Tuesday, February 25, 2014

"Ashamed of Texas" roundup

-- How to make winning Republican TV ads in Texas.  If you aren't ashamed of being from Texas after reading and watching this, then you're a TeaBagging GOP primary voter with poor spelling and grammatical skills.  But I repeat myself.

-- Dan Patrick denies that a hand-written letter, produced by the man whom he hired years ago and was undocumented at the time, is written in his hand.  This sordid display of renouncing one's previous compassion (WWJD?) is embarrassing enough for most Texans, but it still probably won't keep Patrick out of the runoff in his race.

Just to review: Dan Patrick is ashamed he once helped an immigrant, while Greg Abbott has no shame about standing with a pants-crapping, draft-dodging, virulently racist and sexist child predator.  And those two will probably be the governor and lt. governor candidates for the Republicans in November.

-- The Texas Observer has a worthy down-ballot aggregate.  It includes Debbie 'Terror Anchor Babies' Riddle, the 'my God can beat up your God' war between Baptists and Methodists in Tarrant County, and US Senate also-ran Chris Mapp, who despite calling the president a SOB and saying that "wetbacks" ought to be shot, can't get any traction in a primary race that includes Steve Stockman.  Oh, and Pete Sessions' Tea Party challenger, Katrina Pierson, is also toast.  It wasn't the Sarah Palin endorsement that finished her off, but the fact that she was once on unemployment.

-- Don Imus has endorsed Kinky Friedman for ag commissioner.  Does more need to be said?  Is that a brainer?

-- Last, the Texas Tribune, essentially the only news organization left covering the Lege and Texas politics, continues to be assaulted by people besides James Moore.  And yes, Evan Smith is a giant schmuck.  Everyone knows this.

The TexTrib is an embarrassment to media, and Evan Smith does blow goats... but they are all Texas has left for political insight, so I suppose I'll try to be a little nicer to them than some others.  Sorry, Evan: after that argument we had on the phone a few years ago about your polling -- you remember? you were banging pots and pans around in the background -- and my blog disappeared from your roll, you lost out on any donations from me.

You seem to be doing OK without them, though.  Good for you.

5 comments:

Gadfly said...

I'm now more anxious than ever to see some new polls on the GOP Lite Gov race.

As you saw from my post last week, yes, NPR blows just like PBS.

Speaking of, I love, or "love," Evan's "Conversations" that the Waco PBS airs every Friday night. Who died and appointed him an art and music critic, etc?

Robert Nagle said...


First, Texas Tribune is a fine first rate publication. No need to badmouth how it's run. All publications face these kinds of issues. They have blind spots, preoccupations and great challenges in being self-supporting and being transparent about funding sources. Let's just appreciate the in-depth reporting they have done, especially after Hearst media/Houston Chronicle has focused more on entertainment and petro-enthusiasm than on hard news.

Gadfly, maybe I'm the exception, but I believe Evan Smith is a phenomenal interviewer. I haven't seen any of his recent TV interviews, but his interview of Rick Perry before the 2010 election was outstanding. I say this as someone who does a fair bit of interviews myself.

I'll take a closer look at James Moore's charges, but my superficial impression is that there is no "smoking gun" that he probably has some sort of vendetta against Tribune -- although it's probably true that TT should be more transparent about its donor list.

I'm definitely aware of how nonprofit media sources like NPR are funded by fossil fuel companies and their ilk; yes, it concerns me, but I'm also concerned about what happens if TT goes under! I mean, the TX bloggers, Texas observer and maybe Texas Patriate could fill their niche, but not with reporters on the payroll who do investigative reporting.

PDiddie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
PDiddie said...

Robert:

First, the TexTrib is not, has never been, a 'publication'.

But I do agree with you about the Houston Chronic, at least.

Gadfly said...

Robert, I agree that professional news production isn't cheap. (Also, contra Moore, back in the olden days, papers DID kill stories at times if threatened with loss of ads.) I do think the Trib has carried some of this to another level. And, it's not just big corporations. It's fat-pocket individuals, like Pierre Omidyar financing Glenn Greenwald.

Traditional papers made some dumb decisions vis-a-vis the Net back in the 1990s. They had a change to reverse some of that in the early 2000s but were too slow off the bat. The media world today is pretty much broken, and may never be totally unbroken.