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I’m very important. I have many leather-bound
books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.
Time Magazine pays Mark Halperin for this:
The hosts of the daytime show aren’t smiling at Obama’s chuckles about the economy in his “60 Minutes” interview.
Hasselbeck: “Nobody’s laughing… It’s not a joke.”
Elizabeth Hasselbeck: Super Economist.
A sampling from Mark’s wikipedia page:
2008 elections
On August 21, 2008, Halperin posted on his blog the rumor that Richard Lugar would be Barack Obama’s running mate. Lugar had at that point already endorsed Obama’s rival John McCain. The post was quickly taken down and never again referenced, nor officially corrected.[10]
On September 3, 2008 on CNN‘s The Situation Room Halperin stated to Wolf Blitzer that Palin is a "risky choice", and also stated that ‘House-gate’ – John McCain forgetting how many houses he owns – would primarily hurt Obama, rather than McCain.[11][12][13][14]
Halperin again ran counter to conventional wisdom when he concluded that ‘John McCain won the week’[15] in the week the economic crisis hit in full force, widely believed to have been the week Obama started to put the election away.[16]
On November 21, 2008, at a Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election, Halperin called the election media coverage "the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war. It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage." [17]
During the election, Halperin made 113 references to Rush Limbaugh, 77 to Sean Hannity, 56 to Matt Drudge and 34 to Bill O’Reilly on his blog, whereas Arianna Huffington, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow got 23, 14 and 9 citations respectively.[18]
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe reportedly would "repeat mantralike" that "If Politico and Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing." [19]
If Mort Halperin were not his father, Mark would be piloting one of the boats on the jungle ride at Disneyland. (" Look out. A hippo!" bang bang!! "Oh wait. That’s an elephant…Fuck." Repeat thirty times a day…)
16 Comments
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Holy crap, Mort Halperin is his father? Poor bastard.
Mark is clearly working towards ascendancy to Douglas Feith-levels of wrongness. While the internet is littered with examples, I’d like to share his awesome interview on O’Reilly before the election in 2006 (tiny.cc/WOmrx). Mark answers every question in the way most likely to further inflate Bill O’, (”yes, you’re right about CBS” and “if you want to have a future, you’d better make sure conservatives find your product appealing”). Truly, it’s the most fun O’Reilly has ever had without a loofah and a falafel. My favorite quote (possibly mangled) is “even where there is no bias, liberals need to be aware that conservatives see bias”; ie, it is the responsibility of liberals to compensate for the paranoia of conservatives, a concept which completely explains the media between 1997 and 2008.
I hate to blame Mort for this slug, except in the way you would Alex Keaton’s parents.
Similarly, I’ll never understand how Chris Wallace became such a miserable toady.
Mort and Mike join a list that includes Frank Zappa and Kirk Douglas, that of famous talented fathers who should have used a Trojan.
Another asshole wins the Lucky Sperm Contest. Still, someone is hiring these human droppings. Shoot them first. Maybe a disaffected former right winger, homeless and evangelized, will kick Halperin to death and save us the bullet.
Yes, “piloting” the Jungle Cruise ride can be a path to greatness, depending on how one defines the word. Remember Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler? He had that job–be he was sorry to give it up.
Halperin seems to be, to politics, what Cramer is to investing.
but where would the Council on Foreign Relations get interns if they did?
Hey, don’t go knockin’ the Jungle Cruise. John Lasseter used to do the Jungle Cruise, and he’s turned out OK.
Halperin doesn’t even come close to approaching the level of competence required to deliver forty-year-old jokes with conviction.
Jeez. Even Hasselbeck made it to fourth place on Survivor.
I’m totally digging the jungle cruise reference. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to that place.
I view Mark Halperin as one of the characters in the movie Let it Ride. You know, one of the people whom Richard Dreyfus asks what horse they like in the next race, and when they tell him, he immediately crosses it off.
It’s kind of weird how the conservatives seem to obsess more over Obama’s schedules and supposed gaffes, such as being too light-hearted on Sixty Minutes or implying that the competitive environment at the Special Olympics is not exactly like the cmpetitive environment at the international Olympic Games, than they are over his spending plans. Or at least they seem to give them equal weight. I heard the Limbaugh replacment attacking Obama for failing to follow through on his promise to get his daughters a dog.
Sure, it was fun to ridicule Bush’s attempts at oral communication and molestation of foreign heads of state, but I never would have contributed money to Democratic candidates for office over that crap alone. My thing was wanting leaders who follow the Constitution, stay out of pre-emptive wars, fix the healthcare crisis, strengthen Social Security, refrain from injecting their religion into political decisions and regulate the financial markets.
I guess the trouble is, once the Republicans have screamed “No! Cut taxes!” at Obama’s economic plans, they have nothing more to say. So they have to pick nits.
Finally I get an answer as to why this schmuck has a “career” – another truimph of the Nepotocracy.
Uh, what have the Zappa spawn done to tick you off?
Halperin was at Harvard on 9/16/08 and still peddling the McCain houses story was a problem for Obama. He’s a privileged moron.
Or fine Corinthian leather.
Aprés the original Satchmo: If you have to ask, you’ll never know.