The Political Whore

By Mitch Perry
PoHo correspondent
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.

Legendary television anchorman Walter Cronkite’s death on Friday at the age of 92 has prompted massive encomiums on his career and how no one figure could ever dominate mass communications like “Uncle Walter” did in the ’60s and ’70s. It also allows us to ponder the state of national television news.

In the immediate days (and weeks) after Michael Jackson’s death last month, America’s broadcast and cable news networks went — predictably — hog wild over the pop superstar’s death. They saw their ratings rise, while also receiving criticism from a lot of quarters that they were overdoing it.

But were you really surprised?

Pardon the expression, but haven’t we seen this movie, err, blanket news coverage before?

Can you say Anna Nicole Smith?  Ronald Reagan? Princess Diana anybody? Read the rest of this entry »

If you have not yet found the time to catch all of Sarah Palin’s now-legendary press conference, the helpful folks at HuffPo have provided an abridged version which captures all of her rhetorical flourishes (and dead-fish references) in just a minute and a half.

Here’s an interesting idea from New American Media’s Roberto Lovato, writing in HuffPo about the Supreme Court confirmation process for Sonia Sotomayor:

Rather than allow herself to be put at the center of another racism and sexism-laden political circus around the qualifications of a candidate who brings more real-life prosecutorial and actual judicial experience than any other Supreme Court nominee in the last 100 years, Sotomayor should consider another strategy. She — and we — should instead view those hearings as nothing less than a trial to determine whether the GOP is ready to make restitution for its role in a number of judicial and political wrongdoings perpetrated in the Bush era. Those wrongdoings include unleashing unprecedented and dangerous political attacks on Latinos, and breaching the political and electoral contract the “new GOP” said it wanted with Latinos, one of the country’s most important voting blocs.

Some of the major financial institutions that are recipients of tens of billions of our TARP tax dollars weren’t as grateful as you would think they would have been, or as busy trying to right their own ships or lending some of that money out to prospective homeowners or credit card holders. Why? One reason is they apparently spent too much time on conspiratorial conference calls about blocking labor legislation and bundling big bucks for GOP lawmakers who help them out.

HuffPo reports:

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.

Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.

“This is the demise of a civilization,” said Marcus. “This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I’m watching this happen and I don’t believe it.”

The Huffington Post story has amazing audio of the telephone conference call between the banks and retailers as they bemoan the labor legislation, which would change the way companies could be unionized, as the end of the world, or at least the free-market world.

As for Bank of America’s involvement, HuffPo says: Read the rest of this entry »