Spurred on by Conway’s lengthy and deeply dishonest interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo last week
I watched that interview. So much contempt for truth. Even her smile was a lie.
It was agonizing. Cuomo deserves a medal of some sort.
So, Mags (can I call you Mags? Thanks so much) … tell me, Mags, how is it you didn’t figure out until now that it’s time to go into the No KellyAnne zone when the rest of us figured out it out when she started spouting nonsense about alternative facts and The Bowling Green Massacre?
"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election." – Otto von Bismarck
A medal for enduring that, but a slap in the face for putting her on in the first place.
Her and Sarah, identical twins in every way except looks.
I hate to be the finger-wagging grownup about this but without having read everything she’s written I’m not aware this one WaPo columnist was until now a fierce defender of KAC’s unimpeachable veracity. She’s publicly recommending that the television networks comprehensively ban from their broadcasts a highly placed official in a presidential administration. The fact that KAC routinely says clownishly absurd things is something everyone is well aware of. The entire administration is unprecedentedly deceitful; it’s a corporate culture. The TV folks are trapped because everyone willing to speak for the Trump side is like that. If you ban them all, you can’t do business the way you always have. The argument, by implication, says we’ve arrived at that point. There’s nothing naive about it. She’s insisting, from what I see here, that the networks be realistic.
From your well-written post to my immediate reaction to this story:
Rod (“The Twilight Zone”) Serling.
What if everything after 7 November 2016 was a collective dream?
I’m not aware that she’s been a defender of KAC (in fact, I suspect she hasn’t been). Still, my larger point remains, (and I think you share it) … why do you bother to speak with people who will reflexively lie even when the truth would serve them better?
Collect the facts, reach conclusions, and lay them before the reader/viewer. That’s how you have to “do business” with this collection of Cretins and liars. At least these asshats haven’t heard of Epimenides’ Paradox.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw their stones (not Roger). Has Ms Sullivan discussed yet the WaPo’s (and similar outlets) propensity for cultivating the unnamed source who lies and gets that lie into print over and over and over, without being eventually branded and named as an outrageous unreliable witness and prevaricator? Not yet. Or the unchecked/unedited guest “editorial” written by somebody whose CV/bio is wildly incomplete and deliberately shaved to not mention who he/she is currently really working for? Not yet.
You may be right that he shouldn’t have had her on the show, but I’m not sure, partly because I don’t know who his usual audience is.
I do think that having her on for twenty minutes gave her a lot of time to display her contempt and dishonesty, and she certainly made full use of every second. At times she was even preening. Her boss may have liked it but beyond that I doubt she did herself any favors.
I mean, look, she even moved Margaret Sullivan to take a stand in the Post!
First, this is not a defense of the networks. I haven’t ever had cable, and never watch them regularly, so that’s how much I value them. The fact is, they’ve had these two-viewpoint interview talk shows since TV came along. There’ve been reams written about the inherent problems with doing opinion journalism that way, far more than we can get at here. Briefly, it never worked well; today it doesn’t work at all. We see that. So do they. They’re not stupid. But it’s their business model; millions are invested in it, and if they changed they might fail to draw viewers and get fired. As far as public honesty, it’s one thing to tell a significant other, “You know, your dad can be a jerk sometimes.” It’s another thing to say it publicly. These people are mired in what they’ve always done; they know it doesn’t work, but for various reasons they don’t know where to go from here. They’re not stupid, they’re certainly not “complicit,” and they’re competent. Unfortunately what they’re competent at doesn’t work. It’s not a comfortable position and I have some empathy for those who find themselves in it. It a time of rapid change, most of us should, because you may find yourself in the same place next Christmastime.
It is dangerous to ban folks who are part of the administration, they should be allowed to speak, but they should also expect and get immediate factchecking and pushback from hosts. Maybe even cut her mic when she goes nonstop lying. Feel free to stop inviting the non-administration flacks, they add nothing.
Since Trump was elected I’ve seen many more instances of hosts cutting an interview short because the interviewee won’t answer questions and becomes combative. Hell, they had security show Stephen Miller out the other day.
KAC is merely playing her role as la mierdita, repeating and amplifying the lies of the big sack of crap she works for.
Do you mean you’re calling for journalists to do there jobs? I know that’s a revolutionary concept after all.
The entire GOP does this. They can’t make sound arguments for their increasingly incoherent policies, so they make fallacious, lying ones. “Brawndo’s got what plants crave: electrolytes.” With a certain slice of the electorate it works.
What’s needed is a real-time interpreter for the fact-impaired.
Imagine a world where none of these liars get any air time except on faux news. It is bad for everyone’s mental health hearing this crap over and over. One begins to feel that it’s always been this way, that liars are invited onto talk shows to lie and we all think it’s normal.
That certain slice of the electorate needs to get a BS detector to compensate for their lack of critical thinking. That is what made the Russian social media disinformation campaign succeed.
The coffee isn’t working this morning. Maybe there is still a can of Brawndo in the fridge.