the 1984 campaign, or footage of the 1984 debates. There was a lot more substance back then and much more serious questioning about the real issues.

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    p>Sadly in the cable spin cycle all we have heard about is Rev. Wright, bitter-gate, McCains age, Obama’s flag lapel, and completely irrelevant things that will not determine who our next president is. Clinton and Obama have starkly different records, styles of governance, and plans to move our country forward. Now that Clinton is almost out of the picture one can compare McCain and Obama.

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    p>You think the majority of Hillary Clintons white female supporters would switch to McCain when they find out he not only opposes abortion rights but equal pay, paid maternity leave, and even cutbacks in social security that will hurt elderly women? Of course not when the idiots on Fox are saying he is not conservative enough for them and the idiots on the other networks still call him a maverick. Or that his position on the war is exactly the same as Bush’s-lets pray things get better.

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    p>PBS, NPR, the internet even-all provide better commentary and more objective coverage of the campaign. The NewsHour is arguably the most informative hour on American television-watch it. When corporate media loses its profits to public media maybe itll learn to adapt and become serious again.  

    • They’ve been willing to engage in that old journalistic trope of “Shape of the Earth:  Views Differ” since the late eighties.  They are calmer than their profit-driven competitors, but that David Brooks-Mark Shields segment is just a pipeline to spew “Aren’t Washington Elites Wonderful?” into the minds of the liberals who watch PBS.  My favorite Shields moment has to be in 2000, when he credited George W. Bush for deep-thinking about executing prisoners.

      LEHRER (6/23/00): Okay. Now on to other matters. Governor Bush, the [Graham] capital punishment issue-is that going to dog him from now on?

      SHIELDS: Well, Jim, this is a perfect example. It’s an important issue, don’t get me wrong. But a perfect example and sort of the quiet time of a campaign, when folks who have a cause-and the cause obviously being the abolition of capital punishment, a growing cause in the country-grab an opportunity to make this into a media event, which was done in Texas, put it on the spotlight, put him on the spotlight. That was intended. But I think the cause is to get this as a full-fledged debate. I think they did.
      I thought, as somebody who has mentioned on this broadcast, that George W. Bush-the doubts voters have about him is that he fills the chair, whether he’s big enough, whether he really has the heft to be president.  I thought this was probably the finest moment of his campaign as he explained his position. He did it as, outside of a press conference in a suit and tie, with appropriately serious words and manner. And I thought ironically that it worked for him politically without being overly analytical.

      The executed man had a legal defender who…

      boasted in an interview this week that he had flunked criminal law at Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law, called no witnesses during the guilt phase of Mr. Graham’s trial, which lasted two days. He did not challenge before the jury the testimony of the single eyewitness who sealed Mr. Graham’s guilty verdict, although there were other witnesses who could have provided conflicting testimony. He called only two witnesses during the penalty phase, when his job was to persuade the jury to spare his client’s life.

      With all this doubt about Gary Graham’s conviction, and George W. Bush stating he was certain Graham was guilty, Mark Shields thought Bush used appropriate clothing and words.
      and on the Newshour, Mark Shields represents us, the progressives and liberals.
      What if, back in 2000, the “liberal” had actually made the case that George W. Bush was big on irrational certainty?  Is that a trait America wants in a President?

    • Less than 5 years ago, WGBH got caught GIVING member lists to Democrats!  Firing Line went off the air a looooonnngg time ago, and has never been replaced – while Bill Moyers have been given freer and freer rein.

      • has been kept in line by Ken Tomlinson, the Bush Appointee.  He had to resign after an Inspector’s investigation, but, still he did the work Bush needed him to do!

        [Ken Tomlinson] hired lobbyists to defeat legislation that would have changed how CPB’s board is structured.

        The inspector, Kenneth Konz, also had been looking into whether Tomlinson violated agency procedures in his recruiting of former Republican National Committee co-chairman Patricia de Stacy Harrison to be CPB’s chief executive, and into possible White House influence in the hiring of two in-house ombudsmen to critique news programs on NPR and PBS.

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