{"id":403,"date":"2008-02-11T12:01:54","date_gmt":"2008-02-11T18:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2008\/02\/11\/fake-off\/"},"modified":"2020-11-02T07:51:37","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T13:51:37","slug":"fake-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/02\/fake-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Fake Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

When one goes for a hit of news, it’s amazing how often it’s been cut with spin. Not bias, not commentary, but flapdoodle. It’s right after shipment where the purveyors can’t help but allude to it so it stays.<\/p>\n

Example 1. Former President Clinton’s tactics a few weeks ago while campaigning for the candidacy of his wife. He made direct criticisms and rebuttals of her opponent. He in turn was criticized. Bill Clinton’s remarks still<\/a> are being written about in print (print and text online) and spoken of (radio-TV and streams online). Yet Hillary Rodham Clinton fared extremely well in the Super Tuesday primaries afterward. It was almost as if the majority of voters weren’t paying attention — strike the “almost.”<\/p>\n

Example 2. “Doesn’t it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” was said<\/a> by MSNBC employee David Shuster on the air last week. His employer suspended him. As a broadcast journalist he asked a perfectly reasonable question, using slang. He was attacked as if Miss Clinton was 14 and called a prostitute. Back to the top of the paragraph: He was referring to the organization, not the 27-year-old woman. The Obama campaign similarly was pimping out the senator’s wife to the Larry King Show the other night. The McCain campaign never stops pimping out the veteran’s Vietnam history. If Shuster had said, “Doesn’t it seem as if Bill is being pimped out,” he’d be correct there as well, though accused of encroaching on Jon and Stephen’s comic territory.<\/p>\n

If you do someone else’s bidding with little direct reward for yourself, then you are being pimped out, the phrasing dependent on a dark mood. I am a writer, hence an observer, and that makes me a parasite to people who actually are doing things. Ho ho ho.<\/p>\n

While Bill Clinton was drawing negative fire, Hillary Clinton was out shaking hands and persuading millions she’d be a good president. While Chelsea was phoning party delegates and talk show hosts, Sen. Clinton was implicitly showing herself to have been a great mom: Chelsea grew up to be normal, smart but not polished, well-spoken but not working from a script.<\/p>\n

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report call themselves fake news and fake punditry, and of course they joyfully are, but the real fake news comes from whatever hits the applause meter. Listen to these hosts, from The View to Rush Limbaugh to Jay Leno, they throw out a wide variety<\/a> of topics and spend time only on those that get applause, laughs or phone calls, from people who have the free time to be there in the first place. Meanwhile, the world does seem to go on. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When one goes for a hit of news, it’s amazing how often it’s been cut with spin. Not bias, not commentary, but flapdoodle. It’s right after shipment where the purveyors can’t help but allude to it so it stays. Example 1. Former President Clinton’s tactics a few weeks ago while campaigning for the candidacy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-spin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/08\/palin-comparison\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":0},"title":"Palin Comparison","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Sen. John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate. Details are a click away, but here's quick thoughts from the hour since the announcement. McCain just evened the Brick odds of winning. Once the primaries indicated the top candidates, I never saw him\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":387,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/12\/benazir-campaigns-in-fayetteville\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":1},"title":"Benazir Campaigns in Fayetteville","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The week of October 21, 2002, was extraordinary in Fayetteville. This is a vibrant college town so prominent lecturers shouldn't be that unusual but to have three in a week was special. Bill Clinton coming up was not unusual; he's probably here about once a year. On Monday the 21st,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3796,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/06\/its-health-care-still\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":2},"title":"It’s Health Care, Still","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's Supreme Court decision that affirms most aspects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act has two main positives -- besides the obvious, setting up universal, fairly priced health insurance for Americans. The first is more micro: The worker is not as enslaved to his job now. Over the last four\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Carville's rules for '92 Clinton Campaign: Change, Economy, Health care","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Carville-rules-300x230.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/the-green-candidate\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":3},"title":"The Green Candidate","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Four years ago Charlie Rose interviewed Garrison Keillor, who said something so provocative that for a detectable millisecond Rose was speechless, a rarity. Keillor of course was on promoting A Prairie Home Companion, but early on they discussed the just-ended 2004 election, where the progressive Keillor nailed John Kerry's defeat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5224,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2015\/09\/biden-fox-geo-adjunct\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":4},"title":"Biden Exeunts, Fox Guards the Geo House","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 11, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Shy of a Load Joe Biden appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Thursday, in the show's debut week. Most\u00a0main media reports and commentaries seemed to agree this morning that the vice president\u00a0was favoring not running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, but that his decision was not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Shy of a Load"","block_context":{"text":"Shy of a Load","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/items\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Seal of the Vice President of the United States","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Vice-President-Seal-800x800-300x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2303,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/11\/certifiably\/","url_meta":{"origin":403,"position":5},"title":"Certifiably","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First published in the November 2010 issue of the e-Columnist By Ben S. Pollock President,\u00a0National Society of Newspaper Columnists \"Politics make strange bedfellows\" goes the quote by 19th-century newspaperman Charles Dudley Warner, and this fall it's been columnists getting renown for jumping on the mattress. Columnists, commentators, news analysts, bloggers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6701,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/6701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}