The G-Word

"When I was asked whether I thought that it was fair to say that people who were Republican hadn't done a good day's work. Of course, I didn't think so, and I said that. I don't think our DNC chair, Howard Dean, would put it that way again if asked either. I disagreed with him, and I said so. And, I want to be clear, I would have to say so again if I were asked again. I said a lot of good things about Howard's outreach program and invigoration of the internet as a communication and fundraising tool, but no one wrote about that. Instead the headlines blared that I disagreed with Howard. And then the flap arose: A chasm! A split! A revolt!

"Instead, how about: Nonsense!

"We are both talking about the Republicans and their failure to address the needs of working people."

Sure, it's partially spin, but without a media filter.

I mentioned Hillary Clinton's red-meat speech at a fundraiser in yesterday's column. Turns out Hillary wasn't aggressive enough for Arianna Huffington:

"The trouble with Hillary's speech was that for all the partisan speechifying, it was almost exclusively empty rhetoric that she was dishing out. 'We can't ever, ever give in to the Republican agenda . . . it isn't good for America,' she declared. This from a United States Senator who voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice, supported the invasion of Iraq, and came back from a March trip to Iraq sounding more like a White House flack than a potential standard bearer of the opposition party.

"Indeed, throughout the speech, Hillary adopted the tone of a powerless activist whining about those in power rather than a high-profile member of the World's Most Exclusive club. The low point came when she blamed much of the Republicans' success on a too timid press corps ('Where are the investigative reporters today? Why aren't they asking the hard questions?') and suggested that reporters should look into such issues as the $9 billion missing in Iraq.

"Of course she's right about the mainstream media abdicating their investigative role... but, c'mon, it's not like Senator Clinton and her congressional cohorts are powerless to look into such things. In fact, that's what the constitution says they are there for. It's called Congressional Oversight, HRC. . . . I'm sure it was in the introductory packet they handed you when you first arrived."

A CNN programming move has gotten some good reviews, one from Annie Lamott at Josh Marshall's new TPM Cafe:

"You will never believe in a million years what I just saw on the CNN morning news: NEWS! You could have blown me over with a feather. I always turn on the news at 9:00 am (PT) before sitting down at my desk, and can usually predict the order of the stories. Today I was guessing 1) the missing woman in Aruba 2) Michael Jackson's bad back and 3) how the Runaway Bride is coping with probation, and the bad hair cut.

"The new Wolf den runs at noon here on the west coast, and CNN is now running a show called Your World Today. God, what a concept, the mere suggestion that there is more going on out there than George Bush's America."

Columbia Journalism Review is also ecstatic: