Moe Lane

Real quick background.  Apparently a Saudi prince that you’ve likely never heard of owns a portion of Fox News – as if anybody reading this actually freaking cares – and this had Media Matters for America… all in a tizzy?  Yeah, I didn’t notice, either.  Anyway, the Usual Suspects on the Left are all freaking out about this – largely in arenas where their particular shrieking can’t be heard over the din – with the general theme of ‘people shouldn’t support anything* owned by Saudi princes.’ So since that same prince has now bought a piece of Twitter, you can expect all those people to quit that service themselves, right?

Rhetorical question, of course.

(Via @RBPundit)

Moe Lane

PS: Of course this is the first that you’ve heard of the whole situation.  Media Matters for America, remember?  The only reason that they’re not mocked more is because we know that if they collapse as a group MMFA will likely be replaced by a group that’s more competent.

*No, this doesn’t mean that the Left now supports the Keystone ethical oil pipeline.  Don’t be silly.

Let me explain this one: there’s a debate Thursday that’s being sponsored by FoxNews & Google.  Google is letting people submit questions via YouTube – frankly, this has more than a slight whiff of gimmick about it, but let’s roll with the notion for a moment.  The preliminary survey of submitted questions indicate that the top two categories of questions submitted are “Government Spending” and Debt (17%) and “Jobs & Economy” (16%), with “Social Issues” (12%) and “Energy and Environment” (9%) being the next two.  By my calculations, that means that roughly 54% of the questions being submitted involve one of those four topics, which I think that we can all agree are legitimately of interest to Republican voters, yes?

Well, WE HAVE YET TO HAVE A 2012 REPUBLICAN PRIMARY DEBATE WHERE FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT OF THE QUESTIONS WERE LEGITIMATELY OF INTEREST TO REPUBLICAN VOTERS.  We have, instead, had inane questions at worst and invitations to intra-debate sniping at best. I for one am getting tired of it.  And, apparently, I’m not the only one, either. (more…)

Not that MMfA is cool enough to be associated with Fight Club.

Executive summary of this Washington Post article: Media Matters for America (MMfA) has come up with its latest ACME-approved method for beating the Road Runner Fox News: a secret training camp in which they teach selected liberal acolytes secret Barking Moonbat Pundit Kung Fu techniques that will let them infiltrate and dominate an unsuspecting “right-wing media!”  Well… at least those elements of the aforementioned right-wing media that don’t read the papers, because, again the entire exercise got written up in the Washington Post by Jason Horowitz.

The entire thing is, in fact, almost sad.  Even if you concede the central premise that it’s a good idea to be prepared for television appearances – which it is; and it’s one reason why I don’t even try to do TV – it is still always bemusing to see people refuse to give up a cherished, yet quite wrong, notion.  As someone privately pointed out to me – and I agree – MMfA still thinks that it’s their messaging that’s the problem for progressives, not the message itself  (despite decades of empirical evidence to the contrary).  It’s also interesting that the article itself admits that the trainees themselves were more comfortable with arguing the conservative points of view than the liberal ones; sure, they try to explain it away by saying that “it’s more fun to be the bad guy” – but they haven’t really thought that thought through.  It’s fun to play the bad guy when the bad guy is over-the-top – but if conservatives were as over-the-top as progressives think that they are, then conservatives wouldn’t be winning the debate.  And MMfA is starting out by admitting that conservatives are winning the debate.

(more…)

Well, given that the network apparently has the power to go back in time and take over the President’s mind… that’s some pretty god-like power right there, yes?

[Shirley] Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the fear that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her. As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say “do it, because you’re going to be on ‘Glenn Beck’ tonight.”

As it turns out, the White House panicked unduly: (more…)

They didn’t even rate ‘Nixonian.’

Another for the ‘media’s starting to get just a bit tired of the administration’s crusade against Fox News’ file.  From Ruth Marcus:

Obama’s dumb war with Fox News

There’s only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel — picking a fight with people who don’t even have to buy ink. The Obama administration’s war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman’s advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian — Agnewesque? — aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration’s substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings; and it deprives the White House, to the extent it refuses to provide administration officials to appear on the cable network, of access to an audience that is, in fact, broader than hard-core Obama haters.

A colleague of mine wondered privately what could be the reason for what is fairly clearly a counter-productive effort on the administration’s part – and when you’re getting this kind of push-back from what is generally conceded to be a core constituency of the Democratic party, you’re engaged in a counter-productive effort. My response was one word:

Pique.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.