Follow the Money

Anderson Cooper on Michael Chertoff's conflict of interest regarding airport scanners:

THAT, my friends, is what journalism looks like.

Happy Rally Day!

Whether you're going to the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear today or, like we in the Brilliant household, watching it on TV because a) I am headed out of town tomorrow and need some time to decompress before leaving; b) the thought of five hours in DC with no place to pee is terrifying; and c) I've been working like a dog and I'm just plain tired; there's something that feels, well, ALMOST hopey-changey today. I say almost because I am tired of hoping things will ever get better when we live in a nation of willfully ignorant people ruled by their prejudices. But it's expected to be a really nice day in DC today, and whether there's just a comedy show with some nice music or something that feels like a groundswell of something yet to be determined, something feels significant about this rally.

I don't know if it's because of the fits that mainstream journalists are having about it (Tobin Harshaw in the New York Times is the latest, citing the Still Angry About Hillary Taylor Marsh as an unimpeachable source), though I suspect that has something to do with it. These are people trapped in a dying industry; an industry dying of largely self-inflicted wounds. It was one thing when journalists could legitimately pat themselves on the back for breaking actual stories. Bob Woodward may be a shameless hack now, but at one time, he and Carl Bernstein broke the kind of story that journalists today would be afraid to touch and made a generation of young people want to be journalists. The problem is that journalism, particularly Washington journalism, forgot what its job was -- to report the news and to keep the feet of politicians to the fire and keep them honest. We'll report what you do, said journalists, but if you fuck up or you betray the public trust, we will pillory you just as you deserve.

Something happened along the way. Journalists were invited into the corridors of power and decided they liked it there. Sally Quinn, who married Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, held parties that were the toast of Washington, and she decided early on that the Clintons weren't her kind of people, so the press did her bidding. David Gregory danced with Karl Rove at a Washington dinner and later on became the moderator of the once-venerable Meet the Press. But it wasn't just WaPo or television networks owned by defense contractors, or even Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The New York Times ran a story about how the Clintons lost money in a land deal, and next thing you know, the paper is at the forefront of what will go down in history as the biggest partisan witch hunt ever perpetrated on a president. Judith Miller schmoozed with Scooter Libby, and soon the front page of the New York Times was carrying the Bush Administration's water on the false claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Howard Dean dares to run for president, and Times reporter Jodi Wilgoren makes it her business to bring him down.

If journalism hadn't completely blown its credibility on stories like Whitewater and Gary Condit and shark attacks, while carrying the Bush Junta's water on Iraq, a bunch of people in bathrobes making use of this new technology called the Internet couldn't have replaced the increasing triviality and utter horseshit dished up by so-called news outlets.

Jason Linkins over at That Thing Arianna Huffington Publishes That No One Reads has been documenting the roots of this rally. He cites Jon Stewart's first broadcast after the 9/11 attacks:

...noting, quite accurately in my opinion:

...when I watched this again, after so many years, I couldn't help but think that maybe someone has recently stolen this segment, stripped it of its sincerity, and turned it into self-serving schtick. Maybe someone should go and steal it back.

I kind of disagree, though. This rally isn't about gaining political power, it's about a five-foot-six-inch Jewish comedian and a Catholic sunday school teacher from Montclair, New Jersey, who have been having to do the job that people they once believed, and want to believe again, are their betters. Those people aren't the politicians, however. The people who are going to be made fun of today aren't easy targets like Louie Gohmert and Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle. That's like shooting fish in a barrel. I think what you're going to see is more along the lines of the TRUE roots of this rally:

Why he's the best

When Brian Williams or David Gregory interviews the President, it's all about finding the "Gotcha!" moment that can be played in an endless loop on Morning Joe and the Today show and the following night's evening news. It's not about discussing policy, it's about rumor and setting traps and about "Some people say...".

Not one major network talking head with a reputation as a journalist has conducted an interview with Barack Obama that is as substantive as this one:

Julian Assange; Hero or Rapist? Sheesh!

This is the oddest thing. I was scanning my email today and I read an urgent report from last night from CNN's urgent news report service, that Julian Assange, of Wikileaks fame, had been charged with rape in Sweden. I was sort of taken aback but figured I'd look into it today and see if its some ginned up attempt at discrediting him for lack of anything else to do about stopping Wikileaks. Interestingly, not 10 posts later was another special CNN report saying something to the effect of 'oh never mind, the charges have been dropped'...huh?

It appears that Assange is hiding out in Sweden, where the main set of Wikileaks servers are located, because of their laws protecting journalists, while the likes of Michael Moore call him a hero and raise money for his defense. According to the San Francisco Chronicle two women who knew each other, one in her 20's and one in her 30's, came forward and charged him with rape and molestation, but the refused to file official reports....huh? They supposedly knew all about the wikileaks issue and were "afraid of his power"...huh? I'll be looking for them both, weeping on Larry King, looking for their own reality show. Apparently all charges have been dropped and this is just another strange blip in this story, which which would make this guy either a patriotic folk hero or a war criminal/rapist....huh? Assange responded on Twitter thusly:

the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing.

According to Reuters, Co-workers have said that they were expecting the attacks and that they were all purely to discredit Wikileaks content. But Wikileaks is well beyond being just about Julian Assange and anyone who doesn't realize that is a fool.

I believe that what he has done for this country in his brave publication of documents that have definitely made him a target, and his strong stand on continuing this work is no less than patriotic and brave. The information in the documents stands as the real testament of its own worth and lacking a real press in America these days, this guy has done us a huge service.

I also know that when the powers that be are at the end of their collective ropes and can't stop something like this, they resort to this sort of discrediting of those who, at one time, might have been the Woodward and Bernsteins of this war. The playing field is so different and our information network is huge and global, but this feels to me like duct tape left over the lock on a door at the Watergate Hotel.

Michael Moore is raising money for Assange's defense and encouraging us to support him. Of course, even the floated hint of this sort of sexual impropriety could ruin not only that support, but also his life. Its a chance that you take when you go up against the big boys, and I'm sure that Assange was well aware that they would try everything to stop him. But this is so heavy handed as to seem almost like a private extortion attempt by some local assholes. It would be truly sad if this was the work of the CIA, as the SF Chronicle suggested, because if that's so then we need to pump more training into our intelligence divisions.

I hope to see more on this as it unfolds; its too good for the tabloids not to pick up. My advice to Mr. Assange is to keep your head down and, as someone smart recently said to me, draw a line around yourself, close your doors, and just stay inside until things die down.
Godspeed.

RIP Coco...you cant get there from anywhere...still working on it...

This is wonderful news...but can't we just call her "the host"?

I'm of course thrilled that Rachel Maddow will be the recipient of the Walter Cronkite Award...but why is her sexual orientation relevant to the amazing, smart, articulate, and most importantly, FACT-BASED reporting and commentary she does for us night after night?

The openly lesbian host of MSNBC’s "The Rachel Maddow Show" will receive the 2010 Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award from the Interfaith Alliance in honor of her work covering religion and politics, The Huffington Post reported Tuesday, Aug. 17.

The award "recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom, and reinvigorate informed civic participation," according to an announcement from the Alliance. Cronkite served as Honorary Chairman of the organization until his death last year.

Maddow will receive the award at a gala dinner held in New York in October.

The last great journalist at CNN is out

First it was Christiane Amanpour jumping ship to ABC:

Now , via Nicole Belle, comes the news that the last great journalist from CNN, Michael Ware, has been tossed out on his ear, after having bled and torn open his soul doing courageous and brually honest coverage of the Iraq War:

In addition to having taken a break recently in order to work on his book, it is no secret that he has been grappling with PTSD, brought on from the hellish years he worked in Baghdad. I was told that, unfortunately, when he needed more time off in order to deal with things, his request was denied. So he will not be returning.

While it is a huge loss for us (and for CNN) I am extremely relieved that he chose to take care of his own needs first. And while I sincerely hope that he will return to US television someday on another network, it is far more important that he gets the care he needs.

His work for CNN over the past four years has been an astonishing and brutally honest look at the causes and results of war. Not easy subject matter to watch… but he made us care. His urgency and passion burst through our television sets and made us pay attention, made us want to understand.

Personally, I will never forget the first time I heard him, speaking with Anderson Cooper via telephone to discuss Saddam Hussein’s trial as well as an article he had just written about an embed he had been on in Ramadi. It wasn’t even five minutes of airtime, but it was riveting. When it was announced that he would be joining CNN, I was delighted, because it meant we would be getting even more insight from him. And that we did — he worked like a stevedore, appearing on CNN at all hours of the day and night to make sure that we knew what was really going on in Iraq. As a viewer, you could tell that it mattered to him that the American people understood the issues in this far-away war of ours. He didn’t give a damn about the politics; he cared about what the grunts were going through and what the innocent Iraqi citizens (whose blood, he had to keep reminding us, is no less valuable than ours) were suffering.

His work was always insightful and informative, and on the too-rare occasions when he was able to do longer-format programs for them, it was like being in a classroom. He knew the material cold and presented it in a way that made it easy to comprehend. He is far from the average buffed-and-polished pretty boy posing for the camera. He’s real. He’s a guy — sorry; a bloke — you’d want to sit down and have a beer with, to ask how he’s doing and how he copes with all the craziness he reports on. And want to ask more about what he knows, what he’s seen, what he’s witnessed … no matter how unpleasant the answers would be to hear.

And exactly how does a news organization justify (to themselves, even!) not giving their war correspondents whatever they need in order to deal with their wounds, whether they are visible ones or not? If ABC had treated Bob Woodruff so callously, there would have been hell to pay. I don’t doubt they wanted him back in the field ASAP — doubly so after losing Christiane Amanpour — but don’t force him to make a choice between getting better and getting paid. That just sucks. Surely it would be better to have him off the air but still yours once he is ready to come back than to have him off the air and someone else’s upon his return? So not only has CNN made a callous move here, they have made a stupid one, as well.

I remember Michael Ware doing reportage for the late and still lamented Morning Sedition. The thing with Ware was that his style was so intense that you often couldn't tell whether he was doing parody or the real thing -- until he went to CNN and we found out that it was all for real. Ware, like Greg Palast, is what investigative journalism that seeks out truth used to be about. Palast can't get work in the U.S. It remains to be seen if Ware will either. Inconvenient truthtellers are usually not wanted here.

Maybe it's because not everyone wants media to spout wingnut talking points

Perhaps it happened the day Chris Matthews and G. Gordon Liddy had orgasms on the air over George W. Bush in a flight suit. Perhaps it happened even earlier, when the media decided taht George W. Bush won his debate with Al Gore. Perhaps it was eight years of regurgitating Dick Cheney's lies about Iraq. Perhaps it goes back to the media frenzy over a blue dress and a 20-year-old land deal. Perhaps it was the media presenting Sarah Palin as a credible figure to be a heartbeat away from, or in, the presidency. Perhaps it was the media giving a bunch of half-educated morons donning costumes and calling themselves Tea Party Patriots while spouting fractured history and rooting for tax cuts for rich people credibility as a viable third party and legitimate grassroots movement. Perhaps it hit the last straw with Bill Adair of Politifacts paraphrasing Stephen Colbert when opining that media outlets are afraid that facts are biased.

At any rate, thanks to the outright hackery of the last two decades, the journalism profession lies in ruins and its practitioners are pessimistic about its future:

Most newspaper and broadcast news editors think American journalism is in decline, and about half believe that their employers will go out of business if they do not find new sources of revenue, according to a survey to be released on Monday.

Among print editors, 18 percent said their papers were actively pursuing the idea of charging readers for access to their Web sites, while 58 percent said it was under consideration. Twenty-three percent said they believed that in three years, such subscription fees would be their primary source of online revenue, having overtaken advertising.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism polled members of two industry groups, the American Society of News Editors and the Radio Television Digital News Association. It received 353 sets of responses to the survey, conducted in December and January.

In addition, 48 percent of the editors who participated said that without a significant new income stream, their organizations could not remain solvent for more than 10 years; 31 percent gave them five years or less.

Despite that pessimism, about three-quarters of the editors who took part said they would have serious objections to accepting direct support from either the government or interest groups, and a similar number said their organizations had not seriously thought about taking donations from nonprofit groups.

In an era of shrinking newsrooms, 58 percent of the editors said journalism was headed in the wrong direction. Sixty-two percent said the Internet had changed the profession’s fundamental values, with most citing a loosening of standards.

Yes, blame the internet's "loosening of standards." Blame Brad Friedman, who has worked tirelessly over the last decade to expose the chicanery that lies behind our voting apparatus. Blame Greg Palast, who exposes so much treachery in public life that no one in the U.S. will hire him. For that matter, blame Rachel Maddow, who while part of the mainstream media, does cogent analysis night after night using DEMONSTRABLE FACTS while people who analyze media think this:

...is the same as this:

Here's why Rachel Maddow is not "just like Glenn Beck"

We live in a media culture in which pulling stuff out of your paranoid, crazy ass is regarded as just as valid in terms of truth as actual facts. It started, really, with Ronald Reagan's talk about the welfare queen in the Cadillac, and came to true, horrific fruition with Dick Cheney's One Percent Doctrine -- that if there is a one percent chance that something COULD be true, you assume it is 100% true. This is what allows the insane street-corner-equivalent ravings of Glenn Beck to be taken seriously by too large a segment of the American population.

Conservatives like to paint the two left-of-center hosts on MSNBC as meaning that all of MSNBC is just like Fox News. You could make an argument about Keith Olbermann if you like, though for all his eminently parody-able bombast, he doesn't pull stuff out of his ass like painting capitalist John D. Rockefeller as commissioning Communist art for the buildings that bear his name.

Perhaps part of the reason the Olbermann/Maddow axis is regarded with such fear and loathing by the right is BECAUSE facts are their stock in trade. And perhaps the reason that even leftish outfits like SALON draw parallels is because of things like Keith Olbermann's tireless crusade to speak truth to idiocy about health care reform, truth which led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for free health care fairs in districts whose representatives were opposed to universal health care. And because Rachel Maddow dares to debunk horseshit that has bamboozled the mainstream press -- horseshit like the highly-edited "ACORN tapes" that brought ACORN down based on lies and selective editing:

We know from Brad Friedman's refusal to let the right-wing lie-based jihad against minority citizens go just HOW badly the mainstream media failed in its coverage of this story, and its all-too-eager willingness to believe the story of a couple of white punks based on highly edited video -- editing that can be done now by a middle-school kid with a PC.

But as you watch the above video, note how Rachel acknowledges that individuals in individual ACORN offices MAY have committed some misdeeds -- misdeeds that have absolutely nothing to do with James O'Keefe's videos. And that is the difference between Rachel Maddow and Fox News, and the difference between the left and the right. We do NOT march in lockstep. We do NOT worship our leaders and demand absolute fealty to them. We scream with outrage when our leaders decide that assassination of American citizens is OK. They decide that going to war based on lies is OK.

But what Rachel proves here, as she does every night in the meticulously-researched news stories she covers, is that it is possible to have opinion-based journalism that is based on FACTS, not just crap you pull out of your ass because it whips your frothing minions into a frenzy. You will never in a million years see a left-leaning newsmaker appear on a Fox news program without being somehow ambushed by doublespeak and lies. Rachel is unfailingly polite to her conservative guests, even the odious Richard Cohen, the so-called "ex-gay therapist" -- a guy who stands in opposition to her very being. Perhaps this politeness combined with a ferocious intellect and ability to decontstruct and demolish even the most carefully constructed fallacy is the reason for the fear and loathing of her from the right.

Whatever they call her, she practices real, legitimate journalism -- which is more than one can say for even the much-respected New York Times coverage of James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles.

Credit where credit is due

Some things just aren't partisan, and playing on people's patriotism to stuff their pockets is something on which advocates on the left AND right can agree.

I've been known to do my share of Debbie Schlussel snarking, as have many progressive bloggers. I would hope that if a scummy fraud on the scale of Sean Hannity's Freedom Alliance were being perpetrated by someone on OUR team, that our alpha dogs would do an exposé like this one.

So, who will wreck whom here?

Via Media Bistro:

NOTE FROM DAVID WESTIN:

I am delighted to announce that Christiane Amanpour will join ABC News as the new anchor of “This Week.” A highly respected journalist recognized around the world for her reporting, she brings to her new position a wealth of experience and knowledge, as well as a deep commitment to bringing news of the world to the American people. She will also appear on all other ABC News programs and platforms to provide international analysis of the important issues of the day. And, she will be anchoring primetime documentaries on international subjects.

Christiane will join us from CNN where, for two decades she has reported from the world’s major conflicts, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans. She has received every major broadcast journalism award. A formidable interviewer, she has sat down in global exclusives with many of the world’s leaders and military chiefs from the Middle East, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa, Europe and the United States.

More than once over the years we’ve talked with Christiane about her joining us in one position or another. Until now, it wasn’t the right time or the right fit. We are fortunate that this time it worked for Christiane and for us.

With Christiane we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings. We will continue to provide the best in interviews and analysis about domestic politics and policies. But now we will add to that an international perspective. All of us know how much the international and the domestic have come to affect one another – whether it’s global conflict, terrorism, humanitarian crises, or the economy. And our international reporting has long been a hallmark of ABC News, part of the legacy Peter Jennings left for us. Christiane will bring the international and the domestic together, in the interviews she does and in the roundtable over which she presides. Our audience has come to us for years to see differing points of views expressed in intelligent and compelling ways; now the different points of view will be expanded beyond partisan politics alone.

A little Rachel Maddow envy there, Dave?

This could get interesting, depending on whether Amanpour brings the journalism chops she honed back in the days when CNN was an actual news network, instead of a Confederacy of Teabag Whores bringing in the likes of Erick Erickson as a "commentator." It would be delicious to watch her pwn Cokie and Sam and Nooners and George "Rich People Create Jobs" Will. We'll see if she does.

CNN runs a crawl: "Department of Jihad", but on the comedy show, you get this

There is something very wrong in a country when "The Most Trusted Name in News" is trying to hard to be Glenn Beck that it adopts the terminology of that Oedipal mess Liz Cheney, while thoughtful, rational discussion -- and evisceration -- of claims of infiltration of the Justice Department by Al Qaeda operatives under President Dark Skin Funnyname has to be done ON A COMEDY SHOW:

More here and here.

If only Barack Obama had the balls to renege on his apparent deal to not prosecute the Bush/Cheney junta

With Dick Cheney emerging from his hidey-hold to call Barack Obama a pussy and a Threat to America, it would seem to be time to declare that all previous agreements to not look backwards are off, and that it's full speed ahead on investigation of the crimes of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney.

Especially now that it's pretty clear that the Bush Administration's torture tactics were NOT for the purpose of stopping a potential terrorist attack, but were instead used to further the aim of ginning up a phony Iraq/Al Qaeda link to justify their dick-waving war in Iraq.

As usual, only Rachel Maddow has the guts to report the truth:

I know that we have a great many problems to deal with in this country. But if you think that any of the potential Republican hopefuls for 2012 aren't looking at the Bushcheney tactics and thinking "I'd like to do that", guess again.

Of course, I'm not necessarily convinced that Barack Obama hasn't embraced them as well.

So if you want to know what makes a 23-year-old from a privileged background decide to sign up with jihadists, perhaps it's because the leaders of the country the jihadists want to attack decided it was perfectly OK to use torture to gin up a phony case for war against a country that did nothing to us.

More Jeremy Scahill, please

Watch Jeremy Scahill demolish that bloviating hack Chuck Todd on Bill Maher's show this week:

Note how Todd tries to dodge the issue of Afghanistan, claiming credit for what Helen Thomas does. Note how he talks about lack of trust in government and equivocates between lying about an affair and lying to send over 4000 Americans to their deaths. Chuck Todd, who wasn't always like this, is emblematic of everything that is wrong with political journalism today. Now he gets invited to the parties, and refuses to ask tough questions. He too falls into the "He said, she said" model of journalism, in which truth and utter horseshit become one and the same.

The problem is, who actually HEARS Jeremy Scahill other than those who already know what he's talking about?

The last great American news anchor has died

I feel sorry for young people today who don't remember what it was like when the network news that was on every night was about actual news and events, rather than nonstop coverage of Michael Jackson's hair catching on fire. There was a time when news was "stuff you should know", rather than the news-o-tainment that dominates the networks and cable news shows in the age of the 24 x 7 news cycle.

I remember when TWA 800 crashed thirteen years ago, and Brian Williams, not yet ready for prime time, was phumphering his way through the coverage. I remember watching the news coverage on September 11, 2001, when news reporters were as freaked out as the rest of us.

And even though I was only eight years old at the time, I remember Walter Cronkite covering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:

Even though we had been through the Cuban Missile Crisis and Nikita Krushchev banging his shoe on the table at the U.N., quoted as saying "We will bury you", it's hard to imagine how shaken this nation was on that day in 1963. On that day, the nation turned to Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite went on so long, outliving by many years compatriots like Chet Huntley and Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith, it had begun to seem as if Walter Cronkite would always be with us -- a reminder of the golden age of television journalism, when news anchors weren't look-alike bots with poufy hair, but were seen as authoritative figures. And no one was more authoritative than Walter Cronkite. After this on-air editorial about the Vietnam war in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

For all that today's Republicans are at the beck and call of lunatics like Rush Limbaugh and the increasingly unhinged Glenn Beck, it's hard to imagine a Republican President with any grip on consensus reality saying "If I've lost Limbaugh, I've lost Middle America" -- and have it sound anything but just as unhinged as the current purveyors of white male hysteria.

A look through the archives at YouTube shows Cronkite as a real-life broadcast version of Forrest Gump, present at every major event of the mid-to-late 20th century: The Kennedy assassination shown above. The assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Three Mile Island. The 1979 total solar eclipse.

In the era of real television news anchored (if you'll pardon the expression) by Walter Cronkite, news was news and entertainment was entertainment, and the twain did not meet.

One of the hardest parts about growing old is watching pieces of your childhood fall by the wayside. Some of them, like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, died young of their own youthful recklessness. Others have died too soon ravaged by diseases we used to associate with old people. Many of the people who were part of our lives when we were kids were part of our parents' generation, some of them long forgotten until their deaths, others still present in public life, their deaths a reminder that we, the next generation, are in the on-deck circle to the great beyond after they depart. That Walter Cronkite stayed with us so long always seemed reassuring, that as long as that piece of the world in which we grew up was still there, we were somehow still safe.

And now Walter Cronkite, the kindly voice of world events for so many decades, has left us. And like children forced to spend our first night without our security blankets, we feel the world to be a bit meaner, a bit scarier, and even less certain than before.

On the other hand....

Here's the usually hacktacular Jodi Kantor, who has a lovely, and fascinating look today at the journey that both Barack and Michelle Obama's forbears took before they could dance at the inaugural balls last night:

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

“Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I don’t think it’s new in terms of the country,” Maya Soetoro-Ng, the president’s younger half-sister, said last week. “I don’t think the White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this country.”

Though the world is recognizing the inauguration of the first African-American president, the story is a more complex narrative, about immigration, social mobility and the desegregation of one of the last divided institutions in American life: the family. It is a tale of self-determination, full of refusals to follow the tracks laid by history or religion or parentage.

Mr. Obama follows the second President Bush, who had a presidential son’s self-assured grip on power. Aside from a top-quality education, the new president came to politics with none of his predecessor’s advantages: no famous last name, no deep-pocketed parents to finance early forays into politics and, in fact, not much of a father at all. So Mr. Obama built his political career from scratch, with best-selling books and long-shot runs for office, leaving his relatives astonished at where he has brought them.

“It is so mind-boggling that there is a black president,” Craig Robinson, Mrs. Obama’s brother, said in an interview. “Then you layer on top of it that I am related to him? And then you layer on top of that that it’s my brother-in-law? That is so overwhelming, I can’t hardly think about it.”

Though Mr. Obama is the son of a black Kenyan, he has some conventionally presidential roots on his white mother’s side: abolitionists who, according to family legend, were chased out of Missouri, a slave state; Midwesterners who weathered the Depression; even a handful of distant ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. (Ever since he became a United States senator, the Sons of the American Revolution has tried to recruit him. )

[snip]

Only five generations ago, the first lady’s great-great-grandfather, Jim Robinson, was born a slave on Friendfield Plantation in Georgetown, S.C., where he almost certainly drained swamps, harvested rice and was buried in an unmarked grave. As a child, Mrs. Obama used to visit her Georgetown relatives, but she only learned during the campaign that her forebears had been enslaved in the same town where she and her cousins had played.

For the last eight years, we have seen the imagery of patriotism appropriated by the right wing to whip up hatred, resentment, and exclusionism. THEY owned the flag. THEY owned this nation's history. Because they saw this country as an end product, rather than a dynamic, ever-changing process, they clutched the symbols if this country to their breasts and shouted "MINE! MINE! MINE!" -- seeking to exclude all those who don't share their religion (evangelical Christian and market capitalism), don't worship authority the way they do, don't look, dress, or speak as they do. To watch this man, with his multiethnic history, take the oath of office yesterday made more than a few of us remember just what "patriotism" is supposed to stand for, and what it is we are supposed to love and defend about this country.

E Pluribus Unum. It's on the U.S. Great Seal. It translates to "Out of Many, One." I don't think we've ever in my lifetime had a President who represented this more than the current one. For far too much of my life it's been about "us" (conservatives) and "them" (dirty fucking hippies). I don't delude myself that happy days are here again. Michelle Malkin is still out there spewing bile, and I'm sure the entire right-wing hate punditocracy is going to be on overdrive for the next four years. But when I hear things like the caller to WNYC yesterday who aid that he was a Republican who voted for John McCain, but Obama's speech brought tears to his eyes and he now believes this is the right man for the right time, it gives me, for the first time in eight long years, hope.

Your Sunday Cute Overload

Budding reporter Damon Weaver, a Florida fifth-grader:

Note how Joe Biden actually KNOWS what the Vice President does "ivry dee."

The tough political questions are being asked by comedians

What does it say about a country in which the most cogent political coverage is being done by stand-up and sketch comics and talk show hosts?

Here's David Letterman pointing out the hypocrisy of McCranky being associated with G. Gordon Liddy while obsessing about Barack Obama having served on a board with William Ayers at one time, and holding Sarah Palin's feet to the fire about her remarks about "palling around with terrorists":

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honorees: Christy Hardin Smith, who is in a better position than most of us to know why a woman's right to determine her own destiny is between her, her family, and her doctor AND NO ONE ELSE, least of all Sarah Palin and her false Army of God; and Marie Cocco, to whom Christy links.

Money quotes:

Smith:

Now you know why I feel so strongly about this issue. Because I've lived it and because my entire adult life has forced this issue to the forefront. Life is messy and people get caught up in situations that are not of their own making far too often. We never asked for an ectopic pregnancy, but we got one nonetheless. Pro-life folks want you to think that abortion is the only facet of being pro-choice but they could not be more wrong or dishonest.

Being pro-choice is to be compassionate and honest about the world around us, and to value the life of the mother just as much as the life within her -- and to trust the women and others involved in each circumstance to weigh all of the issues involved. Because that is what they already do. Most of the women that I have ever known who faced unenviable difficulties in these decisions chose to have their child where it was medically possible. Which is...a choice.

Pretending otherwise is simply to lie.

Cocco:

Anti-abortion activists promote a policy of official meddling — yes, by government bureaucrats — into the private lives of millions of American women, and the lives of their husbands and boyfriends.

Their pleas to now give the Palin family privacy in one of its most difficult moments are easily understood and no doubt supported by every American who has ever had a family crisis. That is, by all of us.

No one who supports abortion rights would wish for any unmarried, 17-year-old girl to become pregnant. No advocate of abortion rights would even suggest that a teenager in Bristol's situation should terminate the pregnancy without weighing her own conscience and deciding, with her family, on her own course.

And yes, we believe she should make her decisions in a private cocoon, embraced by loving family and friends. We just wish that anti-abortion crusaders would afford every family the same respect for privacy they now demand for one of their own.

Cheetohs this, you nepotism-careered moron

Willie Geist is just another jerk like Chris Wallace -- a lightweight who has the job he has because of his father. At least Mike Wallace has some serious journalistic cred; William Geist is known for dumb puff pieces on CBS Sunday Morning. At least Geist Sr's pieces are never mean-spirited. Yesterday Geist fils decided to interview bloggers at the Democratic National Convention to find out about these "Cheetohs-eating, Star Wars-worshipping bloggers who live in their mother's basement."

Cheetohs? Really?

I thought we were latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, arugula-eating elitists. I thought it was Real Men ate Cheetohs and drank Coors while watching football before going out to Wal-Mart in their Hummers.

Kudos to Bill Scher of Liberal Oasis, who does the Weekend Watchdog at The Campaign for America's Future, for not punching that sniveling little rat-faced git in the face. I'm not sure I would have met Mr. Geist with as much good humor.

The DNC is sort of like the Super Bowl -- you can't decide if you wish you were there or if you realize you're far more comfortable sitting at home on the sofa with a can of Hansen's Diet Tangerine Lime soda. Not that there was ever an issue of me going; the DNC doesn't exactly give credentials to solo bloggers with only 500 visitors a day. This isn't like Netroots Nation, where anyone with a few hundred bucks can buy a ticket. But I'm grateful to those bloggers who made the cut and are covering the convention. Because without them, all we'd have is a picture of a contentious group of disgruntled Hillary supporters and a Party Divided™, brought to us by a parade of Joe Scarboroughs and Chris Matthews, unable to hide their fury at their network's new star, and a parade of wingnut pundits brought there by the networks for the specific purpose of defecating early and often in the party punchbowl.

If that's what's going on at MSNBC, I think these guys might be a good alternative

John Amato of Crooks and Liars interviews Sam Seder. And not a snipe in sight:

More awesome gonzo DNC video from Sam (though with the MSNBC Testosterone Squad on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sam's video hardly seems gonzo anymore) at SamSederShow.com.