A Visit to an Increasingly Smaller Planet

Where are they now?

Andrew Sullivan is currently skulking around behind a Substack paywall griping about all the usual, fearmongering about trans people.  Half his blog is now apparently spent posting pictures of the views from the windows of various people.

Matthew Dowd is making the rounds complaining how unfair it was that he was fired.  A) Yep, and B)  Welcome to the American workforce!

MSNBC pundit ousted over Kirk talk says network agreed comments were misconstrued

Matthew Dowd tells Katie Couric ex-employer concurred but ‘it didn’t matter’ and they dismissed him anyway. 

The political analyst fired by MSNBC over his Charlie Kirk commentary says his former employer agreed with him that his remarks were being misconstrued as “insensitive” – but said “it didn’t matter” to the network, and they dismissed him anyway.

“I said: ‘I think you guys are making a huge mistake,’” Matthew Dowd said on Katie Couric’s podcast. “I said: ‘You know and I know that’s not anything what I meant. You know it’s been misconstrued’ – and they agreed with that.

“They agreed it had been misconstrued. But they said it didn’t matter. The decision’s been made.”

Mr. Dowd is also trying to claw his way back into the circus by explaining why the media is Teh Sux0r, which, if you know Mr. Dowd's history, is the stuff absurdist comedies are made of:

Political pundit and consultant Matthew Dowd said the media’s “herd mentality” is promoting the feeling that President Donald Trump’s tactics of distraction and disruption are working to fool the public into putting Trump in a better light than he deserves.

Despite Steve Schmidt's repeated, heroic efforts to burn his career to the ground, the grifter in him just keeps trying to resurrect himself from the ashes.    This week he scored that coveted 32nd paragraph mention in a New York Times column of which no one made it past the 3rd paragraph.  

 Would it surprise you to learn that Schmidt is lashing out at [checks notes] Both Sides?

"The ad comes from a new group, the Save America Movement, whose leaders say they want to fight Trump with what they call “counter-propaganda.” Two of its leaders — Mary Corcoran, a former public relations executive and Steve Schmidt, a former top aide to John McCain who co-founded (and later left) the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project — are not currently impressed with either party.

They view Trump’s Republican Party with utter contempt, and fault Democrats for failing to push back effectively..."

But didn't he and his pals already save us all back in [checks notes] 2020 (File This Under Selling Your Birthright for a Mess of Pottage)?

That was the setup.  

Here's the punch line.

So far, the group has raised $4 million for their venture, though they hope to use location-targeting technology to spend efficiently...

By now the Alert Reader has noticed that every two bit grifter and refugee from their sinful Republican past has pitched up their own individual revival tents hung with their own, individual "movements" and "causes" banners, each one promising to save Murrican Democracy for the low-low introductory membership price of just $9.95 per month.  

But wait!  There's more!  

If you choose to upgrade to our Platinum Membership level ($250/month or a one-time "Hero of Democracy" donation of $10,000) you will receive early access to their podcasts, access to their Discord and an "I Paid A Shit Ton Of Money To Save Democracy And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt" tee-shirt.

If I told you that Mark "Helicopter Boy" Halperin had shaved his head, gotten some Iron Cross and Skull tats and had gone undercover with the Proud Boys, for a second would you wonder if maybe it was true?   Because the oleaginous Halperin, who was once a ubiquitous presence on the Sunday shows and cable news, has vanished from sight.  Where is he now?  Lemme throw a couple of headlines at you, then you can guess.

First:

Mark Halperin Tells Megyn Kelly How Charlie Kirk’s Assassination...

And then:

Journalist calls it ‘incredible’ that ABC pulled Kimmel after years of anti-Trump programming

Panelists Mark Halperin (editor and chief of Two Way?) and Byron York (Fox News contributor) join ‘The Ingraham Angle’ to discuss fallout from Charlie Kirk’s assassination and ABC’s decision to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

Hilarious that Halps is still demanding to be called a "journalist".  And wuzzit Two Way?  A YouTube thingie which he co-hosts with Sean "Puffy" Spicer and someone from the Shadow Realm called Daniel Calhoon Turrentine  -- a name obviously stolen from the unpublished works of Mark Twain.  

The blurb for morning edition of this drivel... well ... the word "grandiose" hardly covers it (for the full effect, this should be read in your head in the voice of the late Ted Knight doing his Super Friends  voiceover.)

Every weekday morning, the executives who run America’s television news networks chair a key gathering of their anchors, correspondents and producers to look ahead at the day’s forthcoming events. The meeting offers – for those lucky enough to attend – a fascinating, forward-looking snapshot of the news cycle ahead. 

Each weekday morning on 2WAY, the home of conversations like no other, “The Morning Meeting” offers the chance to attend – and participate in – one such meeting...

And since I am a merciful blog host, I shall reprint only the first little bit of the blurb for the evening edition of this drivel:

Join Mark Halperin and some of the leading minds in politics...

But the best headline of all?  From an outfit called "ABD Post":

MARK HALPERIN brilliantly breaks down why Disney canceled Jimmy Kimmel...

The "ABD Post" is a pro-Erdoğan Turkish-American website about which you have never heard, and from which you will never hear again.  

And finally, a two-fer.  In case you were worried that you might have to hold a bake-sale to support Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, you can stop worrying.  They are both are residing comfortably in the reactionary libertarian free-speech terrariums their tech oligarch sugar daddies built for them and their ilk.

From The New Republic:

Tech billionaires and iconoclast journalists suddenly see eye to eye.

...

"Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left", a new book by the journalist Eoin Higgins, is an attempt to understand how a collection of unimaginably wealthy, increasingly angry titans of technology and finance were able to acquire loud allies among journalists who had, until relatively recently, been largely associated with the political left. Higgins previously covered this beat in his work for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and for his own newsletter, The Flashpoint. Some of that work is repurposed here, but the book expands on it, taking a broader look at the sociocultural and political currents that have brought new alignments of writers, audiences, and funders.

His two main subjects are the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, although a number of other new-media all-stars and hangers-on make appearances...

And that is the end of the news.

 

I Am The Liberal Media

H.R. Is Quickly Coming To Mean "Honors Rendered"

Panegyric the right way and you can go back to your desk.  Do it wrong, or disagree, and H.R. will help you pack your shit and show you to the door.

From CBS News:

Multiple firings

A number of employees in a range of industries, as well as in academia, are finding themselves in hot water over remarks they made about Kirk's death or his political beliefs. 

PHNX Sports, an online sports news site focused on Arizona, announced the firing of reporter Gerald Bourguet after he said on social media on Wednesday, in a since-deleted post, that "Refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence."

"Truly don't care if you think it's insensitive or poor timing to decline to respect an evil man who died," he added.

Bourguet declined to comment when reached by CBS News.

MSNBC said it cut ties with analyst Matthew Dowd after he said in an on-air conversation that Kirk had pushed incendiary speech and that "hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions." In a public statement, Comcast accused Dowd of making "an unacceptable and insensitive comment about this horrific event." 

"That coverage was at odds with fostering civil dialogue and being willing to listen to the points of view of those who have differing opinions. We should be able to disagree, robustly and passionately, but, ultimately, with respect. We need to do better," Comcast executives said.  

Dowd, the former chief strategist for Republican President George W. Bush, apologized in a Substack post on Friday, saying he hadn't meant to imply Kirk was to blame for the violence that killed him, the AP reported. But Dowd, a long-time political analyst at ABC News before joining MSNBC in 2022, also accused the network of caving to pressure to fire him. 

"The right wing media mob ginned up, went after me on a plethora of platforms, and MSNBC reacted to that mob," he wrote on Substack. "Even though most at MSNBC knew my words were being misconstrued, the timing of my words forgotten ... and that I apologized for any miscommunication on my part, I was terminated by the end of the day."

Also in the media industry, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said in a Substack post Monday that the company dismissed her last week after she spoke out "against political violence, racial double standards, and America's apathy toward guns," noting that she only referred to Kirk once in a separate social media post. 

A spokesperson for the Washington Post declined to comment to CBS News on personnel matters...

Reminds me of nothing so much as the CEO United Way hard-sell that I used to run across back in my days working in the private sector.  The question was never "if", but always "How much?".  Sometimes it was strongly implied, sometimes it was more explicit, but always it was clear what was expected of you if you wanted to keep your job.  

Probably time to remind the what it means to work in an "at will" state.  

The answer may surprise you!

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd is Still a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

Here at the driftglass blog, we don’t usually play requests. But seeing as how I have gotten an alarming number of emails requesting some words on this subject, well, sometimes one must see the wisdom of bowing to the will of the people.

And so, from the Associated Press...

Analyst Matthew Dowd loses his MSNBC job following Kirk comments

Political analyst Matthew Dowd is out of a job at MSNBC after his on-air comment following conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing about “hateful words” leading to “hateful actions.”

MSNBC said Thursday that Dowd, a paid political analyst, is “no longer with the network.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd issued public apologies following his commentary, which drew a heated reaction online.

Dowd said shortly after the shooting Wednesday that Kirk was a divisive figure “who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which lead to hateful actions. And I think that’s the environment we’re in.”

Kutler posted an online apology for Dowd’s commentary, which she called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

“I apologize for my tone and words,” Dowd said. “Let me be clear, I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for this attack. Let us all come together and condemn violence of any kind.”

Dowd, once a political strategist for President George W. Bush, joined MSNBC in 2022 following a failed campaign for lieutenant governor in Texas as a Democrat. He spent nearly 15 years as an analyst at ABC News. 

Self-congratulatory preamble:  As of this writing, I believe, preserved on this blog for posterity like flies in amber, may be the only remaining samples of Matthew Dowd’s thoughts and prayers back when he was the King of Both Sides Do It.  

So, getting on with it...

First, based solely on what he said, Matthew Dowd should not have been fired.  It was a stupid and cowardly this for MSNBC to do, and since I haven't seen any signs that MSNBC operates according to a set of high-minded principles, I am left to conclude that, like every other decision they make, this was purely a business decision.  

Jesse Watters was on Fox that evening demanding that Dowd be fired, and within hours Dowd was gone.   I can't say if A led to B which led to the unemployment line, but it sure as shit looks that way.  And even if it wasn't, it doesn't matter: Fox News gets to claim another "liberal" pelt and mount it on the wall of their trophy room.  What it looks like is appeasement, which apparently everyone but C-suite media executives seems to understand never, ever works.  As Churchill said,  "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."  

Today, MSNBC threw Dowd to the crocodile.  Tomorrow or the next day or next week, it'll be someone else, because appeasers never fucking learn.  

That being said, second, Matthew Dowd should never have been hired in the first place.  He absolutely disgraced himself and betrayed this country when he used his huge ABC News platform in 2015 and 2016 to bombard his readers and viewers with Both Sides Do It poison.  Vote Third Party!  Disrupt the K'rupt Duopoly!  

If he was not the worst of that bunch, he was definitely in the top five, and if you stroll through my archive you'll see why.  

But what was worse was that he never recanted it or apologized for it.  He just erased it.   Zapped his Twitter archives, pretended it never happened, and blocks anyone who brings it up.  Happened right in front of us.  And you know what?  With help from his former Bush administration pals like MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace and their Republican Reputation Rehab Machine, he absolutely got away with it.  

Which is why, number three, don’t lose a minute of sleep worrying about Matthew Dowd.  He's going to be fine.  People like him always land on their feet.  After tempers cool, they’ll fire up the Reputation Rehab Machine again.  Phone calls to old cronies inside the media will be made. Favors will be called in or exchanged.  And I guarantee you, you’ll see him again, fairly soon.  Probably someplace like the Lincoln Project, or Crooked Media, or the Bulwark.  The Meidas guys.  Maybe  even The Atlantic.  

Dowd has all the right friends in all the right places, so don't feel you need to hold a bake sale to make sure he keeps body and soul together.  Instead, may I recommend kicking a few bucks towards the tip jar of an area blogger, who does have many friends, but like him, they're mostly of the low and disreputable variety.  

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person: Terry Moran Edition

Imagine my surprise when I learned that ABC News is now pretending to have some sort of "policy" by which on-air personalities can be not only judged and suspended, but fired outright, for what they post to social media.

From Fox News (No link because fuck 'em):

ABC News insider says there was 'no alternative' but for network to fire Terry Moran over anti-Trump post

'We f---ing took it seriously and dealt with it pretty g--d--- quickly,' the network staffer told Fox News Digital

ABC News was left with "no alternative" but to let longtime correspondent Terry Moran go over his now-deleted X post attacking President Donald Trump and top White House aide Stephen Miller, according to one network staffer.

"It's just sad honestly," the ABC News staffer told Fox News Digital. "It's sad for him, a long-time colleague, friend, a good person, family man… It's just unfortunate, but there was no alternative, especially in these times."

The network insider acknowledged that, with the industry-wide issue of distrust of the legacy media, not addressing Moran's post promptly and having the drama dragged out could have cost ABC viewership...

"We are at the end of our agreement with Terry Moran and based on his recent post – which was a clear violation of ABC News policies – we have made the decision to not renew," a spokesperson for ABC News told Fox News Digital.

Who knew?   

And what exactly might those "ABC News policies" be?  Is it "On-air employees shalt not shit talk  people on Twitter." or is it "On-air employees  shalt not shit talk people who can fuck with our bottom line on Twitter."?  

I kinda suspect it's the latter, and that it's not exactly written with that kind of clarity, because those kinds of "policies" never are.  Because everyone -- wink, wink -- understands -- nudge, nudge -- the context.  In which case, that explains why there was verbal warning, and no written warning, just -- bam! -- fired.

However, if it's a blanket policy of not shit talking people on social media, well damn.  I guess I have a story to tell.  

If you only know Mr. Matthew Dowd as a person who now spends most of this time posting "On this day..." BlueSky notifications about obscure dead people (and blocking more people than the combined total of all pro football offensive lines since the day the Dayton Triangles took on the Columbus Panhandles at Triangle Park, on October 3, 1920)  you may be unaware that he used to have the very important job of ABC News' chief political analyst.  Or that he occupied that influential  position during what one could argue was the most consequential political events of our lifetime: the 2016 presidential election.  

And in his capacity as ABC News' chief political analyst, Mr. Dowd talked a whole lotta shit on social media every fucking day.  He was, during that period, the most high-profile and ubiquitous promulgator of the Both Sides Do It lie.  Mr. Dowd was an aggressively outspoken advocate for "Disrupting the K'rupt Duopoly" by voting 3rd party or not voting at all.  

I disagreed with Mr. Dowd, and told him so.  On Twitter.  Repeatedly.  He wasn't merely wrong: he was using his high-profile media position to spread a toxic lie that threatened to end up putting a monster in the White House.  Which would be a disaster.

In response, Mr. Dowd insulted my readers, and personally insulted me.   On Twitter.  Repeatedly. Which, I am now given to understand, is a firing offense at ABC News.  

Funny old world.

When, in the fullness of time, it turned out I was right and Mr. Dowd had been catastrophically wrong, he reacted by blocking me and anyone who brought up his past.

Eventually, as he went about hurriedly rehabbing his reputation and finding a new home at MSNBC under the wing of his old Bush regime running buddy, Nicole Wallace (where he suddenly believed the diametric opposite of everything he had said he believed during his tenure at ABC News), Mr. Dowd deleted his entire Twitter archive.

Which is why there is no record of any of this ever happening...

...except for a few fragments preserved on this here blog :-)

.

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd Continues to Be a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

my problem with most sports analysts is the same i have with most political analysts, they start with a hot take, and then go look for evidence to back up their take, and ignore evidence that undermines their take. why can't we just start with objectivity?

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd.bsky.social) January 10, 2025 at 11:34 AM

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd: The Adventure Continues

A few days ago I received the following instructions from Liberal High Command via an intermediary who describes herself as "a Democrat, proud woman, and the engaged citizen you might remember from the other place."

The instructions read: 

Matthew Dowd is here. 

Please welcome him by retweeting and following. 

He is a crucial voice for us.        

 

Well, as you know I'm nothing if not a Liberal High Command instruction-following kinda guy, so I immediately hopped-to.  But a funny thing happened on my way to following this "crucial voice for us."

Without my even knowing he existed on BlueSky, Mr. Dowd preemptively...

Thus carrying over yet another tradition from the Bad Place...

Not surprised. Mr. Dowd's past is as sketchy as an art school dumpster, and is, for him, a professional Achilles' Heel the size of a horse barn.  So I note with some satisfaction that, just before Mr. Dowd terminated his Twitter account and came over to Blue Sky to block me there, I managed to preserved in bloggy amber this hilariously sanctimonious example of why Mr. Dowd blocks me.  

the number of pundits/analysts/news anchors who have been consistently wrong for 20 years and yet are constantly given airtime is absolutely astounding. in no business would these folks last longer than 15 minutes, except maybe sports analysis and wall street.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 2, 2024

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

the number of pundits/analysts/news anchors who have been consistently wrong for 20 years and yet are constantly given airtime is absolutely astounding. in no business would these folks last longer than 15 minutes, except maybe sports analysis and wall street.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 2, 2024

I can't today.

I just can't

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

This graphic above represents Matthew Dowd, in his role as ABC News' chief political analyst, during all of 2015, 2016 and 2017.  I ought to know:  I wrote him up just about every time he pulled this shit, in just about every venue where he pulled it.

In return he called me and my readers stupid.  Liars, who weren't interested in the truth.

Of course, you'll never find any evidence of that on Twitter because before going into the Media Reputation Rehab Program he erased his Twitter archive and blocked anyone who brushed even lightly up against his past.  

At the time I predicted, as widely and as loud as my little blog could proclaim it, that of course he would get away with it.  

Didn't matter that he was a coward.  Didn't matter that he has the ethic of a fucking windsock.  That today, thanks to the thankless efforts of the same people Dowd denigrated as idiots and liars, media Both Siderism is becoming a punch line.  And since that is the direction of the prevailing wind today, that is what Dowd pretends to sincerely believe today.

And tomorrow, or the next day, if the wind shifts, Dowd will shift with it.  He'll take another trip to the Media Reputation Rehab Center, put on a different mask, and then that'll be what he pretends to sincerely believe.

Because it's a club and he's in the club and that's how the club works.

As a result, this is Matthew Dowd today:

one of the worst forms of bias today in news isn't left or right, it is bias towards balance. When news media approaches balance as the goal and not truth, then they present Americans the false idea there are 2 legitimate sides. This is incredibly detrimental to our democracy.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) July 27, 2024

Which is why Mr. Dowd remains the undisputed holder of the fundamentally ridiculous belt.

And why you cannot trust the corporate media.

I Am The Liberal Media

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

This was Matthew Dowd, acting in his capacity as ABC News chief political analyst, in every goddamn venue that he could find, every goddamn day of the 2016 election and well into 2017.  After which he started going radio silent, and then quietly deleted his entire Twitter archive and entered the MSNBC Reputation Rehab program.

And this is Mr. Dowd today:

and just because you believe something to be true, it doesn't mean you have to say it if it isn't helpful. sometimes best path in life is not always to announce "your truth". https://t.co/Jkp9NwqIE4

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) July 2, 2024

Which is why Mr. Dowd remains the undisputed holder of the fundamentally ridiculous belt.

Burn The Lifeboats

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

why on Earth is my former employer @ThisWeekABC putting Frank Luntz on air??? he is a shyster of the first order and i told everyone at ABC that when i worked there.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) June 23, 2024

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that if Matthew Dowd would like to revisit the years when he was employed as ABC News' chief political analyst, I am 100% down with that and will make myself available anywhere, anytime for this worthy cause.

Burn The Lifeboats

2024 Stephen Hayes Is Now Fully 2016 Matthew Dowd

Most readers are, I am sure, familiar with the arc of Mr. Hayes' career.  For those few who are not, here's a quick summary.  From Wikipedia:

In 2004, Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, described Hayes as "most indefatigable proponent of the Iraq-Al Qaeda link outside the [George W. Bush] administration."[11] In 2008, Spencer Ackerman characterized Hayes as one of the most effective amplifiers of the Bush administration's Iraq War claims about an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.[12] Inquiries into the Hussein-Al Qaeda link have concluded that there was no link.[12] In 2004, the 9/11 Commission concluded there were "no collaborative operational ties."[12]

So, big Iraq War pimp was our Mr. Hayes.  And over in the Better Universe, such toxic creatures would've had their careers shoveled into the ground, covered in quicklime, and they would spent the rest of their lives atoning for their sins swabbing out bedpans at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

But we don't live in the Better Universe.  Over in our universe, all those dozens (hundreds?) of staunch Conservative Iraq War pimps in the media, who made such a picnic out of slagging Liberal Iraq War critics as American-hating, terrorist-loving scum?  They all just skated.  None of them lost a job or missed a meal, because (say it with me kids)  There is a Club, and you and I are not in it.  So when the Iraq War went tits up, proving the critics right, followed by the de facto collapse of the Bush administration due to incompetence, corruption and hubris...nothing happened.  All the Bush administration's most ardent flaks, and all of their mainstream media collaborators. just shrugged it off and moved on to the next thing.    

And for Mr. Hayes, the next thing was:

...the New York Post, Washington Times, Salon.com, National Review, and Reason. He has been a commentator on CNN, The McLaughlin Group, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, and C-SPAN.

Because nothing matters and, for these people, there are never any consequences.  

Hayes took over The Weekly Standard for awhile, until the Trump team killed it.  Then he lingered far, far too long at Fox News for anyone with any sense of decency.  Then, since the wingnut welfare trough never goes dry and there is always funding available for these goofs to start their   next thing, he "along with Jonah Goldberg and Toby Stock, formed the conservative media company, The Dispatch."

Hayes has also been hired by MSNBC as a "contributor across all our platforms".

Because nothing matters and, for these people, there are never any consequences.  

Anyhoo, this is the fruit of Mr. Hayes' labors this week: a long and thoroughly perverse attempt to perform CPR on the rotting corpse of the Both Sides Do It lie.  

Just the fourth editorial in the 4 1/2 year history of @TheDispatch.

On the awful choices in front of us. https://t.co/9YLpSJrfnX

— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) March 8, 2024

Because nothing matters and, for these people, there are never any consequences.  

Speaking of which, I believe I promised you soupcon of 2016 Matthew Dowd, who longtime readers know, has long since nuked his entire Twitter archive in a mostly-successful attempt to wipe from the mind of man his long and dishonorable term as ABC News' chief political analyst.  But since I was writing about Mr. Dowd in real-time back then, a fair sized plain-text record of his contemptible behavior from those years still exists in my archives.

So here you go.

So how has Mr. Dowd managed to pass through the MSNBC Reputation Rehab Laundry, reinvent himself yet again, dodge any meaningful consequences for his very-recent history and land yet another teevee opinion-having gig?

Because, as I may have mentioned, nothing matters and, for these people, there are never any consequences.

I Am The Liberal Media

A Very Special Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person Anniversary

Being as it is the month of November, I would be remiss if I didn't tempt the fates by taking a peek into a  filthy corner of that Very Bad November seven years ago.

A filthy corner that was brightly lit for awhile.  Right there for anyone to see.  And the proprietor of that particular, filthy, Both Siderist corner, Mr. Matthew Dowd, used all the media clout that came with the job of ABC News chief political analyst to proudly defend his filthy corner, and angrily attack anyone who pointed out that his corner was, in fact, filthy.

Some people, like me and like Erik Wemple of the Washington Post saw Dowd for who and what he was and wrote about him (from November 1, 2016):

ABC News analyst Matthew Dowd propagates gaping Trump-Clinton false equivalence, blames country

People who work for the establishment broadcast TV outlets are programmed and required to adhere to the neutralist gospel that preaches, They’re all bastards — all of them. In this very spirit, Matthew Dowd, chief political analyst at ABC News, issued the tweet above. The imperative here? That these two issues — Donald Trump’s serial alleged sexual assaults on women and Hillary Clinton’s scandalous use of a private email server — must be paired at all times.

In ways far more eloquent than this blog could ever muster, Twitter ripped Dowd over and over for placing these two issues on the same plane.

Any watcher of bland television news recognizes this timeless lament about “partisans.” Again, everyone is to blame. Sure, partisans on both sides generally go light on the drawbacks of their candidates. Because they’re partisans. It’s a truism that borders on tautology. It overlooks two important considerations, one being that email mal-usage is one thing, and assault of women is quite, quite another. And as long as we’re discussing differences between these two issues, it bears mentioning that Clinton and her supporters have acknowledged that the email setup was a mistake; Trump and his people have called the sexual assault allegations a “total fabrication.”

As it turns out, then, there’s ample justification for talking about one without the other. Dowd, however, wasn’t budging. Instead of perhaps acknowledging that his bundling of two disparate issues was amiss, he retreated to another cliche of the TV network news analyst. The hopelessly divided America cliche, that is.

But by 2016 go-along-get-along-Blame-Both-Sides-for-Republican-atrocities fetish of the political media had become an actual cult.  If you wanted to get ahead, you became an algorithm that generated automatic "Both Sides are equally monstrous/Disrupt the K'Rupt Duopoly!" every day of your professional life.  Like, for example, this garbage by Dowd's 2015/16 running buddy, Ron Fournier which was published in The Atlantic in March of 2016:

The Worst of All Worlds

What could be worse for a creaky, cancerous political system than a match between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump?

By Ron Fournier

If you had asked me four years ago to concoct the most dispiriting and debilitating 2016 presidential campaign, I might have said, “Start with a political family; find a scandal-scarred creature of Washington addicted to 20th-century identity politics.”

“Now find a vacuous outsider; somebody who reflects the worst of modern politics and culture. A celebrity would be perfect. Better yet, a reality star who is famous for being famous, a social media whore, a boor, a bully who traffics in old hates via new technologies.”

I might have picked Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. What could be worse for a creaky, cancerous political system than what the Democratic and Republican parties are brewing up? Nothing really. This is as bad as it gets...

Well it turns out that this was not, not, not as bad as it gets.  

And although it looked for a time like Fournier's career as political opinion-haver might mercifully scuttle under a porch and die, as we all know, in the media There is a Club and you and I are not in it.  Which is why, even after thoroughly shitting the bed in 2016, "liberal" MSNBC still found a use for Fourner in 2019, Chuck Todd (remember Chuck Todd?) salvaged Fournier from the ash heap of punditry so he, as a "left of center voter", could come out strongly in favor of the third party candidacy of Howard Shultz.

Remember Howard Schultz?  And his mighty campaign of...blaming Both Sides for everything?

At the time, Fournier was "president of the political consulting firm Truscott Rossman" which, although it claimed to be "bi-partisan", weirdly enough had nothing but Republican clients.  

Which I also wrote about at the time.

Here's the original article from Talking Points Memo, January 30, 2019

Ron Fournier Is President Of A ‘Bipartisan’ PR Firm, But His Clients Are Republicans

When veteran political journalist Ron Fournier, a perennial pundit who rails against “tiny politics,” left the profession back in April to become president of the Michigan-based public relations firm Truscott Rossman, he said he would provide a needed Democratic perspective in the wake of one of its co-founder’s retirement...

But, as it turns out, none of Fournier’s known clients at the firm are Democrats; in fact, TPM couldn’t find an example of a Democratic client at the largely Republican-leaning firm at all.

Over the phone Wednesday, Fournier initially claimed that “of course we have Democratic clients.” But he couldn’t name any, aside from the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, a non-partisan group that supported the successful effort to legalize cannabis in Michigan.

So, in the aftermath of Trump's election, these two Both Siderist grifters -- Dowd and Fournier -- diverge.  Fournier finds a new was to bilk credulous dopes out of their money in the political consulting biz, whereas Dowd would really rather not leave the stage.  The teevee spotlight is warm and cozy and pays the bills and leads to other paying gigs, so having also violently shit the bed, Dowd begins to publicly peg for forgiveness.  

And thus, just 10 days after Erik Wemple's Washington Post scathing article and just two days after the 2016 election, Dowd wrote a column for the ABC News site entitled:

In This Election, Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa

Matthew Dowd offers an apology in this election cycle.

Well, despite him being catastrophically wrong at the one thing he is paid to not be wrong about...and despite personally attacking me and you lovely people on social media for being stupid and "not caring about the truth"...I have been known to be a forgiving kinda guy.  

As such, if Matthew Dowd were willing to sincerely apologize for using his position at ABC News to cravenly Both Sides every story about Trump for over a year, I'd hear him out.

If he were willing to own up to his part in getting a monster like Trump elected, I'd consider it.

Because that's what he'd be apologizing for, right?

Right?

Oh Hell no.  

Instead, citing St. John of the Cross, Dowd used his ABC News column to desperately apologize to the bigots and imbeciles for ever doubting that Il Douche would be elected.  And behind every word of it you can practically hear ABC News execs demanding that, if he wanted to keep his job, he'd fucking well better get his ass out there and make nice with the bigots and imbeciles who would now be taking power in Washington D.C.

And he'd fucking well better make it good.  Like, A Fish Called Wanda Good! 

And so, from the ABC News article:

I want to take this opportunity to say I was wrong about who would win the election. But my biggest regret, and what I would like to apologize for is the arrogant, close-minded, judgmental, and sometimes mean-spirited way I related to many who believed Trump would win...

I became too bunkered in New York City (away from my home in Central Texas) in the last few months, and didn't pay attention to the local stories where another portion of America lives and breathes...

Then in the fall, I became convinced Trump would lose, and after the three debates, even put odds on Clinton winning at 95 percent...

I should have followed St. John of the Cross and held a place of the unknowing: where truth doesn't come as much through the head, as from the heart and the love we show others... 

So I'm not getting an apology.  

You're not getting an apology.  

Erik Wemple's not getting an apology.  

But the racist zombies that dwell in sewers of the Breitbart comment sections do get an apology.

Cooool!

And what did Matthew Dowd plan on doing to right his his terrible, terrible wrongness?  

He groveled to the bigots and imbeciles, and pledged to make amends.

A few weeks ago on an appearance on ABC, I said that in order to authentically move on from hurting others one must go through a process of the 4 Rs -- responsibility, regret, repair and reform. And so I as a human being and sinner myself must move through that journey...

I offer this as an apology to those folks who I judged, laughed at, criticized, or was dismissive to. I hope you find it in your hearts to forgive the times I stepped on you in an arrogant manner. I humbly say I am sorry, and in the days ahead will try to reach out to as many individually as I can...

You see, as long as his job is under threat, Matthew Dowd can be made to care about taking responsibility for his bad actions and repenting of them.

However, when his livelihood is not under threat, a very different Matthew Dowd emerges.  One who takes no responsibility for the terrible damage he has done.  Expresses no regret.  Does not say he is sorry.  Does not reach out to individuals like you and me. 

Instead, that Dowd just shrugs his past off like a tattered shawl, and glides into the next phase of his career pretending the whole thing never happened.  Dowd has nuked his entire, inconvenient Twitter archive.  Dowd blocks anyone on social media who even lightly brushes up against his past.  And with the help of his old friends Nicole Wallace at MSNBC -- 

Matthew Dowd Joins MSNBC As Political Contributor And Analyst 

-- Dowd is now free to reinvent himself yet again, this time as the Righteous Scourge of Both Siderist Journalism.

And when other news organizations accommodate the lies and misinformation by presenting two sides to every conversation, then they also contribute to the demise of our democracy. https://t.co/oCx4b83b0Z

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) February 17, 2023

This, of course, is not the original Tweet.  This is just the fragmentary relic of the original Tweet, because the original is gone.

Because Mr. Dowd, who is a moral windsock that changes his core principles with the prevailing breeze, is now very careful about "curating" his social media presence: a hedge against the day when the wind shifts once again and he must, once again, use his friends in the media to help him erase his inconvenient past.

No Fair Remembering Stuff

Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

As i just said on @msnbc @11thHour "Newt Gingrich dumped toxins in the lake (of America) and now he's complaining about a three-eyed fish like Matt Gaetz."

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) October 3, 2023

Remind me. What was Matthew Dowd doing during those many decades when Gingrich was poisoning our politics?

Here's a hint:

Zell Miller, Newt Gingrich, Matt Dowd, Oh My!

By Carl Hulse

Aug. 2, 2004

The Bush campaign on Sunday stepped-up its efforts to change the subject from the Democratic National Convention's focus on John Kerry's military record to Mr. Kerry's record during 20 years in the Senate.

Senator Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat who has allied himself with President Bush, stuck to the talking points on "Meet the Press" when he picked up the theme that Democrats are trying to make Mr. Kerry's Senate service disappear.

"If you will look at his record in the Senate, which is something they didn't talk about at all during the Democratic convention, it was as if he has been in a witness protection program somewhere and didn't even exist, incognito somewhere," said Mr. Miller. "He's been on the wrong side of foreign policy issues for the last 20 years."

Bush pollster Matthew Dowd and former House speaker Newt Gingrich tried to make the same case on "Fox News Sunday."...

 

Here's another:

Dowd: Don't Count Gingrich Out So Fast

By Matthew Dowd December 23, 2011

Many times we each get caught up in stories and we keep repeating them, even though they no longer apply to the current reality. We ignore facts along the way that give us opposing evidence because it just seems easier and more comfortable to keep repeating a story or narrative that we have made part of ourselves.

This happens in so many areas of our life including relationships, our families, our work, and in politics. So often in relationships we come up with a story that we just can't let go of, no matter how much the recent evidence tells us of the contrary. We are locked into a story that for our own internal psyche is just hard to break...

Yadda yadda yadda

But let's look at the facts. While Gingrich's support has fallen off a bit nationally from his high, three recent polls have come out showing the race dead even. In ABC, CBS, and CNN polling, the race is way too close to call.  Further, in Gallup's daily tracking on the race for the Republican nomination, Gingrich's lead evaporated quickly, but in the latest track he is now back ahead of Romney.

For every other Republican that rose and fell in this race (Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain) once their drop started, they never recovered and ended up in single digits. This isn't true for Gingrich, and his staying power (and recovery strength) seems much different.  While we need to see what is going on in Iowa and Gingrich could be in big trouble there, his national standing is still as strong or stronger than Romney's. Gingrich could quote Mark Twain at this point concerning the false news of his demise: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

So let's all pause for a moment, take a look at things with a new set of eyes and heart, and see if we can allow what is currently true to write our story and not the faded engravings of a narrative which just isn't real any more.  It may cause us to have to make big change in our perspective or our lives, but in the end it is better to be loyal to the evolving truth than the myth of consistency.

Here's another, which includes a long sidebar about how awful "divisiveness" in Washington, and how Both Sides are to blame, but how much worse Obama made it by refusing to be a unifyer. 

Charlie Rose Show:  Matthew Dowd, analyst for ABC News and a former strategist for George W. Bush, looks at Newt Gingrich's campaign and why it poses a threat to Mitt Romney's chances.

Burn The Lifeboats

Ep 734 No Fair Remembering Stuff Podcast: Matthew Dowd is a Fundamentally Ridiculous Person

"If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past.  If you tell a lie, it becomes a part of your future."   -- Author Unknown

 

 

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Strange Bedfellows: The David Brooks/Dirtbag Left Alliance

Despite some factional infighting, before 2008/2009 it was possible to squint hard enough to believe that the Liberal blogosphere might actually evolve into the actual "Liberal Media" that had always danced like a mirage at the far horizon of possibilities.  

Then things changed in a hurry.

By that time, Both Siderism had so congealed into the official state religion of the Beltway Media that on the Left, vivisecting this creepy ritual of Both Sidesing every Republican atrocity had become a topic in and of itself,

But then Barack Obama was inaugurated, and the soaring rhetoric of the campaign gave way to the brutal meatgrinder of governing.  And right out of the gate, President Obama was caught flat-footed by the unbending obstructionism of Republicans.  These were not his Harvard conservative friends, or the Republican denizens of the Springfield state house with whom one could have a drink, play a little poker and cut a deal or two.

These were unified, ferocious and racist ideologues, acting in lock-step, who made it perfectly clear they would do whatever it took to sabotage and destroy his administration.  This disillusioned millions of Obama supporters who’d never been through this meatgrinder before and had expected everything Democrats had proposed to sail through the House and the Senate on the strength of their virtue and general awesomeness.  And when that didn't happen, it felt like an apocalyptic betrayal and they became easy picking for the new, rising force in the Liberal blogosphere:  the Jane Hamsher/Glenn Greenwald "Obama is Worse Than Bush!!" Left.

From a 2014 Atlantic article by Norm Ornstein:

Why the LBJ of 1964 Wouldn't Succeed in the Washington of Today

Obama isn't stalled out because he can't lead like Johnson, Reagan, or Clinton—it's because the nature of the opposition party has changed.

The meme is what Matthew Yglesias, writing in 2006, referred to as "the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics," and has been refined by Greg Sargent and Brendan Nyhan into the Green Lantern Theory of the presidency. In a nutshell, it attributes heroic powers to a president—if only he would use them...

Turns out, for a whole lot of people we mistook for allies, pivoting from "Fuck Bush" to "Fuck Obama Even Harder" was really easy.   And really profitable.  

By 2010,  Glenn Greenwald -- who had been a featured  speaker at Yearly Kos just four years before -- was touring the country scolding Democrats that they should sit out the next several elections and cede power to Republicans for the foreseeable future because, y'know, that'd show 'em!

This was Greenwald at the University of Wisconsin, speaking just two days after the Teabagger supercharged GOP has swept to power in 2010, effectively ending President Obama's ability to pass anything for the next six years.

This became a very common refrain among people who I thought damn well knew better. 

In the spring of 2013, future Putin permanent houseguest, Edward Snowden, passed tens of thousands of stolen, secret US intelligence documents along to Glenn Greenwald, thus promoting him from contrarian crank, to the World's Most Famous Contrarian Crank.

A couple of months later, eBay founder Pete Omidyar offered Greenwald a quarter of a billion dollars to start his own media company, which rumor has it was originally going to be called, "Great!  Now we can really skull-fuck Obama and the Dems!" but was changed to The Intercept for legal reasons.

And thus Greenwald was promoted again, this time from the World's Most Famous Contrarian Crank to World's Most Famous Contrarian Crank With a $250M Megaphone.

And woe betide the poor, stupid Liberal blogger who didn't have a quarter billion dollar check from Pete Omidyar in his or her back pocket, but who nonetheless persisted in pointing out that Greenwald was now wildly exaggerating, arguing in blatantly bad faith, and outright lying rather a lot.  That he had divided the entire world into two and only two camps: people who agreed with him completely and uncritically, and Jackbooted O-Bot fascists.  And that it might not be wise to follow hims down the deep, dark hole into which he was headed.

But by now a depressingly large number of my Liberal allies were members of the Greenwald Horde, and had become card carrying members of the Both Sides Do It (and Dems are Worse)/Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly Club. 

Y'know, just like David Broder.  

And Matthew Dowd.  

And Ron Fournier.   

And Peggy Noonan.  

And David Fucking Brooks.    

And Maureen Dowd.

And Joe Scarborough.

And on and on and on.  

They and the "Fuck Obama and Fuck Hillary Harder" Dirtbag Left were all on the same team now.  And wasn't that just so very special!

Well, wouldn't you know it, in 2016 they all got their wish, when, in bleak November, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.    And for the next four years the Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly Club were going to have more Disruption with a capital "D" than they would know what to do with gavaged (look it up) down their throats until they burst.

Also of note, just one month after Trump was elected, Greenwald had already moved on to the next phase of  his "Fuck America" project:  being Tucker Carlson's occasional wacky sidekick.  

From MEDIAite in December of 2016:

Journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared with Tucker Carlson on Fox News tonight to criticize Democratic hysteria over Russia. 

And pretty soon after that, my "Jackbooted O-bot fascist!!!" screaming former Liberal allies started getting real quiet. I haven't seen much of them 'round these parts since.

Ah, but that's just half of the story.

The other half of the story was...what the fuck was the mainstream media going to do now?  For the better part of two years, all of their preening and posturing and prognosticating and been predicated on the assumption that Hillary Clinton could not possibly lose and it was therefore perfectly safe and professionally advantageous to relentlessly bash her all out of proportion with anything she had actually done.

Very much like -- bear with me now -- all the mainstream press' pimping and posturing and superpatriot flag-waving and been predicated on the assumption that the Bush administration's Iraq War could not possibly lose in Iraq.  It was gonna be a cake walk, and it was therefore perfectly safe and professionally advantageous to ignore, slander and generally stomp all over protesters who had warned that it was not going to end well.

So now that the impossible had happened and Donald Trump had been elected, the mainstream media desperately needed to throw together some fairy tale in which they were not complicit villains.  Y'know, just like after the Iraq War went tits up. 

In this case, the fairy tale they needed  told was one in which the mainstream media had not blithely ignored, and lied about, and "Both Sides" the fact that the Republican Party had been a shitpile of bigots and imbeciles for decades.  That it had been racing down the road towards a monster like Trump for decades. 

Which meant that the very last people the mainstream media wanted to hear from on this subject were us dirty fucking hippies who had been right about the Right all along.  Y'know, just like after the Iraq War went tits up.  Our existence was a huge inconvenience, and if the Liberal blogosphere had retained the kind of political and cultural clout it had had back in 2006 or 2007, we might have been able to bring enough pressure to bear on the mainstream media the bend the narrative towards the truth.  

But after eight years of the loudest and most well-funded voices on the Left being the "Fuck The Democrats/Obama Was Worse Than Bush" faction, the Liberal blogosphere was a barely shadow of what it had been back in the day.  Besides, those loud and most well-funded voices were busy becoming Fox News' favorite "Liberal" stooges: 

Or building new careers as the next generation of David Brooks-style Both Siderist hacks:

The mainstream media needed to sell a fairy tale in which the Republican base had not been engineered into an ever more volatile shitpile of bigots and imbeciles for decades because that's how Conserative media built audiences and how Republicans won elections.  A fairy tale in which the party base had instead had been noble, sensible, level-headed bunch who had suddenly and without warning gone insane overnight due to some mysterious, magical power wielded by Donald Trump, and  therefore nobody -- including the mainstream media -- could have seen what was coming.  

And down among the grifters and political vagrants who had been run out of the Republican party during the ascendance of Donald Trump, the mainstream media found the perfect characters with which to populate their fairy tale.  

Over on MSNBC -- the only even remotely "Liberal" channel on cable teevee -- they began shedding Liberal programmings and larding their lineups with Republicans.  

Hugh Hewitt became a regular, and would eventually be given his own show.  GOP consultant Steve Schmidt and former RNC chairman Michael Steele both became regulars, as did Mike Murphy, Ben Ginsberg and Nicole Wallace.  

Eventually, Charlie Sykes was signed on as an MSNBC contributor. 

As was Bill Kristol.  

And Mona Charen.  

And Tim Miller.  

And Rick Wilson.

And Tom Nichols.  

And on and on.

A year after the election, in October of 2017, Charlie Sykes wrote a book entitled “How the Right Lost Its Mind” which got wall-to-wall coverage in the media.

Then, on the strength of the millions of dollars in free publicity lavished on a handful of Never Trumpers, Sykes and a few others launched The Bulwark website, which has become a virtual subsidiary of MSNBC. 

A year after that, life-long Republican hit-man and all-around scumbag Rick Wilson “wrote” his book, "Everything Trump Touches Dies".  Which also got wall-to-wall coverage in the mainstream media.

Then, on the strength of the millions of dollars in free publicity lavished on Wilson, he and a few others launched “The Lincoln Project”: a political marketing corporation and money-pit down which credulous Liberals pissed away millions of dollar and which had become a virtual subsidiary of MSNBC until it was repeatedly rocked by financial and sexual harassment scandals.

All of their success was a direct result of the fact that they all told the story the mainstream media wanted to promote: That Trump had come out of nowhere.  That he had somehow hypnotized an otherwise-sensible, level-headed Republican base.  And that all of this had come as a complete surprise to Sykes and Wilson and Steele and Charen and Michael Gerson and Bill Kristol and Joe Scarborough on and on and on.  That not a single one of them had any inkling about the madness that was cooking right below the sensible, level-headed facade of the Republican base.

And while this was going on as various mainstream media assholes who had been in the vanguard of the media's "Disrupt the K'rupt Duopoly" fetish -- 

-- were hurriedly scrubbing their social media archives of any evidence that they had ever said any such thing.

And you know what?  It worked.  

Again.  

They got away with it.  

Again. 

Because when you control the cameras, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Occasionally some mouthy OG Liberal blogger still tries to use their quaint little old-school blog to poke through the whitewash and bring some actual history into the conversation.  But you probably already know how that goes.

No Fair Remembering Stuff