As a temporary solution, I am going to copy the content of posts to a Blogger Web site I created, called The Festering Swamp. Bookmark this address. If you have trouble getting to the primary site, go to the backup site. You'll still be able to comment, as I'll provide the Haloscan link.
Journalspace usually works very well, and for free we can't be too demanding. But the periodic outages are very inconvenient -- once Cathy's World was out for five days -- so we need a backup. Come to think of it, why just one backup? Others can do just what I did. Make sure to provide the Haloscan link for the current thread, and we're back in business.
Other than that, I'm going to write more later today about ABC's Jake Tapper's egregious misrepresentation of a Clinton comment on global warming.
Here is what Clinton said:
Everybody knows that global warming is real," Mr. Clinton said, giving a shout-out to Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize, "but we cannot solve it alone. And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.
I think that's pretty understandable. Clinton discusses one possible solution for global warming, cutting back economic growth, then dismisses it because the poor nations of the world will never go along with it. So "the only we we can do this", he says, is to "prove it is good economics." IOW, find ways to produce more jobs through environmental technologies.
Here's how Tapper described it:
In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?
I don't really think there's much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy….So was this a moment of candor?
I guess that for Tapper, "long and interesting" means "I didn't really understand it and am straining to get a headline".
Tapper's blatant misrepresentation earned him the scorn of hundreds of commenters on his own blog. A semiliterate followup post by Tapper failed to settle the matter.
Lots of you -- and the Clinton campaign -- argue that it's obvious that Bill Clinton was spelling out that last point, he was describing what would happen if there isn't a worldwide effort, that he was setting up a straw man, because this is a false argument.
I can certainly accept that's what he meant. I don't think it was clear. But I wasn't certain.
That's why I provided the video links, the full quote, and gave a number of options as to what he meant.
And again, I think the larger point -- bigger than me, bigger than one president's comment -- is what would it cost to take action against global warming?
Digby said it well:
Actually, the important issue here is that most journalists not only have a misunderstanding of the issues, but are perpetually convinced of their own brilliance despite all efforts to the contrary. Admitting that they're wrong is like exposing themselves to kryptonite. And so journalistic standards brush up against arrogance and intransigence. The funny thing is that, despite claims that they are objective purveyors of the facts, it's ALL personal when it comes to these guys. They'd rather peddle a lie than be seen as wrong.
As one commenter on Tapper's blog wrote,
It's easy Jack: statements that follow the word "maybe" are hypotheticals. Statements that follow the word "but" address the shortcomings of the previous statement.
It's called "English" and is usually considered a useful skill for a reporter in an English-language publication. ABC obviously feels otherwise.
Over at the National Review, Iain Murray weighed in -- defending Clinton.
Jonah, that video is actually (and again, I can't believe I'm saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton. The biter bit, you may say, but I don't believe this sort of manipulation by the media is in any way helpful. The clip is out of context. What Clinton actually said was:
And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada — the rich counties — would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that. But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren.
The bold section is what ABC chose to highlight in that video, plucked from the middle of words that have the opposite meaning. That's not good journalism in any sense.
How true. I used to think highly of Jake Tapper. My bad. Tapper is just another dimwit Roland Hedley type, pretending to have some profound insight and intelligence he doesn't have.
Journalists who persist in their delusions of inerrancy in the Internet age are not only making themselves fools before the world, they are bringing discredit onto the entire profession in the public's eyes. ABC is doing itself and journalism no favor by letting Tapper get away with his mealy-mouthed non-apologies.
UPDATE: Grist, an environmental journal, points out Tapper's evasive, dishonest attempt to retroactively restate what he said
Andy Revkin has a Dot Earth post today that reflects on Jake Tapper's hackery and, in my humble opinion, lets Tapper off way too easily. Look at this:
For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton's speech confusing and was posing questions more than offering criticisms. And his main point, he told me over the phone late last night, was to examine whether Mr. Clinton was portraying efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions as something that would blunt the economy. This is a point that other proponents of gas curbs have sometimes downplayed.
"I didn't think I was accusing him of anything other than candor," Mr. Tapper said.
That is rank bullshit, on its face. Tapper's updates did not "clarify" anything, they just replied to an entirely just accusation with catty snaring meant to make his Village buddies giggle. There was nothing confusing at all about Clinton's speech -- unless, like Tapper, you are so immersed in shallow Beltway conventional wisdom that someone saying something different is like a foreign language. And he wasn't "raising questions" -- he straightforwardly portrayed Clinton as saying the opposite of what he actually said. Tapper did not "accuse him of candor." Clinton was quite candidly saying that he thinks we can make money shifting to a green economy. Tapper is convinced that environmentalism means economic pain, because that's what his right-wing sources keep telling him, so he was convinced that that was what Clinton was secretly saying. But that just means that Tapper's a vapid dunce.
I don't know enough about Tapper's sources or motives to agree with Grist that his misstatement of Clinton's speech came from right-wing sources. But I don't have to do mind-reading to conclude that Tapper is indeed a "vapid dunce."
Indeed, Tapper's kind of glib stupidity seems to be popular among media political analysts. I wonder how that works. Did ABC give Tapper a lobotomy, so he could only. Write. And. Understand. Short. Sentences? Anything requiring the least subtlety of thought or reflection seems to short-circuit the synapses of political analysts, especially shouters like Chris Matthews.
As Don Henley sang:
"And when it's said and done they haven't told you a thing."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hugh "Cherrypicker" Hewitt seems not not care that he's blatantly misrepresenting facts in his role as a Mitt Romney shill. His latest distortion is to select one poll from a bunch and talking about a growing Romney lead in California's Super Tuesday primary.
Here's Hugh:
And here's what Hewitt's link reveals:
Click on the photo above to read the result more clearly. Even without doing so, you should be able to see that Hewitt based his comment about Romney increasing his "lead" on one poll out of five. This is getting close to Jake Tapper territory, Mr. Hewitt. You should think about the long-term damage cherry-picking the facts to give a misleading impression does to your reputation. And I say this as someone who admires your advice to newspapers.
Click this link to comment.
