Monday, June 20, 2011

My breakfast with the late Times editor Bill Keller

My breakfast with Bill Keller :

  If the 2012 election were held in the newsrooms of America and pitted Sarah Palin against Barack Obama, I doubt Palin would get 10 percent of the vote. However tempting the newsworthy havoc of a Palin presidency, I’m pretty sure most journalists would recoil in horror from the idea. [Keller]


My breakfast with Bill Keller

The name Bill Keller immediately generates in me two distinctly negative brainal pulses.
  1. Keller was until last week Executive Editor of The New York Times.
  2. Keller and New York Times publisher Putz Sulzberger were only recently the subject of this extraordinary debate: "Should they be executed for treason."  It was not hyperbole. [Disclosure:  I was in the firing squad group]
Regarding Keller's latest article [The Tom and Jerry Problem],  his "horror" declaration flashes in bright lights, "Dead End Ahead." Nevertheless —

 Mr. Keller:

The evidence of Palin’s scorn for what she calls the lamestream media is abundant, but I was struck by the gratuitous quality of one remark she tossed off during that Rolling Thunder rally in Washington the Sunday before Memorial Day. When an NPR reporter asked what had brought her to the event, she replied, “It is our vets who we owe our freedom — not the politician, not the reporter — it is our vets, so that’s why we’re here.”

Bill, what does that tell you?

Why, thank you for asking Rodge.

 "There’s a grain of truth and a loaf of myth  (in her obvious to me, though unstated by her, charge that ...)  "journalists are liberal elitists, that they find the Tea Party fringe ridiculous or alarming or that they are infatuated with the cerebral black liberal in the White House.

Bill, do you think there's room in these penumbra and emanations to allow for her animus being, as it is for most Americans,  because the "lamestream" are systemically corrupt; functioning as little more than cheerleader and enabler for the Democrat Party?  People who put leftist ideology before God and country?

Why thank you for asking Rodge, but no you silly goose.

Palin’s disdain goes beyond the bitterness of a public figure who has been burned by the press. Plenty of others have endured the pain of mainstream-media excoriation but have remained civil and responsive. What these politicians have in common, though, is enough confidence in the strength of their ideas to imagine that they can make a case through the press, if not actually to the press. Perhaps one key to Palin’s dislike of the news media is a streak of intellectual insecurity, or a trace of impostor syndrome. Her best defense against being found shallow is a strong offense.

Another factor, I think, is that the humiliations she has endured in the media have been unusually invasive — including, at the lowest point, speculation that Palin’s youngest son, Trig, was actually born to her daughter, Bristol, and borrowed as a campaign prop. That would bring out the grizzly in any mama. 

Bill, what's really behind this stream of bile and pus?

Rodge, "A few months ago I was startled to hear my 13-year-old daughter, who has a Hillary Clinton campaign sticker on her bedroom door, say she thought Palin was 'cool.'"

There there Bill.  My kids are smarter than me too. 


14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Politely, and with all due respect, do you honestly think that Sarah can any decent coverage by the MSM? Do you think a pile of donations, no matter how large, can counter the free emanations and penumbrations from the press, such as Keller?
They *know* that she is blah blah blah and will cut and paste each others statements to the front page of each and every paper they can, if only to be 'members' of the group that slagged her. I do not believe the depths to which they will go have been reached.
Would/will they do the same to someone else? Likely, but there will have been 4 years of exposure to their creepiness set in print and placed on America's table for everyone to see about Sarah, but maybe not so much for someone else.
OK no.mo.from.me.
tomw

Rodger the Real King of France said...

I reread the post, fearing I had focused on Sarah Palin, who is merely the foil in this drama, and not on the feckless media as intended. I don't think I did. Maybe I should substitute "Mr. X" for Palin?

Anonymous said...

Almost twenty-years ago now, way back before 911 and ubiquitous security, I was invited to meet with the editorial board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Immediately inside the front door of their downtown office, in a very small space only containing the front door and an elevator, I was confronted by two large negro gentlemen in security garb. One of them escorted me to the appropriate floor, where a very serious looking woman buzzed me through the bullet-proof glass doors, and then I was escorted through a maze to meet the grandees where they proceeded to gather evidence for their hit-piece.

I took away from this experience that these were some very cowardly males with plenty of reason to live in such fear.

Casca

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Well done Casca. Well done.

gadfly said...

From Contentions

Palin’s remark was a reference to Charles M. Province’s poem, “It is the Soldier,” which Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) recited during his 2004 keynote address at the Republican Convention:

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press. …

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

Rodger the Real King of France said...

you're talking over Keller's head gadfly

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Instapundit chips in with another on-topic tale of perfidy and water carrying by the NYT (Clarence Thomas).

Anonymous said...

Isn't Keller the same stupid sumbitch who wrote the headline "Dewey Wins" back in '48? I forget. All the commie rat-bastiges in the print medial look alike to me.

H the Comet

Anonymous said...

media not "medial". Sorry.

H

Anonymous said...

Keller comes off like he has the brains and vocabulary of William Buckley. Keller couldn't carry Buckley's piss. Are liberals aliens?
Buzz D

Gerry N. said...

Are liberals aliens?

Now that you mention it, yes, yes they are. And as such should be hunted down like the vermin they've proven themselves to be, winkled out of their filthy holes and "dealt with".

Anonymous said...

watermark looking picture again. Do you invert the color or something? just curious

-bfhogues

Rodger the Real King of France said...

No, I use Paint Shop Pro X-3 which has an auto-watermark feature.

LargeBill said...

Any Republican nominee, including Palin, has to be prepared to win without getting the support of the media. Bill Keller and people of his ilk are not going to vote for anyone worth a damn. We need to recognize that and deal with it. Use new media to go around the LSM. We need to talk to older relatives who get news from the View and make sure they understand the lies being told by the media. In 2008 I talked to an aunt who honestly believed Obama (most pro-abortion candidate ever) was pro-life. Regular media exists to misinform old people.

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