Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2007
Mark Halperin, who as of late has been noted for pimping his book to Hugh Hewitt and other right wing talk show hosts, admitting that he takes his lead from Matt Drudge, as well as making a conscious effort to tilt more right to appease conservatives has been hired as an editor at large and senior political analyst at Time Magazine.
The more the merrier I say. His track record has not been exactly stellar the last few years, but apparently as long as you stick to the conventional wisdom, there always is a job for you.
What upsets me after this hire, and after the Bill Kristol hire is that prominent liberals are not being offered the same opportunity. There are high profile, articulate progressives who are not being given these positions. Why is that? How about an Air America host like Thom Hartmann? He is an author, is not a radical bomb thrower, and has depth of knowledge in several areas? What about having Juan Cole write opinion pieces on the middle east? One may disagree with his analysis, but there is no disputing that it is informed? Glenn Greenwald is a great writer.
Bill Kristol and Mark Halperin have been terribly wrong about a lot of things these past six years. Jonah Goldberg gets a job at the LA Times. When will our "liberal media" deign to actually hire liberals?
Yes, this is a rhetorical question.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
According to Editor & Publisher, Joe Klein goes hard after the Bush administration tomorrow in the print Edition of Time Magazine. Perhaps all the liberals mocking Klein over his typical cocktail party inanities over at Swampland, the Time political blog, has finally payed off.
Klein claims, in referring to the president, that he has “tried to be respectful of the man and the office” but now he recognizes that the “defining sins” of his administration “are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.”
The problem many liberals have with Joe Klein is that he isn't liberal. Klein is put out as "the liberal voice" for Time magazine when he is squarely on the center of the political spectrum. He is a centrist on policy issues, and he tends to be full of the inane David Broder B.S. conventional wisdom that drives many on the left crazy. After being hounded on false generalizations for a few months now, and being called to task for bitching about the left continually, creating a false history of himself as a champion of preventing the Iraq war, I really think this is why Klein acted. He simply got tired of being called a wimp and decided to go 3/4 of the way towards calling Bush impeachment bait.
Atta boy Joe. I suggest cocktail shrimp for you tonight. You deserve it.
Update:
Joe Klein's column is now up.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Karen Tumulty of Time has a long cover piece on the disarray that the Republicans find themselves in these days. It's a strong article but there is something I must quibble with in her overall thesis.
But everything that Reagan said in 1985 about "the other side" could easily apply to the conservatives of 2007. They are handcuffed to a political party that looks unsettlingly like the Democrats did in the 1980s, one that is more a collection of interest groups than ideas, recognizable more by its campaign tactics than its philosophy.
One of my criticisms of the Mainstream Media and our culture is the notion that we have two parties and therefore we must have two ideas to compete with each other, as if this is some sort of ordained from above fiat. Interest party politics can be tiresome, and as Markos Moulitas Zuniga and Jerome Armstrong point out in 'Crashing The Gate', interest group politics can indeed be detrimental to victory when it is short sided. An example Kos uses often is NARAL supporting moderate pro-choice Republicans when they help the Republicans control congress, which persues an anti choice agenda.
Leaving that aside, it is troubling for our democracy when interest groups are in effect told to sit back and shut up in order to achieve party unity and victory. There are several competing interests in the Republican party today. If you are a social conservative, you shouldn't be required to be quiet just so Rudy Guiliani can escape unscathed from the primary. It is a false choice to say that both parties can effectively represent all opinions on all issues without some conflict.
It may end up being healthy for the GOP to be experiencing what they are going through these days. Party Unity is what brought us President Bush and his policies in Iraq, Katrina, as well as a culture of corruption. There wasn't anybody around being contrary to say that the party needed to correct it's course. The Baath party was very unified, as was the Soviet government. I am enjoying the fruits of the fractions in the GOP at the moment, but in the end, hopefully the Republicans will actually grow to be a better party, and engage the populace as better citizens if they stand any chance of leading again in the near future.
They will only get this chance when the identity groups are allowed to fight things out, and have their say. It's messy, but it's democracy.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Joe Klein, blogging over at Time's Swampland, takes on Glenn Beck of CNN for being basically in agreement with Osama Bin Laden that our culture in the US is offensive and needs to be attacked. Klein suggested that Glenn Beck had no place on the air, and it was wrong for him to be spouting such hateful rhetoric.
I, along with other commentators, noted that
Oh, and to those commentators who would equate Bill Kristal with Glenn Beck, here are two distinctions: 1) Bill has spent years studying this stuff and has come to a conclusion that I disagree with, but he states it in a civilized, dignified, well-thought and usually friendly way. 2) He isn't the editor of Time Magazine, just a columnist (non-staff, unlike me) just as Michael Kinsley is. Glenn Beck controls the content of his program.
My dream is a public square where neither America-haters like Chomsky or world-haters like Beck have positions of authority, but both can spew their nonsense as guests.
Let us dissect. First, Klein once again is equating "tone" with reasonability. If I said, "let's fix our fucking health care system", and Rush Limbaugh said politely,"I feel deeply that we should efficiently euthanize any senior citizen who can't pay for medical coverage. We can call it a relaxation room and pipe in some music for them", who here is being more reasonable?
Kristol advocated for pre-emptive war with Iraq even before Clinton left office. He said it would be easy. Kristol said that the Shia and Sunni would get along with each other, and was a big part of the drumbeat for this disaster as the debate was ongoing. Our nation's reputation is now in tatters. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, our debt is exploding. We have lost our moral compass with Abu Ghraib, warrantless wiretapping, removal of habeus corpus guarantees. He defended all these things and is offered a column.
Equating a left of center guy like Michael Kinsley with Bill Kristol is absurd. It is comparing apples to oranges. Kinsley often goes with the conventional beltway wisdom on things such as trade and economic policy. It would be like comparing Ann Coulter to Larry King saying there is balance. Larry seems kind of left of center. That's balanced. What an absurd argument.
I have really not read Chomsky in any depth, but how does he exactly hate america? By criticizing bad things that we do? That is all I know of that Chomsky does. Does Joe Klein have any evidence of hatred for all things American, or does Chomsky critique the governing ideology that Klein feels he needs to protect. Kristol is allowed on tv all the time, Chomsky isn't. If they were both allowed equal access to the mainstream, perhaps we could independently evaluate their positions. We aren't. True liberals, true radical leftists aren't allowed on corporate media's print space or airwaves. We allowed people on the airwaves who have suggested Hillary Clinton is both a lesbian and had affairs with Web Hubbell and Vince Foster. We have had people on the air who stated that Clinton murdered Ron Brown and ran cocaine out of Mena, Arkansas.
Why do we always get told "radicals" aren't going to get on tv. Yet, the radical right continually gets a forum to air their views? Seriously Joe, why is that? We can't even get the media to this day to continue to investigate why nobody in Alabama ever noticed Bush showing up for duty, but I see Jerry Falwell on tv all the time. This is the same guy who was hawking tapes that alleged Clinton was a cocaine kingpin.
On the internets, you get called for this bullshit analysis. True progressives aren't allowed in your club, and with you being "the token" liberal at Time, your illogical defenses of the status quo will be challenged vigorously. I might also note for the record that when you get challenged, you tend to get a bit uncivil yourself. At the same time, you don't seem to take that to the next level and understand why people who opposed George Bush from the start might be uncivil after being called traitors, america-haters, terrorist enablers, fifth columnists, by the "reasonable people" like Bill Kristol who continue to be wrong, but get only more air time as a result.
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
