Saturday, February 11, 2023

Libya, Roseanne

At Rebecca's request, we're starting with this from a 2014 Iraq snapshot (and I'll note the end of the exerpt with "------"):


Thursday, January 2, 2014.  Chaos and violence continue, the New York Times played people for fools on Benghazi, today they rewrite history on Iraq, 'media watchdog' Greg Mitchell idiotically reTweets the Times, Nouri assaults Anbar, children are being killed, where did Iraq get fighter jets, and so very much more.


We're going to start with Benghazi.  September 11, 2012, an attack in Benghazi left 4 Americans dead: Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens.

Sunday, the New York Times published David Kirkpatrick's garbage on the Benghazi attack.  I heard in November, from a White House friend, that the Times was doing a major front page article on the attack to help improve Susan Rice's image.  The White House designated Rice a press leaker in the first term and she remains that.  She is one of those 'government officials' who is given anonymity to leak flattering details about the White House or to attack White House opponents.

The silly Bob Somerby applauded the article, he wasn't the only one to do so.  I avoided the article thinking it would need a mention or two in the year-in-review.  Then I read it when I started writing  "2013: The Year of Exposure."

People who value journalism should not value this crap.  Andrew Rosenthal wrote an idiotic defense of the article and attack on its critics.  When the paper gets defensive, it's because they're caught lying.

Not caught by the people, they never give a damn about that.  But Democrats and Republicans in Congress have pushed back.  That's a bit of a surprise if you consider this is a week when people take time off.

So now the paper gets defensive.

In the year-in-review, I focused on the YouTube nonsense.  In paragraph ten of the long, long article, Kirkpatrick claims that the video is connected to the attack.

Alright then.  Walk us through it.

I believe he's given at least 7,200 words.

Few people will get 1,000 words to back up their point.

But Kirkpatrick can't back up his point.  The closest he comes is telling you an Egyptian program broadcast a clip of the video then moves to a Libyan man who supposedly backs up that the program is watched in Libya -- apparently by those with satellite TV.

Here's the thing though.  The Libyan man says they watch the Egyptian program on TV Fridays before morning prayers.  Okay well there are problems with that claim but let's let it go forward.  The article tells us that the Egyptian program aired the clip in the September 8th program.  Since the attack was in September 2012, we're talking about September 8, 2012.

Here are the two paragraphs we're talking about.

 Then, on Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on the ultraconservative Egyptian satellite channel El Nas. American diplomats in Cairo raised the alarm in Washington about a growing backlash, including calls for a protest outside their embassy.
No one mentioned it to the American diplomats in Libya. But Islamists in Benghazi were watching. Egyptian satellite networks like El Nas and El Rahma were widely available in Benghazi. “It is Friday morning viewing,” popular on the day of prayer, said one young Benghazi Islamist who turned up at the compound during the attack, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

I can't believe how gullible and complaint people are.

Did no one read this damn report?

It's too long, granted.  But if you read it where was your brain?

September 8, 2012, one of the entries that went up here was "Nouri's criminal ways."  What didn't go up?  An Iraq snapshot.  Why was that?

I don't do a snapshot on Saturdays.

The argument is the Egyptian program popularized the video and the program is watched in Libya Friday mornings before prayers and that Friday they watched the program, saw the clip, it incited rage.  None of that is proven or even backed up.  But worst of all, if the clip was broadcast September 8th, no one in Libya saw it on that Friday because that was Friday, September 7, 2012.

Not only did the readers -- if anyone did read it -- fail to use their critical thinking, but there was no fact check of this awful article.

This article -- in an earlier form -- was so bad that the paper didn't run it.  In June, Kirkpatrick wrote a version of it.

You need to grow the hell up and grasp when you're being conned.  An article that didn't qualify to the paper as "all the news that's fit to print" in June is printed at great length in December?

What changed?

The deal to rehabilitate Susan Rice's image.

You're being conned and you're being lied to and if that's okay with you, then cheer the stupid article, but if you've got a brain in your head, now's the time to use it.


-------------


I don't know mind calling out lies and cons.  I don't mind that I'm often attacked for it by the especially stupid.  I don't go around, years later saying, "Look, I was right!"  I never doubted what I wrote above.  Again, it's basic, a video released on Saturday September 8th could not have been the cause of an event that took place the day before.  THE NEW YORK TIMES thought you were stupid and, sadly, many people were.  Not just Bob Somerby, but many people.


Rebecca was working on a post about something else (Sidney Blumenthal -- specifically did Chris Hitchens say Blumenthal beat his wife? -- yes, Hitchens did say that) and she found Dylan Matthew's 2016 article for VOX which includes:


Blumenthal also passed along information related to the Benghazi attack, sending Clinton an email the day after the attack blaming it on protesters angry about a vehemently anti-Islam YouTube video titled "The Innocence of Muslims," which was sparking worldwide protests around that time. Clinton passed the email on to Sullivan. But while this was the initial theory of the intelligence community, it proved to be false, as militants actually showed up specifically to attack the US mission in Libya. A day later, Blumenthal followed up with an email stating that Ansar al-Sharia, a jihadist group, had pre-planned the attack and used the protest as a cover, which contradicted the administration's public statements at the time. That's mostly right; Ansar al-Sharia members were involved but they weren't the only attackers, and the attack was one of opportunity, rather than being preplanned.

 

Yeah, it was a lie, it was always a lie.  I'm sorry dumb whores like Bob Somerby fell for it.  I don't have the need to go back to every time I went out on the limb and was right.  I'm living in today.


But let's note again, the NYT article did not meet the basics and should never have passed a fact check.  A video released the day after an attack could not have been seen before the attack and outraged people to cause an attack.  Saturday follows Friday, not the other way around.


These basic observations and my analytical scores are the reason ________ (your hero, not mine), set me up with a lunch that I thought was a blind date and turned out instead to be CIA recruitment.  Not being a dirty whore like Gloria Steinem, I was outraged and said no.  The CIA is not your friend and it's not a hero.  It's amazing how no one in the press ever wants to deal with the CIA's actions on US campuses or, for that matter, their close -- but clandestine -- relationships with so many US faculty.  (For the record, I wasn't thrilled about the blind date aspect when I thought that's what I was being set up on but I wrote it off as a college professor who cared about me thinking he was doing me a favor.)  (And for the record, I have told him to his face that he needs to get honest and that if he dies and hasn't been honest then I'm probably outing him here.)  (It won't be such a shock.  Most people have caught on that he's not the left hero that they once thought he was.)


Other things?


Carla asked if I had missed the promo for Roseanne Barr's upcoming comedy special.  I haven't missed it.  I thought I would post it here and then I made the mistake of streaming it.


It's a comedy special.  FOX NATION clearly doesn't understand comedy.  They're promoting it as some sort of political talk -- with pompous music in the long segments between Roseanne speaking.  It does not make you want to watch the special.  I believe and hope that the commercial is just proof that FOX NATION doesn't know what it's doing.  In an earlier time, it tried to do entertainment -- Roger Ailes' MYTV was a huge failure.  

I hope the special's funny and I have no problem noting that it will air Monday on FOX NATION -- start airing on Monday.  I'll even note that in the snapshot.  But the trailer is the worst trailer I've ever seen.  Roseanne, like most comedians, builds to something.  The nonsense of quoting a line here then providing a passage of pompous music then another line is not how you promote her special.


But FOX NATION isn't trying to help Roseanne.  They're trying to cash in on her and figure the easiest way is to try to make this an Us or Them moment/event.


Carla wondered whether it was possible for Roseanne to come back?


I don't know about ''come back.''  There are people like me who don't feel she did anything to be punished for.  Jerry Seinfeld made that comment and then had to walk it back.  I'm not going to walk it back.  I've known Roseanne for years.  She is not a racist.  I didn't think the Tweet was funny but I didn't believe she meant it to be racist.  I didn't think she was offsides for critiquing Valerie Jarrett (who lined up all her friends and family to organize a media response against Rosanne) but I didn't think the Tweet was funny.  I'm not sure Roseanne was going for a belly life, she might have just been attempting a smile or smirk from readers.  Otherwise, it was just Twitter filler.


Regardless of what it was or was intended as, she did not deserve what happened.


She made a mistake, not the Tweet.  Her mistake was to believe a corporation.  Dan Rather and Mary Mapes were idiots on that in the '00s.  Never believe them.  They asked her not to speak -- ABC asked her -- and that they would handle it.  She respected their wishes.


That was her mistake.


They weren't interested in fixing anything.  They were interested in stealing her creation.


They cancelled the show and then attacked her for putting people out of work.  It was too late for members of the crew to find jobs with ROSEANNE cancelled.  She, ABC insisted, put all of these workers out of work.  Roseanne was then told, 'Sign over the rights to your characters and the crew can keep their jobs.'  


People don't understand, to this day, what was done to Roseanne.  This wasn't a case of her being banned or cancelled.  That's happened to a lot of people.  She was blackmailed and tricked so that ABC could steal her work.


They used the crew not having jobs to force her to okay their using Darlene, Dan, et al in a future series (THE CONNORS).  I have no respect for anyone on that show -- sadly, that does include Katey Sagal.  I've turned down work before because I refused to be part of projects like that.  I like Katey but she should have said no.  


John Goodman can rot in hell.  Screw him.  He'd be nothing without Roseanne.   But he stabs her in the back weekly by continuing to be on the show.  


Sara Gilbert?  A backstabber of the worst order.  Thanks to Roseanne, she had a job from 1988 to 1997.  This was true even when ABC wanted to fire her, called the teenage Gilbert a "d**e" and wanted her replaced with a more 'feminine' actress.  I'm not talking during the pilot, I'm talking about after the show had been airing for over two seasons.  Roseanne stood up for Sara and said no way in hell.


Sara goes on to live a long lie and to fail in every effort after ROSEANNE ends.  She was so rude on THE BIG BANG THEORY that the co-stars didn't want her to be a regular.  


Roseanne brings back ROSEANNE in 2018 and Sara suddenly has an acting career again.  She then actively works to attack Roseanne and to steal the show from her.


Karma slapped her in the face, thankfully.  And it will continue to do so.  


Her life is miserable now and I'm thrilled by that.  She's a coward and she's a thief.  And when THE CONNERS is over, so is she.  


If you don't know the Sara Gilbert story, let me short hand it for you.  Lesbian pretends she's not a lesbian.  Lesbian gets into a longterm relationship with girlfriend/wife who wants lesbian to come out (the whole world suspects already that she's a lesbian).  Lesbian says no.  For nine years, she has relationship (live-in relationship) with girlfriend and hides in the closet.  Finally, in 2010, lesbian tells the world what they already knew.


That alone is disgusting.  But if you don't know THE SARA GILBERT STORY, you may not get why that is so outrageous.  In 2004, they had their first child (Ali Adler gave birth).  In 2007, they had their second child (Gilbert gave birth).


If you don't see that as offensive, you must be desperately in lust with Sara Gilbert.


She is in the closet while living with Ali.  She is in the closet while having one child with Ali.  She is in the closet while having her second child with Ali.  By the time she finally came out, their first child was six years old.


You want to live in a closet, that's on you.  But you force your kids to live in the closet with you?


No.  That's disgusting. 


I have no idea what values you think you're teaching your children by hiding in a closet.  Nor do I know why you would decide to have children while hiding in closet.  (As two women having children, Ali and Sara had to plan the pregnancies, they didn't just 'pop up' with a woopsie!)


But it goes to how disgusting Sara Gilbert is and always has been  And the industry always knew so it wouldn't have effected her standing to come out.  


Roseanne did not lose all of her fans.  In addition, some on the political right adopted her after what took place.  (The political right spent decades loathing Roseanne Barr.)


If FOX NATION truly wants to an entertainment channel, they'd be smart to give Roseanne a sitcom.  In terms of a 'comeback,' my problem with that term is Roseanne didn't lose her fans.  Roseanne didn't release a project that failed.  She was at number one in primetime when ABC cancelled her show.  When we talk of comebacks, we're usually noting someone who had a series of flops (films, TV shows, albums, etc).  That's why I hesitate to use the term "comeback."  This will be more a case of whether or not the industry wants to stop blacklisting her.  


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