In The Marketplace Of Ideas

Media Matters For America:

We now have further confirmation that Fox News’ role as a mouthpiece for Donald Trump is affecting the network’s bottom line.

According to a report by Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair, the network is struggling to sell ad space on their 9 and 10 PM respective programs.

While Fox News dominated the ratings in May—a fact Trump bragged about on Saturday—the network is having new difficulties monetizing its most pro-Trump programming. According to three sources briefed on the numbers, advertising revenues for Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are down in recent months. “The pro-Trump thing isn’t working. We can’t monetize DACA and the wall and that right-wing shit,” one staffer said. “Despite all the hype on Hannity, they can’t sell it,” another insider told me. (Tucker Carlson’s show is faring better, sources said).

But until some management imposes real standards and consequences at Fox News, it’s up to activists and advertisers to shoulder the burden. As Media Matters president Angelo Carusone wrote in October:

Mostly driven by concerns around digital advertising, companies are becoming increasingly mindful about brand safety and intentionality in that advertising. And that mindfulness is starting to influence other advertising decisions as well, like television sponsorships.

Companies do not want their advertising to be associated with rank partisanship, bigotry, or deceit. They recognize that it’s bad for business. But Fox News continues to offer all three in spades, and as a result, I suspect it is beginning to have a downward effect on the network’s commercial viability as a whole.

Bottom line is this: Fox News’ ad revenue plummeted. It’s likely largely attributable to Hannity’s growing advertiser losses. And it also appears to reflect a deeper vulnerability in Fox News’ business model of bigotry, deceit, and partisanship.

Today's Tweet

I don't call 'em Press Poodles for nuthin', y'know.

Trump, Monday: THE SKY IS YELLOW!
Trump, Tuesday: THE SKY IS GREEN!
New York Times: Trump's Understanding Of Sky Evolves

— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich) June 2, 2018

Today's Tweet

The simple fact that this shit still seems to be something of a surprise for you is why 45*'s attacks are effective - you insist on acting like Press Poodles, and the criticism sticks.

Wow. Lesley Stahl, speaking at the Deadline Club Awards, says she once asked Trump why he continues to relentlessly attack the press.

His answer: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you." pic.twitter.com/YVvDTD0Pm9

— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) May 22, 2018

Today's Chart

As expected - and for the 20th year in a row - a coupla things come into pretty sharp focus.

The first is re-affirmation that the reason DumFux News and "conservatives" bitch about liberal bias is almost solely because they're way off to the right.

click to embiggen

The second item is that DumFux news has extended its losing streak to 22 years.

No Pulitzer
No Peabody
No Polk
No Hillman

Zero Zip Zilch Nada

Today's Poodle-ry

Press Poodles continue to pimp the myth that says the history of the Republican Party began with an escalator ride in Trump Tower in 2015.

Michael Edison Hayden, Newsweek:

Overt anti-Semites have been slowly creeping into Republican politics in the aftermath of President Trump’s successful, populist candidacy, and now one of them has a fighting chance of representing the Republican Party in a Senate race.
No, doofus - shit-heels like Patrick Little have felt very much at home in the GOP for decades. 45* just pried up the rock they live under, gave them a sense that they're not really the inveterate racist assholes they are, and turned 'em loose.

This is not Trumpism. He has not remade the GOP in his image. 

45* is the near-perfect reflection of what the GOP is now - and has been for a good long time.

hat tip = driftglass

On Secrecy And Security

...and good government.

JFK, American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961:

"We decided long ago that the dangers of unwarranted and excessive concealment of pertinent facts far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it."

"Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions."

"Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it."

"And there is grave danger in an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment."

This was mostly about trying to have a conversation about where to draw the line.

And drawing lines is what the whole thing is about to begin with - because compromise; you don't get everything you want; checks and balances, ya big dope.

An awful lot of our little experiment in self-government depends on the honor of the people we put in office.

We fuck it up sometimes, and we elect Huey Long; Dick Nixon; Warren G Harding; Joe McCarthy; Rob Blagojevich; Tom Price; Billy Tauzin - the list goes on forever - but we turn it around and we get it back on track, and the way we do that is by taking our responsibilities seriously enough to insist on making the system of Checks and Balances work, and to hold ourselves accountable for it.

In a democratic republic, the quality of our government is only as good as the work we're willing to put into it.

Yeah, But The Emails

Mary Louise Kelly, WaPo:

Around 3 p.m. that day, massive news broke. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security released a terse statement, declaring that Russia had “directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” In other words, the leaders of the intelligence community were for the first time publicly fingering Russia for the Democratic National Committee hack, and not only that: “Only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”

I had attempted to take Oct. 7 off, and I have a vivid memory of standing on the sideline of my son’s soccer practice, scanning the statement on my phone and realizing that my weekend was shot. But before I finished filing for the NPR newscast, another shoe dropped. At 4:02 p.m., David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post tweeted, “stand by for some news about @realDonaldTrump.” One minute later, his story on the “Access Hollywood,” “Grab ’em by the p----” video went live, instantly imperiling Trump’s candidacy.

And still the news gods were not done. Just when you thought the afternoon could not possibly get nuttier, 4:32 p.m. brought a tweet from WikiLeaks. “RELEASE: The Podesta Emails,” it read. Some 2,000 messages from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s personal Gmail account were posted immediately; WikiLeaks claimed to have tens of thousands more. Soon reporters would be mining a document dump that included both serious campaign communications and Podesta’s risotto recipe.
That last bit - the part about how reporters were combing through the emails like a bunch of grade school little brothers who've found their big sister's diary, and making no perceptible effort to make sure we were well-informed about the link between those emails and the fact that the whole goddamned Spook Network was telling us the Russians were fucking with our election.

Now, of course, they blame Obama for not trying harder - for not continually hitting us over the head with it.

Do your own fuckin' work, Press Poodles.

A Glimmer

A glimmer of what, I don't really know. Not yet anyway, but WaPo ran an OpEd piece today that tells us the truth about our "Hyper-Partisanship Problem".

Catherine Rampell:

Dysfunctional Washington refuses to work out its differences to solve problems that matter to Americans.

So say pundits and policy activists, perhaps hoping that diffuse criticism, rather than finger-pointing, will yield a government willing to govern.

But the problem isn’t “Washington.” It isn’t “Congress,” either. The problem is elected officials from a single political party: the GOP.
- and -

...Even the awe-inspiring Marjory Stoneman Douglas High student survivors, while calling for stronger gun-control measures, have appeared cautious about disproportionately picking on Republicans.

“I was very partisan in the beginning and violently attacking the GOP. I was angry and scared. Now I know that people from every party are supporting us. Everybody is demanding change,” junior Cameron Kasky tweeted when a critic accused him of spouting “Democrat talking points.”

Kasky is, of course, correct that Americans of all parties demand change. But politicians of all parties do not.

And, as always - driftglass

I used to devote more time and viscera deconstructing the Weekend Gasbag Cavalcade back when there was a glimmer of hope that if enough of us documented and published the catastrophic failures of our political media over and over and over again, it might change their collective behavior.

I no longer believe that.

Clearly, their contemptable collective behavior is an organizational feature and not a bug, and therefore unfixable until it becomes unbearably more painful for the men and women who control our corporate media to change their ways than to maintain the status quo. I still take note of the weekly crimes against journalism and the vipers and pettyfoggers who commit them, but now it is more with an eye towards the future. Just a dime-store Josephus documenting who we are and why this is happening to us as our country is systematically gutted by forces beyond my control. And I think I write a pretty honest stick, but this Sunday I can't sum things up any better than @51Renee on the Twitter machine:
Trump having a meltdown today.

Jill Stein having a meltdown today.
Bernie snapping at Chuck Todd today.
Hillary Clinton is laughing her ass off.
She tried to tell you.
#StillWithHer

Yeah, that's about where we're at.
I don't expect driftglass to stop doing what he does, but the guy's been at it for 10 years, thinking only a few of us are hearing it. And he needs a break - everybody does once in a while. You can only slam your face into that wall so many times before you have to walk away, find a good place to sit, and just think about nothing for a while.

So Ms Rampell comes through for us with a good assessment, and hope lives in expecting more of that.

Hang in there, driftglass - and everybody else too.

For The Record

These assholes came to my home town

Killed one of my neighbors

No incident in itself will change anything, of course. But we have to write it all down so we can piece it together - connect as many dots as possible - and remember it. Because we have to remember. Because once in a while, somebody has to lay it all on the line - and it's our turn now.

SPLC:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) counted over 100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called "alt-right" — a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits.

On December 7, 2017, a 21-year-old white male posing as a student entered Aztec High School in rural New Mexico and began firing a handgun, killing two students before taking his own life.

At the time, the news of the shooting went largely ignored, but the online activity of the alleged killer, William Edward Atchison, bore all the hallmarks of the “alt-right”—the now infamous subculture and political movement consisting of vicious trolls, racist activists, and bitter misogynists.

But Atchison wasn’t the first to fit the profile of alt-right killer—that morbid milestone belongs to Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who in 2014 killed seven in Isla Vista, California, after uploading a sprawling manifesto filled with hatred of young women and interracial couples (Atchison went by “Elliot Rodger” in one of his many online personas and lauded the “supreme gentleman,” a title Rodger gave himself and has since become a meme on the alt-right).
I don't know exactly how this next bit from Jeff Sessions factors in, but I get a bad feeling when it looks a whole lot like The Malignant Leprechaun is on his knees again, with his nose way up the ass of nitwits like the Sovereign Citizen gangs - eg: Cliven Bundy et al.



And the Press Poodles kinda went out of their way to make sure they missed the main point, even though they were dutiful in picking up on the racism bit.

It's important to call it out, but we react to the racist shit, and that actually provides some cover for the bigger issue of the Autocracy being built right in front of us.

WaPo:

Organizations such as the NAACP deemed Sessions’s language his latest act of racism. Lawyers, however, have been quick to point to the term’s regular appearance in case law, saying that “Anglo-American law” — also known as common law — is a widely used term in the legal system that refers to the shared legal roots of England and the United States.

Sessions’s use of the term appears to have been impromptu, as it does not appear in his prepared remarks, which imply that he was supposed to say, “The sheriff is a critical part of our legal heritage.”

To those unfamiliar with the term’s legal context, “Anglo-American heritage” sounded offensive, especially considering the accusations of racism that have nearly derailed Sessions’s career. A Senate committee in 1986, for instance, denied Sessions a federal judgeship, as his former colleagues testified that Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana,” according to The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips.
It's not like we haven't known about these assholes for a while.

The Center For Public Integrity - April, 2016:

Sheriff Nick Finch let a pistol-packing local man out of the Liberty County, Florida, jail shortly after taking office, a decision that brought him admiration, donations, and speaking requests from anti-government activists across the country. It put him at odds with state authorities, who charged him with a crime, but also thrust him into the vanguard of a radical and growing movement among sheriffs in rural communities who assert they can ignore state and federal laws they decide are unconstitutional.
- and -

What’s unique about his group is not that it opposes gun controls but that its ambition is to encourage law enforcement officers to defy laws they decide themselves are illegal. On occasion, some of his group’s sheriffs have found themselves in curious agreement with members of the sovereign citizens’ movement, which was also founded on claimed rights of legal defiance and is said by the FBI to pose one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats.
It's not simple coincidence that this idiot has become a shining star in the Daddy State Movement:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A federal judge on Friday dismissed most of a civil rights lawsuit against former Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. over an incident at Milwaukee's Mitchell airport last year.

But a claim that Clarke retaliated on Facebook for Daniel Black's exercise of his First Amendment right to shake his head at Clarke survives, and is now set for trial Jan. 22.
Black and Clarke were on the same flight from Dallas to Milwaukee on Jan. 15, 2017. Black saw Clarke wearing Dallas Cowboys gear and asked if he was David Clarke. Clarke said he was, and Black shook his head and walked away to his seat in coach.

When the plane landed in Milwaukee, Black was greeted by six sheriff's deputies who had been directed by Clarke to take Black aside and question him. They then escorted him from the airport.

This shit is happening. See it. Remember it.

What We're Looking For

We keep hearing the same old bullshit arguments about how horrible everybody thinks American Press Poodles are - and they are (or have been), but in very different ways.

Straight up criticism comes more vociferously from 'the right'; to the point now that we're all the way into Daddy State fantasy land projections of Fake News. 

But there's plenty of bitching from 'the left' as well - tho' for different reasons.

Conservatives point at the press and yell 'Liberal Bias' while every study for at least the last 25 has found the opposite.

Liberals mostly complain about False Equivalence and The Horse Race.

I come down pretty solidly in the 'liberal' camp these days because I think I detect a brand of rhetoric that's quite a bit less toxic coming from 'the left'.

Of course, there're loonies on the extremes of both ends of the spectrum, but by sheer volume and rate of incidence, 'the right' has way more crazies pimping the bullshit, and way more rubes lapping it up.

Suffice to say we get lots of trouble because we all tend to agree the American Press is kinda fucked up.  

Conservatives bitch about Fake News, and then the studies come out (refuting the bias), but that little tidbit can be safely ignored because the standard narrative is that everybody knows it's all fucked up, so the conservative audience will only hear, "See? Even the liberals agree there's bias in the Mainstream Media."

It works the same way for Congress. Nobody's particularly happy with Congress, but Dems are a lot more likely to think their reps need to be more progressive and push the Repubs harder etc etc etc. The polls come out and because the notion that "everybody thinks Congress is all fucked up" fits the GOP's framing of the issue, once again the Repubs can point and say, "See? The liberals think we're right too - better keep voting for the guys who know what the problem is blah blah blah."

Anyway - back to the point of how we're supposed to go about determining what is and what ain't, here's a golden oldie from FAIR:

How To Detect Bias In News Media

Media have tremendous power in setting cultural guidelines and in shaping political discourse. It is essential that news media, along with other institutions, are challenged to be fair and accurate. The first step in challenging biased news coverage is documenting bias. Here are some questions to ask yourself about newspaper, TV and radio news.

Who are the sources?

Be aware of the political perspective of the sources used in a story. Media over-rely on "official" (government, corporate and establishment think tank) sources. For instance, FAIR found that in 40 months of Nightline programming, the most frequent guests were Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Elliott Abrams and Jerry Falwell. Progressive and public interest voices were grossly underrepresented.

To portray issues fairly and accurately, media must broaden their spectrum of sources. Otherwise, they serve merely as megaphones for those in power

• Count the number of corporate and government sources versus the number of progressive, public interest, female and minority voices. Demand mass media expand their rolodexes; better yet, give them lists of progressive and public interest experts in the community.

Is there a lack of diversity?

What is the race and gender diversity at the news outlet you watch compared to the communities it serves? How many producers, editors or decision-makers at news outlets are women, people of color or openly gay or lesbian? In order to fairly represent different communities, news outlets should have members of those communities in decision-making positions.

How many of the experts these news outlets cite are women and people of color? FAIR's 40-month survey of Nightline found its U.S. guests to be 92 percent white and 89 percent male. A similar survey of PBS's NewsHour found its guestlist was 90 percent white and 87 percent male.

• Demand that the media you consume reflect the diversity of the public they serve. Call or write media outlets every time you see an all-male or all-white panel of experts discussing issues that affect women and people of color.

From whose point of view is the news reported?

Political coverage often focuses on how issues affect politicians or corporate executives rather than those directly affected by the issue. For example, many stories on parental notification of abortion emphasized the "tough choice" confronting male politicians while quoting no women under 18--those with the most at stake in the debate. Economics coverage usually looks at how events impact stockholders rather than workers or consumers.

• Demand that those affected by the issue have a voice in coverage.

Are there double standards?

Do media hold some people to one standard while using a different standard for other groups? Youth of color who commit crimes are referred to as "superpredators," whereas adult criminals who commit white-collar crimes are often portrayed as having been tragically been led astray. Think tanks partly funded by unions are often identified as "labor-backed" while think tanks heavily funded by business interests are usually not identified as "corporate-backed."

• Expose the double standard by coming up with a parallel example or citing similar stories that were covered differently.

Do stereotypes skew coverage?

Does coverage of the drug crisis focus almost exclusively on African Americans, despite the fact that the vast majority of drug users are white? Does coverage of women on welfare focus overwhelmingly on African-American women, despite the fact that the majority of welfare recipients are not black? Are lesbians portrayed as "man-hating" and gay men portrayed as "sexual predators" (even though a child is 100 times more likely to be molested by a family member than by an unrelated gay adult—Denver Post, 9/28/92)?

• Educate journalists about misconceptions involved in stereotypes, and about how stereotypes characterize individuals unfairly.

What are the unchallenged assumptions?

Often the most important message of a story is not explicitly stated. For instance, in coverage of women on welfare, the age at which a woman had her first child will often be reported—the implication being that the woman's sexual "promiscuity," rather than institutional economic factors, are responsible for her plight.

Coverage of rape trials will often focus on a woman's sexual history as though it calls her credibility into question. After the arrest of William Kennedy Smith, a New York Times article (4/17/91) dredged up a host of irrelevant personal details about his accuser, including the facts that she had skipped classes in the 9th grade, had received several speeding tickets and-when on a date-had talked to other men.

Is the language loaded?

When media adopt loaded terminology, they help shape public opinion. For instance, media often use the right-wing buzzword "racial preference" to refer to affirmative action programs. Polls show that this decision makes a huge difference in how the issue is perceived: A 1992 Louis Harris poll, for example, found that 70 percent said they favored "affirmative action" while only 46 percent favored "racial preference programs."

• Challenge the assumption directly. Often bringing assumptions to the surface will demonstrate their absurdity. Most reporters, for example, will not say directly that a woman deserved to be raped because of what she was wearing.
• Demonstrate how the language chosen gives people an inaccurate impression of the issue, program or community.

Is there a lack of context?

Coverage of so-called "reverse discrimination" usually fails to focus on any of the institutional factors which gives power to prejudice—such as larger issues of economic inequality and institutional racism. Coverage of hate speech against gays and lesbians often fails to mention increases in gay-bashing and how the two might be related.

• Provide the context. Communicate to the journalist, or write a letter to the editor that includes the relevant information.

Do the headlines and stories match?

Usually headlines are not written by the reporter. Since many people just skim headlines, misleading headlines have a significant impact. A classic case: In a New York Times article on the June 1988 U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow, Margaret Thatcher was quoted as saying of Reagan, "Poor dear, there's nothing between his ears." The Times headline: "Thatcher Salute to the Reagan Years."

• Call or write the newspaper and point out the contradiction.

Are stories on important issues featured prominently?

Look at where stories appear. Newspaper articles on the most widely read pages (the front pages and the editorial pages) and lead stories on television and radio will have the greatest influence on public opinion.

• When you see a story on government officials engaged in activities that violate the Constitution on page A29, call the newspaper and object. Let the paper know how important you feel an issue is and demand that important stories get prominent coverage.

Here's A Pretty Good One

45* continues to punch down at every opportunity.

Elizabeth Bruenig, WaPo:

If mercy is not only meeting but exceeding the requirements of justice — giving others not just their due but more — then cruelty is its opposite, exceeding even the privations of injustice: not only failing to give others their due but taking from them even more.

President Trump’s comparison to Caesar in a brief 2017 run of Shakespeare’s famous play may thus have been too generous — merciful, even. Whatever virtues Trump and his administration are aiming for, mercy isn’t among them. Mercy, after all, is a quality of the strong; in his repeated attacks on those with the very least, Trump is most obviously weak.
The single ray of hope - although it's a strong one - is that I think I'm detecting more of a change in the behavior of the Press Poodles lately.

eg: John Harwood - not exactly the model of a Lefty Loonie - has been very critical of 45* the last coupla times I've seen him on MSNBC, which denotes a very different stance on his part. He's always been a down-the-line-just-the-facts-ma'am kinda reporter, but in the last week or so he's said a few things on air that seem to indicate he really understands the danger, and he's starting to throw off the Presumption Of Regularity bullshit and report to us just how fucked up 45* really is.

Surprise - Really?

Matthew Yglasias, Vox (making it clear that he's using his head for a butt plug again):

But what’s flown under the radar is that there is plenty surprising about Trump’s conduct in office. In particular, on economic issues he’s governed a lot more like a hard-right conservative than a freewheeling populist.

As a candidate, Trump promised a crackdown on abusive pharmaceutical pricing. As president, Trump has put a pharmaceutical executive in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS is changing regulations to better fit the needs of pharmaceutical companies, and Trump is personally pocketing club membership fees from people with business before the federal government, including the CEO of Allergan. The candidate who ran as the champion of the forgotten man has led an administration dedicated to such causes as making it easier for financial advisers to rip off their clients and ensuring that workers suffer continued exposure to toxic chemicals in paint-removing solvents.


There is nothing surprising about any of this. "Donald Trump lies" was at the top of every tautology chart in the world before the GOP primaries even got started.

• Water is wet
• Pain hurts
• Trump lies

Casualties Of War

Al Franken resigned this week.

(hoping I'm wrong about all this, BTW)

I can't stop thinking he got swift-boated. GOP went after him solely because he's been very strong on Equality issues.

It's basic Debate (and Salesmanship) training: If the opponent can knock down your strongest point, they can ignore everything else you have to say and revert to their comfortable assumptions.

There's a strong element of False Equivalence too. Kristen Gillibrand has led the charge, saying that when we argue over Degrees of Offense, we're having the wrong conversation - harassment is harassment is harassment, and we simply cannot have it.

I think I get it - we all have to be called to account, including our friends and political allies.

But this looks a lot like the GOP has played the Hypocrisy Card, and the Dems have bought in like it's Everything On Sale At Whole Foods. 

AKA: taking your strength and turning it against you. And as usual, Dems have been most obliging by going into navel-gazing mode, picking fights with their own, and imploding with self-recrimination.

Meanwhile, we are in fact very busy being drawn into having Ms Gillibrand's Wrong Conversation anyway - because when you overreact, you can lose some credibility, which means you give up the edge, which means the other side gets more control over the subject of the argument.

To wit: we're talking about why The Librul Media cropped out one of their Silence Breakers.

"It's intentional, to represent women who aren't able to come forward," Rosner wrote. "In this case, it is an actual woman with a tale of harassment who was unable to be public, but here she represents all women who remain silent (for whatever reason)."

Rosner also compared this cover to New York Magazine's July 2015 cover, which depicted the 35 women who had accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault at the time. The cover left one empty space to symbolize the women who hadn't come forward with their stories.

"When New York Magazine did their Cosby accuser cover they similarly left an empty chair — it's an elegant and powerful gesture, a visual ellipsis," she wrote.

And suddenly, we're not talking about the problems caused by harassment. The folks who need to be thinking about, and talking about harassment aren't thinking or talking about it.

So Dems, you assholes better make this work, cuz this is USAmerica Inc, where we really suck at nuance. Maybe you're trying to move against that; trying to demonstrate a stark contrast between the two parties, but the Rule Of Unintended Consequences is against you.

If you think this is a low-cost proposition, you're probably in for a rude surprise. I think you can count on a serious backlash against the perception of "Dems being Dems - always looking to tell us how to live our lives - they're a buncha pinch-faced blue-nosed prigs who just love the smell of their own farts, and the Nanny State! and blah blah blah".

If you make it about Purity, we lose the best opportunity we've had in 50 years.

Don't fuck this up.

Charlie Pierce

Charlie Pierce, Esquire Magazine:

The outrage against the piece was quick and volatile and, in truth, the story is a mess, as Fausset himself admitted in a very strange essay that ran virtually simultaneously to the story, the very existence of which leads the careful observer to conclude that the editors at the Times knew the story was a mess and told Fausset to cover the newspaper’s hindquarters.
The NYT's piece that sounded lot like normalization of America's Nazis drew a lot of fire (not undeserved IMO)

We regret the degree to which the piece offended so many readers. We recognize that people can disagree on how best to tell a disagreeable story. What we think is indisputable, though, is the need to shed more light, not less, on the most extreme corners of American life and the people who inhabit them. That’s what the story, however imperfectly, tried to do.

Every reporter has stories they wish they could have back. (It would be a shame if the inhabitants of this shebeen would Google some of the stuff I wrote about John Edwards back in the day.) But a newspaper is a collaborative effort. It is the job of editors to recognize when a story isn’t there—and especially so if, as Lacey claims, the story goes through multiple drafts and it still isn’t there, and especially so, as in this case, the paper has the reporter write an explainer about how the story wasn’t there. 

Pro tip, lads: if you send a guy out on a story like this in 2017, and he can’t come up with anything that Hannah Arendt didn’t say better in 1951, it really is time to move along. Anything else is flat dangerous. Ask Herbert Hoover if he'd like that speech back.

The Nazi Next Door

NYT put up a piece by Richard Fausset that everybody seems to think is "normalizing" Nazis. Kinda hard to disagree with that.

Here's a look:

HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio — Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”

Nice try, NYT.  But you fucked it up. Again.

Here's a piece from James Hamblin at The Atlantic, mocking the Times as they just "put this out there and let you guys see for yourselves how awful it is that Nazis are just like everybody else":

“What can I say,” jokes Stevenson, as he sees me taking note of the spice rack. “I like garlic powder.”

We both chuckle. The shimmering evening sun glints off the porcelain saltshaker and casts a long shadow onto the linoleum. As I follow its path, his wife Stephanie appears in the kitchen doorway, an exasperated look on her face.

“You forgot to put the toilet seat down again,” she says, rolling her eyes and pulling her phone out of her back pocket. Stephanie is pretty. Her hair is saffron and flaxen, and she wears jeans also, and she has a wry smile.

Stephanie Stevenson is followed by a normal dog, who walks into the room with a slight limp, and Stephen pets it. He leans in.

“The Jews control all the money, and the world would be better off if they were dead,” he says, petting the dog. “Who’s a good boy?”

The question is rhetorical. I ask about the wallpaper.

Some people disagree with Stevenson’s political views.

“He’s a nice enough guy,” said the local grocer, Butch Tarmac, a registered Democrat. “He buys apples and pancake mix. I also like those things. But I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on the bit about the one true race cleansing the soil and commanding what is rightfully theirs.”

Facebook

It's the money, stupid.

Ari Melber's take:

Money is power, and for some folks, power is everything.

Today's Tweet

We've got some pretty low standards here in USAmerica Inc.

Someone at @FoxNews reported the truth and it's making headlines all across America. #MorningJoe

— LisaMarie (@indianaoldsoul) November 15, 2017

 

The Meme's The Thing

We get all het up because we're seeing something cool and new, and it's hard to slow it all down enough to consider what shitty things can be made to happen if the cool new thing is manipulated in an attempt to drive us in a direction not of our choosing.

Revisit And Relearn

An explainer from Carlos Maza at Vox - one I keep going back to.

Dead On, Mr Fallows

James Fallows, The Atlantic:

Five years ago, after what was the horrific mass shooting of that moment, I wrote an item called “The Certainty of More Shootings.” It was about the massacre in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and after acknowledging the victims it said:

The additional sad, horrifying, and appalling point is the shared American knowledge that, beyond any doubt, this will happen again, and that it will happen in America many, many times before it occurs anywhere else.

And here we are, two days after Las Vegas, and we're being distracted by Press Poodles alternately concentrating on people's grief and/or the technical details of how the fucking gun works, and worse - the bullshit about "maybe something good can come from this senseless tragedy and blah blah blah".

No.

We choose to do nothing. We choose to listen to the passive voice - "Mistakes were made" or "Isn't it just awful" or 

Nothing will come of this enormous horror except the next (nearly-identical) enormous horror.

Something else that pops up now and again - and is purposefully ignored: "...the worst mass killing in modern American history..."

I'm not giving partial credit on this one.  It's the worst mass killing since Wounded Knee, which was the worst mass killing since Sand Creek, which was the worst mass killing since Trail of Tears...and on it goes.

But OK - we don't need to look at anything but the last 50 years to be duly impressed with our diligence when it comes to murdering each other in large numbers.

WaPo:

(Bonnie Berkowitz, Lazaro Gamio, Denise Lu, Kevin Uhrmacher and Todd Lindeman)

949 victims

Each gun was used to kill an average of four people, not counting shooters. The 949 people came from nearly every imaginable race, religion and socioeconomic background, and 145 were children or teenagers.

The oldest victim

Louise De Kler, 98, still took her pool cue and boombox to the rec room at Pinelake Health and Rehab and shot pool with the “young guys,” her daughter told the Associated Press. She was shot to death on March 29, 2009, along with seven other residents and a nurse, by a man who had come to the Carthage, N.C., nursing home looking for his estranged wife.

There's a very enlightening infographic that you need to see.

So this thing is big and ugly and complicated, and it goes in 37 different directions - sometimes all at once. But I'm not interested in hearing about how we just can't do anything about it.

We sent 14 guys to the moon - 12 of them walked on its surface - on the fucking moon. And we got 'em all back, and we did it when we were working out the math using slide rules and pencils and chalkboards - bear skins and stone knives compared with what we can do now.

We're closing in on Autism and PTSD and Alzheimer's.

Don't tell me we can't get this done.

Here's a pretty good place to start:

Overturn Citizens United