Sagal: That was kind of contentious of course, that's where the subject of Mary Cheney came up which she's been talking about
Ifill: And ya know the funny thing? I didn't even ask about Mary Cheney they obviously the candidate, the Democratic Candidate, Senator Edwards, just felt the need to bring it up apropos of nothing and then claim later that he was just trying to express his sympathy and solidarity with the vice president's daughter.
Let's rewind the tape.
FILL: The next question goes to you, Mr. Vice President.
I want to read something you said four years ago at this very setting: "Freedom means freedom for everybody." You said it again recently when you were asked about legalizing same-sex unions. And you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks. Can you describe then your administration's support for a constitutional ban on same-sex unions?
CHENEY: Gwen, you're right, four years ago in this debate, the subject came up. And I said then and I believe today that freedom does mean freedom for everybody. People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want. It's really no one else's business. That's a separate question from the issue of whether or not government should sanction or approve or give some sort of authorization, if you will, to these relationships.
Traditionally, that's been an issue for the states. States have regulated marriage, if you will. That would be my preference.
In effect, what's happened is that in recent months, especially in Massachusetts, but also in California, but in Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage.
And the fact is that the president felt that it was important to make it clear that that's the wrong way to go, as far as he's concerned.
Now, he sets the policy for this administration, and I support the president.
IFILL: Senator Edwards, 90 seconds.
EDWARDS: Yes. Let me say first, on an issue that the vice president said in his last answer before we got to this question, talking about tax policy, the country needs to know that under what they have put in place and want to put in place, a millionaire sitting by their swimming pool, collecting their statements to see how much money they're making, make their money from dividends, pays a lower tax rate than the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving on the ground in Iraq.
Now, they may think that's right. John Kerry and I do not.
We don't just value wealth, which they do. We value work in this country. And it is a fundamental value difference between them and us.
Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.
As Newton Minnow pointed out in comments, someone at Time Magazine is having a bit of fun with their "liberal" columnist, putting his recent column below the new poll numbers.
...oh, and regarding this line from the Klein column:
If Baghdad isn't stabilized, the war is lost. "I know it's the cliche of the war," an Army counterinsurgency specialist told me last week. "But we'll know in the next six months—and this time, it'll be the last next six months we get."
I've started taking these Friedmanesque predictions and putting their expiration dates in my calendar. If you spot them, please send them in.
The events of the past week provide one more demonstration that progressives must begin to fully appreciate the importance of the media in our political life. Look what happened: Conservatives began a coordinated attack on a news organization, and suddenly we weren't talking about Iraq or about anything else, we were actually debating whether The New York Times should be prosecuted for treason.
And journalists could barely summon the energy to defend not just their colleagues, but their profession -- let alone the citizens they are supposed to serve. At the same time that they were being subjected to this assault, they continued to view the political world through a lens created by the very people battering them mercilessly.
In recent editions of our weekly wrap-up, Jamison Foser has been making the case that, as he wrote back on May 26, "The defining issue of our time is the media." Conservatives obviously understand this fact. Perhaps soon progressives will come to the same understanding.
I see our Ana Marie has her claws out again and has written a bubbleheaded review of a Katha Pollitt book. Pollitt - intelligent, funny. Cox - not so much. The real mystery is why the New York Times... oh, never mind. That's no mystery.
Which brings me to the real point of the post. Long ago after her reading her nasty review of Kristin Gore's book I vowed to read Gore's book to see if it had merit, and after Cox wrote her own book I vowed to compoare them.
I finished Gore's book, Sammy's Hill, a few weeks back. It was really kind of amusing to compare them. Gore's book was everything Cox's tried to be but wasn't. Both were basically "chick lit" (and I don't mean that pejoratively) set against the backdrop of Washington. But Gore's book actually provides some insight into what Washington culture is like, has interesting characters that are fully realized, has an unpredictable plot, and most of all is actually frequently funny. Cox's book was a lame attempt to exploit whole "Washingtonienne" thing one more time with a boring plot about a fake blog.
A key difference between the two books is that in Gore's book, the lead character actually gives a shit about something, which makes it possible for us to give a shit, while Cox's book is just a parade of narcissists who don't give a shit about anything.
I imagine it's a key difference between the two authors as well.
So, if you need a fun light summer read from one of the writers of Futurama, go for it.
Let me basically endorse what Yglesias says here while adding a couple of things. First is that the existence of an actively hostile and partisan/idelogical media on one side of the political debate tends to push me much more in the direction of abandoning the current model of journalism we have.
The second point is that while it's true that UK newspapers don't aspire to that particular model of journalism, the BBC news empire does, so the UK does in fact have the kind of institution Tomasky discusses.
It's time for those in the mainstream media to understand that even as they invited conservatives into their homes, those conservatives were waging a war against them. Tim Russert will give them another chance on Sunday.
The media wars are on, and the respectable media seems to be surrendering.
Really, there's literally nothing a conservative can say which will prevent them from getting invited back to respectable mainstream news outlets, where respectable hosts and respectable journalists will take them seriously.
Meet the Press hosts Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The roundtable includes author Bill Bennett, CNBC's John Harwood, Washington Post's Dana Priest, and New York Times' William Safire.
Face the Nation hosts Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Carl Levin (D-MI) and New York Times' exec. ed. Bill Keller.
This Week hosts Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The roundtable includes ex-Sen. Fred Thompson (R-TN), Cokie Roberts and Time's Joe Klein.
Fox News Sunday hosts Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jack Reed (D-RI) and NASA Admin. Michael Griffin.
Late Edition hosts Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Barney Frank (D-MA) and Griffin.
The funny thing is I'm sure the Meet the Press producers/bookers saw absolutely nothing odd about a roundtable featuring Dana Priest, John Harwood, William Safire, and Bill Bennett. Nothing odd about that at all.
Still, the real mystery isn't why Meet the Press does this, the real mystery is why people like Priest and Harwood agree to participate in such a thing.
It seemed almost too much to hope for, but the Supreme Court finally called George W. Bush onto the carpet yesterday and asked him the obvious question: What part of "rule of law" do you not understand?
The easy ability to insert false stories into the media bloodstream is tremendously beneficial to the conservative movement, because irresponsible hack journalists never feel the need to correct the record, and the Zombie Wingnuttery lives on long after it's been killed.
Justice Thomas refers to Justice Stevens’ “unfamiliarity with the realities of warfare”; but Stevens served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. Thomas’s official bio, by contrast, contains no experience of military service.
In a just world, Thomas would resign in shame and spend the rest of his life tending to the needs of disabled Vets.
I think it behooves the fine people at TAP to keep pointing out how craptacular TNR often is. Remember, it wasn't long ago that they sent out an email which said:
You may want clear opinions from The New Republic or from any magazine of political commentary. But you certainly don't want predictable opinions or simple opinions, which, alas, is what you get from The Nation and the National Review, The Weekly Standard or The American Prospect. Why, I bet that you could write their articles in advance. No challenge, no mystery, no surprise, no puzzling through of argument. Not like The New Republic.
As I've said numerous times, there's literally nothing that a conservative can say which will cause the mainstream media to decide that perhaps they shouldn't have a regular platform on their "respectable" news shows.
It's long past time for respectable journalists to stop giving legitimacy to these outlets. They have no standards for truth or decency.
My quick take is that it's certainly an important symbolic victory, but this administration's contempt for the law, the constitution, and the balance/separation of powers that our system rests on isn't going to be very affected by what 5 people in black robes say. They've ignored Congress and they'll ignore the Court too, leaving our mainstream media with more time to deal with the impending threat of blogofascism.
It looks like I'm going to have to hurl some blogofascism at him. He writes:
Wait! I'm not the one who said that. According to The Washington Post--yes, yes, MSM "douchebags," I know, I know--a new study by two researchers at East Carolina University found that Stewart's cynicism has the effect of making viewers so disgusted with politics on both sides of the aisle that they feel too discouraged to vote. Constant ridicule seems to have the effect of turning the political system into one gigantic self-parodying freak show, with no sign of imminent change or relief.
That could be why all the pre-election talk about Jon Stewart sending his young viewers--though the average age of a "Daily Show" viewer is actually 47--to the polls in great numbers to vote for Kerry was just that--talk. It simply never happened.
So maybe ridicule and invective, though entertaining, and a refreshing alternative to the mainstream media's passivity and reserve, isn't the boon to democracy it's cracked up to be? Anyway, don't despair, and don't get enraged because that's just the bad news about Stewart. The good news is that he's not a fascist.
Neither the misleading Post story nor the study itself claimed the Daily Show "has the effect of making viewers so disgusted with p
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