Discussion for article #232972
In other words, the character assassination pig pile is already backfiring on the conservative media.
10 Likes
That’s why true or not, this is all beginning to have the whiff of another Swift Boating campaign by some interested parties, with an incentive, though not clear, of throwing more logs on the fire. I have no idea. It just strikes me as a full court effort to dig endlessly to discredit another presumably “liberal” persona and take out the competition. He may have been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq, I get that he offends many of us progressives on that issue alone, but this has the feel of rightwing pile-on to me. If you google this story you see the usual suspects doing most of the pile on. Rags like Daily Caller, Brietbart, Right Wing Watch, etc. They are the ones pushing this story the most, and having a field day at it. Its all a fucking ratings game anyway for most of them. Maybe I’m wrong, and there is something to be leery of, but for all the Faux Nooze bullshit day in and day out that never gets called out…how can this be anything but hair-on-fire hysteria over something that seems relatively mild in comparison to all the daily crap we’re exposed to by our lofty fucking media bozos.
9 Likes
The Ritz Carlton is adjacent to the French Quarter, not IN the French Quarter. Walking distance, the RC is about the same distance to the Dome as to Jackson Square
3 Likes
Precisely, which is why other allegedly “liberal” news sources like CNN can’t resist joining the pig pile either.
Meanwhile, the entire Faux team blatantly pushed the “no-go zone” lies a couple weeks ago and never got even close to this level of treatment.
4 Likes
I was mad that Brian Williams might have really lied, but when Dan Rather came out in his defense I decided to give his story a chance. The new governor of Mass. made up a story about a fisherman, and he was still elected. William’s helicopter may have been fired upon, and he embellished the story to make it seem more dangerous. Who knows what the mind does in situations in a war. He went to Iraq during the height of the war, which was very dangerous. That in itself should be a story to tell.
2 Likes
Bobby JingleBells got a day or two of tsk-tsking after that particular steaming pile of bullshit in London. If anything, lying through your teeth to a foreign audience and then doubling down here in the US should have made the Governor of the great state of Louisiana unfit for office, and a candidate for impeachment (if they allow that sort of thing). Not only was his bullshit easily disproven, it was completely made up, an incendiary bigoted lie, intended to provoke hostility within an allied country. And that asshole wants to run for President. Good Lord. The foreign press called him out. Our media…not so much. And even now, they’ve let it go…
3 Likes
That’s why true or not, this is all beginning to have the whiff of another Swift Boating campaign by some interested parties, with an incentive, though not clear, of throwing more logs on the fire. I have no idea. It just strikes me as a full court effort to dig endlessly to discredit another presumably “liberal” persona and take out the competition. He may have been a cheerleader for the war in Iraq, I get that he offends many of us progressives on that issue alone, but this has the feel of rightwing pile-on to me. If you google this story you see the usual suspects doing most of the pile on. Rags like Daily Caller, Brietbart, Right Wing Watch, etc. They are the ones pushing this story the most, and having a field day at it. Its all a fucking ratings game anyway for most of them. Maybe I’m wrong, and there is something to be leery of, but for all the Faux Nooze bullshit day in and day out that never gets called out…how can this be anything but hair-on-fire hysteria over something that seems relatively mild in comparison to all the daily crap we’re exposed to by our lofty fucking media bozos.
1ReplyReply
Sniffit
TPM prime member
Sniffit
take out the competition
Precisely, which is why other allegedly “liberal” news sources like CNN can’t resist joining the pig pile either.
Meanwhile, the entire Faux team blatantly pushed the “no-go zone” lies a couple weeks ago and never got even close to this level of treatment.\
Exacly correct. That story went nowhere.
1 Like
I have family in New Orleans. Have spent much time there in my 50+ years. My New Orleans relatives stayed with me during Katrina. Watching the national news coverage during Katrina was maddening. The reporters didn’t know the layout of New Orleans, and their reporting was abysmal. The national reporters didn’t know the difference between the Quarter, Canal, the Central Business district, the Lower Garden District, the Upper Garden District, Uptown/Downtown etc.
We all knew that the RC (formerly the Maison Blanche department store) wasn’t IN the French Quarter. We all knew that Canal flooded because Canal Street is the namesake of the drainage CANAL that separated Anglo from French. (The drainage canal is still there, under the street).
Guess the national reporters looked at the RC brochures which advertise the RC as a “French Quarter Hotel.”
Contemporaneous report of doctor staying at Ritz Carlton at the time:
I had a wheelchair bound friend staying in the Ritz Carlton to ride out the storm. The water did come up that high and conditions were very serious. She was starting to develop sores from the wheelchair and they had to have the national guard get her out of there.
The bigger question for me is why people who did not serve in the military seem so obsessed with establishing their badass cred. I was too young for Vietnam and too old for Iraqistan, and I could not be happier. I respect those who fought in wars, including my father and brother, but I certainly don’t feel any less fulfilled as a human because I happened to spend my draftable/enlistable years during a period of relative peace, as did Williams. Maybe it is different for those who purposefully dodged the draft (see also: Cheney, Richard), but I feel no guilt whatsoever.
2 Likes
The Ritz Carlton sustained such damage, it was closed for over a year after Katrina for $100 million in necessary repairs:
http://www.fivestaralliance.com/articles/ritz-carlton-new-orleans-reopens-in-december
We’re seeing a lot of Williams debunkers piling on, but let’s see instead some actual journalism, investigating his statements. It’s easy for someone with an agenda to say, “There was no flooding there,” and everyone says, “He lied again.” Journalism involves research and multiple sources, not viral memes that no one fact checks.
It does seem like the goal is to nail another “liberal” broadcaster. Never saw BW as all that liberal. There was a time when admitted to following Rush Limbaugh and agreeing with some of his ideas (many years ago). Maybe he’s just middle of the road, which amounts to leftist for the paranoid crowd. I wonder if CNN thinks they can boost their ratings by bringing him down.
I also fear that his replacement, if it comes to that, would be picked with a more conservative bent to assuage the RWNJs. I hope, hope, HOPE NBC doesn’t cave. Do the research, back up your guy, give him a wrist slap if need be, but don’t cave. Rather got a bad deal, no reason to repeat that nonsense to assuage the unassuagable Right.
1 Like
Who cares? He’s not a journalist. He’s an actor who reads the news. And if he loses his job for this, he’ll just be replaced with another actor who reads the same news he’d have read.
This is like trying to debunk Brad Pitt. I’m sure he’s seen some bad things too, but it doesn’t make him a journalist. The days of Walter Cronkite were over before Cronkite even retired.
2 Likes
Have we reached the point where people are blaming Brian Williams for Bush’s Katrina response?
Heckuva job, Williams.
This whole thing has been a tempest in a tea pot from the beginning.
1 Like
What is it about the conservative mind that causes them to obsess over meaningless minutia? Its like they think they are fighting a war that can only be won by accumulating molecules, one at a time. In the days of my youth, we called this the anal retentive optical syndrome, wherein the sphincter muscle gets wrapped around the Optic Nerve, giving you a shitty outlook on Life.
Sorry but you are wrong… the entrance to the Ritz is a few steps from the FQ
I have friends that have houses on Dumaine@ Burgundy, St Ann@ Burgundy and at St Ann @ Rampart and all 3 were flooded severely and it was months before they could move back. All 3 houses are in the French Quarter