MAGA Toxoplasmosis of the Prestige Press

Normal people won't buy this shit, but the New York Times eats it up

© 2015 Gage Skidmore, used under a Creative Commons license

We’re all sort of used to the prestige press being full of shit these days, and some of us discuss it in social media, in newsletters like this one, in animated conversations that ensue when one of us signals to the other that, yes, the shitful are indeed full of shit.

I caught some of a 1990 George Carlin routine the other day. The Carlin bits that stick with me are usually the most reductive, because they transcend the topicality that stand-up guys live on and get into Mr. Dooley territory — brass tacks, as we used to call it, e.g. “My shit is stuff but your stuff is shit.” This one’s about how many people are stupid (the famous “think of how stupid the average person is” bit) and how many people are nuts and, relevant to my theme, how many are full of shit. Carlin portrays the normal person listening to such a one: “[squinting] Well… he’s fairly intelligent… [pause; suddenly points finger] AH! He’s full of shit!”

The mimesis succeeds in large part because of Carlin’s New York roots — from back when Humphrey Bogart was advising Conrad Veidt there were parts of New York he wouldn’t advise they try and invade. It suggests a sharp eye, or rather nose, for bullshit, and willingness to call it out. I find that an admirable tendency, and feel solidarity with the crowd that loudly cheers Carlin’s act in that now 32-year-old clip.

But these days I do wonder how keen the average person’s nose for bullshit is. Maybe it’s because I don’t go to the klaverns and suburban sports bars where the political bullshit variant gets yammered — I ran from that world at a young age and never felt any way nostalgic for it — and mainly see it in print and pixels, which does tend to flatten the impact unless, like me, you’ve been looking at it so long you imagine you can smell the bullshit even off the 2-D version.

Like I said earlier, some of us compare notes on this and feel like normal people must smell it too, or at least would smell it if their attention were directed to it. But that’s the thing about printed bullshit: You’re missing the visceral cues like the hammy arm-waving of Ted Cruz or the soul-dead vacancy of J.D. Vance’s mascaraed eyes that also say “bullshit,” whether the guy’s using big words or small ones to con you.

So while for some of us Trump’s lie diffuser Kellyanne Conway is the epitome of shitfulness, her post-defeat retreat from public appearances and reinvention as a credentialed opinion journalist in the prestige press — notwithstanding the glaring obviousness of her Trump-pimping mission — may go unnoticed by folks who just want the headlines and maybe the Wordle. Maybe they’ve even forgotten who she is, lucky bastards.

It's not so easy for me as, I remind you, I was kind of surprised in January 2023 when the New York Times bit on Conway’s “The Case For and Against Trump” which, at that early stage in her rehabilitation, still had to rely on a little protective coloration — see, she’s admitting there’s a downside, which just happens to be very modest (mainly that he doesn’t currently have the best advisors, hint hint) while the upside is MAGA great! And I was annoyed in December 2023 when Conway tried to get (or pretended to try to get, because the real mission is always self-promotion to worm her way back into the limelight)  Republicans to reduce their post-Dobbs abortion damage by talking about how eager the GOP was to preserve birth control rights, obvious bullshit that several prestige press outlets ate up as if it weren’t.

But I gotta say, hardened spelunker that I am of the great rightwing shitmines, I was taken aback by the Conway op-ed — excuse me, “Guest Essay”! — in the New York Times the other day: “Who Should Be Trump’s No. 2?”

The Tiger Beat headline was bad enough. (Win a Dream Date with Donald!) Conway’s actual nominations, which start with non-starters like Marco Rubio just so that when she gets to her big reveal — let’s give him a black guy! — readers might feel as if she’s been daring and counter-intuitive, when some of us have been predicting for months that Tubby will pick just such a running mate just so his rubes can thrill when Byron Donalds calls Kamala Harris a ho.

Speaking of that, there’s also Conway’s long drag on Harris, consisting entirely of lame third-hand bullshit (“A lack of gravitas and a paucity of confidence in her competence have led President Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, to become among the least popular in history,” Jesus Christ) and, worst of all, her abortion scam:

Democrats are not winning on the economy, crime, the border or foreign policy, but they have leveraged fear and lies about total opposition to abortion and a national abortion ban — and unforced errors by pro-lifers in state initiatives — to keep the heart of abortion beating strongly.

 (“Unforced errors” meaning “actually saying what they meant and getting their ass kicked for it.”)

A credible, courageous, fluent running mate able to articulate what it means to be a pro-life Republican and a pro-choice Democrat in 2024, and to do it with compassion…

No one believes this. No one could believe it. Not even the antiabortion factota like Alexandra DeSanctis could believe it. It isn’t even a credible lie. It’s gibberish, a full-on reality inversion, a handful of sand Conway throws in your eyes so she can get away with it — which apparently works on the editors of the New York Times.

My main source of optimism about the prospect of kicking these assholes to the curb in November is that while this 2-D bullshit is invisible to most real people, it has become the lifeblood of the prestige press — and their credulity at it suggests they’ve been huffing it so long that it has transmitted to them MAGA toxoplasmosis, poisoning whatever judgment they had and leading to all the creepy Trump boosterism in which you see them now engaged. We’ll see soon enough whether it’s spread to real people; I’m guessing not.