Friday, September 27, 2013

Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the "pathetic" American media

Pulitzer Prize winner explains how to fix journalism, saying press should 'fire 90% of editors and promote ones you can't control'

Pulitzer Prize, right off so there you have it, everything that follows is to be weighted with that singular weighty fact. Let's continue and try not to hold this weighty appeal to authority against him. But I wish the author hadn't done that.

Holds extreme ideas on how to fix journalism. Close news bureaus of NBC ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing, return to fundamentals of journalists, that is, being outsider.

I'm starting to like this guy, Seymour Hersh, but that does not sound so extreme.

Nemesis is of U.S. presidents, and there is a link if you care to.

Nemesis is an inescapable agent of one's downfall. They just said Hersh felled down presidents. That might be worth reading. They continue, Hersh was once described by Republican party (no name given) as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist." 

Now I'm really starting to like this guy Hersh.

Don't even get him started on the NYT which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would -- or the death of Osama bin Laden. "nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic USNavy Seals raid in 2011.

He wrote a book about it. Wanna know what in it? Okay, goes like this, at length at theguardian.

He says Osama was not buried immediately at sea, he was already dead for two years, the raid was a sham and everybody there swears,to Allah presumably, they never saw Osama or anything remote to that at the Abottabad compound that was raided. Besides, it  was Costellobad. 

39 comments:

chickelit said...

Chip, that last pun was abottabad as it gets.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

He's right about the media.

chickelit said...

The beltway media circle jerk bought, threatened or silenced Bob Woodward. I wonder what they'll think of for Hersh.

YoungHegelian said...

Hersh's critique is another example of the "wingnut coalition" at work.

Both the political "extremes" (and I quote that because most of the American right & left are not all that righty or lefty by world standards) have really lost patience with the mushy middle.

The cardinal virtue of the moderate middle ruling class is pragmatism, i.e. "we get things done". There have been so many egregious & ongoing failures by the ruling classes that no one believes in their expertise any more. Combine that with the ruling classes' faith that their positions are based on their unalloyed merits, and you have a powder keg waiting to go off.

Getting told by someone who truly is brilliant that he shits chocolate mousse is bad enough; getting told that by a pompous & incompetent twit is grounds for a revolution.

bagoh20 said...

I shit more of a mocha mousse, and it's fantastic.

YoungHegelian said...

@bagoh20,

I shit more of a mocha mousse, and it's fantastic.

Wait, did I accidentally cross-post to yet another Get Well, Trooper York thread!?

chickelit said...

You shat a mousse, bago?

bagoh20 said...

"He says Osama was not buried immediately at sea, he was already dead for two years,"

That is probably the most difficult to believe conspiracy I ever heard. I mean imagine this administration leaving that accomplishment unheralded. It's more likely that they will find or create a doppelganger of Osama so they can kill him again. That's the only thing he got right so far.

bagoh20 said...

"You shat a mousse, bago?"

Horns and all. It's a matter of muscle control, and just learning to let go.

bagoh20 said...

Just to throw something out there:
Who is the best Democrat alive today?

I'm drawing a blank?

bagoh20 said...

Relatively speaking Bill Clinton was a paragon of pragmatism compared to what we have now among most of the Dems, but his taste in women is worse than Barney Frank's.

chickelit said...

Who is the best Democrat alive today?

Definitely not a man.

bagoh20 said...

Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) is rated most conservative Democrat by Heritage Action for America who rate all the house members. He's rates 40% among Democrats who overall average 6%, so that's pretty conservative.

YoungHegelian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YoungHegelian said...

Who is the best Democrat alive today?

Not a politician, but a pundit: Kirsten Powers.

Not only easy on the eyes, but will publicly call out fellow Democrats for their BS when she thinks it warranted, which is often.

Mumpsimus said...

Mickey Kaus deserves a mention.

Icepick said...

That is probably the most difficult to believe conspiracy I ever heard. I mean imagine this administration leaving that accomplishment unheralded.

That's assuming that the Administration was responsible for the death. (I haven't read Hersch's piece, so I don't know what he's selling.) It's also possible to imagine they would want to move the death date closer to the election.

But even if they got bin Laden when and where they said they got him, they invited conspiracy theorizing by handling the whole matter in the way they did, by letting pretty much no one see the body and then disposing of it where no one could possibly double check their story. Add to that the deaths so soon afterwards of many members of the team that was on the mission and the thing sets up great for conspiratorialists.

And frankly I'm not sure what I believe about that night. I was surprised that bin Laden was still alive, that's for sure.

YoungHegelian said...

@Mumpsimus,

Mickey Kaus deserves a mention.

I have read & admired Mr. Kaus since the early 80's, but, honestly, MK is a Democrat only because he says he's a Democrat

No other Democrats ever claim him as being one of them.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I must admit when the Osama Bin Laden killing supposedly took place, it seemed like bullshit. No photos, no body, no proof at all, really.
Something seemed off to me.


I'm not into conspiracies.I need proof going the other way, not just conjecture.

The administration lies about so many things... and is desperate to hang onto power by any means necessary.. So, who knows?

Rabel said...

Seymour Hersh is a lying scumbag.

John McCain has hired Elizabeth O’Bagy as a legislative assistant.

It may be time to give up and move deeper into the woods.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Hersh may be a lying scumbag - but - he's right about our pathetic media.
Even lying scumbags get it right from time to time.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Sen. John McCain has hired Elizabeth O'Bagy, the Syria analyst in Washington who was fired for padding her credentials, The Cable has learned. She begins work Monday as a legislative assistant in McCain's office.

O'Bagy was a young but well-respected adviser at the Institute for the Study of War and had emerged quickly as an important voice among those arguing in favor of intervention in Syria. McCain and others had cited her work publicly before her nascent reputation collapsed when it was discovered that her claims to having a combined masters/PhD were false and that in fact she had not yet defended her thesis.



What can we do to fire John McCain?

Methadras said...

It's to late to do anything Hersh suggests. The Marxist left has completely overtaken the body politic since the GOP is still stuck in its circular firing squad and letting leftists dictate the message, the fight, and the direction without a single bit of retaliation in sight. Ted Cruz was/is an anomaly in a sea of utter feckless haplessness. Until the GOP sheds the dead weight old guard and learns how to effectively manipulate the communications stream and retaliate point for point against the leftist media then this will continue to be the state of message saturation by the left. They own the message machine and the GOP is just furniture for now.

Rabel said...

"...it was discovered that her claims to having a combined masters/PhD were false and that in fact she had not yet defended her thesis."

The "incomplete thesis" story was her second lie about her credentials. She later admitted that she was never in the PhD program after Georgetown said it had no record of her enrollment.

Valentine Smith said...

At least we had the sense to prop up the swollen head and lifeless eyes of the "heroic" Che when we whacked him in 70's Bolivia. We should have displayed Bin Laden's head on a bayonet while wearing the snout of a hog. Barbaric PR trumps moral cowardice every time.

rhhardin said...

Cruz simply hammered the last nail into the coffin Barack Obama himself built by trying to make a play for control of the health system. He thought he could live without consensus.

Nobody picks up the phone anymore

Belmont Club

test said...

YoungHegelian said...

I have read & admired Mr. Kaus since the early 80's, but, honestly, MK is a Democrat only because he says he's a Democrat

No other Democrats ever claim him as being one of them.


On the other hand if you judge his preferences by what other Democrats claim they support he's a perfectly mainstream Democrat.

It's amazing Democrats want to cast him from the party just because he wants to honestly debate the issues.

Methadras said...

Valentine Smith said...

At least we had the sense to prop up the swollen head and lifeless eyes of the "heroic" Che when we whacked him in 70's Bolivia. We should have displayed Bin Laden's head on a bayonet while wearing the snout of a hog. Barbaric PR trumps moral cowardice every time.


Well, we can't offend the protected religion of murderers and death cultists now can we? That would just be rude.

chickelit said...

I frankly don't get all this dodged a bullet with McCain, took a shotgun blast with Obama feel good rhetoric. It divides me from you and you from me.

edutcher said...

Agree with Rabel on Hersh's veracity, but the part about bin Laden being dead for 2 years (which I am loath to discount) intrigues me.


What's his source?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I prefer McCain over Obama in 2008. It was never going to happen. A young good looking smooth talker over a tired old man?
That's why the dems selected McCain for us. (Also why the dems went bat crap crazy when he chose Palin. The dems had no control over that, and it drove them nuts and they had to destroy her)

The problem with McCain isn't McCain circa 2008. It's McCain circa now.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

@ RAbel

The "incomplete thesis" story was her second lie about her credentials. She later admitted that she was never in the PhD program after Georgetown said it had no record of her enrollment.

Lovely.

Valentine Smith said...

Re Che: It was 67 in Bolivia. I credited the schmuck for going around and around in circles in the jungle for much longer than he was capable. Army SF was right there when he begged for his life like the coward he was. As for Bin Laden his women had bigger balls than he did. Ditto for the feckless Hersh.

ndspinelli said...

edutcher, You'll have to buy his book. That's what this is all about.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

edutcher said...
Agree with Rabel on Hersh's veracity, but the part about bin Laden being dead for 2 years (which I am loath to discount) intrigues me.


Proving that you can play the rubes on both sides of the ideological divide if you really put your mind to it.

betamax3001 said...

No One Seems To Be Interested in Protecting Their Juices: Dehydration Will Render Your Dessicated Flesh to Onion Skin Paper Upon Which No One Will Write.

betamax3001 said...

I Put the Saddle on the Little Girl of Justice and Let Her Gallop Me to Truth.

AllenS said...

Whoa. bin Laden was dead for two years before the well publicized raid?

When I heard about this story of bin Laden being buried at sea with absolutely no pictures or testimony by anyone. This administration left me with an I don't believe it feeling.

In short, who knows?