With Obama, seeing is believing

She continues to attack him on content, but McBride has done an about-face on Barack Obama's speaking ability after hearing him firsthand.

A July 24 post entitled, "Barack Obama's Lack of Eloquence:"

The MSM myth is that Barack Obama is a powerful and moving orator. I realized this was myth when I heard the audio from his Milwaukee appearance a few months ago, in which he blamed Virginia Tech on Don Imus, Iraq, and everything including the kitchen sink. I was shocked then how much he LACKED eloquence.

And Today:

I saw Barack Obama speak in person. And I have to say he is a good speaker (that's not a media myth, his rambling Milwaukee speech on Virginia Tech aside). He is able to connect emotionally with his audience in a way that Hillary Clinton does not (she connects through logos; he connects through pathos). He also seems like a very decent person (if you can really tell that from a stump speech), and it's true he's bringing additional people into the political process (such as the younger voter), and that's a positive.

We don't see an endorsement in the future, and she didn't join in the standing ovation. But maybe she can understand why it happened, with an audience of black journalists, including student journalists.

(Re)Public Speaking

McBride again displays her own unique brand of schizophrenic logic in this post about the fairness doctrine. Jay Bullock at folkbum's performs the analysis here. You know it's gotta be good when it starts out with the statement, "...a perfect example of what for most people would be mind-splittingly painful cognitive dissonance".

'Poor Tommy' just doesn't have it

We don't remember Jessica McBride being so supportive of Tommy Thompson's presidential bid in the past, but now that it's over she's all for him:

I admire him for giving it a shot. He brought ideas to the table. It bothers me that money and media attention (which comes first, the chicken or the egg?) handicap the candidates, turning those without either one into punchlines. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, a governor without any accomplishments to match Tommy's (welfare reform, school choice, etc.) comes in first. Why? Because his mix of east coast celebrity, "presidential" looks, political name, and money made him "electable" in the minds of the media.

Campaign finance reform isn't the answer. It would be nice if the media would voluntarily stop handicapping the candidates based on money and star power. Rather, it would be nice if they simply reported on all of the candidates' ideas, forgetting such labels as "frontrunner", and focusing on the issues instead. Why should the media decide who's a "serious" candidate? And why is Mitt Romney a more serious candidate than Tommy Thompson, if you look at track record and ideas?

You can't blame it all on the media, Jessica.

If you want to know what Tommy's real problem was, look a little more closely at the candidate. The problem was Tommy.

He declared, and the media reported, time and again, that he would win in Iowa because it was retail politics -- the kind of politics where you didn't need a lot of money, or television advertising, because you could get to know the voters up close and personal.

After months of stumping the state, the candidates at Saturday's straw poll in Ames had probably met just about every one of the candidates.

There's the old joke about a reporter asking an Iowa farmer how he's going to vote in the straw poll. Does he like Tommy Thompson? "Can't say yet; he's only been in our house twice so far."

Iowa Republicans didn't reject Tommy Thompson because the NY Times told them he couldn't win.

They decided, after sizing him up against the rest of the pack, that he just didn't pack the gear.

Frankly, he comes off on TV like a doofus. He may be better in small groups or one-on-one, but he yells his speeches like he's angry at the audience. And he looks a little goofy, with his whitewall haircut. One observer said Tommy had either the worst haircut or the worst hairpiece they'd ever seen.

And, yes, appearances matter when you're running for president. It all counts.

McBride says Romney won because of good looks, money, media attention, a well-known name (? His father ran 40 years ago), and East Coast celebrity.

All of that isn't worth a warm bucket of milk in the Iowa straw poll, if you listen to the Iowans, or even to Tommy, describe it.

It's not like Tommy was edged out by Romney. Tommy placed sixth, with 7% of the vote. A mere 1,039 votes after all that money and work.

How does Jessica explain Mike Huckabee's second place finish? He got more than double Tommy's vote, at 18%. And Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, did not have good looks, money, media attention, a well-known name, or that killer, East Coast Celebrity. But he whipped Tommy pretty badly.

Heck, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo, and Ron Paul -- the latter two candidates a lot of people joke about -- all beat Tommy.

You just can't hang it on the media.

Tommy just didn't have what it takes, and came up way short.

Now we can watch the debates without cringing every time we see him, hoping no one will say "Wisconsin."

UPDATE: Power Line, a national right wing blog, also bemoans Tommy's failure, but is honest enough to call him "uncharismatic." That counts, too.

50+ things you won't learn on talk radio

OK, McBride's not a radio presence any more (if she ever was), but this effort is too good to go unrecognized by Whallah!

Wisconsin's lefty bloggers have teamed up to produce this gem, a response to Charlie Sykes's book blaming the schools for everything wrong with the younger generation.

It's posted all over the Cheddarsphere.

Here's the Milwaukee Rising version.

McBride undercover; poses as black journalist

Well, not exactly.

She's apparently at a convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists, with some students, and was inspired to to try to ask Barack Obama a question.

Good grief.

Do you think we are paying her to be there? (It's in Vegas.)

UPDATE: Her question is whether Obama would meet with Al Qaeda. Would Republicans meet with Saddam Hussein? Well ...

Rummy and Saddam, in the happier days of the Reagan administration. (Hat tip: Illusory Tenant.)

The one that got away

So a guy shows up late for a job interview and starts it out by announcing, “you’re a damn fool if you don’t hire me.”

Jessica McBride thinks the Journal Sentinel should have hired him anyway.

Why? Because the guy in question, Jason Whitlock, is a black sports columnist who followed the right-wing line during the ugly Don Imus controversy in April, saying black culture and gangsta rap, not Imus, are the real problem, and accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of exploiting the Rutgers basketball team and making the issue too big of a deal.

That, of course, is the diversity of opinion the right wing loves, whenever they can find a black person who agrees with them. (They are few and far between.)

"He would have been a really fresh voice in town," McBride says.

Right.

UPDATE: Illusory Tenant digs a little deeper and finds that McBride, avowed affirmative action foe, is the advisor for a student group whose goal is to increase diversity.

JBVH is warned: The wingnuts are watching

We learned here the other day that Jessica McBride thinks JB Van Hollen has broken his promise to be a partisan right wing hack as attorney general.

It's spread. Van Hollen's bona fides are now being questioned by the other half of the duo formerly known as McSykes. Charlie put JBVH to the test on his show this week, and gave him an incomplete. The wingnuts are watching, JB. Xoff has more.

Judging a cop by his cover

Welcome once again to McBride World, where candidates for police chief are evaluated by how tough they look.

If that's the criterion, the Fire and Police Commission should look at the mug shot of the guy charged in the triple murder in Connecticut.

McSykes is dead; long live McSykes

Some lefty bloggers used to use the term "McSykes" to denote how Charlie Sykes and Jessica McBride's mutual admiration society resulted in them writing the same thing about the same subject, or, more often, simply linking to one another's blogs to steer readers there.

"How insightful," Charlie would say, with a link to McBride's latest drivel. "What an eye for talent," McBride would respond, linking to Sykes.

Since Charlie's protege was banished from the WTMJ Kingdom, the echo chamber appears to have stopped. She still speaks highly of him, but doesn't even make it onto his blogroll of 23 right-wing Wisconsin blogs, including some that are pretty marginal.

But there's a new relationship blossoming with Sykes and the Journal Sentinel's resident wingnut, Patrick McIlheran, who have formed a new and improved mutual admiration society and send readers back and forth. Can a permanent McIlheran chair on the Sunday Sykes TV show be far behind?

So, the old McSykes may be history, but there's a new McSykes tandem to carry on. Praise the Lord.

Patrick and Charlie, we now pronounce you wing and nut. It's a match made in heaven.

UPDATE: McCarthy McIlheran says liberals aren't entitled to describe themselves as Americans, because they're really unpatriotic:

Time and again, left-leaning organizations have, in the years since, sought to wrap themselves in an outer mantle of traditional Americanism, despite their distaste for it.

These foreign policy views are a riot

Jessica McBride doesn't like it when Democrats talk about foreign policy. That's why she is willing to rewrite the Constitution to say, for example, that Senators like Russ Feingold can't complain about the conduct of the Iraq war. And, presumably, why she would blame Democrats for "inflaming the Muslim world" when introducing and article mostly about a Republican. And, I guess, why she is willing to risk Godwin's Law just to diss Barack Obama.

That's from Jay Bullock at folkbum, and he's just getting warmed up.

'Every reporter's worst nightmare'

Jessica McBride wrote this recent one-liner, with a link to a story about the assassination of a black newspaper editor in California:

Arrests made in slaying of Oakland journalist
Every reporter's worst nightmare.

That's the entire post by journalism teacher McBride.

Let me preface this by saying that, as a former journalist, I do not want to minimize or understate the courage of those reporters and photographers who put themselves in danger to report the news, in war zones and in other dangerous situations. Many of them regularly risk their lives.

But it is a giant leap from recognizing that bravery to suggesting that "every reporter's worst nightmare" is that he/she will be gunned down on a street corner in the US by masked assassins, as the Oakland editor was.

If that truly is their worst nightmare, they should not lose any sleep over it.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 636 journalists have been killed worldwide in the last 15 years, including 109 in Iraq. From the group's website:

CPJ applies strict journalistic standards when investigating a death. We consider a case “confirmed” only if we are reasonably certain that a journalist was killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment.

Since 1992, four journalists have been killed in the US under such conditions.

One was a Haitian, killed for political leanings, one a Cuban-American exposing a NYC drug ring. Another was a 9-11 victim and the fourth a victim of terrorists who sent anthrax to his newspaper. (Details below.)

What's my point?

That a journalism instructor who is introducing college students to the profession does it a disservice by portraying it as a glamorous, dangerous business where reporters routinely risk their lives. It's far more likely that I will be bitten by a rabid right-wing blogger than it is that one of McBride's students will be shot for some crusading piece of journalism.

They may well get an abusive phone call now and then, an angry email or letter to the editor, but anything more, like even a punch in the nose, would be a rarity. (Read this morning's Journal Sentinel and ask yourself who's likely to be murdered for what they wrote. See what I mean?)

Her students' worst nightmares should be that they end up in a dead-end reporting or editing job where they're just punching the clock and waiting to retire in 30 years.

McBride's worst nightmare should be that someone will fact-check her work.

--

Details on the journalist deaths:

Manuel de Dios Unanue, El Diario/La Prensa, March 11, 1992, New York City

Cuban-American de Dios, the outspoken former editor of El Diario/La Prensa and the founder of weekly magazine Cambio XXI and monthly magazine Crimen (Crime), was shot in the head in a New York City restaurant. Police believe that more than a dozen drug traffickers and businessmen plotted to murder de Dios in retaliation for hard-hitting stories he had written about their drug and money laundering operations. Daily death threats were telephoned into the offices of El Diario/La Prensa after the journalist's murder.


Dona St. Plite, WKAT, Miami, October 24, 1993, Miami

St. Plite, a Haitian-born reporter and commentator for radio station WKAT in Miami, was murdered at a benefit for the family of Fritz Dor, a colleague killed two years earlier. His name had appeared on a hit list of supporters of ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was the third Haitian-born journalist killed in Miami in three years.

William Biggart, free-lancer, September 11, New York City

Biggart, a free-lance news photographer, was killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The journalist's body was found on September 15 in the rubble at Ground Zero, near the bodies of several firefighters. Biggart had rushed to the scene with his camera shortly after hearing about the attacks.

Robert Stevens, The Sun, October 5, 2001, Boca Raton

Stevens, 63, a photo editor at the tabloid newspaper The Sun, died of inhalation anthrax in Boca Raton, Florida. Authorities opened a criminal investigation into the killing but have not determined where the anthrax came from. However, officials did confirm that the type of anthrax that killed Stevens is the same strain that was mailed to NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw.

Dog shoots no one; McBride shoots self in foot repeatedly

Illusory Tenant says McBride sets the bar high in her post about a mis-reported "dog shoots owner" story:

... {I}f there is a lesson to be learned from the so-called teacher of journalism here, it's as a model of concision and brevity: it will be hard to top making so many errors and omissions in the space of a couple of paragraphs, even for McBride.

Sour Grapes Makes For A Bitter Whine

Apparently, McBride still isn't over the drubbing that J. B. Van Hollen gave her hubby, Paul Bucher, in last year's primary for Attorney General. She has, in the past, been generally critical of some of Van Hallen's decisions and writings. But now, she apparently has reached her threshold of tolerance for ole J.B., when he is praised in a column in the Wisconsin State Journal.

She even uses her old friend, Mark Belling, to bolster her argument.

All the two of them manage to do is show that they believe adhering to the law and the constitution are only for liberals, and that their brand of conservatism is above the law.

McBride wrong? Surely you jest

Ken Mobile says McBride gets it wrong when she beats up a Milwaukee alderman over his quote on housing sex offenders.

McBride gets it wrong? C'mon, Mobile! Who's gonna believe that?

Using the 's' word

Illusory Tenant has caught someone red-handed in "a textbook double standard" over use of a racially-charged term.

Guess who?