23 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

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  richard on October 20 at 6:55 p.m.

  I was reading an article the other day that was talking about the Bush White House and read a quote from the late Tony Snow, who was Bush's press spokesman, in which he said that one of his favorite political philosophers was Adolph Eichman!

  I was shocked that anyone working in the White House, for any president, would have a mass murderer for a favorite philosopher. Amazing!

  I am very disillusioned by that.

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  spokelooneh on October 20 at 7:53 p.m.

  You must be reading some strange articles, Richard.

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  Chip Jones on October 20 at 8:37 p.m.

  Where was this article?
  I have never heard Adolf Eichmann called a “political philosopher” before, and I really doubt that the late Tony Snow, aleve shalom, would say that.
  

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  Gary Crooks on October 21 at 9:44 a.m.

  I met Snow once. He gave a speech and did a brief Q&A back before his White House stint. Very nice guy. Had some interesting anecdotes about how Howell Raines, who was the editorial page editor on the NY Times, despised Bill Clinton.

  Both were from the South, but apparently Clinton wasn't deemed to be from the right side of the tracks, as it were. That would seem to qualify for “media elite”.

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  richard on October 21 at 5:04 p.m.

  Why would you think Snow would not say such a thing, Chip?

  Is there anything wrong with him having that view, seeing as how he worked in the white house?

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  Chip Jones on October 21 at 9:02 p.m.

  Everyone is entitled to their own views. I am just skeptical that one of Tony Snow’s favorite political philosophers was a Nazi.

  I am interesting in checking the veracity of the article; could you supply a reference? I am a skeptic on many things, and I find that by researching original sources, secondary sources are often wrong. Most stuff that I have seen on the internet is a bunch of junk (and this could be in print, don't know). There are established professional organizations and foundations with good material on their websites, but a lot of the other stuff out there is just plain wrong.

  Anybody with an agenda can put anything on the web, with no review and no fact checking. Just because it is out there, doesn’t make it correct.
  

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  spokelooneh on October 21 at 9:09 p.m.

  Chip, Richard just makes things up as he goes along.

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  richard on October 22 at 7:39 p.m.

  Okay, I admit it, for once Loone is correct; I did just make that one up.

  But it was done to point out that what often amounts to “news” in today's media is often based on the ideology or the political allegiance of the particular news organization one may happen to being viewing or reading.

  But if it were true, we know it would have been “reported or at least noted in the many articles and commentaries over the past 8 years, which sought to raise a (legitimate) question abut the right-wing extremes of the Bush administration.

  “What is the true agenda of the Bush White House?” “Why is there a Nazi-lover in the White House?” Paul Krugman would have asked?

  “When we learned that Bush's press spokesman is faithful to the ideology of a notorious Nazi war criminal, does it not underscore the true hidden agenda of an administration which uses “torture?” Keith Olberman would have, in his best Shakespearean modulation, declare.

  And millions of Americans, including myself, would be forced to take pause and to give more consideration to the countless “news” articles and commentaries hinting that there is more to the alleged “right-wing” excesses of the administration, than mere rhetoric

  By itself, Tony Snow's Nazi “inclinations” would be an odd curiosity; when juxtaposed with the Iraq war, “torture,” Gitmo, wiretaps, eavesdropping, etc. it would be a legitimate topic for mainstream media to probe and raise questions about. And we know they would have.

  So when it was learned that Van Jones was a declared Marxist who gave credence to the “Truthers” who believed Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks, why was there only one or two commentators who put that story out there?

  And the same was true about Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers, and other leftists with either a terrorist background, or was supportive of terrorism against the US government. These stories were “forced” upon mainstream media who looked away as long as they could.

  And now we have the White House communications director who declared that her two most favored political philosophers were Mother Theresa and … Chairman Mao!

  Now even John Lennon knew that “you ain’t gonna make it with anyone” if you are carrying pictures of the Chairman!

  Be that as it may - and everyone can make up their own minds if Obama has an inclination for extremist leftwing politics … IF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WAS DOING ITS JOB, LIKE THEY WOULD HAVE HAD IT BEEN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!

  If this is not extreme favoritism for Obama and a serious neglect of journalistic principles … what the hell is it?

  You can’t keep denying what is so obvious to non-Kool-aid drinking Americans. This is a serious issue.
  

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  Arch_Druid on October 22 at 9:13 p.m.

  If “Richard” could make things up about Snow, how about all the rest of it?

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  Gary Crooks on October 23 at 11:11 a.m.

  If it were obvious, Richard, you wouldn't make stuff up.

  How is that Bush was able to conceal that DUI for so long? Where was the media on that one?

  You just know it it were Teddy Kennedy ….

  When Alan Greenspan was patting regulators like Brooksley Born on the head about how the markets would ferret out fraud in derivatives, where was the media to bust him? Ditto, his handling of interest rates and how that fed the housing bubble.

  Too busy calling him The Oracle and genuflecting to his every utterance. Talk about a cult of personality.

  Everybody has gripes with the media, Richard. Those, too, are driven by ideology.
  

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  Chip Jones on October 23 at 12:32 p.m.

  Yet, Richard’s attempt at irony fell flat (or whatever it was supposed to be). Why? because it made no sense (starting with the misspelling of Adolf Eichmann). You should have used Dick Cheney, that would have been more believable.
  The whole “if this would have happened, then the left-wing MSM would have done this” is nothing but a straw man. That is a common form of argument from the radio bloviators, but it has no merit. Why not just stick with what really happened.
  Richard, you seem to be a man with a flame thrower in a field of straw men (my apologies to George Will).
  

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  richard on October 23 at 2:08 p.m.

  Kool-aid drinkers, please answer this then, since you are so quyick to dispel the 800 pound gorilla staring at you.

  Reverend Wright … who broke that story? And who took weeks before being forced to examine this story? Fox and the established media are the correct answers

  Bill Ayers … same question and, the same answer actually.

  Van Jones? three for three!

  Anita Dunn? Four for four!

  And that doesn't even consider the countless less obvious stories that mainstream media has tended to “back-page” or skip all together since January 20th of this year.

  And are you guys really that dishonest … or are you just that non-observant? Maybe you need to open your eyes a bit more and for once gve honest consideration to what you instinctively reject out of hand.

  I have never seen such an odd array of kool-aid drinkers who all come to the same conclusion about any given topic offered by someone situated more to the right than them.

  And of course no one addresses the specifics what is said; rather, generalized put-downs are all that is offered.

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  richard on October 23 at 2:18 p.m.

  Acoording to a news account . . .

  “Today the White House stepped up its attack on Fox News, announcing that the network would no longer be able to conduct interviews with officials as a member of the Press Pool. The Pool is a five-member group consisting of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC organized by the White House Correspondents Association. Its membership is not subject to oversight by the government.Before an interview with “Pay Czar” Kenneth Feinberg, the administration announced that Fox News would be banned from the press pool.”

  And this is not shades of Hugo Chavez … because … why?

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  Chip Jones on October 23 at 2:38 p.m.

  This is from Charles Krauthammer's op-ed piece, isn't it? By your own definition, Richard, this is not a “news account.” If you take me to task for using “news” in a broad sense, then you should be consistent in your own use of the term.

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  Chip Jones on October 23 at 3:03 p.m.

  PS – everything that Krauthammer writes is not correct. He is extremely biased and has his own Neo-Con agenda. He was wrong about Iraq, he is wrong about many things.
  The report that I read (and I can not remember where, but I can look it up if necessary) was that real journalists, like Major Garrett, from Fox would be treated like all other journalists.
  If you don’t think the Fox News Channel has an anti-Obama agenda (just as the evening shows on MSNBC have a pro-Obama agenda), you are not paying attention.

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  richard on October 23 at 5:48 p.m.

  Chip … I didn't get anything of the sort from Krauthammer. it is factual that Fox was removed from the pool of major news outlets who are given preference for certain interviews.

  Finally showing they have a pair, ABC, CNN, NBC, PBS and CBS all told Obama to go to hell and they would not do any pool interviews if he was going to exclude one because of differences in politics.

  Get a clue, chip! I have never said there is not a different viewpoint at Fox and at MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC etc, because there obviously is. What you don't accept or understand is, that only the liberal viewpoint is acceptable from this administration.

  Just lkie Hugo Chavez in his shut downs of news outlets. if that isn;t chilling to good liberals, nothing ever will be.

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  Arch_Druid on October 24 at 7:53 a.m.

  And on the other hand, only radical viewpoints, those most acceptable to the LAST administration, were the ones actually permitted access. For which “Richard” shows no sign of nausea at all.

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  JohnBailey on October 24 at 6:57 p.m.

  I was privileged to be a friend of the late Tony Snow during the last decade of his life. Anyone who read or listened to Tony knew him because he was absolutely no different privately than publicly. He was a very good man, a good husband and a good father. Besides being a Catholic, he was very ethical in his dealings. He did have a wonderful sense of humor that could render his liberal opponents speechless. If they wandered too far from reality, he would often say “Are you smoking rope?”

  All in all, I simply cannot imagine Tony saying such an absurd comment unless it was meant to demonstrate an absurdity. We are too quick to accept undocumented statements on the internet and too quick to make judgements. As one “journalist” stated about a misquoted celebrity: “I don't care if he didn't say it…he could have.”

  Well, I care, and I don't think Tony could have.

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  JohnBailey on October 24 at 7:20 p.m.

  Tony Snow Comment - Part 2

  I looked around for the offending Nazi comment by Tony Snow and found an article a day before Richard's posting in which Mark Steyn wrote an article in the Washington Times and fabricated a fictional quote in praise of Nazis by Tony Snow [even including quotation marks]. The point of his article was how if Tony would have made such comments, [he DIDN'T] they would have been criticized, whereas Anita Dunn's dispicable comment about having Mao as one of her favorite philosophers received little or no criticizing. That Tony's FICTIONAL statement was criticized here, seems to prove Steyn's point.

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  richard on October 25 at 7:51 p.m.

  And, JohnBailey, I didn't even read Steyn's commentary. But it seemed apropos to draw the distinction between media's - and liberals in general - likely response to someone in Bush's White House making a very inappropriate comment about a mass murderer vs. someone in Obama's administration making an equally inappropriate comment about another (less virulent?) mass murderer.

  And they all took the bait and exposed themself … and Gary C went and hid under his desk.

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  Gary Crooks on October 26 at 9:50 a.m.

  I really need to remove this camera from my office.

  Your ruse failed, Richard. Keep bailing.

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  Arch_Druid on October 26 at 10:14 a.m.

  Which arguments I find hilarious all around. The fellow who's questionable article about Clinton's “womanizing,” that brought Paula Jones out of the woodwork claiming to have been a “victim” of sexual harassment with no proof to back it up. —David Brock. Who would later be an author of such books as the “Republican Noise Machine,” claimed that even members of the GOP quoted Mao among other Marxist entities.

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  Chip Jones on October 26 at 10:16 a.m.

  I don’t see a derogatory comment above about Tony Snow. I knew that it was not true, and questioned you, Richard, as to your source. You have taken too much of your own kool-aid.

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