defend the indefensible: glenn fucking greenwald

He wasn’t even remotely specific about any single thing in the interview he gave RT about it. Just the broad generalities (“they are trying to stifle dissent”’). Weird....

The Guardian and WaPo benefited professionally from his work w Snowden exposing the NSA, to the tune of both winning 2014 Pulitzer. somehow he's a bad contrarian and they aren't, even though they happily mined those "click rewards".

I have to say I do love that GG is now such an obvious schmuck / useful idiot that we use this thread as a place to talk about the editorial standards of places he doesn’t work, instead

"useful idiot" -- McCarthyism is def dead

I don't find him to be a useful idiot at all. Just strident a little too often.

Yeah, let's not get back to the bad days where Joseph McCarthy called people a 'useful idiot' a lot. Boy, that was horrible.

Also, apart from it being amazingly stupid to reduce McCarthyism to calling people 'useful idiots', Greenwald literally published information given to him by a Russian Intelligence Agent with the thinnest of fig leafs. It's not even hyperbolic to call him a 'useful idiot', it's quite descriptive.

Useful idiot is a technical term

Fred, you're the other kind

Frederik 'Useful Genius' B

like Tony "Tiny" Lester

.@ggreenwald is on white nationalist @TuckerCarlson's Fox News show hyping the latest GOP-fueled conspiracy theory. #FearlessAndAdversarial pic.twitter.com/aMooy9AY89

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 14, 2018

You’d think the self-proclaimed adversarial journalist, who holds the powerful accountable, might want to expose literal internment camps instead of hob-nob on de facto state media shows.

— Ben Yelin (@byelin) June 14, 2018

Really just the classic trajectory

I’m starting to think that “holding the people in power accountable” isn’t actually what he’s about.

Are there still people on the left who give this asshole credence, and if so, why?

Pretty much all residual benefit of the doubt from the Snowden days.

He is sometimes good on specific points/subjects but overall seems too high on his own farts to see what he's actually doing. Never a big fan but soured on him a lot when he gave Tucker Carlson a very forgiving interview on the Intercepted podcast, allowing Carlson to put out all his soft-sounding justifications for his bigoted anti-immigrant and anti-minority rhetoric without a serious challenge.

and his earlier writings, obviously. in some ways the times have passed him by though, it' sad
xp

man alive, I disagree. He knows exactly what he's doing. I don't believe for a second that he's simply confused or misguided. I think he's actively working for the other side.

he's obviously not

What makes you say that? I don't think it is obvious at all. He's playing a useful role for Fox and the GOP, and enjoying all the attention he's getting from it.

He knows exactly what he's doing

let us dispense with the notion . . .

What makes you say that? I don't think it is obvious at all. He's playing a useful role for Fox and the GOP, and enjoying all the attention he's getting from it.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Wednesday, June 13, 2018 10:38 PM (forty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um, the fact that the rest of his work/writing suggests otherwise?

I wouldn't say that he's always played this role, or always wanted to, but I think he's found that his targets and Fox's targets have aligned ever closer to the point where his most receptive and widest audience can be reached through Fox. He's banged away on the same themes for years, but in the age of Trump, it's less palatable to leftists and very useful to the right.

It was funny to see these two tweets in succession today. Kind of like how he accused the guy who linked Russia to the NRA of being an insane conspiracy theorist and never apologized for being wrong when it became even more confirmed to be true. Par for the course with his approach to the Russia investigation.

Beyond the fact that she treats her audience like 8-year-olds - repeating the same banal points 5 times in increasingly dramatic fashion to make sure they retain it & believe it's earth-shattering - she's now the most militaristic, and the most conspiratorial, commentator on TV: https://t.co/5YrVLxVJki

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 13, 2018

President Trump Said He Got the Idea to End Military Exercises With South Korea from Vladimir Putin >>> https://t.co/Ij89UirPkZ via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 13, 2018

i don't see a connection between the two tweets (i'm sure a Pavlovian response to "Putin" takes care of that).

"State media" is a particularly cunty construction by the MSNBC zombies. It's megacorporate media lusting for an audience.

GG is quote tweeting the below in the first one. Of course the segment isn’t at all like it’s being described plus seeing him be that obnoxiously dismissive when the story turns out to be confirmed by Trump himself. But his description of Maddow is self evidently ridiculous (with or without noting that he goes on Tucker).

So after dramatically revealing to her audience that North Korea has a border with Russia -- gasp -- Maddow tonight went on an extended dot-connecting monologue where she darkly intimates that maybe somehow the real beneficiary of the Trump/Kim summit was... PUTIN. Beyond parody pic.twitter.com/a9bEwWn6l1

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 13, 2018

The description of Greenwald from that essay we discussed in the other thread was spot on: The man’s political illiteracy is exceeded only by his sense of self-righteousness. And it should be no surprise that once his political illiteracy caused him to do something majorly fucked up - like taking information from Russian Intelligence to ratfuck the Democratic presidential nominee - his sense of self-rigtheousness would demand that he did whatever he could to somehow, someway make it seem okay.

Putin is the beneficiary of the summit
Yam 'got idea' to end exercises from Putin

^These don't seem to be nec identical.

I'm going to let you two New Cold warriors jerk off in peace now.

Shouting “you want WWIII” over anyone who talks about the Russian govt in negative terms is in no way an embarrassing trope or bad for the discourse.

TFW you're slamming Rachel Maddow for conspiracy theories by linking to a guy who pushed Seth Rich, Syria false flag & Hillary health conspiracies (aka an actual conspiracy theorist) pic.twitter.com/kv2SUa8lQj

— Centrism Fan Acct 🔹 (@Wilson__Valdez) June 15, 2018

And as has been repeatedly pointed out to Glenn (including in the replies to this very tweet) the segment's premise was based directly on this reporting from the rw WSJ, that said the very thing that he is calling an insane conspiracy. pic.twitter.com/MYKk6eKECw

— Centrism Fan Acct 🔹 (@Wilson__Valdez) June 15, 2018

Good god that dude has gone off the deep end.

honestly what irks me most about GG is he's perfectly capable of a reasonable, well-balanced take or interview (what I saw of the Ocasio-Cortez interview was good, his recent Chapo appearance was pretty much completely unobjectionable AFAICT), but when he's wrong or misleading he invariably doubles down, deflects, or obfuscates instead of owning up to it (not a problem unique to him of course). This is a general problem with the pundit/journalist class - evolution is generally a liability

I for one am willing to admit I've mostly only noticed the OK takes cause I don't follow him on Twitter, meaning I only see the ones my followers have prescreened for approval

The thing that most irks me about that is Ocasio-Cortez and Chapo still dealing with him and pretending he is not an idiot who consistently goes on Fox News to attack the left.

enh O-C needs all the media support she can get givent he short campaigning window (and won't get any attention from mainstream media ever) and Chapo has never really consistently vetted their guests beyond having a shared set of dunks on whatever libs or chuds they're talking about in a given week, which is fine since that's at least 85% of their whole thing

his clowndom on Hannity is unforgivable. love the implication that somehow your avg shitlib is somehow more dangerous/ more influential than Sean fucking Hannity.

Chapo should vet their guests and why would O-C need media support from a Fox regular? Alarm bells should ring.

yes why would somebody running for office want support from the media? i mean aside from trying to get voters ofc

I would wager that for most people, GG/the Intercept doesn't have an immediate Fox connotation regardless of his appearances there, but even if he did, she's there to deliver a message, not boost his. xp

People who still believe in GG/intercept are idiots at this point, and it should be disturbing that a progressive candidate depends on that kind of idiots to get into power. What kind of message can she deliver? And you could use the same logic anywhere. Some idiot going on Breitbart, but to deliver a message, not boost them. Also, she rails against PACs and corporations because she (correctly) says they inevitably influences the politicians who depends on them, but on the other hand she joins hands with Fox contributors to get votes from idiots and think it doesn't matter?

you're not a smart man

I flagged your post because you used "idiot(s)" 4 times. Learn more words.

If we lock this thread will it trap Fred B inside forever?

does mordy still post ?

Frederik is more dangerous than Hannity

btw about 5000 Americans know what the intercept is, you brie-eating fucko

The Simpsons are "Fox contributors" btw

If we lock this thread will it trap Fred B inside forever?

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Friday, June 15, 2018

https://moviesijustwatchedforthe1sttime.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/phantom-zone.jpg

There was a more recent post in this thread worse than Fred saying “idiot” a few times. I MIGHT have flagged it. Just a heads up.