One of the biggest upsets in American politics was powered by right-wing media, according to analysis of last night’s defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Leader, who fell to an obscure Tea Party-backed candidate. Cantor’s campaign spent nearly as much on drinks and dinners at steak houses as David Brat did on his entire primary push. Yet Brat easily defeated the seven-term Republican leader.
“The seeds for Brat’s upset were sown on right-wing radio talk shows, particularly Laura Ingraham’s,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported. On Fox News last night, radio host and Brat booster Mark Levin celebrated the Virginia “ass-kicking.” (During the same appearance, Levin urged Republicans to “stop chasing genitalia” in order to win elections.)
“There are parts of this country where if Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter, and Mark Levin are on the radio supporting you, that’s worth a lot,” Fox’s Brit Hume noted. “In the right place, with the right constituency, those people hold real power.”
Real power, indeed.
For years, that power was mostly directed at Democrats, and specifically at President Obama as talk radio and the larger right-wing media Noise Machine has worked tirelessly to demonize its opponents via nasty and often dishonest, illogical attacks.
After John McCain’s dispiriting loss to Barack Obama in 2008, damaged leaders of the Republican establishment slowly shuffled off the national stage. And into that vacuum rushed Roger Ailes, Glenn Beck, Rush-I-Hope-He-Fails-Limbaugh, and other players from the right-wing media lineup. They took over the messaging for the Republican Party, the attacks on the new president, and helped power the surging Tea Party movement in America.
Teaming up with the GOP and its unprecedented plan to obstruct a president who won an electoral landslide victories, the Noise Machine provided the mass media muscle and set out to portray Obama as nothing more than a suspicious, foreign, anti-capitalist socialist who distrusted America and wanted to take away citizens’ guns. He was also condemned as a “racist” who displayed a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”
The Republican Party, by and large, was happy to watch as the right-wing media took control of the GOP’s communications apparatus, which allowed the right-wing media to take control of the GOP’s public messaging. And when they were demonizing Obama and the Democratic Party, Republicans likely marveled at their good fortune of having millions of dollars in free media at their disposal each week to launch misinformation campaigns against the White House.
And for Cantor personally, the Noise Machine was a godsend. With no apparent interest in governing, legislating, or in public policy, Cantor’s professional goal appeared to be to obstruct the White House at all costs, and to make Obama look bad at every turn. And for that, he had perfect media partners.
But then Cantor became the target.
As the Wall Street Journalreported, Brat “repeatedly accused [Cantor] of supporting amnesty for people in the U.S. illegally,” which is not accurate. Cantor doesn’t support “amnesty,” by any reasonable definition, and has worked to make sure the Senate immigration reform bill that passed with bipartisan support last year hasn’t received a vote in the House.
No matter. Brat’s talk show booster Laura Ingraham began hyping the candidate’s claims on her nationally syndicated radio show, as she vilified Republicans for even thinking about addressing the issue of immigration reform.
“Vote Brat and stop amnesty once for all,” read a blog post on Ingraham’s site. She also blamed Cantor for the “enticement” of the immigrant children into the country, which she described as “an invasion facilitated by our own government.” And while appearing at a Brat rally last week, the talker suggested Obama should have traded Cantor to the Taliban in exchange for American prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl.
So yes, Cantor pretty much got the Obama treatment from Ingraham and other influential segments of the far-right press: Misinformation wrapped around overheated personal attacks with constant attempts to demonize.
But this is what happens when Republicans help build an irresponsible Noise Machine that’s designed to offend and designed to attack. What happens is that, in case of emergency, there is no ‘off’ switch
After nearly three years as publisher of The Awl and its network of sites, John Shankman, 32, is boot-strapping his own venture, Hashtag Labs. The company will act as both a production studio for branded media and a consultancy for publishers looking to bone up on everything from understanding programmatic to implementing a native ad strategy. Shankman likened it to “talent agency” for brands that want to be publishers.
Digiday spoke with Shankman about the proliferation of brand-created media, the competitive landscape for content marketing shops and whether it will ever be as well produced and widely consumed as non-commercial media. Shankman, naturally, thinks it will be.
What’s going to make Hashtag Labs successful?
The major driver behind this is that distribution has been equalized. A brand like Coca-Cola with 82.9 million Facebook fans has as much distribution power as the networks used to have. The gatekeeper has been taken away, and now production is where the value’s at.
Doesn’t the brand just become the gatekeeper then?
Absolutely. But brands need to create interesting content they can put out and distribute. Instead of a network funding the production, now the brand will. It used to be Coca-Cola could advertise on “American Idol,” but in the future Coca-Cola will just make “American Idol.” Coca-Cola will just work with the production company instead of Fox.
Where will media companies fit into this structure?
People are going to want to consume content from a certain point of view. Niche publishers that have a unique point of view are going to continue to thrive. These are the publishers brands will want to work with to create content for them. Then there’s a second tier where a brand will sponsor what a publisher is doing without inserting any creative direction.
So there’s a way to do branded media without, as some have called it, whoring yourself out?
There’s going to be a second tier that has the passion of the creator behind it. And in order for a brand to be attached to it, the creator needs to keep control.
But isn’t that the central dilemma of branded content? Brands want access to the most talented creators, but they can’t get it unless they work with the edit side.
Yeah, but the freelance network is really growing. We’re not going to ask a reporter from The New York Times to do branded content. But there’s no reason we can’t find a freelancer who once wrote for The New York Times. If we find the right project for them and it pays well, that’s a good opportunity. Hashtag Labs is about making both the brand and creator feel good about what they’re doing.
Are editorial people warming up to the idea of working for a brand?
Definitely, but you have to find the right project. It’s important to delineate between entertainment, profit-driven media and truth-driven media. “Breaking Bad” is a good example. It wouldn’t make a difference if AMC made it or BMW.
A brand would finance a show about a sadistic drug dealer?
In 20, 30 years, yeah.
That’s interesting since right now sponsored content doesn’t perform well.
We need to prove that these branded productions can actually be as high quality as editorial.
Are you worried that branded content is becoming too crowded?
Yeah. If I was talking about this three years ago, it’d be awesome. Ideas are just ideas. It’s proven that execution is really where it’s at.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an interview with People magazine released Wednesday, said she had “moved on” from the Monica Lewinsky scandal that dominated her husband’s second term as president.
In an interview timed to the publication of her memoir “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton said she did not take time to read an essay by Ms. Lewinsky that Vanity Fair published last month about the Clinton affair and her life since then. “I think everybody needs to look to the future,” Mrs. Clinton said.
And asked about published reports that she called Ms. Lewinsky a “narcissistic loony toon” after the affair became public, Mrs. Clinton said, “I’m not going to comment on what did and didn’t happen.”
The brief comments are the first time Mrs. Clinton has publicly addressed questions about Ms. Lewinsky since the scandal was revived in recent months, partly by conservatives and partly by Ms. Lewinsky’s Vanity Fair article.
The People cover story, accompanied by photographs of Mrs. Clinton walking her dogs, is part of a media blitz for the June 10 publication of “Hard Choices.” On Monday, Mrs. Clinton will sit down with Diane Sawyer of ABC News for an interview, and she is also scheduled to make appearances on the other major broadcast networks as well as on CNN and Fox News.
In the People interview, Mrs. Clinton discusses her life since leaving the secretary of state’s job last year: cleaning out her closets (“very calming”); doing yoga and aquatics (“not as much as I should”); and binge-watching the Netflix series “House of Cards,” a Washington-based political thriller.
She said she was trying not to dwell on any decision about running for president in 2016. “With the extra joy of ‘I’m about to become a grandmother,’ I want to live in the moment,” she told the magazine. Her daughter, Chelsea, announced in April that she was pregnant and expecting her first child in the fall.
“At the same time,” Mrs. Clinton added, “I am concerned about what I see happening in the country and in the world. Through the next months, I will think more about what role I can or, in my mind, should play.”
The Lewinsky scandal re-emerged in January after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, brought it up in addressing criticism that the Republican Party had waged “a war on women.” President Bill Clinton, he countered, had taken advantage of a young intern. “That is predatory behavior,” Mr. Paul said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.”
The next month, The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, published a trove of White House-era documents from Diane D. Blair, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton’s who died in 2000. The Blair papers included diary entries based on conversations with Mrs. Clinton. According to those entries, Mrs. Clinton called Ms. Lewinsky a “narcissistic loony toon” and said the relationship with Mr. Clinton was consensual.
Then, in May, Ms. Lewinsky — who was a 22-year-old White House intern during her relationship with Mr. Clinton — posed in a white dress for the Vanity Fair article. In the essay, she said she found Mrs. Clinton’s “impulse to blame the woman — not only me, but herself — troubling.”
As her press blitz continues, Hillary Clinton says she wants to “live in the moment” – including enjoying her new role as a grandmother-to-be – as she weighs a run for the presidency in 2016.
In an interview in PEOPLE Magazine, the former secretary of state offers yet another statement that she has “a decision to make” about a run, even as her aggressive media strategy appears to point to efforts to put past controversies behind her in preparation for a campaign.
In the interview, part of a wide-ranging publicity schedule surrounding the release of her memoir, Hard Choices, Clinton also said that she’s “moved on” from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And she declined to comment on reports that she called the famous White House intern “a narcissistic loony tune.”
Clinton also addressed questions about her health, saying that she has no lingering symptoms after a head injury.
“I did have a concussion and some effects in the aftermath of it, mostly dizziness, double vision,” she said. “Those all dissipated. Blood thinners are my continuing treatment for the blood clot.”
Answering questions about her life after Foggy Bottom, the onetime first lady described her love of the Netflix show “House of Cards” and her bliss at being able to sleep in “to probably 8 o’clock.”
Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, announced this spring that she and her husband Marc are expecting their first child later this year, a life change that Hillary Clinton says is a factor in her decision about a 2016 campaign.
Video – Chelsea Clinton: I’m Very Excited About First Child
“Part of what I’ve been thinking about, is everything I’m interested in and everything I enjoy doing – and with the extra added joy of ‘I’m about to become a grandmother,’ I want to live in the moment,” she said. “At the same time I am concerned about what I see happening in the country and in the world.”
National Geographic Channel released the names of six people who had “unanticipated brushes with fame” in the 1990s, and will participate in the network’s upcoming documentary The 90′s: The Last Great Decade?Among them: Monica Lewinsky, whose “unanticipated” brush with fame involves having an affair with the President of the United States, spilling the beans, saving the dress, and being stunned by the reax in Washington and in the media. Lewinsky is best known these days as the media victim who “stalks her past, yanking us back to when she flashed her black thong,” as Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times back in 2002, when Lewinsky came to the TV Press Tour after successfully pitching to HBO a documentary about herself, for which she reportedly was paid $150,000. In today’s announcement, NatGeo is happy to play along with Lewinsky’s carefully crafted storyline, calling her the “White House intern whose relationship with Bill Clinton led to her becoming a legal target in an investigation and a media target like the world had never seen before.”
This year, Lewinsky re-emerged, having penned a piece about her victimhood — regrets the affair, dreads a Hillary Clinton run in 2016 because the paparazzi are sure to stalk her, etc. – for Vanity Fair. The left thinks the piece was orchestrated by the right, to embarrass presumed presidential candidate Clinton, but Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, has told Fox News Channel she believes it was orchestrated by Hillary’s camp to get it out of the way now.
Other newly named docu participants joining Lewinsky in the newly released Unanticipated Brushes With Fame-rs list include:
– Kevin Powell and Julie Gentry, who signed on for the first edition of MTV’s The Real World and “helped to create the reality TV revolution.”
– Christopher Darden, the Los Angeles DA assigned to the prosecution team trying OJ Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife and her friend.
– Richard Dean, an employee of the Social Security office at the federal building on Oklahoma City who saved the lives of three people in the blast that killed 168.
– Titus Murphy, who sped to the scene of the attack on truck driver Reginald Denny as it played out live on TV, in the wake of the Rodney King verdict, and helped Denny to safety.
– Judy Sheppard, whose son, Matthew was beaten, tortured, and left to die because he was gay.
Remind me, why does NatGeo believe the 90s should even be considered for Last Great Decade status?
Lewinsky and the rest of the gang will join previously announced participants Jason Alexander, Roseanne Barr, Shannen Doherty, Vanilla Ice, Courtney Love, Matthew Perry, Martin Sheen, James Van Der Beek, Colin Powell, Tony Blair, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani.
The series, “High Maintenance,” will premiere six new episodes on Vimeo On Demand. The series originally launched in 2013.
CNet | 5/29/2014
A popular Web series is becoming the first original series available exclusively on Vimeo, the video site announced on Thursday.
“High Maintenance,” a popular Web series that launched in 2013 and follows a cannabis dealer delivering products to clients around the city they live in, will now be available exclusively on Vimeo On Demand. The show has already aired 13 episodes on Vimeo, which are available for free viewing right now. Vimeo has ordered another six episodes to premiere later this year.
Vimeo has established itself as a respectable streaming-video provider. The company has 26 million registered users and has 170 million global visitors each month. Its content ranges from user-generated content to professional programming.
“High Maintenance” has become Vimeo’s first original series, putting the video service in direct competition with some of its chief streaming competitors, including Netflix and Amazon. Both of those companies, along with Microsoft through its Xbox service, have invested heavily in original programming. Netflix has arguably won the first battle with such hits as “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black.”
Vimeo On Demand is slightly different than the streaming services Netflix and Amazon provide. Rather than offer a single fee per month for streaming, Vimeo’s content is available for purchase on a per-title basis. Still, the very fact that Vimeo is getting into original programming suggests the importance of that as more companies compete for streaming viewership.
Vimeo plans to announce more details on the official launch date and pricing for “High Maintenance” at some point in the future.
CNET has contacted Vimeo for comment. We will update this story when we have more information.
Win gives Golden Bears fourth title in school history
4/1/2012 | The Associated Press
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – Will Hamilton and Tom Shields looked at each other and knew they could finally enjoy a California repeat at the NCAA championships.
Hamilton and Shields clinched California’s fourth NCAA title — and first consecutive titles for the school in 30 years — on Saturday night with a 1-2 finish in the 200-yard butterfly as the Golden Bears held off Texas for the second year in a row. The result gave the Bears an insurmountable lead with two events remaining.
California finished with 535.5 points, while Texas was second with 491 and Stanford was third with 426.5. A year ago, the Bears needed a victory in the final event of the meet, the 400-yard freestyle relay, to hold off the Longhorns. This time, the Bears were able to enjoy the final two events with the title already in hand and win back-to-backtitles for the first time since 1979 and 1980 when they claimed their first two NCAA titles.
“I know the projections were all over the place, but we knew it and I think we finally showed that’s all that ever mattered,” said Shields, who was named swimmer of the meet. “It’s nice to come back and do it and do it in a completely different way.”
The title for California was a bit of a stunner compared to what the Bears pulled off in 2011. Last year’s group at California was a veteran squad led by sprint champion Nathan Adrian and coming off a runner-up finish in 2010. This group of Cal swimmers featured just four seniors and a host of underclassmen that made contributions during the three-day event.
The capper to the week was Hamilton swimming home with the points that clinched the title for Cal. Making a charge over the final 75 yards, Hamilton overtook early race leader Neil Caskey of Texas, then managed to hold off Shields at the wall and deny Shields his third individual title of the event. Shields won the 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke on Friday night.
During the three-day event, California picked up a total of six titles in individual races and relays. But the one that set the tone came in the first race of the meet when Cal won the 200 freestyle relay from an outside lane.
“Everyone looks at our youth or looks at what we lost and we tend to focus on what we have. With 11 returning guys that swam in this meet last year, that brought enough experience to the group and brought enough learning how to navigate this meet but also how to be successful at this meet,” Cal coach Dave Durden said. “They just did a great job, particularly our seniors … in guiding our guys over the last three weeks to be successful.”
Texas finished second for the fourth time in the last five years. James Feigen of Texas also doubled during the championships, winning the 100 freestyle on Saturday to go with his victory in the 50 free on Thursday, then anchored the winning 400 freestyle relay by holding off Shields over the final 25 yards.
The finals started with a brilliant record-setting duel in the 1,650 freestyle. Georgia’s Martin Grodzki overtook Stanford’s Chad LaTourette went back-and-forth during the lengthy race where someone usually pulls away. Instead, Grodzki and LaTourette went down to the final few yards with Grodzki holding on for the victory in record time. Grodzki’s time of 14:24.08 set championship and U.S. Open records, while LaTourette’s time of 14:24.35 set an American record.
LaTourette said he knew a special race was in process by how violently his lap counter was shaking the number board as each lap ticked off. All three records were previously held by Chris Thompson of Michigan set in 2001.
“I just tried to stay with him and have a great last 150 because I knew he’s got speed and I’ve got speed and that it was going to come down to the finish,” LaTourette said. “… I had a feeling we were doing pretty well. “
Arizona, who finished fourth in the team race, picked up two titles on the final night. Cory Chitwood became a three-time champion in the 200 backstroke as he held off a final kick from Stanford’s David Nolan to claim the title. Chitwood’s time was slightly slower than the previous two years, but he became the first three-time winner in the event since Rick Carey won three straight 200 backstroke titles for Texas from 1982-84.
Ben Grado later won platform diving by scoring 91.80 on his final dive to overtake Missouri’s David Bonuchi.
