Day: September 23, 2010

The just-announced decision by Facebook honcho Mark Zuckerberg to donate up to $100 million to the Newark, New Jersey school system has nothing to do with countering the “asshole” image of Zuckerberg that The Social Network advances…right? The bequeathment will arrive in the form of “Facebook’s closely held stock,” accordign to a 9.23 Wall Street Journal story by Barbara Martinez and Geoffrey A. Fowler.

There’s a mild irony in the fact that awareness is growing in journalistic circles and elsewhere that Zuckerberg’s assholery (as depicted in the film) is nowhere near as acute as Aaron Sorkin‘s script suggests. Zuckerberg is withdrawn and socially awkward, but he reportedly has a longtime girlfriend. Eduardo Severin ‘s financial moves on behalf of nascent Facebook in the early stages were questionable and he did need to be cut loose.

A putrid right-wing stink filled my den this morning when this ad played on MSNBC. It’s so infected with the Big Lie virus (i.e., indifferent to the fact that Bush-era deregulation and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan created catastrophic conditions before Obama took over) that it creates a kind of instant soul-cancer effect.

It’s obviously aimed at stoking ignorant Teabaggers, but is really about Republican slime wanting to play more golf and kick back with screwdrivers inside their McMansions and cruise like they used to during the Dubya years. Not to mention their bedrock concurrent fears that the reign of the exclusive white-male political club is no longer a locked-down arrangement.

No organization claims responsibility for creating this ad and no contact information is supplied at the end. The Fair Campaign Practices Act prohibits this kind of thing, no? FCPA rules state that if an ad is political, “a disclosure statement must include (1) the words ‘political advertising’ or a recognizable abbreviation such as ‘pol. adv.’; and (2) the full name of one of the following: (a) the person who paid for the political advertising; (b) the political committee authorizing the political advertising; or (c) the candidate or specific-purpose committee supporting the candidate, if the political advertising is authorized by the candidate.”

A 9.23 Washington Post op-ed piece by White House adviser David Axelrod warns about the right-wing corporate shadow forces that are paying for these ads and financing the anti-Obama campaign.

MSNBC should be ashamed of itself.