Ambinder: Sorry I Was So Stupid, But I Was Right To Be Stupid
Mark Ambinder takes the opportunity of Ridge’s confirmation that the terror alerts were one big political game to claim he was justified in believing that we DFHers were wrong about the alerts–and in doing so, demonstrates what is so wrong with so much of Village journalism.
Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists’ conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence. But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration’s pronouncements. And yet — we, too, weren’t privy to the intelligence. Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt. We can see, now, how pre-war intelligence was manipulated, how the entire Washington establishment (including Congressional Democrats(, including the media, was manipulated by a valid fear of the unknown — but a fear we now know was consciously, deliberately, inculcated.
Note, first of all, the false binary that Ambinder the so-called journalist sets up:
Our skepticism about the activists’ conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence.
Somehow, Ambinder read the minds of "activists" across the country and confirmed that "these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush." Apparently, you see, Ambinder can read the minds of activists, but not Ridge and Bush.
And so then, after reading those minds and/or simply making shit up about why and how "activists" concluded the terror alert system was bogus, Ambinder says that short of having the raw intelligence, journalists have no way of independently assessing whether the terror alerts were a big political game. Either you have gut hatred or you have raw intelligence–there are no other means to get to the truth.
God forbid a journalist use simple empiricism–retrospectively matching terror alerts with reports on which they were based–to assess the terror alerts. God forbid a journalist learn that we went to Code Orange because someone claimed terrorists were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch, and from that learn to be skeptical of terror alerts going forwards. It’s not as if, after all, the election eve alert was a one-off, the only alert in which the hype was later shown to be over-hype. There was a pattern. And normal human beings equipped with the gift of empiricism that apparently gets weeded out at journalism school tend to look at patterns and conclude that if a relationship consistently has happened in the past, then it probably will exist in the future.
But no!! Journalists can’t do what normal human beings do all the time, and make certain conclusions by watching patterns develop.
Ambinder’s lame explanation for why we all knew the terror alerts were bullshit but he didn’t is particularly atrocious for two reasons.
First, he relies on a stereotype–the activists motivated solely by their gut hatred of George Bush–to avoid reflecting on why normal people relying on simple empiricism had access to truths that journalists somehow couldn’t access.
But then there’s the stereotype itself, the activists motivated solely by their gut hatred of George Bush. Accepting for a moment the totally bullshit premise that all of the people who believed the terror alerts were bogus hated Bush and were motivated soley by their hatred of Bush–accepting that false premise as true–how do you think those "activists" got their gut hatred of George Bush? Were they all birthed with it?
Or is there the slightest possibility, Ambinder, that they acquired it? Not just because, after we assessed the claims made before the war, concluded they were hyped, and then learned that we were in fact correct that those claims were hyped, we came to loathe a man who would manufacture a case to go to war? But because of a number of other things–things like outing a CIA spy or reversing decades of environmental regulation or telling the rest of the world to fuck off–all of which have proven to have bad consequences for our country.
You see, by basing his entire self-exoneration on his mind reading of activists and their gut hatred of George Bush, Ambinder can not only avoid really assessing why he was so wrong and real people weren’t about the terror alerts. But he can avoid considering whether there wasn’t an empirical case to be made–that journalists should have made–about the dire effects Bush’s cowboy bullshit was having on our country?
Update: Victory is mine (well, sort of)!
My critics are right. Skepticism about the terror warnings wasn’t just based on gut hatred of Bush, although there was some of that…
There was a growing mistrust of the government’s prosecution of the war on terror… and I have no way of knowing the motivations of…
a majority of the doubters. Yes, journos by pattern give gov’t the benefit of doubt. Doesn’t mean they _should. Not sure why this surprises.
Update: Ambinder has posted a more extensive apology for suggesting he knew why liberals did what they did.
My hindsight bias is no less offensive than the bias I attribute to these liberals. It was wrong to use the phrase "gut hatred." Had I spent more time thinking about the post, I would have chosen a different phrase. And I should have.
Thank you for the apology, Ambinder.
And yet another of what the Villagers claimed was a fevered fantasy of the frothing Bush haters is retroactively confirmed as truth.
Yet, it is still the left of the left that is seen as out of touch with reality and not the Hitler/Obama posting waving lunatics.
To quote George Carlin:
This country is finished.
-G
I don’t know. We do know that the TradMed is finished. It’s just taking a long time to decay completely.
Did you email Ambinder and ask for any clarification? Not that he deserves one.
That’s some great journalisming on Ambinder’s part. The Villagers had to assume we were wrong because we are who we are! Of course, a DFH couldn’t actually base an opinion on hard facts.
Oh, wait…we DID! Asshole.
I never hated GW and had he remained a private citizen, I would have simply ignored him. What I hated were his policies and what he did, both as governor of TX & as president. And I also hate that his policies seem to be in place still.
I hated the worthless piece of shit, personally. But I agree with you in another respect: now that he’s a private citizen it wouldn’t even be worth my time to spit on him if I passed him in the street.
Wow. Ambinder just doesn’t get it, that is what, chief among other things, separates passionate liberals from “passionate” concervatives, neo-cons and wingnuts. It’s NOT PERSONAL with us. Good lord! You have to really care about someone to “hate” them. I don’t know a single, thinking, liberal soul willing to waste time on such a silly pursuit as hate. In fact, most liberals I know, IF they harbor any feeling for Bush, have an abiding sorrow for how this simple man was manipulated, played, and betrayed by those he trusted.
My reasons for disliking George W Bush are based on his mocking of a death row inmate when he was Governor. My reasons for doubting George W Bush and his (mis)administration was based on the fact that I can READ. Atrios has designated Ambinder “wanker of the day”. I think that should be upgraded to at minimum “wanker of the decade”.
Going to spam again, now in this thread to yet more links to Juliusblog’s work on the 2004 terror alerts.
All those collected DATA points, mapped out in coolly calculated fashion, showing a correlation between Bushie admin events, the Presidential approval rating and the terror alerts.
Nothing but pure, raw hatred, right?
Never occurs to assholes like Ambinder the hatred came AFTER the DATA showed there was something not to merely dislike but worth hating.
Not spam–thanks for the links. And yes, that is precisely my point.
Added it to the post, thanks.
Thanks for posting that link. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to remember the site name where this was posted. Many folks at DU were talking about how this color coded chart was being used as a weapon of mass distraction. Like clockwork, we had terrorist ‘chatter’ ramping up in 2002, 2004, and 2006….just before the elections. In off years, this tool was used to get the TradMed off of embarrassing/criminal events that the administration didn’t want the focus on. Viola! Trot out Ridge and the handy dandy color coded terror threat level. I think the chart was 1st put together at DU and then he/she created the blog to further develop it.
Too bad Armbinder and his Washington journo brethren weren’t paying more attention to the blogs back then. They might of learned the real reasons why Bush Derangement Syndrome was so widespread and maybe they could have used this information to become part of the solution instead of remaining part of the problem.
Ridge admitted the color code warnings were not based on objective evidence, in 2005. He strongly hinted such, by saying he was ordered by the White House as to WHEN to change the colors.
This story is only new because he has a book to sell. Period.
well, that, and the fact that ambinder admits he has no clue what journalism is all about
and then doubled down on teh stupid
and got burned again
the dude’s gettin advice on what jobs would be compatible with the stenography skills he exhibits
hey ambinder, I prefer NOT
And, of course, this can also be used to justify scrutinizing Obama’s decisions using Republican talking points in lieu of empiricism.
“We were wrong and I pledge to hold all future administrations accountable, starting with Obama’s, and will champion the minority views, however fraudulent, starting with the current Republican minority.”
Morning all!
Sorry completely OT, but this ship story is getting even more interesting.
‘Russia has been accused of a cover-up over the cargo ship which vanished last month.
One theory is that the Russian secret service was using the freighter to smuggle equipment, possibly nuclear.
But it feared that a Western intelligence service had found out, meaning the ship had to be boarded to prevent the equipment falling into Western hands. ‘
‘Mystery: Officials were seen checking for radioactivity on the quay in Pietarsaari where the Arctic Sea had been docked’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..z0OkCWTGUM
Jeepers. Just off the coast of Mauritania.
How convenient.
Fear is a powerful tool. It can make people believe in death panels or that plastic and duck tape will shield them from a nuclear attack. The job of a journalist is to look behind the curtain of fear and seek and reveal the truth. For Ambinder to trust fear mongerers just because, and to doubt the left because they are the left, says he has very little understanding of human nature, no understanding of history and certainly no credibility as a journalist.
And we paid these #$*)^&*&-ing homeland security experts how many millions of US dollars to spin the color wheel?
Or did DHS contract that out, too?
Um, when did this become conventional wisdom?
Shouldn’t it be just the opposite? That in a democracy, journalists should treat government pronouncements with healthy skepticism?
What are they teaching in j-school nowadays?
Did you notice the capital “D” in “Democratic”?
Yeah. Even Ambinder’s editors are idiots.
By the way, I see Ambinder posted a modification to his piece, graf now reads:
Un-huh. Nice of those non-liberals to bail out us dirty f*cking haters, I mean, hippies NOW.
imo ..it was a better world when the first function of a “journalist” was to be skeptical of gub’mint .. not a lackey licking it’s boots clean of bullshit .. kissing ass for access .. etc .. etc ..
count me in with the “grassroot” poster @15
How do people like Ambinder get into positions of influence, when they’re so clearly, well, intellectually sub-par? “You were right, guys, but you only said it ’cause you hated him.” That’s your justification? It’s just such an easy argument to pick apart with simple logic, as has been done so well here and in the comments. And by the way, Ambinder, all politics aside, what would be so bad about admitting you were wrong and leaving it at that? That’s what the grown-ups do.
Because learning to spout the Beltway conventional wisdom on any issue is a job requirement for any position of influence.
It’s why the Broders rise to the top and the Froomkins are axed.
Totally, dude.
After all, I had no idea that Bush’s bro was the Gov of Florida, or that Bushie had fewer votes than Gore — except for that critical SCOTUS vote.
After all, I didn’t pay any attention to the SCOTUS votes, so like, ya’ know, it like… ya’ know didn’t ever enter my teensy lil’ tattoo’d head that like, ya’ know, that Thomas guy had been appointed by GHWB. And that Scalia guy, and the Reinquist guy and that O’Connor lady, like… who appointed them?!
After all, everyone knows K-k-k-karl Rove is a political genius, so clearly, it was the Bush-hating side of me that caused me to suspect the terror warnings.
After all, ya’ know, the fact that GWBush had a series of business failures, got bailed out by some Texas Rangers buyers, had probably done coke and had a drinking problem, had never traveled, and spoke only to groups where the information was pretty controlled, meant nothing to me at all. No reason for concerns about any of those items — totally, it was only the Bush hater in me that raised the red flags.
Like, ya’ know, totally, dude….
Y’all have to excuse me while I go paint my fingernails purple, dye my hair blue, and go dig in my organic garden — ’cause, ya’ know, that’s what Bush Haters Like Me Are Like.
Totally…
I needed this post. Lately I have had free floating anxiety as I felt my hatred for Dubya wafting away with the passage of time, replaced with disgust for gun toting assholes screaming “Liar” anytime they were confronted with facts about health care reform; and just the general soothing effects of summer days in the garden and on the humid shores of eastern NC. It’s just been too much work to maintain that rightous hatred. And yet; now comes the affirmation of what we all knew instictivly, that the Bushites manipulated the terror threat color codes to political advantage. Sewing fear for political gain like tossing gallons of Roundup into a garden of lush summer tomatoes. KAFUCKING BAM! It is back! The loathing returns. That soggy, sweaty , nasty cloak of hate for a truly evil man is mine to carry around all summer now. Welcome back ol’ pal, with every tell- all book from the Bush crowd the hatred will be a constant companion with each passing season..
… To win the election… Tom Ridge was asked on election night… And who was running that show? Karl. “The architect.”
Remember the timeless photo of Karl operating his computer databank out of the Old Family Dining Room?
I wonder where Tom Ridge was seated in that room so he could be asked to pull the lever for the alert?
Interestingly, I also stumbled around another shot of the same room, but looks like it was taken by a participant. A little more telling.
I recognize most of the people.
Don Evans (standing)
?? seated next to Karl
?? obscured by Karl’s head
Assistant Susan Ralston (coffee cup)
Rove’s wife (orange jacket)
Rove’s son Andrew (I think)
Gary Walters (White House head usher, standing)
?? seated in front of the table
Your second link doesn’t work. I’m dying to see it….
Standing ovation, EW.
Michael Ignatieff’s non-apology apology for supporting the invasion of Iraq worked according to the same logic: I was wrong, but I was wrong for the right reasons, and the DFH’s were right, but they were right for the wrong reasons, and then he waves at our gut hatred, just as Ambinder does, ignoring the fact that most people in the rest of the world who were paying attention at the time believed the IAEA.
Your analysis of that crooked manoeuvre — it’s fair to analyse the DFHs overgenerally and condescendingly, but God forbid we should try to read between the lines of what the respectable people are doing — is right on. The moral and intellectual failure is just breathtaking. These people honestly do care about measuring up to the bourgeois proprieties more than they care about truth and justice and goodness.
And Iggy is probably the best hope we have in the short term of getting Harper out. Pity us.
and on the heels of Steven Pearlstein saying this about the public option:
Idiots!
there’s the thing, we didn’t have a hatred for bush until he earned that hatred by lying to us
simple stuff there, the “gut hatred” was earned by his actions against this country
ah, I see marcy, you already said what I said only much better;
Fixed:
someone claimed terrorists were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow
torchjobAmbinder obviously isn’t capable of addressing the substantive issues Marcy raises, due to his: gut hatred of liberals.
Hmmm… *curious furrowed brow*
This is good news for Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Fallows!
Oh, I hope Coates and/or Fallows respond to Ambinder’s troll bait. Food Fight at The Atlantic! Could be fun to watch, especially since Coates and Fallows would probably decimate Ambinder in any sort of logic or rhetoric contest.
.
The ultimate correlation between Bush manipulation of intelligence and political gain is Col. Sam Gardiner’s Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II. Sam taught information warfare in the National War College, so he knows what he’s talking about.
This is the core of the problem:
Izzy Stone rolls over in his grave
I think Ambinder meant “the political establishment”, not the government. (Ambinder probably hates the government or at least thinks he does, no?)
But your point stands.
That jumped out at me as well. The very fact that someone who calls himself a “journalist” and simultaneously thinks he will or should give the government the benefit of the doubt doesnt’t even deserve to be called “citizen”.
It is exactly this kind of doublethink that almost drove me completely crazy for the past 8 years.
From ABC News:
It’s always nice when two world leaders can share a joint after doing the hard work of establishing torture regimes.
I don’t know if many here ever visit the Global Research.ca website.
It is EXCELLENT.
The inimitable Michel Chossudovsky did a piece on this four years ago.
Hope this links:
Tom Ridge’s Mea Culpa:
The Code Orange Terror Alerts were based on Fake Intelligence
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca 12 May 2005
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/505A.html
Marc Ambinder is a cocktail weenie.
{apologies for name calling — think of it as a “shorter emptywheel” presumption…}
This brought to mind, Viktor Bout:
Bout, who flew arms and passengers from Dubai and other locations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan prior to 9-11, is now providing air services in post-Taliban Afghanistan as well as U.S.-occupied Iraq. Bout’s transactions with the Taliban were handled by Vial, Inc., a firm based in Delaware.
It is also noteworthy that many of Bout’s operations are based in Eastern European countries that have been mentioned in association with the rendition and transporting of CIA prisoners. Bout’s numerous Russian-built cargo and passenger planes have been seen at the same airports used by CIA flights. For example, Bright Aviation, a suspected Bout front, is based at Sofia Airport in Bulgaria. Bulgaria is believed to be one of the countries used by the CIA to house secret prisoners. Another Bout front, Moldtransavia SRL, is based in Chisinau, Moldova, another suspected stopover point for CIA flights.
One Chisinau, Moldova-based Bout front company, Aerocom, which also does business as Air Mero, is contracted to fly for Kellogg, Brown & Root in Iraq and elsewhere. Some law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe believe that the covert flights being operated by CIA contractors and Bout’s companies in support of secret prisoner movement are also involved in smuggling drugs. After being subjected to news reports, Aerocom quickly changed its name last year.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/12/329754.html
The fact that my critics were right in no way denies me the right to my strawmen.
Only big-time journalists are surprized that the authority bias of big-time journalists compromises the journalism of big-time journalists. As a result they will continue to scratch their collective heads as their enterprise becomes ever more pointless.
@ 37 SparklestheIguana
You can also get it through the first link in my comment. Assuming google gives you the same search results, its in column #4, second photo. (…You may have to click the upper left to enlarge and acutally see it…)
I’m wondering who shot it?
The caption says it’s Roland Betts sitting next to Rove. I don’t know who the woman on the floor is, but jeez, could a man please give up his seat for her?
Ah, GWB’s frat bro!
been reading the coments on his site and they are really brutalizing him for what he said about “the guthatred of bush”
fun
man, you guys really need to read the comments over atmarks article
more fun you will not have today, this I guarantee, one moresel;
I can’t stop refreshing, he has had not one person on board with his post
They really are savaging him, aren’t they? lots of new bodily orifices cut for Ambinder in that thread.
Don’t know whether to credit him for taking his lumps or for being so stupid as to expose himself in such a moronic fashion.
shorter mark ambinder:
of course, homeboy ain’t THAT honest about it …
so what, rational deductive reasoning was beyond your capacity ???
or maybe just above his pay grade
so what is it ambinder, isiot ??? or a sell out ???
Am(in a)binder?
It’s perfectly understandable that journalists believed Bush after imagining his package on the deck of the Abe Lincoln and wishing they could join Cheney for the S&M sessions at the undisclosed locations. That’s what savvy is after all and that’s what they are paid for.
Tom Ridge to his credit took his serial humiliations like a good Party man and now will advertise his sniveling performance, without shame evidently. Little men know their place.
Ambinder is just channeling his own version of Chuck Todd;s “view from 30,000 feet.”
No matter what their altitude, it’s still completely dark because Todd, Ambinder, and the rest of these “pundits” all have their heads up their asses.
Weird title, Don’t Cry For Tom Ridge, when the whole article seems to be more a “don’t pick on me just cuz I was wrong and didn’t do my job”
This is silly, to put up something like this: “Many of the loudest voices were reflexively anti-Bush” and not give even one example of the “loudest” voice of someone who was just demonstrably “reflexively anti-Bush” without reason or rationale.
And now he’s covering with – well, ya know, if there was like, ya know, a one percent chance, then like, ya know maybe it would be just a matter of opinion, ya know, or like, that’s what my pal whose trying to help me out says.
It’s irritating to even read, like elevating the drones of whiney kids in the back seat into print and calling it journalism.
Tom Ridge was a fallback after Bernie Kerik, remember. Tom was a man in waaaaaaay over his head, which was the point. At least he was honest and not some suck up to the stars with a manliness fetish. Ridge was a man who would follow orders and otherwise defer, always. This was all obvious from day one.
Everyone in America knew the orange alert in late October 04 was theater. There wasn’t a Republican in the nation that didn’t love it. Hell, that was reason enough to vote for Bush.
They lie to us and they know we know they are lying. We know they know we know they are lying. It’s all very post modern. You can’t be a company man or a Party man an organization man if you don’t hold the company line.
I don’t know Ridge, but I’ve certainly known people who knew how to dig in and watch assholes, while collecting evidence for later use in evening the scales of justice. It’s possible that Ridge is of that type.
I’d like to be at least a bit optimistic; full-on cynicism 24/7 just doesn’t generally hold up over time.
I could be wrong; then again, I could also be right.
Imagine that you’d been in Ridge’s situation. Don’t you suppose that he’s among the former GOPers who have an inside track on major dirt about the BushCheney cabal? Don’t you think he has some motive to see that some of that dirt gets washed out?
Here’s hoping that he’s capable of providing some good info that will help expose how absolutely venal the BushCheney cabal is — so people wake up and strongly support investigations.
He’s credible b-list presidential candidate for the thuglicans, in the likely event their favorites end up like the wicked witch of the east.
@51
(Tom) Ridge to FEMA critics: ’Stop whining’
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTer…..D=2…
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7,2005 (UPI) — Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge says critics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hurricane Katrina response should ”quit whining.” Ridge’s outspoken comments are the first time he has responded in public to criticisms of the way FEMA was incorporated into his new department in 2003.
”They ought to quit whining about what happened in the past — that had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in Katrina,” he told United Press International.
Ambinder wrote:
Right! It had to be gut
instincthatred because there was no rational reason on Earth to distrust Bush. He has proved throughout his entire life that he never warrants distrust.And there is absolutely no evidence that Bush ever used 9/11 for self-gain. He never used 9/11 fears to start a war and he never use 9/11 footage at Republican pre-election events to make people fear changing the government. He would never do such scandalously immoral things.
Ambinder was projecting his gut hatred for liberals on them when he described the motivations of liberals advocating the alert policy was a politcal tool.
Finally, Ambinder isn’t a professional. For the definition of a professional is someone who is able to put their personal biases aside and advocate what is right. Ambinder has proven by his own writing that he is unprofessional.
There’s one thing I’m taking away from this excellent post, which Glenzilla expanded upon;
Expect to take the Hippie Punch In The Face. Just expect it, and let’s continue to roll with it.
We’re the Venetian Blinds on the American Overton Window, in the classic sense of venetian blinds. Supposed to light light and air in, keep heat out. Somehow, people always fuck up those blinds, and blame it on the BLINDS!
It’s just they don’t know what to do with the function of the blinds and have no patience to learn; mostly cause they don’t want to.
will Loser Ambinder also apologize for his comment yesterday that Obama should lie to liberals and then scr*w us on healthcare reform?
SASQ: No.
It’s not just the villagers. My wife repeatedly charged me with basing my opinions on hatred for George Bush, despite all my protestations that I didn’t hate him, I only despised him. It is an easy way out. I have a fair number of old democrat friends who think the same way. For some of them (not my wife), the protests against the Vietnam war and the DFH’s were traumatizing. It wasn’t just the right who were traumatized. I don’t know Ambinder’s generation, but he could have simply picked up this feeling by osmosis. Or, as is more likely the case, it is simply village-think. Nobody outside the village has a right to think for themselves.
All that time I was protesting the Vietnam war, I didn’t realize I was traumatizing anyone. I thought the war was traumatizing people.
Well, Mark, journalists may give government the benefit of doubt, but government has a long record of lying, especially in matters of war, and that includes both political parties. When were you born? Check the record.
An apology. I must say, that’s very unexpected.
Still, it would be better if he realized that activists such as ourselves- who are all also associated with that most dreaded of all terms in the journalistic world, “blogger”- have better things to do with our lives than obsess about hating Bush.
the bottomless conceit and effete dumbassery of these useless has-been fools are why Jane and Marcy and Glenn (etc) had to happen.
Armbinder’s idea of journalism is why the very idea of traditional media has jumped the shark. The job journalists used to do is now done by a certain narrow subset of bloggers. For little if any pay, no less. So no wonder journalists hate bloggers — they make journalists look both obsolete, stupid, and corrupt.
When Bush first made his big, dramatic case that “OMG!!!!1!! Saddam Hussein is gonna kill us all!!1!1″ on 12Sep02, I got the NY Times version, read every word and concluded “Bush is a lying sack of shit.”
Upon the eve of the Iraq War breaking out, I concluded “Iraq very clearly does not possess nuclear weapons. Yeah, maybe Iraq possesses chemical or biological weapons, but it has no means of delivering those weapons.”
And yes, I had seen Bush’s reaction to 9-11, hanging around in the classroom without any apparent concern for the fact that the attack was far from over and that any military man (I’m a vet myself, though I never saw combat) worthy of the name would have gotten himself to a command post, heck, would never even have gotten to the school in the first place. A serious guy would have headed to Air Force One long before the first plane struck the first tower. I saw his reaction long before Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9-11 on the Internet and concluded Bush was guilty of, in the best possible case scenario, dereliction of duty.
Did I “hate” Bush? I certainly thought the guy was evil, but I think the people I really hated were those who enabled and assisted him, even though they were supposed to be the checks and balances that kept him honest.
such a delicate subject, even in a place like FDL, where folks have dissected and destroyed Bush/Cheney lies and fabrications about
: the manufactured case for the war against Iraq, the domestic spying/FISA affair, Guantanamo and habeas corpus, the Plame affair, etc.
It seems that when it comes to the big Kahuna that kicked it all off for the Bush admin – 9/11 – on this issue of all things the Official Story from Big Dick Cheney and Little Georgie is the one that most progressives still need to believe in, or risk being called ‘unserious’ or worse, a ‘conspiracy theorist.’
and they replicate Mark Ambinder’s arguments on this, something like “only tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who hate the government would say … “
so someday, we may hear:
Mr. Armbinder,
You are a self serving asshole. There damn well was ample evidence of Cheney/Bush’s Machiavellian tactics, it’s just that you and the rest of the mainstream press were a bunch of cowards from 2001-2005. Nobody in the MSM wanted to be accused of being unpatriotic, or more accurately, the corporate masters who owned the media outlets did not want them to appear to be disloyal, so they overlooked felonies and the assault of our Constitution. There was ample evidence that Bin Laden was going to attack us prior to 9/11 – ask Richard Clarke. There were mountains of evidence that President Cheney/Bush were ginning up fake evidence to get us into war with Iraq under the flimsiest of circumstances. Sizable antiwar protests were not covered in the lead up the the glorious invasion.
The press found it was easier to be lazy and simply regurgitate what the White House said. No need for wasting good shoe leather, no need to check facts or sources, simply parrot what Ari Fleischer said. Worse yet, the press acted as cheerleaders, as obsequious sycophants, as toadies there to do the bidding of that malevolent prick Cheney and his lying little piss weasel Bush. The press abdicated their responsibility of healthy, independent skepticism and acted as un-indicted coconspirators. Damn few members of the press did their jobs responsibly and honestly. That might be one of the reasons that MSM is floundering: after their abysmal performance during the Bush years, why should we trust them ever again?
As I see it, four men, all outsiders in the world of the mainstream media – Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, and David Letterman – bear special mention as being among the VERY few on TV that were willing to go after Cheney and Bush. If it weren’t for those four, the airwaves would have been all Cheney/Bush all the time. They did more journalism than the rest of the MSM hacks combined, and two of them are comedians!
Screw you Armbinder and your self serving excuses. You simply didn’t do your job very well. You were lazy and you abandoned any pretense of skepticism or objectivity. You were wrong and you should just say that and then shut the hell up.
This is really good. That about says it.
Krugman was pretty brave, too, though he was mostly in print.
Well, it would, if I didn’t assume Ambinder was operating from a position which is effectively little different in its outcome than gut hatred.
As it is, it doesn’t surprise a bit. I don’t like being wrong myself. I imagine if I’d very publicly staked my personal credibility and that of my cohort on being right about this and seriously screwed the pooch instead because I was a class-struck adolescent git, I’d want to find something to say to make it look as if I felt a bit grave about my part in cheerleading all those dead people to the other side.
You call his second item an “apology?”
“You’re still a bunch of dirty hippies, but I could have been cleverer w/ my choice of words” is far from an apology.
My favorite comment from the Ambinder failed apology attempt:
Although, this one was pretty good too:
And by the way…
Interesting choice of words in the present environment of hate displays currently towards Obama. Me thinks Ambinder doth project too much.
Which is why reading Ambinder is a waste of time. He could have done journalism, but prefers sitting on his aqss and bashing people who were and are right.
I seem to have been the only one to read through to the bizarre conclusion:
He’s one messed up soul.
lupe,
I’ll gladly give props to Krugman. But, as in the case of the four previously mention on TV, Krugman is not really a journalist. Most journalists simply did not do their jobs. Knight-Ridder and McClatchy reporters did some good work, but they were left to go it alone. Even the New York Times – what conservatives would term the scion of the liberal press – was on the “War with Iraq” bandwagon.
In the print world, I would single out Pat Oliphant and possibly Mike Peters as being the boldest foes of the Cheney/Bush regime. Again, it is the comedians and not the journalists that seem to have been doing the most serious criticism!
Oliphant was at the forefront of criticism of Nixon, Reagan, Bush the greater, and Bush the lesser. He was also withering in his mocking of President Clinton. He has also shown a willingness to go after President Obama as well. Go Pat!
What Gasman said.
As I posted UT, the cognitive dissonance in my analytical mind caused by the relentless cheerleading and factfree “news” presentations up to and during the War in Iraq almost made me go insane.
And as someone else posted, I, too, had to defend my visceral distrust of Bushco to loved ones under my own roof who spent waaaay too much time watching all the propaganda on tv. It is totally insidious to the untrained mind.
Nice work sqewering Ambinder’s complete lack of critical faculties Marcy. He’s just another example of how most of our “professional” media really just acts as stenographers for the monied interests who cut their paychecks.