Wonkette
DOES OBAMA HATE OUR IMPORTANT NEWSPAPERS? “Last week, this president — a mere child in diapers when my generation was enjoying civil rights and the Beatles — hosted a press conference that was a vulgar deformation of the term. Instead of taking questions from the White House reporters from our most important newspapers, Obama led a rudderless free-for-all in which seemingly any miscreant who wandered in off the street could pose a question to the leader of the free world.” [AOL Political Machine]
Wow, Ken. That’s so meta it makes my head swim. If only you could get it published in WaPo!
But is it a crime syndicate? Cause that’s the best kind.
“The job cuts will mostly come from the production and online divisions, thank goodness..”
Posted at: AOL Political Machine, http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/03/28/does-barack-obama-hate-our-important-newspapers/
What an asshole. “The job cuts are only coming from the people who make it possible to read what i write, thank god.”
Kinkster: Huh?
Well duh, the White House press corps did such a great job exposing all the evil and stupidity in the Bush White House–THAT’S why Obama is afraid of them.
I tried to read that as if I were an average AOL reader, coming across this “Ken Layne” character for the first time, expecting a Serious News Analysis. It is not a pleasant experience, and Ken should probably be arrested for cruelty to retards.
What’s black and white and deep in red ink?
You never see that guy in the picture or Chuck Todd in the same room ever.
Bring on the retards!
Without print journalism, what will I use to clean my windows with?
When I worked in downtown Seattle, the PI was always in the bag I carried onto the bus. Just as well I moved.
I, for one, will mourn the Monitor but will be getting the weekly edition (what else will I take to the doctor’s office when all he has is golf mags in the waiting room) and as soon as it’s available, will be a subscriber to the email edition. That way, I can get a quick read of important shit. So informed, I can switch to wonkette without feeling like there’s something I’m missing.
So I guess I’m okay, all things considered.
But why the same old network guys? Hopey, give Chipper a rest, will you?
BTW–It’s always pissed me off that the same boring reporters are on shows like Washington Week. I’ve never understood why they don’t have a Monitor reporter. Or Ken, Sara or Jim. That would be good, too, but different.
Gallowglass: Never go full retard.
Ken, this one was a little too close to the bone. I read and read and read, and I kept telling myself it must be satire. When I saw the tagline, I smiled. I had come a little too close to going full retard.
Didn’t take long for the birthers to show up. They must refresh their google alert page every five seconds and attack every time ‘Obama’ shows up somewhere on the web. Truly only a great patriot would devote their life to this endeavor.
[Middle English miscreaunt, heretic, from Old French mescreant, present participle of mescroire, to disbelieve : mes-, wrongly, not; see mis-1 + croire, to believe (from Latin crdere; see kerd- in Indo-European roots).]
Bravo Ken, on the mark as usual. I say, these evil doers that you described, could they be called dodo heads, or doodoo heads as it were. Just a thought. My lexicon is not at par with yours, and I dare say my wit pales in comparison. But I do so enjoy your sage observations and that rapier pen. Well, I must go now, cooking you see, fabulous stuff.
Another glorious column from K-La.
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of Wonkette
hobospacejunkie: Christ on a stick - all this time I thought your name was HobospaceJUNGLE! (I use to hum it softly to myself while weeding in the garden). I suppose it makes more sense….
Damn AOL seems to be blocking my comments - must be somethin I said.
Anyway, we should outsource our local newspaper industry to India at 1/10th of the cost. Then everyone will be happy and will have shoved a lead pipe into the unions behind (hard).
Wow, first time I’ve seen a Paultard over there. Pompous, argumentative, completely missing the point — yeah, I’m calling Paultard:
Truth 5:52PM Mar 28th 2009
David Satterfield,
You opined: “Lois Romano’s sanctimonious questions were asinine and completely without substance.” Kind of like your comments, eh, Dave. Who are you, the mouthpiece of vacuity? Of course Layne, and everyone reading the blog understood that there are other media sources. You go on to labor your pedestrian point to death, repeating it with dull nuance, as if excessively proud of your mundanity. Why didn’t you mention that most liberals get their political news from comedy talk shows, genius? There is a much larger point to the blog than just the issue of one media, or another, surviving. Layne is making a serious and important point about Obama’s arrogant, dismissive attitude towards the media, and therefore, the right of citizens to know the TRUTH.”
Custerwolf: Shit! Me too! Good either way tho.
I used to work for a small town newspaper in CT that got bought up by a company by JRC which spent it’s time buying and squeezing revenue out of papers via layoffs and denying overtime to the horribly overworked remaining editors and reporters. Newspapers being a money making venture is the worse thing that that ever happened to them, because all these ‘media’ companies do not want to invest in doing a good job, just getting the monies from the ads.
The funny thing: when another reporter at the paper I loved was laid off, he placed a curse on the building, conducting a ritual involving sage and feathers. Five years later, the company is bankrupt and banned from trading on the exchange. The building is a parking lot.
The game to play with Ken’s AOL columns is all in the comments and it’s spot the comments that are genuinely from wingnuts and crazies rather than from Wonketeers pretending to be wingnuts and crazies. Another game is spot the fools (sometimes earnest fools) who don’t know the meaning of the word “parody”. It reminds me of the immortal lines from Blackadder:
Blackadder: You don’t know the meaning of “irony” do you.
Baldrick: Yes I do! It’s like “steely” or “wood” except it’s with iron instead of wood or steel.
grevillea:
Boy is his face going to be red.
chascates: Mystery solved. He changed his name. I can get used to it.
Aurelio: What will my cockatiel shit on?
Gallowglass: Good one, ‘bob’!
grevillea: Unfortunately, that one isn’t me. I posted it here but by the time I went to do it there, someone beat me to it. I’m the one suggesting that we should cut out the middle man and elect TELEPROMTERS.
The Nation has a good article on the life & death of newspapers this week:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090406/nichols_mcchesney?rel=hp_picks
They predict we’ll see more of ’shouters’ on TV. Yesterday I had to wait to pick up a friend at a Dr.’s office where they had Fox News on. I don’t have a TV so I’m a little out of touch but apparently the world really is coming to an end. Our government has a plan to control the thermostats in our home, the United Nations will control more of our economy, and Dana Perino has great insight into the affairs of the day. I didn’t have a hammer to throw into the screen but I wonder what studies of Fox viewers’ blood pressure would show.
chascates: Ha! I also don’t have a teevee (our last one broke and we can’t afford a new one or cable). After detoxing from MSNBC for a few months, I am amazed when I watch any of the pundit shows. They’re so freaking vile. And they assume that their audience is a stupid and vile as they are.
For some reason Lou Dobbs is always on when I work out at the gym. I watch it to keep my heart rate up. I just imagine I’m running towards him so I can give him a punch in his flabby orange jowls.
When I send a Sicilian message to my enemies, am I supposed to wrap the damn fish in electrons?
I started my career in newspapers and would still be there if it wasn’t such a lousy payday (I left the Fourth Estate in ‘90). Newspapers’ death have been predicted since USA Today came out (and before that, teevee), but I think it’s real this time. Anyone under 30 really has no tradition of sitting around in the morning with the paper. I think, at some point, the biggies (NYT, WaPo, et al.) are going to have to bite the bullet and start charing for content (nothing greedy, but about $25 a month) and work out a deal with blogs (Wonkette, etc.) how to bill for content that’s used to comment on. I still like the tactile experience of my newspaper, but I suspect in about 15 years, I’ll have to get over it.
As for who Hopey calls upon, good, mix it up. Leave Fox and CNN out next time. It’s not that big a deal since everyone is carrying it and, as we learned last week, they all just ask variations of the same question they’ve been working on in the press room. Obama might be better off to ask the networks for time to televise a news conference with the nation’s college newspaper editors or the Scholastic Kids Press Corps. This anachronism of Helen Thomas of UPI, Kent Brockman of AP and Sander Vanocuer of ABC all getting a shot is kinda ridiculous. I think Obama spent the last week or so letting the White House Press Corps know where they stood (no Gridiron appearance and skipping the NYT and WaPo in favor of the French and Stars and Stripes).
No offense, Ken, but I like the comments better than your articles. That level of crazy is magical (okay, & a little scary).
FYI, in just one hour Al Gore is going to turn off all of yr pwrz…
The major newspapers and TV news networks of the nation just returned from an eight year vacation, so it’s going to take them awhile to get back up to speed. The President’s just trying to help them ease in gently. We can’t have them taking the entire burden of investigative journalism off Seymour Hersh’s tired shoulders all at once, can we?
I’m so happy to see Ms. Romano of the Washington Post peek out from the shadow of Woodward and Bernstein to dive into this teleprompter scandal. A Pulitzer no doubt awaits the first reporter who can unmask Mr. Obama as the Manchurian Candidate. Considering the Commies were almost able to achieve their objective in the ’60s without anything so obvious as a telepromter, it seems curious to me that they would rely on such an unwieldy technology in the 21st Century. But who am I to criticize? I’m sure Ms. Romano has a strategy this reader is just unable to comprehend in these early days. Perhaps she will join forces with Glenn Beck to share the research burden. One would hate to split the awards and screenplay cash, but I’m sure Bob and Carl would attest that half a Watergate is better than none.
WadISay: Forget the fish: send death threats on Facebook. Apps that say “I’m going to kill you” will be a promising development for social networking sites everywhere.
Numbat Dundee: I’ve been trying, but I really can’t tell the difference. They are too well written.
Maybe I’ve gone full retard… OH NOES!
Sharif DelMonte: Amen!
If newspapers are the skeleton of democracy, what is Ann Coulter?
This gets said every week, but those AOL threads really are priceless. It makes me embarrassed to read it.
chascates: OT somewhat but it’s Saturday and I’ve got the flu so can’t go out. Thank you.Did you know what happened over at Mudflats with that dick filled demo pus hauler Mike Doogan in the name of great journalism and the noospaperz? They can stick a rolled newspaper up their combined asses for all I care. The server over there keeps going down from overload but maybe it’s lightening up cause of Power Off!! or what ever MarieDeGournay: Cool and very weird but then it’s CT and really anything at all can happen there.
Custerwolf: You were not mistaken. But since Lascaux Caveman has put details of my life together & reached inside my brain to expose me to myself, I only thought it wise & prudent that my name reflect who I am or were, depending upon your view of the space/time continuum and whether there can ever be a point in time truthfully described as ‘now.’
102415: I’m convinced every politician in Alaska is either corrupt or simply unhinged. Doogan seems to be the latter.
As much as I love seafood and the possibility of easy access to pot Alaska really seems to be in the 1880s.
shanemacgowan–FTW.
Apparently the press went after Reagan for relying on the TelePrompTer too. I guess it is just a cross that Great Communicators have to bear.
In that picture Ken looks like his own bodyguard.
Mr Blifil: I was thinking more of the Unabomber.
Scandalabra: Ha! I used to make jokes about Ronnie being an idiot because he had to use teleprompters. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that he was an idiot.
chascates: As far as I can tell, Alaska is the world’s largest free range lunatic bin.
I’d hit that!
Looks like the wingtards have another vaporous whitey tape (NYpost haha…yeah, good source!) . This time it’s Biden’s daughter doing some blow. Another shiney spoon the mongoloid republicans can play with for the next few months .
El Pinche: I’ve also noted several “Did Obama cheat on his wife’ sites/posts.
The deadenders are going to be a pain.
I don’t know why but I’m always stunned by how dumb some of Ken’s commenters are on AOL.
Satire just really escapes a whole fucking lot of people.
magic titty: Indeed. Ken has a special gift. But readers really don’t get it when reading SKS’s posts at nbcnewyork. I didn’t think it was possible to be dumber than the AOL folks, who are least leavened by snarkers trying to get their goat, but SKS really brings out the idiots in record numbers.
It’s sad that so many local, regional and alt papers are going to the wall, because these contain actual news reporters. Just as all politics is local, so is all news. All news is local news. Across the world, the big papers throw money at sooth-sayers and partisan evangelists who never found out a fact that wasn’t handed to them. Maybe it was ever thus; it’s still depressing.
I thought they were all Wonkette posters, until the guy remarked about the humor injected by Wonkateers.
Reading retarded wingnut comments is ruining my life. It’s like rubbernecking a three-car pileup on the highway. I can’t stop. So then I come to Wonkette to reaffirm my faith in humanity.
Needless to say my kids have no clean socks or underwear.
tootsieroll: CLEAN SOKS ARE THE DEVILS PLAYGROUND! When ZOG assumes control that’s the last thing you’ll worry about.
Transmission completed.
tootsieroll: when i crazily say Glenn Beck is god and the aol zombies seriously agree with me, it is time to break out of character, for the sake of humanity.
hobospacejunkie: Christ. That was depressing.
“Syndicated Columnist”? Red Star.
Next article, “Ukranian Athlete Almost Gives Birth to Doornob.”
Just for the money.
S.Luggo: Hail Bachmann is just a little incendiary, don’t you think?
I mean, there’s the edge. And then there’s the abyss.
El Pinche: The S.Lugo retort was meant for you. Cursed Jim Beam with Elmers Glue!
Next Obama video conference, Barry will call on, “Home and Garden”, “The Daily Worker”, and “The Sears catalogue.”
Politico and CNBC and Fox will not tire itself with analysis or thought, but will use cute finger puppets to ask questions.
chascates: its a little slow at the political machine. i just want to shake it up a bit at AOL,and turn it up the retard a notch or two.
I think these are my favorites:
“two of our nation’s finest newspapers, the New York Times and of course the Washington Post.”
“Was she a woman? Yes, but that is hardly an excuse to make a fool of someone, at least when they work for an important newspaper.”
Also, ditto on the find-the-painfully-sincere-poster game on the AOLs. I love when they enjoy K-La’s writing so much and gush over it, as do we, in a different way.
Layne, you are a cruel man – you can’t resist baiting wingnuts and gullible liberals. Your post always manages to bring a lot of wingnuts out of their bunkers.
P.S. who is “some hobo”?
hobochristsuperstar: Now is the winter of our discount tents…which we will need in the hobo jungles.
jagorev: “cruelty to retards”. In Texas that means a denial of the right to carry a loaded gun into a hospital ICU unit or an elementary school cafeteria amd will definitely lose you the Republican primary vote.
donner_froh: Well said, sir or madam as the case may be.
S.Luggo: I heard he decided only to call on “Cat Fancy”, “Muscle Car Magazine” and the South County Senior Center???
donner_froh:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made Larry Summers
by this sun of Dork.
[Referring to Timmy G.]
hobospacejunkie: “Didn’t take long for the birthers to show up.” Kim Deal objects.
And where the hell is shortsshortsshorts & Kevo-tron? These west-coasters are jes gettin’ lazy.
SSS is on vacation in the desert or something & Kevo has limited access to internet now that he’s unemployed. He drops in pretty regularly but is not able to be the 24/7 presence we have come to know & love.
THEIR COMING FOR YR NEWSPAPERS & YR AMEROS!!1
Ohmigod that was funny. Ken is great, but no fiction writer could invent some of the responses to the responses from people who thought the responses were serious!
He called on Stars and Stripes, which is the newspaper that that draft dodging Al Gore used to work for. Why does Barry Half-White hate global warming?
Totally off-topic, but I got this ad served to me here:
http://www.cyclonedairy.com/
I couldn’t figure out if it was real or snark given it was advertising on Wonkette.
One day, everyone is going to suddenly realize that there are no more wingnuts posting over at AOL, but rather a handful of Wonketteers goading each other into greater fits of satirical hyperbole and nutteritude.
(Conversely, there really ARE people that fucking stupid on the planet. Please God, no. Please.)
Today we will learn all about Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley.
“Was she a woman? Yes, but that is hardly an excuse to make a fool of someone, at least when they work for an important newspaper.” I can’t believe how stupid the commenters must be to not get the gist of the article. Then I remember it’s AOL and it all makes sense.
WadISay: You’ll need to wrap the pesci in a bunch of Kindles now, paisan.
Bruno: Yeah, it’s spooky good snark if it’s fake. The registrar is GoDaddy, which doesn’t prove it’s fake but hints at it being a web developers joke. There are some other hints from some bloggy sites that it’s too-clever-by-half agitprop from Food and Water Watch.
My favorite?
From the FAQ
Q: Are there any ethical issues with cloning?
A: No.
I remember when AOL used to be about the chat rooms, and not “journalism” or “political commentary.” You’ve changed, man.
I thought Ken was great in Gigli. No need for the sunglasses.
Is he going to be teaming up with K-Lo in anything soon?
Ken with the hot photo posts. [please adopt the goatee [please adopt the goatee [please adopt the goatee]] father son holy ghost ahumph]
Dreamer: I am the hobo in question.
Is Ashley Biden hot? Does she show her tits? This story is not getting the attention it deserves. Especially if it’s not true.
Truck Nuttes5:39PMMar 28th 2009
PETITION FOR YOU TO LOOK AT OBAMA’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/
LOOK AT IT IT’S OBAMA’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE
LOOKING AT IT IS FREE YOU ARE ONLY ASKED TO STFU
Anyone posting as Tuck Nuttes MUST be a real AOL common tater.
Amirite?
~
“Mr. Layne, I admire your way of writing.” NOW I AM GOING INTO FULL CAPS MODE BECAUSE I AM AN ANGRY WHITE MAN WITH A HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION WHO CANNOT RECOGNIZE IRONY IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM.
gurukalehuru: Everyone’s taste is different, but I’d say yes. Maybe she and Michael Phelps can go an a national Legalize Pot and Coke tour.
Warning!!
Some Lush Limballs Lubber is trying to use reverse-psychosis:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-klavan29-2009mar29,0,5456892.story
And this chuck writes for a living?
This tiny tome is so full of stereotypes attacking stereotypes. Jeebus.
tootsieroll: Double-blind I bet — they are all Wonketters playing at morAns…
After SayItWithWookies: Thanks for the link. After reading the article, I am convinced the whole thing is fake.
The New York post was offered video of the vice president’s daughter doing coke and they wouldn’t pay $400,000 for it? I’m guessing they wouldn’t pay because it was obviously not her, or not coke, or something that made it absolutely worthless, so they had an editor’s meeting and decided the only way they could run the story was WITHOUT the video.
But, yeah, I’d hit it.
Or as we used to say back in the day when the Beatles were new, What goes around comes around. The print establishment spent the past decade hyping Wall Street, real estate (granite countertops for everyone!), and $500/day spa vacations while pretty much giving the Bushies a pass as they destroyed a couple of countries and all our alliances. They even helpfully closed their foreign bureaus. Prez O could not be any more clear that ALL those days are over.
Favorite Cyclone Dairy quote…
Our Mission:
To provide a strong financial return to our investors.
April Fools!!
DemmeFatale: meyotch: Bruno: I checked around their website and found it noticeably absent in contact info (no phone numbers, addresses, email, etc.) And then after some googling I found this. Pretty funny though.
Thanks for being on top of the really big media news this week–The Blender closed. Truly depressing.
gurukalehuru: It was at least too blurry or unclear to determine if it was Ashley. Also, I doubt many Republicans would go out on a limb to denounce Biden’s daughter for using coke — after all the times they’ve been hit in the face with their own hypocrisy, cocaine use might just be where they draw the line — as it were.
Also, I’m terribly thrilled that perenially unemployed idiot Alberto Gonzales might be indicted in Spain for war crimes. Sorry for the trolling, but I’ve got sources, humor and creepy Photoshop, if that’s any consolation:
http://lostintarnation.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-awful-things-happen-to-terrible.html
hailripley: I know, right? I hooked up many many times on AOL in the early days. That’s where us geyz came up with “AOL inches”. Sad, really sad. ‘Scuse me while I go to Craigslist…
I think AOL’s Political Machine consists of a single dwarf hamster running in a wheel, connected to a small generator that powers a GUNSGUNSGUNS chatroom.
“A mere child in diapers…” A black child, at that, being raised by his WHITE GRANPARENTS, you tool! Some of us watched the civil rights movement, some of us were the civil rights movement. I hate these frickin’ people. You lost. Go away, and next time learn how to fill out a god damned voter registration card.
gurukalehuru: But, yeah, I’d hit it.
Hell yeah, she’s lovely, just like her mom. In fact, a person might very likely be asked “which one?” should they say “I’d hit it” after viewing the picture linked to by Mr. Wookies. And, respectfully, the answer would, of course, be both.
SayItWithWookies: Nice work. I won’t bother to tell this to the people I forwarded the link to, I’ll be curious to see the reactions. As long as they are paying their advertising bills and that $ is flowing to Wonkette, god bless them. The only other thing I can suggest is some cloned cow eco-racing kind of game.
So if the cows were cloned and Organic would that make it OK?
Here’s what I consider when reading the mind-vomit of a typical AOL commenter:
I have a distant older relative who started using AOL sometime in the early 90’s because AOL sent them a shiny disc in the mail that said something about “FREE.” No matter how many times I try to explain it, they still do not understand that the AOL GUI is not “the internet,” and are very very very very confused when I try to direct them off of the AOL interface, or try to explain what a web browser is. They also do things like: hit the computer on the side when “the email” is taking too long to send, like smacking an old TV set in order to get better reception.
Atheist Nun: Ha, ha! That reminds me of my father-in-law, (who thinks he’s “all that” tech-wise), putting a big-ass magnet on the side of his monitor, and then calling Bangalore (or wherever), to complain when it wasn’t working.
Thanks, Wooks! (Can I call you Wooks?)
hailripley: Many don’t know this, but K-La INVENTED the chat room in 1932. Of course, back then a “chat room” was a cardboard box which random people would defecate in.
Things haven’t changed much.
Atheist Nun:
Those are the type of imbeciles that receive my threats of physical violence if they send me one more chain letter.
DemmeFatale: Of course you can — it’s the internet, so I answer to anything this side of a**hole.
SayItWithWookies: Careful about protecting your true identity, do you really want to be “outed” by someone like the nice Mudflats lady, or followed by O’Reilly thugs?
By now, I’m sure you’ve probably got some teethless enemies out there. Just be glad you didn’t use your real address on that GOP improvement survey and Cheney still isn’t in power, or we would be sharing waterboards in G-Bay.
Atheist Nun: “That file you sent me won’t open”
“It’s a PDF, you can’t open it in Word, if that’s what you’re trying”
“Huh?”
“Do you have Acrobat Reader?”
“Huh?”
“OK, try this. Open the folder the file’s in, and double-click on its icon”
“So, I go File>Open…”
[hang up]
MGBYG: What a win that comments area is.
grevillea: This is my all-time favorite tech support transcript:
http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/archives/003467.html
No big whoop about newzpapers. Huffington Post is now doing investigative journalism. They already have their first scoop:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/29/huffington-post-launches-_0_n_180498.html
DemmeFatale: Servo: grevillea: lol… “no, you dumbfuck… it’s not a cup holder, it’s a CD drive.”
Atheist Nun: When I first started using PowerPoint in the classroom and letting the (college) students download the slides, I regularly got
“I can’t open that PowerPoint presentation you posted”
“OK, open PowerPoint on your computer, go to “open” and select the presentation”
“My computer doesn’t have PowerPoint”.
long silence. “Ya know, maybe you should think about that for a minute”.
hobochristsuperstar: great job! One of the very few comments that does not cause you to lose a brain cell.
I call shenanigans. Everyone knows Ken Layne is a nattily-dressed marmalade cat, not a bearded, bespectacled nerdweenie.
We need more curses on bad businesses, evil politicians,etc. I know too many Wiccans, etc., who say they COULD curse Bush et al., but are too moral to do so…. I say, what’s the point of being a witch if you can’t get money and sex or punish your enemies?
Zhu Bajie
“It’s sad that so many local, regional and alt papers are going to the wall, because these contain actual news reporters.”
When I lived in Oxford Oh, for all the ’80s, G-d help me, the local newspaper was so relentless about only printing happy news and sports, that a Hungarian friend nicknamed it “The Oxford Heroic People’s Popular Press”, because it so much resembled old-style Commie newspapers in Eastern Europe. Anything controversial (shouting matches at the zoning board meeting, etc.) was read only in the local shopping supplement, The Oxford Shopper, printed in the neighboring town.
The real news is what you hear at, eg, Ozzie’s Bar.
Zhu Bajie
Let me guess: nursing homes and American Legion halls with video poker get free AOL.