It ought to be enough to know that, since “the liberal media” is going to distort the ‘truth,’ it’s OK to distort your ‘truth‘ up front, so that you can ‘balance‘ the bias.
Logically, whatever the truth or falsity of your premise (that there IS a ‘liberal media’ and it will ‘slant’ the news in a ‘liberal’ direction), it is indisputable that YOU are biased, and, therefore the justification of your need to be biased … is that bias is a bad thing.
Quod Erat Dumbonstrandumb.
The Romneyites met with the Blogosmear™ yesterday, and, while the press has eyes, they do not see, nor, with ears, do they hear. The particulars were reported without, seemingly, understanding what it all meant. Here are the particulars. Huffington Post:
NEW YORK — In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C. club, according to attendees.
Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.
The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator,Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.
Details of the Romney meeting did not previously leak out because of the off-the-record ground rules…
My first reaction to that list was, What? Where were Breitbart.com’s media assassins?
Gone, but not unsnotten
Not to worry. Buzz Feed reports:
The meeting, which included writers from RedState and Breitbart.com as well as a list of conservative publications reported by Huffington Post — National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Powerline*, Townhall,, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media (though not, as an early report had suggested, the conspiracist site WorldNetDaily). RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.
Notably, the meeting also included some grassroots bloggers with no real institutional ties to the Washington Republican Establishment, including the Twitter virtuoso Ace of Spades and John Hawkins of Right Wing News.
[* Powerline Proprietor John Hinderaker is the newest Koch installation on the Cato Institute Board of Directors, his firm does work for Koch and the blog was prominent in the takedown of Dan Rather via blogswarm. This memory will be important below.]
And, a bit further down, in the Huffington Post story, this:
Ann Romney told attendees that she planned to discuss economic issues on the trail from a women’s perspective. Last month, she pushed back against Democratic pundit Hilary Rosen for saying that the mother of five had never worked a day in her life, a charge Rosen later apologized for.
Forest: trees. Trees, forest.
Remember April 30th’s “The Witching Hour“? GOP modus operandi:
- Demonize
- Denounce
- Distract
They’ve already managed to turn the astonishing embarrassment of Lunatic Theodore Nugent into a successful distraction, instead of the unsuccessful “showing their cards” of bigotry, barely masked racism and manufactured paranoia:
Ted Nugent’s Bizarre CBS Interview Culminates In Profanity-Laced Speech About Being Moderate
VIDEO
Musician and activist Ted Nugent sat down with CBS’ Jeff Glor for his first on-camera interview since his talks with the Secret Service over comments he’d made about President Barack Obama at the National Rifle Association’s recent conference in St. Louis.
[…]
“I’m pretty moderate,” he told Glor.
Really? He says what he said (and similar ugly things about Hilary Clinton sucking his machine gun, et al.) and is FETED*? Is treated like a serious pundit, rather than a serious candidate for a rubber room? Listen to the interview and ask yourself how CBS ever sank so low as to air this vile tripe, and how lemming-like ABC is to have picked up on and REPORTED it? Good ghod, people. Joe the Plumber runs for Kongress while Ted the Dumber spews verbal sadism at the interviewer for merely doing his job in putting the Vandal on the airwaves.
[* More like “fetid.”]
The “distract” mechanism is working puuuuuuuuurectly, to quote Mr. Burns. Excellent.
What Buzz Feed found was this:
The Twitter smackdown of Hilary Rosen
Here is what Buzz Feed reports:
At the Republican National Committee yesterday, conservative online writers and bloggers who arrived to meet with Romney were also shown a chart that seemed to explain the Romney campaign’s new warmth toward them. The chart (resembling, a source said, the one produced by Twitter above) illustrated the role a hyperactive conservative Twitterverse played in turning Hilary Rosen’s jab at Ann Romney into a great campaign moment for the Republican.
This additional bit of information fills out the picture:
The event, two bloggers told BuzzFeed, was organized by Patrick Hynes, a veteran online GOP consultant. It featured some friction on issues like health care, but a broader sense that ranks are closing against the common enemies of Obama and the liberal media.
“It was facing reality — what are we going to do?” asked one attendee. “Everybody agrees with Romney that, policy-wise, Obama is a disaster and a threat.“
All right. We can now solve the puzzle. (And, I hope that the deeply conspiratorial nature of the GOP-blog-media linkage in an Information War is not a surprise to my readers.)
At the highest level (as when Bush met with the Right Wing Bloggers in the fall of 2007), the Romney/RNC is organizing a fanatical opposition (“disaster and a threat”) to President Obama for the election, and, flush with success (Buzz Feed headline: “After A Twitter Win, Romney Meets The Online Right – A united front against Obama and the liberal media.”), the Rovian Strategy becomes apparent.
The “Ann Romney, Victim” meme was as false a meme as any con man ever shucked a rube by. We now have the evidence of HOW that falsehood was spread (see “The War on the War on Women Woman” April 13).
This is the Rovian tactic of dominating EVERY news cycle of every day (ofttimes with a George Dubya speech in the morning), so that the “initiative” (as in chess) is always with the black pieces, as the black kings and queens, the black knights and bishops and their black pawns attempt to rook us all about the Black president.
Instead of dominating every day, they have focused their attention to dominating every HOUR, every MINUTE via coordinated Twitter attacks, a la Ann Romney’s apotheosis and translation to Maternal Heaven and Virgin Maryhood, via a Chariot of Ire. Don’t believe me? Take a look at what Mitt’s “store” is selling for your bumper:
From the Romney Store (captured 4-27-12)
Do you get it? They MADE their coordinated false meme into “reality.” That Mitt meeting with the Mendacious was not to coordinate “news.” It was to coordinate the creation of “news” irrespective of facts. Their “triumph” was akin to Big Brother’s triumph over Winston Smith when Smith finally sees that 2 + 2 really DOES = 5. (You just have to spend enough time in Room 101. Simple.)
OK. When we crunch all the data (and the simple collusion of Rightie bloggers, openly, with the Romney/RNC campaign OUGHT to, itself — by the standards of “JournoList” and Shirley Sherrod — be worthy of SCREAMING and SCANDAL!), the Rightie/Romney/R-Money tactic of choice for fall becomes clear.
Where, beginning with Dan Rather, the blogosmear™ was used to drive news cycles, the new weapon of choice is Twitter. And that can mean only one thing:
As Roman historian Tacitus notes in Chapter XI of the Annals, “Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity. They had accomplices in all who feared the same fate….“
Courage.
==============
UPDATE 1:33 PM PDT: Look what just showed up on my radar — The New York Times adds the following evidence, looking through the other end of the telescope:
May 4, 2012, 8:11 AM
Republicans Use Crowdsourcing to Attack Obama Campaign
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR[…]
An e-mail from the Republican National Committee urged conservatives to use the Twitter hashtag #Julia to mock the timeline. And mock they did. Throughout the day, Twitter was filled with sarcastic messages that described “Julia” as a ward of the government.
Facts is facts, folks. (Republicans, excepted, of course.)
Blitzkrieg (German, “lightning war”) … Through constant motion, the blitzkrieg
attempts to keep its enemy off-balance, making it difficult to respond effectively
at any given point before the front has already moved on. (Wikipedia)
====================
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.