6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013

6 UnAmerican Media Pundits America Should Ignore in 2013

Readers, I recommend you do likewise. Herewith, a barrel of horribles who ought to be jettisoned, exuberantly flung from civilization. They are boils on the ass of the media beast, and it is my well-considered opinion, they should be ruthlessly lanced. With one exception, these offenders were not chosen simply on the basis of awful election-year prognostications, though all were indeed guilty. No, this is a lifetime achievement award. These folks (with one exception) have been awful for a very long time; I propose that in the new year we stand athwart their shitty track records and yell “Enough!”

1. Dick Morris.Regrettably, the Big Dog’s coattails are impossibly long (see Penn, Mark). If Morris couldn’t put “former Clinton adviser” in front of his name, he would be just another toe-sucking mercenary with a gift for impossibly goofy [3] predictions. What’s remarkable -- indeed, an achievement -- is Morris’ ability to continually find suckers willing to compensate him. This includes The Hill, that respected Washington rag, where he still collects a check. The staffers are suitably embarrassed [4] by Morris’ weekly dross. But I do not include Morris for his predictive failures [5]. Stupidity is forgivable, but his sin, operating in bad faith, is not. Morris confessed to Father Sean Hannity a week after Mitt Romney lost the election that he, Dick Morris, projected a Romney victory because [6] “the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic” and “nobody thought there was a chance of victory.” There is no value in a man willing to tell you what you want to hear.

2. Niall Ferguson.In America a Scottish brogue, a nice build and good hair can get you pretty far. These attributes go a long way, I assume, toward explaining why Ferguson hasn’t been run out of Harvard Square on a rail. A review of Paul Krugman’s clips are instructive; if he’s not racist [7], he’s brutally stupid -- ignorant of borrowing costs [8] and willing to lie [9] to his audience about the cost of healthcare reform. Ferguson really showed his ass in the week before the presidential election: in a single Daily Beastcolumn, he argued [10] that Barack Obama still needed to win over undecided voters (he didn’t [11]), that polls were “scar[y] for the incumbent” (they weren’t, which accounts for the War on Nate Silver), and that Obama, on the cusp of the election, would support an Israeli attack on Iran. So: Ferguson was, in the words of Meat Loaf, doubly blessed: ill-equipped to adequately comment on economics -- his area of “expertise” -- and politics. Since he’s also a two-time loser (an adviser to McCain ‘n’ Mittens, respectively), there is no compelling reason to give him the time of day.

3.Peggy Noonan.Mary Ellen Noonan has been around so long it is assumed she must have been, in the supply-sider universe far, far away, talented. Her reputations rests on “a thousand points of light,” a meaningless, ambrosia salad phrase made funny by Dana Carvey, and “Read my lips: no new taxes,” a lie. But that’s enough for a lifetime Journalsinecure, apparently. Noonan’s prose, turgid and purple, is at its worst when evoking the name of Ronald Reagan, which is always. The irony: Her relationship to the 40th president was tenuous. As a former Reagan adviser pointed out [12], after Noonan trashed [13] her fellow speechwriters in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Noonan was “never part of the team” and her gifts, such as they were, were limited to self-promotion. And yet Noonan, like the execrable Mr. Morris, has dined out on this skimpy presidential connection well past the sell-by date.

4. Michael Barone. There are rumors Barone was once a reason-based, intelligent lifeform. I have heard nice thing about The Almanac of American Politics. He continues to be revered by conservatives, who treat him like a combination of Nate Silver and Jesus. But there has been no trace of this supposedly erudite, analytical man for a very long time. In March 2003, Barone wrote [14] that “Quick success in Iraq, followed by success as soon as possible in Syria and Iran, will help us deal with” the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. (To recap: An invasion of two countries that hadn’t attacked us, so quickly on the heels of an invasion of yet another country that hadn’t attacked us.) Indeed, this is in keeping with a fellow who, in 2005, e-mailed Glenn Reynolds (below) to say [15] “there might be something to Intelligent Design.” That same year, he predicted [16] “the end” of political polarization. In 2006, he wrote [17] that a McCain-Lieberman presidential ticket “would probably win easily.” By the time Barone said journalists didn’t care for Sarah Palin because "she did not abort her Down syndrome baby," it wasn’t really a surprise.

5. Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer once argued [18], in the pages of America’s second-most-influential newspaper, that torture was okay under “the ticking time bomb” scenario, which does not exist and has never existed in real life. For reasons that escape me, the New Republic keeps on its masthead [19] a man who lets a "24" wet-dream dictate his views on foreign policy. I hope it’s simply a matter of priorities -- the magazine has undergone a redesign -- but perhaps they believe, as does Politico, that he is “sophisticated [20].” Krauthammer certainly fooled the Pulitzer committee, which must be so proud to have honored a man so addled he hates [21] the Berenstain Bears and believes Obama blackmailed [22] David Petraeus. In any case, by Krauthammer’s own metric, he ought to be put out to pasture. On April 22, 2003, he told [23] an American Enterprise Institute audience, “Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.” And here we are.

6. Jennifer Rubin. Rubin’s descent into outright hackery (see this Drudge-sirened “EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW [24]” with, ugh, Ed Gillespie) wasn’t precipitous, even though she wrote for Commentary, a journal of sub-basement quality. Her columns filed during the previous election cycle for the New York Observer were relatively clear-eyed. Romney, she wrote [25], was “the least adept politician in the field.” She criticized his “manicured appearance and cautious language [ibid].” In another column, she noted [26] that “Americans don’t like it one bit when candidates adopt positions (or entire platforms, for that matter) for political expediency.” (You don’t say!) It’s unclear what transpired between that election and the most recent, but this time around she functioned not as a reporter but as an unpaid spokeslady for the Romney campaign. Her advocacy [27] was breathtaking brazen; she often resembled those fixtures [28] of pre-Giuliani Times Square, cleaning up after each Romney flub. To Rubin’s credit, she admitted [29] as much.

Actually there are four more at the link. These are people who have huge megaphones via media like Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, AM radio and some are syndicated to newspapers across the country. Why? They lie a lot, they always spin, they hate logic and science, they say they're for freedom and yet are always advocating laws that infringe on freedom.   And speaking of Charles Krauthammer, he really knows how to make a insulting analogy, Larger Sandy Relief Bill Was 'Rape Of The Treasury' (VIDEO).