What’s that old saying, once is coincidence, twice is a pattern, three times is enemy action? If that’s true and I believe it is, at this point the NYT, WaPo, et. al. are so deep in the enemy camp we should call in drone strikes.
We can’t count on the courts, or the press, or social media, since social media is run by billionaires who are at best reactionary centrists and at worst actual Nazi sympathizers like Elon Musk. Literally all we can rely on is the good sense of the voters come November.
I was heartened somewhat by Biden’s SOTU, but only hope he can keep it up. When the opposition has to immediately pivot from “he’s old, weak, and senile” to “he was yelling, talking too fast, and surely on drugs” I think it’s safe to say Biden accomplished *something.* Whether it will be consistent or enough to matter remains to be seen.
They'd pound less on "Biden is old" if they had literally anything else. The only thing they've got that could qualify as an issue is immigration, and by their deliberate choice to pitch it in the craziest and more racist way imaginable, they've blown their one issue's potential to move the normies.
I was gonna say Roger Stone, but pinstripes and a hat hardly qualify. Evidently he fancies himself a sartorialist. It all just reminds me that he's a dirty old swinger. A vain, nasty little man who probably owns a nice watch for each day of the week.
Re: Bannon's shirts: I imagine a parody of a Monty Python sketch, where Bannon is invited on a show to talk about his nonsense, but the host keeps circling back to Steve "Two Shirts" Bannon material.
I mean, all racism sucks, but if there are going to podcasters talking about "the inferior races" I'd much prefer they wear powdered wigs and knee-breeches so they at least look as ridiculous as they sound.
Instead we get goobers like Ben Shapiro, a guy who thinks growing a beard will make him sound less like Squeaky McSqueakerson. Both racist AND lame.
LOL, I most emphatically did NOT. Somebody made the great point on BlueSky that all these podcaster dudes who rail against the Great Replacement or cry about cultural decay and the loss of Western Civilization are basically failed screenwriters/actors/directors etc. Hollywood took a look at their work and said, "nope." So their entire persona is The Failure's Revenge.
I remember that! It was a George F. (for Fuckin') Will column. Sitting at the airport, he noticed a father and young son in matching t-shirt, jeans, sneakers (i believe he called them "tennis shoes", as we olds do) and ball cap, and had the brilliant insight that this meant modern culture was infantilizing men, who should be wearing a 3 piece suit and a trilby for travel clothing, as one does.
Man, do I hate this shit. I paid this much for a burger at the airport, I saw this guy and his kid at the airport, my taxi driver said this thing on the way to the airport AND HERE'S WHAT IT ALL MEANS, BIG PICTURE. We do have social scientists who collect actual data if we're wondering how we're doin' as a civilization (and those indicators ain't so great, let me tell you) I really won't be needing your n=1 "dataset" from the fuckin' airport.
God forbid we measure our progress as a society with silly things like how many people have enough to eat and how many children get drone-bombed to death. Yeah, let's send some rich white asshole to the airport for a societal status-check.
And the GOP shot themselves in the foot with immigration by failing to pass their own legislation. I strongly believe Biden should go full Harry Truman, blasting the do-nothing Congress non-stop and saying "if you vote them back in, you're as dumb as THEY think you are."
There's a way for the Republicans to do this effectively where they'd capture some puddin'-headed swing voters: "Gosh, I'm sure these are all FINE people, but we can't take in EVERYONE just because we feel sorry for 'em right? The WHOLE WORLD would move in, and we ain't got ROOM! And who's gonna PAY for it, huh?"
No need to claim they're all Hannibal Lecter, just rely on plain old American selfishness to do the job. But they just can't do that, they can't help themselves, they've gotta amp everything up to Max Racist because it just FEELS so damn good.
I have little to add, but I hope this is the freebie: should be required reading for those who missed media consolidation was also consolidation of the Insider Line/talking points as the only valid framing.
Sure, this was Old Republican Steve. Faux empathy and tax cuts. But Trump convinced the base and a clutch of Republican politicians that Chaos was a tool they could use to smash the liberal state, to rebuild Real America on the rubble. Well, Trump and the base really wants to smash liberal culture, which refuses to bend the knee to them and greenlight a gritty reboot of Matlock starring Trump.
Maybe Biden could distract them by saying he’ll appoint someone like Arte Johnson or George Burns to be Secretary of HUD. (See, they’re so old, they’re *dead*! Hilarity ensues. Press forgets about Biden’s age.)
How hard NBC and MSNBC have turned surprised me. Medhi Hasan gets kicked out, bam, a month later Katy Tur says business fraud is a victimless crime. About as subtle as a sledgehammer.
As Atrios says in frustration whenever our more hidebound elected Democrats stand blinking in shock as neither the Courts nor the Press, nor Fitzgerald/Mueller/Garlandicus come to save us: The Celestial Hall Monitors aren’t going to step in. You have to do it yourself.
I love the Celestial Hall Monitor moniker (ha ha) but I think Garland is more like Charlie Brown with the football than anything else: "I'm sure if I continue to give conservatives plenty of rope, THIS TIME they won't fashion it into a noose to hang my boss."
Am I the only one who wonders what names he rejected before arriving at Unfortunate Portrait? Maybe “Photo Lit Only by Fluorescent” or “Selfie with One Eye Half Closed”
Downer is right. He "recently designed a $78 shirt that reflected his sense of feeling 'uninspired' about the election." This reads like parody.
I bet that shirt isn't even funny. And, if it's a nice shirt then why ruin it? The best I can hope for is that it's an abstract pattern that he feels conveys the sentiment.
Years ago (decades, really!) there was a massive protest in NYC against the Iraq war, maybe a million people there, the Times ignored it except for one story, a profile of one of marchers. A high school kid interviewed in his parent's apartment on the upper west side (the article mentions a Picasso, and not a print, hanging in the living room.) The kid wasn't great on articulating his reasons for opposing the war, I wouldn't have been either when I was 17, but what caught the interviewer's attention were his pants. Multi-colored, made of many patches of cloth sewn together, it wasn't clear if the kid had done them himself of bought them at some fashionable boutique.
Long story short: The Times can ALWAYS find such people.
I'm guessing he caught the reporter's eye at the march. Interviewing a protestor of substance would have been boring. The hope was that he'd say something foolish? Be guaranteed to draw fire. Mockery, by extension, of the cause.
More likely his dad was in the same Harvard fraternity as the reporter. They don't go to marches and mix with the people, especially when they know there's zero chance anything they send back will be printed. Better to use your social connections for some upper-west-side human interest.
Was that the one when the cops sectioned off EVERY BLOCK of NE First Ave, and then closed access whenever one was half full? The whole upper east side was swarming with thousands and thousands of protesters JUST TRYING TO JOIN THE PROTEST, and the Times ran a photo from street level that looked like 5th Ave at lunchtime. There were helicopters that day, they could have used an aerial photo but no. Bastards never change, never learn.
You are brilliant because you agree with me about this whole thing!! Or perhaps I agree with you? Whatever. But it does look like Erik got there before both of us.
Those who write for and those who own the media are fascists, fascist enablers, or to put the best foot on the whole thing merely people in love with strong authoritarian daddies. And since at this point what are ya gonna do? I am reminded of the Simpson's Halloween episode where the space aliens take over the bodied of both the presidential candidates and Lisa reveals all. But it doesn't matter cause "What ya gonna do?"
There was a window, between the end of the Watergate hearings and the beginning of the Carter Administration, where the media actually pretended to make a difference. But before, and especially after? Fascism-minded owners, all the way down.
It was a lot easier though in three channel days (CBS, NBC Red, NBC Blue, er ABC). And harder for the crooks to take over, too many eyes. Now with so many outlets.....
I think it is a lot more the fact that conservatives have now ceded the moral high ground, or morals period, and hippie punching' is how they justified it. The hell that Lewis Powell unleashed, "they need to hear our side" has destroyed the Republican Party, and that coupled with late-stage capitalism (I.e. steal everything for the stockholders as quickly as possible) has brought us dangerously close to destroying the country.
What gets me is that these jokers think Trump will give them a pass. That life will go on as is and they'll have lots of funny stories to tell and make a whole lotta money. Nope.
They better hope they don't have any desirable and profitable real estate that Dictator Trump might cast his eye on. The owners of Pebble Beach and Augusta National should be shitting themselves in fear. If Trump gets elected, Don Jr. is coming with an offer they can't refuse.
I think it's another example of The Scourge of unpaid internships. I think "news reporter" has become of a desirable position for closely bred trustfunders. Sam Fuller would beat the shit out of any of them just for fun.
It's also pretty obvious that their cushy, high profile jobs are rapidly vanishing and they need Trump to create the National Enquirer world they thrive in so well.
I think it's funny that this full court press of pro-Trump bullshit is failing.
I really appreciate the parodies - You've earned your title of Internet Wit and all around Bon Vivant, but I'll tell you man,
Your straight commentary and news
are excellent.
I'm having a righteously fucked up day.
I apologize if this doesn't make any sense. I'm currently looking around for a big stick to beat someone to death with-
I was here at 5:15. I didn't t go 30 foot inside the door before I ran into a fucked up situation...( 60,000 asparagus crowns that have been improperly received plastic liner left in the crates-condensation forms with temperature change which encourages the growth of fungus which means we have to treat it with fungicide over the weekend. It was a stupid mistake that filled me with hate and anger. I am the Lorax around here and I speak for the trees and the asparagus and the daylilies and the roses and the seconds and all the rest. The person who made the mistake knows better and deserves beaten with a stick.
I'm an English teacher/instructor in Japan. I've got a private student who's a medical doctor/researcher who likes to build his vocab by reading articles from Time magazine. (I subscribed to Time, among other publications, in my late teens-early 20s back in the 70s/80s). Anyway, our routine is that he picks out articles, reads them aloud, and I help with pronunciation and clarification of vocab, idiomatic stuff, and general nuance. We've been doing this once a week for about 10 years. Every once in a while I'll look him in the eye and say, "You know __-san, this article/paragraph/sentence is bullshit," and and go off on a mild rant about bothsiderism/bullshit/outright lies etc. I always apologize when I'm done, and he says, "It's OK, Rick, that's what I pay you for."
Probably, but I've made it a mission to avoid learning anything resembling a swear word in Japanese (as well as warning students against using them in English). Swearing in a foreign language requires complete mastery of usage, time, and place. The words I know are mostly related to lying/liars/etc.
Well, fooey. I wrote a long story, then realized Rick don't want to know this much milder oath. (bail out Rick bail out) I say it to myself a lot. Learned it from my son years ago. Almost always in response to yet another defeat by my arch-nemesis, inertia.
"Wow, that hurt. Wonder what David was yelling before I suffered a mild concussion?"
The way this presents in my mail reader before I clicked on it, all it saw was "Well, fooey, I wrote a long story, then . . ."<br>
And that took me back to an instance nearly 30 years ago when someone submitted an article that I ended up chopping down to a headline, a photo, and a caption because that was really all it was. The author later called me up and said "Well, I wrote a long story . . . but your version is better!" (I'm pretty sure it helped his ego that I paid him full price for a feature article for that, um, thing.)
Ah, grasshopper, you learned the teaching early, as did I. "What's this?" new capability in the program blah blah blah. "Well I'm glad I was able to stop by and tell you the idea". "Yeah, boss, your idea was great. I'd be lost without you" (guy had zero sarcasm sense, so he takes it literally. Me and my buddy there would try to see which one of us would crack up the other first giving our status reports)
Trump calls the press the "enemy of the people" and get his supporters so riled up that journalists like Katy Tur have to be escorted out of the arena by a phalanx of police so she does not get ripped limb from limb by the ravening MAGAs.
BUT . . .
Joe Biden did not hold a press conference during his first hundred days in office, so journalists like Katy Tur KNOW that Joe Biden is the real threat to freedom of the press.
Yeah, if everyone ignored the press it would be fatal to the press, so, if you're the press, Uncle Joe is in a pre-murderous state and must be stopped for the sake of...comity, or something...
Exactly, why isn't his press person making news every day like the ones for Trump and Bush always did? It's not the media's fault the Democrats make no effort to manipulate them.
It's the difference between the hive mind and well, my party of lifelong allegiance (Excepting being for Winthrop Rockefeller in '68 and '70, my only dalliance). I'm still convinced there is a blast fax, yes low-tech fax, that gives them the script everyday. They're getting a script from somewhere, because it is obviously a damn script.
Meanwhile, 10 Democrats can't agree where to go to lunch, much less how to butt heads with duplicitous bastards, That;s problem A. Problem A1 is no liberal media powerhouses, because of problem A. What the blast fax is to the pols, FOX is to the useful idiots. So no clout either of intent or advertising draw. You can't shame these guys anymore. I really am at a loss. What can we use for a stick? We're fighting The Blob at this point.
Many yes -- but why are we surprised? "Inventing Reality" was published in the 1980s, revealing media corporations were owned by fascists-in-all-but name & spewing propaganda non-stop. The media landscape has only changed since then because driving clicks are all that matters, & so jabbing the outrage centers of the brain is all that's needed.
I was beginning to derive some small quanta of hope from long-form content on podcasts or YouTube (Some More News is one of my faves), but this past week, all I see are content creators shilling some product or other during each show.
The news business has been imploding for the last couple of decades due in large part to the collapse of newspaper advertising.
Sometimes they think promoting BLOTUS attracts an audience — that is, an audience they can keep. (They’ve been proven wrong but still they persist (😉).
There’s the biases of the owners — complete assholery and shitheadedness on the part of the Times’ publisher.
There’s a commitment to the horserace coverage because that’s what they think attracts an audience.
Slagging Dems is part attracting that fickle potential audience and/or media owners’ biases, maybe fear of what Dem control of things might do their wealth IYKWIMAITYD.
TheTimes, more now under current management than previously, doesn’t care about producing shitty —harmful — journalism (outsidePulitzer bait that gets ignored). Their focus on corporate profits which is by way of increasing the number of subscribers. That barely half the subscribers subscribe to the news is telling.
Of course, in a regressive, declining society, the audience for news isn’t huge to begin with…
I’ve really been around the block too many times… At least I’ve been to my last rodeo (Cody, WY, 2021, where I had the epiphany that the entire state needed to be in therapy).
Wyoming's a beautiful state. Played a music festival in Buffalo bout 15 yes ago. Median income in Buffalo was $75,000 then. High school the size of UC Berkeley. Headliner that year was Michael Martin Murphy, his hit was Wildfire, but a big part of his show is a Salute to the American Indian. Halfway through, a couple of gen-u-wine cowboys next to me in the back said to me (and I had long hair) "does he know who he's talking to?"
Also, people should know they hold a rodeo in Cody every week. Every week.
Cody was sort of cute when we buzzed through in the early 90s. By 21, built up, the state was full of RWNJ — Cheney Country 😉. And the Christo-fascist rodeo.
The route in in 21 was through a zillion miles that like the Afghan boonies.
The entire vibe was… not all that happy, a society in sort of collapse.
Now, western Montana, more so Missoula specifically, is calling us back for the fourth time in three trips x-country this summer. Biga’s has the best pizza west of the Hudson.
Cody and Wyoming I can pass on. Then again, this summer’s route isn’t take us south from Montana anyway…
Just remembered. Yellowstone — the park. Yeas, that area’s gorgeous. Had a cool drive the non-tourist part on the way into Montana.
"That barely half the subscribers subscribe to the news is telling." imagine telling a time-traveller from the 20th Century that the hot thing at the Times is a *puzzle.*
Can’t recall and am disinterested in tracking down how the Athletic, cooking, games and the Wirecutter rank.
Of course, if those four was financing and supporting a good news operation (good on important stuff), who’d care. But because it’s subsidizing sociopathic journalism, it’s tragic or something.
As for someone from the future, telling someone from the present would likely be as boggled as one from the future.
How about that RFK Jr/Rodgers ticket? Gonna assure a Biden loss for sure — as if the EC and SCOTUS wasn’t enough assurance of that.
The entertainment is fine except for the bugs in sudoku and Strands’ beta-ness.
My points are that nearly of the Times’ subscribers have no interest in the hard news from an elite publication (now that I think about it, there’s no elite publication quality-wise in the US) and that that cohort is coincidentally subsidizing crap that’s harmful to our society. I have no problem that subscribers are avoiding the news side. I mean, it’s recommended. But it’s also a sign of historic media failure. No guilt trip intended.
But how's the press going to crank out those effortless horse race/baseball/football cliches when one of the candidates is promising the apocalypse? Easy- you put on your darkest shades and turn your head to the other guy's slightest even imaginary fault...
I saw an interview with Jordan Klepper, he was talking about that clip of Haley Supporters that he did, responding to the question, "If it comes down to Trump vs. Biden in November, who will you vote for?" Before that question, each was shown describing in lurid detail the danger that Trump represents: to our democracy, to our national security, etc. The big payoff is when they get the question, each contorts their face in pain, LONG pause, then, "Well, I guess Trump." Hilarious, right?
Anyway, in the interview, Klepper says they asked a lot of people at that Haley rally the same question, and "most of them said they wouldn't vote at all." Got that? MOST wouldn't vote at all, but the ones who came out with "Well, I guess Trump" after much face-contorting were funnier, so that's what we see. And I get that, dude's a comedian, you get your news from comedians, that's what you get. All is in service to the joke.
But showing his "serious" side to Jen Psaki on MSNBC, they both agree this is BIG trouble for Biden, if he can't figure out how to win these people over (I mean the five people who said they'd still vote for Trump after admitting he'd destroy America). If Biden can't persuade Republicans to vote for him, what chance does he have? What's wrong with his "messaging" that he hasn't got these people yet?
Do some basic arithmetic and if a third of Haley voters just leave the Presidential slot blank in November, Trump is cooked. That's what happened in Georgia in 2020, fifty thousand people filled out a straight-party Republican ballot but didn't vote for President, and that handed the state to Joe Biden. So the REAL story is all those people Jordan left on the cutting room floor, but "Gonna stay home, I guess" just isn't as laugh-inducing.
As for Jen Psaki and MSNBC, they will ALWAYS go with the take most likely to provoke panic in their liberal viewers. Gotta get those people to tune in tomorrow, somehow. And they can always tell themselves they're not trying to scare us, they're trying to WARN us.
I think this is one of the underplayed stories, this drop-off in Trump's support. You see similar but lesser drops in Biden's support nominally, contradicted by the results of special elections that just show people showing up in droves to vote for reproductive freedom. At 50k feet, after a clinical assessment of poll sampling and special election results, it looks like Trump is toast and Biden will win comfortably.
But who can stay clinical at 50k feet when it looks like that treasonous fascist has so much of the deck stacked in his favor? If anything, we're seeing that a large slice of the nation - at least the 25% that IDs as GOP, from local big-box shoppers all the way to the Supreme Court - *really* yearns for a dictatorship.
I honestly don't have a clue how this will turn out, and think it's foolish to even try to predict. I live in Wisconsin, if I had to guess, Trump will win the state by 20,000 votes, or Biden will win by 20,000 votes, but it will be close. And dammit, it SHOULDN'T BE, but here we are. America, the roller-coaster ride from Hell.
All I'm asking for from the media is a little balance. Both of these candidates have problems, just as ALL candidates have problems, here's the ONE thing they could both-sides with no complaints from me.
Was just reading an article from Vox from 2018 about Hungary and how it slid into "soft fascism" and, mein Gott, the fucking PARALLELS with present America.
Thanks, I'll read it, but didn't Orban win some massive majority in the parliament when he first came to power? I think I remember something about having a more-than-two-thirds majority so he could easily push through constitutional changes. What separates Trump from other right-wing autocrats who come to power through elections (like Modi in India, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Poland's Law and Justice party) is those guys and their parties are actually popular, at least for a time.
Orban has been popular with the American right for a while now precisely because he offered them a model they could use that didn't involve military force and all that rude violence. The American right wants Hungarian-style fascism.
Thanks for this. The situation is infuriating, but not surprising, and the explanation is simple: Trump is good for their business model. Always has been.
The wingtips always figger the gummint will simply purchase whatever they make at inflated prices for eternity, or else...the gummint, on the other hand, figgers they can require mondo substantioso vig from every prospective corporatist as cost of entry to the game. Must be a lotta itchin' – So much backscratchin'!
It's true the legitimate media are subject to manipulation and that the Republicans/Fascists/Christianists have done a masterful job of neutralizing them. You know what's coming, right? I blame the Democrats, or as I like to call them, Doormatocrats. Why don't they make a similar effort at manipulation? That's's the more important question for getting any real world results. That's who we should be trying to change. Short of an independent studies Masters Degree from Brown and a trust fund, none of us is likely to get hired at the NYT, but we theoretically could influence the Democrats, who could then influence the legitimate media.
And yet, somehow, on every contentious issue from gay marriage to climate change to police brutality, eventually a large majority of the public ends up agreeing with the liberal/progressive view! Somebody must be doing that, right?
Yea, the people who agree with commonsense views, aided mostly by the legitimate media. I don't see that Dems play more than a small part. Republicans, on the other hand, are almost solely responsible for the lies and bullshit their followers swallow.
On the left, it's social movements that do all the persuasion work. The women's movement, the gay rights movement, the environmental movement, etc. Elected Dems do hardly anything except to wait until all the hard work of persuasion is done and then swoop in and claim "Sure, I was for this all along!" And you know what? I don't really mind. For legislation, you need legislators, let 'em take the credit as long as the goals of the movement get codified into law.
On the right, The Party IS The Movement. You don't see the arms-length relationship that elected Dems keep with their activist base. A single tweet sent out by a right-wing activist can be coming out of the mouth of a Republican Senator the very next day.
When I weigh all the pros and cons, I like our arrangement better.
Good points, but the social movements aren't targeting people who vote Republican who would not do so if they had much of a clue about what's going on. Democrats should be doing that. I don't see why it's even a question.
If we're targeting voters, it's a question about where the biggest payoff is. I'd like to see the Democrats targeting the roughly 50% who don't vote at all. Once someone's voted for a particular party, their identity tends to get wrapped up in that party and it's ten times as difficult to move them. Voters who haven't voted for anyone (and especially young voters who haven't yet formed a partisan identity) are the most productive target.
Convincing people to change their party identity is much harder than getting a non voter to start voting. It’s the difference between getting a Lakers fan to cheer for the Celtics vs getting a disinterested person to watch an NBA game for the first time .
Unfortunately and scarily, there seem to be a growing number of Very Serious Reasonable Liberals who are falling for the "TRANSES ARE COMING" bullshit.
As far as I could tell, there was little or no mention of how the Democrats eviscerated Hur by quoting his transcript to him. So even when they try, Dems get largely ignored.
I hate to sound like a broken record here, but . . . they want to sell their product to both sides. Only one side buys the truth.
It’s the same reason someone like Roy struggles to find gainful employment in the field. Truth-tellers are a dime a dozen. They want professional turd-gilders like Bret Stephens and David Brooks to cloak the ol’ right-wing bullshit in a soothing coating of pseudo-civility in the hope they can get liberals to choke it down without too many canceling their subscriptions. Now THAT’S an art.
"Democrats likely to lose" is a story liberals will read because they're anxious and want to stay up-to-date in their anxiety, and a story conservatives will read for the pure fun of it.
"Republicans likely to lose" gets ZERO Republican readership, and liberals will avoid it because they're worried they might be lured into dangerous COMPLACENCY.
At this point, I think you have to add to all the other motivations for the elite media to propagandize for Trump, that the owners and the prominent journalists have a well-founded fear for their lives if they cross Trump and he gains office.
What’s that old saying, once is coincidence, twice is a pattern, three times is enemy action? If that’s true and I believe it is, at this point the NYT, WaPo, et. al. are so deep in the enemy camp we should call in drone strikes.
We can’t count on the courts, or the press, or social media, since social media is run by billionaires who are at best reactionary centrists and at worst actual Nazi sympathizers like Elon Musk. Literally all we can rely on is the good sense of the voters come November.
I was heartened somewhat by Biden’s SOTU, but only hope he can keep it up. When the opposition has to immediately pivot from “he’s old, weak, and senile” to “he was yelling, talking too fast, and surely on drugs” I think it’s safe to say Biden accomplished *something.* Whether it will be consistent or enough to matter remains to be seen.
Once more the bottom line: When the only media of consequence in any state are corporate media, the corporate media are the de facto state media.
Are we in a sad state yet?
They'd pound less on "Biden is old" if they had literally anything else. The only thing they've got that could qualify as an issue is immigration, and by their deliberate choice to pitch it in the craziest and more racist way imaginable, they've blown their one issue's potential to move the normies.
It's all fine and (racist) dandy until "Whaddya mean I gotta mow my own lawn?"
Racist dandy ... what have we got, here in the latter day? Faugh!
It is said that modern men too often dress like boys. Probably true of the racists. I bet the 18th and 19th centuries had real racist dandies!
Instead we get Steve Bannon, the Beau Brummel of racists because he wears TWO shirts.
I was gonna say Roger Stone, but pinstripes and a hat hardly qualify. Evidently he fancies himself a sartorialist. It all just reminds me that he's a dirty old swinger. A vain, nasty little man who probably owns a nice watch for each day of the week.
Re: Bannon's shirts: I imagine a parody of a Monty Python sketch, where Bannon is invited on a show to talk about his nonsense, but the host keeps circling back to Steve "Two Shirts" Bannon material.
1.75 marks. Docked .25 only because I am seriously pissed off that I did not think of it first.
Arthur “Two Shirts” Jackson
ETA: I see the esteemed Mr Rubble has already mined this comedic lode. Mea culpa.
Yeah, was gonna say "You a culpa!"
Two shirts and a pocket full of pens.
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8K1fTZaR7w
I mean, all racism sucks, but if there are going to podcasters talking about "the inferior races" I'd much prefer they wear powdered wigs and knee-breeches so they at least look as ridiculous as they sound.
Instead we get goobers like Ben Shapiro, a guy who thinks growing a beard will make him sound less like Squeaky McSqueakerson. Both racist AND lame.
Excuse me, I think you meant MOVIE PRODUCER Ben Shapiro.
https://youtu.be/ICqdduW8JbY
LOL, I most emphatically did NOT. Somebody made the great point on BlueSky that all these podcaster dudes who rail against the Great Replacement or cry about cultural decay and the loss of Western Civilization are basically failed screenwriters/actors/directors etc. Hollywood took a look at their work and said, "nope." So their entire persona is The Failure's Revenge.
Looking forward to part 2 of that SMN takedown.
Can anyone explain to me WTF is it with right-wing assholes and objectively irritating voices?
Ooh, did I TRIGGER you with my voice, snowflake?
By the way, I'm bringing back "Faugh!" Any help would be appreciated. There's no shortage of opportunities.
... It's best if you're a man with a prominent stomach, wearing a vest. Lean back laughing with both hands on your belly.
Fap https://arnoldzwicky.org/2014/09/10/fap/
"Pfui"; per Nero Wolfe.
Goddamnit now I gotta go buy a VEST?
Don't forget the fez.
Also, pocket watch on a chain if you want to go next level.
T-Shirts and sneakers is why we now have to go fascist, because manliness.
You gotta admit the cosplay opportunities are better over there...
I remember that! It was a George F. (for Fuckin') Will column. Sitting at the airport, he noticed a father and young son in matching t-shirt, jeans, sneakers (i believe he called them "tennis shoes", as we olds do) and ball cap, and had the brilliant insight that this meant modern culture was infantilizing men, who should be wearing a 3 piece suit and a trilby for travel clothing, as one does.
Man, do I hate this shit. I paid this much for a burger at the airport, I saw this guy and his kid at the airport, my taxi driver said this thing on the way to the airport AND HERE'S WHAT IT ALL MEANS, BIG PICTURE. We do have social scientists who collect actual data if we're wondering how we're doin' as a civilization (and those indicators ain't so great, let me tell you) I really won't be needing your n=1 "dataset" from the fuckin' airport.
God forbid we measure our progress as a society with silly things like how many people have enough to eat and how many children get drone-bombed to death. Yeah, let's send some rich white asshole to the airport for a societal status-check.
And the GOP shot themselves in the foot with immigration by failing to pass their own legislation. I strongly believe Biden should go full Harry Truman, blasting the do-nothing Congress non-stop and saying "if you vote them back in, you're as dumb as THEY think you are."
There's a way for the Republicans to do this effectively where they'd capture some puddin'-headed swing voters: "Gosh, I'm sure these are all FINE people, but we can't take in EVERYONE just because we feel sorry for 'em right? The WHOLE WORLD would move in, and we ain't got ROOM! And who's gonna PAY for it, huh?"
No need to claim they're all Hannibal Lecter, just rely on plain old American selfishness to do the job. But they just can't do that, they can't help themselves, they've gotta amp everything up to Max Racist because it just FEELS so damn good.
Seriously thought there for a second Max Racist was a person
Probably is, and someone from the MSM is going to find him in a Midwest diner.
It turns out, Dees-Nuts is a person:
https://www.wfla.com/news/national/man-named-deez-nuts-arrested-charged-with-battery
I have little to add, but I hope this is the freebie: should be required reading for those who missed media consolidation was also consolidation of the Insider Line/talking points as the only valid framing.
Sure, this was Old Republican Steve. Faux empathy and tax cuts. But Trump convinced the base and a clutch of Republican politicians that Chaos was a tool they could use to smash the liberal state, to rebuild Real America on the rubble. Well, Trump and the base really wants to smash liberal culture, which refuses to bend the knee to them and greenlight a gritty reboot of Matlock starring Trump.
Maybe Biden could distract them by saying he’ll appoint someone like Arte Johnson or George Burns to be Secretary of HUD. (See, they’re so old, they’re *dead*! Hilarity ensues. Press forgets about Biden’s age.)
How hard NBC and MSNBC have turned surprised me. Medhi Hasan gets kicked out, bam, a month later Katy Tur says business fraud is a victimless crime. About as subtle as a sledgehammer.
I'll take your word for it, I've been trying to avoid the place, with mixed success.
I've been avoiding it on cable, but what I didn't plan for was those clips getting pushed at me on YouTube. I blame the Chinese Communist Party.
Tik-tok, motherfucker...
As Atrios says in frustration whenever our more hidebound elected Democrats stand blinking in shock as neither the Courts nor the Press, nor Fitzgerald/Mueller/Garlandicus come to save us: The Celestial Hall Monitors aren’t going to step in. You have to do it yourself.
I love the Celestial Hall Monitor moniker (ha ha) but I think Garland is more like Charlie Brown with the football than anything else: "I'm sure if I continue to give conservatives plenty of rope, THIS TIME they won't fashion it into a noose to hang my boss."
Even Uatu isn't Watching anymore. Sits with his head in his hands.
Not to mention the National Guard.
“Max Dower, the founder of the clothing line Unfortunate Portrait”
You've been superseded there, boss. Scratch Max Dour off yer list of great conjuring names.
But 2 solid marks for "Look at the number of them." That line always cuts to the bone, every time I hear and watch him say it.
My advice to all the world's still barely conscious political media is to hire you simply to craft headlines for 'em.
Am I the only one who wonders what names he rejected before arriving at Unfortunate Portrait? Maybe “Photo Lit Only by Fluorescent” or “Selfie with One Eye Half Closed”
I just now bothered to look it up. "Unfortunate Portrait" is entirely appropriate.
"Landscape, With Triggers."
Love it.
"Portrait of Sarah Harrop as a Scold"
"Max Headcase" was taken?
The BUSINESS name? Given I consistently read his name as "Max Downer" I thought the company name was pretty insightful.
Downer is right. He "recently designed a $78 shirt that reflected his sense of feeling 'uninspired' about the election." This reads like parody.
I bet that shirt isn't even funny. And, if it's a nice shirt then why ruin it? The best I can hope for is that it's an abstract pattern that he feels conveys the sentiment.
Years ago (decades, really!) there was a massive protest in NYC against the Iraq war, maybe a million people there, the Times ignored it except for one story, a profile of one of marchers. A high school kid interviewed in his parent's apartment on the upper west side (the article mentions a Picasso, and not a print, hanging in the living room.) The kid wasn't great on articulating his reasons for opposing the war, I wouldn't have been either when I was 17, but what caught the interviewer's attention were his pants. Multi-colored, made of many patches of cloth sewn together, it wasn't clear if the kid had done them himself of bought them at some fashionable boutique.
Long story short: The Times can ALWAYS find such people.
I'm guessing he caught the reporter's eye at the march. Interviewing a protestor of substance would have been boring. The hope was that he'd say something foolish? Be guaranteed to draw fire. Mockery, by extension, of the cause.
More likely his dad was in the same Harvard fraternity as the reporter. They don't go to marches and mix with the people, especially when they know there's zero chance anything they send back will be printed. Better to use your social connections for some upper-west-side human interest.
Was that the one when the cops sectioned off EVERY BLOCK of NE First Ave, and then closed access whenever one was half full? The whole upper east side was swarming with thousands and thousands of protesters JUST TRYING TO JOIN THE PROTEST, and the Times ran a photo from street level that looked like 5th Ave at lunchtime. There were helicopters that day, they could have used an aerial photo but no. Bastards never change, never learn.
Cursèd Daguerrotype
An extra point for the accent mark.
Now THAT'S what I call typing!
For many years i thought stereotyping meant using both hands...
This one's in stereo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LJ1i7222c
Hey, you got stereo-. It's the -sterbation part that tripped you up.
Absolutely brilliant! The whole ad campaign popped fully formed into my head like Athena giving Zeus a Pounding! Pounding! Pounding headache.
Zeus should have tried Godacin...sorry, I can;t help it
You are brilliant because you agree with me about this whole thing!! Or perhaps I agree with you? Whatever. But it does look like Erik got there before both of us.
Those who write for and those who own the media are fascists, fascist enablers, or to put the best foot on the whole thing merely people in love with strong authoritarian daddies. And since at this point what are ya gonna do? I am reminded of the Simpson's Halloween episode where the space aliens take over the bodied of both the presidential candidates and Lisa reveals all. But it doesn't matter cause "What ya gonna do?"
There was a window, between the end of the Watergate hearings and the beginning of the Carter Administration, where the media actually pretended to make a difference. But before, and especially after? Fascism-minded owners, all the way down.
It was a lot easier though in three channel days (CBS, NBC Red, NBC Blue, er ABC). And harder for the crooks to take over, too many eyes. Now with so many outlets.....
I think it is a lot more the fact that conservatives have now ceded the moral high ground, or morals period, and hippie punching' is how they justified it. The hell that Lewis Powell unleashed, "they need to hear our side" has destroyed the Republican Party, and that coupled with late-stage capitalism (I.e. steal everything for the stockholders as quickly as possible) has brought us dangerously close to destroying the country.
What gets me is that these jokers think Trump will give them a pass. That life will go on as is and they'll have lots of funny stories to tell and make a whole lotta money. Nope.
I'm thinking a lot like High Stage Stalinism with the Old Trumpists.
Bravo! Superbly played.
They better hope they don't have any desirable and profitable real estate that Dictator Trump might cast his eye on. The owners of Pebble Beach and Augusta National should be shitting themselves in fear. If Trump gets elected, Don Jr. is coming with an offer they can't refuse.
Bravo! Well stated and cogent.
I think it's another example of The Scourge of unpaid internships. I think "news reporter" has become of a desirable position for closely bred trustfunders. Sam Fuller would beat the shit out of any of them just for fun.
It's also pretty obvious that their cushy, high profile jobs are rapidly vanishing and they need Trump to create the National Enquirer world they thrive in so well.
I think it's funny that this full court press of pro-Trump bullshit is failing.
I really appreciate the parodies - You've earned your title of Internet Wit and all around Bon Vivant, but I'll tell you man,
Your straight commentary and news
are excellent.
I'm having a righteously fucked up day.
I apologize if this doesn't make any sense. I'm currently looking around for a big stick to beat someone to death with-
I know I'm going to hear from HR about this one.
"closely bred trustfunders" is right.
You're *already* having a fucked up day?
C'mon, man – salt of the earth, workin' the soil from 4am to midnight, spritzin' them bulbs, snappin' those portraits...cut the dude some slack!
Writing "Nobody wants to work anymore" and "retirement should be abolished" can take a lot out of you by the end of the day.
I was here at 5:15. I didn't t go 30 foot inside the door before I ran into a fucked up situation...( 60,000 asparagus crowns that have been improperly received plastic liner left in the crates-condensation forms with temperature change which encourages the growth of fungus which means we have to treat it with fungicide over the weekend. It was a stupid mistake that filled me with hate and anger. I am the Lorax around here and I speak for the trees and the asparagus and the daylilies and the roses and the seconds and all the rest. The person who made the mistake knows better and deserves beaten with a stick.
I take it you're not at home.
Deep breaths.
Yeah. Don't wanna go off half-oxygenated.
Hearted for poor old hardbit HR. We, your collected co-commenters, understand what HR goes thru.
Nurse! Get that man a shillelagh, stat!
I'm an English teacher/instructor in Japan. I've got a private student who's a medical doctor/researcher who likes to build his vocab by reading articles from Time magazine. (I subscribed to Time, among other publications, in my late teens-early 20s back in the 70s/80s). Anyway, our routine is that he picks out articles, reads them aloud, and I help with pronunciation and clarification of vocab, idiomatic stuff, and general nuance. We've been doing this once a week for about 10 years. Every once in a while I'll look him in the eye and say, "You know __-san, this article/paragraph/sentence is bullshit," and and go off on a mild rant about bothsiderism/bullshit/outright lies etc. I always apologize when I'm done, and he says, "It's OK, Rick, that's what I pay you for."
Does Japanese have a term equivalent to "bullshit?"
Probably, but I've made it a mission to avoid learning anything resembling a swear word in Japanese (as well as warning students against using them in English). Swearing in a foreign language requires complete mastery of usage, time, and place. The words I know are mostly related to lying/liars/etc.
You are wise. They are lucky to have you.
I heard that. A Japanese lady noted, Is there an easy way to be fluent in Japanese?
There is only one easy way.
Be born Japanese.
Well, fooey. I wrote a long story, then realized Rick don't want to know this much milder oath. (bail out Rick bail out) I say it to myself a lot. Learned it from my son years ago. Almost always in response to yet another defeat by my arch-nemesis, inertia.
"Wow, that hurt. Wonder what David was yelling before I suffered a mild concussion?"
The way this presents in my mail reader before I clicked on it, all it saw was "Well, fooey, I wrote a long story, then . . ."<br>
And that took me back to an instance nearly 30 years ago when someone submitted an article that I ended up chopping down to a headline, a photo, and a caption because that was really all it was. The author later called me up and said "Well, I wrote a long story . . . but your version is better!" (I'm pretty sure it helped his ego that I paid him full price for a feature article for that, um, thing.)
Ah, grasshopper, you learned the teaching early, as did I. "What's this?" new capability in the program blah blah blah. "Well I'm glad I was able to stop by and tell you the idea". "Yeah, boss, your idea was great. I'd be lost without you" (guy had zero sarcasm sense, so he takes it literally. Me and my buddy there would try to see which one of us would crack up the other first giving our status reports)
You can get PAID for calling out Time's bullshit?
Yeah, but not on a full time basis!
You'd be doin' perpetual OT just to keep up.
Sanity breaks are mandatory. That's just good mental hygiene.
Trump calls the press the "enemy of the people" and get his supporters so riled up that journalists like Katy Tur have to be escorted out of the arena by a phalanx of police so she does not get ripped limb from limb by the ravening MAGAs.
BUT . . .
Joe Biden did not hold a press conference during his first hundred days in office, so journalists like Katy Tur KNOW that Joe Biden is the real threat to freedom of the press.
Yeah, if everyone ignored the press it would be fatal to the press, so, if you're the press, Uncle Joe is in a pre-murderous state and must be stopped for the sake of...comity, or something...
Exactly, why isn't his press person making news every day like the ones for Trump and Bush always did? It's not the media's fault the Democrats make no effort to manipulate them.
No money in it. Can't be a D.C. celeb.
It's the difference between the hive mind and well, my party of lifelong allegiance (Excepting being for Winthrop Rockefeller in '68 and '70, my only dalliance). I'm still convinced there is a blast fax, yes low-tech fax, that gives them the script everyday. They're getting a script from somewhere, because it is obviously a damn script.
Meanwhile, 10 Democrats can't agree where to go to lunch, much less how to butt heads with duplicitous bastards, That;s problem A. Problem A1 is no liberal media powerhouses, because of problem A. What the blast fax is to the pols, FOX is to the useful idiots. So no clout either of intent or advertising draw. You can't shame these guys anymore. I really am at a loss. What can we use for a stick? We're fighting The Blob at this point.
Many yes -- but why are we surprised? "Inventing Reality" was published in the 1980s, revealing media corporations were owned by fascists-in-all-but name & spewing propaganda non-stop. The media landscape has only changed since then because driving clicks are all that matters, & so jabbing the outrage centers of the brain is all that's needed.
I was beginning to derive some small quanta of hope from long-form content on podcasts or YouTube (Some More News is one of my faves), but this past week, all I see are content creators shilling some product or other during each show.
Counterpoints!
The news business has been imploding for the last couple of decades due in large part to the collapse of newspaper advertising.
Sometimes they think promoting BLOTUS attracts an audience — that is, an audience they can keep. (They’ve been proven wrong but still they persist (😉).
There’s the biases of the owners — complete assholery and shitheadedness on the part of the Times’ publisher.
There’s a commitment to the horserace coverage because that’s what they think attracts an audience.
Slagging Dems is part attracting that fickle potential audience and/or media owners’ biases, maybe fear of what Dem control of things might do their wealth IYKWIMAITYD.
TheTimes, more now under current management than previously, doesn’t care about producing shitty —harmful — journalism (outsidePulitzer bait that gets ignored). Their focus on corporate profits which is by way of increasing the number of subscribers. That barely half the subscribers subscribe to the news is telling.
Of course, in a regressive, declining society, the audience for news isn’t huge to begin with…
I’ve really been around the block too many times… At least I’ve been to my last rodeo (Cody, WY, 2021, where I had the epiphany that the entire state needed to be in therapy).
"what Dem control of things might do their wealth IYKWIMAITYD"
You mean inconvenience them slightly?
Also, would love(?) to hear about Cody sometime. I assume you went to the actual rodeo, but what else about the place caught your...eye...?
Yes, yes, cost our overlords a pittance of their riches.
As for Cody, OMG, the PTSD…
Suffice to say, it suffered a huge excess of Christo-fascism.
I've been to Cody, and the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum. You're underselling it.
We were there about thirty years earlier and I found it attractive enough.
But, oy, that rodeo… So much Christo-fascism…
We then did a drive by of the Cody Cowboy Church.
Next morning, we split. It was a short stop on a ~7 week trip to the heartland of the Homeland.
Also discovered Kum & Go (RIP). In Iowa no less. It then became our gas stop of choice.
Wyoming's a beautiful state. Played a music festival in Buffalo bout 15 yes ago. Median income in Buffalo was $75,000 then. High school the size of UC Berkeley. Headliner that year was Michael Martin Murphy, his hit was Wildfire, but a big part of his show is a Salute to the American Indian. Halfway through, a couple of gen-u-wine cowboys next to me in the back said to me (and I had long hair) "does he know who he's talking to?"
Also, people should know they hold a rodeo in Cody every week. Every week.
Cody was sort of cute when we buzzed through in the early 90s. By 21, built up, the state was full of RWNJ — Cheney Country 😉. And the Christo-fascist rodeo.
The route in in 21 was through a zillion miles that like the Afghan boonies.
The entire vibe was… not all that happy, a society in sort of collapse.
Now, western Montana, more so Missoula specifically, is calling us back for the fourth time in three trips x-country this summer. Biga’s has the best pizza west of the Hudson.
Cody and Wyoming I can pass on. Then again, this summer’s route isn’t take us south from Montana anyway…
Just remembered. Yellowstone — the park. Yeas, that area’s gorgeous. Had a cool drive the non-tourist part on the way into Montana.
"That barely half the subscribers subscribe to the news is telling." imagine telling a time-traveller from the 20th Century that the hot thing at the Times is a *puzzle.*
Can’t recall and am disinterested in tracking down how the Athletic, cooking, games and the Wirecutter rank.
Of course, if those four was financing and supporting a good news operation (good on important stuff), who’d care. But because it’s subsidizing sociopathic journalism, it’s tragic or something.
As for someone from the future, telling someone from the present would likely be as boggled as one from the future.
How about that RFK Jr/Rodgers ticket? Gonna assure a Biden loss for sure — as if the EC and SCOTUS wasn’t enough assurance of that.
"Gonna assure a Biden loss for sure"
Seriously?
Ah, the eternal danger of sarcasm.
RFK’s election results will be no better than a wee poof of flatulence.
I like the the Athletic, cooking, games and the Wirecutter. Rarely read the news or Op-eds. What's so wrong with entertainment?
The entertainment is fine except for the bugs in sudoku and Strands’ beta-ness.
My points are that nearly of the Times’ subscribers have no interest in the hard news from an elite publication (now that I think about it, there’s no elite publication quality-wise in the US) and that that cohort is coincidentally subsidizing crap that’s harmful to our society. I have no problem that subscribers are avoiding the news side. I mean, it’s recommended. But it’s also a sign of historic media failure. No guilt trip intended.
Ðe Mediæval Tymes:
“Area skald regales pilgrimage-goers with riddles. Yntire story at 11, following ðe York Play of the Crucifixion.”
"You mean the crossword?"
"No... Not *exactly*..."
Puzzlinger than that!
Here's what news we could scrape together on our limited budget, brought to you by Wordle.
“And how it could negatively affect the Democrats”
But how's the press going to crank out those effortless horse race/baseball/football cliches when one of the candidates is promising the apocalypse? Easy- you put on your darkest shades and turn your head to the other guy's slightest even imaginary fault...
I saw an interview with Jordan Klepper, he was talking about that clip of Haley Supporters that he did, responding to the question, "If it comes down to Trump vs. Biden in November, who will you vote for?" Before that question, each was shown describing in lurid detail the danger that Trump represents: to our democracy, to our national security, etc. The big payoff is when they get the question, each contorts their face in pain, LONG pause, then, "Well, I guess Trump." Hilarious, right?
Anyway, in the interview, Klepper says they asked a lot of people at that Haley rally the same question, and "most of them said they wouldn't vote at all." Got that? MOST wouldn't vote at all, but the ones who came out with "Well, I guess Trump" after much face-contorting were funnier, so that's what we see. And I get that, dude's a comedian, you get your news from comedians, that's what you get. All is in service to the joke.
But showing his "serious" side to Jen Psaki on MSNBC, they both agree this is BIG trouble for Biden, if he can't figure out how to win these people over (I mean the five people who said they'd still vote for Trump after admitting he'd destroy America). If Biden can't persuade Republicans to vote for him, what chance does he have? What's wrong with his "messaging" that he hasn't got these people yet?
Do some basic arithmetic and if a third of Haley voters just leave the Presidential slot blank in November, Trump is cooked. That's what happened in Georgia in 2020, fifty thousand people filled out a straight-party Republican ballot but didn't vote for President, and that handed the state to Joe Biden. So the REAL story is all those people Jordan left on the cutting room floor, but "Gonna stay home, I guess" just isn't as laugh-inducing.
As for Jen Psaki and MSNBC, they will ALWAYS go with the take most likely to provoke panic in their liberal viewers. Gotta get those people to tune in tomorrow, somehow. And they can always tell themselves they're not trying to scare us, they're trying to WARN us.
What's their take on No Labels? Well, it will hurt Biden and help Trump, OF COURSE. Don't say they didn't warn you!
I think this is one of the underplayed stories, this drop-off in Trump's support. You see similar but lesser drops in Biden's support nominally, contradicted by the results of special elections that just show people showing up in droves to vote for reproductive freedom. At 50k feet, after a clinical assessment of poll sampling and special election results, it looks like Trump is toast and Biden will win comfortably.
But who can stay clinical at 50k feet when it looks like that treasonous fascist has so much of the deck stacked in his favor? If anything, we're seeing that a large slice of the nation - at least the 25% that IDs as GOP, from local big-box shoppers all the way to the Supreme Court - *really* yearns for a dictatorship.
I honestly don't have a clue how this will turn out, and think it's foolish to even try to predict. I live in Wisconsin, if I had to guess, Trump will win the state by 20,000 votes, or Biden will win by 20,000 votes, but it will be close. And dammit, it SHOULDN'T BE, but here we are. America, the roller-coaster ride from Hell.
All I'm asking for from the media is a little balance. Both of these candidates have problems, just as ALL candidates have problems, here's the ONE thing they could both-sides with no complaints from me.
Was just reading an article from Vox from 2018 about Hungary and how it slid into "soft fascism" and, mein Gott, the fucking PARALLELS with present America.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump
Thanks, I'll read it, but didn't Orban win some massive majority in the parliament when he first came to power? I think I remember something about having a more-than-two-thirds majority so he could easily push through constitutional changes. What separates Trump from other right-wing autocrats who come to power through elections (like Modi in India, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Poland's Law and Justice party) is those guys and their parties are actually popular, at least for a time.
Orban has been popular with the American right for a while now precisely because he offered them a model they could use that didn't involve military force and all that rude violence. The American right wants Hungarian-style fascism.
If they were trying to warn us, they'd cover Project 2025 more.
Thanks for this. The situation is infuriating, but not surprising, and the explanation is simple: Trump is good for their business model. Always has been.
Their business now is business, and business loves authoritarianism because it makes for a quiet, orderly, controlled economy.
The wingtips always figger the gummint will simply purchase whatever they make at inflated prices for eternity, or else...the gummint, on the other hand, figgers they can require mondo substantioso vig from every prospective corporatist as cost of entry to the game. Must be a lotta itchin' – So much backscratchin'!
It's true the legitimate media are subject to manipulation and that the Republicans/Fascists/Christianists have done a masterful job of neutralizing them. You know what's coming, right? I blame the Democrats, or as I like to call them, Doormatocrats. Why don't they make a similar effort at manipulation? That's's the more important question for getting any real world results. That's who we should be trying to change. Short of an independent studies Masters Degree from Brown and a trust fund, none of us is likely to get hired at the NYT, but we theoretically could influence the Democrats, who could then influence the legitimate media.
And yet, somehow, on every contentious issue from gay marriage to climate change to police brutality, eventually a large majority of the public ends up agreeing with the liberal/progressive view! Somebody must be doing that, right?
Yea, the people who agree with commonsense views, aided mostly by the legitimate media. I don't see that Dems play more than a small part. Republicans, on the other hand, are almost solely responsible for the lies and bullshit their followers swallow.
On the left, it's social movements that do all the persuasion work. The women's movement, the gay rights movement, the environmental movement, etc. Elected Dems do hardly anything except to wait until all the hard work of persuasion is done and then swoop in and claim "Sure, I was for this all along!" And you know what? I don't really mind. For legislation, you need legislators, let 'em take the credit as long as the goals of the movement get codified into law.
On the right, The Party IS The Movement. You don't see the arms-length relationship that elected Dems keep with their activist base. A single tweet sent out by a right-wing activist can be coming out of the mouth of a Republican Senator the very next day.
When I weigh all the pros and cons, I like our arrangement better.
Good points, but the social movements aren't targeting people who vote Republican who would not do so if they had much of a clue about what's going on. Democrats should be doing that. I don't see why it's even a question.
If we're targeting voters, it's a question about where the biggest payoff is. I'd like to see the Democrats targeting the roughly 50% who don't vote at all. Once someone's voted for a particular party, their identity tends to get wrapped up in that party and it's ten times as difficult to move them. Voters who haven't voted for anyone (and especially young voters who haven't yet formed a partisan identity) are the most productive target.
Convincing people to change their party identity is much harder than getting a non voter to start voting. It’s the difference between getting a Lakers fan to cheer for the Celtics vs getting a disinterested person to watch an NBA game for the first time .
Unfortunately and scarily, there seem to be a growing number of Very Serious Reasonable Liberals who are falling for the "TRANSES ARE COMING" bullshit.
Back when I had a Times subscription, the comment sections were full of 'em.
"theoretically could influence the Democrats" ah well, see
I could THEORETICALLY have sex with Scarlett Johansson.
Well, just take it easy with the hypothesis testing.
As far as I could tell, there was little or no mention of how the Democrats eviscerated Hur by quoting his transcript to him. So even when they try, Dems get largely ignored.
I hate to sound like a broken record here, but . . . they want to sell their product to both sides. Only one side buys the truth.
It’s the same reason someone like Roy struggles to find gainful employment in the field. Truth-tellers are a dime a dozen. They want professional turd-gilders like Bret Stephens and David Brooks to cloak the ol’ right-wing bullshit in a soothing coating of pseudo-civility in the hope they can get liberals to choke it down without too many canceling their subscriptions. Now THAT’S an art.
"Democrats likely to lose" is a story liberals will read because they're anxious and want to stay up-to-date in their anxiety, and a story conservatives will read for the pure fun of it.
"Republicans likely to lose" gets ZERO Republican readership, and liberals will avoid it because they're worried they might be lured into dangerous COMPLACENCY.
"up-to-date in their anxiety" is very good.
If you don't hit refresh constantly, you may go out for lunch and miss the coup.
Yeah, missed it, but the strawberry/mango smoothie was To Die For!
Remember Media Whores Online? They will live forever in my memory just because they gave Chris Matthews the nickname Tweety. (I think it was them.)
Ah, the late, long-lamented Horse.
P.S. I haven’t watched any news since 2016.
Here, let me catch you up! (how much time have you got?)
I’m OK. Thanks.
The correct response is, of course: Are there any news?
At this point, I think you have to add to all the other motivations for the elite media to propagandize for Trump, that the owners and the prominent journalists have a well-founded fear for their lives if they cross Trump and he gains office.
But they can't possibly believe he'll remember and be grateful?
"But we helped you gain power!" they'll cry as they're loaded onto the trains.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/14/2229270/-Cartoon-Tom-the-Dancing-Bug-takes-a-look-into-the-future-in-the-New-York-Times-newsroom?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=comics&pm_medium=web
I laughed, I cried.
Media working overtime to forget as hard as they can that King Toad spent the last eight years referring to them as "enemies of the people".
You're not taking him LITERALLY, are you? How unsophisticated of you.
brownshirts all the way down...
I just realized we could’ve been calling Moms For Liberty “Brownskirts” all this time.
OOF, AND 1.75 marks*!
*I agonize over the cues I've not picked up today.
"Are those my cues?"
"Yes, and they must be dry by now! Why don't you pull them up out of the cellophane before they scorch?"