She luxuriated in her grievances—against the establishment, against the media, against everyone from the mightiest politician to the lowliest teenager who happened to knock up her daughter (as Levi Johnston put it at one point, “It’s almost funny, that she’s like, 46 years old, and she’s battling a 19-year-old, and I’m winning”). Resentment was her instrument, her tool, her vehicle and her purpose.
Alyssa wonders if the Palins will lose their other gigs:
The Palin family as a whole seems to hope for careers in show business, but this is only the latest in a string of failures for them. The TLC show Sarah Palin’s Alaskasaw declining ratings and wasn’t renewed for a second season. Bristol Palin’s Lifetime show was yanked from the network for lower viewership, but not before landing $354,348 in tax subsidies from the state of Alaska. Todd Palin was reduced to appearing as one of many celebrities on NBC’s military reality show Stars Earned Stripes.
Maybe now that Fox News has cut ties with Palin, the rest of the television industry will follow suit.
Here’s what I hope: that they all lead long, happy lives far far away from any hint of political office. And that one child with Down Syndrome gets the care and love he needs and deserves.
(Photo: Sarah Palin waits to appear on NBC News’ ‘Today’ show. By Peter Kramer/NBC/NBC NewsWire via Getty Images.)
Let me first second Kirsten Powers’ loathing for Media Matters’ campaign to shame and target individuals for appearing on Fox News. But the memo she cites is from a year ago. And I have to say that even if it means agreeing with David Brock, I’m afraid I have to confess that I do not regard Fox News as a legitimate news organization. It’s a propaganda channel for the far right, and not much worse than MSNBC’s leftist partisan smugbursts. And an administration, in my view, should be open to all at regular press conferences (okay, not heckling by the Daily Caller) … but does not have to legitimize propaganda machines by appearing on them. I’d keep off MSNBC and Fox if I were in any administration. They both poison our discourse. Let these propaganda channels put talk radio on TV all day if they want. You don’t have to enable them.
It’s not okay — or presidential — to continue smearing an entire network of hard working journalists because you are mad at Sean Hannity.
And why not, pray? If Fox wants to regain some semblance of respect for their viewers, they need not have that partisan fanatic on every night. Was he not exposed as a complete fraud and a total fool on election night? Every time he opens his mouth, he delegitimizes Fox News as a journalistic enterprise and when he’s on in prime time that reflects on the whole enterprise.
Are some Foxies better than others? Sure. Shep Smith is an entertaining, talented newsman. Megyn Kelly is razor-sharp. They belong on a real news network, not Fox. Of course, the White House cannot and should not do anything to restrain Fox’s freedom of speech – including untruths and propaganda designed entirely for political rather than journalistic purposes. If it did, I’d be the first to go after them. But you don’t have to cooperate with non-journalists and well-paid “liberals” at Fox to be some dreadful threat to free discourse.
Fox is the threat to free discourse and to journalism. Because it has turned journalism into partisan oppo research. And revels in it.
Red brick industrial buildings next to a smokestack, next to a rapid river? My guess is Lowell, Massachusetts. If I had more time, more patience, more interest or if I were more google-skilled, I’d make an effort to confirm my hunch. As none of those things apply, I’ll wait till Tuesday to find out how close I was.
Another:
You’re going to get a TON of guesses from Massachusetts on this one. The red brick and semi-dilapidated smokestacks place this one in a mill town in New England. The two rivers (Merrimack and Concord for any Thoreau fans) meeting near a small waterfall (Pawtucket Falls) places it in Lowell, Massachusetts, formerly the largest complex of mills in the country.
Another Lowell guesser:
Being a lifelong Left Coaster I have no expertise in the matter, but I immediately thought “Massachusetts river mill”, which turned up this postcard from 1906:
The bank’s all wrong, but I’ll declare victory anyway and return to coffee.
Another:
Augusta, Maine and Frankfort, Kentucky are locked in an eternal struggle for Cutest Capital City in America. Both are significantly smaller than their states’ major cities (Portland and Louisville), and both have their distinctive geo-architectural features. Frankfort’s is the little bowl in which the state capitol sits. Augusta’s is this old red-brick mill on the St Lawrence, in your photo.
Another:
I say Saco, Maine. I don’t have time to chase a more specific answer, but since I was an early paid subscriber I believe that should be enough.
No favoritism to subscribers! But we are grateful for your support. Another reader:
Wow. I have been following your contests for a couple of years and have always been impressed with people who deduce locations from minor details in the picture, then spend time on Google Maps researching the exact location. I never entered before since I just don’t have that time and determination. But, then I saw this week’s contest and realized – I used to work in this building!
A few weeks ago, Larison argued that Obama is no realist:
[I]ntervention in Libya was exactly what one wouldn’t expect from “a replica of the administration of George H.W. Bush.” Obama launched the Libyan war over the objections of Robert Gates, so we cannot rule out the possibility that he could do the same elsewhere over the objections of a Secretary Hagel.
Agreed. There is a bleeding heart in the midst of that platinum cool. Leon Hadar counters that Bush I was no dove:
[O]ne must explain why a non-direct U.S. military intervention in Libya should be considered more “internationalist” and “interventionist” and less “realist” than the first Iraq war, Panama, and Somalia.
President Obama, like all post-war American Presidents, Republican and Democrat, is not an instinctive anti-interventionist. He’s an internationalist, with both liberal-internationalist and conservative-internationalist inclinations, and that’s reflected in his record. He is governing, like Nixon, in a period of retrenchment, and like Nixon he has been laboring primarily to prevent loss rather than to advance. Like Nixon as well, he makes few bones about legal restraints on his authority. But I tend to agree with Hadar that his record fits in pretty well with post-war Republican predecessors who we tend to call, rightly or wrongly, “realist.” Contra Larison, even his Libyan adventure can be understood partly in these terms.
I consider the Libyan war to be much more like interventions in the Balkans [than Iraq] because the U.S. had no real stake in the outcome of those conflicts just as the U.S. had no stake in the outcome of Libya’s internal conflict. In all these cases, no conceivable U.S. interests were at stake.
[B]ased on my reading of President Obama’s foreign policy, including his resistance to get drawn into intervention in Syria and into war with Iran, his muddling through or empiricist approach toward the so-called Arab Spring, his ending the war in Iraq and accelerating the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the emphasis on the U.S. relationship with other great powers and on the need to protect U.S. interests as opposed to the global promotion of democracy, I would argue that when its comes to foreign policy and national security, President Obama can be compared favorably with Republican President George H. W. Bush. And in contrast to the current Republican foreign policy agenda—with its emphasis of invading countries and doing regime change here, there, and everywhere—President Obama is at least trying to bring U.S. global commitments and power into some balance.
I think (and hope) that Hadar is basically right – which is why Chuck Hagel was picked (and Gates before him). Mali will be an interesting test-case, though. You can almost sense Larison preparing to pounce.
During his inauguration, Obama cited “raging fires” as evidence of climate change. George Will protests that there “were a third fewer U.S. wildfires in 2012 than in 2006.” Joe Romm chides Will and the WaPo for taking the data out of context:
2006? Seriously, George Will — and blinkered editors at the Washpost? If you wonder why in Hell (and High Water) Will just happens to pick the year 2006, you need look no further than the above graph of annual U.S. acreage burned from the National Fire Center (via Tamino).
Chait spies a self-refuting hit piece on TNR’s alleged anti-Semitism (if you live long enough …).
One tiny add: purging the contributing editors is always a touchy thing.
I took my turn, sending out personal letters to each one who hadn’t really contributed anything in decades, and avoiding any of Marty’s oldest friends (so far as one could). All went well, until a mix-up in the mail room ensured that the letters went out but each addressed to the wrong contributing editor. So each knew that someone else was being released, and inferred (correctly) that they too were on the chopping block. For a day or so, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I decided the whole thing was so embarrassing I’d just reinstate everyone to keep writing nothing. Ah … the days of old media.
Gerald Scarfe has been a fixture at the Sunday Times since my family used to subscribe to it when I was in my teens. He’s a genius in many ways and it speaks well of the paper that runs my weekly column in Britain to maintain a diverse set of opinionators, even if it is essentially a right-of-center and sensible paper. Anyway, here’s a link to the cartoon that appeared (apparently by accident) on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s clearly about the oppression of the Palestinians by Netanyahu’s wall-building and settlement policy. Is it anti-Semitic?
I was genuinely torn about it at first blush. I don’t think Netanyahu is distorted any more than any other politician to somehow look more Jewish. And Scarfe’s brutal depictions of public figures is important context. I think Netanyahu comes off as a brutal bully, which he is – but not an anti-Semitic archetype.
The use of blood as mortar is what arguably puts the image over the edge, in my view, whatever its intent. Any depiction of Jews using the blood of other people for any project evokes the classic “blood libel” slur. On a day designed to commemorate the mass murder of millions of European Jewry? Please. But check out this recent Scarfe cartoon of Bashar al-Assad – literally drinking the blood of dead Syrian babies. I don’t think Scarfe’s intent was bigotry; I think it was outrage. In Haaretz, Anshel Pfeffer [pay-wall] defends the cartoon as not anti-Semitic. Money quote:
This is not what a blood libel looks like: Some have claimed that the blood-red cement Netanyahu is using in the cartoon to build his wall indicates a blood libel motif. Well of course it’s blood but is anyone seriously demanding that no cartoon reference to Israeli or Jewish figures can contain a red fluid? The classic European blood libel, like many other classic European creations, had a strict set of images which must always contain a cherubic gentile child sacrificed by those perfidious Jews, his blood to be used for ritual purposes. It was a direct continuation of the Christ-killer myth. Scarfe’s cartoon has blood-cement but no blood libel components – it almost seems he was careful not to include any small children among his Palestinian figures (one of the eight is arguably an adolescent) so as not to have any sort of libel scenery.
It’s not anti-Semitic to portray the Arab victims of Israel’s continued expansionism and religious and ethnic social engineering as somehow caught up in a wall (Scarfe illustrated Pink Floyd’s wall as well). But using their blood – even if it isn’t in the classic blood libel sense? Not a good idea. Netanyahu is not Assad. He may be misguided and dangerous, but he got elected in a democracy and is not busy killing tens of thousands of his own subjects.
Despite, in my view, being an excellently made, if morally negligent, movie, it’s fast losing Oscar buzz. Like most things Oscar, I doubt it has anything to do with the actual merits of the movie.
McCain says that bi-national gay spouses being ripped apart or being forced to live abroad isn’t of “paramount importance”:
Chris Geidner and Zeke Miller report that the president feels differently:
Same-sex couples will be a part of the proposal for addressing immigration reform that President Obama is scheduled to unveil Tuesday in Las Vegas, BuzzFeed has confirmed with multiple sources familiar with the White House plan. A Democratic source said: “Same-sex couples will be part of his proposal.” A second source confirmed that, unlike the Senate framework released Monday, same-sex bi-national couples — those with one American and one foreign partner — will be included in the White House principles.
That’s a huge achievement for those of us committed to Immigration Equality (I’m on the board). And a great and important statement from the president. Margaret Hartmann fears that bringing “gay rights and religious freedom into the debate sounds like a good way to make sure immigration reform never passes.” I do not see how religious freedom can in any way be affected by allowing Glenn Greenwald to live in the US with his partner. Adam Clark Estes zooms out:
No matter what happens from here on out, it’s becoming apparent that the gay rights movement is about to latch on to the push for immigration reform. And why shouldn’t they? The point of reform is to fix things that are broken, and as the country moves towards greater equality for people of all sexual orientations, why should same sex couples be left out? Well, it could get tricky. If the conversation turns too sharply in the direction of gay rights, the larger immigration reform process could get bogged down or even stuck in the mud completely.
“Latch onto”? We’ve been insisting on being included in comprehensive immigration reform for years. Comprehensive means, well, you all know what it means. And the real pain and anguish of gay binational couples, forced apart, or forced to live abroad, may not be of paramount importance to John McCain, but they are of paramount importance to someone whose marriage can be torn apart by an immigration official. John Aravosis sees a less fraught opportunity:
Republicans are desperate for immigration reform. And embracing gay rights is a political plus, not a minus, for Democrats, as the President has already learned. Combining the two is a win-win for everyone. Does anyone really think the Republicans are going to risk killing the very thing they’re now most desperate for?
Of course, if DOMA didn’t exist, none of this would be necessary at all. But as one half of a bi-national married couple, in a Western world where almost every other country recognizes our relationship in some respect in terms of immigration, all I can say is that keeping a committed couple together in America, regardless of their orientation, should be of “paramount importance” to the government of the United States. Because family life is integral to the immigration laws in this country, and gay people are not only part of families but also makers and defenders of them. Or to put it another way:
If we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
Either we are equal as human beings and citizens or we are not. Maybe McCain does not see civil equality as important in a liberal constitutional republic. I can’t see anything more important.
Former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, who endorsed Amendment 64, his state’s marijuana legalization initiative, was so sure it would fail that he made a bet with Adam Hartle, a documentarian covering the issue. If this thing passes, the conservative Republican told Hartle, I will smoke pot for the first time in my life. Amendment 64 won by a 10-point margin, and last week Tancredo said he intended to follow through on his promise. But now ABC News reports that Tancredo, “under pressure from his wife and grandchildren,” is reneging.
But he still supports legalization, which makes the bulk of what I said here still valid, but with the thrill taken out of it. But his wife should really reconsider. She could find a whole new, mellower, love-those-Latinos hubby. For an hour or so. And it would be great live TV for Fox. Get Tancredo stoned and then get Shep Smith to grill him. I’d watch.
The Dish 