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.
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?"
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'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."
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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?"
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.
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."
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
P.S. I haven’t watched any news since 2016.
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.