Babbling Babs is at it again. This time she cancelled her subscription to the LA Times because they… Well, I’ll let her tell you:
The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity but demands it. Your publisher’s decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community.
I’m almost embarrassed for you in seeing the LA Times being referred to as the “Chicago LA Times” on the myriad of internet sites I’ve visited in the last few days. It seems, however, an aptly designated epithet, representing the feeling among many of your readers that your new leadership, especially that of Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with them and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms.
So Babbling Babs takes the Times to task not accepting views that “stretch [people] beyond their own paradigms.”
OK. Fair enough.
But then she just throws the whole thing into the intellectual scrap heap.
…I am now forced to carefully reconsider which sources can be trusted to provide me with accurate, unbiased news and forthright opinions. Your new columnist, Jonah Goldberg, will not be one of those sources.
So her problem is that the Times hired a conservative columnist. So Babbling Babs doesn’t exactly want to be “stretch beyond her own paradigm” does she?
Protesting a conservative voice in Southern California… so much for “proudly embracing diversity.”
Irony is so lost on the dumb.
Babs, if you’re reading this… And I know you lurk…. I don’t dislike you because you’re liberal. I dislike you because you’re stupid.
Paul, your title is the perfect summation to the first commenter in my piece directly below. Truer words were ne’er spoken…
J.
Remember when she sued some dude doing an aerial survey of the California coastline for an environmental survey? Well, she has a place on that coastline and objected. It was all about her…..
Yes, Babs wants a diversity of opinions that she agrees with!!
What an intellectually dishonest hack!
Based on his history, you can’t trust Goldberg. His work is riddled with errors, and conservatives should be wary of reading him. I think this is an issue about trust.
But hey, it’s important to make sure Barbara Streisand’s power is limited. After all, she is a danger to this society. She could make or break all of us. A good service on your part.
So you hate me because I’m stupid?
Hey, blogger, how many Grammy’s have you won? How many concerts at 125$/ticket have you sold-out?
This short bus goes straight to the bank. And the DNC. And Spago.
Would anyone know, or care, anything at all about the Hollywood “glitterati” were it not for the imaginative fantasy that has been their life’s work? From “Babs” to Mike Farrell, from the “Meathead” to Susan Sarandon and her significant whats-his-name, from Whoopi Goldberg’s trash mouth to Martin Sheen’s well-scripted TV angst, all of these celebrities and media personalities, whose fame and fortune, whose notoriety and very being itself, come from their enormous capacity for make believe, all of them would now have us believe that their view of reality is somehow important? Yeah, right!
Why don’t you just toddle on back to the screening room, Babs dear. All your friends are waiting there for you, and the cartoons are about to start any minute now.
After North Korea tests President Hillary’s resolve by detonating a nuclear device in LA harbor, we won’t have to listen to Hollywood anymore. Prediction: she’ll send in Jimmy Carter and call it a day.
“So her problem is that the Times hired a conservative columnist. “
No, its’ because the Times replaced Scheer with a lazy and ignorant coulmninst.
Goldberg falsely claimed CNN’s Ed Henry cast Novak’s outburst as “a ploy” to avoid Plame questioning
Not one library was ever searched” under the Patriot Act
I suppose if we are going to call every columnist who makes a mistake lazy and ignorant, then there goes journalism and journalists as we know it.
The flushing of the Koran comes to mind. A false story put out that by just about every mainstream journalist here.
Babs doesn’t like Goldberg because he is conservative and that is the ONLY reason. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous.
E.
From your cited article:
“Almost 60 percent (59.9%) of librarians responding to the Library Research Center Poll stated they thought the secrecy provision is an abridgement of First Amendment rights.”
I couldn’t find the figure, but I’ll bet 80 plus percent of librarians self identify as “liberal”. Yet only 60 of them feel the library search is an abridgement of first amendment rights.
A lot of people don’t like the patriot act, or RICO, but like it better than being blown up. And don’t think its unconstitutional.
Lets win this war and then get rid of the damn thing.
Laying aside the content of her letter, from a syntax/stylistic perspective, it’s pretty atrocious. It’s practically unreadable.
Think of what a fat head she must be to let such a piece of crap go out under her name, without realizing or caring that it is barely literate.
Dear LA Times:
The IQ of your subscribers just increased with the loss of one Robert Scheer fan.
Even though I live in Poca WV, please accept my check for a year’s subscription.
Having spent a good 40 years of my life dealing with artists of different persuasions–music, film, “art”, writing–I know one true fact:
Outside of their given realm of artistic endeavor, they are useless human beings. Early on, they get this idea that because they have greatness in one aspect of their lives, everything they say, think, or do must be equally great.
With few exceptions, Nuh, Uh.
And Babs isn’t one of the exceptions: She’s mono-talented.
I still don’t know why she didn’t feature in “Team America.” Must be more litigious than the rest of the sockpuppets that got taken down.
Speaking of “lazy and ignorant”…Sorry but linking to Media Matters doesn’t prove anything. The first link is obviously speculation and the second one doesn’t prove anything. You and Babs can put your collective half dozen brain cells together and bitch about Goldberg because he’s a conservative. Boo hoo.
Jonah Goldberg responds to Babs in today’s National Review online here.
(Registration required.)
Pretty funny stuff, if you like Goldberg.
“The flushing of the Koran comes to mind. A false story put out that by just about every mainstream journalist here.”
That was actually put out by a conservative columnist. And while it’s still unclear if it was flushed – urine was splashed on a Koran at one point.
“Sorry but linking to Media Matters doesn’t prove anything.”
Go read all the reports on Goldberg. Then decide on his credibility. In fact, Goldberg has himself corrected stories he has written due to Media Matters. That proves something. From the man himself:
“Media Matters correctly corrects me for saying that CNN anchor Ed Henry was “quick to claim” that Novak left the set because of the Plame issue. In an earlier draft of my column I said “many” quickly claimed and I changed it to Ed Henry at some point in the editing process. The articles I had in mind at the time, do not say what I remembered them saying. I regret the error and will ask the syndicate to issue a correction. My apologies to Henry and others.”
Sorry, I couldn’t get past “The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity but demands it.”
“Demands” diversity, hmmm? As in, “I need someone to spend forty hours a week on my lawn for $200,” demanded it?
Or does she mean demanded in the sense that “We need one or two darker-skinned people to play the slaves/Iraqis/Italians/Indians in this movie for authenticity” ?
At least Goldberg publicly admits to his errors. When’s the last time we saw Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Kristoff, Ivins and the rest of Bloviating Liberal Entourage corrected their mistakes publicly? Answer: they don’t or their “public editor” buries them online and/or makes excuses for them. Hell, sometimes they even need to print retractions of their retractions of their retractions! That’s rich.
Michael Ishikoff, writer on the Koran flushing story, is decidedly NOT a conservative columnist. You are wayyyyy off base there, jp2.
As for the Koran, it wasn’t even close to being flushed. It got droplets of pee on it, and goodness knows whose pee it is and how it got there. The ticks at Gitmo are lucky they’re even getting the books that feeds their fires.
Isikoff – the lead reporter in Clinton’s sex scandal. Used quite unsubstantiated (and as discovered, untrue) rumors to attack the President. He was suspended over his overzealous actions. He claimed that he was “at the center of the plot to destroy Clinton.”
No, no. Certainly not conservative…
“At least Goldberg publicly admits to his errors.”
About .4%. Again, read MediaMatters. He corrected one, but it’s a drop in the bucket.
Peter F, thanks for the link to Goldberg — I’m going to be reading him every day now! Here’s some priceless stuff:
Indeed, it’s doubtful that Scheer would even take the time to tell her that “gamuts” cannot be “diluted” or that if you are going to pronounce upon “principals of journalistic integrity” with Olympian pomposity, you might take an extra moment or two to spell “principles” correctly. Otherwise, when she writes that the Times is stepping away “from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants” it sounds like she’s saying we should back away slowly from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and other journalistic “dictators.” “Have that accountant beaten! He’s acting like an editor!”
Don’t know Goldberg. And if he is in LA Times I won’t be finding out what he says.
Scheer seemed a mad dog to me. I was astonished for years that anyone printed his crap. Maybe DailyKoz and Howard Dean admire him. Oh, Barbra too.
As for library secrecy. The library is a branch of government. Them thar are the sad facts. Librarians are quite good at playing the “aren’t we just professional sweethearts, dedicated to serving youts and other literati” game. But they are public employees, paid with taxes. I don’t see why they have any authority to decide what use is made of public records. Elected officals are supposed to make laws, not librarians.
If the lawmakers don’t want library records to be searchable by the police then so be it. I just don’t want librarians making law.
Again, that’s .4% more than Magnificent (Liberal) Seven would even admit to. Where is your indignation when Krugman, Dowd and Co. screw up their numbers, their facts, their ineptitude and are not held accountable? The knife cuts both ways and often much more deeply on the liberal end of columnists, jp2.
As for Ishokoff, where do you get your information? No links provided, no named source on the quote, just quoted. Name and provide the source and how it all proves Ishkoff is somehow a “warmongering, puppy-kicking” GOP stooge.
Welcome, wavemaker.
I’m glad Goldberg took a shot back at Babbling Babs.
I do know Isikoff and he is conservative only if you consider Howard Dean a centrist.
He’s not a bad guy, for a liberal, and he owned up to his mistake on the Koran story. As did Goldberg on his fluffed piece. That’s what honorable people do.
Which is why it takes a gun to the head to get Krugman to admit to error–never mind apologize. And I strongly suspect that “apologize” is not in Bab’s vocabulary unless it’s either in a song lyric or about something some American did sometime over the past 250 years.
John B.
You said it much better than I did. Kudos.
jpt:
Media Matters is a left-wing media watchdog on the right. (Apologies for “left-wing media”, it’s a bit repetitive.) Media Matters is like asking one thief to watch and make sure the other thief does their job correctly! They’ve never scruntized a Kurgman or Dowd like this. But O’Reilley, Novak, the WaTimes? Oh, there all over that. Gimme a break…
Peter F. wrote, “At least Goldberg publicly admits to his errors. When’s the last time we saw Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert, Kristoff, Ivins and the rest of Bloviating Liberal Entourage corrected their mistakes publicly?”
In case you missed it, Molly Ivins has corrected one of her mistakes publicly – in one of her own columns. She admitted that her mistake was a big one, and she apologized.
Dodo:
Where, when and provide the link. I’m Googling and finding zip, zero, nada…
“I am now forced to carefully reconsider which sources can be trusted to provide me with accurate, unbiased news and forthright opinions. Your new columnist, Jonah Goldberg, will not be one of those sources.”
Judas Priest! Jonah Goldberg is nothing if not forthright! As for her problem with Goldberg’s hiring, well, I guess Babs missed the fact that they gave Michael Ramirez the pink slip too…which is a real shame, because he’s one of the best editorial cartoonists out there.
Dodo:
OK, I found something that Ivins apologized for. Kudos to her for doing so.
Oh, but I just love this rich contradiction within her apology.
There are wildly varying estimates of the number of civilians, especially babies and young children, who died as a result of the sanctions that followed the Gulf War. While it is true that the ill-advised sanctions were put in place by the United Nations, I do not see that that lessens Hussein’s moral culpability, whatever blame attaches to the sanctions themselves — particularly since Saddam promptly corrupted the Oil for Food Program put in place to mitigate the effects of the sanctions, and used the proceeds to build more palaces, etc.
So who was responsible for those deaths, Molly? The sanctions? Or Saddam? Seems she just can’t make her mind on the subject when it’s reasonably clear who was responisble for distributing food and medicine to the children of Iraq: Saddam Hussein. Blame everyone but Saddam, eh, Molly?
Anyway, she apologized. My correction.
Peter, what did you search for? I just put in “Ivins mistake apology” and the first link is this (it’s also the second and third link):
CROW EATEN HERE: This is a horror. In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.
…
I was certainly under no illusions regarding Saddam Hussein, whom I have opposed through human rights work for decades. My sincere apologies. It is unforgivable of me not have checked. I am so sorry.
“I do know Isikoff and he is conservative only if you consider Howard Dean a centrist”
I actually do consider Dean a centrist in many areas, certainly fiscally. Check his record in Vermont. Balanced the budget more than 10x if IIRC. I know Republicans aren’t fiscally responsible anymore, but there was a time when it was considered to be a value within the party.
I thought we were talking about Goldberg? What does his record have to do with Krugman?
Besides, there already is a conservative media watchdog for the right – MRC. Bozell is all class, as his organization. First class!
Peter – the reason MMFA doesn’t go after Krugman is because they are dedicated to misinformation from the right, which requires full-time employement of many people. (Fox News itself needs at least 10 people, full time) For Krugman analysis, maybe the MRC has info. See above.
I actually do consider Dean a centrist in many areas, certainly fiscally. Check his record in Vermont.
Yeah, well, we’re not talking about Dean when he was a governor, we’re talking about Dean when he first achieved national status running for President and heading up the DNC; in either case, whatever he used to be, Dean has pretty much morphed into a world class deranged moonbat. Like Algore, who used to be a centrist Democrat. Believe me, Karl Rove couldn’t have ordered up a more perfect DNC chair to serve the interests of the GOP.
Oh, ok. I didn’t know you had a specific Dean you were judging. Sure, let’s ignore his record and anything else that doesn’t fit your point of view. Sounds fair.
Judging from the approval ratings, you could say the same things about Bush – Dean himself couldn’t have picked a better person to hurt the Republican party.
Reply to tangential issue (“Howard Dean…is a centrist…[reference used is his “record in Vermont” with mention of his “balanc(ing)” of that state’s budget]):
Howard Dean “balanced” Vermont’s budget by vastly enlarging the numbers of people enrolled in Medicaid (that’s his health care legacy and his “balanced budget” legacy, too)…what he did was just move populations from state funded programs to federally funded ones. Presto, reduced state expenditures/costs and, presto, brought expenses inline with expenditures.
That’s hardly a centrist thing to do, but it is a Democrat thing to do, in how Howard Dean has used-to-infinity that accomplishment (“I balanced the budget”) to sell his own brand of craziness. The only aspect that is remarkable about Dean’s history in government and Dean as a character is that people actually believe he has credibility and makes any sense.
Centrist issue: Streisand would not recognize “diversity” if it peeked in her window. What she and many extremely Left, emotionally driven people like Streisand regard as “diversity” is a quite rigidly marginalized community: the Left who are in L.A.’s entertainment industry.
But, in defense of artists, writers, musicians…people like Streisand, and Streisand especially, give the rest of creatives a very bad name. It’s possible to be creative and be intelligent and reasoned, and not just vain about your talent. Streisand is just vain about talent and vain about her petulant perspectives, an indication that, even among other creative folks and even those in L.A., is obnoxious. Streisand is not well regarded as a person but is as a talent, is my point; however, she has her “audience” and that’s what keeps her petulently in play. There are actually conservatives with talent in the entertainment industry, and, more importantly, there are intelligent people who are conservatives (and some who aren’t) in the entertainment industry.
But, the Streisand “example” exemplifies the LEFT among entertainment — and while the majority are (LEFT among entertainment industry folk) — and what the Left in that context is is a closed society that is not based upon diversity but based upon a majority of similiar types, rewarded for being Left, not being diverse.
A lot of the smart people move away from L.A. for these very reasons. It’s noteworthy that Streisand has not. Imagine her somewhere else…O.K., now you can stop.
“Streisand would not recognize “diversity” if it peeked in her window”
Didn’t she grow up in Brooklyn, one of the most diverse places in the world?
Sorry if you think fiscal responsibility is “crazy.” Voters and businesses in VT sure liked him and he broke with Democrats on a lot of issues – from expanding snowmaking, two income tax cuts… But hey, like the guy before you, I won’t let facts get in the way of your ideas.
Someday barbara streisand will die off, her picture will fall off the wall into a garbage can, and a whole lotta people will rejoice…
Old singer cancels her newspaper subscription. Why should I care about this?
Babs is a political loon and the LA Times is birdcage fodder.
Maybe she should try the Wall Street Journal instead?
Didn’t she grow up in Brooklyn, one of the most diverse places in the world?
Okay, so she’d recognize it — and hate it, and flee as far from as it as she could at the first opportunity.
So which is it – Barbara Streisand “hates” New York or “hates” diversity?
…Judging from the approval ratings,
Oh, you mean these approval ratings?
http://nytimes.com/2005/12/08/politics/08poll.html?hp&ex=1134104400&en=7436be4ed2c6b028&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Or click here
Well, I pooched the href tag, I think. Let me try again.
Click here
“So which is it – Barbara Streisand “hates” New York or “hates” diversity?”
Can’t it be both?
As for Isikoff being conservative… because he printed news that hurt Clinton…
That’s a whole new level of “whoa”. 🙂
“Oh, you mean these approval ratings?”
The survey, conducted Dec. 2-6, showed Mr. Bush’s approval rating at 40 percent, up from 35 percent a month ago.
Yes. Yes I do. If you’re content with 40, that’s great news for the Democrats and Bush is doing wonders for them.
“Can’t it be both?”
Okay – so Barbara Streisand hates New York and hates diversity. Interesting and hilarious. Please write more on the subject if you can.
“As for Isikoff being conservative… because he printed news that hurt Clinton…”
Printed lies. Otherwise, you’re on the money.
I still don’t know why she didn’t feature in “Team America.”
I’m guessing the South Park guys like her music, so they didn’t pick on her.
It’s just a theory…