Dotty Lemieux: Invisible Paul Ryan can dodge and weave an invisible Todd Akin as he tells people his own plan for limiting abortion and protecting Medicare. Real senior citizens can pelt him with mock vouchers from the wings.
My Five Minutes with Bill O’Reilly
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Peter Dreier: It was clear from the get-go last night that Bill didn’t want to talk about Pete Seeger. He wanted to talk about why I called him a “right-wing buffoon”
The Romney Campaign’s Situational Demagoguery
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Joseph Palermo: Worse than Swift Boating, worse than Willie Horton, Mitt Romney is running the most craven, dishonest, and hypocritical campaign we’ve seen in contemporary American politics.
Mocking the Mockery
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Berry Craig: Todd’s on the money when he said Colbert is mooning the Fourth Estate. I suspect that’s mostly what got Todd’s goat.
Stephen Colbert Befuddles Even “Liberal” Chuck Todd
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Joseph Palermo: If someone like Todd who represents a “liberal” network can’t see Colbert’s parody for what it is then it truly illustrates how disconnected the corporate media have become.
Mr. Colbert — Wanna Help Us Make a Better Tomorrow, Today?
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Wendy Block: But Stephen, my basic motivation for telling you about DISCLOSE is because when you oppose things, you lavish them with criticism on your show for the benefit of the entire Colbert Nation, which pretty much means the entire universe. I bet your opposition could – no, will — clinch our victory.
GOP’s Finest in Fierce Battle to Become 2012 Jester-in-Chief
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Michael Sigman: When Tea Partiers warned the Feds to stay away from their Medicare, little did we know they were foreshadowing the all-out battle now raging among Republicans for the role of Jester-In-Chief.
Rick Perry v. ‘Rick Parry’: Pushing Campaign Finance Frontiers
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Marian Wang: For months, comedian Stephen Colbert has been taking his satire to the field of campaign finance, highlighting how little-known groups can raise and spend unlimited — and sometimes undisclosed — funds on election ads.
The History Lesson Sarah Palin Really Needs
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Sharon Kyle: There’s a market for all things “Sarah” — which explains the media’s behavior. They cover her, the public eats it up, they make money, she makes money. No harm, no foul. Well, not quite. We’ve all heard about the Paul Revere gaffe but what about what she said at Bedloe Island?
The Party of No and the New START Treaty
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Walter Moss: And all hope is not yet lost that enough Republican senators would follow the lead, not of Kyl, but of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, their chief expert on arms control.
The Real Center of American Politics: A Reflection on Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert
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Robert Reich: In other words, the political center isn’t about what we decide It’s about how we decide. The center American democracy is a commitment vigorous debate, done honestly and civilly.
Did Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Restore Hope?
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Sharon Kyle: So, in sum, things may look better after you attend a rally like the one yesterday, but in the final analysis, we’ve still got a bunch of insulated decision-making elites who need to be kept in check by the voters. If you haven’t already voted, please do it on Tuesday and encourage all of your friends and loved ones to do the same.
Fey’s Fantastic, But Never The Twain She’ll Meet
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Michael Sigman: Given the commodification of dissent in corporate America, it’s doubtful Fey or anyone else will achieve Twain’s trifecta of talent, courage and mass popularity. But worrying about what we can’t control will only invite the kind of unhappiness that caused the great man himself to reflect that, “My life has been a series of disasters, most of which never happened.”
Watching Conan Twitch
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Mike Price: Listen up, O’Brien’s band of merry suits. Twitching may have killed ‘em at the Hasty Pudding Editorial Planning Brunch, but it won’t fly with people who have grown-up wants, needs, and programming options.
Visioning Exercises: Popular, and Often Misleading
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Bob Letcher: am reluctant to go in for visioning exercises, because in my own experience such exercises almost always proceed on the basis of (to borrow my favorite of George W Bush’s malapropisms) “misunderestimating” the capacity of the opposition, and particularly those elements of the opposition who always already possess systematically asymmetric advantages in access to power and resources.
More than Merely Counting Carbon Dioxide Emissions
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Bob Letcher: If we agree simply to total up CO2 emissions, China ends up being the world’s biggest emitter. But, if we agree to account for China’s much larger population, by ranking per capita emission, the US can go back to its familiar cheer: “We’re #1! We’re #1! Whhoooa!!”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Nomination: Obama Gives the Nation Another Teaching Moment
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President Barack Obama has done a symbolically extraordinary thing by nominating for the first time in U.S. history a person of Latino descent to the Supreme Court. The president has stayed true to the theme of his long campaign when he adopted “Si Se Puede” from the legendary Latina leader, Dolores Huerta. Right-wing talk show [...]
The Return of the Mulatto: The Green-Eyed Monster
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You can’t write that about the president of the NAACP. “Write what?” I said. “That,” Melissa told me, pointing at my notebook’s screen. “You’re calling him a ‘mulatto’?” “Well, that’s the definition, right? His father was white, his mother was black. I think.” I scratched my head. “Maybe he’s a quadroon .” Melissa rolled her [...]
How We Can Win
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You’d have to be on a media fast to have missed journalist/blogger/commentator David Sirota on TV (Stephen Colbert, CNN, Fox News[!]), radio (NPR, Pacifica) and in the pages of Newsweek and The New Republic earlier this summer. He was discussing his New York Times bestseller The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring [...]
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Why Liberals Don’t Stand a Chance in the Corporate Media
Joseph Palermo: Our political spectrum, as refracted through the lens of corporate media, runs from center-right to far-right. No wonder the conventional wisdom in Washington holds, without evidence, that the United States is a “center-right” country. Those making that argument might not be real, informed commentators — but they play them on TV.