give all the folks on the cable teevee natty uniforms and sharp strong patriotic insignias on their lapels... i think we would really pay more attention and stop criticizing them so much.

There's no modern precedent for such a ridiculous arrangement. Dick Cheney launches a crusade against the White House, and to supplement his attacks, the networks turn to his daughter -- 22 times in 24 days?

It is beyond ridiculous; people at my office who don't even usually watch the cable nets are asking why she is all over the place. Do the networks have any standards left? (I realize the answer is no, but still...)

THE CORPORATE AGENDA OF THE MEDIA COULD NOT BE MORE FUCKING CLEAR.

"The whole of the defense is, "Liz is a great guest."

Except, that's not at all true. Liz Cheney not only lies routinely..."

You and they simply differ on what makes a person a good guest.

It's more likely that she is the only person around who is willing to defend Cheney on air right now. And since Dick is speaking everywhere, the cable shows have to have someone on to take his side in the inevitable back and forth. But what office-seeking elected official wants to have the digital record of his/her full-throated defence of Dick Cheney floating around.

She's testing the waters
Daddy's girl wants to be preznit.

Stormskies has it right. This is NOT an accident, or due to mere incompetence.

The media is pwned and they have a mission.

Steve Benen wrote: "This isn't journalism. It's just crazy."

Wrong.

What is "crazy" is to expect the handful of giant corporations that own and control virtually all of the USA's mass media to practice "journalism" rather than to propagandize the American people in furtherance of the class warfare agenda of their ultra-rich owners.

Lynn Cheney is on the air all the time because her deliberate lies help to further the corporate oligarchy's agenda of undermining public confidence in and support for the Obama administration and the Democratic majority in Congress.

And she is considered a "great guest" because, like Ann Coulter, she tells vicious lies while being white, blond and female.

You're late to the party. Ask anyone over mmmmmm 60, and they'll tell you that journalism, other than Bill Moyer, vanished from TV years ago. Integrity, intelligence and the ability to talk coherently, rationally and cogently on the air has almost disappeared. I remember Sevaried, Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkly, Roger Mudd....and their like is not to be seen other than in Moyer. Sure there are intelligent, insightful people but, like a prom queen, they hide it if they have it. Seeking and speaking the truth clearly and cogently is regarded as perhaps obscene or heretical and, at the very least, would confuse, bore or outrage the viewer.
So It Is Not Done.
The only place that it still shows up is on Comedy Central from Messrs Colbert and Stewart.
OTOH, Obama *was* elected so maybe there is some hope for the American people: they may yet rediscover a hunger for facts and honest reality, however much work and unpleasantness may be behind that door.

MSNBC just wants to have the credibility of CNBC.

She's eye candy with a Dick (daddy). It's really just TOO creepy; when I hear the voice, I can't hit the mute button fast enough.

Ref: E. J. Dionne the other day. I'm really not convinced we can ever move this country back to the center, because corporate media pushes too hard in the other direction. Obama keeps following them and tacking right, a trend that will, I think, cause a lot of his supporters to turn off and stay home next election.

Or maybe I'm just projecting my own frustration.

No, she's NOT "all over the Tee Vee".

She's not on Democracy Now, LINK TV, FSTV (Free Speech Television).

And (so far) CSPAN- although I may be wrong about that. . .

In a related note, did anyone catch Scarborough and Buchanan pimping their books by doing an In Depth Analysis of the conservative viewpoint?

To quote Chris Matthews, "HAA!"

Every left/moderare blog should hammer away at this absurdity. Start laughing at the people who book her. Make her name a joke.

but "the media" is still overwhelmingly liberal, isn't it?

The more frequently Baby Dick (Liz Cheney) and the former VP appear on TV, the more they look like fools defending the indefensible. Okay, if Liz Cheney insists on being her father's most avid spokesperson, then the viewing public deserves to know more about her past. In 1999, under her father's leadership, Liz Cheney took an active role in creating the personal questionaires and participated in the vetting process for potential Bush VP candidates. Bush chose Dick Cheney, enabling him to avoid the same intense scrutiny of his financial, business, political, and medical records. Perhaps it is time to make the viewing public more aware of Liz's background and the nepotism involved in Baby Dick's State Dept. job in the Bush/Cheney administration. This is about more than trying to salvage the pathetic legacy of the Bush/Cheney administration. It is about more than trying to bash President Obama. It's about raising the profile of Liz Cheney.

She's Dick Cheney's weenie product and I personally wish she would shut the fuck up. It's not worth any attempt to maintain a civil composure where this lying bitch is concerned. This should be yelled from the rooftops, Liz Cheney is NOBODY! WTF is she doing on television?!

Be aware that these people are simply not going away. The Big Dick has opined that the Little Dick will make a hell of an elected official (even if they have to fix the election.) Bush the Elder, who brought us Bush the Moron has offered, just this week, what a great preznit Jeb the Just A Little Less Moronic would be. When will we ever learn?

but "the media" is still overwhelmingly liberal, isn't it?

yeah, and we're still a "center-right" country--election results and polls notwithstanding.

What is crazy, Steve, is clinging to the idea that the MSN is any kind of public forum where opposing political ideas can be discussed for the benefit of the population at large. If the BIG DICK says jump, the corporate doggy just asks how high.

I just wish all the progressive blogs would have jumped on this a couple of weeks ago--going back to when MSNBC caved to Liz Cheney's demand that she be allowed to stay on Morning Shmoe so she could sabotage Eugene Robinson's segment.
As far as I'm concerned, there's no reason why she should have been on even once.

If one of Bush's daughters cared to, and could string reasonable-sounding sentences together, she could go on the shows and defend daddy.I think it works because, while viewers of politics say they wanna listen to discussions of policy, gossip and scandal and personalities still move the needle stronger. So with her, we get the pathos of a daughter defending her dad, along with some celebrity (I mean political-celebrity) gossip, and a veneer of rational argumentation.

If Obama's daughters were older, and wanted to go on tv, which network would turn them down?

If Clinton's daughter went on tv and defended her dad during the impeachment blowjob hearings, ratings would be sky-high.

Mr. Benen plays his *incredulous* schtick a little too hard sometimes. It's not believable.

I keep thinking that this is Cheney's doings to foul up the evidence of his war crimes. The more Liz or her daddy are on TV, the more reason they will have to cry that Daddy could not get a fair trial. I'm convinced that Cheney and Rove had lots to do with the fouling up of the Plame prosecution. This is more of the same.

Uh, flubber, did you miss the flurry of accusations that Hillary Clinton was "*pimping* her daughter" by allowing her to appear in her campaign?

It should be obvious that there is also a huge difference between bringing family on as surrogate speakers or fund raisers--which is a decision *campaigns* make for themselves--during the course of an actual campaign for votes and allowing an interested party and family member to serve as a surrogate *analyst* on major news broadcasts.

I presume you'd recognize it as a problem if Liz were covering her daddy's war trial? This is really no different. What I don't get is its not even really good TV. Frankly, even I'd buy cable to watch someone beat the crap out of Liz Cheney verbally. But I won't bother to watch her play out her hugely inappropriate electra complex, unrebutted and unmedicated, on national tv.

aimai

I've absolutely got to disagree with anyone who suggests that this is some sort of corporate media agenda. That's related to an extent, as it means that TV news is more about entertainment than reporting truth; but the reason for her appearance must be because the producers and booking agents for these shows are idiots who imagine she's got some level of entertainment value.

But to suggest that she's on TV because of some direct intervention by their corporate owners is laughable. Not only would it be dangerous for them to explictly tell show producers and booking agents to go heavily conservative and book fools like Liz Cheney, it's unnecessary. They hire phoney fools to run these shows and these fools like Liz because she's like them and they think she's intelligent. And since all the other shows are booking her, they imagine that they must be doing something right.

And after all, what are we to believe: Corporations want higher ratings and profits, or that they want to push an agenda, even if it hurts their bottom line? I could be wrong, but I'm a big believer in the incompetence of others and have never seen anything from Corporate America that suggests they have an attention span beyond the next fiscal quarter. They're not pushing an agenda, they're just idiots who imagine that Liz Cheney helps them sell more commercials. And what's sad is that they're even wrong about that.

Two points:

1) Why is Liz on all the time and not her dad? Is it because he's a gutless coward, hiding behind his daughters perky breasts (known as the "North Defense")? Health issues?

2) What about the -other- Cheney daughter, the one he is ashamed of, Mary Cheney? Why isn't she also making the rounds? Is she still locked away in the attic? Has she been allowed to see her children yet?

The problem with being on so much is that eventually people are just going to tune her out from sheer over-exposure. She has only two talking points:

1) Obama is bad, mmmm-kay?

2) My daddy is a GOD!!

Beyond that she's got nothing, so sooner or later her novelty value will just wear off and they'll have to find a new sock puppet to shill for them.

what Stewart Dean and SecularAnimist said.

I would add only that there need be no corporate conspiracy for us to be in this situation.

These "news" shows (they're not really doing journalism anymore) are entertainment. Not news, not journalism, just entertainment. That's it. No more, no less.

So, if Liz Cheney lies all the time and looks good doing it, then she qualifies as entertainment that works, and she'll get her 15 minutes.

and, sure, it's slanted entertainment--no aggressive progressives allowed on with her to rip her to pieces--but, in the end, it's primarily entertainment. If we could figure out a way to fight this fire with more fire, we'd be better off (colbert and Maddow two modest examples). Somehow, progressives have to be entertaining too. Right now? They're not. Because if they were, they'd be on with Liz, making even more entertainment. Even with the corporate slant most mass media is required to have, if there were a progressive who was entertaining enough, that progressive would get air-time.

Of course, the fact that she's Dick's daughter cannot be overlooked. The power of nepotism is as intense as it ever was. That can't be gainsaid.

Also worth noting that the age of the audience for the shows Liz is on is comparable to the age of the audience for Billo. In short, it's a very old audience, and one that would be closed to most progressive arguments, entertaining or not. Liz is, unfortunately, a *great guest* for this very old audience.

there may be a corporate conspiracy here..hell, there probably is, of sorts, a confluence of political interest if nothing else. But if we were more entertaining to a valuable demographic, we'd probably get more airtime, as money and ratings often (not always, but often) speak louder than political expediency...

Liz Cheney is the most attractive woman on television.

That makes liberal women feel bad about themselves. And we can't have people having "low self-esteem," can we?

Boo Hoo Hoo. Stop picking on Lizzy.

msnbc doesn't give a shit about lies and the lying liars who spout them. hell, they've got guests and host personalities who do that daily. it's all about creating outrage -- that they hope to hell generates ratings.

Meghan McCain is cute and doesn't have that mean swinish look like Liz, she's more reasonable and has picked on Coulter etc. Why don't we see more of her?

I think Dick Cheney used his VP office to spy on everyone of importance in the all media and, as a result, has dirt on all those people to blackmail them to his will. "My daughter Liz and I will appear on any of your programs when we want to, and on our terms only."

Looking over this post and the previous about CNN and Sessions, I am reminded of a saying and book title by the late great polymath Robert Anton Wilson: "Reality is what you can get away with."
BTW, check out rawilson.com/home

For anyone interested, I wrote more here:
The Myth of the Corporate Media Agenda

How quaintly old fashioned to think that being 'a great guest' has anything to do with journalism.

Biobrain, I think you're mistaken. Certain policies and focus help the sort of institutions that own media and others don't. Do you really think those owners would be *so* stupid, they wouldn't try to take advantage of their administering news to affect policy, which affects them, and not just the immediate earnings of the current offerings? SecularAnimist may be repetitive, but s/he knows the score.

BTW, do you know for sure whether you *really are* a "brain in a vat" or not?

Liz Cheney is on a "keep Daddy out of jail tour." The more she is on TV lying the more the idiots in this country will accept that as the truth. They are turning a truth-seeking into a political fight that most Americans are too chicken to take on.

Conservative women do have a better history of being elected to the highest offices.

Hey, 'member that time on "Geraldo", where that guy snapped and Geraldo got a chair in the face and it broke his nose? Oh, no really important issues got addressed or solved - the guy probably found out that the neighbour's monkey was sleeping with his gay mother or something, but it sure was entertaining!!! People talked about it for days, and most agreed Geraldo's slightly crooked nose made him look tougher, instead of the kingsized pantywaist he looked like before.

The same motivation, and pretty much the same quality journalism inspires some networks to feature Lizzer over and over - liberals hate her, and if they let her get up there and lie and lie and lie some more, maybe a big mad liberal will get into the studio and bust her across the melon with a chair. Think how entertaining that would be, and how great for their ratings!! There'd probably even be some sympathy for Liz! Everybody wins!

"Except, that's not at all true. Liz Cheney not only lies routinely on national television, she occasionally even repeats bogus arguments that even her father won't say. My friend Rachel Maddow joked last night, "Liz Cheney is still on TV -- making news by apparently making stuff up."

Since this process, Liz-on-the-loose, is already well under way. Let it go on and on. Even Chaney's friends must be getting sick of seeing her and she just might say something that will put her daddy in front of a Spanish firing squad.

"She's testing the waters
Daddy's girl wants to be preznit."
apeman

Yup!
But her lies will follow her everywhere now and for the rest of her life.

"The more Liz or her daddy are on TV, the more reason they will have to cry that Daddy could not get a fair trial."

I agree, I think Chaney is trying to poison any future jury.
But even the most famous of trials has been able to find 12 people who either have no knowledge of the acts being tried or so little knowledge that an untainted jury was seated.

We could of course change the venue to the Hague.

Remember even Duhbya says he doesn't watch or read the news.

"But to suggest that she's on TV because of some direct intervention by their corporate owners is laughable. Not only would it be dangerous for them to explictly tell show producers and booking agents to go heavily conservative and book fools like Liz Cheney, it's unnecessary."

This is so ignorant and wrong, it's funny.

Obviously Biobrain has never worked in a big corporation in any position of power. Bosses *do* tell their underlings what to do, despite Biobrain's naive assertions.

Newt Gingrich gets on the air far more often than makes any sense. But at least Gingrich once was a big deal.

Liz Cheney, on the other hand, is nobody of consequence, nor has she ever been anyone of consequence. And Lord knows she's got no reason to restrict herself to the truth when she seems to keep getting back on the air, regardless of what she says.

As the old joke goes, I guess we need another examination of blogger ethics.