Is Tina Brown trying to balance the “wimp” cover a few weeks back? Has one sliver of the ‘liberal’ MSM finally decided to question his Holiness Obama? Or is Ms. Brown merely doing what she does best…forcing us to pay attention.
The featured piece by Niall Ferguson is a thorough assault on the Obama years.
Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.
It gets more damning after that.
Ferguson uses Obama’s economic team against him, slams Obama’s ‘hug a foreigner’ campaign, and pounds his misreading of the Arab Spring. Remarkably for a magazine like Newsweek, Mrs. Clinton is not blamed for anything, nor are the usual excuses about Obama’s “situation” trotted out. Obama is no leader and Ferguson says so. In Newsweek. When I first saw the cover I was sure it was a photoshopped joke. Old guard media going after Obama? Nah…not possible. But the cover is real.
Are we seeing an American Media Spring? Are the shackles of Obama hypnotism being thrown off by the 4th estate? I doubt it. Ferguson is an accomplished intellectual and a good writer. Brown, who’s still an underrated magazine editor, collects people like Ferguson. Brown is smart enough to know the piece he wrote would land somewhere. She made the most of it by splashing it across Newsweek’s cover. The shock isn’t the headline here – it’s the masthead. Brown is good.
We’ll only discuss the cover for two days or so. Still, Newsweek matters for 2 days. This is an accomplishment. It’s not likely to happen again.
Personally, imagining the flushed faces at places like Talking Points Memo as they process the possibility of the Obama media protection wall disintegrating at any moment is, well….priceless.
Haven’t read the article yet, but this is a good sign.
Considering that most readers of Newsweek do so while glancing up from unloading groceries from their cart, this headline is a very good sign.
Newsweek is hemorrhaging and after the Harmans jumped ship Barry Diller threatened to cease print publication and maintain only its online presence. It’s the talk of the NY magazine world the past couple of weeks. Tina Brown is desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Thank goodness for that. It was the previous Newsweek editor who pushed Obama in 2008 then the day after the election stated on PBS that he didn’t know what Obama stood for.
I’ve heard this “statistic” cited several ways. I’ve heard (from Ann Coulter, among others) that “half of Americans don’t file a tax return”. That’s pretty obviously a pernicious lie. According to the IRS (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/11db03nr.xls), there were 143,607,800 individual tax returns filed in 2011. According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the number of Americans over the age of 18 was 234,564,000 (in 2010 – figures for 2011 aren’t yet available on the web). Now I can see where someone with an axe to grind might divide those two numbers and come to the conclusion that only 61.2% of adults file income taxes (or conversely that 38.8% of adults don’t) – but I fail to understand how 38.8% is “nearly half” (“over a third”, perhaps, but certainly not “nearly half”). Even then, the statistic is misleading. You see, in 2009, 53,639,038 of those returns were “married filing jointly” and therefore represent two taxpayers rather than just one. And that means that over 197 million adults (or 84%) of adults were represented on a tax return. Or conversely, that a mere 16% were not.
Now perhaps this statement is intended to mean “nearly half aren’t represented on a tax return that shows a tax due”. That can’t be true, either. According to the IRS, only 828,798 returns showed a tax rate of 0 in 2009 (234,579 of these were joint). And that, my friends, means that 196 million adults were represented on a “taxable return” – 83.6% of the total number of adults. When I took math, 16.4% wasn’t considered to be “nearly half” but perhaps things have changed since then.
Let’s forget that this includes the disabled and the elderly in the number of total adults.
Thanks for the actual facts, prop.
Love the math!!
djmm
Considering Newsweek’s earlier description of Obama as “a sort of god”, perhaps a better headline would have been “The God That Failed”.
Newsweek is ‘cheating’ on God. I love it.
LOL Sorry prop, perhaps I should have nested my comment under yours.
Aside from Ms Browns motivations, Niall Ferguson makes a good argument
Ferguson was an adviser to McCain. I guess he is offering his services now to Romney. And Brown’s cover and title are brilliant. The pop media President just got zinged.
Of course, Limbaugh beat us to it…
When O refused No. 1 cheerleader, Tingles, an interview for the ‘documentary’ msnbc has made about him, he made a mistake he will regret. Tingles has been salivating all over himself for over 3 years, at least partially, to gain access to the Pres. O showed his usual contempt and lack of gratitude. He has done this throughout his career, with little consequences, maybe karma is now coming back to bite him.
It’s about time.
Amen to that. I saw yesterday where the blogger boyz at TPM are already trying to hang the Akins albatross around Romney’s neck. The blogger boyz at ThinkProgress are trying to do the same to Ryan. Maybe Brown is picking up on the changes that are coming, too. I hope so. I like her, but her ability to read the public trajectory is a kind of one step forward, two steps back.
You and your readers may be interested in my latest, the first in a three part series that will explore how the left and right are sort of swapping places in the electoral landscape. http://peacocksandlilies.com/2012/08/19/realignment-is-happening/
Next up is a discussion of the new Democratic conservatism, followed by an examination of the new Republican liberalism.
They’re just following orders. I’ve got half a dozen Akins emails from various OFA wings.
I’ve been watching the hay making myself today, with zero interest. It’s kind of like watching old episodes of One Day At A Time on TVLand.
Lola/AB,
I appreciate and enjoy reading your columns about your changing and evolving political perspective, I find your thoughts very insightful but I can’t understand why in your thoughts that Romney is the GOP’s version of Clinton, to me that doesn’t make any sense and for me that’s a huge non-sequitir the otherwise well-reasoned flow of logic for me.
Why do you think that?
I believe conner43 @August 20, 2012 at 4:48 am is right….Tingles can cheer lead the destruction of whole counties and economies …but not forgive such a diss to himself! The outrage after the ocean of spittle Mr. Crazy leg syndrome spent on Barry! And it might be an example of Obama’s biggest problem : his open ingratitude to the TPTB .
Barry is a nothing , always has been. They very much wanted his nothingness back in the day . They moved heaven and earth to install thier nothing 4 years ago…perhaps they want to install another? Perhaps he’s bored, lasy bones himself out of yet another job
The first headline says”The slaughter in Syria must stop”
Simple. Withdraw the Al Qaeda death squads we sent there…that was easy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2191021/EXCLUSIVE-Obama-cancelled-missions-kill-bin-Laden-THREE-TIMES-getting-cold-feet–Hillary-Clinton-stepped-claims-explosive-new-book.html
This story has been gathering legs for a while, seems to make sense to me. I read on Ulsterman/Mamet’s page that his original Insider said it was Panetta that finally had so say “it’s happening”.. it’d make sense for Barry’s constant “I” statement regarding the miltary action that culminated in Bin Laden’s death.
I’m not really a huge conspiracy theorist per-se, but the PR photo of the “war room” always looks odd to me, Obama seems kind of leaning as far into the corner as he can, his body language is just wierd.. some people speculate that it’s a doctored photo, but I can only assume that it isn’t but what I can ask is “does that person look like the CiC in that photo?” For me, not really.
link to photo w/funny caption
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7epuvleUI1r3qp89o1_400.jpg