Donald Trump is an awful president. But, Frank Bruni writes, in these perverse times, his sheer awfulness works to his advantage:
That’s Trump’s edge over everybody. That’s his gift. He can do no wrong because he’s all wrong. He never really shocks because he’s a perpetual shock.
When someone frolics at the nadir for as long as he has, there’s nowhere to go but sideways.
Trump has always been an habitual bottom feeder, establishing his brand at the nadir of human experience:
It was clear that he had amassed his fortune through convenient bankruptcies, unsavoury alliances and stiffed creditors.
His racial demagogy had been well established in his insistence that Barack Obama was an illegitimate president born outside the United States.
And his misogyny? Megyn Kelly was able to ask that famous question at the first 2016 Republican primary debate — the one with a litany of his gross physical put-downs of women — because they had all been chronicled, recorded, transcribed. There was no running from his boorishness. Boorishness was his brand.
And that boorishness appeals to cynical voters. There is only one way to deal with him -- stop concentrating on the boorishness and focus on the corruption:
The way out isn’t clear, but a few necessary adjustments are. We in the media should do less “horseface” and more ballooning deficits, dysfunctional federal agencies, disgraceful cabinet members and reckless judicial appointments. Too often the substantial sinks beneath the saucier stuff, yet another factor that favors the president and lets him off the hook.
The real issue is what Trump is doing to his country -- and to the rest of the world.
10 comments:
It's more than media, Owen. The progressive movement and those who claim to represent the progressive viewpoint, have to lay out a clear vision. At the moment we see a conservative captured populist front versus a we are not them lost left. There is a substantial voting population in the US and much of the so-called democratic world that sees the option as vote for the troglodytes or stay home.
I'm afraid you may be right, Toby. Until progressives give people something to vote for -- not just we're not them -- the autocrats will get their way.
Toby's not right.
As much as the US has reached a point where the major faults in the political system are being exposed and exploited by the moralless,
The First Estate has failed.
Every Democratic Cantidate in the US Midterms is running on local and National issues. The MSM is not reporting it, preferring easily cut and pasted memes:
Headlines on the home page of the NYT right now:
– Donald Trump’s Perverse Advantage
– What if the Republicans Win Everything Again?
– Democrats Need Latinos at the Polls. But Will They Turn Out?*
Lot's of fact free doom and gloom, Democrats in dissarray,
and Horseracing.
* African American women are actually the ones that "carry" Democrats across the line, and boy are they pissed at the Rethugs and turning out.
Meanwhile, Rethug's are running on "Illegal Immigrants, Democratic Mobs, Socialism and how they are going to save the ACA.
The US MSM is actively involved in selling "doom and gloom" to Democratic voters and Democrat leaning Independents in order to supress the vote.
We got 5 years , 9.5 billion column inches and 93,000 front pages of "Emailz", "Clinton Foundation", and "Clinton Cash" fake scandals and 2 days of Trump Tax Fraud.
The US MSM is busy following the ReThug agenda and chasing after Still Dead Briebart's salty ball in the hopes they can catch them and suck on them.
The MSM is no "friend" of Progressives, Environmentalists, Human Rights, Economic Justice, the list goes on and on.
Those are opinion pieces you're referring to, Jay. the Times and the Washington Post have been doing a lot of digging and have exposed a great deal of Trumpian corruption. The real question is,"How many Americans are like Trump?" He -- and they -- don't read.
That would be a nope Owen,
There were 978 days where Emailz!!!!!! was both the Front Page "news" story in the NYT and at least 3 of the Opinion Column's covered it as well.
The New York Times spent 16 years spiking investagative news stories about The Insane Clown POSus, 964 in 2015/16 alone.
The NYT Trump Tax Fraud news story, was actually first written in August 2016, but was spiked. The NYT "covered it" for two days as a news story and two Opinion Columns were written about it.
The NYT has not written a single "news" story covering the platforms of Democratic Party Cantidates, including the platforms pre and post Primary, of the Upset Cantidates in New York City. For that information you have to got to the cantidatesweb sites or the New York Magazine.
Meanwhile, the NYT has written another Haliography normalizing the Nazi's, this time The Proud Boys, shortly after violent attacks on protestors outside the New York Republican Club.
Wapo has gotten a lot better, but they still engage in horseracing and Celtus Safari's,
And of course, you have to go to local Media and anti-hate sites to find out that Florida's Republican Party Chair participated with skinheads and Proud Boys, wearing Proud Boy gear, in a riot outside Democratic Party Campaign Office. Funny how in the aftermath, he claimed he didn't know who the Proud Boys were.
As another example:
http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=22246
The FTFNYT has spent 70 years describing the Regimes ruleing The Kingdom of Sawdi Arabia, most recently Prince Mohammed Bone Saw, as reformers.
There's a reason why the shortly lived Public Ombudsman, brought in to clean up the FTFNYT biased reporting, now works at the WaPo.
I agree with you about New York Magazine, Jay. And I agree that the Times was snookered in the run up to the Iraq War. But the work that Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmitt have done deserves praise. The Post -- with people like Eugene Robnison and conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin -- has also done excellent work.
Unfortunately, cable news networks chose their sides long ago. But I am impressed with Rachel Maddow. She lays her case out meticulously without shouting.
Maggie Haberman is also known as " stenographer Haberman", and she's had to quit Twitter many times, for getting "punked" by White House Satffers and "Michael Bannon".*
* the moniker The Insane Clown POSus used to use and probably still does when he wants to feed a line of BS to the Media, "off the record".
The Anonamous OpEd should have been a wake up call, not only for the Media, but for the Readers.
A perfect example, is Meuller. He doesn't leak, his investigation is airtight. We find out what he's actually doing, what lines of investigation he's follwing, when he drops indictments or hands sub-cases over to other Courts and Grand Juries.
And yet, every week there's half a dozen stories on what, supposedly, Meuller is doing, all by "informed sources".
1/2 of these stories are leaked Turd Polishing by the Indicted and The Suspects.
1/2 of these stories have been The White Supremacy House and Soviet Republican's trying to "control the narrative".
All these stories have been wrong, built on half truths and outright lies.
What's a Journalist supposed to do when an Anonamous Souce lies to or deliberately misleads them?
They are supposed to do a follow up story pointing that out, or amend and update the origional story, and Never Use That Source Again.
What's a Journalist supposed to do when an Anonamous Souce lies to or deliberately misleads them repeatedly?
They are supposed to burn them and strip away their anonaminity.
When's the last time you ever saw that in the MSM?
In contrast, when Mary Wheeler at Empty Wheel learned that one of her "trusted, anonamous sources", was actually using her to aid in The Insane Clown POSus's Coverup, burned her "source" to the FBI and informed her readers that she had done so and how it had effected her past coverage of the Trunp/Russia Collusion.
Jennifer Rubin has recently done good work, but there is a reason her nickname is Benghazi Rubin.
Maggie and Michael most famously claimed that Don McGahn had "turned on" the Insane Clown POSus and was cooperating with the Meuller Investigation back in April. Funny, not so much.
While there are a few good reporters out there, mostly at McClatchy and the Wapo, there's way too many "access" journalists and crap reporters.
Another example, close to home. For over 2 decades, there has been a Clique of drug addled Senior Administration running the local University.
When the past President was let go, the University said it was "differences of direction", and that's what the local news said. Orderly Transition. Everbody in town knows it was because she was having moly parties with students. When the head of Student's Services drove his car head on into a logging truck, it was " job stress and marital stress", not the fact he was about to be fired for taking drug fueled sexual assaults to the Ministry. When the head of Foreign Student's recruitment died of a fentanyl overdose at a Confrence in Victoria, it was a "personal tragedy", although everbody knew he and his staff had been high on coke for 15 years.
I take your point, Jay, that some of the powers that be have been master manipulators of the media -- none more so than Donald J. Trump. That said, there are still reliable sources out there. And, on the subject of sources, no one uses anonymous sources more than Bob Woodward. His prose is workmanlike. And he, too, has been accused of being a stenographer. But his record for accuracy speaks for itself.
Thanks for the link, Jay. The Saudis have worked for years to present a positive face to the world. But the truth is very disturbing.
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