As of today, the Chicago Tribune has agreed to include my blogging among its growing network of Chicago area bloggers. It will be Publius Forum on ChicagoNow.com!
I know, I know, here I beat up on the Old Media nearly every day yet here is one of the nation’s biggest newspapers is adding me to its online news community!
Hilarious, I think!
So, look for Warner Todd Huston (that’s ME folks) on the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow.com network.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Here is one of the sneaky tricks that the Old Media plays in order to support a cause. In this case it’s the Associated Press coming to the aid of Obamacare with “news” that a “Catholic” hospital group is coming out in support of Obamacare. Of course, the AP does not inform the reader that this purported Catholic group is not associated with the Church and is not authorized to speak for Catholics but it conflates this “Catholic” group with Catholics as if they do anyway.
With a headline that screams, “Catholic Hospitals Support Health Care Bill,” the AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports that the Catholic Health Association has come out in support of Obamacare despite the federal funding of abortion.
Naturally this report of Catholics in support of Obamacare is meant to fool readers into thinking that the Catholic Church itself, or some important segment of Catholics, are in support of Obamacare. If all you read is the headline and the first two paragraphs you might come away thinking that “Catholic Hospitals” support Obamacare.
Later in the story, after the lede, Alonso-Zaldivar does delve into some of the controversy amongst Catholics concerning the federal funding for abortion in Obamacare and states that the Church itself is still not supporting Obama’s takeover of our healthcare — this is good — but Alonso-Zaldivar never does fully explain that the group he is discussing is NOT a real “Catholic” organization.
You see, the Catholic Health Association is a for profit company that works for some Catholic hospitals as a sort of trade association. It isn’t part of the Church nor does it represent any official group of religious Catholics, nor does it serve as a source of Catholic teachings.
The truth is that CHA chief Carol Keehan is paid around $800,000 a year to advocate for this trade association, not the Catholic Church. She is not an altruist like nearly every other member of the actual Church that serves in an official capacity.
Kehan’s interest is to make money not to serve the Catholic Church and its doctrine. Naturally, Alonso-Zaldivar doesn’t inform his readers of any of this, leading the reader to assume that the CHA represents Catholics.
So, readers are left thinking that “Catholic hospitals” are in support of Obamacare yet are never informed of the capacity in which this Catholic hospital group serves Catholics… or rather doesn’t serve Catholics. And why is this so important right now? We all know that this coming week will find Obamacare facing a crucial and perhaps final push. This report is meant to help Obamacare pass. Plain and simple.
-By Warner Todd Huston
What is it that the left and the Old Media said about the Tea Party movement? Didn’t they say it was not really filled with regular folks and didn’t they say it was not really a grass roots level effort because some nefarious “top-down” Republican groups were secretly behind the whole thing? That’s what Paul Krugman said in The New York Times. So did Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — after someone taught her was “astroturf” even was, that is. In fact, the whole left-wing Old Media establishment attacked the tea party movement as some fake, manufactured thing and claimed that it wasn’t peopled by regular folks like you and me. All you need do is put “astroturf” and “tea party” in a search engine and you’ll get thousands of hits revealing the left’s unhinged response to the tea parties.
So, since they seem to want us to believe that they hate “astroturf,” will the left-wing press get all upset that this “coffee party” effort really IS Astroturf? Will the Old Media explode in calls of “astroturf” as it did during the early phases of the tea party movement? Or will they pretend that this coffee party business is real grass roots and report on the effort based on that false assumption. Already it seems as though the coffee party effort is not meeting any real scrutiny and I just got an email that proves the essential “top-down” style upon which this effort is built.
Of course, we know the charge that the tea party movement is astroturf is untrue. While groups like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and a few others did rush to add their voices to the tea party events held all across the country last year (and continue to today) they neither originated the movement, nor did they invent the scope of events, nor did they control the message in any way. In fact they had to scramble to have any part in it at all. Even the big group’s efforts were ad hoc early on.
I know this because I was there in Chicago as the whole thing began and I saw when, where and how the larger national organizations arrived on the scene and it was later not earlier that it happened. I have, for instance, known Eric Odom, one of the early organizers of a large Chicago tea party event, since 2006. I watched as he staged the first big Chicago tea party and helped him build the effort in my own small way. (Odom now runs American Liberty Alliance.) I also have ties to AFP and Americans for Tax Reform and others and watched as they all began to line up behind the tea party movement. The big groups were late comers, for sure.
But all that aside, we can also discount this “astroturf” accusation by looking at the tea party groups today. Even still, there is no national tea party group and the various local tea parties are not united as one. Each group across the land is autonomous and operate at various levels of effectiveness and organization. Some are deeply involved in their local politics, others are barely hanging together as a web-based communication tool.
Now comes this coffee party USA group claiming to be non-partisan. Frank Ross of BigGovernment.com did a great job proving that the creator of this “coffee party” business was really a big Obama operative. No thanks to the Old Media we quickly found out that Annabel Park, the coffee party originator, is an Obama operative and works for The New York Times as a “strategy analyst.” So, it was created by an Obama operative and member of the Old Media, but this was conveniently absent from early reporting on the coffee party phenomenon.
And now comes the first nationwide effort of this coffee party thingamajig and, surprise, surprise, it is also run by perpetual out-of-towners. Here in Chicago the coffee party is not being run by anyone here meaning it is being floated by outsiders, astroturfers, not grass roots locals like the tea party groups are.
Today I received this email alerting me to a “coffee party” kick-off event being held in Chicago where a local Chicagoan that stumbled upon the thing even admits openly that it isn’t being run by anyone local. In his personal email meant to drum up local support for this astroturf effort, the emailer (whose name I will not release) says, “Clearly, this organization is not led by someone from Chicago.” Why? Because the first event was planned to be held during the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade one of City’s biggest local party days. As the emailer scoffs, “Otherwise they would know that we’d all be at a huge parade on this day and instead of drinking coffee we’d be drinking green beer.”
As the emailer says, it is plain that no one from Chicago is actually part of this faux grass roots “coffee party” business or they’d have chosen a different day to try to kick-off their thingamajig. Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of the biggest city wide party days of the year and no one will be much interested in politics that day, for sure!
In all, this is a classic example of outsiders, a perfect example of astroturf. Will the Old Media take notice?
Text of the email:
From: XXX XXX
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 01:43 PM
To: ‘XXX XXX’
Subject: Coffee Party USA Kick-Off – Saturday, March 13Friends and Colleagues (some of you may receive this email twice – my apologies),
I hope you all can join me at the Coffee Party USA kick-off on Saturday, March 13 at Charmers Cafe, 1500 W. Jarvis in Rogers Park – 10:30 AM. Clearly, this organization is not led by someone from Chicago. Otherwise they would know that we’d all be at a huge parade on this day and instead of drinking coffee we’d be drinking green beer.
So, let’s compromise… after a cup of coffee and civil dialogue on the important political issues in our communities we will go next door for one of those beers at the Poitin Stil – a quaint Irish Bar.
If you can’t make the coffee party at Charmers Cafe, join us for beers at xxxxxxxx.(ed: I excise this bit so as to not help them advertise their coffee party event)
The Mission of Coffee Party USA is to give voice to Americans who want cooperation in government and bring civility and open discussion to the national political debates that are dividing our communities and our country.
I have attached the press release and poster for this event. Below is an excerpt from the press release:
The Coffee Party movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government, and welcomes everyone to the table. “We are purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization. That is our strength and we plan to use it to facilitate a collaborative process that would encourage people to come together as a community, checking party affiliation at the door,” said Annabel Park, the founder of Coffee Party USA.
Call if you have questions:
(xxx) xxx.xxx
Yep, classic astroturf.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Race hustlers, hate peddlers and “critics” strike again with their wolf-crying about raaaacism. This time it’s that eeevil Walmart (again) that is raaaacist because one of its stores marked down the black Barbie doll to $3.00 while the white Barbie doll was still being sold at $5.95. See? It’s raaaacist!
ABC claims it found some “critics” that charge Walmart for not being “sensitive” in its pricing strategies. For its part Walmart says that the store in question was trying to thin out inventory for the upcoming Spring restocking.
But… can’t you see that it’s raaaacist, asks ABC and its carefully sought out “critics”? Here is the race hustler and agitation pimp that ABC dredged up to point fingers at that eeeevil raaaacist Walmart.
“The implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll,” said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.
But, wait? I thought all blacks were “underprivileged” and “underserved” and “poor” in this nation? Shouldn’t we be celebrating the fact that the eeevil Walmart lowered its prices on the black Barbie doll?
Why, Walmart should be given the Al Sharpton medal of freedom award for helping the black community to be able to afford their own Barbie doll…. shouldn’t it?
Race hustler and loud mouth Dye went on… “While it’s clear that’s not what was intended, sometimes these things have collateral damage.”
No, no they don’t, Mz Dye. Unless, of course, you whip up your race hating agenda to purposefully misrepresent this situation and not unless you purposefully make it into something that it isn’t. This was no move by Walmart to “devalue” black people, it was no effort to make less of America’s black population. It was just an effort to move some inventory. That is all.
It only goes to show that these baiters, haters and prattlers can’t be pleased. Mattel doesn’t have a black Barbie doll? Whip up the race-baiting machine to force Mattel to make one. Walmart isn’t yet offering the black Barbie doll? Whip up the race-baiting machine to force Walmart to carry the toy. Walmart charges too much to the poor, poor “minority” community? Whip up the race-baiting machine to make them lower prices. Walmart lowers the price? Whip up the race-baiting machine because Walmart is now “saying” that blacks aren’t worth as much as whites.
ABC should be ashamed of itself for passing this whining off as a serious story.
Now, is there racism in the world? Undoubtedly. Is it the problem in America it once was? Not even close. Stories like this, however, evoke precisely the sort of derisive mocking that I just delivered to it. Unfortunately, it also makes real instances of racism seem silly and easily dismissible when they are lumped in with such foolishness as this ABC report.
The fact of the matter is, that when everything is raaaacism, nothing is. When we distract everyone with constant wolf-crying about raaaacism, no one will be paying attention when there is a real incident of it. And race baiters and hate peddlers like ABC and Thelma Dye are guilty of making light of real racism in America today. If these folks wanted to really address racism they’d do so in a serious manner. But, you see, race hustlers like this don’t want to do away with racism. They want it ginned up forever. After all, if racism didn’t exist we wouldn’t need charlatans such as Thelma Dye, Al $harpton, and Je$$e Jack$on. To folks like these, losing their cushy jobs and great community power is a fate worse than a world without racism.
-By Warner Todd Huston
For the Chicago Sun-Times, columnist Laura Washington laments the degraded state of American newspapers. She says that “hard news” has been replaced by “fluff and titillating trash.” Washington also cries that real news is an “endangered species.” But if newspaper writing has been laid low, Laura Washington’s column is an example of that wretched state as opposed to an example of the opposite as this is one of the messiest columns I’ve seen in a while. And naturally it’s all because of raaaacism according to Washington.
Washington starts her piece scolding the news media for missing the Scott Lee Cohen story. Cohen, the winning Democrat Lt. Gov. candidate, had a strange history of violence and prostitution that no media operative seemed to ferret out before Illinois Democrats nominated him in February’s primary. Washington also laments all the many job cuts in the media landscape.
Worse, according to Washington, is that the reporters that are left are “being diverted to cover meaningless fluff and titillating trash.”
From there Washington segues into a finger wagging at the Chicago big media missteps that saw convicted felons Larry Mendet and James Laski hired for the Chicago media market and the shocking discovery that “highly touted” reporter Gerald Posner had to resign over his wide-spread plagiarism.
So why is all this happening? Strangely, Washington ascribes it to a lack of “diversity” in the media.
Media diversity has always been a challenge, but now we’re going backward, the annual study of newsroom hiring by the American Society of Newspaper Editors shows. The percentage of journalists of color in the nation’s newsrooms dropped slightly, from 13.5 percent in 2007 to 13.4 percent in 2008, according to the most recent available data. There was a “net decline” in black journalists over the previous decade.
Then to finish up her mishmash of a column Washington attacks the left-wing TV media for only at the last second maneuvering “a few black faces onto the set of ‘Meet the Press’” to avoid looking like they aren’t hiring enough “journalists of color” for their shows.
Wow, that’s all such a head spinning reach, isn’t it? Washington goes from scolding the media for losing focus on the “real news,” to dismay that so many good “journalists” have lost their jobs, to disgust that the Old Media has hired convicts as on-air talent, to it all going wrong because not enough “journalists of color” have been hired.
Is Washington seriously suggesting that a few more “journalists of color” will cure all the other ills that has befallen the Old Media? Really?
How this offhanded steam of consciousness can be called a column is anyone’s guess. Although, it does go a long way to explain why news papers aren’t selling any more, doesn’t it?
Fortunately, Chicago’s media reporter Robert Feder reported last week that Ms. Washington has taken a new role as president of the Woods Fund of Chicago. Let us hope that her new duties keeps her too busy to accost us further with such badly written columns.
