We all know that CNN has gone through a foxification, from the dumbing down of the audience through Wolf Blitzer to the transparently conservative Erin Burnett:
CBS was a little late to the
starting line, but the network has made
great strides in recent weeks:
"Morning Joe" was obviously another re-hashing of the old "Hannity & Colmes" format, with this partcular Colmes not even meriting her name in the title. And those photos at the commercial break? You know, the ones that attempt a creepy fusion of soft porn and Beatles album cover? They don't make up for the fact, Mika, that a slight turn of the head or a somewhat quizzical expression doesn't fully substitute for a sharp rebuttal when Joe Scarborough says something stupid or false.
[NOTE: By far my greatest opprobrium is reserved for the Scarboroughs, the Limbaughs and the Hannitys of this world, as well as their producers and directors. I would NEVER watch them. But here's the final straw that has turned me off of the rest of the MSNBC AM lineup.]
Yesterday morning, "Jansing and Co." ran this chyron throughout a ten-minute-plus segment about the recent Iranian nuclear deal:
Fuck you. There are some things so patently obvious that you don't need false equivalency bullshit like that mucking up the discussion. "Breakthrough or Mistake"? Furthermore, that's a
logical fallacy that's so fucking basic it has earned about a dozen different names over the years, including a "false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, black-and/or-white thinking, the either-or fallacy, the fallacy of false choice, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses, the fallacy of the false alternative or the fallacy of the excluded middle)." Here's another logical fallacy that might fit well on your show:
Here's why I found the show to be so fucking deplorable: Daily Inspections. Iran has consented to daily inspections of their nuclear facilities. To put that in some perspective, consider that you are a grown person, perhaps even a reporter for a national cable network, and your mother thinks you are getting too thin so she's going to watch you eat every meal, every day for the next six months. No, wait, that's not good enough. Let's say your neighbor thinks ... no that's still not good enough. Let's say somebody across town who you have despised for years--maybe they ran over your dog or cat or something--has forcefully demanded that they watch you eat each meal for the next six months. Iran has agreed to this.
Secondly, there's this: The Reduction of Weapons-Grade Uranium. So that you'll understand, I'll continue with the earlier analogy here. That person you dislike so much? That person also gets to take some of your stuff while he or she is sitting at the table watching you eat for the next six months. And not just Hummel figurines, but important stuff like photo albums and scrapbooks. You know, shit that can be replaced but it would take some time and piss you off.
Thirdly, the agreement provides for this: No Further Work on Creating 20% Uranium. That neighbor? He or she is going to watch you eat for six months, take your important stuff, and you cannot replace any of it.
Fourthly, we got this: "The F'n Give-aways." Does six or seven billion dollars in aid measure up as any kind of serious "give-away"? The Tea Party GOP cost Americans much more with just a sixteen-day partial government shutdown. Perhaps the producers at MSNBC didn't know that Iran's population is much more than that of Colorado, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, North Dakota, District of Columbia, Vermont, Wyoming, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Hawai'i, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota and Alaska combined, or that it was the eighteenth-largest country in the world by land mass or had a GDP of nearly a trillion dollars in 2012? I laugh at your six or seven billion dollars.
Finally, this: The Fucking Alternative. All the rest of that stuff above is bad enough, but this really establishes, prima facie, that what you did with your "Breakthrough or Mistake" fallacy was fucking batshit crazy. The alternative to this interim agreement is to let Iran continue developing nuclear weapons capability and hope that the Israeli or American limited nuclear airstrike actually takes out the bombs Iran has created or those bombs will be coming back at us. Moreover, if you say that continuing the sanctions or even making them harsher is an appropriate alternative, I have only this to say to you: The Battle of Fucking Britain and the fucking fire-bombing of Germany.
The British during World War II faced not just economic deprivations but also actual planes bombing their cities every night and actual u-boats sinking their cargo ships every day. The Germans faced even greater deprivations, with encircling allied armies cutting off all trade and 1,000-plane sorties fire-bombing their cities and industries to the ground. Did that stop either of those two countries? And six to seven billion dollars will? J.P. Morgan profited eighteen billion dollars in 2012. Not a country, a company.