Tag: Scandal

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Politics

Yet Another Politico Posing for Pictures

Courtesy of the New York Daily News ( @DNDailyPolitics ), we have yet another Democratic politician posing for dirty pictures with some chick he met on the Internet:

Here We Go Again: Anthony Weiner Redux | New York Daily News.

At least two of the photos showed the Cumberland County freeholder’s crotch, two showed him dressed to the nines in a suit, and a fifth showed him waist up without a shirt.

One wonders: what if NRA officials were as careless with their stock-in-trade as politicians seem to be with theirs? Because when you get right down to it, what else does a politician have to rely on once their face is tarnished in this way?

Categories
Journalism Media Politics

The @WSJ Editorializes #Hacking Scandal: We’re Still Pretty Awesome

Color me a cynical bastard, but really: how much more can you possibly muddy the water in a single editorial piece? Hell, in the first three paragraphs of an editorial piece:

Review & Outlook: News and Its Critics – WSJ.com.

To recap: that News Corp got caught in a major scandal that has caused the shuttering of a newspaper, the resignation and arrest of a director of said paper, the resignation of the CEO of the Wall Street Journal and the resignation of a Scotland Yard chief is evidence of a potential assault on journalism. We’re all in this together.

Also, the fact that Scotland Yard didn’t act on the unethical and illegal actions of our journalist brothers in arms (remember: we’re all in this together) is more troubling than our lack of ethics. Because we cannot help being craven, we need law enforcement to step in.

And oh, yeah: politicians need media coverage, so the media should be given a free pass when they hack the phone of a dead teenager. That part seems obvious. Even more obvious: hacking phones of terrorist attack victims is pretty much equal to a biased editorial slant in the Guardian’s reporting. Wait. Did I say “pretty much?” No. Totally. Equal.

The rest of the article is a lot of blah-blah-blah about how awesome the WSJ is and their CEO is just the tops, despite having resigned over a scandal which has to date only affected British papers. Methinks the next week is going to be full of fun WSJ news….

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Uncategorized

The Appearance of Impropriety

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzDEbVFcg8[/youtube]

By the way, check out Andrea Mitchell’s hair.  Whoo.  And it’s funny that she reported on this story and now acts like she doesn’t even remember it.  And let me direct you to my post of a few days ago.  Watching this video, keep in mind that the only thing John McCain wanted to fix was what got him into trouble, not the basic dirty dealing of the scandal.  And also keep in mind that, despite having self-flaggelated on the lobbyists and campaign money front for the public’s amusement, he’s still got active lobbyists in his campaign.

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McCain’s Narcissistic Reform Initiative

Talking Points Memo has both the video and the quote of Jonathan Alter critiquing John McCain’s reaction to the Keating Five scandal.  I’d like to amplify his comments slightly, if I could.  First, the quote:

Talking Points Memo

[Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it’s crazy but there’s been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he’s getting a hard time, he’s really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing – nothing – to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget.

To put this another way, John McCain’s signature reform initiative was entirely narcissistic and self-flagellating.  The largest scandal in our nation’s financial history since the Great Depression, now dwarfed by our current crisis, meant nothing to his sense of reform.  He made no attempts whatsoever to reform the financial system that was at the root of the problem – indeed, he spent the rest of his time in Washington actively working against regulations that might have prevented our current crisis.  Rather, the important take-away from his experience with Keating and lobbyists was that getting involved with lobbyists might get you into trouble.