The decline of American journalism has some things in common with the decline of the legal profession. Consider this piece of “journalism,” published yesterday in Forbes, purportedly one of the nation’s leading financial magazines: Read more…
The latest from the always-inexplicable Frank Bruni surely demands a blogger ethics and quality panel. I think Althouse’s guest columns were more substantive and coherent.
Shorter Verbatim WaPo ombudsman Patrick Pexton:
If your politics are liberal and you don’t generally read Rubin, but you read her Norway posts, you probably would be pretty offended. But if you are a conservative, or someone who reads Rubin regularly, you’ll know that this is what she does and who she is.
Rubin was hired by Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Post, to be an opinion blogger who would appeal to conservatives and people who want to follow conservative politics. She does.
I concede the point! Well, except that I have liberal politics and yet unfounded assumptions and comically transparent non-sequiturs in the service of being the most obsequious Republican lickspittle this side of Fred Barnes are also exactly what I expect from Jennifer Rubin…
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Apparently, the phone hacking scandal doesn’t just implicate people within the Murdoch crime family.
Meanwhile, Consigliere Brooks has been arrested. Hopefully this time the questioning officers won’t accept Fox News sinecures…
Consiglieres Brooks and Hinton may have resigned, but it seems pretty clear that having been killed by the Murdoch family the good Wall Street Journal is never coming back.
Joshua Green is, in a way, right — Paul Ryan’s expensive bottle of wine is like John Edward’s expensive haircut. It’s a farcical non-story, in other words. It’s bad that Ryan is leading a charge to destroy the safety net because…it’s bad to destroy the safety net, and it would be equally bad if he stuck to the fruits of Ernest and Julio Gallo. We already knew that Ryan was much wealthier than the average American; whether he buys fancy wine, a bigger house, or buries his money in the backyard doesn’t make any difference. We already knew that the idea that the upper class can’t sustain a dime more in taxes was ridiculous. And unlike Edwards, there isn’t even a hypocrisy angle; Randian crackpots are being perfectly consistent when they buy expensive stuff for themselves.
I guess anything that works to hurt Ryan, except that 1)I don’t think it will, and 2)I think reducing political discourse to Dowdian trivia strongly favors reactionary interests in the long run.
Apparently, a complete dick has been suspended by MSNBC for one of the least offensive things he’s ever said.
Stephanie Mencimer reminds us that there are issues that are even more important — even scandalous! — than Anthony Weiner’s highly consequential penis. It’s the 10th Anniversary of the Bush tax cuts:
Big debt: Between 2001 and 2010, the Bush tax cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, 50 percent of the total debt accrued during that time. Over the past 10 years, the country has spent more than $400 billion just servicing the debt created by the cuts.
Supply-side failure: Far from paying for themselves with increased economic activity as promised, the tax cuts have depleted the public treasury. Tax collections have plunged to their lowest share of the economy in 60 years.
No jobs: Between 2002 and 2007, employment increased by less than 1 percent when the economy was supposed to be expanding. Employment growth barely kept pace with population growth. Between the end of 2001, when the country was in a recession, and the peak of the real estate bubble, er, economic expansion in 2007, the US economy performed worse than at any time since the end of World War II.
Rich people benefit: The best-known result of the Bush tax cuts is that virtually all the benefits were conferred upon people who didn’t need them at all and who didn’t use the money to, say, create more jobs or pay their workers better. Median weekly earnings fell more than 2 percent between 2001 and 2007. Meanwhile, people making over $3 million a year, who account for just 0.1 percent of taxpayers, got an average tax cut of $520,000, more than 450 times what the average middle-income family received.
Make sure to read all of the grim details.
But the 2000 campaign, Gush v. Bore, Gap v. Banana Republic, amirite? I demand more investigation into Al Gore’s highly troubling three-button suits!
Hertzberg does a great job of explaining why trying to pretend that scandals involving consensual sex are actually relevant won’t fly:
By itself, the fact that a person has lied about sex tells you nothing about that person’s general propensity to lie. Unlike most citizens, prominent politicians like Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Anthony Weiner make speeches by the hundred, give media interviews constantly, and have extensively documented public records. If the politician is a habitual or characterological liar, the public record will show it and the lying-about-sex is redundant. If the politician is not a habitual or characterological liar, his lying-about-sex is misleading—is itself a lie, in a way.
All roads that involve attempting to evaluate politicians through personality traits lead to an empty tautology. (See also.)
In other news, Besty McCaughey would like you to know that Anthony Weiner lacks integrity.
…see also Greenwald.
Politico is the latest outlet claiming that Democrats are obligated not to tell the truth about the plan supported by almost every Republican House member to end Medicare. At least the Dems seem to be sticking to their guns for now…
Paul Campos, Above the Law 2011 Lawyer of the Year
Erik Loomis, HNN Cliopatria 2011 Best Series of Posts
