CBS IS FOX'S FAULT

The New Yorker's Ken Auletta blames Fox News for perceptions of bias across all media:

Then you've got Fox News, which is admittedly more partisan or perceived as more partisan, and so people then start to say, hey, wait a second, they're all partisan.

If only Fox had never existed. Then people wouldn't get these crazy ideas.

(Via Alan R.M. Jones)

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ANOTHER "SECRET" EXPOSED

Remember the secret Pentagon report that wasn't secret, wasn't prepared by the Pentagon, and didn't actually rise to the status of a "report", except in the minds of confused Guardian/Observer journalists? Former Clinton apologist turned Guardian columnist Sidney Blumenthal proves himself worthy of his new position:

In April 2004 the Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College produced a report on the metrics of the Rumsfeld doctrine: Toppling Saddam: Iraq and American Military Transformation. It concluded that the swift victory over Saddam was achieved by overwhelming technological superiority and Iraqi weakness, and therefore using operation Iraqi Freedom as "evidence" for Rumsfeld's "transformation proposals could be a mistake". The Pentagon has refused to release the study.

Refused to release? It's available right here (see third entry under Other Topics).

(by J.F. Beck)

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CASH FOR COMMENTS

Professor John Quiggin will donate one shiny dollar to tsunami aid for every comment received at this post. He's loaded, so head on over and comment away.

(Via Tim Train)

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FAIR WARNING

Quote of the week comes from Clint Eastwood:

"Michael Moore and I actually have a lot in common - we both appreciate living in a country where there's free expression," Eastwood told the star-dotted crowd attending the National Board of Review awards dinner at Tavern on the Green.

Then, the Republican-leaning actor/director advised the lefty filmmaker: "But, Michael, if you ever show up at my front door with a camera - I'll kill you." The audience erupted in laughter, and Eastwood grinned dangerously.

"I mean it," he added, provoking more guffaws.

UPDATE. Michael thanks all his fans following his People's Choice triumph:

Thanks again, and now let's get on with the serious work at hand -- winning more awards! Hahahaha. Just kidding.

Sure, Mike. Sure.

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CASH FOR COMMENT

Via Instapundit, a revelation from Zephyr Teachout:

In this past election, at least a few prominent bloggers were paid as consultants by candidates and groups they regularly blogged about ...

On Dean's campaign, we paid Markos and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.

While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime.

They should have paid Markos to shut up.

UPDATE. Full disclosure from Marko$:

For the record, I will not discuss my role within the Dean campaign, other than to say it's technical, not message or strategy. I will also not discuss any of my other clients, including their identities ...

[cough] Halliburton [cough]

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PLASTIC FRANKEN

Al Franken, a ferocious opponent of lying liars, tells a lie:

Last year, I was in the same hangar that Bush did his - who came with the Thanksgiving turkey, the plastic turkey ...

Franken, according to Dennis Glover, is part of the solution. Just so long as the problem doesn't involve anything so complex as working out if a roasted bird is real or not.

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NUMBER FEARED LOW

"I just can't comprehend this," writes Wes Roth. "An official report out of Indonesia puts the dead at 210,000 ... which ups the overall number to 272,000."

An official document posted here says that nearly 210,000 people in Indonesia are dead or missing from the Dec. 26 tsunami, a death toll that appears to be far higher than officials have reported publicly. Rescue workers think even that number may be low.

The larger Indonesia toll would bring the total of dead and missing from the tidal surge across the Indian Ocean to nearly 272,000, ranking the tsunami as the fifth or sixth deadliest natural disaster in about 250 years.

Hoping that those numbers are wrong won't make them so, but let's hope anyway. Wes speaks for many when he says: "I wish I could help more." Australians who wish to help personally are directed here.

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POTT SHOT

Crikey.com.au, Australia's primary supplier of internet-based inaccuracies since 2000, takes aim at Sunday Telegraph motoring editor Paul Pottinger. And misses.

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SIMPLE THINGS NOT ACCOMPLISHED

To paraphrase Jeffrey Barnard's editors, Mark Latham is unwell:

"The news about my health has not been good. I have been told to rest and not to work, advice I am trying to follow," Mr Latham said.

"Over the past fortnight I have tried to take a total break, do a few simple things with my family and make the best recovery possible."

Good for him. The mystery remains, however, as to why his staff (and party) also followed the advice of Latham's doctor. By resting and not working, they've allowed Latham's recovery to become a massively damaging story. All they needed to do post-tsunami was issue a simple press release expressing concern, and urging Labor voters to support aid-gathering charities; then Mighty Leader could have retreated to Terrigal and nursed his withered pancreas back to full strength. The Sydney Morning Herald's Mark Sawyer completely misses the point:

For pity's sake, the reasons for the latest furore are pitiful. Spotted he was, guv'nor, frolicking with his kids by the hotel pool when he said he was sick and when he should be saying - or scrawling out or signing - something to support the tsunami victims!

One could believe from the hubbub that some kind words from the Green Valley Kid would make all the difference. What tosh!

The issue isn't Magical Mark's ability to undo tsunamis; the issue is Labor's complete inability to manage elemental politics. Latham might be sick, but Labor is stupid.

UPDATE:

Far from soothing his party, Mark Latham's statement has fuelled anger and frustration across his front bench, throwing federal Labor into disarray.

After a week of waiting for Mr Latham to give an explanation of his illness and its prognosis, Labor MPs say the statement fails to resolve the two most vital issues: the real state of his health and his long-term leadership plans.

Exasperated by Mr Latham's failure to make a tsunami statement, many senior MPs were even more disillusioned by the absence of a detailed explanation of his health in yesterday's statement.

UPDATE II:

Tasmanian MP Dick Adams has criticised the Labor leadership's handling of the tsunami disaster and expressed concern about Mark Latham's ability to manage his illness while remaining leader.

The member for Lyons said Labor had "dropped the ball" in its response to the tsunami.

"Howard was a bit slow (to respond) and we should have said that we had a leadership role to play and that Australia needed to pledge a significant amount of money," Mr Adams said. "(Labor) should have set the bar and we didn't do that."

Mr Adams is a former Latham supporter who spectacularly fell out with the Opposition Leader over the party's election forest policy.

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SUBTERRANEAN SEWER CROCS

Former Latham, Crean, and Beazley speechwriter Dennis Glover - nice CV, pal - addresses media bias:

Open a major newspaper on any day of the week and you will find Labor has few friends in the world of print.

Oh, please ... if Mike Seccombe and Alan Ramsey were any friendlier to Latham, they'd be Robert Bosler. Feel the love in this news report of the ALP's doomed forests policy. And, when the chips are down, the ALP knows it can always rely on old Phillip Adams.

Contrast the assessments Mark Latham gets from the Left with the assessments John Howard gets from the Right. Right-wing commentators almost invariably defend the Coalition and slam Labor. Even former Labor ministers, staffers and national secretaries seem to spend as many of their precious column inches attacking Labor's present political strategy as they do attacking the conservatives.

Labor has a present political strategy? What is it?

This is perhaps inevitable and even desirable - one of the strong points of the intellectual Left is its independence of spirit, something we'd all be worse off without. It seems, though, that virtually no one will defend the modern Labor Party. In my opinion, as someone with a foot in both the intellectual and political camps, this is a seriously underestimated problem for both.

Beware the self-professed intellectual. Glover next blows a few hundred words on the failure of Leftist columnists to cheer loudly enough for Labor:

The contrast with the Right and its relationship with the Howard Government could not be starker. The Howard Government is far from ideologically consistent. Somewhere in Australia a right-wing intellectual sits bitterly disappointed at Howard's betrayal of conservative flagship ideas -- small government, low taxation, opposition to middle-class welfare -- it's just that she'll seldom say so.

Why would we feel betrayed? Howard's policies on tax, government size, and welfare have always been centrist; he promised no conservative paradise.

By holding their fire on Howard for his betrayals (but never his sleights -- he never offends his backers), they've let him get to the position where now, with a Senate majority, he can implement his real ideological agenda and make it sound like common sense. Perhaps the revolution is only just beginning.

This victory is partly because right-wing commentators have led public opinion. They've helped Howard mould the times.

Glover explains the devious means by which this victory has been achieved:

The process has been simple and open. Starting as pseudo-academic articles in Paddy MGuinness's Quadrant and the IPA Review, ideas travel down the intellectual food chain via broadsheet opinion columns, to the Melbourne Herald-Sun's Andrew Bolt and Sydney Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman and on to Sydney-based radio broadcasters Alan Jones, John Laws and others.

Like a brood of baby crocodiles flushed down a suburban toilet, these ideas have taken a subterranean journey through the sewers and emerged fully formed on main street, to devour the unwary. Listen to the punters from marginal electorates on talkback radio, read the reports of political focus groups, talk to your cab driver; they're all repeating the opinions, boiled down to a populist essence, of some right-wing intellectual.

Paddy and the IPA will be disappointed; despite their apparent massive influence, we still have high taxes and large government. Glover's brilliant plan to counter Australian conservatives will entertain US readers:

Liberal America has now started to counter-attack in a way that may promise eventual success. Although it did not get a John Kerry win this time, it will help create the preconditions of victories in the future.

Former Clinton chief of staff, John Podesta, has established a new organisation, the Centre for American Progress, that is neither think tank nor media outlet but an attempt to both create ideas and disseminate them via the popular media.

Other liberals have turned into successful populist commentators, publishing humorously written political books, such as Al Franken's Lies and the lying liars who tell them, that had a simple aim -- getting George W. Bush out of the White House.

Still others have become hosts on new liberal talkback radio networks. Mike Moore (who now sees the errors of his ways in helping undermine Al Gore in 2000) has used Hollywood to reach out to millions through his committed, but populist, documentaries and books. Sick of being part of the problem, American liberals are becoming part of the solution.

Dennis Glover, whose speeches have helped Labor lose four consecutive elections, thinks the monster FrankenMoore will fix everything. Some intellectual.

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