Salon.com: A Lesson In How NOT To Cover Sarah Palin

The re-emergence of Sarah Palin has provided a stark and depressing message about the way our media cover politics. Because Sarah Palin is a politician, yet she is treated as a pop culture celebrity. And then some in the media defend her, by saying it's unfair that she is treated as a pop culture celebrity. Arguments about whether or not she is responsible for the coverage are irrelevant, because no matter how she presents herself and behaves, it's still up to the media to decide how they react to her presentation and behavior. If she sells herself the way most celebrities sell themselves, the media ought to make that their focus: that whatever she is, she is not someone who focuses on what should be a politician's focus. Instead, too many supposedly serious media outlets also fail to focus on what should be a politician's focus.

I've subscribed to Salon.com since it became a subscription website. Salon publishes some of the best political commentary, anywhere. Its reporters often prove themselves among the best, anywhere. Its coverage of Bush administration crimes, the Walter Reed scandals, and the still emerging Arlington National Cemetery scandal have been invaluable. So, it is painful to read Salon's puerile coverage of the re-emergence of Sarah Palin. Salon's coverage is a lesson in how not to cover Sarah Palin.

First, Sandra Tsing-Loh writes a mind-numbingly inane puff piece, that starts off with an attempt at folksy cutesy humor, before taking a weak stab at exposition:

Can Congress Actually Function With a Jobs Bill?

It will come as a great surprise to our erstwhile members of Congress, I’m sure, but there’s a growing awareness within the electorate that after successive generations of television and sanctioned bribery Congress has become worthless, unable to effectively respond to any emerging problem and merely exacerbating current ones, precisely as it did with prescription drug prices. Ruthless capitalist sharks are enabled more as the campaign cash flows in, the sick system somehow demanding citizens accept the phenomena as a “doughnut hole.”

That was the Republican then, fine, after ten Democratic months of Congress are matters demonstrably different? Okay okay, the Republicans blew the place up, that’s why the little people swamped their losing ludicrous asses out of office, how are the fixes going? We have economy/finance, healthcare, energy/climate, war, civil liberties and infrastructure on the Total Critical list. What has Congress tangibly done with the list this year? ¹

Open Thread

Instead of building trust for the government, Obama's economic team has made it worse. It's too bad, because it didn't have to be this way. Will he have a second chance? Not very likely. And that means some continuing and even growing hard times for Americans. (But the bankers are doing right nicely, thank you very much.)

Afghanistan: Broder Panics; House GOP Seeks Advice From Oliver North.

In Salon, Gene Lyons summarizes the stupid that is pressuring President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan:

Hurry, hurry. There's no time for thinking; it's time to act. Washington's permanent war lobby has worked itself into a veritable lather. The proper Pentagon press leaks have been made, Op-Eds written, talk show commandos deployed.

No less influential a military mind than the Washington Post's David Broder declares that even a bad decision about Afghanistan would be better than a postponed decision. Conceding that "a flood of leaks" has shown that "the perfect course of action does not exist," Broder nevertheless counsels haste. "[T]he urgent necessity," he writes, "is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right."

Read that again. Better to do something stupid, the man says, than for President Obama to ask too many tough questions.

Shorter Broder: when in doubt, panic. After all, it's only lives, our national security, and our strategic interests that are at stake.

Open Thread

California once again takes the lead in energy efficiency by setting standards on how much energy a flat screen TV can use. By using our resources more wisely, we won't have to build lots of new, bigger and more expensive power plants. This is good policy and good news for Californians.

Jobs

A funny thing is happening on the way to economic recovery: certain economists are warning that things are going to get worse; that these include some of the very few economists who warned about this economic implosion before it happened ought to make them among the very few economists to whom we actually pay attention. If we care about credibility. And about the direction of the economy.

NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini was so singled out for his dire predictions about the direction of the economy, during the housing bubble, that he was given the moniker "Dr. Doom." People don't like hearing what he has to say. But given the record, we all need to. For months, he has been warning about rising unemployment. As Mary pointed out, on Tuesday, Roubini's warnings now are taking on a more urgent tone.

Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.

And he warns that after both the 2001 and 1990-1991 recessions had ended, unemployment continued to rise for another year and a half! Which, in the present case, means rising unemployment through next summer! When we will be in the midst of an election which will largely determine the ability of President Obama to implement his agenda for the rest of his first term! Frightened yet?

A Lack of Savvy

As things stand now, my earlier optimism about getting a good health care reform bill out of this Congress is now gone. Part of that I blame on the inept leadership Democrats suffer from in each chamber. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are exactly the wrong people to be charged with strategic thinking and agenda management, and yet Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel banked the farm on them, and let the Democratic caucuses in each house translate an electoral mandate into significant losses in 2010.

Part of it I blame on what Bush left behind. Just like he left Texas in a mess, Bush left this country in shambles, and had already started on a course of indebtedness and Wall Street bailouts that poisoned the well for the next president’s agenda.

However, it’s also too easy to blame the problems facing Democrats right now on their leadership and the Republicans. A healthy dose of looking in the mirror would help the White House right about now, not that they ever will. Barack Obama owns the paltry and misguided stimulus package, and the fact that we will not get another shot at one before 2010. Barack Obama owns the lack of financial reform to date, and the fact that his own administration is conspiring to work against real reform and continues to this day to be more interested in helping out Goldman Sachs than they are in holding Wall Street accountable. And Barack Obama owns the blown health care debate and legislative approach, which has evolved to a point where a necessary debate about the morality of letting big insurance companies destroy the lives of everyday Americans has been diverted into a debate about abortion, which should have been foreseen months ago as a red state poison pill.

Open Thread

Digby highlights an interview with Rick Perlstein putting the Obama presidency in historical perspective. Definitely a must read.

Perspective

From Joan Walsh:

So while I'm not worried about President Palin, I remain worried about President Obama. I'm particularly concerned that his increasingly triangulating, anti-deficit administration will do the wrong thing, morally and politically, and move to the right, without understanding that some right-wing rage could be rechanneled by acknowledging its roots: That the economic system seems rigged for the have-a-lots v. the have-a-littles, and despite their promises, the Democrats haven't done enough to change that. Palin can't change any of that, but Obama can. There's still time for him to do so, but the clock is ticking.

Open Thread

Dr Doom declares the green shoots dead. Time to come up with another plan to get Americans working again because bailing out the banks didn't get the job done.

Big Pharma Shows Its Colors

One of the most enduring legacies, and disappointments of this administration will be its gross naivete when it comes to domestic politics. They thought they could deal with Republicans, and that Republicans wanted to deal with them. They thought they could change Washington, and that their new kind of politics rendered any bitter opposition to them as old-school. They thought they could govern from the center, and that their base would go along with only rhetoric and not substance. They thought the 1990's campaigns of undermining and de-legitimizing an elected president were unique to the Clinton years and not emblematic of the GOP's modus operandi in running a thugocracy.

And they thought they could cut a deal with Big Pharma, because the drug companies wanted to be part of the solution in this new kind of politics, which is why the administration agreed to oppose serious price controls.

Here's their "thank you" card:

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.

But what about that agreement with Rahm Emanuel, supported by Max Baucus and the boys about giving back some of those profits in exchange for no government price controls?

Open Thread

China rising. Having China's economy grow should be good, yet, when it comes home, as Krugman says, there are some things to worry about.

So picture this: month after month of headlines juxtaposing soaring U.S. trade deficits and Chinese trade surpluses with the suffering of unemployed American workers. If I were the Chinese government, I’d be really worried about that prospect.

Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to get it: rather than face up to the need to change their currency policy, they’ve taken to lecturing the United States, telling us to raise interest rates and curb fiscal deficits — that is, to make our unemployment problem even worse.

One of the other things I'd worry about is from the NPR story:

"Why is America's economy so good?" he says. "The first is education. The world's best universities are in America."

The second advantage, Yi says: The U.S. has the best high-tech talent in the world.

Finally, Yi concludes, "you have a good political system: democracy" — one that Yi says allows the U.S. to solve problems quickly.

One could only wish that was true. But with our fiscal policies and priorities throwing out education with the bathwater, the exporting of high-tech jobs overseas and the watching sausage get made for "solving problems quickly" to provide healthcare for all, one has to wonder.

Skyrocketing Rate Of Birth Defects In Fallujah, Iraq

A horrendous humanitarian disaster seems to have developed in Fallujah, Iraq, site of two of the most brutal battles of Bush's Iraq War. Typically, the American corporate media is all but ignoring it. From The Guardian:

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

The extraordinary rise in birth defects has crystallised over recent months as specialists working in Falluja's over-stretched health system have started compiling detailed clinical records of all babies born.

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

For those who don't remember, the first battle of Fallujah began in April, 2004, after the much-publicized brutal massacre, dismemberment, and public display of the bodies of four Blackwater mercenaries. As explained by Washington Post Pentagon and military correspondent Thomas Ricks, in Fiasco:

Open Thread

Paul Krugman warned that the stimulus passed by the Congress and signed by the President earlier this year was too small and he noted at that time that it would probably be all but impossible to go back to the well for another round. (After all, only war authorizations get to go back again and again and again.) So now, as Krugman says, it's time to help put people back to work by subsidizing jobs and promoting job sharing. Way too many people are falling through the cracks.