Wink.
Shall we?
David Gregory of Meet the Press got his chat on with Matt Lauer of the Today Show about the President’s comments on the Gates arrest…the distractitude of the press from health care reform…and his upcoming interview with Hillary Clinton this Sunday.
I am always fascinated when the press discusses the press as if the press isn’t the press.
Blink.
My favorite version of the phenomena is when the press covers their own reluctance to cover missing people of color as if they themselves don’t have the power to cover missing people of color.
Wince.
In this case, Gregory and Lauer discussed the President’s surprise that the press latched on to his comments on the Gates arrest rather than cover his comments on health care reform.
Now, this bitch wasn’t surprised by that shit at all…and I suspect President Obama and his staff weren’t either, after reflection. Obama’s comments on the Gates arrest were a big juicy bone and his delivering them during a press conference was the equivalent of tossing that big juicy bone into a well populated dawg park – there may have been activities going on and health care reform Frisbees being tossed prior to the launching of that bone but no dawg with an ounce of canine logic is going to chose those health care reform Frisbees over the opportunity to wage war for distractitude juicy bone Presidential opinion on a controversial case dominance.
Anyhoo, this bitch is going to get my ponder on regarding the other news story…health care reform…and the issue of deadlines.
During the press conference where the President made his comments about the arrest of Skip Gates he also discussed health care reform (gasp!)...the reason why we need health care reform…and the deadline his administration set for Congress to get that health care reform done. I noted that President Obama also offered his opinion that Congress prefers inertia because doing something…hell anything…is bound to piss someone off and Lawd knows politicians are loathe to act when they may face a response to that action.
So, knowing the beast very well, the Obama administration set a deadline.
Congress is now indicating that they will not meet that deadline.
And now the heads that talk for a living are in frenzy over the deadline now likely to be missed…the potential impact of that…whether the President should have set the deadline or Majority Leader Reid should have set the deadline…and listening to them speculate makes this bitch wonder if they aren’t wondering if the President should have appointed a Congressional Deadline Tsar.
Shit.
A bitch thinks the deadline was a good thing.
Congress has gotten a lot of work done regarding health care reform and they now have legislation to edit and debate and revise and hopefully propose and then pass.
The issue, now that Congress is saying they can’t meet the original deadline, is pressure.
Pressure from the masses…and that’s you and this bitch.
Pressure from special interest groups…and you can bet your insurance premiums that they’ve camped out in the halls to make sure health care reform doesn’t damage their profit structure.
Health care needs to be reformed. The Obama administration is going to take a hit over this deadline bitness because that’s just the way the press works and because the opposition wants to talk about anything and everything as long as they don’t have to talk about health care reform.
But having a deadline gave us a goal, expectations and legislation…
…’tis up to us to hold Congress accountable while the heads that talk continue to fight over distraction-based bones.
Contact your Senators and Congresspeople...
...and tell them the health care reform bill is past due and we the people intend to collect.
8 comments:
THANK YOU for posting this.
Sometimes I think the mainstream media is like a child with a short attention span. They got tired of covering health care because it just wasn't as interesting as talking about problems in "post-racial america", or assuming that all rabbis in the Tri-State are selling people's kidneys for a profit.
/off to rant to my senators for the zillionth time
Ur right, the press is using it as 'waging war' on Obama..claiming the man who 'never' used race is now showing true. Talk w/seniors..grin..'I told u so, that a person of color would be bias'...big sigh. Also agree that a deadline is good but only if enforced.. for the lobbies have put the pressure on Congress big time, so how do they 'please' everyone?
The kicker is that 95% of the rest of the press conference was about health care, with a few things thrown in on the deficit and the TARP, but of course they latch onto the one comment. If he had said no comment they'd have jumped all over that too. The mainstream press make me SICK! I want to take a shower everytime I am forced to watch their mess and even wince when I see clips of their foolishness on the Daily Show. SMH
Shark Fu this Gates/Obama/Police officer incident was all over network news tonite 7/24; maybe only a few secs bout health care reform. I hate everyone one is focusing on this. I feel bad for the professor though. Health care is our top priority right now and news shows need to focus on that and what this deadline means for the bills.
"President Obama and his staff weren’t [surprised] either, after reflection"
And that surely is the essence of the problem, no reflection *beforee* the event. Obama didn't think when asked about the Gates imbroglio, he just opened his mouth and re-acted. It's always the little things that give them away. We now know without a shadow of doubt, where-as before we merely suspected, that the President is racially biased. No harm in that, virtually everyone in the world is, including your good self, 'Shark-fu', but in a racially mixed country with underlying tensions an *intelligent* leader reminds himself that he is president of *all* the people and keeps his prejudices to himself.
Similarly, we now know what we only suspected that Obama is a rabid socialist. I had thought that extremists like Frank and Pelosi were defying the President's wishes to moderate but I now realise that it's the moderates he detests.
He and his acolytes in the Congress are stoking the fires and as the full implications of his socialism is realised I suspect something of an explosion. I only hope it is confined to the next Congressional election and result in the demolition of the Democrat majority. Alas, I fear it may explode in an altogether different way.
David...
Obama's candid comments about the Gates affair were a welcome change...not talking about race is the reason this nation is racially charged in the first place. Not talking about a problem has never resolved a problem and it will not resolve the issues of race in America.
As much as I wish Obama were a rabid socialist he is not. Now I'd like nothing more than a national discussing of socialism versus the status quo just like I'd love a historical retrospective on when the "he's a communist" or "he's a socialist" indictment pops up in America and what that says about society...but we really need to catch that knee before calling a solid moderate a rabid socialist.
Mercy. This is why socialists are starting to go public in defense of their values!
As for the impact of health care reform on the Democratic majority time will tell.
Sadly, millions of Americans suffering without access to health care didn't take down the Republican party...but Lawd knows Americans are nothing if not twisted, so 'tis possible that extending health care to millions of Americans may actually hurt the Dems.
But this bitch does not fear my government in action.
I fear a government that will not act and the masses who cheer that inertia as progress.
I...Love...this...blog. Keep writing, I'll keep reading
signed another ABB
What exactly is wrong with being "socialist?"
I refer not to, e.g., unfettered South American failed (or failing) experiments with putting everything "in the hands of the people" (who don't know what to do with it) or one's pockets (which while certainly a system of wealth redistribution does not, exactly, fit the mold of what socialism entails).
I refer instead to the concept that there is a greater societal good; that each of us as individuals bears an obligation to our fellow human beings.
Just as "Capitalism" should never be a dirty word, Socialism has it place - alongside Conservative and Liberal - as a concept toward which we should all work. We are a nation who wants checks and balances, and this is one: socialism as a concept brought about unions, rights for child workers, humane working conditions, and a wage by which one could strive to become better.
I hear "Socialized medicine" used as a boogie man, but a modern system can support the socialization of care cheaper and more efficiently than our current patchwork of holes. As someone who works in the healthcare industry, I assure everyone - IF DONE RIGHT a national health system will save money and lives.
However, the way to do it right is to do it right; to quit arguing about the most asinine of minutae (and I would include Obama's socialist bona fides as part of that list...) - it is human nature to stand on the sidelines and judge (snark, bitch, moan, point fingers and laugh) but to what end?
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