All of them despise the media for daring to shed harsh light on their crusades as they crush anyone in their way who might want to erect a few barriers of truth to confront their steamrollers

These hated troublemakers are the ones who insist on asking the tough questions and reporting the embarrassing answers and/or deceptions from those politicians and entrepreneurs who have gotten used to spreading their messages with no resistance whatsoever.

As the cliche goes, if the reflection is ugly, they want to break the mirror .  In Jobs’ case, when his corporate hands are caught in the IPhone 4 “Death Position”, blocking the antenna which causes the embarrassing loss of cellphone reception, he bitterly hurls attacks at the journalist pests, saying “…when you see someone get successful, you just want to tear it down”.

It’s really tough on a guy when his bullying and PR manipulation suddenly aren’t enough.  Just ask Palin, who at all costs avoids all but  sycophantic news situations these days and stays largely behind the bunkers with her  Fox Friendlies, where she can “refudiate” the “Lamebrain Media”.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann, another one rising on the Right’s risers sings an even harsher tune for her choir entitled the “Treason Media”.  And let’s not forget those Senate candidates Sharron Angle (T-Nevada) and Rand Paul (T-Kentucky) who are ducking further contact with anyone who might cause them to trip over their own oversimplifications.

The idea that the voter has a need to understand what the empty slogans and marketing ploys mean is anathema to the likes of Palin, Angle, Bachmann and Paul

That obviously includes Steve Jobs who has made it clear that inconvenient reporting is just not his Cupertino.

Let’s not forget every President from Barack Obama on back as well as every other pampered star in show biz, sports and the corporate world.  They tool come to resent the audacious riff raff who dare to challenge them. They’re just not used to such things, surrounded, as they are with groupies and drones buzzing around them.

They’re cannot tolerate nay-sayers,  only aye-sayers. . The problem is the path of least resistance inevitably is a path to sloppiness and even corruption which are then overgrown with coverup.  Any effort to clear it away is a threat.

This is dangerous.  Look no further than inside-the-beltway and out.

If anything we in media are too often too pliant or intimidated,anxious to look away when a “go along, get along” approach means less hassle from an administration or conglomerate that is more than willing to bully.

What we leave in the wake of our timidity is a vacuum, and hustlers who view it as a convenient opportunity to make big bucks or further their ambitions by filling the space with garbage.

As Americans we have a responsibility to be an informed electorate whether we’re choosing candidates or products.  The manufacturers and/or promoters of both have a responsibility to make sure what we’re buying is not packaged in fraud.  That’s where an effective press comes in, whatever its form, to quench a thirst for complete information.  Otherwise, all we’ll have to drink is Apple Tea.

Suddenly, the spy biz has become show biz. About all we haven’t seen of that  suburban ring is  a program called “The Real Russian Housewives.” And one has to believe that Playboy and/or Hustler have been in touch with the redhead. I see a centerfold coming.

Of course, they’ll need to shoot it in Moscow, or somewhere, because that’s where the ring members are taking up residence, now that they have been deported, uprooted from being embedded in our bedroom communities.

Their charade could hardly be called “Deep Cover.” Given the superficiality of the ‘burbs, “Shallow Cover” seems more appropriate. And these moles were removed by the FBI, not the usual lawn care service.

But you know the whole story.  And there can be only one explanation for that:  it’s phony.  It’s gotta be made up.  It is either a concoction of the news networks, looking for something to over-cover when even the President Obama show seems to have gone on hiatus.

Or it was their desperate attempt to come up with programming to match the breathless Lebron-James- Goes-From-Cleveland-To-Miami-Duhhhh melodrama on ESPN.

It could well have been an insidiously clever plot on BP’s part to distract from their destruction of an entire region of the United States, their former colony.  I kinda doubt that explanation because that would mean they’re good at PR and what we’ve witnessed would suggest that the only ones worse are Gen. McChrystal and his crew.

My favorite possibility is that it’s just another ploy by the aforementioned redhead to get publicity. This is even bigger than Facebook!!  The woman is amazing.  Who knew there were so many ways to pout?

What’s really remarkable is that the two teams pulled this off before the trading deadline.  For those who are not sports fans, that’s a baseball reference, but you’re still probably wondering who this guy Lebron James is.

In this case, they pulled off a sensational swap…10 minor leaguers sent from the Washington Nationals in exchange for four star players from the Moscow Reds, along with who knows how many players to be named later.

Whatever, it has been great beach reading. It’ll be a terrific movie. Let’s call it “The Cul De Sac Capers.”  It’s so juicy the nervous producers and executives won’t even emasculate the script.  To those who would argue “You can’t make this stuff up,” I would say “Sure you can.”  It’s not that “Truth is stranger than fiction,” what’s really strange is that we believe a word of it.

There was probably no shortage of takers, but they could have saved a lot of the moving expense if they’d simply run the same employment ads here in the US. If it sounds like a nice cushy gig, it is.  In this country,we call people like that “lobbyists”

One can’t help but wonder why the SVR, which is what they call the KGB these days, would spend so much time and money on gaining information that is widely available on the internet, and communicating  with equipment that is far less exotic that many IPad apps.

One can only conclude that in Russia, just like this nation, there are still a lot of cold warriors longing for the good old days before they became irrelevant…well almost irrelevant. They do pop up all the time on TV as foreign policy and national security experts.

It looks like a lot of these Soviet throwbacks still have their government jobs, just like their American counterparts.  Without a doubt, they have their own civil service protections too.  They are known as “apparatchiks” over there, here we call them “bureaucrats”. For too many of either, the imperative is to preserve the old rigid ways of thinking and doing things and of course, their positions.

This all surfaces at a particularly delicate moment in relations between the two superpowers.  It was just a few days ago that President Obama was caught on camera trying to kill President Medvedev by feeding him cheeseburgers. That is particularly suspicious because, as the White House acknowledges, Obama  was aware of this alleged spy caper.

We can expect some sort of retaliation from the other side. That’s what always happens in these espionage affairs.  So don’t be surprised at all if Dmitry invites his new best buddy Barack to sample Russia’s national dish.  If memory serves that’s vodka.

What this goes to show is just how similar we are.  Apparently both governments have their gangs that couldn’t spy straight.  And both have outsiders who try and worm their ways in so they can exert influence.

Of course, we shouldn’t take the similarities with lobbyists too far. So many of them come from the ranks of highly placed government staff and elected officials.  None of the Russian plants do.  That we know of. But that’s classified.

He had after all,  spent more than half a lifetime jealously defending the rules, peculiarities and turf of the Senate and protecting against almost any smart alecky attempt at reform.

He succumbed in the predawn hours of a morning when the Senate was  scheduled to begin exercising its Constitutional mandate to give “Advice and Consent”.  Using the current media construct, this is Day One of the hearings leading up to a vote on whether to confirm Elena Kagan, the President’s nominee to join the Supreme Court.

It’s pure Separation of Powers, the kind of stuff which would make Senator Byrd swell with pride.  Unfortunately these hearings are a showcase of another Senate tradition: bombast.

Day One is devoted to opening statements from committee members.  This is where they display an amazing talent to use a lot of words to say very little.

After each and every speaker gives a verbal homage to their “Dear Friend” Senator Byrd, and maybe even brush away a tear or two, they then get on to the partisan business at hand, in the inimitable way of the Senate.

It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to predict the speeches.  Democrats and Republicans alike are predictably embracing this opportunity to “examine her record” and engage in an “open discussion about issues”. Never mind that there won’t be anything of the sort, that’s what they always say.

The Dems are ready to embrace Kagan’s brilliance and accomplishments and maybe laud the fact she will bring a fresh perspective to the court since she comes  from “outside the judicial” monastery, because she’s never been a judge.

Never mind that she argued as Solicitor General before the same justices she’ll presumably be joining and never mind she hails from the same Ivy League monastery as every other one of them…she’s offered something new.  Or so the Democrats’ argument goes.

Republicans?  After the same “examine her record” and “open discussion about the issues” platitudes, they’ll raise “concerns”  about the very lack of judge experience the other side is “lauding”. (“Concerns” and “Lauding” are Senate-speak-roughly translated, they mean “Seeking partisan advantage”).

The GOP committee members will drone on about their “concerns” over “judicial activism” (same meaning) and “liberal agenda (ditto) and their demands the nominee give specific answers to their questions about specific issues.

All of this takes a whole day because even though long time committee member Joe Biden has rambled on to another setting, there is a whole set of members ready to fill his verbosity gap.  When they finally all have their last gasp they will have set up Kagan’s appearance Tuesday, where she will spend the rest of the week NOT giving specific answers to specific questions.  The twaddle will flap in frustration.

It can be mesmerizing (hypnotic) or mesmerizing (sleep inducing). It is fascinating to watch to see if something unexpected happens to turn this from the usual mush to some sort of surprise that matches the long past glory days of the Clarence Thomas hearings.

Through it all, perhaps Bobby Byrd will be looking on and smiling. Many of us mortals will be cringing.

This one will fall short of that (I hope, anyway) but it may surprise you: “Full disclosure:  Geraldo Rivera and I are friends of long standing”.  At least we have been until now, because I want to take issue with his Fox News appearance where he strongly criticized Michael Hastings for repeating the incendiary comments by General Stanley McChrystal and his aides that got Gen. McChrystal fired.

Geraldo contends Hastings and the magazine were out of line, that, given his access, there should have been “a cone of privilege (Geraldo’s words) that kept the bitter snarkiness about the President and the chain-of-command confidential.  “If it’s not on the record”, Rivera continued, “It’s off the record”, meaning, I suppose,  that these defiant statements should have been kept confidential because the smart alecks didn’t know better.

There’s something to be said for that, when you’re embedded with a unit on a battlefield, as Geraldo proudly points out he has been.  So have I and so do I, although I never broke the agreement to not reveal the troops’ position, like he did. The point is that the foot soldiers cannot be expected to be sophisticated about all the media rules.  Fair play requires they need to be warned ahead of time that what they say can harm them.

But we’re not talking about grunts.  We’re talking about the commander of Afghanistan forces…a four star general, and the people clustered around him at the top.  They didn’t get there immediately after falling off a turnip truck, although their dumbass remarks sure made it look like they had.

There’s also another Geraldo quote from the same interview that bears examination:  Making the point, I suppose, that we journalists, who are US citizens “…want America to win  the war”, he only makes half a point.  Of course, we all want our country to win.  And our contribution is holding the feet of our leaders to the fire.

We serve an important purpose when we expose, as Hastings’ article did, the huge breaks in the chain of command and the distracting infighting that most likely has caused the Afghanistan war to go badly.  The piece makes it very clear that the military guys were not doing what they’re supposed to do, which is to “salute smartly and follow orders”, unless, of course, you mean the one-fingered salute.

The story also validly raises questions about President Obama’s leadership as Commander-in-Chief, and whether he’s running a loose ship which is sinking.  So contrary to what Geraldo says that “This is a terrible thing this reporter did”, it was actually quite the opposite…a mighty good thing, in the best reporter tradition.

What we need when it comes to the faltering Afghanistan is a more complete picture of the reasons why.  In other words, what we need is even more full disclosure.

We all know the story by now.  For reasons beyond comprehension, McChrystal and his fellow high ranking smart alecks let the Rolling Stone writer listen in as they trashed just about everyone in the civilian chain of Afghanistan command…most memorably the Vice President, who will forevermore be known as Mr. “Bite Me”.In the end,it was McChrystal who got bitten…chewed up and spit out.  He’s relieved of his command, replaced by none other than Gen. Petraeus, who could have been excused if he had fainted again, from shock.  There he was, comfortably ensconced at CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa and now he’s on his way back to Kabul.

Memo to Television executives and speech agencies:  Stanley McChrystal is suddenly available for work as a military affairs commentator, with a Special Ops, uh,  specialty.  He is probably not the guy to give the most expert analysis of politics and definitely not press relations, but the fallen high and mighty seem to hold a special TV news fascination.  Just ask Eliot Spitzer. But I digress…

Back at the Situation Room, once they shooed out Wolf Blitzer, the President convened a strategy session.  It probably ought to be called a “Cut the Crap” meeting.  He should have no problem looking for someone’s “ass to kick”, since just about everyone involved seems to be running in different directions.  If they dumped on the enemy as much as they have each other, the Taliban would be long gone from the region and so would the United States.  Perhaps one of the top ranking diplomats should also go…replaced by say, Rahm Emanuel.

Wouldn’t it be fun to watch Emanuel dealing with Afghanistan’s uber warlord Hamid Karzai?  Come to think of it, what probably did in Gen McChrystal was the one big endorsement he got from President Karzai.  Can you hear it now?  When  Karzai offered his strong words of public support,  McChrystal probably squealed “Noooooooo….!!

Now that he’s gone, Karzai is probably doing a little moaning himself. He’ll have to deal much more with Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative, or super envoy for the region.  Karzai is widely regarded in the US as a loose cannon and widely unloved in Washington.  Holbrooke, is not all that adored either.  There are many who consider him capable but annoying as hell.  Karzai feels the same way, at least about the annoying part.  So maybe as he deals with the administration, that’s a good starting point of agreement.

As for Petraeus, he’s a regular old charmer, and somebody who chooses his words verrrrryyyy carefully.  So don’t look for any articles about his incendiary remarks.  What would be nice, of course, would be reports of progress with Afghanistan. Perhaps the President needs to continue to send out the clowns.  This is not a comedy.  It’s a tragedy.

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• McChrystal to Face Obama: ‘I’ve Compromised the Mission’ (abcnews.go.com)

The piece, set for release Friday, calls McChrystal “The Runaway General”.  Well, he’s crawling away from Afghanistan, back to DC. He has been jerked back after accomplishing what many thought was impossible.  Apparently the article with all its contemptuous quotes about damn near the entire national security team has made the President…dare I say it…ANGRY!!  He’s so mad that his press guy won’t even rule out the possibility that he’ll be fired.

It won’t be hard to spot Gen. McChrystal on the way to his White House grovel.  He’ll be the guy in the perfectly pressed uniform with the red face above all those stars on his shoulder.  As for firing him , the President will have a balancing act to perform here.

On the one hand, this won’t be the first time that McChrystal has been borderline insubordinate with him.  The last time, we can recall, Obama yanked him from London to Copenhagen so he could be pictured getting the “Let’s Remember Who’s Commander-in-Chief” lecture.  Apparently, it didn’t take.  Add to that, the fact that things are not going all that well in Afghanistan and some in this administration might regard this less as a crisis than an opportunity to toss the guy overboard

On the other side of this double-edged sword, cutting him loose would mean getting rid of the guy who developed the master plan for Afghanistan the President has chosen to follow just as it goes into high gear.  Besides, McChrystal seems to be about the only person in the US government these days who gets along well with the country’s President Hamid Karzai, and doesn’t consider him a dangerous cuckoo-bird.

As important as all that, there is also the Douglas MacArthur-Harry Truman lesson. MacArthur was another big Mac, with an ego to match, who as UN Commander in Korea, in 1951, unleashed his own criticisms of the President and his policies.  Truman didn’t wait long.  Very quickly Gen. Mac Arthur became the FORMER UN Commander and just as quickly, the wildly popular general (he had been a World War 2 hero) became a martyr. The firestorm brought all the Truman-haters out of the woodwork and did serious damage to the administration.

The Obama-haters are already out of the woodwork.  He doesn’t need to bring McChrystal to the tea party. So maybe the bigger deal for Obama is to deliver the message that his peeps can’t roll over him, any more than the BP peeps could. That’s why he dragged them to the Oval Office last week to deliver a 20 billion dollar message to them and remind them of their obligations to the “small people” who populate the Gulf of Mexico region.

The “small people” are a big deal, and this is too.  It’s hard to see how McChrystal can stay, since the article guarantees he’d be perceived as working for people he obviously doesn’t respect.  So don’t be surprised if he is relieved of his command and perhaps put ion charge of the crews cleaning up tab balls on Louisiana beaches.

One thing for certain:  The White House will be Action Central.  Don’t bet on the President inviting in CSPAN for these meetings, but every glimpse we get will be “Must see TV, from the moment McChrystal slinks in.  This, as Vice President “Bite Me” would say, truly is a big…oh never mind, you get the picture.

Back in my TV puberty in Cleveland, a presidential candidate came to town and was sitting down with the usual rotation of local yokel anchor types, like me, who could be expected to ask puffball questions and get canned non-answers.

The aforementioned candidate’s staff (his identity doesn’t matter) had prepared his crib sheet and he carelessly left it sitting there for me to, uh, crib.. I could see he was going to wow me (the sheet included my name) and the audience with specific figures about the area’s unemployment rate, and industries,so no matter what my inquiry he’d work them into his answer.

I hated that.  So I began by saying “Senator _______, the unemployment rate here is (whatever his sheet said it was) and the (ditto) industry here has been particularly hard hit….” Then I continued with my question.  The poor guy had nothing to say.  The response was so generic, he didn’t even bother to use my name.

Now in today’s sophisticated world of message manipulation, the politicians’ media adviser brains have made damned sure their clients hide anything they don’t want the upside-down-reading-scumbag-
reporter to see. (Is “scumbag-reporter” a redundancy?).

In fact the cleverest of the clever in this battle of deceit will sometimes place papers on their client’s desk they DO want us to see…misleading us into believing we’re pulling a fast one when we’re not the puller but the pullEE.

A variation on that would be the talking point.  Those are exactly what they sound like:  Words created by party leaders and their handlers that are to be mindlessly repeated to make sure that A) their puppets  stay on message and B) they look like they know what they’re talking about.

Which brings me to Dylan Ratigan, the puppet disrupter of MSNBC, and his quote “Racists and talking points piss me off”.

( Full disclosure: I never met the guy, never been on his show, although I do show up on MS.  Full enough?).

Ratigan was explaining the browbeating he gave Democratic Congresswoman Debbie            Wasserman-Schultz

(Wasserman-Schultz and I have met  but when we did she was looking over my shoulder as she said “Nice to see you”).

Whether Ratigan mistreated Wasserman-Schultz or not, his view of talking points is dead on. Just like those of that long ago presidential candidate (he lost by the way), they need to be penetrated and disrupted.

They are a mirage, creating an impression there’s a “there-there”, when it’s just an illusion.  They are another version of the consultant’s maxim “Answer the question you want to answer, not the one you were asked”. It’s clever but frankly dishonest, it obscures truth and stifles valid debate.

Frankly, those of us in TV have helped create this monster.  Another axiom is that “Viewers don’t remember the debate or discussion, it’s the sound bite they recall”. So if the well programmed advocate sticks to one bite and repeats it till the clock runs out, he or she can escape unscathed and wait till the next show calls.

The problem with all this is that instead of ideas, we get self-serving, vacuous phrase-mongering.  Is it any wonder there is no longer such a thing as bipartisan cooperation or even engagement?.  In order for that to
happen the various sides need to talk to one another.

What we get instead is people talking to themselves and their amen choruses.  It helps explain why we never get anything down. There is no back and forth, no openness.

That contributes to the feeling that the bottom is falling out of our system. It’s inevitable when the whole concept of exchanging ideas is so turned upside down. And Dylan, not that you need them but please feel free to use these thoughts as talking points.

  The contemptuous disregard for minimal safety procedures was brought on by pressure from the very top of the company. It was the never-ending demand to minimize expenses and maximize profits which borders on criminal negligence.  In fact, it crosses the line and serious consideration has to be given to the prosecution of those responsible, from top to bottom.

While we’re at it,BP, lose the ads.   We don’t need those absurd attempts to depict recovery efforts as some benign corporate act. That’s not image making, that’s image faking.

  For that matter, we would probably be better off without any from the energy industry.  Those commercials we see that present big oil as  protecting our interests are nothing more than propaganda disguising campaigns that try and rachet up opposition to new taxes on the industry and the obscene income its gets because of its stranglehold on all of us.  It is, after all, a cartel that feeds our addiction to oil and gasoline,

The industry can save a lot of money so why does’t it simply control the law the old fashioned way…by bribing politicians with campaign contributions and threatening them if they don’t, uh, rig things.

Let’s face it:  Their conduct is so egregious they’ve even made President Obama mad. So, now BP executives had to do a “perp walk where ameras couldshow them trudging into the White House to ratify their new fund. 

It’s paid for, by  cutting out dividends to stockholders.  Of course it is.  So many of them are small time investors, who count on the dividends for much of their income.  A lot of pensioners are now going to do without,just like all those people in the Gulf…the ones that the company chairman called the “small people”  Now we know why he’s so reclusive.

If you believe that he and other top management are going to suffer any loss of compensation, I have some land to sell you a mile below the water. First though, I should refer you to the bankers and Wall Street titans, who are still rolling in obscene salaries, stock options and bonuses.

What’s important now is to watch BP very closely and be prepared for backsliding on the promises to “make things right”.  That’s an act, a BP performance. Its leaders know full well that once they finally cap the gusher, assuming they finally do, the gush of bad publicity will also be plugged and our attention will shift to the next outrage.

That’s when they can start their reneging on promises and using legal obstructions to keep things wrong. We cannot cut them any slack. If we do, they will slack off.

When it comes to that compensation account, we can expect fund and games.  We’ll be damned lucky if the money reaches the innocents who deserve it before their hopes for the future are beyond recovery, beyond any chance to “make things right”

If you ever wwonder about these rantum acts of unkindness toward so many coporations it’s because they have demonstrated a callous disregard for those with whom they share an economy, sometimes a murderous disregard.

There he was.  The President of the United States, in the Oval Office, telling us he was mad a heck.  He couldn’t even work up a “mad as hell”, as he assured us he simply will “refuse” to let this  destructive oil spill destroy the Gulf way of life.

And what was with his rambling about how they “bless the fleet” down there?  Maybe it had something to do with his meeting with the BP executives.  Maybe its the ceremonial blessing of their fleet of corporate jets, the ones that whisk them to and from their mansions in the Hamptons (You want to stop the oil gusher? Just let the first tar balls reach the Hampton’s beaches.  Then we’ll have results!)

Quick: What’s the difference between this disaster and Hurricane Katrina? Katrina was caused by an act of God.  The BP destruction was caused by oil company executives who think they’re Gods.  That’s who the President has invited over to the White House. Presumably they won’t be sitting down for a beer.

So now we’ll have a victims fund, paid for out of BP’s petty cash.  It will be independently administered…meaning that the independent administrators will immediately set up a bureaucracy that will see to it compensation is delayed for individuals, families and their businesses until way after they’ve gone under.

Meanwhile, the most important part of the President’s Oval Office address, the part about how we must change our evil oil-guzzling ways, fell on deaf ears.  Ours.

In fairness, he has appointed a new head of the Minerals Management Service as part of his “Kick Ass” campaign.

Michael Bromwich is a former Justice Department official who is known for his ability to do just that.  And there are certainly of opportunities for him at MMS. Maybe his first act would be to put a moratorium on the agency’s oil-company sponsored sex parties.  Just thinking.  And remember: I’m not making that up.

I should mention that the Nats lost last night.  The people of the Gulf are losing too.  We all are.