This morning I was privileged to be woken up to Morning Joe at 4:20 in the AM. I was in the middle of a dream where I was on the set of Meet the Press and about to be interviewed. The birther topic was on the table, and boy was I nervous. But I had a pretty good idea what I was going to talk about. Anyway, I awoke to see the inspiration of that dream, and it was Morning Joe discussing the birth certificate issue. They had Bob Woodward on, and he claimed that the birther issue was manufactured outrage by the media.
Mika couldn't understand this. "The President had a press conference" she said. And Woodward fired back, with something like, "he has a press conference every day, and it's not covered like this." Well that ended that argument.
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During my dream, despite wondering how I got thrown into the fire without any media training, I was planning on discussing the larger problem with this birther shtick. Yes it was racist, yes it was distracting, but it was also part of a trend. It's a manufactured problem, whereby someone the Republicans hate has to show their identification to solve a problem that doesn't exist. They tried this in Arizona with SB 1070. They wanted to force dark skinned people to show their papers at every opportunity they could. And the reason they wanted that identification wasn't the one given, fear of undocumented immigrants. The law was pushed through by the for profit prison industry in Arizona. What happens is if they detain an undocumented immigrant in the state, they can put him in their private prison until the federal government is ready to deal with them. And they get paid a fat check from the feds in the meantime.
Another example is the rash of voter ID laws that are passing through Republican controlled states across the nation. They say the problem is voter fraud, yet they can't produce any significant evidence of this fraud. The real plan is to disenfranchise young and poor voters, and Democratic activists that register voters. Here's more from a great article over at the Daily Kos
This is just part of what they're doing in Florida
# Voter-registration groups would have to register all their volunteers and paid staff with the state’s Division of Supervisors of Elections, which would then create a database. What's the purpose of the database? NO ONE KNOWS. But in a state where they don't want to make a pill-mill database because it violates the privacy of drug dealers have no trouble with a database that records information of people who just want to help others vote.
# Restrict the ability of news media and bloggers to take video or audio of voters at polling places. Nice. This is a little gift to those vote-cagers we talked about.
# Volunteers have to turn in registration forms within 48 hours, are face fines and possible criminal penalties.
Another solution for a problem that doesn't exist. These Republican legislators are pulling a lot of anti-democratic bullshit, and proving they don't really care about the Constitution like they profess. It's all about winning and it reminds me of the steroid era in baseball. Republicans are juicing up, will anyone stop their crap BEFORE they start to cause serious trouble?
Crossposted from the Progressive Electorate where all your crossposts are welcome and greatly appreciated.
UPDATE: Here's a transcript of the exchange. I totally forgot that Woodward called Trump the new Joe McCarthy. Thanks to Nashville fan for putting this together!
Joe: I'm just curious, you know Washington better than anyone, why did the President feel the need to release anything to a group of conspiracy theorists?
Bob Woodward: Well, because it's not just the conspiracy theorists unfortunately, there are all kinds of people who have these suspicions. I've looked at this a little bit, there's no evidence at all that he was born in someplace else. All the evidence, long form, short form, median form, what was in the newspapers, what people say, what the history of this is - he was born in Hawaii, and what happened is Donald Trump came on the scene and raised this and, you know, let's call things as they are, Donald Trump I think was I think or maybe still is aspiring to be the new Joe McCarthy.
No evidence, but you make an assertion and you look at these things Trump said, "Oh people are looking into this are really surprised and shocked", people interviewing him at that moment should have said " What's your evidence?"
Trump has no evidence, and when you have no evidence, you have nothing and the discussion of the subject should, uh, should end. I fault our business to a certain extent magnifying this.
Look, if there's any evidence, if there's a shred of doubt, where there's a piece of paper or a witness, then examine it, but people running or about to run for political office like Trump making assertions like this, presenting not one, not one factoid, not anything should just be kind of say "Okay come on back when you've got something". Trump,is gonna get the new name "tailgunner", I think that's what they called Joe McCarthy.
And so when Obama said "My God this seeping into the conversation, I'm gonna try to present more evidence" . . . you know whether he's gonna convince people or not I don't know, but the news media has kinda gotta get a handle on itself on this. My old partner Carl Bernstein calls this "manufactured controversy", and that's exactly what it is.
Mika: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Now I'm all about calling something for what it is, manufactured controversy, fake news, but the President held a press conference, I mean, are you kidding me? Was that a smart move?
Joe: I was gonna say Bob, I think this was in a great sense manufactured controversy , manufactured for prime time cable, and I guess that's why I am so surprised that the President engaged in this.
Mika: And I'm just not sure the media's the one that needs to get a handle on this. I'm serious.
Joe: They'll never be happy will they? Whoever didn't believe the President wasn't born in America will never be happy, they'll just come up with a new conspiracy theory won't they?
Bob Woodward: Look, you follow President Obama, he has press conferences, he makes statements every day almost, . . . it's not covered with this intensity.
This is the news media. You know it has a kind of "Oh there's this side and that side, it's a controversy", we agree manufactured, you know, I think, you know, we've all lived in the world we now cover and anybody can say anything about anybody and he saw this seeping into the polls . . . I kind of feel sorry for him quite frankly. . .
Mika: Bob, but Bob you said he has press conferences all the time, is it the media's fault for covering the press conferences for choosing this one over others? I don't understand what you're saying.
Bob Woodward: No, what I'm saying is cover it and the headline is "There is no evidence that he was born elsewhere". When you have a situation when all the evidence is on one side and there is zero evidence on the other side, what's the controversy? What's the big deal?
Yeah, you could deal with it, people have dealt with it, I think it's one of these things that gets raised in the political arena, people jump on it in the media, oh my God, Donald Trump is saying this or that, you have to be able to sift and deal with facts, and unfortunately, we're not doing enough of that.