It's a Primary Debate. Not a Freaking Prom. Morons.

Sorta weirdest story of the week. But when dealing with wing nuts it's dealing with morons. Oftentimes.

And some of them were upset with the tough questions Chris Wallace was asking the wannabes, last night. Go Here.

Granted, when confronted about that on "Fox and Friends," he made the NFL analogy instead of my fave, there's no crying in baseball. But the message is the same. This is politics, and that a rough sport (even if not one with actual physical contact, in the USA at least.)

Now I linked to Mediate. And the "editor," Ms. Fran Martel (so I hear it, she's almost a home girl for me,) makes a very specious argument. But she is a true believer wing nut. Anyway, she argues that," Wallace’s assertiveness and frankness in his questioning helps undermine other media outlets’ criticism that Fox News merely acts as a “mouthpiece” for the Republican Party."

And that's some ripe, nasty bullshit. Firstly, intramural GOP politics is every bit as much a vicious blood sport as the GOP vs the Dems. Republicans eat their young, there aged, and any game that can be taken down and chewed on. Implying otherwise is a big fat lie. Therefore either covering or hosting a GOP Debate has to have some adversarial content. As much as the wannabes might want to run against P. Obama now, they have to shred each other to be declared GOP champ, earning the right to be the one to challenge the Democrat Incumbent.

Next, only a fool would think that there's no commercial value in hosting a more pugnacious debate than one that so full of softballs it's like Sean Hannity interviewing a favorite politician.

Next, never underestimate that Fox Mgmt. might be subtly behind someone already and the rest of the pack are just there for dramatic filler.

Lastly, Chris Wallace never seemed to me to be a wing nut. He knows who signs his paychecks, and all, but he's the rare true hunting hound over there in the Fox Kennel. I don't want to continue the metaphor, so I will just say he's one of the few real journalists with his own show, there. And that is the role he plays. He's Mr. Legitimate. Even if his frequent smirks belie the fact he's well amused by the bullshit game his networks got going, there.

So trotting out the "Not a mouthpiece" editorial comment is really bullshit, not because that is a lie, but again, that's Wallace's role there. And during a primary, he gets to play. Good for him! But that does not change the fact that Fox News is the cable TV equivalent of one of those old time biased local papers that routinely side with one party against the other. This is an ancient game, Fran. Don't pretend it is more than that.

More about Chris Wallace's "Palinization" of Bachmann.

Again, Professor Wingnut is not the point. He's just a convenient stand in for similarly minded wing nuts. And one of the things wing nuts decry is the way the media treated and still treats Mrs. Palin. He uses the term Palinization. I guess that's the new form of getting Borked. Anyway, here are the main reasons the media ripped on her so harshly.

1. She came out of virtually nowhere. And that leads to a presumption that

2. She did not deserve to be picked as VP nominee.

3. She's a snowbilly.

4. She talks very funny. Worse than a thick Southern Accent funny. She talks crazy person funny.

5. She is a gaff machine like none other that has been on the national scene in any living person's memory.

6. Despite having been a governor, her resume was thin.

7. Because she came out of nowhere, everything about her was dug up pretty fast and made public for the first time within a short period of time.

8. Her family is a disaster/real life soap opera/was a reality TV show before they were getting paid to be on TV.

And Lastly.

9. Even if she might not really be as stupid as some of us like to say, she obviously can not think on her feet and respond well to unexpected questions. So she comes across as profoundly stupid.

And she's got that freaky religion, and her anti elitism not only is a slap in the face to the media (ya, that's smart. Antagonize the press like that,) but it makes her the worst of snobs. It makes her a redneck snob.

Wingnuts will deny most if not all of this. But all that shit is her shit. She makes it very easy for the media to treat her more like a freak show than a serious player.

Back to Bachmann, Wallace, and Professor Wingnut. I sort of remember that he had the update on his post last night that Wallace,"has issued a video statement acknowledging that it was a mistake to have used the term “a flake.”" And the Professor then says Wallace is a class act. Excuse me?

The Professor originally laid out the case that Bachmann was being Palinized, and then calls Wallace a class act for merely taking it back? Like I said last night, The Professor is pretty stupid if he does not understand that that was no accident. Wallace likely pre planned that question, as a bit of deliberate theatre. He had his own reason for taking the shot, never mind that the other well known Tea Party Queen is still an employee of Fox News. He got the effect he wanted. He gets to say, hey. I can punch at the republicans too. And he gets to apologize for it, after being pressured. It's still a win for him. Not classy, that. It's cunning, though.

Wallace is likely the smartest person on the payroll there who's "on air" talent. I suspect he's not only gaming the system generally, but he's gaming his bosses.

No wonder he's spent so much time trying to equalize himself and Jon Stewart. He keeps forgetting that if his act is really that, an act, it's still supposed to be a secret. He's in showbiz in his own mind. And he's playing the part of wing nut journalist. But he's still being graded under and classified as a journalist, not a performer. Ok. That's my take on it.

And a couple things before I find the door. Wing nuts like the professor just don't get it. They don't get it, that not only is politics a big game, but Fox News, for all they like to be the right wing partisan network, basically holds their audience in low level contempt. They try to game the game as well as they can, and that means they game the audience on a regular basis. And make a shit load of money that way. Just look at that all knowing smirk on Chris Wallace's face for the tell.

Oh. And one other note. And this might be how Bachmann falls off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. Even better than Palin, Bachmann can work well enough with prepared remarks (as long as she doesn't have any of that stupid shit in her pre prepared remarks.) But as well I suspect she will fail the improv test. Back in the days when she was saying all sorts of stupid assed shit, if not totally bullshit and lies, she likely was speaking off the cuff.

But she's been well rehearsed lately. We got to get her on the fly and try to make her think on her feet. If she's been well enough coached, she might not take the bait though. We need to give the shiny thing something she can't resist as a shiny thing, lure. Then we will see the real crazy person. She's not buried that deeply. More so in the interview she did with Bob Schieffer than Wallace, she started to let her freak fly, when she started talking about her religion. She held back some, but just like Mrs. Palin she's done some testifying before the congregation. And when she lets her freak fly its almost as freaky as Palin's tape was. If I find it again, I should post it.


Edit to add:

Letting Her Freak Fly. Kooky Shit.

And I finally watched the Chris Wallace apology. He was very easy on her. But I guess he did not know that the answer to the flake question that he described as "good" was her campaign, boilerplate bio bit. She said the same shit on Bob Schieffer's show. Same.

I Meant to Post About this Last Night. Good Thing I Waited. Jon Stewart's Doubler Take Down of Fox.

By now the news is being spread throughout the land, and across the Internet, that Jon Stewart took down Fox New's Chris Wallace in spectacular form, this past Sunday. The killer moment was when he got Wallace to admit that Fox is,"Presenting the other side," as opposed to, as I would say it, trying their best to present the most objective and professional news reporting, that they can.

Here's Stewart's own post interview recap. He doubles down on the mastery of the event here.



Various orgs are likewise touting the original interview as a serious win for Stewart. I'm mainly just saying what lots of folk are saying here. But for the following.

I have had this argument with wing nuts on message boards. Yes, they are so intellectually dishonest that they can, within the same argument, say Fox is "Fair and Balanced," and say they present the other side. To a deranged, unhinged wing nut, there's no contradiction. I can see (hear) Wallace did the same intellectually dishonest thing during the course of that interview that the morons do on the message boards. Thing is, I give Wallace the benefit of the doubt that he knows that is in fact a bullshit argument. He knows the game he is playing, and in order to remind himself why he should not care, all he has to do is look at any slip of paper or digital display that shows what he gets paid.

That not something to be proud of, on a matter of personal ethics. But hey. It's just show biz, right?

The preceding line was meant more as sarcasm, but it dovetails into the last point or points. If I had posted what I was thinking about yesterday, I would have asked the rhetorical question, "Why does Fox seem so hell bent on denying Stewart's profession and status as a comedian, and try to put him on the same level of a journalist?"

Well the answer came to me earlier today. They are jealous. Given how many people trust Stewart's comedy as a source of news over Fox, he's a source of jealousy for them. And the other part of it is since Stewart's clearly rooted on the Entertainment side of broadcasting, as opposed to News, he is free to cross over into current events and commentary without the least bit of loss of professionalism or cause for criticism. However, when news orgs or journalists drift over to entertainment content, they are the ones acting unprofessionally and degrading their professional. All that shit.

Personally I despise the current state of things, where we have these three or four, how many ever cable news outfits which blur, to varying degrees, The Wall of Separation Between Entertainment and News. Let the comedians have that. Stick to trying to objectively and professionally provide top quality news reporting, will ya please?

By the way, and before I find the door. Yo! Chris and the rest of you wing nuts who think the "mainstream" media has a liberal bias. It's not really that simple. There is a huge difference between saying that most people in that field have a liberal world view, as opposed to them pursuing a liberal agenda. That's a difference on the order of not liking cats, vs going out at night and hunting them.

Ya dig?