Posted on 07/21/2008 11:49:46 PM PDT by kristinn
Pelosi would also feel right at home in the Soviet Duma.
Call it "memoryhole.com." :-)
By Greg Mitchell
Published: July 21, 2008 10:45 PM ET
Coverage of 'Netroots' Confab Draws Protest-- Snarky Article Spiked -- Editor's Note Apologizes
~snip~
When Beach, at the start referred to the crowd as "marauding liberals" I knew it was not to be taken literally. But then we got this:
-- The audience nearly staged a "faint-in" when Gore appeared (note use of '60s term).
-- Pelosi is so far left her title should include "(D-Beijing)." This would come as a surprise to many in the crowd who have criticized her timidity – and posed hostile questions in the Q & A..
-- The liberal blogosphere is "terribly self-confirming" -- not like the mainstream media! In a contradiction, he then noted that at the conference they "critiqued themselves."
-- Paul Krugman, as if to "galvanize stereotypes," wore Birkenstocks -- but Beach throughout the article clearly needed no help in having his own stereotypes galvanized.
-- It's shooting fish in a barrel "to paint liberals as overly intellectual types incapable of having fun unless reading Noam Chomsky counts, and its sure does for them." In fact, the convention was practically "party central," few attendees were "intellectuals," and only a tiny percentage, I would guess, are Chomsky lovers -- again, an outmoded stereotype.
-- Those who protested during the Pelosi/Gore "faint-in" were "shushed" as if they were at a Nanci Griffith concert. I certainly know who she is, but I can imagine most of these particular attendees reading this reference and asking, "Who???"
-- One more reference to Liberals Don't Wanna "have fun." And so on.
Well, I thought I would perform a public service and let some of the convention attendees know about all this -- few are fans of dead-tree media -- so I posted a summary on my diary at DailyKos (the popular blog that founded Netroots). The “Kossacks” as they are known could do what they wanted with it, if anything. Within a few minutes, so many people were reading and recommending my post that it shot to near the top of the DailyKos “diaries” for the day. It also got picked up at some other popular blogs.
Many commenters promised to write letters to the editor. Some of them were Austinites who claimed they knew people at the local paper and might actually work their magic on them.
Theories abounded:
--Longtime editor Rich Oppel had recently retired and who was this new leader named Fred Zipp?
--The paper had been a cheerleader for Bush for many years and only acted liberal, at times, because this, afterall, was Austin.
--Patrick Beach, who has had a long career at the paper (he is a former rock critic), allegedly had rarely written a political piece in his life and probably was assigned to the convention, with no background in this kind of thing, on a lark or in desperation.
Monday: I was back in New York and had turned the page on all this, until I got an email from Michael King, news editor at the Austin Chronicle, the long-running and successful alt-weekly. Coincidentally, the paper’s founding editor (and South-by-Southwest guru) Louis Black had given me a personal tour of the Chronicle’s rambling offices on Saturday night.
Anyway, King informed me that the comments from Beach’s article had been wiped and it was impossible to find the article on the paper’s Web site, though it might still be there somewhere. Perhaps, he mused, "some editor finally looked at the piece and yanked it out of simple embarrassment."
Later Monday, I found the link to the original article on Google – and now the story had been removed from the site completely and was "not available."
yitbos
Didn't he serve with Ted Striker during the war ?
That was George Zip.
Ah, yes.
Which one made the lighter?
Astonishing how the “free press” caves to a bunch of acne-ridden geeks with dandruff-flecked glasses who get upset at any sign of criticism of their self-created world.
I thought it was the other Marx brother...Zippo!
They only let him on the set once—for the scene of Atlanta burning in Gone With The WInd...
E & P’s filled with a bunch of commies anyway. Let them and KOS slit each others throats.
Ted Striker: My orders came through. My squadron ships out tomorrow. We’re bombing the storage depots at Daiquiri at 1800 hours. We’re coming in from the north, below their radar.
Elaine Dickinson: When will you be back?
Ted Striker: I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.
The fact they put this on the front page instead of the opinion section gave the Kossacks an axe to grind. Poor judgement on the paper’s part.
My memories of Austin, Texas include the Austin American Statesman playing second fiddle to the U.T. freebie college paper. The A.A.S. was not taken seriously over 25 years ago. I can’t see how they might have improved things given the level of liberalism in that city and that profession.
My hometown paper, the St Petersburg Times, often publishes slanted liberal, opinion type pieces on the front page and even in the headlines. It makes me berserk.
We can have major news and you’ll see one of these garbage articles in the headlines. Especially poll stuff.
I don’t think anything but news belongs on the front page. But I don’t think the MSM understands what news is any more.
Just once I’d like to read a news piece where the FACTS are the important thing.
I also hate it when newspeople analyze a speech or such, but never tell you what the person really said. Most of the time they don’t capture what the speech is about at all, they just criticize the person (if he is a republican) or laud him if he is a democrat.
I remember once Bush gave this major war address. I went to CNN to see what they would show. I think they showed him saying half a sentence on a side, unrelated topic, and spent 5 minutes dissecting that piece of sentence. They never got to what he actually said at all.
Well, until conservatives start hitting back, nothing is undeserved.
marking.
The thugs are in charge right now.
Where do we go from here? It’s not pretty...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.