Like Maria Said Paz: A few thoughts on Ben Carson's media treatment

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

A few thoughts on Ben Carson's media treatment

I agree with Cynthia McKinney:

Of all of Trump's appointments, why does the NYT have THIS headline about Dr. Ben Carson?...

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If you're not the media approved African-American, they will go to town on you.

Roland Burris?

Look at the way the media went after him.

Ben Carson is Dr. Ben Carson, a surgeon.

He is a Yale graduate.

How was Julian Castro qualified?

He is our current Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and he went from Mayor of San Antonio to HUD Secretary without any qualms of his "lacking expertise in public housing."

Steve Preston, Bully Boy Bush's last HUD Secretary, had no experience.

I'm not saying Carson would be good, I'm not saying he would be bad.

I am saying a lot of HUD Secretaries have come in with no public housing experience and it wasn't treated like a crime.

The media really seems to love going to town on Dr. Carson.

Jon Stewart, for example, was able to make fun of Dr. Carson by using a racist voice to 'mimic' him and the media was a-okay with that.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, December 6, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the Mosul slog continues, the lack of western coverage of the action Iraqi women staged in Baghdad yesterday goes to the ongoing and never-ending sexism in the US media, and much more.

It's day 50 of the never ending operation to liberate or 'liberate' Mosul.

Ahmed Rasheed and Patrick Markey (REUTERS) report, "Iraqi army units advanced from southeast Mosul towards a bridge across the Tigris in the city center on Tuesday, in an attack that could give fresh impetus to the hard fought, seven-week battle for Islamic State's northern Iraq stronghold."

With record numbers of military deaths last month, the Iraqi military is reeling. But don't worry, as we noted Saturday, the United Nations doesn't work for the world, it works for the Iraqi government and, therefore, will no longer keep count of military fatalities because the Baghdad-based government wants to bury that.

They've already buried the huge numbers of desertions as soldiers flee the Mosul slog.

‏@GL4senate

I remember when Obama was simultaneously at war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and his wicked supporters had ZERO problem with it.

Fake news?

It's been around for years, decades.

It helped start the Iraq War and it helped it continue.

DIGITAL JOURNAL has a press release we're going to quote the opening paragraph of:

As the Iraq War’s official end on December 18, 2011 marks its fifth anniversary, many questions remain on its fallouts.

For the record, American businesses are whining about how they were hurt, in New York, by the boycott of french fries.

Yes, that is right up there with the children in Falluja born with birth defects.

(That was sarcasm.)

The Iraq War did not end on December 18, 2011.

There are US troops in Iraq today. Since Barack began sending them back in, we've seen US troops die in the ongoing Iraq War.

I don't expect a lot of whining business owners to grasp reality.

I do express the press to.

And they've often repeated that lie as well -- that the Iraq War ended.

If they're going to repeat that lie and not be 'fake news,' then it's incumbent upon them to ask one question: Where was the parade?

Barack will leave office in January.

There were no parades for the returning veterans.

There was no parade to celebrate the so-called end of the war.

Like many a namby pamby bulls**t piece of crap ingrate, Barack bought into the lie about how awful the peace movement was to veterans during Vietnam.

He repeated that lie over and over in one campaign appearance after another in 2007 and 2008.

We could be specific but I don't want to promote the lies he pimped.

I do want to underscore that having rode his high horse into town, it's very clear that he betrayed the veterans of today's wars.

He never held one parade.

Not one.

While castigating those in the Vietnam era for their actions, he did much worse than anyone could imagine.

Not one parade.

And it's not as though veterans groups and service organizations weren't asking for the parades.

In his first term, he lied -- let's use the right word -- and said that they would come.

Didn't in his first term.

Haven't in his second term -- which winds down next month.

Where are the parades, Barry?

All that grandstanding before the VFW and you don't think they notice there's no parade.

No president has ever been more protected by the press.

He wasn't ready for the job.

He might have become ready if the press had done their job.

But instead they fawned and petted and treated a presidency like it was an experiment in social engineering.

Even now they refuse to hold him accountable for any of his failures.

His promise was to end veterans homelessness by the end of 2015.

2016 is almost over and we still have homeless veterans.

He failed.

And he lied.

And if you want to lecture others about fake news or pretend you're so brave to call Donald Trump a liar -- a bit like calling him loud -- does it get more obvious? -- then you better go back to your little pet Barack and start applying the same standards.

Hell, apply any standards.

No one ever got an easier ride from the press.

That's one reason there was so much anger out there and why 2016 was a change election.

The media make excuses for Barack that shouldn't have been made.

Matt Lee of AP coordinated with the State Dept spokespersons to determine his questions and to figure out how to kill the Benghazi reports.

Outside the media bubble, this is how it looks:

The press can pretend otherwise but they played favorites and picked sides.

They did that for the last eight years non-stop.

They didn't show skepticism, they didn't report.

They acted as the p.r. firm of the administration and practiced advocacy not journalism.

This was outrageous behavior.

So is the western media blackout on what took place in Baghdad yesterday.

‏@jenanmoussa

Cool. Its a challenge for girls to ride bike in some MidEast countries. Today Iraqi girls cycled in #Baghdad elwehda.com/Al-Raq/1129468… @akhbar

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Every fat gutted, balding American male reporter in Iraq has tried to treat soccer like the second coming of democracy.

But let women risk something -- and it was a risk to do what they did -- and you've got your thumbs your asses?

The rank sexism in coverage of Iraq is one of the least noted press critiques that have been offered. (We've covered it here from day one -- beginning with THE NEW YORK TIMES go-go boys coverage of Iraq.)

Yet again, rank sexism has prevented a story that should have been told from reaching American news audiences.

New topic . . .

General James Mattis is president-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense. Mattathias Schwartz (THE INTERCEPT) reports:

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mattis said, “we will probably look back on the invasion of Iraq as a mistake — as a strategic mistake.”
Mattis was one of the Iraq campaign’s most important ground commanders. He led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion and later oversaw the bloody retaking of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004.
As for the Pentagon’s view on the Iraq invasion at the time, Mattis said this: “I think people were pretty much aware that the U.S. military didn’t think it was a very wise idea. But we give a cheery ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Because when you elect someone commander in chief — we give our advice. We generally give it in private.”

And here's one response to that news:

‏@cjwerleman

Rule: If you think Iraq was only "probably" a mistake, you'll probably make the same mistake again. 

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In other news, AP reports that 43-year-old Iraq War veterans Luis Carolos Montalvan has died and his body was discovered on Friday in an El Paso hotel. THE DAILY MAIL adds:

The medical examiner's office has not completed a preliminary autopsy report.

'He was an extremely dedicated activist nationwide for multiple causes, including rights and benefits of veterans and the disabled, as well as the promotion of service dogs,' a statement from his family reads.

Still on Iraq War veterans, a Canadian in Iraq has been arrested.

‏@ipoliticsca

Feds working for release of Canadian veteran held in Iraq |iPolitics ipoli.ca/2gLMhNs

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The CANADIAN PRESS reports:

A former Canadian soldier being held in Iraq is in good health and Canadian Embassy officials are working to win his release, federal cabinet minister Judy Foote confirmed Monday.

Foote, the senior minister responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador, spoke to Mike Kennedy’s mother in Newfoundland earlier in the day, said press secretary Jessica Turner.

Kay Kennedy told radio station VOCM her son was arrested in Erbil in northern Iraq while taking part in what she called a humanitarian mission. She said she was speaking with him on Tuesday evening when she realized something was wrong.

The following community sites updated:

Iraq