Wednesday, June 08, 2022

Michael Buble

Clair e-mailed about seeing MICHAEL BUBLE: TOUR STOP 148 on PBS and enjoying it.  Did I watch?  It's part of  GREAT PERFORMANCES or was when it first aired.  I saw it four years ago on my PBS station -- KQED -- and I checked to see if they were reairing it because I would watch it again.


They're not.  That's the thing about PBS, every individual station decides what it airs --a nd reairs.


It's from his TO BE LOVED tour.

I wasn't a uble fan.  I wasn't an enemy either.  But he didn't atract me.  When his son got sick, I did feel sorry for him and did include his son in my prayers (I'm Catholic).  But that was really it until he started doing the commercials.  The commercials showed another side of him.  He was goofy and funny.  I don't need to see that in a concert but I did appreciate that side of him and that's when I started listening to his music.


I really do enjoy his covers -- especially "Where Or When," "Cry Me A River," "Kissing A Fool," "God Only Knows," :Feeling Good: and Dream A Little Dream."  


In fact, I'd love for him to do an album of sixties covers like "Wear Your Love Like Heaven."

 

Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshotL:

 

Wednesday, June 8, 2022.  Make a plan and watch the universe laugh as your plan is quickly destroyed.


So in a few hours I'll be having surgery -- again -- on my eyes -- again.  I had different plans for what I'd do here.  But then I see nonsense.


Let's start first with what I was going to do.


Last week, Sabby Sabs took on David Sirota in a weak ass and embarrassing manner.  I wrongly too the blame.  I'm so very good at taking the blame.  If only, I lamented in a snapshot, I'd gone over what happened back in the '00s . . .


Back in the 'oos, Tina Richards, mother of Iraq War veteran Cloy Richards, confronted US House Rep David Obey about his weak ass efforts to end the Iraq War.  This was public, very public.  A lot of news coverage.


David Siorta, a humorless sort that Al Franken used to tease/mock on his AIR AMERICA RADIO program, was out of sorts and deterimed to attack Tina and what she stood for.  He wrote a piece of garbage that went a lot of places.  


I saw it at INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE and I called it out.  Not only because David was wrong to attack Tina but also because David lied.  Yes, it is lying to write a column attacking Tina for her confrontation with Obey if you don't reveal in the column that you worked for Obey.


Disclosure is very important.  David would learn the hard way a fews years later when he tried to syndicate a column.  Again, he forgot to disclose in the column his connection with David Obey.  This time, I noted it here, I went to where it hurt: his wallet.  I called friends at outlets that carried that garbage column and explained the lack of disclosure.  That hurt David because it hurt the syndicate and the two parted.


He was furious about that in an e-mail but unlike the one years earlier, at least he didn't say he was going to sue me.


Was he ever going to sue?


My honest opinion was that he thought he could frighten me or he got off bullying women or both.


You can sue someone for anything.  But had he done so, he would have been launching a frivolous lawsuit and the courts don't look kindly on those.


David came up with the story for that bad NETFLIX TV movie DON'T LOOK UP.  It was pure garbage.  That might not have been his fault, he didn't write the screenplay.  But he did get nominated in the screenplay category for an Academy Award.


I thought about how undeserving that whole film was and I thought about what he did to Tina and I thought about his bullying e-mails to me over the years.  David needed to stay in his lane.  But he'd veered off into mine.  Which is why print outs of those e-mails made the party circuit in the lead up to the voting.  I used every thing I had to derail his chances of winning.


Now other than that, I think I've been kind to him.


I've noted him over the years if he got something right -- even though it meant I'd hear about it in e-mails from community members who felt he should be banished forever.


I've got more important things to do and, had he not tried to 'branch out' into my industry, I would have left him alone.  


Now we did discuss it here -- many times -- even included it in the 2007 year in review.  


The plan was to publish those outrageous e-mails and have an easy snapshot that I could work on ahead of this morning so that I wouldn't have to work hard this morning when I had more important issues on my mind (surgery).


What changed it?


HARD LENS MEDIA, SABBY SABS and countless others.


There's a public stoning of Ryan Grim taking place.


I don't like Ryan Grim.  I'm on record here stating that.  I think he's a bad journalist and point to his Tara Reade coverage as a good example of that -- he failed her, he failed that story, he failed to connect dots, when Alyssa Milano was yammering about how she knew the truth about Tara she was referring -- as we noted in real time -- to what Time's Up was spreading.  Ryan could have had that story, he was even tipped off about it by a friend of mine.  He ignored it.  The truth about Time's Up didn't emerge until the New York governor had his scandal.


I think he's a lousy reporter.


He's a better TV host.  I love that they all want to talk about what Ryan said as they rush to defend Jimmy Dore but none of them want to discuss Jimmy Dore (and others) bringing on a convicted pedophile as an expert on Ukraine and not inform their audiences that Scott Ritter was arrested three times for this, was convicted of it, was sent to prison for it, and after he got out was forced to register as a sex offender.


This is not a minor issue.


Rachel Maddow landed on my bad side when she brought on an Iraq War veteran that she glorified and praised -- even after she found out that he beat his wife.  I still have all the UNFILTERED message boards.  She was informed of that on the board during the show.  Not only did she not change tactics but she invited him back for the Friday show.  


I don't tolerate that.


I don't tolerate hosts who lie to cover up the crimes of their guests.


I would love to see Sabby Sabs explain how that was appropriate, how him bringing the pedophile on was appropriate.


Ryan Grim made a stupid statement where he thought Jimmy was misunderstanding what David Sirota Tweeted.


Let me stay with Ryan for a moment.


I'd rather watch his program because he's not bringing on convicted child molesters.  He, Kim and Bri have that standard at least.  His show at THE HILL also covered some important topics that the other ones weren't covering.  They seem awful brave now but the reality is that Ryan and his co-hosts led on a number of issues a few months ago.


Krystal Ball is left-lite.  She will never be a radical.  She will always cave to the Democratic Party in the end.  But RISING will address serious issues.  And we will highlight them as a result and as a result of the fact that they're not bringing on convicted pedophiles.


I think all the programs would do better to stop telling people who to vote for and to instead just cover issues.  


So David Sirota and Jimmy Dore are in conflict -- again.  And Ryan Grim's trashed.  


Ryan's really not that important.  I certainly don't think he or this non-issue deserved 13 minutes from HARD LENS MEDIA, and  from Sabby Sabs, and from . . .


Do you not see what everyone else sees?


You keep claiming you're creating an independent media.


You're not and I'm not going to play along.


I was kind in the '00s even though I warned as far back as 2005 that all that was happening was they were cutting off Cokie Roberts' head only to have a million new ones sprout.  


David Weigel we're now supposed to gather around.  That's the ass who was part of JOURNOLIST, please remember.


Oh, that's right, most YOUTUBER hosts are too stupid to remember.


It's not that I didn't talk about David Sirota in real time, turns out I did, it's that idiots don't want to do the work required.


People need to learn to research. 


Reading will be your friend.  It will take you to other notions and concepts, it will expand your knowledge base.  


I am so sick of the non-readers who weigh in on events and think they've made some great discovery.  As Stevie Nicks sings, "Who in the world do you think that you are fooling?  Well I've already done everything that you are doing."


I am so sick of this refusal to be aware of and acknowledge those who came before.  You haven't read Gore Vidal, you haven't read Michael Parenti, you haven't read Cedric Robinson, Nancy Fraser, Judith N. Shklar, Asad Haider, Manning Marable . . .  And what about the writers publishing in political journals currently?  I've been very intrigued by the recent work of Tanika Raychaudhuri, for example.  


You have no knowledge and yet you pontificate on and on.  You've never done the required reading and you want to talk about historical topics when you just aren't up for them.


You bring on a John Nichols but ignore a John Stauber and then you wonder why the country is so screwed up on the left?  Because you're bringing on whores, lying whores.  


I'm really tired of your stupidity.


You're not going to create anything by being stupid.  


You need to inform yourselves.


You are not doing the work required yet you think you're in a position to lead.


Ryan Grim is not the problem.  But you certainly circle-jerked him, didn't you?


Do you really think you look like independent media as you all rush to devote lengthy segments calling him out and defending Jimmy Dore?


Is Jimmy so damn weak that he needs all of you defending him to begin with?  (I don't think so.)


Why can't you focus on real issues?


Iraq's not on your radar at all.  You're not doing a daily piece on Ukraine in which you track the over $50 billion the US government has already committed to giving it.  


What do you think you are accomplishing?


Because I'm not seeing it.  You've got platforms and you use them for something so trivial.


The ongoing wars do not exist on most of your programs but you, these days, weekly make time to defend Jimmy Dore on air at length.


Betty's "Sabby Sabs, leave the plantation already" went up last night and her "Black YOUTUBERS please stop promoting Jimmy Dore" went up weeks ago.  She is exactly right.


Jimmy's show isn't welcoming to people of color.  Outside of one professional athlete, I can't think of an African-American he's had on his show.  So why do Sabby Sabs and REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT have to do so much work for him.  Is he their boss?


It's pathetic.  


And this circle jerk is not building independent media.  Nor is it building trust.


So I guess we can expect a year or two more out of you YOUTUBERS pretending to care and then you'll sell out like the ones before you did.


Who didn't sell out?


Glen Ford, Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberley and John Stauber are four who didn't.


Now Glen and Bruce have passed.  


Margaret and John?  If you're truly wanting to build independence and get people to think for themselves, they should be on your programs weekly but the reality is that only REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT brings Margaret on.  No one brings John Stauber on.


You're whining about what happened to David Weigel (I don't care if that last name is spelled correctly or not).  David not only lied to his interview subjects, he lied to his readers.  That's why he was fired from THE WASHINGTON POST pre-Jeff  Bezos.  


But you who can't cover Iraq are now going to waste time on defending DW?


That's who you prefer to stand with -- not Margaret, not John.


A lot of us have worked for years on issues of representation.  We wrongly hoped that the internet would provide a different world.  That didn't happen.  Instead a number of White men -- with the help of CJR -- policed who was included and who wasn't.  We're now past bloggers and into YOUTUBERS and enough complaining and protesting has resulted in a tiny bit of difference.  A small sliver.  So I am with Betty on this, REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT and Sabby Sabs, if you don't have enough self-respect to stop whoring for White man Jimmy Dore, have the respect for your audience.


It's disgusting to watch you ignore real issues and rush to constantly praise Jimmy Dore.  He's not doing s**t for you and he never has.  He might if you stopped acting like his servants.  Instead you want to kneel before him.


It's disgusting to watch.  


He may be a big politics ally but he is not an ally to any community of color and let's stop pretending he is.  He's perfectly fine with doing his all White show for his all White audience.  


Considering how many years -- decades -- the MSM has shut out voices of color, if you've got a platform in 2022, it is your responsibility to diversify your guests and your topics.  


Jimmy Dore's made no effort to do that.


Yet every week -- as SPAR AND BRAWL has taken to noting -- it's another drama from Jimmy Dore.  


I really do think that, for example, Black America has more important issues to address than who hurt Jimmy's feelings this week.


And when you're all filing the same segment, stop pretending that you're creating independent media.  

You're doing exactly what David Brock did.  And that led us nowhere -- at least not anywhere worth going.  


David Sirota's politics are a problem.  He's fakery is a problem.  


Whether he got Jimmy Dore's joke or Jimmy got his or knock-knock who's there are not issues and they don't require lengthy segments.


When are US troops going to leave Iraq?


And when are YOUTUBES going to find the time to be concerned about that?


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