House of Eratosthenes

…prompted an angry phone call from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney (hat tip to Gateway Pundit). That story in turn links to a NY Times column which says inside some parentheses…

(In an angry phone call, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, told the network’s executive vice president for news, Michael Clemente, that even by “Fox & Friends” standards the video crossed the line, according to two Democrats who weren’t authorized to speak of the private conversation.)

So I suppose I already know more about this than I am supposed to, which is a shame, since it implies I’ll not be learning anything further and what I already know about it is rather baffling.

I know Fox folded like a cheap suit. It doesn’t seem like the facts are on the White House’s side on this thing, so I’m wondering why. “Crossed the line”? What the hell does that even mean?

You know, when you get right down to it our modern society really has only two problems: People get their way when they shouldn’t, by insisting on a “yes,” and people get their way when they shouldn’t by insisting on a “no.” Several times a year we find out about some movement to completely dismantle something and re-build it again, because someone wants something a certain way; they haven’t thought through all the likely ramifications, they’re not in a position to profit from or to suffer from the thing they want started or stopped. Someone else is, and that someone else might disagree, but it doesn’t matter.

Do it our way. There are more of us than there are of you…or we won an election…or whatever. There ought to be a law. Or, stop it right now, it “crossed a line” or it’s “beyond the pale.” This shall not stand! Not a day goes by, some airhead isn’t throwing a hissy fit that has something to do with picking up his marbles and going home…still, there’s no consequence. Nobody is escorting him to an international airport to buy a one-way ticket to someplace else. He can throw exactly the same temper tantrum the next day, and the next, and people still put up with it.

That thing, way over there, has to be ripped out and replaced because it offends the sensibilities of me, a guy way over here, functionally anonymous, typing words into a website on the Internet. Well okay, that doesn’t apply to Jay Carney, he’s not anonymous — but that is part of the problem. Who really stands to lose something from the issues presented in this ad? Yeah you could say Carney is afraid for his job just like everyone else, but that doesn’t really work. Jay Carney’s afraid of languishing endlessly on an unemployment line? Jay Carney is worried about where to get his next tankful of gas? Screw this guy.

“The package that aired on FOX & Friends was created by an associate producer and was not authorized at the senior executive level of the network,” [Fox News Executive Vice President for Programming Bill] Shine said in a statement. “This has been addressed with the show’s producers.”

That’s an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire moment if ever there was one…or, it should be. Was there some policy or other protocol in place that said this level of authorization had to be sought? Shine does not explicitly come out and say so. Was there a factual problem with the clip? Nobody has offered one. The Media Matters write-up presents none. And what’s up with that double-standard anyway? How come so many loud angry people were piping up about this Obama thing last month, but they didn’t have a word to say before?

Aw well, we know the answer to that I suppose…

Hissy fits and temper tantrums? My spider sense is tingling. I know something’s wrong. I feel it real bad when I drive to or from work. I feel it real bad when I read my favorite blogs or just watch the news. Something’s wrong, really wrong. I work at a female prison. Yes, I’m one of those public sector workers; to be more precise I work in a prison surrounded only by a hedge. As prisons go it’s a nice place. It looks more like a modern college campus the only difference being the students are locked up at night. I see hissy fits everyday, hissy fits because there isn’t enough toilet paper, enough paper towels, hissy fits from people who actually get paid to earn a GED, take college courses, paid to learn skills that might help them in the real world, the one you and I live in. Most the time it’s all for no good. They get out. They come back in, pregnant this time, ready to pop out another vertical barbarian to throw future hissy fits…if they get the chance.

That’s not all prisoners (in our enlightened institutional system) get paid for. Do you have a drug problem? No problem payment will be deposited directly into your account. You got some psychological problems? You can get paid to see a shrink. Yeah I work there. I’m one of those public employees, a public employee that secretly cheered Scott Walker, one who secretly hates paying union dues and really hates where that money ends up (and we all know where that is). So why’s my spider sense tingling? I feel like I’m getting a preview of things to come. Hissy fits have worked so far, but how long can it last? The prisoners don’t realize the toilet paper and all these other things they throw hissy fits about are running out…
- Treadgar | 06/23/2012 @ 10:49
Aw well, we know the answer to that I suppose…

We surely do, my friend. “The line” that was crossed, “the pale” that this is beyond, is… factual information harmful to the Democrats.

That’s all it is. That’s all it ever is.

And you know what? I’m not even bothered by the double-standard anymore. It doesn’t faze me when the right caves yet again. All I really feel is tired. It’s just so goddamn bumblefucking obvious what’s going on. That words like “civility” and whatnot really only mean “conservatives should muzzle themselves, so that we can continue to slander them with impunity.” Democracy is dead when union thuggery just isn’t thuggish enough to prevail. &c.

That’s really my only hope for the 2012 campaign. I’d like Romney to win, of course — he’s marginally more competent / less socialist than Obama — but what I’m really hoping for is a referendum on our useless, worthless, kneepadded cheerleading squad of a so-called “media.” Every time I think their shameless partisanship and lobe-shattering hypocrisy can’t possibly get any worse, I remember it’s only June. They’ve already tried a reverse Willie Horton (Trayvon Martin), endless reiterations of MediScare, “horse ballet,” and all the rest. They even brought poor Romney’s dog into it (“needs more salt,” was the Golfer-in-Chief’s first reaction). By the time November rolls around, anyone who isn’t disgusted by the blatant bias isn’t smart enough to remember to breathe without cue cards.

I want to believe, I guess I’m saying, that a significant fraction of Romney’s vote total will come from people so fed up with the media they’ll vote for him just to stick it in Andrea Mitchell’s eye.

Such is my hope, anyway. And folks like Carney are doing their damnedest to make it happen….
- Severian | 06/23/2012 @ 10:54

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Fox & Friends a Little Too Close to the TruthSaturday, June 23rd, 2012

Fox & Friends a Little Too Close to the Truth
Saturday, June 23rd, 2012