No, the most ridiculous thing on television last week was the endless chatter passed off as news.
Friday, on MSNBC, you had talk show host Andrea Mitchell bemoaning with CBS NEWS' Bob Schieffer the "demonizing of the mainstream media" (Andrea's words). For those who've forgotten, in 2002 and 2003, neither Andrea nor Bob said "boo" against the Iraq War.
This despite the fact that the war was sold -- by the media -- on lies.
The lies included false linkage of Iraq to the 9/11 attacks, the false claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction and so much more -- all lies promoted by the media.
By the media.
Not just by Judith Miller.
"Not just by Judith Miller" is a fact Rob Reiner misses in his yet another sexist film, his new SHOCK AND AWE aka MEN DO EVERYTHING BUT WOMEN DO NOTHING.
Watching, we noticed reporter Margaret Talev was disappeared. We notice women of any weight or power were disappeared.
There's a reason women like Diane Keaton have such an awful time working with Rob Reiner -- he doesn't like women.
The only film he made worth watching is WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . . and that's a reflection of Nora Ephron's screenwriting talent, not a reflection of Rob Reiner. (Mockumentaries are better done by Christopher Guest on his own without Reiner.)
Rob's never liked women -- they intimidate him, the same way his penis was intimidated for years with Penny Marshall. Poor shy fellow.
Rob Reiner's film shows that you can make the Iraq War boring. Just as his films demonstrate that he doesn't understand or care about women.
Remember, Nora wrote WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . .
It's one of twenty films Rob directed -- the only other one to feature a woman writer? THE STORY OF US which was co-written by Jessie Nelson -- who, by the way, was brought in at Michelle Pfeiffer's request.
That's a fact no one in the media ever wants to address.
The silence is almost as ridiculous as it was to hear Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC last week going on about the "demonizing of the mainstream media" when this is the same Andrea who back then was married to Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. (She remains married to him although he is no longer the Chair of the Federal Reserve.)
Greenspan is the one who, in his 2007 book THE AGE OF TURBULENCE: ADVENTURES IN A NEW WORLD, noted, "The Iraq War is largely about oil. I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows."
Funny how Andrea, a premiere tele-'reporter' on NBC never found the time to cover that reality from 2002 to . . . well even now.
If Miller is truly worried about the way mainstream media is viewed -- poorly by most Americans -- than many she should spend some of those endless and worthless MSNBC hours she has each week to actually set the record straight and maybe show some remorse for what she and others did to sell the Iraq War?
But, no, that's way too much.
Instead, the media went into more lying, in fact 8 years of it, during which they made their entire mission not to report but to protect the presidency of Barack Obama.
From the 2009 deal Barack made with terrorists in Iraq (which did impact the rise of ISIS -- letting Shi'ite thugs the US had arrested out to swap for the corpses of dead Brits did impact the rise of ISIS, to the destruction of Libya and the IRS targeting of political groups, to Loretta Lynch's disgusting instruction to not refer to the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton not be referred to as a "criminal investigation," to the ongoing abuse at Guantanamo, etc -- where was the press?
Propping up baby Barack.
Wiping his ass.
Jerking him off.
Sucking the sheets after his nocturnal emissions.
Andrea knows how to treat a president, go back to her reporting in the 80s.
But the rule was 'hands off Barack' because they saw him as Black and because this was 'historic.'
So he could -- and did -- get away with everything as the media repeatedly played defense for Barack.
There's no question that the media is offended by Donald Trump.
They think he's stupid and they're offended on a snobbish basis.
If they held Hillary Clinton to any standard, you could argue that the 'vengeance' with which they're operating currently is a reaction to overcompensating for the last 8 years of non-reporting.
But they don't hold Hillary to any standard.
Multiple people have gushed opposite Hillary Clinton as they gave her airtime to promote her latest ghost-written book.
Not one has bothered to ask her about the debate questions Donna Brazile slipped her.
They let her make offensive remarks about Donald Trump and never call her on it or ask her how that helps a nation heal?
So let's not pretend that the press is ripping apart Donald because they are attempting to get back to doing their jobs.
They're ripping him apart for reasons other than journalism.
The worst has to be CNN -- which reached a new low in journalism, in television, in everything on Wednesday -- all in one awful program, NEW DAY.
The very ugly Chris Cuomo wasted minutes explaining what he felt Donald Trump needed to say -- what he, the host, felt Donald needed to say.
There was no need to bring on a guest who might be an expert in maybes, not when you have Cuomo Domo who can be the expert on everything always.
Now VARIETY reported sometime ago that Jeff Zucker planned for NEW DAY to be hard hitting but a talk show host prattling on about what a president needs to say doesn't strike us as hard hitting -- just eating up time and patience.
We know Jeff Zucker and we wanted to believe him, when quoted in the same article, that NEW DAY would be "there to hold both sides accountable."
But after Wednesday, we're not sure CNN knows what the term "both sides" even means.
We question their knowledge base because Wednesday they were full on Russia hysteria yet again.
And "both sides" apparently means that you do a 'report' wherein a 'reporter' -- who looks like a basset hound -- channels Democratic House of Representatives member Adam Schiff. The 'reporter' relays everything Schiff whispered to the 'reporter.' The 'reporter' never questions the whispers, never offers any alternative than what Schiff coo-ed to him. It's not 'reporting' it's a televised game of telephone.
To 'balance' that and present 'both sides' apparently, they did two segments on the Russia hysteria.
The second segment?
It featured Senator Richard Blumenthal.
Like Adam Schiff, Blumenthal's a Democrat.
Like Adam Schiff, Blumenthal believes Russia interfered in the election.
The hysteria report was the claim that Russia bought FACEBOOK ads to influence turnout in Wisconsin.
This oft repeated but unproven allegation that CNN couldn't stop pimping also came with the claim that, to target Wisconsin, Russia must have been tipped off by someone.
It ought to be illegal to be that stupid and on TV.
It was August 2013, when we noted:
We were also struck by the nonsense Rothschild and Welsh offered regarding Wisconsin. At one point, Rothschild insisted, "Well it was devastating when he [Walker] won the recall I've got to say because we had a million people sign signatures to get him out of office, all we needed was about 400,000 more people to vote against him and he'd have been out of office."
Facts are needed for an honest debate. 400,000 votes were not needed. Walker received 1,335,585 votes while Tom Barrett received 1,164,480 votes. 171,106 was the amount of additional votes needed to defeat Walker. Does Rothschild struggle with basic addition and subtraction? That would explain a great deal.
(For any wondering, 939,266 registered voters did not vote in the recall. Had Rothschild and company worked harder, they wouldn't have had to pull from Walker's support, only motivate 1/4 of the registered non-voters to vote and vote for Barrett. All figures from the Government Accountability Board of the State of Wisconsin.)
Rothschild clearly struggles with other realities. Despite the (small) ongoing protests against Walker, his approval rate was 48% with 46% disapproval. Rothschild may want to portray Walker as hugely out of step with Wisconsin but the polling does not suggest that's the opinion of the state's citizens.
That doesn't mean Walker's good or great. It does mean that despite running off national readers with their near exclusive focus on Wisconsin, The Progressive has failed to communicate effectively to the people of Wisconsin on what they see as Walker's faults.
For the really stupid, what we just quoted above? That's what a swing state is -- a state that could go either way in a national election.
There was no special tool needed to know that Wisconsin was a swing state -- even if Hillary Clinton and her campaign were too stupid to grasp that.
Senator Richard Blumenthal was too stupid as well, insisting that too target Wisconsin, ""They had to have some kind of highly sophisticated and technical advice."
If it's any consolation, we were stupid too.
We were stupid the last week of September when we attended a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing and, listening to Richard Blumenthal prattle on about The Veteran Peer Act, think he actually meant what he said.
But, goodness, we've seen him on TV since and all the blowhard's done is talk rumors about Russia.
Shouldn't he be ashamed?
And shouldn't we all be embarrassed as this Russia gossip continues to distract from real issues?
Blumenthal introduced this bill in October of 2015.
If it's important to him, maybe he should shut up about gossip and start working on behalf of veterans?
Two years ago, he introduced a bill that still hasn't become law. Seems to us, he's just sitting on his ass.
And if CNN cared about reality, maybe it could cover that bill?
And if you're not seeing the balance, nor were we.
During the same hour, Cuomo made it a point to argue with White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.
About Russia?
No, about Puerto Rico.
Cuomo cut off Mulvaney repeatedly and insisted that they were just covering a subject in need of coverage.
It's a shame Mulvaney wasn't smart enough to point out that Barbados is suffering and CNN isn't giving a damn about that.
Cuomo has yet to grandstand on that topic.
Back to Friday and Andrea Mitchell gas bagging with Bob Schieffer and declaring that it was so hard for her to keep up with everything and "figure it out." That, of course, is her job. If it's too much for her, as she gears up for her 71st birthday, maybe it's time for her to retire?
Maybe it's time for so much of the media to retire?
