CBS just fired former General John Batiste as a consultant for having the audacity to speak out against Our Dear Leader and his “strategeries” in the Iraq War, by participating in this ad on behalf of VoteVets:
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Here’s a little background on General Batiste, who is hardly a dirty fucking hippy when it comes to the use of America’s Military.
The son of a soldier who’s married to the daughter of another soldier, Batiste was a highly regarded major general who did what few generals would ever do in 2005: he rejected an offer of the premier command in the U.S. military at the time: V Corps, which was based in Germany and headed to Iraq. “It was gut-wrenching,” he told me in an interview. “I loved soldiering.” Fed up with Donald Rumsfeld’s botched stewardship of the Iraq War, Batiste retired and almost immediately became a vocal critic, something he felt he couldn’t do while still in uniform. […]
Batiste says he remains a “diehard Republican” and has no intention of wading directly into the presidential campaign à la McClellan and MacArthur. He took part in the VoteVets.org campaign, he says, because it’s a “nonpartisan group.” (VoteVets.org describes itself as a political action committee whose goal “is to put Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans in Congress who are critical of the execution of the war in Iraq.” The cofounder, Jon Soltz, said he “came up with the concept” for the ad himself. He and Wesley Clark, the former general and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, recruited Batiste …)
Despite his impressive military credentials, and actual service as a commander in the field in Iraq, I guess he just doesn’t have the “right stuff” to be given airtime on CBS, that bastion of Dan Rather, Bush haters and a well known liberal bias against all things Republican. Did he wear the wrong tie, I wonder?
I mean Fox News lets Wesley Clark pontificate on its “news” shows, and he’s a flaming Democrat, for Chrissakes! I hate to say it, but it looks like Fox really is more “fair and balanced” than CBS, at least when it comes to the opinions they allow former generals to express.
More about the Batiste firing by CBS can be seen here in Keith Olbermann’s interview with General Batiste:
War on Terror
(tag US Military))
Republicans
George W. Bush
(tag Dissent))
Former Generals
Well, my outrage meter is on full tilt. So mad!!! Who do I write to? What do I do? Fuck CBS. Are all these networks just shills for the oil companies, or what? I say, just merge them all and call them The Pravda Network, or something. This is ridiculous.
I stopped watching CBS after they canned Rather and delayed the 60 minute piece critical of Bush on Iraq because it was “during an election campaign.” It was obvious to me then that they were in full suck up mode to the right wing.
maybe MSNBC could hire Batiste as a expert on things military? Wouldn’t mind seeing him make a regular appearance on the assorted news blocks, not to mention “Countdown” (I rarely watch any of the other MSNBC talking heads shows, except for the last couple of minutes of “Hardball” while I’m waiting for “Countdown”.)
Let’s hope.
Recent stories have said that whoever seems more passionate in their desire is going to win the battle. I’m guessing CBS heard from a lot of lunatics about those ads.
Or maybe it’s a trade- off for firing Imus.
It’s time to unleash more anti-Bu$hco anger.
to chastise CBS?
If the stations can’t sell your eyeballs to the advertisers, they’ll die off.
If the channels can’t make mega-million ad-deals by promising eyeballs from the desired demographic, they’ll get bought, merged, subsumed like a drifting continental plate being overtaken by another.
The people targeted by those ads for new medicines and new cars and travel destinations, probably overlap with this group of computer users more than they overlap with people rummaging around costco and wal-mart.
Studios don’t provide what viewers want. They provide what advertisers want… to use as bait to attract wallets.
BTW, I don’t own a TV. 🙂