The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Michael Hastings ‘Was Hauling Irish Ass’

Posted on | June 20, 2013 | 57 Comments

According to LA Weekly‘s source:

LAPD traffic investigators found the motor of the late-model Mercedes-Benz C250 coupe involved in the accident about 100 feet away from the car . . .
[T]he expert estimation of Harry B. Ryon, a former LAPD officer who now runs his own private accident investigation firm in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The engine’s location is evidence that the driver “was hauling Irish ass and lost control,” Ryon told us . . .

Here’s the video that shows Hasting’s sports coupe — a silver blur — zooming through a red light four blocks away from the crash scene:

As a journalist who’s done a bit of high-speed driving myself — I routinely hit triple digits on two-lane highways while traversing NY-23 during the 2009 Doug Hoffman campaign — I feel a certain sympathy with Michael Hastings, despite the fact he was more liberal than your average Occupy Wall Street protest organizer. I mean, Rachel Maddow devoted five minutes to praising him Tuesday night.

Ask yourself:  Has Rachel Maddow ever said anything nice about anybody you actually like? No, she hates everybody you admire, and loves everybody you hate, and as for you yourself — if you’ve ever voted Republican — she hates you with every cell of her being.

With their customary civility, conservatives either maintained a respectable silence or joined in the praise of Hastings after his fatal accident in Los Angeles, as if it would be somehow discourteous to mention what a radical ideologue Hastings so proudly was. But he himself never bothered to hide his political enthusiasms, as I learned while researching my 2,000-word article at ViralRead:

As a political reporter, Hastings was openly contemptuous of objectivity, a liberal who shared the anti-war, anti-Republican sentiments widespread in his generation of journalists. In a GQ article recounting his work covering the 2008 presidential campaign for Newsweek, he called former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani a dangerous “maniac”:

On one of my first days, I watched Rudy deliver his stump speech in Peterborough, New Hampshire. As you might imagine, it was a little focused on the “terrorist war against us.” His solution was to “go on the offense” — meaning more aggressive torture techniques, recklessly increasing the size of our military forces, fighting an unending war in Iraq, and possibly bombing the shit out of Iran. …
I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during a press conference … saving America from the horror of a President Giuliani.

Hastings rejected objective journalism as a fraud and said most reporters secretly shared his views:

Objectivity is a fallacy. In campaign reporting more than any other kind of press coverage, reporters aren’t just covering a story, they’re a part of it — influencing outcomes, setting expectations, framing candidates — and despite what they tell themselves, it’s impossible to both be a part of the action and report on it objectively.  …
I wasn’t alone in the press corps. I don’t think I spoke to another journalist who ever said one good thing about [Giuliani]. What did we say? We made fun of his divorces and his wives, that he’d married a second cousin, that he surrounded himself with corrupt cronies, that he had a piss-poor relationship with his children, etc. We talked about his megalomania and his cynical exploitation of September 11.

Describing his own habits on the campaign trail, Hastings said he watched pay-per-view pornographic videos in hotel rooms and said masturbating to porn “was not unlike the larger experience of campaign reporting.” . . .

You can read the whole thing. I have no idea why Republicans act like it’s an insult to call liberals “liberals,” or to say that a guy who rammed his Mercedes into a palm tree was “hauling Irish ass.”

 

Category: Journalism

Comments

57 Responses to “Michael Hastings ‘Was Hauling Irish Ass’”

  1. galwayten
    June 21st, 2013 @ 1:08 am

    RT @John_Scotus: Michael Hastings ‘Was Hauling Irish Ass’ http://t.co/WLb9aAu1Ia

  2. Patrick Carroll
    June 21st, 2013 @ 8:47 am

    My experience (and I am from the west of Ireland) is that Irish asses normally haul at just above a walking pace, especially when bringing turf home from the bog.

  3. stuedal
    June 21st, 2013 @ 9:48 am

    @Trishahope11 http://t.co/QIfBEuYzAO @usa_truth

  4. 20thCenturyVole
    June 21st, 2013 @ 10:55 am

    Think of it as “Evolution In Action”, why don’t ya?

    Stupidity is sometimes lethal.

  5. ChuckFinley
    June 21st, 2013 @ 11:20 am

    A Bluetooth earpiece for a cell phone is usually a class 2 or 3 device with 1 to 2.5 mW of power and a range of ~ 1 meter for class 3 to ~10 meters for class 2.

    A class 1 Bluetooth antenna like the kind you can plug into a USB port has 100 mW of power and a range of ~100 meters and in a cantenna it might get significantly more range than that.

    If somebody hacked together a device that operated in the Bluetooth spectrum and complied with the Bluetooth standard for spread spectrum frequency hopping but operated at significantly greater power, they could establish Bluetooth communications over a great distance. Once they took control of your car, all they would have to do would be to stay within range until you either run out of gas or crash.

  6. ChuckFinley
    June 21st, 2013 @ 11:31 am

    This is better:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xnHs9_yo5c

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    June 21st, 2013 @ 11:39 am

    You can never go wrong with George Jones (may he RIP).