It’s almost that time of the year again, when every Thanksgiving gathering will have at least one old uncle who’s a right wing blowhard. Old Uncle Ralph, after a few Budweisers, will no doubt spout the latest Fox talking points on “Obamacare,” Benghazi or something else. The good folks at Environmental Working Group have come up with some good talking points of their own regarding one of the conservatives’ pet issues, climate change.
If you watch or listen to the Republicans and much of the mainstream media, you might think that the Affordable Care Act is nothing but a website that is having problems. However, Nicholas Kristof published an op-ed in the New York Times last Saturday that sets the record straight, and shows us how to frame the Affordable Care Act properly.
A road trip from Southern California to San Francisco blows up the conservative myth that “government is bad for business” from Mile 1. First, you’ll likely drive up Interstate 5. That’s one of the highways largely built with taxpayer funds as part of the Interstate Highway System. I-5 runs through California’s Central Valley, where a big portion of America’s fruits and vegetables are grown, and it’s not unusual to see agricultural trucks making up 50 percent or more of the road traffic. Those truckers, growers, store owners and consumers throughout the U.S. depend on I-5 and other federal and state highways to move commerce to market efficiently.
Now that Republicans have failed to stop the Affordable Care Act, their next tactic is to battle the Act in an anecdote war. The mainstream television news media love anecdotes, because they are small shiny objects around which the media folks can get their short attention spans. We saw this anecdote tactic play out, for example, during the recent GOP shutdown, when the media reduced many big, important issues about government to a small sideshow dispute over the World War II Memorial.
The Republican Party is acting a lot like the zombie “walkers” in the tv series “The Walking Dead.” Check out the similarities:
Republicans have already revealed their strategy in the GOP shutdown: take America hostage by shutting down the federal government, and then criticize President Obama and Congressional Democrats for not “negotiating” major concessions, including defunding the Affordable Care Act, in return for Republicans reopening the government. Republicans skillfully repeat this word “negotiate,” but their definition of the term is absurdly narrow. In this context, Republicans only mean that President Obama should negotiate away popular Democratic principles and new laws while he has the GOP shutdown gun pointed at his head.
Chuck Todd of NBC News created a media firestorm last week when he blamed President Barack Obama “for not selling” the Affordable Care Act (“ACA“) a/k/a “Obamacare,” and said that media figures like himself had no responsibility to counter Republican lies about the ACA. Well, President Obama answered Chuck Todd and the Republican lie machine yesterday with a blazing speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland (see video above). Some of the highlights from President Obama’s speech were as follows:
Chuck Todd of NBC News caused a media firestorm yesterday when he stated on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program that the Republicans’ false talking points about the Affordable Care Act a/k/a “Obamacare” were “more importantly, … stuff that the Republicans have successfully messaged.” Todd went on to say that that it’s not the fault of “folks in the media” like Todd that Republicans are getting away with their Affordable Care Act lies, but rather, “it’s the President of the United States’ fault for not selling it.”
On Twitter, users expressed their anger at Chuck Todd, starting a hashtag called #chucktoddexcuses and posting messages such as “If people like me called out politicians on lies, we wouldn’t have had all that fun in Iraq.” Sites like politicsusa.com also pointed out the flaws in Todd’s thinking:
Todd’s logic falls apart, because he is missing the point of what people are trying to tell him. People aren’t saying to the mainstream media that they want them to support Democrats. The message is that the media should be interested first and only in facts. People get frustrated with the media, because they give lies the same weight as facts.
Bill Maher, who says he is the most frequent guest on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” over the past 20 years, sat with Leno Tuesday night and proved once again why political comedians are killers. Maher recapped his feud with Donald Trump, calling Trump an “insufferable racist,” an “egomaniac,” and perhaps most insulting of all, “a pop reference from the 80s. In return, Trump merely posted a couple of pathetic tweets attacking Leno and Maher:
“I’ve always defended @jayleno but he never defends me. He’s not a loyal person & I now understand why everybody dumped him. Jay sucks!”
“I hear this moron @billmaher said nasty things about me (hair etc—boring) on the terminated @jayleno show. Stupid guy/bad ratings!”
Bill Maher is part of a slate of political comedians, including Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, some of their cohorts such as John Oliver, and John Fugelsang, with whom, if you’re a politician, you just don’t want to tangle. These guys write the best material, in some cases along with their writers, and deliver it in deft ways. Recall Stewart’s appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire” in 2006, slamming hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for “hurting America.”
It’s also worth noting that all of this effective and funny political comedy is coming from the Democratic or progressive side. When Republicans and conservatives try political comedy, it falls painfully flat.
Bill Maher and this crop of political comedians are looked to not just as a top source of comedy, but as a top information source as well. They deserve both honors.
A new Quinnipiac University poll released today in the 2013 Virginia Gubernatorial election shows Democrat Terry McAuliffe leading Virginia’s Republican Attorney, General Ken Cuccinelli, by 48-42 percent. These results could be a bad omen for Republicans around the country, for a number of reasons:
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