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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Condi’s Guys

posted by on January 11 at 14:06 PM

“My Fox guys, I love every single one of them,” gushed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into an open microphone between television interviews this morning. She also said she’d like to do a “one-on-one” with CBS anchor Harry Smith next time she’s in Iraq. As though we needed further proof that the mainstream media is in bed with this administration…

Posted by Sage Van Wing.

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1

Fox news is mainstream? Hardly.

Posted by Chip Chipmunk | January 11, 2007 2:46 PM
2

Mainstream for the retarded...

Posted by Fox Has a Growing Market | January 11, 2007 3:04 PM
3

Is Condi Rice the stupidest Secretary of State the U.S. has ever had...?

How does someone who seems in all public appearances to be at best a high-functioning mentally retarded woman get such lofty positions in government and higher education?

Posted by Peter | January 11, 2007 3:05 PM
4

Good grief. You don't have to be a frothing-at-the-mouth right-winger to notice that, for better or for worse, the mainstream media leans left. Journalists are considerably more liberal in their politics than the general electorate. Some bias is inevitable. And a comparison of editorial opinion of mainstream media with congressional voting patterns also shows that only Fox (centrist, believe it or not) and talk radio (right of center) are exceptions to this tendency. You do your side no favors by denying the obvious. Better to acknowledge and spin it, as in "yeah, the mainstream media is liberal. So what? That's because liberals or smarter or better informed or whatever."

Posted by Dissenter | January 11, 2007 3:09 PM
5

Well stated, Dissenter.

Posted by Chip Chipmunk | January 11, 2007 3:14 PM
6

Peter (3): It's a mistake to argue that Condi is not intelligent. Reasonable people can easily see that she is -- whether she is misguided or mistaken is another matter -- and this makes reasonable people discount anything else you have to say. Condi was a political science prof at Stanford. So it's much more likely that you are wrong than that Condi is unintelligent. You just don't agree with Condi, and attacking her personally (rather than her arguments) only makes it look like you have no arguments of your own. (A parallel argument would be that anti-marijuana activists hurt their overall credibility by telling obvious falsehoods, such as that marijuana is highly addictive, that a single bong hit can lead to impotence, etc.) One problem Seattle's liberal echo chamber is that everyone is so used to talking to each other that we have lost the ability to make arguments that persuade. It's like a muscle at the gym that never gets worked out: use it or lose it.

Posted by Dissenter | January 11, 2007 3:21 PM
7

Um, I was making an observation, not an argument. Condi just seems like a profoundly stupid human being to me. Obviously there must be more to her than the things she says on mic and camera.

I like your ironic bit about Seattle as "a liberal echo chamber" (I don't live or work in Seattle, anyway); almost as amusingly ironic as the Rumsfeldian "Good Grief" you started your post with.

I'm glad you agree with yourself, though. Carry on your one-sided conversation.

Posted by Peter | January 11, 2007 3:36 PM
8

Dissenter, the mainstream media is far from being liberal. Once upon a time, perhaps so, but not in the last decade or so. Very few journalists dared to even challenge the Bush administration until recently. He has always been given the benefit of the doubt, events are always spun as working in his favor, and journalists tend to parrot Bush's talking points. Your characterization of Fox News as "moderate" is laughable. Just in the past day Fox News anchors have called Edward Kennedy a "hostile enemy at home," a characterization that not even the interviewee Dan Bartlett could let slide without a correction. This is the channel that gives Hannity and his "Enemy of the State" piece a national forum. They're a shameless poodle of Bush and the right-wing.

Posted by Gabriel | January 11, 2007 3:38 PM
9

I think it takes a reasonable amount of intelligence to spin bullshit the way she does. She's better at it than Tony Snow.

Think those two are doing it and that was her coded "I love you"? He is, after all, her main "fox boy."

Posted by monkey | January 11, 2007 4:10 PM
10

Centrist for the retarded. And for Dissenter.

Posted by Fox Has a Growing Market | January 11, 2007 4:26 PM
11

No, Condi isn't stupid, but she's obviously insane. Sometimes I wonder what the hell she's thinking. Our foreign policy is the hugest disaster it's ever been in our history. Many more citizens in a recent international poll had a favorable opinion of China than of the US and China's a totalitarian police state, for frak's sake!
Condi, Bush II, Cheney and Rumsfeld have shredded everything good and decent that this nation once stood for. She's a proven liar and a war criminal and should be in prison if there's any real justice in this world.

Condi, Bush II, Cheney and Rumfeld have shredded everything good and decent that this nation used to stand for. She's a proven liar and a war criminal and should be in prison if there's any real justice in this world.

Posted by Original Andrew | January 11, 2007 4:29 PM
12

Intelligent people embrace challenge, not an echo chamber. It is partly this administration's unwillingness to have anyone except cheerleaders around that has led it to make so many mistakes in foreign policy; if you shut your ears to everyone who says there might be problems, you never have to work out how to fix those problems.

Most of the media is socially liberal but economically centrist/ conservative -- in favor of free trade, uninterested in universal health care, free childcare and other issues that are important to working class families' ability to survive. Admittedly many people vote based on their social values, so that some low income people vote for Bush because of their dislike of abortion and homosexuality, and the wealthier and more educated media types vote for Democrats even though the Dems promise to raise their taxes.

Posted by PG | January 11, 2007 4:41 PM
13

Faux news is an embarrasment. God told me so last night.

Posted by Will in Seattle | January 11, 2007 5:09 PM
14

I always find it odd when people complain about one news organization when we have a wide smorgasbord of news outlets to suit a wide variety of political dispositions. Just what are they so afraid of?

Posted by Chip Chipmunk | January 11, 2007 5:31 PM
15

Er, perhaps they think the news should be as factual as possible, not various flavors of propaganda. Of course, that may not be the centrist position...

Posted by rodrigo | January 11, 2007 5:57 PM
16

Peter(7): I realize you were making an observation, not an argument, and there's nothing wrong with that. I just wish that more Seattleites (yeah, The Stranger is a *Seattle* paper) saw the necessity of making their case more often (and more carefully) instead of ranting frequently about how stupid the other side is. But that was probably an unfair burden to place on a throw-away comment on blog comment.

By the way, I was not channeling Rumsfeld when I wrote "good grief." That's an expression my (liberal, very democratic) mother used to say, and it's also a phrase made famous by the Peanuts comic strip. I really had no idea Rumsfeld used it. Still, this illustrates my point about your focusing on people rather than ideas. Who cares whether I used the same expression as one of your political targets? Would that somehow discredit me and my comments here?

Gabriel(8): My characterization of Fox News as "centrist" comes from research showing that the positions of Fox News line up fairly well with the voting record of moderate politicians, as defined by the median voter nationwide. In this context, that seems like a reasonable definition of "centrist" to me.

Posted by Dissenter | January 11, 2007 6:14 PM
17

As Mr Colbert lectured President Chimp a few months ago: "As is well known, reality has a Liberal bias".

Posted by Dr Glomph | January 11, 2007 9:52 PM
18

Yeah. What does Condi know? She's obviously a tard. I mean come on, she doesn't even have the brains to have children. Which as Senator Boxer points out, invalidates her whole perspective. I find it terribly liberating that we can now openly discredit an unmarried black woman as obviously unintelligent without offending blacks or feminists. We have come along way baby.

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me | January 12, 2007 1:44 PM

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