Thursday, March 09, 2023

See?

I do love this.

You can call me a "so-called lawyer," but the State of Texas has authorized me to practice law as one.

You can call me a "so-called pastor," but the United Church of Christ has ordained me to act as one, with full authority to perform the sacraments recognized by the denomination.

Hell, you can call me "so-called" all you want. Sticks 'n' stones, and all that.

But to what agency, tribunal, or institution do you appeal to affirm you are a "journalist"?  The New York Times, perhaps?  Judith Miller.  Jeff Gerth.  Yeah, there are disbarred lawyers; but they can't call themselves "lawyers" anymore.  Miller and Gerth just aren't employed by the Grey Lady.  They are, and always will be, "so-called journalists."

Suck it, Matty.
And once again my head swims as I join sides with David Frum (how bad does it have to be that Frum is now being sensible?): The GOP and their witnesses keep leaving bird's nests on the ground. And Gym Jordan is still a prick.  Here, by the way, is the context to that colloquy between Jordan and Rep. Placket, from the opening of this hearing:

"This is unacceptable," she explained. "I'm ready for it. I don't know if a lot of other people are, but just as it was unacceptable for Kevin McCarthy to provide 41,000 hours of sensitive security footage to a biased talking head in an effort to rewrite what happened on January 6th."

"This is a new Republican playbook, apparently. Risk American safety and security to score political points," Plaskett insisted.

"The gentlelady's word should be struck," one Republican on the panel demanded. "That is out of line and outside the rules of this committee."

Plaskett objected.

"You don't get to determine what's struck down," Jordan snapped, declining to take down her words.

"This is a false narrative," Plaskett said of the hearing. "We're engaging in false narratives here, and we [Democrats] are going to tell the truth."

Following Plaskett's opening statement, Jordan felt the need to push back.

"You guys don't care," he remarked on Jan. 6. "You don't care. You don't want the American people to see what happened. The full video, transparency, you don't want that."

"And you don't want [the testimony of] two journalists who have been named personally by the Biden administration FTC in a letter," Jordan added. "They're here to tell their story. And frankly, I think they're brave individuals for being willing to come after they've been named in a letter from the Biden FTC."

"Is this your question time?" Plaskett asked.

"No, I'm responding to your ridiculous statements you made in your in your opening statement," Jordan shot back.

"OK, well, let's get on with it," Plaskett said.

"Oh, now we want to get on with it. So you can say all the things you want?" Jordan complained.

"I did in my opening statement as well as you had an opening statement," Plaskett pointed out. "You said what you needed to say in your opening statement. And I, as the ranking member, have used my time!"

"Disdain" is almost too kind. 

Real journalists don't admit who hired them. It's public record (on Twitter) that "sources at Twitter" is Elmo, who hired Taibbi and gave him access to the "Twitter files."

That business about the FTC consent decree is actually pretty freaking important (not that I'm surprised Taibbi doesn't understand anything about it). There's 11 tweets there, but it will repay your attention. Elmo's got more problems than a rich guy can throw money at. Hey, just like Trump! Again!  In the meantime, Gymmy Jordan really isn't very good at this (nor is  Taibbi): 6.2 million news articles, millions of Twitter files, and a team of researchers. Meanwhile: Which raises the question, still: how many files did Matti look at? And, in the context of the FTC consent decree (let's just re-up some of that, shall we?): Now, to be fair: But Taibbi also said: Which is on Elmo, as far as the FTC is concerned. But 338 files sounds like a number. Compared to "millions" reviewed by a team of researchers who didn't find any impact against conservatives on Twitter; in fact, it found a bias in favor of Twitter.  And Taibbi continues to complain "but sure, Chrissy Tiegen" over the fact the only effort by a government official to "censor" Twitter was by then POTUS Trump trying to silence a comment about him by Ms. Tiegen.  Which somehow doesn't concern Mattydickpics as much as the desire of Joe Biden to have Twitter remove pictures allegedly showing his naked adult son.

So, yeah:  fair and balanced.
I still don't understand why Taibbi can't reveal that Musk is his employer and that Musk, as Musk has tweeted, gave Taibbi access to the Twitter files. Hell, Musk said he hired Taibbi to write about the files. What intermediary source is there? A whistleblower? A disgruntled employee? As for substack, shit, I don't know what that is, either, and don't really want to know (so don't write in trying to explain it to me! Or I'll go outside and shout at clouds!) And still, opinions differ: Go and please the world. (You can't stuff everything Taibbi says back down his throat with an extensive, emptywheel-esque, fact check. IMHO, anyway.) See? Then again, you could have this guy in your corner: Not the endorsement I think even Taibbi wants.  And I'm not really concerned with the lack of ceaseless fact checking of every word that came out of a witness's mouth: Much more effective.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)