Media

Jerry Brown, California's attorney general who is running for governor, was on Cavuto last night going after the corrupt officials who are making up to $800,000 in city jobs.

He is right is declaring Meg Whitman the super-rich candidate, but she is not alone in this. He is wrong in calling for a federal bailout, saying some of the money “going to AIG” should go to California.

Arnold Schwarzenegger made the same point last year and Obama’s people rejected it quickly. They might have been watching Glenn Beck, who was making the important point that it would be the healthy internal states that would be bailing out the broke and debt-ridden Golden State with its $800,000 small-city managers. But Jerry Brown should be listened to. He brings to California an opportunity.

It’s hot outside. Too hot for a summer stroll or any sort of outdoor activity. So yesterday morning, I settled in for some riveting Sunday talk show action.

Aside from the usual histrionics surrounding the Sherrod racial episode and the “necessary dialogues” on race the mainstream media feels compelled to hold every other month just so it can sleep well at night, the latest argument to follow in Washington is what to do over the expiring Bush tax cuts.

We learned something very important in the matter of Shirley Sherrod. We learned the full magnitude of fear in the Obama White House. Fear of the conservative media infrastructure. Fear of conservative Republican attacks. Fear of the race issue itself. Fear of Drudge. Fear of Breitbart. Fear of Fox. Fear of being attacked even without cause.

Even after the white couple that Sherrod allegedly did not help emerged with full-blown support for Sherrod and gratitude that she saved their farm, the White House still, even then, publicly backed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's firing of her.

It is wrong when an entire Tea Party movement is smeared with the false charge of racism. It is wrong when Shirley Sherrod is smeared by a right-wing media that distorts the truth and tries to destroy this woman through character assassination. It is wrong when the president of the United States and the secretary of Agriculture cower in fear of righ-wing media and execute the lynching of Shirley Sherrod.

Let’s see if MSNBC can rise to the occasion of recognizing that not all Tea Partiers are racists and that criticizing Fox News and Glenn Beck is not enough. In this matter it was unconscionable for the White House to execute the lynching before learning the facts or trying the case.

Who knew Steve Jobs had so much in common with Sarah Palin? Or Michele Bachmann or the others shouting from their Tea cups?

All of them despise the media for daring to shed harsh light on their crusades as they crush anyone in their way who might want to erect a few barriers of truth to confront their steamrollers.

These hated troublemakers are the ones who insist on asking the tough questions and reporting the embarrassing answers and/or deceptions from those politicians and entrepreneurs who have gotten used to spreading their messages with no resistance whatsoever.

My Israeli friends want to break with America before it is too late. They who through millennia have always been a serious people no longer consider us to be a serious people and feel the shared relationship could now destroy Israel. But it is to be expected today in our country, where a former president actually declares himself to be a priest and begins to perform marriages. We substitute pop stars and politicians for priests and gods and politics for religion. We have declared ourselves to be our own gods.

Shouldn't we remember that, by definition, clandestine agents like to skulk in the dark shadows, jealously guarding the secrecy of their creepy creeping? So mightn't we want to be just a tad suspicious about the clamor of publicity concerning the recent espionage game-playing?

Suddenly, the spy biz has become show biz. About all we haven't seen of that suburban ring is a program called "The Real Russian Housewives.” And one has to believe that Playboy and/or Hustler have been in touch with the redhead. I see a centerfold coming.

In his new book, Killer Politics, Ed Schultz tells it like it is, describing how big money and bad politics are destroying our politics and putting the American Dream under the constant attack of special interests. If every Democratic candidate would speak as forcefully as Schultz writes in his book, Democrats would win another landslide!

The book is pure, vintage Schultz, and it's all there. How a truly reformed healthcare system would serve all Americans. How economic justice in the populist tradition would get our economy growing again and make our economy fair to workers, as well as prosperous to Wall Street. How special-interest money corrupts our system, day in and day out, 24/7.

Betsy Rothstein of Fishbowl has a great piece about the digital nervous breakdown of Dave Weigel, the Washington Post blogger, who regurgitated his dislike of various forces on the right to what appears to be a listserve of various liberal media afficiandos.

Where have you gone, Ben Bradlee, a nation of former Post subscribers turns its lonely eyes to you!

The Drudge debate is now between those who believe he should set himself on fire (led by Weigel), those who believe he needs to take a bath (including PR advisers to Al Gore, who can make a reasonable case), those who ask whether Weigel's bedwetting rant against conservative media is the best the Post can produce (including me), and those who wonder why progressives spend so much time whining about right-wing media and so little creating their own Drudges, Fox Newses and Washington Examiners (me again).