The Unethical Truce Between GE and Fox

Glenn Greenwald has a good run down of the CEO agreement between General Electric and News Corps to end the war between Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly:

In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a "summit meeting" for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the "feud" between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Fox's Bill O'Reilly. According to the NYT, both CEO's agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other's news organizations and employees.

There are a number of implications of this story. Among other things pointed out by Greenwald, the GE/Fox deal is strong evidence of corporate control by companies like GE over their news divisions. I would also think that the deal also demonstrates the limitations of any effort to bring progressive ideas and personalities into the mainstream media. If corporate headquarters at GE, Disney, or TimeWarner can decide that a huge right-wing target like Fox is off limits, then it's pretty evident that progressives won't be able to get very far with the corporate-owned media.

The GE/Fox deal also looks like an obvious violation of anti-trust laws that discourage this kind of collusion.

Brian Williams Still Sucking Up to Power

It's reassuring to know that guys like NBC's Brian Williams know how to suck up to power even though President Obama is a Democrat.

Williams talks of "walking through the West Wing and Secretary [Hillary] Clinton drops by to see the president. To be in the hallway when the president walks by with a handful of M&Ms, popping them in his mouth as he goes to visit his chief of staff — it was unbelievable."

Talk about nauseating. All the same, I was pleasantly nauseated because Williams was sucking up to Obama rather than Bush.

Limbaugh's Butt--No. 3. How Can Cillizza Be Boring About Limbaugh?

The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza's note on Rush Limbaugh's new prominence in American politics is an unbelievable bore. How does he do it? Looking at Limbaugh provides an extremely interesting perspective on political dynamics at the outset of the Obama administration. Plus, Rush Limbaugh might be the single most quotable human being in the United States of America (apart from Ann Coulter perhaps).

Yet Cillizza limits himself to one dull Limbaugh quote and goes on to quote a couple of Republican consultants who are trying very hard not to say anything. Here's one.

"Rush is a double-edged sword, he cuts both ways" said Phil Musser, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association. "Sometimes you love him, sometimes you cringe at his impolitic (he'd say honest) fusillados."

Talk about cringing, I cowered when I saw "impolitic fusillados." Musser must have spent too much time at all-white country clubs while he was growing up.

There are several facts to keep in mind here.

The most important is that Rush Limbaugh is extremely unpopular with the 80% of the population that aren't committed conservatives. Limbaugh knows this as well as anyone. People on the left despise him as a "Big Fat Idiot, (the book that made Al Franken a senator)" but moderates hate him just as much.

The mainstream media was pulling Limbaugh into the national spotlight even before Obama mentioned him. That's because GOP congressional leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have such a weak media presence. Cillizza quotes Haley Barbour retainer Ed Rogers as saying that the Republican leadership has not found "their voice or direction." That's weak, weak, weak! John Boehner doesn't have enough charisma to fill a shot glass. How's he ever going to find his voice?

The same with McConnell.

The emergence of Limbaugh provided Obama and his press secretary Robert Gibbs with the opportunity to tell Boehner and McConnell that they were either "with Obama or with Limbaugh." Because both of those choices are losers for the GOP leadership, Boehner and McConnell were probably trying to figure out how to stand "on the middle ground" for the first time in their lives.

At the end, Cillizza raises the question of whether Limbaugh's new prominence as a "Republican spokesman" is a good thing for the Republican Party.

Why raise the question when the answer is obvious? Having Limbaugh in the mainstream media is horrible for the Republican Party. They wouldn't do any worse if they dug up Saddam Hussein and made him a party spokesman.