"Warren gets wide exposure, friendly questions on book tour" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff April 25, 2014
WASHINGTON — The venues for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s book tour have been decidedly favorable. No Fox interviews for her, no Rush Limbaugh, and very few tough questions.
A recent segment on “The View’’ hosted by Barbara Walters managed to show off pleasant black-and-white pictures of Warren’s family, raise the prospect of a Warren presidential run, and also discuss her Harvard law professor husband’s good legs.
Warren’s softball media tour has made her and her populist message nearly ubiquitous on major media outlets in recent days.
They are throwing her softballs, huh?
The Massachusetts Democrat has gone both highbrow and lowbrow, serious and comic: a front-page story in USA Today, a full-page ad in The New York Times, a lengthy “CBS Sunday Morning” interview, and segments on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, and “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer,” to name a few.
I'm so glad I never watch any of those programs.
The five-minute segment on “The View” concluded with Jenny McCarthy, the former Playmate of the Year and controversial autism advocate, touching Warren enthusiastically on the shoulder as the senator discussed her work in creating a federal consumer agency.
“Wow, wow, you’re awesome!” gushed McCarthy, a panelist on the daytime gabfest.
Related:
"Jenny McCarthy: Keep quackery out of ‘View’" July 19, 2013
Like it or not, people care what celebrities think. So ABC’s decision to hire MTV-star-turned-medical-conspiracy-theorist Jenny McCarthy as a host of “The View” poses a certain risk. McCarthy backs a fringe theory that purports to link vaccines to autism, and the network is giving her a prominent platform that she could use to spread a harmful superstition.
Related:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
And they are complaining about spreading harmful superstitions? You know, when you are attacked by the pharmaceutical-$erving pre$$ you must be on to something. Take a look at all the in$ide ba$eball and promotion $ervices called a Globe bu$ine$$ $ection any day of the week if you doubt my shot at them.
The idea of a vaccine-autism link emerged in the 1990s, and has been
thoroughly debunked.
Just like the immutable and incontrovertible laws of physics were debunked regarding 9/11?
Consider the $ource of the debunking.
There’s just as much evidence connecting autism
with vaccines as there is linking the condition to leprechauns and
rainbows — that is to say, none.
That's what happens when they have been called out; they resort to insults.
Yet McCarthy, who has an autistic
child, has gone to great lengths to keep the theory alive, which has
convinced some parents to withhold important vaccinations from their
kids.
Yup, gotta get those loads and loads of $hots into the kids.
And that does have an impact: Statistics show that vaccination rates have declined in many states since the 1990s. Not surprisingly, dangerous diseases like mumps, measles, and whooping cough have seen a resurgence.
So the Globe claims. Grain of salt, please.
Autism is an emotional issue for many parents — and it’s also the kind of issue that could come up in discussions on “The View.” ABC should make it clear to McCarthy that she’s been hired as a talk-show personality, not a scientific expert, and the network shouldn’t let her use the show as a platform for her theories. Giving them even a moment’s airtime would be a disservice to the public.
Didn't the same program run Roisie O'Donnell off the air just for bringing up WTC7?
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I think she is awesome, although I'll bet Liz would be bothered by it!
But even while the news is glowing, it may be fleeting, given the short shelf life many political books have.
Warren’s memoir, “A Fighting Chance,’’ has benefited from a canny media strategy and some luck in the form of a relatively slow news week, while Congress is in recess, after its release earlier this month. Beyond making her some money, estimated by some specialists to include a $1 million advance, the book is allowing the freshman senator to communicate with her biggest audience since she addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2012.
Yeah, all Liz Warren cares about is money.
Btw, the advance puts her in the 1%, doesn't it?
Nearly every interviewer has speculated that Warren might run for president, which she flatly denies. But the exposure and the warm presentation of her life story and policy goals will no doubt set her up for a run if she changes her mind. The book also allows Warren to further push Democrats toward her anti-Wall Street agenda and burnish her image as the leader of the party’s populist wing nationally.
Yeah, you are "anti-Wall Street" if you think they should follow the law and go by the rules.
You are "anti-Wall Street" if you think executives that committed criminal frauds should go to jail and not get to keep their ill-gotten fortunes.
You are "anti-Wall Street" if you think they brokerage houses should be honest with customers and clients instead of scheming to loot as much money from them as possible.
The most informative thing you get from the phrase is the values of his masters the reporter brings to his article. He's self-internalized them. That's the problem with AmeriKa's whoreporate media.
Plus, cross-promotion opportunities abound. A fund-raising e-mail sent out by Warren on Tuesday promised that 10 lucky donors would get a signed copy of the book, while a liberal political group that promotes the “Elizabeth Warren Wing” of the Democratic Party has started a book club around her memoir.
See: The Warren Wing of the Democratic Party
Joe Scarborough playfully asked cohost Mika Brzezinski if she had yet written a check for Warren’s presidential campaign. Stewart, the comedian, may have posed one of the toughest questions on the tour so far, asking Warren why she supports repealing a tax on medical devices meant to help pay for President Obama’s health care law.
Warren, venturing into serious policy, said that she does not support any special taxes on manufacturing, and that Congress needs to find a way to replace the money.
This may be Warren’s moment. But recent history is littered with politicians who have been bounced up by big book tours only to see their books — and sometimes their political stature — wind up in the remainder bin.
The names are Rubio, Perry, Santorum, and Brown, with Obama the exception.
********************
Despite the mixed results of political books, Jim Milliot, editorial director of Publishers Weekly, said publishers are eager to release books from potential presidential candidates because they have a platform that can break through to an oversaturated media. Candidates often use a book either to promote a presidential run or to cash in at the end of a political career.
I'm sure that is what she is doing.
Milliot said Warren’s publicity tour is in line with other big political authors, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who published a memoir last year. But he predicts that forthcoming books by former treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, due out next month, and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, due in June, will squeeze out any remaining attention on Warren. In addition to getting a leg up on marketing, Warren was also able to get the first word in on her personal and policy battles with Geithner, with whom she sparred while both worked for Obama.
I won't be reading any of those books.
Warren’s press strategy as a senator has dovetailed nicely with her publicity tour. She tends to stay off of national television unless she is pitching something specific, like a bill proposal. That has allowed her to keep the discussion focused on topics she prefers to discuss, rather than being forced to react to whatever the daily political controversy is.
During the book tour, she has answered questions mostly about her hardscrabble upbringing and her populist ideas, including a recent push to lower the burden of student loan borrowing costs. She is not usually asked about the questions that surfaced during her campaign about her Native American heritage.
My question would be what is the status of her proposed reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act?
In the recent interviews, her tone is folksy, with the g’s at the end of some words dropped, a speaking style she usually avoids on the Senate floor.
Oh, I love it.
When asked whether she will run for president, Warren almost always sticks to a variation of a scripted answer, steering the conversation to her life story and the fight for the middle class.
Related: Will Liz Warren Run For President?
“I’m not running for president. You can ask it lots of different ways,” she told “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent Mark Strassmann. “But I wrote this book because we can’t wait longer. It’s written out of gratitude for my start and the opportunities that America built for me.”
Unfortunately, it is already too late to save America.
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And the reviews are in:
‘A Fighting Chance’ by Elizabeth Warren
More candor please, Senator Warren
Look whose talking!
Looks like Liz will be working in the minority next year:
"Democrats work to turn out vote in midterm elections" by Dan Balz | Washington Post April 25, 2014
WASHINGTON — Democrats have a problem and everyone knows it. President Obama calls it a ‘‘congenital disease.’’ If they can’t control it, Obama could spend the final years of his presidency battling not only a Republican House but also a Republican Senate.
It is darn near a guarantee at this point.
Democrats don’t vote in midterm elections.
Oh, that's the excuse they are using for doing a piss-poor job?
That’s an exaggeration, of course, but the core of the Democratic coalition is made up of many people who turn out to vote only in presidential elections. The Republican coalition — older and whiter — suffers less from midterm falloff.
But what?
So nice to know that "Democrats" take such a flippant attitude toward the governing of the country.
So much has been made of the building blocks the president assembled to win his two elections — the outpouring of voters younger than 30; the long lines at precincts in African- American communities; the support he engendered among the rising Hispanic population; the growing support for him and Democrats generally among unmarried women.
Related: Obummer For Youth
And the rest of us, including you women!
But a Republican victory in a special congressional election in a winnable district in Florida last month has put many Democrats, including the president, on edge. ‘‘Our voters . . . get excited about general elections,’’ Obama said at a recent fund-raiser in Houston. ‘‘They don’t get as excited about midterm elections.’’
See: Jolly Sinks Democrats' House Hopes
Obama hopes to stir his base to action and in recent weeks has been trying to push all the buttons. He invoked the slaying of civil rights workers in the 1960s to implore a largely African-American audience in New York to take advantage of their right to vote.
See: LBJ Overshadows MLK
Pushing the wrong ones!
At the White House a few days before that, he pushed the issue of pay equity for women.
As he waives the requirement that says women may not be discriminated against and charged higher rates. I really hope you ladies are not fooled by this.
Around the country, he and other Democrats have seized on raising the minimum wage to draw a contrast with Republicans.
As the gap in wealth inequality has yawned during his term. And lest I remind you, he had a filibuster-proof Congress for two years and never raised the minimum wage. All we got was his lousy, in$urer-written health bill.
So did all the talk all these years cut you a bigger paycheck? Ever notice the i$$ue only comes up during an election year? Then it is back to bu$ine$$ as u$ual down there.
He chastised House Republicans for not moving on immigration overhaul.
I'll telex the latest to you.
But the president, hobbled by weak approval ratings, may be a drag on Democrats in some of the places his party will be fighting hardest this fall. And Republicans appear more motivated, spurred by their opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
Related: A Politically Poisonous President
And nothing he is doing is changing that.
Democrats are banking on the belief that they can better identify potential supporters, motivate them, and get them to the polls — in essence, reshape the midterm electorate to make it look more like the electorate in a presidential year.
To try to do so, they will for the first time fully employ the sophisticated tools and techniques used in Obama’s presidential campaigns to aid Senate and some House candidates.
So the FIX is IN, huh?
Republicans need to pick up a net of six seats to take control of the Senate. For Democrats, the most endangered seats are in Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia.
That's three that will be turned out.
Incumbents Kay Hagan in North Carolina, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Mark Pryor in Arkansas, and Mark Begich in Alaska are in difficult campaigns, most in states Obama twice lost badly.
That's four, so the Republicans have one to spare -- not counting the toss-ups!
And Republicans see opportunities in Michigan, where Democratic Senator Carl Levin is retiring; in New Hampshire, now that Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator, has decided to take on Senator Jeanne Shaheen; in Colorado, where Representative Cory Gardner’s challenge to Democratic Senator Mark Udall has changed the race; and possibly in Iowa, where Representative Bruce Braley has stumbled recently.
That's four more they could get in this year's referendum on Obama and his party.
See: Scott Brown's Base
They went with him, and he also has another ba$e.
Democrats see opportunities to win two Republican seats. One is in Kentucky, where Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has a fight on his hands.
Related: The Grimes Against Mitch McConnell
The other is in the race for an open seat in Georgia.
With all due respect, I don't see the Democrats winning in Georgia.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is assembling what executive director Guy Cecil said will be a $60 million effort in targeted races.
I'm not saying a Republican Senate will be better, folks. It seems every time the American people "vote" for "change" things get worse, and I suspect it will be the same this time. A Republican Senate will simply put more Zionist pressure on Obama.
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Time to close the Globe and put it down for now.
