It has to be asked. Is Tim Russert's death a blow to the Bush administration?

[derby378]

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501951.html

[tularetom]

Shame on you for stating the truth

Before the beatification has been completed.

[tularetom]

1. delete

dupe de doo

[babylonsister]

2. No. And an article from Milbank, from 1/07? Not worth

bothering about either way, especially from Dana.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[kath]

25. what a nice thought... You ought not to be swearing while in the process of canonizing a saint.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasObserver]

4. Cheney knew he could sell his bullshit on MTP.

Russert was good at posing direct, pointed, insightful questions.

He was not so good at requiring answers, however.

[DS1]

5. Yep

The only time I saw him demand answers was "Are you running for President"

I shouldn't single him out though, none of the big media types really went or goes after these criminals.

[kath]

24. "not so good at requiring answers, however."

Touche!
especially not so good at requiring anything even resembling an answer **from Neocons**

[TexasObserver]

27. That was the biggest problem. He gave them the mantel of respectability.

By asking hard questions but accepting soft answers, he allowed the Bush administration to behave as if it were being open and answering the press. Think of what it might have been like if the questioner had been someone who didn't mind offending the president or the VP?

Russert was a nice guy, but that also meant he was a marshmellow with guys he should have been much tougher with.

[kath]

29. yep - that "mantle of respectability" meant that he was able to be more damaging than the other

mediawhores.
As another DUer put it today:
#19: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3445868&mesg_id=3446038

Is a journalist-poseur worse than an upfront right wing mouthpiece?
"Today's essay question, class"

[NNN0LHI]

6. Russert has been these thugs go to guy for 7 years now

That has been obvious.

Don

[ironrooster]

22. BINGO

[kath]

28. Longer than that. He was a huge leader of the choruses of "Clinton's cock!, Clinton's cock!,

Clinton's cock!" and "Gore's a liar! Gore's a liar! Gore's a liar!"

And wasn't there something in Greg Palast's book about there bening a very tight relationship between Russert and Bush's Opposition Research team in 2000? Timmy *gladly* spread any crap they dug up on Gore. (Don't have a copy of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" here, but I'm pretty sure it's in there.)

[OzarkDem]

7. It will be difficult to replace him

but they'll find someone.

[Vickers]

19. My thoughts exactly.

RIP and all, but still.

[JI7]

8. well, considering most of the media are whores for the administration

not really

[tom_paine]

9. Only if NBC fails to replace him with a worse Bushie, which they won't fail to do

Maybe Murderin' Joe Scarborough will be slotted, perhaps NBC can get Sean Hannity.

I don't think it was a matter of Cheney "controlling" Russert, it was willing complicity.

So, Russert's death will only be a blow tothe Bushies if NBC puts an actual journalist in that slot, which I highly doubt.

I think Russert's replacement will be more Bushie than Russert...that's the trend in the Toady Media these days.

[Gold Metal Flake]

13. The trend.

I agree with the trend, which is also it's undoing. Russert was very good. His replacement will not be as good. More accomodating, but more obvious. Might work to our favor in a Obama admin, if we force the issue.

[BlueManDude]

14. but whomever they choose won't have Russert's "credibility."

[tom_paine]

17. In the Modern age of media saturation, highly advanced propaganda and PR, credibility

can be easily manufactured in the minds of a large enough percentage of the populace that those who notice the truth don't matter.

The Science of Marketing. They have us gamed and their techniques calibrated to the tenth decimal place. Sadly, the human mind has grown no less malleable to lies and propaganda in the last 8000 years, while the lies and propaganda, using sciences like psychology as their engine, have increased their power 10,000-fold.

[Peace Patriot]

37. I think it's remarkable how much the American people have resisted the propaganda.

And it is, indeed, highly calibrated, sophisticated propaganda, with the really lethal messages being conveyed by not so obvious techniques. For instance, the message of powerlessness (the powerlessness of the people to influence the nation's policy and their own fates) is conveyed in part by media focus on the super-rich, the glitzy, the celebrity of the moment--as if they lives matter more than, say, that of the housekeepers in their fancy hotels, or the garbage men who handle all their trash). More noticeably, the corporate news monopolies write plausible narratives for highly manipulated, pre-ordained events, such as Bush/Cheney's 2000 and 2004 election "victories," and because they control all imagery, "news" and opinion--and people are plugged into their newstream almost as if it were an umbilical cord to the nation--it is difficult to unplug your brain from these narratives and realize how phony they are.

I did some research into approval/issue opinion polls starting around the Iraq invasion and paying close attention to polling trends through the 2004 election, and I was amazed at what I found. Just prior to the invasion of Iraq, 55% to 60% of the American people opposed unilateral action by Bush, and any war that was not authorized by the UN (i.e., international consensus that a UN peacekeeping mission was necessary), with about half of those opposing war on Iraq under any circumstances. 55% to 60%! Did you have ANY sense of such a significant opposition to Bush warmaking in the corporate media at that time? It was all flag-waving and gungho war. MOST of the American people did not agree, and their viewpoint was NOT reflected in the "news."

So, how would this make the members of that anti-war majority feel? Powerless. Helpless. Unlistened to. AND--very important--thinking that everybody ELSE in the country had gone off goosestepping to Bush.

I found 60% to 90% majorities against virtually every Bush policy, foreign and domestic--consistent over a long period of time, in all polls. War. Torturing prisoners. Social Security. The deficit. You name it. The majority of Americans oppose Bush policy, in big numbers, and have done so since well before the 2004 election and before the war.

I therefore began looking at the new voting systems, because it became clear to me that, a) the American people were much better informed (or had more native wisdom) than anyone was giving them credit for, and b) something was very wrong in the mechanisms of democracy, with such large discrepancies between what the people want, and what they think, and what the Bush regime and largely complicit Congresses were doing.

The new vote counting systems are hair-raisingly non-transparent and unreliable, and are in the direct control of rightwing Bushite corporations, who run these machines using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls.

My conclusion: The American people are much better informed and more concerned than they are given credit for by the left, and than they are depicted as being, by fascist media; they are not stupid "sheeple." What they are is disempowered and demoralized, and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED.

In 2006, ALL POLLS said that the American people were voting to give the Democrats a mandate to end the Iraq War. SEVENTY PERCENT of the people by then opposed the Iraq War and wanted it ended. They voted and...nothing happened! The new 'Democratic' Congress proceeded to ESCALATE the war, and lard Bush/Cheney with billions more of our tax dollars to kill more Iraqis, occupy their country, build permanent bases there, and steal their oil.

Explain that to me. Something is wrong with this picture. I think it's the voting machines. I think they were designed and installed, during the 2002 to 2004 period, to defeat the anti-war majority. The Congressional bill that fast-tracked these new voting systems was passed by the Anthrax Congress in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (Oct 02, and with not a peep of objection from the leaders of the Democratic Party, who were (and remain) all for Bushite corporations 'counting' our votes with "TRADE SECRET" code.

Yes, we have a lot of serious problems in our political system--including corporate 'news' monopolies continually trying to disempower and propagandize the population, limiting political debate to a few fascist "talking points," and fucking with our heads about candidates having to "move to the right" and wear flag lapel pins to be "electable," and the obscene amounts of money it takes to buy your way into political office (much of it going to corporate moguls for brainless TV ads). Direct, "TRADE SECRET" control of the vote counting takes the cake, however. It blockades all efforts to reform the other evils.

You want to know why Washington seems completely deaf to the American people? You don't have to look far. Our votes are no longer counted in public view, and thus the people who get empowered by these rightwing corporate-run, non-transparent, secret code elections have no reason whatever to listen to us.

[Gabi Hayes]

38. amen all the way. have you read this, about the progression from the

father of modern marketing to Rove?

Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized… "

So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.

Mr. Bernays lived a fascinating life. He first got involved in high stakes politics when he "warmed up" the dour Calvin Coolidge by arranging the first presidential celebrity photo op in 1928. For the private sector, Bernays engineered a most notorious publicity stunt for the American Tobacco Company, by single-handedly neutralizing the taboo against women smoking in public. He organized a "Torches of Freedom" march down Broadway by ten smoking debutantes during the 1929 Easter Parade. With the help of feminists – some of whom understood the "right to smoke" as libratory – Bernays expertly publicized this spectacle, thus setting in motion the expected stir on op-ed pages across the land.

For Bernays, truth in public affairs did not exist per se. Rather, truth was the product of the "public relations counsel" forging prevailing "public opinion." It should be said that he readily recognized the ethical implications of his work, as witnessed in his later anti-smoking advocacy, after the dangers of cigarettes became known in the late-1950s. He could also be, in his own curious way, a humanitarian – as reflected in his work promoting the NAACP and anti-syphilis public education.

For Bernays, however, the necessity of controlling the public mind was a crucially important matter confronting the better element, a group in which he clearly included himself. In his first work, the hugely influential Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923), Bernays noted that the establishment of public education and the gradual extension of the right to vote caused consternation among western elites. The use of public relations techniques, then, was a way for the minority to "so mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bender2.html

.............

then, this:

During Bernays' lifetime and since, propaganda has usually had dirty connotations, loaded and identified with the evils of Nazi PR genius Joseph Goebbels, or the oafish efforts of the Soviet Communists. In his memoirs, Bernays wrote that he was "shocked" to discover that Goebbels kept copies of Bernays' writings in his own personal library, and that his theories were therefore helping to "engineer" the rise of the Third Reich.

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html

just an intro.....lots more out there

[Gold Metal Flake]

10. I think it's gonna cause some disruption in messaging.

He was a consummate pro. His loss leaves a big hole on the air and behind the scenes. But, they will persevere. They always do. We just have to win the WH and then fight like hell to force the Obama Administration to re-regulate broadcasting and work like hell to dismantle the corporate media monopolies.




Edit: spelling

[democrat2thecore]

11. Russert didn't pass some DUers Purity Test. The totalitarian instincts here can be scary

Nobody is perfect.
Tim Russert wasn't perfect.
Are you perfect?
The fact so many here demand everyone in the public eye pass a 100% purity test sets them up for constant disillusionment.
Not to mention it shows a need for control and frankly, totalitarian instincts.

[derby378]

15. Well, I've already been called a heartless bastard...

And no, I don't think I've even breathed the words "Purity Test" on DU to my knowledge.

[tom_paine]

18. Oh bullshit, there a big difference between a "100% purity test", as you call it

and the well-documented repeated "failings" (that is, unless they were purposeful) of Russert.

Go to mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com Type in "Russert" into their search engines.

Then put on a pot of coffee and start reading...you have a lot of it to do. Videos, transcripts, the works...it's all there.

You can talk of 100% purity tests, but that is a straw man. Statistically, I suppose it's probable given the thousands of currently active DUers, that there are some who apply this standard to people, but I think they are very few and far between.

I am not perfect, and if I thought for a moment that Tim was making isolated "mistakes", I would not be so hard on him.

Of course, as the old saying goes, "If a person's paycheck depends on them making a 'mistake', you can count on them making that mistake every day."

That pretty much sums up Tim, at least since 1998, and the entire Toady Media for that matter.

[ironrooster]

33. ouch!

Tom, that was a good - pithy, yet deeply satisfying.

[kath]

36. bravo!

:applause: :applause:

other poster: "the totalitarian instincts here" :wtf: jeebus.

[calimary]

40. Sad but true.

He certainly never saw a Monica story, or a Judy Miller story, that he didn't LOVE.

He meant a lot to some people I admire, like Olbermann - and that does have currency with me. Olbermann was visibly grief-stricken all evening on TV - looked like he'd just come from the men's room where he'd holed up for a few minutes to have a good cry.

Russert was a towering figure in broadcast journalism, earning that stature over many years of toiling in the news vineyard. But he was also a wholly-owned subsidiary of a corporate entity with a distinct agenda, and he understood clearly who was buttering his bread. He worked for them, not for us.

Rest in Peace, Tim. You were an incredibly devoted son and father. Everyone on camera yesterday spoke of you more as the man and the compassionate, caring human being than as the news professional. And that counts for something. I pray for his family and those who are so deeply grieving for him today. A lot of people cared about him, and for very good reasons.

Unfortunately, in the stature he had, he was uniquely and prominently positioned to be able to call bullshit on a lot of what went on in Washington, from the Lewinsky mess onward. He may have been one of those journalists who felt that, if they personally leaned one way, they had a moral and professional obligation to try to see the other side equally - if not just overtly to give that opposing side more than its fair share of benefit-of-the-doubt. There are many of those. But they overcompensate without really thinking it through, or understanding what consequences or ramifications may come from their actions. In this case, the results were a sham impeachment that has now left the very concept of IMPEACHMENT almost irreparably hobbled and rendered a complete farce, AND beyond our reach in circumstances in which it fully, seriously, and credibly deserves to be applied. AND we have a bogus "presidency" that never should have been allowed to stand (what if that had been a Democrat who scammed the Supreme Court and won? What kind of firestorm would the coverage have produced in that case?), that led to a war that we were lied into fighting, that led to more than FOUR THOUSAND unneccessary deaths of American troops (and everything else that's plagued us as a result - from loss of international reputation and good will to the squandering of a couple of trillion dollars and the complete wasting of our military). Tim Russert and others like him were well-positioned to be able to stop all of that, or at least slow it down. They failed. And in many cases, they did so DELIBERATELY.

And I CANNOT get that out of my mind. I apologize to other DUers here who'll certainly think me harsh, to let it go, to let it ride, to not go there for awhile at least until the body's cold, etc. I appreciate their feelings and theirs is a point worth making.

But I CANNOT get that out of my mind. I CANNOT dismiss that from my overall consideration of a gentleman like Tim Russert. As I take a full measure of the man, THAT part of his story, at least for me, is sadly unavoidable. I keep going back to the images of the sobbing moms and distraught young widows and fiancees and girlfriends - and families and children - who have nothing but a box with a flag on it to cry on - because people like Tim Russert refused to do their jobs. I'm sorry if that's harsh. I'm probably just being a judgmental asshole here. Wouldn't be the first time. I'm glad he's in a better place, but the rest of Heaven's a little too prematurely crowded at the moment because of what he helped to enable. I mourn for THEM as much as I do for him (if not, perhaps, a little moreso).

I just CANNOT get that part of it out of my mind, or pretend it didn't exist or that it never happened.

Can't argue with you, tom_paine. Not for a moment. I can't disagree with you either.

[ironrooster]

23. Nobody is demanding perfection or control but -

It would be nice to have a few real investigative reporters instead of the ersatz ones.
It seems our standards have become so low that we elevate the barely adequate to the extraordinary.

[BlueManDude]

12. I'd say that the McCain campaign lost a very big supporter today.

[Gold Metal Flake]

16. Come, now, it's not like Russert wore his allegiances under his lapel...

Oh, wait.

[JanusAscending]

34. How can you even dare say this??

Are you aware that he got his political training from some of the best Democrats this country has ever known? He worked for Mario Cueomo (sp?) and led Sen. Monihan's re-election campaign? I always found him to be fair, and a seeker of truth. He wasn't playing the "i gotcha" game with his interviews, just giving people enough rope to "hang themselves". We are just observers. You should try listening to the people who knew him, and loved him. From both sides of the aisle, he was respected, and I for one will miss him dearly on every Sunday morning, and come this election, there will be an emptiness at NBC that will be hard to fill.

[kath]

35. Doesn't much matter where he got his training - he turned to the Dark Side of the Force. Jack Welch

and all his MIC megabucks were too much to resist, and being buddy-buddy with Bushco...

read up a bit.

[sam sarrha]

20. it seems Tim turned a right corner after W's "misspoken" word at a secret White House meeting,

apparently W spilled the beans abut attacking Iran in August if this year, and conveniently had to swear nearly all the Corporate Whore talking heads to secrecy and pledge not to say anything about it..

so i guess we cant call that wet brain alcoholic stupid any more.. unless it was Roves idea.. in which would still make him stupid.

[Gold Metal Flake]

21. What meeting?

Ooo. New stuff!

[sam sarrha]

30. here is a >>link >> its late.. all i have now

http://www.mensvogue.com/business/media/articles/2007/0...

SNIP..."March 2007

Williams writes a blog entry in his office at 30 Rockefeller Center. (Photo: Annie Leibovitz)

I know, I know," Brian Williams says into his low-end Motorola. "What if that ever got out?"

He's talking at a rapid clip to his NBC colleague Tim Russert, the host of Meet the Press, about the exclusive Roosevelt Room meeting they just had with President George W. Bush. This was the plan: Williams and Russert and their network peers (Gibson, Couric, Schieffer, Stephanopoulos, and others) would get the president's perspective on the troop surge he was scheduled to announce in a few hours, and no quotes would be allowed to emerge without approval. But some doozies, like the one Williams and Russert are kibitzing about, slipped out of the president's mouth. When this happened, Williams recalls, he looked around at the ashen faces of White House aides, who quickly imposed a retroactive lockdown on that tidbit, whatever it was.

And so Williams keeps the secret, despite my needling across a two-foot-long folding table that separates me from the anchor of the NBC Nightly News—he of starchy wardrobe, stiff hair, and Dudley Do-Right air—on a northbound Amtrak about an hour later. He can talk about it with Russert and anyone else who was in the room, but no one on the outside, not even his wife, Jane, herself a savvy onetime TV news producer. "I call them 'go-to-the-graves,'" Williams says, tallying about a half-dozen he maintains for Bush alone. Williams hastens to add that today's just-between-us moment was not meant to shield the president from a trifling embarrassment, but instead to preserve the United States' options for multifront warfare."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3446526
a discussion earlier

[Gold Metal Flake]

32. Secrecy is democracy's poison.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

31. I don't think so.

It's really hard to harm cockroaches.

[1776Forever]

39. I heard Twitty say last night that Russert believed there were WMD at 1st like many others

Chris went on to say that like so many other patriotic Americans Tim was taken down the road of deception by Cheney. Odd that Cheney lives on while Tim is gone. I really feel that Tim Russert was a wonderful and kind person who lived for his family and loved his job. I too was taken in by Cheney as were some others. I think Cheney is the one to blame on this more then Tim. I wonder what Tim really thought after it became obvious it was all a lie!