Jamison Foser, over at Media Matters, reminds us that it’s the media, non-smart person…

He writes…

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the “global war on terror.” It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

After veering into the less sexy world of education issues, Bob Somerby has trained his Daily Howler guns back on politics lately. Of course, he’s also been raising the hackels of many a progressive blogger for his recent rebukes of the leading lights of the lefty blogosphere.

Like this from today…

YGLESIAS SUMMARIZED: My career, as a smart young liberal writer, will probably run through the pages of Slate. Therefore, it might not be prudent to note the fact Slate’s editor just posted the stupidest piece of “analysis” ever written—an “analysis” which promotes a Standard Script about fake, phony Dems and a Standard Script about Bush’s great honesty. If I know what’s good for Number One, I may have to downplay this problem.

But, with Al Gore back in the news, he’s reclaiming his rightful place as the blogfather of media watchdogs.

Today, Somerby writes about this Tom Toles cartoon…

At least three things should be said about this cartoon, which is so long overdue:

First, no news org has been more at fault than the Washington Post in creating and pushing the “narrative” Toles mocks. (Here at THE HOWLER, we’ve been discussing this matter since March 1999.) For that reason, it’s especially rich to see this cartoon at the top of the Post editorial pages. It was on those pages that the late Michael Kelly was allowed tp publish his “Farmer Al” column, a column which kicked off the War Against Gore—and which captured, for all the world to see, the modern press corps’ astounding dishonesty. And it was on the pages of the Washington Post that Ceci Connolly toyed with the truth for two years—making a joke of Election 2000, and sending George Bush to the White House. When it comes to the “narrative” Toles mocks today, no news org disgraced itself as much as the Post. This cartoon could be improved in only one way—if the Uncle Sam figure had a sign which said “Dissembling Post” on his chest.

Second, you’ve read about this problem here—but elsewhere, you’ve largely seen it ignored. In particular, career liberal writers have generally chosen to avoid discussing the conduct Toles mocks. Somehow, Toles—a cartoonist—understands what has happened, but your fiery career liberal writers just don’t. May they burn in a place with extreme global warming for the horrible thing they have done.

Third, we’ll suggest that you savor an irony here; we’ll suggest that you savor the way the DC elite has slunk away from its greatest narrative about Gore and the truth. For the past seven years, they pushed a great theme: “Al Gore has a problem with the truth!” They said it over and over and over—and they kept inventing “lies” by Gore to convince you that their story was accurate. But have you noticed a funny thing in the recent coverage of Gore? That long-running “narrative” has now been abandoned! It has been replaced by a new Standard Script: Al Gore was controlled by his campaign advisers! He should have talked about warming more! We’ll examine the sheer inanity of this new Standard Narrative in our series about Frank Rich (starts tomorrow). But isn’t it funny? For years, they insisted that Gore had a problem with the truth. Now, they don’t mention this great claim at all. What is the most inconvenient truth? The fact that this ugly tale about Gore was, from the start, just made up.

The question I really want to answer for myself during this election season in Vermont is to what extent does Vermont political reporting suffer from these same problems.

At Green Mountain Daily, odum’s on a similar quest I think. In a post titled “Vermont’s Own Tony Snow?“, he discusses the Hall Monitor report about Rutland Herald reporter Brendan McKenna’s new gig as communications director for Martha Rainville.

Odum writes…

What qualifies Brendan McKenna to be the press mouthpiece for the general? How about his promotional piece touting her “strong stance” for the troops? Or this one, explaining how “Rainville has made it her duty to understand the frustrations, hopes and fears of Vermont National Guard soldiers serving in Iraq” (penned in December and January respectively — long after Rainville had decided her “duty” was actually to run for US Congress while exploiting the National Guard by “unofficially” running her campaign and refusing to step down honorably — no mention of that little detail in either piece, of course).

Go ahead, you know you want to…

Yesterday, I joined Bill, Ntodd, Flameape and Cathy Resmer for my first ever Friday Coffeeblogging (yes, on Thursday) at the Burlington Telecom Grand Opening.

I’ve been led to believe that interesting conversation often develops during these podcast tapings as the participants sit around a coffeehouse table. But, with all of us facing the fairly empty Contois Auditorium, we quickly devolved into mocking the schwag table and heckling the speakers quietly into our microphones.

Kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000 without the robot puppets.

And, though I’m all for the social and political benefits of a locally owned telecom company, I don’t live in Burlington.

So, heckling was right up my alley…

Ork!

Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss
photo by Ntodd

But, here’s a picture from that French speaking country…

The Louvre, March 2006

First: A little update to the “Bernie’s blog ate my comment” story. Through some back-channels, odum over at Green Mountain Daily was able to alert Bernie’s blog staff that a comment was not posted. And lo and behold, my unremarkable comment has been posted. So, kudos to Bernie’s staff for making good on this, but it begs at least one question…

Instead of publicly whining about it like a sullen teen, I would much rather have sent an email to someone on the blog staff, but (at least within the short time I looked) I couldn’t find any contact information. And the names of the main blog posters are not linked to email addresses. (And for posterity’s sake, I was only whining for you, my fellow netrootsians).

Oh, and the question that was begged?

Why are the bloggers posting anonymously? Seems to kind of undercut the benefit of transparency that blogs can provide.

Second: I really wish members of the press (and not just of the mainstream variety) would stop using the short-hand phrase “Anti-War Democrats.” You hear it all the time and it plays right into the Republican plan to convince America that Democrats are soft on defense. If the press would just simply insert the all-important word “Iraq” to make the phrase “Anti-Iraq War Democrats,” it would be a far more accurate description. Check out this Google search for about 14,600 examples.

Third: I heard Cokie Roberts opine today on NPR that Bush’s approval ratings are so low just because of the poor progress of the Iraq War. Um, Cokie? Why don’t you take a look at just this one poll among many that detail the many other ways that Americans are dissatisfied with George W. Bush.

Fourth: Read Jean Rohe’s blog entries on Huffington Post about her New School commencement speech that took on John McCain — and the push-back that followed.

Fifth: 802 Online links to a good reader-driven interview with Dan Gillmor.

Sixth: Two news media observer blogs have started. Peter Daou gets busy with a Daou Report annex called The Grit which tags itself as “Quick hits on politics & media” (also the name of a Michael Stipe-owned natural foods restaurant in Athens, GA).

And Greg Sargent launched The Horse’s Mouth on May 14th but he just announced this morning that it will be hosted on the American Prospect site.

OK, maybe the title should say Seven Parts…

Here’s another long episode of Al Gore: Come-Back Kid from New York Magazine.

I was going to type up the rather amusing exchange Randi Rhodes had with a PR guy from ChoicePoint on Tuesday.

But, Greg Palast, who was on right after the PR hack, did it for me…

ChoicePoint wouldn’t come on the show if Palast was in the studio with Randi, referring dismissively to the New York Times bestselling author and BBC reporter as a blogger.

Excerpt…

I smell mendacity! The sticky-sweet Atlanta drawl of the PR flack for America’s private KGB was dancing in rhetorical circles with Randi Rhodes, Air American, broadcast yesterday.. Unfortunately for the Bush-friendly Spies-R-Us contractor, Randi also has a keen nose for the telltale scent of pure bullshit.

By “private KGB,” I mean ChoicePoint, Inc., the Atlanta company that keeps over 16 billion records on Americans which it sells to the FBI, Homeland Security and, through a bit of a slip-up, identity thieves.

They are watching you because George and Dick don’t have time to track everyone in America (and that would be illegal, to boot), ChoicePoint does it. Then turns over the electronic you — cross-matched profiles of voting registration, your DNA info and who knows what else — for a price.

Randi was on the phone to one James Lee, Marketing Director of ChoicePoint. He was trying to explain some of the good work they do for government — and responding to the evil lies about his corporation by a reporter (me).

I was listening in from a glass booth. The Eichmann treatment was required by ChoicePoint — they wouldn’t let her interview the company if anyone else was in the room. They also warned her, her interview would be “taped” … AND, they didn’t have to add, they know where she lives — and where she votes and a whole lot more about Randi that maybe Randi herself doesn’t know. Just a friendly warning.

Read the whole thing.

I saw the War Room this past year. And seeing the contrast between the youthful and sincere Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulos during the ‘92 election, and the establishment celebrity pundits they’ve become, is more than a little sad.

Zack Exley, writing on Huffington Post yesterday (and cross-posted at Daily Kos), chastises Begala for his less than warm comments about Dean’s DNC’s 50 State Strategy.

He writes, in part…

Your comments came as part of a series of attacks on Dean and the DNC from big-name members of your Clinton Class of ‘92. A whole generation of new Democratic activists finds these attacks totally bewildering and appalling.

You should be up there on TV celebrating that we finally have a DNC who understands that winning means building real power and standing for something. Your entire career has been about teaching Democrats to “stand for something.” But, coming from a communications background, maybe you just don’t understand the “building real power” part of the equation. So let me try to reach you on that point.

Starting with George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, the Republican Party slowly built a powerful grassroots machine, county by county, year by year, across the whole country. That “50 State” grassroots machine trounced us, achieving the highest voter turnout of any candidate ever. On our side, the combined efforts of fifteen separate swing state “Coordinated Campaigns,” the national Kerry campaign, and all the 527’s put together couldn’t match the work of one unified, well-organized political party.

I spent the last couple months of the campaign in the field, in almost every one of the targeted swing states. On our side it was utter chaos on the ground. Both the party organizations and the 527 organizations had been slapped together in a few hurried months. Operations varied in quality from state to state, and even county to county, but overall it was a disorganized mess — a disservice to the record hundreds of thousands of passionate volunteers who threw themselves into the campaign. On the Republican side, their organizations had been formed years before the election, and scaled up during the campaign under the tested and stable leadership of organizers rooted in their home states and local communities. (It is worth noting that the AFL-CIO’s voter contact program ran very smoothly and effectively, having been built slowly and consistently over several cycles.)

And Exley can speak with some authority on this.

After the frustrating chaos during the 2004 election he describes above, he took the time to publicly lay out a detailed blueprint for how to merge the top-down/bottom-up divide. And it’s the only comprehensive one I’ve ever seen.

I’ve always been surprised how this particular essential meta-discussion is so absent throughout lefty blogland.

Though it’s no longer available online, I snagged his very persuasive “Letter to the Next DNC Chair” from January 27, 2005, for a brief netroots primer I put together a bit ago for Scudder Parker’s campaign.

Really excellent stuff. But, perhaps because of some feud with Kos that I never knew the details of, it has largely vanished down the memory hole.

Exley, Peter Daou and James Boyce are some of the very few people who saw the Kerry operation close-up and who’ve been strongly advocating for the netroots perspective on Huffington Post and elsewhere.

UPDATE: As an aside, it should be noted that Scudder’s campaign has apparently given up - at least for now - on the idea of a blog.

And a further troubling sign for us netroots advocates is that I entered a comment on Bernie’s blog on a thread on May 10th. Nothing showed up for an entire day, but the only one they decided to post was an anti-Bernie rant. It was simply a comment on Tarrant’s “You don’t have a million dollars… You’re a loser!” comment to Peter Freyne. This could easily be an oversight, but I doubt I’ll take the time to contribute to Progressive America any time soon…

I don’t like the direction of this trend, if that’s what I’m seeing, and I hope it’s just a temporary retreat from opening up the dialogue.

UPDATE: And for the record (and in case it’s not completely obvious), the name of the parent site of this blog, Peasants with Pitchforks, is directly inspired by the insider/outsider tension that prevents the collective wisdom of the masses from being utilized in campaign strategy.

Yesterday on the Randi Rhodes Show, Greg Palast revealed far more about the NSA data mining story than you’re likely to hear from um, Katie Couric, for example.

Seems the phone records are being cross-referenced with data from the notorious ChoicePoint company. You know, the company that erroneously scrubbed tens of thousands of people from Florida’s voting lists in 2000.

Palast writes up some details about the spooky depths of Total Information Awareness…

I know you’re shocked — SHOCKED! — that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That’s nothing. And it’s not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI — though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

[…]

Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

ChoicePoint’s board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone — even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.

I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 “felons” that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida’s voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.

And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they’ve since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint’s ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected.

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, “hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States …linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]” from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds — but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was “the number one” provider of DNA info to the FBI.

“And that scares the hell out of me,” said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It’s more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida “felons,” Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test “results” on rape case evidence … that didn’t exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.

Read the whole thing here.

Also, here’s a good diary on data mining at Daily Kos.

Mike Meyers before he changed his name?