It must be great to be on his moral high porch.  I do blame the media for a lot, but for a sitting congressperson to blame the media is absolutely laughable.  The media is a product, as much as the negative tone is a product, of the partisan hackery in our elected institutions.  So welcome to the whole media cycle in one interview.  #BarneyFail

Barney is just awesome when it comes to snark…lol. The best ones I have had recently are the ones he made about Gingrich after Gingrich said Barney should be in prison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYc81yJ7lug&feature=player_embedded
Not too happy he went after my lovely Savannah though, but she’s a big girl. Guffaw.

Oh, how I will miss Congressman Barney Frank!!!

He can snark all he wants now! He is not running a campaign anymore!

Like Waxman, Dingell and Waters and others, Frank is an imperious, unlikeable boor entrenched in a job he should never have gotten or kept for so long. Congress should operate a little better without the dinosaurs.

This power greedy scumbag knows he cannot win even in the very liberal district he resides in regardless of the map changes!!

He knows that the informed people understand that he is largely responsible for the housing financial meltdown!!

Good bye to a true asshole!!

Barney…come on…trouble at home big guy?

Least he didn’t fart………

Now he is free to pay teenage boys to screw him.

If this is a foretaste of what is to come from Barney Frank, I’m really excited. If he uses all of his media appearances for the next year to be cranky, sarcastic, and combative with reporters, count me in. Gingrich is kind of playing the same card: insult the media, show their complicity in the destruction of this country, and gain popular support in the process. It may not be immediately helpful, but at least it’s entertaining.

Probably had it plugged with something.

Jealous?

No. Bet you are though.

Not me. The thought was yours . Not mine!

Anyone know what the over/under is that he’ll be a good sport and say “sufferin succatash” before he leaves?

He never had to “campaign.” He promised hand outs and got elected year after year. The redistricting cooked his goose.

I’m surprised the Today Show managed to air something remotely resembling news.  Must have been a slow day for style-watch, cooking, giggling, celebrities.  Oh that’s right – all that airs from 7:10 – 9:00.

Redistricting had nothing to do with it. I know that part of Massachucetts very well.

#thisisnottwitter

Well, he’s not blaming ‘Teh Media’ – he said, CLEARLY, it’s part – his word “part” of the problem.

And he’s clearly, unarguably correct. Look at what a tool Savanah Guthrie acted like in this interview. Look at what a tool Frances Martel is acting like in the way she is reporting on this here at Mediaite. Look at what a tool you have become in going along with their spin. 

Indeed, you get caught up in your own illogic: if, as YOU put it, the media is a “product, as much as the negative tone is a product [wic] of the partisan hackery in our elected institutions”, then BY DEFINITION, YOUR definition, the media is “part” of the problem.

Those questions from Guthrie were truly typical of the more moronic side of nbc – so moronic, I thought we’d slipped into CNN or even Fuppet Theater. She was an idiot to think Frank would not point this out – he ALWAYS points out such things, and has done for 30 years. Where has she been? And he was completely correct in doing so. Frank is one of the very very few Congress Critters who has received a lot of TV talking head time who actually knows how to appreciate a socioeconomic problem, how to devise a reform, how to write a law to make that reform happen, how to shepherd a bill with that law in it through Congress. There are very few who can do that, and NONE that we see regularly on the boob tube that can do that, OTHER than Barney Frank.

Ms. Guthrie is a completely forgettable, utterly replaceable TV face – Barney Frank has been a truly great Congressional rep and a wonderful asset to the country. 

And you, Frances Martel, chose to go with the bimbo. Typical.

She deserved it. How can she have covered Beltway politics for as long as she has and NOT see this coming? Barney has NEVER suffered fools, particularly in media.

(Besides, Barney is, uh, not one to be bowled over by a pretty girl face. Rick Herzberg over at The New Yorker, tells of the time his magazine sent over a babe-reporter – actually a real reporter who happened to be a babe, so actually good at her job, unlike Guthrie & Martel – to do a story on Barney back in the early 1980s, and she came back and reported him being ‘unresponsive’. Well, d’uh.) 

@readers:disqus  my classmate’s mother-in-law made $211685 so far just working on the computer for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more. http://avoo.net/dywxs

you calling frank a liar? He said he didn’t want to represent people he was unfamiliar with in the new districts. Use your head, wontcha?
Barney Frank blames redistricting in decision to quit
.
A somewhat bitter U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said today he will not seek
re-election in 2012 in a move he
said was triggered by redistricting
that left him with too many new constituents to serve as a “lame-duck”
legislator.
“There are too many constraints,” Frank said about
his life as a politician and the energy it would take to meet new voters
so late in his tenure.
“People are skeptical about incumbents,” he added. “There was also this — I don’t like raising money.”

@Alex:disqus 
 Alvarez — Come on…you’re smart enough to see what’s going on here.  Only someone who feels they need to be hyper-defensive would take offense to Guthrie’s tame -yet pertinent- questions.  He wanted to try and turn it back on her and vicariously the media.  But anyone with a clue could see through that bluster.  There was nothing at all wrong with the questions she posed.  Why would they have Barney Frank on the air the morning after he announces his upcoming retirement to talk about “public policy”.  It’s absurd, and he knows it…as should anyone else watching.

This article should have been written in the vein that Frank was very defensive in an interview where there was no reason to be.  Perhaps his record in toto is one that he really can’t defend?

What’s the worst thing you hate about women?

But that hasn’t changed anything for him. Barney has ALWAYS been like this, for 30 years. He was like this when he was student and political organizer at Harvard and Harvard Law (like Obama, another of those “born to privilege” types with no father at home because his had been sent to prison for various scams, and from beautiful idyllic home to the wealthy and privileges urban slum Newark). Your comment implies he has CHANGED, when he has NOT.

You know, I’m starting to think Mediaite doesn’t give a rat’s skinny behind that such truly awful slanders as the above get flagged.

Come on Frances Martel – do SOMETHING at least.

Do you really think he will be replaced by a Republican? Good Luck.
BTW say goodbye to Senator Scott Brown as well.

Bull. Shit.

If you check out the New Yorker story, he said 30 years ago he wanted to spend 30 years in Congress, tops. As he said here, he wasn’t even going to run in 2010 except he wanted to work on financial reforms. As he makes clear, it’s not that redistricting cooked his goose at all, it’s that he didn’t see the point of hanging around longer than he originally planned when NOW in particular it would mean him spending all his time campaigning for election when what he REALLY wanted to do with his last term was reform Wall Street and banking laws.

You really are an ignorant tool, you know that? 

See folks? This is the mark of respect, the SURE SIGN of Barney Frank being a truly great American statesman – that such a sewer rat as G-D would go after him.

Ibid. There is more value in one of Barney’s eyebrow hairs than in your entire being. You are a waste of space and matter.

Calling them by the right name? :)

I understand reading is hard.  Let me quote for you a key line that you apparently missed:

“I do blame the media for a lot”

And as far as the questions from Guthrie, I agree.  But you’re failing to notice the part of the problem that causes this stupid cycle.  That congress is a bunch of petty, vote-whoring assholes who concern themselves more with re-election than actually getting work done for the nation.  As the typical congress critters do, the media follows and from that creates a narrative.   You cant have the media as the problem and a negative tone as a problem w/o acknowledging the root cause, which is PARTISAN HACKERY BY THE OFFICIALS OF OUR ELECTED INSTITUTIONS. 

I know its easy to just call everyone a tool and gloss over context that may make you look less ignorant, but doing the hard work of pointing out to someone who uses snark to get his message across, rather than say doing their job, that they are the cause and effect of their own problem is considered a chore.   And, I would note, are breathlessly defended by folks like you.  Folks who always want to swoop in with some other side of a coin, that no one asked for. 

Savannah Guthrie didnt help any in this situation, but Barney Frank is as much to blame for the “part” that he’s pointing out as anyone.  To say otherwise shows your bias and ignorance in related matters.

#HolyShitYouFiguredItOut

This is what Frank does in all of his interviewers. He doesn’t own up to any of his wrongdoing – he just deflects and whines about the interviewer being misinformed and stupid. 

This guy puts himself on such a high pedestal … he thinks he can do no wrong. Too bad he did ULTIMATE wrong (a little think called partially causing the housing crisis).
Frank has such a history of cronyism relating to Fanny Mae (like getting his boyfriend a job at FM – paid for by taxpayer money). It’s no surprise that Frank didn’t tell the truth about FM before the bubble. 

They should let Savanah wear heels…  so what if she’s 6′+?  that doesn’t mean she should be the only woman on the set not allowed to wear FMPs just ’cause she’d make Matt and Al look short.

not nice

calm down he’s now free to run his prostution and marijuana rings full time

if he had the b*lls to answer it would be the rejection he can’t seem to lure the hotties back to moms basement

He’ll soon have the title that cannot be taken away– former congressman.

I saw Nixon live during the Watergate Scandal.  He was almost as funny as Don Rickles.  No holding back.  I’ll miss that quality about Frank.  He was a fun interview.  Too bad he is as responsible as Bush for our current economic malaise.  Thanks to him, poor people could buy homes they could not afford just like the rest of the country.

And those same poor people that bought those homes couldn’t afford to make their 3rd payment.

Ah, the old walkback card. You and royal rex related?

They gave that money to a cheap lawyer to file a Ch. 13 and put the arrearage in the plan, and manipulate the bankruptcy laws so they can live there until they get the boot in bankruptcy court.

I expect Barney, God love him, to become more and more cantankerous as the months move along.  As he stated at his retirement news conference he does not have to be nice anymore to those he cannot stand.  His farewell floor speech to the House should be pure Barney gold.  I cannot  wait.

Are you the resident sexist?  Or is this just your shift?

Frank is a characterless buffoon.

He refuses to acknowledge any culpability in the mortgage debacle, even though he’s on video at least 4 times stopping GOP efforts in their track to reign in Fannie & Freddie.

He belongs with the rest of the self-aggrandizing, politically-indoctrinated, intellectual dilettantes up at Harvard, where he’ll probably wind up! 

Barney is being awfully negative here, isn’t he?

Well, if you’re going by taxpayer cash wasted on a pound for pound basis, that’s certainly true.

Yep. He just insults anyone who challenges him, much like his up and coming replacement, Anthony Weine…oh, wait. Nevermind.

And the taxpayers get to eat all of it, via Fannie and Freddie. Thanks, Barney!

THe GOP is ganging up on Frank.. but I can’t tell why, it’s not like doing that will help their election chances… seems strange. Sometimes stuff like this happens when a person did something unethical that has yet to be revealed. I wonder why he’s stepping down.

Why is it that liberals never debate what is said but instead attack the person who said it?
Barney Frank is a fricking scumbag that should be in prison for his involvement in the financial collapse of this Country yet there are actually idiots like you who stand up for him…go figure!!!

The GOP can’t stand Frank because he likes the big banks and Wall Street to have some regulations that prevent them from destroying the economy… again!!

Politically it sounds like we agree, but you just complained about personal attacks, and then proceeded to personally attack Barney in a big way. In addition, the map change does appear to make the districts slightly more conservative, but Barney’s closest election ever was still won by 10.5 points, and that was in the giant wave election last year. 

Yeah, he is nasty to her because she is an attractive female. If he was a young guy Barney would have been polite and attentive.

Usually men gang up on Barney and he is excited~

Moron, it was Frank who ignored Sec of Treasury John Snow and Pres. Bush to tighten borrowing from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…and his right hand woman tried to call the tightening proposals “racist.” So cut the shit about Frank doing anything but bending over for his boyfriends.

I hope he says something nice about the male pages he boned.

Was that the same President Bush who wanted everyone to own a home?? Watch the video for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNqQx7sjoS8&feature=related

Nice try, liberal…the real facts are here:

HOW THE ECONOMY COLLAPSED 101 
1) 1977: Jimmy Carter (D) signs the Community Reinvestment Act, guaranteeing home loans to low-income families.
 
2) September 14, 1993 Bill Clinton (Democrat) signs NAFTA bill, killing US jobs
 
3) December 08, 1994 Bill Clinton (Democrat) signs GATT, killing US jobs
 
4)
September 03, 1998, HUD publishes report damning FREDDIE MAC and FANNIE
MAE for not lending home loans to unqualified blacks and Mexicans. EEOC
charges that FREDDIE MAC and FANNIE MAE create “hostile” work
environment toward blacks.
 
5) 1999: Bill Clinton (D) puts
the CRA on steroids, pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the
number of sub-prime loans to 45% of their total.
 
6) March
02, 2000, Franklin D. Raines (Democrat) chairman of FANNIE MAE pledges
to open lending to unqualified blacks and Mexicans.
 
7) October 10, 2000 Bill Clinton (Democrat) signs U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000, killing US jobs
 
8) April 2001, Bush administration raised red flags over massive low-documentation loans by FNMA
 
9)
September 30, 2002, African-American Safiyyah Rahmaan, (Democrat) sues
FANNIE MAE for not lending to enough unqualified blacks.
 
10)
September 10, 2003, Treasury Secretary John Snow (Republican)
recommends to the House Financial Services Committee to impose controls
on FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC. Barney Frank (Democrat) and Maxine Waters
(Democrat) object to controls.
 
11) October 2003, less than a month later, Fannie Mae disclosed 1.2 billion dollars in “accounting errors”.
 
12) November 2003, Bush Administration increases warnings of toxic loans made by FANNIE MAE.
 
13) December 21, 2004, Franklin Raines (Democrat) resigns from FANNIE MAE.
 
14) February 2005, Bush budget plan exposes potential disaster from FANNIE MAE loans.
 
15) February 17, 2005, Alan Greenspan recommends limits on FANNIE MAE lending.
 
16) April 6, 2005, Senator Chuck Schumer (Democrat) refutes placing limits on FANNIE MAE.
 
17)
June 2005, Deputy Secretary of Treasury, Samuel Bodman (Republican)
warns of risks caused by FANNIE MAE lending to unqualified lenders.
 
18) April 2006, Goldman Sachs sold $494 million of securities on toxic FANNIE MAE loans.
 
19) May 25, 2006, Senator John McCain (Republican) warns of risks of slack limits on FANNIE MAE lending.
 
20) August 2007, Bush (Republican) asks Congress to put through limits on FANNIE MAE lending.
 
21) December 2007, Bush (Republican) warns Congress to hurry limits on FANNIE MAE lending.
 
22) March 2008, Bush (Republican) warns Congress again.
 
23) April 2008, Bush (Republican) warns Congress again.
 
24) April 2008, Goldman Sachs donates $1,000,000 to Obama campaign.
 
25) April 2008, AIG donates $630,000 to Obama campaign.
 
26) April 2008, Morgan Stanley donates $485,823 to Obama campaign.
 
27) May 03, 2008, Bush (Republican) warns Congress again.
 
28) May 19,2008, Bush (Republican) warns Congress again.
 
29) May 31, 2008, Bush (Republican) makes radio address warning Congress to pass limits on FANNIE MAE.
 
30) June 2008, Bush (Republican) warns Congress again.
 
31) July 2008, Congress finally passes a reform bill on FANNIE MAE lending.
 
32) November 4, 2008, Hussein Obama elected president.
 
33) December 18, 2008 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducts further hearings into FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC.
 
34) February 17, 2009, Hussein Obama (Democrat) signs bailout program.
 
35) March, 2009, AIG reports $62,000,000,000 loss.
 
36) April 2009, Goldman Sachs reports $780,000,000 loss.
 
37) April, 2009, Morgan Stanley reports $1,300,000,000 loss.
 
38) American taxpayers get stuck in the a$$ with over $787,000,000,000 in bailouts.

Lol! What’s the name of the right-wing website that you’re coping and pasting from?? I would like to see where you’re getting your information from??

Leedouche below me:

Why not refute point by point what I posted, or admit defeat. Now go and cry to your boyfriend Barney Frank.

Tell your tale to the people who kept reelecting him…… for unlikeable, I’ll match one Barney Frank against one  Boehner and I’ll lose…….

He is over 70 years old. 
 He has other things to do before he dies and trying to help fools like you is a losing proposition these days, since you are only too willing to be uninformed about the facts of the issues so the Repugs can use you for their own elections. Barney largely responsible for the meltdown…..oh, lordamercy, don’t you remember anything? read anything but rightwingfiction? even try to learn the facts? Isn’t there something between your ears  but rightwing blather? No I thought not. 

And your comment was NOT an attack on Frank and the people who stand up for him?  What planet did you come from?????
But that you make my head want to implode indicates you are a paid troll and not worth much to any intelligentconversation.

Was it Terry Gross or Diane Rehm who had a great interview with barney this week? Glad to have the voice of reason asking the questions and listening to the answers. No wonder I don’t need/have tv.

Thanks to the mortgage companies that were required to use standard procedures but instead pushed unqualified buyers into mortgages they couldn’t afford, and thanks to the republicans in control of the govt who cut the staffs of the regulatory agencies set up to keep track of the mortgage companies. Those guys were super salesmen who persuaded even normally capable people into overpriced houses. 
Faux fans need someone to blame and perish the thought it might not be a democrat. If it isn’t  a dem/librul, then make it one of them…..twist it anyway necessary to not blame the republican culprits. This country is toast. 

franks is a piece of filth and it is once again beyond me how anyone could of voted for this piece of crap

And then you go on to attack the person who said it. Exxxelent.

he’s the poster child for what’s wrong with career pols. he lied to the American people about the solvency of fannie and freddie, wrote laws to force banks to give mortgages that they knew would never be paid back, fought bush trying to prevent the mort colapse, then lies and blames bush. oreilly showed a tape of him stating same and 20 seconds later he’s denying it. on the bright side he announces he’s getting out of the screwing up of America business and the stock mkt goes up over 300 pts showing their belief that with frank (sucker) gone the housing mkt may be able to recover (providing dodd-frank gets repealed.he’s even worse than san fran nan(ny state) as immpossible as that may seem. i cannot think of anyone that’s done more damage than him in the house and dodd in the senate. not only that he’s a really nasty piece of work/shit

Fummettii lives in alternate universe, the one where the Republicans think that Corporations are people and speech is money. Fannie and Freddie didn’t create this problem and if they did then why did the Fed and the government, with TARP, bail out this country’s banks and corporations, and the worlds too? If Fannie and Freddie were the problem it would be easy to fix. The Community Reinvestment Act had higher standards than the banks did. Fannie and Freddie didn’t get into the subprime loans until 2005 to compete with the other banks, and that was under the Republican Congress and Bush……………..

The best I’ve read so far.  Having dug into this problem in detail, I confirm your facts and time line.  Great work!!!!!