What is MSNBC's interest in promoting torture? (0.00 / 0)

Ditto for Newsweek, FUX Newz and others.

Why do they see it as in their interest to promote torture? What do they stand to gain from this?

Great post.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

-- Frederic Bastiat, "The Law", 1850

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by: Emocrat @ Mon Jan 12, 2009 at 23:01:59 PM CST

It's not so much that they're promoting torture (4.00 / 2)

as that one, they're defending the establishment figures in DC that they're very close and feel an allegience to (i.e. the whole Village thing), two, a lot of their viewers probably support torture, if not wholeheartedly then in "ticking time bomb" situations, and they don't want to alienate them (many are probably armchair terrorist fighter 24 fans), and three, their marketing whizes have probably told them that it's good for ratings. Remember, the GOP didn't fall out of favor because its policies were seen as evil, but because they messed up on the war and economy. There is almost certainly still a large number of non-wingnut indies and centrists out there who don't see the problem with torture and some military ass-kicking if done right, and for the right reasons. MSNBC realizes this and cynically goes along with it.

Paddy Chayevsky predicted all this over 30 years ago.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 02:03:56 AM CST

[ Parent ]

General Electric (4.00 / 3)

General Electric is the parent company of NBC (and half parent to MSNBC).  It is a major defense contractor.  Jack Welch told Brian Williams that he wanted the Republicans to win elections because it was good for GE.

Funny thing is, lending is another large piece of their business, particularly business loans.  In that sense, Republicans, by screwing up the economy, were terrible for business.

Fox of course sold out to the GOP in exchange for loosening ownership restrictions that now allow them to own more TV stations among other things.

I don't get Newweek.  They are owned by the Washington Post.  I suspect they are simply part of the Village mentality.

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by: David Kowalski @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 02:51:05 AM CST

[ Parent ]

In my opinion (4.00 / 1)

this is why the Republicans bought  up the old media. Not to make money, but to promote their worldview.

Montani semper liberi

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by: Sadie Baker @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 07:00:54 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Not only .. (0.00 / 0)

is he on Tweety's show .. and sometimes hosts it when Tweety is on vacation .. and Barnicle can't be there .. but Smerconish also hosts a morning radio show on the local Philly radio station that hosts the wingnuts(Yes .. we get OxyCotin Man and Sean Insanity .. but no Air America in Philly .. go figure) .. Smerconish practices law very infrequently these days .. Adam B(the DailyKos one .. who might have the same handle here .. I don't know) can tell you more .. if he so desires .. since I am sure he knows more about what cases Smerconish has handled before .. or what he might take now

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Mon Jan 12, 2009 at 23:34:09 PM CST

I'll say what I know (0.00 / 0)

He's still listed as being of counsel at The Beasley Firm, a very high-profile plaintiff's trial lawyer firm.  I'm not aware of whether he's actively handling anything.

Smerconish is an odd duck, because he also endorsed Obama for President b/c of his being smarter on the war on terrorism, and in particular the focus on Pakistan/Afghanistan.

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by: Adam B. @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:55:33 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Yeah (4.00 / 1)

I saw the bit about the endorsement, and almost mentioned it in the piece but cut it for brevity's sake.  It really makes his position all the more alarming.  It's one thing for Rush Limbaugh or freepers to endorse torture, but this guy is a different category.

He's also a really bad lawyer, from later in that transcript:

Is the president legally culpable here under some future tribunal in this country for having decided that he can ignore the Geneva Conventions in this case?

SMERCONISH: I think not. Frankly-well, frankly, the law doesn't say much of anything in this regard. I mean, I think I know what went on here. They turned to John Yoo, who, frankly, was at a third level in the administration, and they asked him to create new law in this regard. Now, oddly enough, he's out at Berkeley.

The direct answer to your question is al Qaeda doesn't wear the uniform of any particular nation. They're not a signatory to the Geneva Convention. They're not going to play by those rules, so why should we? If they were playing by them, maybe I'd have a different posture in this regard.

Simply bizarre.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 09:12:39 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Satyagraha (0.00 / 0)

Lately, I've been wondering what specific actions could I most effectively take to best help our new president use his authority to stop the ongoing normalization of crimes against humanity. To that end, I turned to the Wikipedia entry for Satyagraha, Gandhi's theory of non-violent (but not passive) resistance. Fascinating, and it feels intuitively right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

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by: Frances Madeson @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 00:37:07 AM CST

Cheney lies (0.00 / 0)

Scarborough is just parroting Cheney, whose lie was debunked by Spencer Ackerman.

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by: KCinDC @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 00:59:32 AM CST

We on the left sometimes forget (0.00 / 0)

that not everyone who's rejected the GOP has done so for moral and ideological reasons. Many, if not most, have done so because they've proven to be incompetent and corrupt, and the moral stuff just doesn't figure into it. I think that the 75% or so who morally failed the Milgram experiment (which was recently repeated with very similar results) map pretty well to the public in general. Most people, no matter how "religious" or "nice", just don't have that strong a moral compass when it comes to situations that either don't directly affect them (torturing "terrorists"), or for which they believe that there will be no consequences (not hiring someone because of their race but making it look like it's for other reasons) or have otherwise been taken off the hook (Milgram). MSNBC knows this, and is just giving the public what it believes that it wants. Most Americans, I'm convinced, would be ok with torture if told that it works and is necessary to protect them, even if they'd deny this if asked directly and non-anonymously (call it the Bradley Effect of moral questions).

There's a reason that they give shows to, and regularly have on, people like this. It's what their market research people told them that their audience wants to see. I.e. reassuring faux tough white guys pat each other on the butt and cheer on each others' faux toughness, in-between talking about football and ogling the unending parade of pretty female newsreaders that MSNBC has so many of and who were clearly hired for their looks first. It's a cultural thing. We may say that we're against torture, but deep down, most people are ok with it, so long as they don't have to do it, see it take place, or hear about it, at least in much detail. Olbermann and Maddow are the exception, but MSNBC is still mostly a center-right faux macho white male suburban Reagan Democrat network. It's quite sickening.

And Zbig should be ashamed of the daughter that he raised, for being around these assholes and appearing to like it. Talk about self-estemm and moral value issues.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 02:20:42 AM CST

Zbig (4.00 / 1)

He did step in there to bat for her and put Joe in his place not so long ago:

   Scarborough: "You cannot blame what's going on in Israel on the Bush administration."

   Brzezinski: "You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you."

Joe's understanding of torture is equally stunning and embarrassing to listen to, even aside from the moral aspect, he just doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:18:32 AM CST

[ Parent ]

The thing is ... (0.00 / 0)

does anyone other than Beltway people(and some serious political junkies) watch Tweety on his weekday show(or even his weekend one)? .. I doubt it

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:21:45 AM CST

[ Parent ]

uhm (0.00 / 0)

As many as 1.3M watched tweety on Friday.  It wasn't quite that many since that's counting his 5pm and 7pm slots, but it's not trivial in any case.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:28:29 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It's not about who watches these shows (4.00 / 1)

as about who watches, listens to and reads the people who watch these shows. It's a trickle down/sideways sort of thing, where the overall misinformation, false meme-spreading effect is distributed in ways that are hard to control. The establishment media has many components, in terms of shows, papers, magazines, columns, journalists, pundits, etc., and while each isn't that pervasive or pernicious on their own, the overall, virtually collaborative effect can be quite powerful. They all play off of and parrot each other, and when the opinion setters decide on something, everyone repeats it. And smart and cynical manipulators like Cheney and Rove know how to exploit this, and it's exactly what they're trying to do right now.

The establishment media is like a thousand little megaphones, which, manipulated properly, can be turned into one huge megaphone, and these shows are key to doing that.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 16:48:55 PM CST

[ Parent ]

A case for misanthropy (4.00 / 1)

could be built simply from Smerconish.

Nota bene, self-proclaimed Christians: in Christianity one would rather be tortured rather than ever harm another. The self-proclaimed Athiest (closet theist) Hitchens understands this better than most.

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by: Paul Goodman @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 05:34:47 AM CST

The Aristocracy Has Always Believed In Torture (4.00 / 3)

Unspeakably evil as this may be, I think you need to understand it as simply the natural consequence of the rise of the right, which is fundamentally aristocratic, authoritarian and anti-democratic in its values.

Kevin Phillips has written about this in terms of "Restoration politics" as the political culture--first promoted in a big way during the Reagan Era--in which the Bush Dynasty emerged to the height of its power, a culture in which dynastic power is normalized and democratic accountability is sneered at.

One can't really disentangle the Clinton impeachment, for example, from this larger milieux.  His crime?  Being trailer trash.  And daring to think that being a Rhodes Scholar could possibly erase that.

If they would go after a siting President like that--spending years looking for a pretense to drive him from office--then how is it the least bit surprising that they would torture a dark-skinned foreigner who had helped attack the US?  And so what if they got a couple hundred of the wrong guys along the way?

And if did that, why in the world would they be the least bit concerned with logic, or consistency, or democratic principles?  These folks are deeply, deeply, deeply anti-American in the bottomless pit of their souls.

But what's truly despicable right now is Obama's namby-pamby pandering to them, because that is the exact opposite of the full-fledged moral condemnation that is so clearly called for.  If the Democrats can't stand unequivocally against torture, they have no moral authority with which to confront the GOP, no moral authority to do anything at all.  We should totally expect this sort of behavior from the GOP.  But when we get it from the highest levels of the Democratic Party as well, then the corruption of the American Republic is virtually complete.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 06:57:39 AM CST

Yes (0.00 / 0)

No argument here.  What bothers me is that you didn't used to hear such open endorsement of it, and the Democrats winning 2 wave elections has evidently not changed the course on this.

How far are we from these people starting to justify slavery or perhaps we can bring back the guillotine?  

We're all Al Gore's frog in the slowly heating water.  

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:22:29 AM CST

[ Parent ]

One did not hear such open endorsement of torture (4.00 / 1)

and heavy-handed tactics because such were simply not spoken of in polite circles. It ain't like the US military and intelligence agencies learned these skills in Iraq or Afghanistan, its just that the darker corners of the American Empire are coming to light. I find it a bit encouraging, because no one even had a conversation like these on national TV during the cold war. Back then, only the most insane of the "conspiracy theorists" would even consider mentioning "US foreign intelligence" in the same sentence with "torture and rendition" and now, its the VP of the US that defends the methods in front of the nation.


"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

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by: SpitBall @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 08:54:27 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I suppose (4.00 / 1)

I'm inclined to think that the loss of inhibition about speaking openly of such things is more reflective of their growing acceptability as opposed to a rise in honesty about the true nature and form or US foreign policy.

If torture is forbidden and no one has the temerity to openly advocate for it in the public sphere, there should be less of it, and the little that happens at great risk of prosecution.

Now, the President and Vice-President admit to personally authorizing torture as if nothing is remiss.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 09:08:42 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Even so, that such are a topic of political conversation (0.00 / 0)

is a step into the light. What gets to me is the underlying notion that, somehow, the Bush/Cheney regime is responsible for introducing the use of torture (harsh interrogation, if you must) into the equation. They did not. Such has been part and parcel of US actions for decades, so no surprise that the incoming administration might not step up and produce the "moral outrage" that Paul deems necessary (and probably IS necessary). It simply is not going to come from those that count themselves part of the "aristocracy" that runs the empire because it would be very much akin the the naked emperor informing everyone that he is unclothed. Its a matter of national security, after all.

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

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by: SpitBall @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 10:10:52 AM CST

[ Parent ]

It's partly who does it (0.00 / 0)

Torture always used to happen, but mostly it was done by US proxies, like the products of the School of the Americas.

The change Bush instituted is that there's now no objection  to Americans carrying out that same torture themselves.

Forgotten Countries - a foreign policy-focused blog

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by: Englishlefty @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 13:49:25 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Doesn't that make it harder to cover-up and excuse? (0.00 / 0)

The use of such tactics has been "normal" for many, many years, it just didn't get as much attention in the media (of any stripe or type) as it has since Gitmo and Abu Graib made the press.

But with that increased awareness may come an opportunity, no? Now that the torturers have come out of the shadows, is it still possible to ignore their actions and the intent of those who penned the justifications for "enhanced" techniques?  

I admit, the inertia must be overcome. So far, it looks like Mr. O is tilting toward sweeping the whole mess back under the rug, but that's where the rest of us come into the game.  Are we strong enough to get all these sordid details out into the open? Do we have the stomach to endure stories of what has been done in the name of "protecting our way of life"? Are we willing to live in a world where our "freedom" is not bought by the oppression and elimination of others?

"It sounds wrong...
     ...but its right."

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by: SpitBall @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 14:07:50 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Clinton never really understood power (0.00 / 0)

Or, at least, never really had the courage and discipline to do what he needed to do to get and keep it. They smelled fear, cowardice and vacillation in him, and took him for all that he had--and then some. It takes three things to corrupt a society. One, underlying crises and/or conditions that provide openings for it to happen. Two, those who seek to exploit these crises and conditions to their benefit. And three, those who allow it to happen, who are supposed to make sure that it does not. The latter includes not just leaders, but everyday people, who are responsible for the maintenance and well-being of their society.

Clinton failed us, by not standing up to Gingrich & Co. strongly and smartly enough. Obama can't repeat this. He simply can't, and would be a massive fool if he did. These people need to be destroyed, not accomodated, sidestepped or appeased. They are cancer.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Tue Jan 13, 2009 at 17:05:28 PM CST

[ Parent ]