Trump’s entire persona has been built on lies and misinformation from long before he started running for President. Th media has played along with Trump because it made “good copy.”
Now the monster they were instrumental in creating has grown large enough to control them. If there is one thing that the media cannot abide it is that the media is shown disrespect. Looking back over the last several years the only time that the media has pushed back from their “false equivalency” approach to making up their stories is when someone has shown disrespect to the media. Then they come out unanimously on the side of themselves expressing outrage that they have been disrespected.
Now they have to take a long look at what their intentional disregard for the facts has brought us. They can start by actually reporting the facts and abandoning the “equivalency” standard and replacing it with the facts.
Not too likely because even more than Donnie Short Fingers the media does not admit to having been wrong.
Thursday and yesterday were really really REALLY bad days for Trump and his spokespeople. On Thursday Ivanka and Donald Jr. were pilloried and exposed for what at best could be described as imperious callowness, and in Donald Jr’s case could be a Freudian Anti-Semitic Slip. Judge Curiel denied the Trump motion to re-schedule the trial in the Trump U case into 2017, having already postponed it beyond the election and denied the release of the video of HO’s pre-trial deposition. He also called bullshit on the Trump lawyer’s reasons for requesting the adjournment. I think this is a major blow to Trump and means that instead of flying off to rest and recover after his electoral loss, he is going to be facing the music after years of holding the plaintiff claimants at bay as he is so used to doing. Yesterday was sort of like a self inflicted Pearl Harbor in terms of the damage to his credibility.
I am dying to see the polls for the period following September 13th, and including Thursday and yesterday.
I liked the game but Trump isn’t a game.
There are real consequences, already. Escaping responsibility isn’t really escaping, it’s prolonging, it’s playing dodgeball that eventually everyone winds up getting hit at.
The media is really in a pickle here. They have admitted to being played and to tagging along like little puppies to hopefully get their next treat.
If they reimmerse themselves right back into repeating his every utterance and claiming it’s all equal, then they take a massive credibility hit and frankly, they don’t have much to give.
Who knows, when all is said and done, the outrageousness of Trump may just be the thing it took to snap the media out of their trend away from news and into the entertainment for profit mode.
I don’t think the glory days are ever coming back but at least they could not participate in the rapid decline of the nation’s morality while they sort of do the news.
The door to sanity is wide open and the maniac is practically begging the holders of the key to walk through it.
At my local newspapers comments section the Trumpeteers were aroused by a new conspiracy that it was Sidney Blumenthal who first broached the birther issue to a former head of McClatchy. Doesn’t explain why Trump spent the next eight years hammering on the ridiculous conspiracy but in their minds it at least put the heat on Hillary as the guilty one once again.
Yup, and the up and comers like Amy Chositz at the NYT are following Mitchell’s lead like students in a classroom. How to be acceptable false equivalency MSM presenters with a side of bithciness ala Mo Dowd.
Good point. And in that sense we are now in a national I.Q. Test and a Democratic Party I.Q, test.
I cannot say whether or not the general public (I am NOT talking about Trump voters, I am talking about swing people) will allow Trump to bullshit and dissemble, while Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell pander to him.
But we have to allow for the possibility and PUSH BACK on the unfairness of False Equivalency. We also have to get these Millennial kids off the Gary Johnson bandwagon. Johnson may like weed and seem “cool” but his policies do NOT support these kids, Libertarians are type who would pass a dying man on the street and–most importantly–a vote for Johnson can result in a President Trump.
Okay, who hacked the AP and substituted journalism for the story that was supposed to go out on the wire?
Holy crap, I hope Liz Spayd was sitting down with her smelling salts handy when this came over the wire. But at least she can take comfort in the fact that the Silver Alert Lady didn’t transgress journalistic standards so crassly.
In a typical Trumpian tantrum he turned around and lashed out with another lie about Hillary after he finally admitted that “birtherism” was a collection of lies and then compounded that lie with his implied threat against her by saying her SS detail should drop their guns “because she wants to do away with the 2nd Amendment.” Emotionally he is a 5 year old. Intellectually, not a lot older.
Yes. I don’t know any details about Mrs. Greenspan’s obvious loathing of Mrs. Clinton, but my (based on years of experience) speculation is that it’s a fucking schoolgirl pettiness that Andrea probably doesn’t even know she exhibits.
The two women are almost exactly the same age. One of them was brainy and cute, the other was pretty. Andrea suffered from what I’ve always called “Pretty Girl Syndrome” – where they are so adorable from birth through high school that they never develop any other aspect of themselves except that they look real good and can get men to pay attention to them. Hillary suffered from the fact that she was smarter than most everybody and ambitious and knew that she would not win the swimsuit competition so she overcompensated in being the clever one and never bothered with worrying about whether some guy was going to take her places.
In Andrea’s mind, she was supposed to win the Rock Star guy – the tall, handsome, smooth-talking, sax player. Hell, all the girls wanted that one. It just so happened that the cool guy was also brainy, so it took him further than most of that type fellow get to go. What a catch!
Meanwhile, Cute and Brainy attracted the attention of Rock Star and Pretty Girl had to end up settling for Well-Established and Sober Daddy Figure to take her to the prom. She hoped that everyone would see he got to drive his Own Car that night because 1) he was old enough and 2) he owned one, but nobody noticed. They were watching Rock Star and the girl on his arm.
And they still do.
Edited: Not that I believe Hillary is subordinate to her husband in any way. But Andrea attaches plenty to the belief that the other girl only gets noticed because she won the best guy.
One of Chris Matthews’s round table guests yesterday, a young woman with the Daily Mail (IIRC), who I think is a conservative, said essentially the same thing, that it wouldn’t be a big deal because it was a Friday and by Monday people will have moved on. Other guests, including Eugene Robinson, disagreed. Hopefully, it will be the big topic of the Sunday shows, and reporters will push their questions when Donnie finally takes questions. And I hope in the first debate that Lester Holt questions Donnie about the reasons for his putative about-face.
Also, don’t know if you meant the “press corpse” instead of “press corps” intentionally, but I like it.
Most white American do not truly get the toxicity of “birtherism.” It not merely about promoting conspiracy theories or lying. It goes to the core of people’s identities.
As an Asian-American, I detest being asked “Where are you from?” or having to prove my communication skills. I have seeing myself portrayed as a sidekick on television shows, never the main hero. I have seeing myself portrayed in the media as a good worker, but not the leader. And I detest having to justify myself as American to others. It is my country, and I refuse to be made to feel a stranger in my own homeland.
To make the President have to prove his own American-ness is one of the little stings in the heart for those of us he are too often made to feel less American than others. Actually, it is more like stab in the heart — but you shield your American heart in the same armored coating that contains and hides your anger, and the stabs don’t hurt as much.
This is correct, and once again the age old cliché rings true: Follow the Money…
Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: "It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS"
11:26 AM PST 2/29/2016 by Paul Bond
Leslie Moonves can appreciate a Donald Trump candidacy.
Not that the CBS executive chairman and CEO might vote for the Republican presidential frontrunner, but he likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.
“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” he said of the presidential race.
