Alterman noted this this AM.

What more do you want from the editors of TIME?

The already annointed you the Man of the Year for chrissake.

Time No thanks. When they named my stupid fucking brother-in-law man of the year, I stopped reading.

Seriously, if not for doctors office subscriptions, wouldn't they have folded long ago?

When I searched, I too found minimal reporting from Time Magazine, except for the following blog, from a woman I have seen on the evening talk shows holding her own in political discourse:

March 18, 2007 9:25
Showdown?
Posted by Karen Tumulty
"Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy's announcement today that he plans to subpoena White House officials, possibly including Karl Rove, is big news--and exactly the kind of showdown the White House has been dreading. Before the election, Bush Administration officials were sounding a very hard line. Here's what we wrote in October:

The President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."
It's hard to imagine anything more likely to be deemed "inappropriate" at this White House than summoning Rove to testify. But it's also far from clear that they have the political capital it would take to mount the kind of fight they were talking about back then. Even Texas Senator John Cornyn, normally one of Bush's most reliable defenders, sounded very lukewarm about Gonzales and the Administration with Stephanopoulos today. Keep your eye on White House Counsel Fred Fielding this week."

TIME? Perhaps it's time for name change...

TARDY
FLUFFF
WAITING ROOM

I'm sure our bright minds here can come up with appropriate names.

And I guess since they haven't been covering breaking political events, that means they shouldn't send their punditheads to the political roundtables anymore...seriously.

Isn't it obvious? There is no political news to report that wouldn't cause more damage to the Bush Administration. So instead of doing that they will report nothing at all.

Glenn Greenwald, for whom I always had a big crush, wrote this:

UPDATE II:

"(6) As I noted the other day, I thought it was commendable that Ana Marie Cox pushed her Time boss, Rick Stengel, to respond to criticisms of his appearance on the Chris Matthews Show (even if her pushing was very delicate and her follow-up non-existent). I also think it's commendable that she today linked to, and posted an excerpt from, this rather scathing criticism of Time's most prized pundits, from an article written by her husband (h/t Andrew).

It's nice to see, on Time's own website, Michael Kinsley's defense of the Bush administration in the U.S. attorney scandal referred to as an "ignorant flourish of capital insiderism" and have his "Columnist of the Year status" derided. And it's better still to see the commentary of Charles Krauthammer called "jowly" and held up as an example of the D.C. pundit class "swooning in chorus" over this scandal -- all under the Time logo."

My wife and I just let our subscriptions to both Time and Newsweek expire because both magazines have become quite poor in terms of actually dicussing the major stories of the day.

Instead we spend the time that used to be devoted to reading those magazines reading blogs.

The less they deal with facts, the less they'll have a liberal bias. I see this as a positive step.

Yeah, their columnists are almost always right-wingers who have been consistently wrong on everything. Blood-thirsty fanatics. Yay.

And how they are constantly harping on how all the scandals are in the "past."

And their constant toadying to the right wing / religious nuts.

Why on earth would TIME report on purgegate?

I mean, afterall, there is no news in revealing the fact that the GOP is really the acronym for Greedy Oil People.

So what if the administration is systematically rearranging the DoJ to reflect more repugnacan trends and interests?

So what if the fired prosecutors were actually good at what they do?

Leave TIME alone, the American people need real news. I mean it's obvious, penguins rule!

So is the purpose of "Swampland" just to give its political staff something to do besides play computer games?

I think Time has decided that politics is (outside of election years or absent a major current event) the realm of political junkies, who are much more in tune to the web or the idiot box rather than a magazine these days. So they are making Time fluffier and fluffier to appeal to an even lower common denominator, while trying to leverage the Time name on the internet with their embarrassing blog, Swampland, and the other one, Real Clear Politics. It's kind of a survival move for them, going where the audience is.

I have to say I was horrified by the National Press Correspondents' Dinner, an all-in-the-family expose, with way too much fun and familiarity, for the press and this administration.
Scandalously joined at the hip, even putting on silly sketches --
that were ultimately quite repulsive.
This, after Karl Rove's exposed conspiracies, shown in the Kyle Sampson e-mails, "Karl Rove stopped by, "How we planned to proceed re: US attorneys, whether all were going to go, to allow some to stay..." etc.

And I watched the Kyle Sampson testimony on Cspan, finding it fraudulent, with far too many
"I don't know, I don't recall" statements--I had the teevee on in the wee hours of the morning and wished I had a pen and paper to make a note of the multitude of poor memory recollections from the attorney general's chief of staff. It was sickening.
It was also unbearable watching the president comment today on the conditions for war veterans at Walter Reed Hospital 5 (five) years after this horrible, scandalous war about which he lied to all of us to start.

There was a joke in the 1960s (now doubly overtaken by cultural changes) to the effect of "When you have nothing to do with your hands, you smoke a cigarette. When you have nothing to do with your mind, you read TIME."

Of course, the TIME mag of that era, middlebrow as it was, looks like The New York Review of Books compared to the current product.

Hey Kevin,

Can you have running post that's updated regularly which bullet points each scandal that seems to be coming out almost daily from the Bush administration? I'm starting to lose track of them all...

There was another saying from that era- "LIFE is for people who can't read, and TIME is for people who can't think."

Can you have running post that's updated regularly which bullet points each scandal that seems to be coming out almost daily from the Bush administration? I'm starting to lose track of them all...

Actually, this maladministration needs its own wiki for that. It would be huge.

See...
That's the way...see...
our medias...
see...
keep the people informed.
In 'merica...
all our people have to worry about is shopping...
See...

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain

CWA;

First, you have no idea how glad I am I missed the Antics of Karl Rove at the dinner. Just hearing the sound clip of "MC Rove" was enough to make me want to hurl. What bothers me more, though, is just the gall. I mean, this has been a nightmare administration from day one, and now that the world is falling down around its ears (day after day we are seeing the ugly deeds of El Presidente and Co. come home to roost) and they're up there just having a grand old time.

If nothing else, it pisses me off that Rove feels comfortable enough to step up to the mic.

And Walter Reed... five years after the war started, and SIX WEEKS after the story hit the papers! Six Weeks! Somehow I have this image of Bush sitting in the White House saying, "Eh, I'll deal with it tomorra" in that carpetbagged accent of his.

Though you gotta love Eaton. Dude was basically like, "Yeah it was great he came out, but it be even nicer if it wasn't just a political stunt."

sigh

Eye of Ra;

That is not a bad idea... hmmm... maybe something to do for me own blog.

They could change the title to Past Time.

I think the reason that they didn`t write anything about the USAttorney affair is that they are waiting for the Bush MalAdministration to settle on a single explanation (spin, whatever) that doesn`t change between when the magazine is sent to the printers and it actually appears in public.

"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist. " - Archbishop Helder Camara

daCascadian;

What do you mean an excuse that doesn't change between being sent to the printers and actually appearing. Time's a weekly perio... oops, nevermind.

Uh huh. CNN doesn't fucking report political news either, unless it is a complete fabrication which paints a Democrat in a bad light (e.g. Pelosi and the Jets, Barack _Osama_). Around eight weeks before they noticed the fired US attorneys. Nothing about the GSA pushing GOP candidates. Nothing about Rove using GOP email. Not a goddamn thing.

The press is corrupt.

'When you grow up you realize that there isn't really any Santa but the monsters are still around. If only they were big and hairy; now they're just dark and amorphous, and they're no longer afraid of the light. Sometimes they're the guy who climbs in the window and takes your television. And sometimes they're the guy who walks out the front door with your heart in his hand and never comes back. And sometimes they're the job or the bank or the wife or the boss or just that sort of dark heavy feeling that sits between your shoulder blades like a backpack. There are always terrible things waiting to grab you by the ankle, to pull you under, to get you with their long horrible arms. And you lie in bed and look at the shadows on the ceiling and feel, under the covers, just for a moment, like you're safe. One more day alive.'
Anna Quindlen

What do you mean they don't cover political news? I saw this on an outdated TIME magazine in the doctor's office the other day:

"The Iraq Study Group says it's time for an exit strategy. Why Bush will listen."

craigie >"...this maladministration needs its own wiki for that. It would be huge."

Now THAT is an understatement if I have ever seen one. Huge indeed.

How about SuperDuperExtraHugeFamily sized ?

And they would need a cast of tens of thousands as editors...hmmmm, maybe that`s what Blogistan is for.

Ben Franklin would be proud to be part of it.

"...This is not a game." - Lorie Van Auken (2001.09.11 widow)

hehehehe... "Why Bush will listen."

You know whoever wrote that has got to be feeling a little dumb now.

Give wind and tide a chance to change.
Richard E. Byrd

The Time magazine that I read , as a kid, cover to cover,in the 60s, died, after a long degenerative illness, more than 2 decades ago. It's death was a strong indicator that something was very wrong in America; serious news outlets were pandering to the masses for profit.

"[The War Office kept three sets of figures:] one to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.
- Herbert Henry Asquith

And that's the problem Mike. In Franken's book Lies, he mentions that it's easier to cover horse race instead of policy. Showing the "showdowns" in the senate, or the house, or with the White House is so much easier than actually doing anything about it. Nancy Pelosi is going to Syria, and CNN is quick to make a big deal about how pissed the White House is, but no a single sentence as to why. Just the other day I had stumbled upon the Radio Factor (God I hate Bill O'Reilly), and here's a man who makes millions by talking about current events. You know what he wasted an hour on? Bitching about Rosie O'Donnel's (sp) bitching. It's ridiculous! I mean, I love some full contact political haymaking, as much as the next political junkie, but dammit, I'd like a little substance now and then.

Good comments, Mr. M...I am prone to quotes this evening. Last night I was using the f-word, so I decided to settle down.

“By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction�
William Osler

“

I've noticed. You're going rather quote crazy. Me, I think there's nothing like a good F-bomb when employed in a surgical strike.

But you're leaving me behind on the quotes... Here's a request. That last little bit from 1984, you know the one, how it's about always being at war, blah blah blah. If I knew it off the top of my head, I'd produce, but I don't, and I know I'm miles away from the closest copy.

A near-perfect example of how the MSM is allowed to get away with bullshit:

Kevin (correctly) opines Time sucks, and has sucked for years...yet cynically assumes (correctly) that Time's bullshit is the de facto standard.

The point is that we have extremely low standards when reading/watching what is laughably called "the news."

It is something like "But we have always been at war with Oceana" ---or Eurasia?

I used to love TIME, having grown up with it. The late Hugh Sidey's weekly columns on the state of the presidency, especially during the watergate scandal, are what true political punditry is all about.

Nowadays, under the tenure of its congenial fratboy dingbat editor Jay Carney, who brought aboard loathsome Joe "Primary Colors by Anonymous" Klein and the ever-vapid Margaret Carlson, the magazine is simply an embarrassment.

I stop by "The Economist" weekly on the internets to read a few articles, but I only read "Time" or "Newsweek" if I am waiting in an office for a Dr.'s appointment.

The Kyle Sampson and A. Gonzales quotes kind of put me in mind of Orwell quotes--

the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

FWIW, there haven't been any recent posts on the Gonzales scandal at Free Republic, either...

It has always been my observation that Duffy is a Bush man, same as Gonzales.

Time isn't doing current event anymore, cause like Tim Russet, someone at TIME is a loyal Bushie.

Why do you liberals hate Hispanics?

Check out Kiss My Big Blue Butt, No. 1 rule in Texas, and more.

I always thought no news was good news.

=)

OT: Did anyone see on CNN/Anderson Cooper just now... Bill Donohue of the Catholic League versus the Catholic artist Cosimo Cavallaro who sculpted a six-foot chocolate Jesus ("My Sweet Lord") with anatomically correct genitalia? OMG, the artist, IMO, won the debate. Donohue got his comeuppance. I thought Bill's head was going to explode when the artist confronted him on the obscenities that come out of Donohue's mouth and how Bill doesn't represent Catholics at-large and that they want him fired. Priceless!

I guess they think having a column by that impotent little weenie Joe Klein constitutes political reporting. I think I will cancel my subscription tomorrow.

TIME = Totally Irrelevant Media Enterprise

Getting it half right since 1923

What makes people think that the two items cited are acutally news? Gonzales is nothing. Absolutly nothing. So Time should carry stories of a media created story? AG's can be fired for picking their nose. This is not a story.

Now the passage of a bill calling for a timeline to withdraw from Iraq - that's a story. Sort of. It does merit mentioning. But since it is really just posing for 08 by Dems, there is little to it. Now if they cut off funding so the troops would have to come home, that would be news. But passing some symbolic legislation is just posing.

Apollo 13
"Did anyone see on CNN/Anderson Cooper just now" Duh no. Everyone is watching FOX, not CNN. Check the ratingzzzzzz.

Monica Goodling, who pleaded the Fifth this week, was no "low-level staffer" at DoJ. She was Senior Counsel to the Attorney General, and the Department's liason to the White House.
She may have been relatively young and inexperienced, but she wasn't low-level.

Dave, remember. Gonzales isn't being roasted over the coals for firing a couple of prosecutors. He's being targeted for being the legal architect of the U.S. torture network.

Read between the lines.

I really liked the Time-Life Science Library as a kid.

Did anyone see on CNN/Anderson Cooper just now

No, but I did see Glenn Beck, interviewing three nutbag eschatologists (including two authors of the Left Behind series). No - there were no actual representatives of any Christian church. Just a couple of whack-job authors. No, there were no biblical scholars. No scientists. Just a normal, mainstream news program, informing viewers about how we're nearing the End Times and the tribulation. Fucking CNN. (this message brought to you by; Colt Firearms? no? How about "lots of canned food"? "bomb shelters?" "televangelists?") - I ask you - when it's 2017, and Jesus still hasn't come, will these assclowns shut the fuck up? How about when it's the year 3129, and we're living on Alpha Centuri, and the Earth is no longer habitable - will they still be peddling this garbage? Who knows? Fucking disgrace. And as a faithful Christian who prays to God every single day - kind of insulting.

So wah! you're crying because Time Magazine has gone downhill? Let me know when you cancel your Scientific American subscription after 10 years, because they started peddling "Intelligent Design" articles.

They stay away from political discourse because they are so paranoid of their advertisers being boycotted by angry readers. Their advertisers are a carefully cultivated Bonzai Tree garden. They peddle profit-maximized risk-sanitized soft-info kinda like soft-porn. Yawn. The Circuit City of major news magazines. Time is nothing more than another "information product".

Oops I need a quote to post:

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.�
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And this was disturbing, as we recall:

Time Covers Coulter:
Magazine's Cover Story a Sloppy, Inaccurate Tribute to Far-Right Pundit

4/21/05

A week after she was praised in Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" issue (4/18/05), the magazine went a step further by making far-right pundit Ann Coulter the subject of a lengthy April 25 cover story. Readers who might have looked for a critical examination of the overexposed, factually challenged hatemonger found something else: a puff piece that gave Coulter a pass on her many errors and vicious, often bigoted rhetoric.

Throughout the article, Time reporter John Cloud gave Coulter every benefit of the doubt. Her clear, amply documented record of inaccuracy was waved away. Coulter's notoriously vitriolic hate speech was alternately dismissed as a put-on or excused as "from her heart," while the worst Cloud could say about her was that she can "occasionally be coarse..."
from fair.org

consider wise always,

With Zydeco a'flowin' in the background from Radio Acadian, thanks to the great advice of MsN, I wonder if you have caught the Repuglican outing of Chuck Todd, formerly with Hotline. Now, that he is at NBC and no longer featured on C-Span, he can be more partisan.

Mrs ThirdPaul is a regular C-Span watcher - know that because of her many rantings about the Repug guests - I only check to see if it's Friday - That is when Brian Lamb has his Repug friends visit - But, Chuck Todd, hides his partisanship no more.

And in China, Shortstop, they flow with a slew of toxins.

That is KVRS, Radio Arcadie - Live streaming Zydeco on Saturday mornings after 8 AM CST.

FYI-- Cspan is re-broadcasting Henry Waxman's oversight and gov't reform committee meeting--after this he sent a letter to Karl Rove.
Administration fabrications are being exposed related to contract violations and other striking discrepancies and troubling items. He even has a white house power presentation. Partisan politics, no-bid contracts to buddies, putting tax payers last, squandering tax monies.
I just love that Waxman. He is relentless.

Time has been getting steadily less newsy for years, and for better or worse, they just don't cover breaking political events much anymore.

But when Time's Richard Stengel gets on national TV and says he is "so uninterested" in Dems going after the Bushies, I don't think it's because he's more interested in the effects of global warming on the penguin depicted on Time's cover.

He's not interested in the story because it doesn't play to the narrative he wants to tell -- the one where the Republicans are the kewl kidz and the Dems are the whiny losers.

FYI-- Cspan is re-broadcasting Henry Waxman's oversight and gov't reform committee meeting--after this he sent a letter to Karl Rove.

Thanks for the tip! and I'm delighted that you "consider wisely always"!!

Considering that their columnists are usually wrong about everything, maybe it's best that they keep quiet about politics. The cover-story Ann Coulter puff piece was very telling. Charles Pierce had a good response to editor Stengel's "I'm just a citizen" defense of his lack of interest in investigations of the Administration's scandals.

"This trend is, if I can coin a phrase, hardly news. Time has been getting steadily less newsy for years, and for better or worse, they just don't cover breaking political events much anymore. That's CNN's job." - Drum

I am really interested in your thoughts on this as it relates to a "scandal" from ten years ago Kevin. Care to enlighten me?

To quote Couric (which will be the first and last time), "Your hearings clearly reinforced the public's already low opinion of politicians"

"ABC wondered whether subpoenas and hearings weren't democracy in action, but a waste of America's resources. On the April 10, 1997 World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings promoted a story: “When we come back, two investigations of fundraising abuse, two of them on Capitol Hill. Is it a waste of time and money?”

"On October 8, Today co-host Katie Couric framed the hearings for Sen. Arlen Specter: “Perhaps this is an intentional effort to embarrass the Democratic Party?” On the November 7 Today, NBC's Lisa Myers pressed Senator Fred Thompson: “Your hearings clearly reinforced the public's already low opinion of politicians and politics. Beyond that, what did it accomplish?”

KVRS, Radio Arcadie

What a good idea! I love zydeco.
Posted by: shortstop

Radio Acadie - KRVS.org

Zydeco ground zero.

... When you have nothing to do with your mind, you read TIME."... Rand Careaga at 8:25 PM

I have to say I was horrified by the National Press Correspondents' Dinner...CWA at 8:23 PM

...But passing some symbolic legislation is just posing. Dave! at 11:41 PM

Waxman. He is relentless. CWA at 10:24 AM

Traveling with Pelosi will be Reps. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia, Tom Lantos, D-Calif., Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and David Hobson, R-Ohio.
Ellison, the Muslim -- that will have the wingers foaming at the mouth.

Re Time: It's a deliberate attitude and practice, since most of them are now part of the upper crust of the compromised sort, and want Republicans to triumph in economics if not socially.