We at geeeZ bow our heads in awe and respect for a newsman who seems to like getting to (and even giving) the truth.I'd heard Jake Tapper was now anchoring a morning show on CNN but didn't think much of it, except when I heard Hugh Hewitt Wednesday on his radio talking about what a good thing this was.
So, Thursday morning, I watched a few minutes as Jake discussed the Hagel hearings with Dana Bash. Bash, of course, talked about how this might prove to be the worst treatment that's ever been given in hearings and Tapper quickly reminded her of the John Tower hearings. I was doing something else and not watching the screen so I have to admit I jerked my head up in shock and awe and reverence. "Wait! truth and fairness at CNN!?"
He did this all morning with Gloria Borger, too. And, to their credit, the liberal reporters who usually get away with their misleading statements didn't blink an eye! They even rather acquiesced. Quite amazing.
CNN....nice to finally see an anchor who's not only left-leaning. They've finally joined ranks with FOX with their anchors Geraldo Rivera and Shepherd Smith. And, like Geraldo and Shepherd, who are clearly not Conservatives, Tapper's politics may remain an enigma, but I don't care if he's a leftwinger; as long as he's smart enough to know the truth and brave enough to share it when it goes against his ideology.
Let's hope Tapper can bring some fairness to CNN...it'd be a very healthy thing for America, particularly after what I've said in my last two posts below. Maybe CNN can even pick up some viewers when they understand they're not just going to get told they're not biased and then proceed to see just how subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, biased they truly are.
Congratulations, Jake...I wish you luck and I admire your knowledge and your fairness. So far. Keep it up.
Nice to start the month of February with good news.
Z
34 comments:
CNN must be looking to improve its ratings.
That can be the only reason they'd even allow Tapper to correct Bash or Borger; that is FOR SURE, AOW.
I just Googled him and I'm two venues above the Weekly Standard. Kinda fun :-)
I sure hope he continues to set the records straight...
Tapper is one of the good ones. God bless him.
Jake used to be a typically abrasive, hard-edged left wing "analyst" with a glittering eye. He seems to have mellowed a lot all of a sudden after experiencing a period of relative obscurity in the world of TV News Personalities.
What accounts for this metamorphosis?
Could it be he's had a genuine change of heart?
The cynic in me says that's unlikely if not impossible. The idealist hopes it might be true.
Could it be that because CNN's ratings have been abysmal compared to FOX's and sinking steadily Jake has been "groomed" by higher-ups, as AOW suggests, to play a role needed to help boost the companies ratings?
Haven't we just learned in the past few days that Jeff Zucker, who now heads CNN, has just staged a massive shake up over there in hopes of reversing the downward plunge?
Tapper is a nice-looking, clean-cut, still-young man whose looks probably appeal to a whole lot of nice, well-meaning middle-aged and elderly women who've been longing for a new matinee idol they could secretly adore?
The television industry, though permeated through and through with leftist, politically correct, propaganda in many and varied guises, is not primarily ideleogical in its purposes.
It exists to make MONEY by hook or by crook. It's the BOTTOM LINE that matters to the moguls who own and operate Tee Vee.
Public Mind-Control may be in second place in their order of priorities, but it is far behind piling up filthy lucre.
Why is that, you ask?
Because M-O-N-E-Y = P-O-W-E-R
A Question for the Court?
Does the Truth still have the power to set us free when it's cynically employed to serve a Money-Power agenda?
Do I smell a little capitalism coming out of CNN? Could be!
GeeeZ, FT...with his performance yesterday, I'm happy for whatever reason he's there.
MANY Leftwing pundits find him admirable..me, too.
ConsonFire...they're in the tank so maybe even they're waking up to how important PROFIT is.
I'm laughing aloud at poor Piers Morgan and that disgruntled little pursed face over guns...I don't believe he's done a show not involving gun control in 3 weeks...he's found his niche!
They had Tom Arnold on and, below his name, they had to add COMEDIAN AND ACTOR, both of which are questionable..but TOM ARNOLD lecturing on GUN CONTROL? :)
they'd better hire a whole bunch more Jake Tappers and GET RID OF PIERS.
Air America learned nothing. Perhaps CNN can be trained after all.
BZ
Z,
I haven't watched the "Communist News Network" since..........? So as not to waste a lot of time; when is this guy on? Based on your narrative I'll give it a try. Thanks!
So the touchstone here, the guide to good reporting is whether or not this grilling was tougher than Towers'?
Some discussion of the content of the questioning might be more relevant. Hagel's responses might even be more important.
Ducky, I have always thought you purposefully obfuscate, now I think it's an inability in you to focus on the meaning of the posts.
Why?
Hagel was an embarrassment (I don't think he's bright enough for the job, after seeing a lot of it), but if you watched Rachel Maddow, he was a STAR (even if she had to admit throughout her piece that he was at least as flawed as all Republicans)..so funny!
ED KOCH has died...the former mayor of NYC who endorsed Republican candidates, the mayor who some of the media today is touting as "the guy who kept NYC from going broke" is gone; but he'll sure never be forgotten.
What a wry, cheerful, unafraid guy... may he rest in peace.
New York owes him a lot...as they do Guiliani.
sad day.
@z --- Hagel was an embarrassment
------
To whom?
Not to me.
"@z --- Hagel was an embarrassment
------
To whom?"
To anyone who had to endure watching him yesterday with, apparently, one exception.
Ducky, even Democrats were shaking their heads in curiosity "didn't Hagel realize what he'd be asked? Why didn't he prepare?" It's in the news.
JonBerg, actually, I was a bit surprised. When you've got hearings and you know very well what they're going to ask, you PREPARE.
Supposedly, the WH grills them, too, but hadn't with him.
big mistake. He seemed not bright enough for the job ahead, but he will get in. This hearings thing is a big joke.
Maybe Hagel has been too busy shooting skeet at Camp David with Pres Obama..Obama recently said he shoots there "a lot" but he's only been at Camp David about 3 times?
and HE SHOOTS?
this is such a perfect example of amazing dare I say LIES?
odd
The only thing that B.O. shoots is "BULL"! How can any rational person even pretend to believe or respect anything that comes out of his mouth?
"President George Bush nominated Mr. Tower, a Texan, to run the Defense Department, but the nomination quickly became controversial amid repeated allegations of what was termed “hard drinking” and “sexual behaviors” that were documented in an F.B.I. investigation report.
During the hearing in February 1989 when the Armed Services Committee recommended that the Senate reject Mr. Tower by a vote of 11 to 9, Mr. Warner called the accusations “a cobweb of fact, fiction and fantasy.” Mr. Nunn, the chairman of the committee, called the allegations “serious” and said “the record of alcohol abuse by the nominee cannot be ignored.”
John Tower sunk his own nomination. If Hagel had the drinking and womanizing in his past as had Tower, everyone here would be calling for his head.
If hard drinking and "womanizing" were genuine criteria for keeping men out of public office, at least half those elected or appointed throughout history should have been disqualified and put in the stocks -- real or metaphorical-- for an indeterminate period.
Fiscally-conservative Libertarians, like myself, who vote Republican only because we have nowhere else to turn, don't give a proverbial tinker's dam about the private vices of any nominee as long as that nominee subscribes to views that concur with mine -- at least to some discernible extent -- and enough intelligence, courage and will to persevere and stick by his guns in a crisis.
ALL people are flawed -- or have behaved reprehensibly in some way at one time or other. Anyone who can't accept that is either hopelessly naive or mentally deficient -- perhaps both.
One needn't be a candidate for canonization in order to qualify for public office.
I'd rather back an effective son-of-a-bitch
Than a lifeless plaster saint standing in a niche.
If you think Chuck Hagel was an embarrassment to himself and those who nominated him -- and he certainly did appear to be a quintessential stumblebum during the hearing -- you should have heard HILLARY'S last public Q & A session.
Virtually, every other SYLLABLE out of her mouth was "UH!" -- with long pauses in between. It was painful to witness. I'm sincerely concerned that her recent concussion-blood-clot episode may have caused measurable brain damage.
And NO I am NOT "asserting" this just because I hate her guts, which I freely admit I do.
Right. That's just the sort of stable personality this country looks for to head the powerful and important Department of Defense: a drunk and a womanizer.
The F.B.I. documented this; it was not rumor.
Tower would have been the head of one of the most powerful departments in the US government. It's not as though he would be one out of 100 U.S. senators or one out of 435 US Reps.
But I'll remember your very liberal attitude when some liberal pol with a background of womanizing and alcoholism is nominated for a powerful position.
Shaw, we're calling for his head because Hagel's not even bright enough to have prepared his answers; he knew what was coming yet even your media agrees he stammered and hedged. Not someone we need in that position.
Obviously, the truth is, Tapper reminded them of another very tough hearing, deserved or not.
GOod luck with Hagel...he fits the liberal dream perfectly.
By the way, we don't care what party someone's in if womanizing and alcoholism are involved. And, trust me, the media'll be all OVER any Conservative...as if anything Republican could hide? :)
FT...Hillary isn't stupid by a long shot, if misguided, but can be extremely inarticulate, you're right..
I was as sorry to learn of the death of Ed Koch as I was to hear of the death of Patty -- the last surviving members of The Andrews Sisters.
As a New Yorker through and though I always enjoyed Ed Koch. He was a character who had genuine character -- a rare combination. I'm glad he lived to the ripe old age of 88. I'll be very happy if I make it age 80 which is beginning -- just barely -- to show on my own horizon.
Patty Andrews was 94 when she died. She was fortunate to be in her own home. It rarely-if-ever gets any better than that.
The personal lives and the relationship among the the three Andrews Sisters may have been "colorful," often "turbulent" and very sad, but what they GAVE to the NATION as PERFORMERS was the best thing of its kind ever to come down the pike. They were part of my very young years -- I remember hearing them on the radio when all their famous tunes were brand new -- and I shall always love them for the joy they gave America.
May God forever bless men and women with high spirits, strong character who behaved with ironclad professionalism in their careers no matter what was going on in their personal lives.
My dear Ms. Shaw, it's never the personality or the personal foibles of a candidate to which I object -- except in the case of her Heinous, "The Most Admired Woman in the World," GECK! -- it's the LEFTIST IDEOLOGY that poisons a candidate for me -- just as it most assuredly would a CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGICAL STANCE that would seal a candidate's doom for you -- please don't attempt to deny that. Your blog fairly bristles with clear and convincing evidence. ;-)
However, manifest stupidity cuts across all party lines, and I dislike it whenever I see it in a person who would presume to influence OUR future in any meaningful way. Naturally, I pity the mental midgets among us, but at the same time I am horrified that so MANY of them managed to get, themselves, elected to the U.S. Congress -- and appointed to federal Judgeships.
He won't last long there. CNN is intolerant, however, I am glad to finally hear at least there is one honest and unbiased person there reporting the news.
Tapper has taken on the Obama administration's hypocrisy several times. He only let up when it was clear he was not going to get an answer.
I think he is logical and tries to be honest and fair.
FT, Hagel REALLY disappointed me in the MENTAL MIDGET category. I'd been a big fan years ago and then started to whiff that something wasn't quite right with him. He's kind of the David Gergen of politics.... unsavory.
It's like Colin Powell insisting he's a Republican. WHat the...? Say what you want, Mr. Powell, insult all you want, mischaracterize all you want, but do NOT lie about it. gad.
Hagel, however, disappointed me surprisingly....so unprepared, so stammering and such weird responses. I'd never looked upon him as a loser, but........
ugh
Joe and Leticia...let's hope Tapper stays. If he doesn't, let's hope he tells WHY.
Leticia,
I just wish that there were about a 1,000 more like you!
z, the midget was McCain who is still carrying a grudge that Hagel didn't support his presidential run.
Now it must be tough for McCain to have to listen to his wife screaming that she could have been the first lady if he hadn't picked the pole dancer as VP but there is no need to be so vindictive.
McCain thinks the surge is something that should go down in history with the Normandy landing. Hagel knows better and all Senator Walnuts accomplished with his badgering was to make himself look foolish.
He and his buddy Graham (R- Closet) are an embarrassing dog and pony show.
Information on Jake tapper from WIKI:
Tapper was born in New York City and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother, Helen Anne (née Palmatier), wasa psychiatric nurse at Philadelphia Veterans Administration Medical Center. His father, Theodore S. "Ted" Tapper, a Dartmouth graduate, was a president of South Philadelphia Pediatrics, a group medical practice, and is an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
Tapper was raised Jewish (his father came from a Jewish family, while his mother, a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, converted from Presbyterianism to Judaism). He attended Akiba Hebrew Academy. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1991 with a B.A. in history modified by visual studies. At Dartmouth, Tapper was a member of Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity. He briefly attended graduate school at the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.
In 1992, Tapper served as a campaign press secretary for Democratic congressional candidate Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky (PA-13) and later served as her congressional press secretary. Tapper then worked for Washington, D.C. public relations firm, Powell Tate, run by Democrat Jody Powell and Republican Sheila Tate. He also worked briefly for Handgun Control Inc. (now the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence) in 1997.
After writing many freelance stories, Tapper began his journalism career full-time as a senior writer for the Washington City Paper from 1998 to 1999 where he wrote in 1998, an article about his experience going on a date with Monica Lewinsky which skewered Washington's culture of scandal.
From 1999 to 2002, he was the Washington correspondent for Salon.com where he was an early questioner of the Bush administration's claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. ...
"There are over 300 million Americans, and another 20 million more Undocumented-Americans about to be fast-tracked down the soi-disant “path to citizenship.” Surely, from this vast talent pool, it should be possible to find someone who’s sufficiently interested in running the planet’s biggest military not to present himself on the world stage as a woozy, unfocused stumblebum. In an exquisite touch, responding to reports that Hagel was “ill-prepared,” someone in the White House leaked that he had been thoroughly “coached.” In other words, don’t blame us: We put him through the federally mandated Confirmation Hearing for Dummies course. He doesn’t have to be a competent defense secretary; he just has to play one on TV for a couple of hours. But even that’s too much to ask of an increasingly dysfunctional political system: The Senate disdains to pass a budget, 70 percent of U.S .Treasury debt is bought by the Federal Reserve, month-long negotiations to cut spending turn out in the final deal to increase spending . . . and the president’s choice of defense secretary tells the world he has no idea what our policy on Iran is." - Mark Steyn
Ducky, I know...all Republicans are rotten to the core and you know everything better.
I disagree on every point. but thanks for coming by.
Hagel's a weak bumbler; just who you'd like to see in the Dept of Defense lest an innocent muslim get killed in the defense of millions of innocent AMericans.
FT..thanks. Ya, I'd read that, of course...very good guy.
"the midget was McCain who is still carrying a grudge that Hagel didn't support his presidential run.
Now it must be tough for McCain to have to listen to his wife screaming that she could have been the first lady if he hadn't picked the pole dancer as VP but there is no need to be so vindictive."
It's hard for me to answer this, Ducky, because I don't want to inadvertently mislead you into thinking I don't believe Chuck Hagel, like all leftists before him who have taken a stab at musing on foreign policy, is a blithering idiot. Let's be honest. The guy is more imbecilic than a competitive paint chip eater and an embarrassment to the Republican Party, even if you ignore the damning facts that that nigh-extinct intellectually bereft organization once proffered up Herman Cain and Ron Paul as Presidential candidates. Chuck Hagel is the prototype Republican moron that other Republican morons must be measured against. In other words, he'd fit right in as a Democrat. If the Republican Party had minimum IQ requirements for admission, setting it at 55 would lock him out.
No, let's have a different conversation. Why do YOU think Hagel should be Secretary of Defense?
Thank you for the snippet from the blessing that is Mark Steyn.
Helen Highwater
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