Like. But I've always remembered that the press mostly hated Nixon (after a short while, although to be completely fair they seemed to hate LBJ and Humphrey more). They loved them some Reagan and the elder Bush, and the younger Bush most of the time (after 9/11 until shortly after the Crash). They certainly loved them some McCain, but because a suitable and presentable Black man was running against him they couldn't pile on as if the Democrat had been say a White woman of some years.
Take your point, but the press couldn’t drag Nixon much because he mostly followed the playbook. They could only attack him when he went rogue, as when he prejudged the Manson case, or acted foolishly, as when he gave White House security those weird uniforms. Watergate cut all bets because it was Trump-level weird. Or so I recall.
Forgot about the uniforms. Just took another look at them. Already they were heading to the militaristic sort of thing so beloved of so much of the country right now.
Yeah, I recall big time support for Law and Order. You're right, Watergate cut all bets, but before that, I recollect the media support tending toward Nixon. Few people liked his awkward, cringeworthy demeanor, but until Watergate, there were all those hippies and anti-war hooligans to hate. People (including media people) DID recall his nasty McCarthy era endeavors, but Vietnam was Johnson's war (except for in 1968 when Nixon bought it, but we didn't know the details at the time) and Johnson was so crude it was easy to pile on. So my recollection is a tiny bit different than Lawguy's.
Trump's "knack for the zinger label" has told me an awful lot more about both Trump's supporters and the media than those zingers ever revealed about Donald Trump. In any other context, such zingers would be viewed for what they are: School-yard taunts one might expect to hear from the mouth of a 5th grader. They bespeak both an intellect and a level of emotional development barely at the middle-school level.
And conservatives laugh uproariously at these things and view them as the height of wit. And the media repeats them, parrot-like, because they, too, are on that same middle-school wavelength.
And all of this tells me that faaaaar more of my fellow citizens are emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged than I have ever wanted to admit.
They’re not going in Bartlett’s Quotations, that’s for sure. (Or maybe they are — what the hell, everyone else’s standards are plummeting, why not theirs?)
For many years I fretted that my interior landscape was bleak, disordered, insalubrious. Then I began reading the comment threads at the SF Chronicle and other newspaper sites, and on (shudder) Yahoo stories, and realized that I am actually, grading on the curve, the very model of mental health. This would be comforting but for the realization that there are so many seething adolescents going about in “adult” disguise, secretly gloating over their moral deformities, and that they walk among us—or rather, that *we* walk among *them*.
Trump's stock-in-trade is largely to tell (by demonstration) 'See! You're wonderful the way you are. If you had millions or billions more, your tastes wouldn't be any better, your manners or morals wouldn't be any better, your goals wouldn't be any higher─THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS, THEY'RE SCAMS. This is a world of shit, and a better life only means getting more of it and working less for it, and hurting anyone who makes you unhappy for even a moment.'.
as if anyone could believe “the public’s understanding of important issues” is what Trump is concerned with.
Well Trump is concerned with important issues to Trump. Like staying out of jail, making much moolah, keeping PoC down, getting much adulation at his campaign events, and the public needs to understand how great he is to ensure they stay on the correct side of these important issues
Commenter 'Derelict's' observation that " faaaaar more of my fellow citizens are emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged" has been scaring the bejezuz out of me for many decades. Guns ! Nixon, Reagan, Bush and their wars. How to reconcile it all with 'truth, justice and the American way'? But now, Drumpf; belligerence, arrogance, purposive ignorance, gleeful Philistinism. Red America personified, mostly.
Like. But I've always remembered that the press mostly hated Nixon (after a short while, although to be completely fair they seemed to hate LBJ and Humphrey more). They loved them some Reagan and the elder Bush, and the younger Bush most of the time (after 9/11 until shortly after the Crash). They certainly loved them some McCain, but because a suitable and presentable Black man was running against him they couldn't pile on as if the Democrat had been say a White woman of some years.
I was 22 when Nixon was elected.
Take your point, but the press couldn’t drag Nixon much because he mostly followed the playbook. They could only attack him when he went rogue, as when he prejudged the Manson case, or acted foolishly, as when he gave White House security those weird uniforms. Watergate cut all bets because it was Trump-level weird. Or so I recall.
Forgot about the uniforms. Just took another look at them. Already they were heading to the militaristic sort of thing so beloved of so much of the country right now.
Handing Elvis Presley a DEA badge. Yeah, Nixon!
Yeah, I recall big time support for Law and Order. You're right, Watergate cut all bets, but before that, I recollect the media support tending toward Nixon. Few people liked his awkward, cringeworthy demeanor, but until Watergate, there were all those hippies and anti-war hooligans to hate. People (including media people) DID recall his nasty McCarthy era endeavors, but Vietnam was Johnson's war (except for in 1968 when Nixon bought it, but we didn't know the details at the time) and Johnson was so crude it was easy to pile on. So my recollection is a tiny bit different than Lawguy's.
Trump's "knack for the zinger label" has told me an awful lot more about both Trump's supporters and the media than those zingers ever revealed about Donald Trump. In any other context, such zingers would be viewed for what they are: School-yard taunts one might expect to hear from the mouth of a 5th grader. They bespeak both an intellect and a level of emotional development barely at the middle-school level.
And conservatives laugh uproariously at these things and view them as the height of wit. And the media repeats them, parrot-like, because they, too, are on that same middle-school wavelength.
And all of this tells me that faaaaar more of my fellow citizens are emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged than I have ever wanted to admit.
They’re not going in Bartlett’s Quotations, that’s for sure. (Or maybe they are — what the hell, everyone else’s standards are plummeting, why not theirs?)
I think the latest edition of Bartlett's has Churchill's immortal framing of the crisis in Europe in 1939 as "Neener, neener! Hitler's a weiner!"
It’s shocking how many alleged adults are the same awful people they were in junior high, just older and with a mortgage.
For many years I fretted that my interior landscape was bleak, disordered, insalubrious. Then I began reading the comment threads at the SF Chronicle and other newspaper sites, and on (shudder) Yahoo stories, and realized that I am actually, grading on the curve, the very model of mental health. This would be comforting but for the realization that there are so many seething adolescents going about in “adult” disguise, secretly gloating over their moral deformities, and that they walk among us—or rather, that *we* walk among *them*.
Trump's stock-in-trade is largely to tell (by demonstration) 'See! You're wonderful the way you are. If you had millions or billions more, your tastes wouldn't be any better, your manners or morals wouldn't be any better, your goals wouldn't be any higher─THERE ARE NO SUCH THINGS, THEY'RE SCAMS. This is a world of shit, and a better life only means getting more of it and working less for it, and hurting anyone who makes you unhappy for even a moment.'.
The Charlie the Tuna analogy is so perfect that I’m angry with myself for not thinking of it!
(And like the tuna, slowly and almost without fanfare going extinct.)
Now there’s an angle I hadn’t considered!
Likewise.
“Tergiversate” was a new one on me. Nice to live in a world that requires so many synonyms for waffling.
as if anyone could believe “the public’s understanding of important issues” is what Trump is concerned with.
Well Trump is concerned with important issues to Trump. Like staying out of jail, making much moolah, keeping PoC down, getting much adulation at his campaign events, and the public needs to understand how great he is to ensure they stay on the correct side of these important issues
Commenter 'Derelict's' observation that " faaaaar more of my fellow citizens are emotionally stunted and intellectually challenged" has been scaring the bejezuz out of me for many decades. Guns ! Nixon, Reagan, Bush and their wars. How to reconcile it all with 'truth, justice and the American way'? But now, Drumpf; belligerence, arrogance, purposive ignorance, gleeful Philistinism. Red America personified, mostly.