TWGB: Fox and the Sour Grapes

 

Media needs to play this clip for GOP candidates and say NOW YOU HAVE HEARD IT--and get them to respond. Because he is using people's names. Real damn people. https://t.co/wGtl0QjSpS

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) October 16, 2024

What would you call the shade Trump painted himself for this? Terror Cotta? The "enemy within"--which Trump has suggested siccing the military on, includes (Democratic) US Congress members. It probably also includes former GOP US Congress members like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. It likely includes certain former White House personnel--his own former White House. IT includes people like Gen. Mark Milley.  And this "enemies list" is not about people who lied about him--oh no. They did something far worse.

They told the truth.  Trump has never been a fan of transparency--even though we can see through him. Russian interference was real and the Trump campaign had multiple Russian contacts, and the perfect phone call wasn't perfect. It was extortionate. 

So, how does Fox News, who was sued by Dominion not so long ago and settled for a really amazing amount of money for lying about the 2020 election, in the person of one Brett Baier, presumed serious interviewer, use this information--that Trump considers various prominent American public servants fair game for being rounded up by the military and punished for being the "enemy within"? 

He whitewashes it to try and make the Democratic 2024 Presidential candidate look like she's being extra. 

No, really. 

This Looks Like News

 

No this isn’t a concert it’s the Harris/Walz rally in ARIZONA 🔥🔥🔥#KamalaBringsUsJoy
pic.twitter.com/WDBWD0yLPh

— Skyleigh Heinen-Uhrich (@Sky_Lee_1) August 9, 2024

This clip is the Harris/Walz crowd in Arizona yesterday. It's big, and these people are turned up to eleven.

Now, I understand the news media like to cover Donald Trump--if it bleeds, it leads, and there's probably money riding on his having a big old red-faced aneurism on stage one day or of course, he just spews his usual "American carnage"-flavored rant--it's a lurid carnival where both the observers and the observed are the freak show. 

But what if there was a thirst for something different and better? Maybe instead of hearing for the hundredth time about low water pressure and whales being driven mad by windmills, insults against journalists, other politicians, immigrants, wide swaths of the American people, and of course, lying about every little thing under the sun and a few beyond it, we could have a conversation about something more constructive than that. 

I think this is the podium to train the cameras on--not the empty one that stays empty even when a late, sweaty, angry old man finally lumbers behind it. Take a look at this crowd, and what had happened to those poll numbers over the last two-three weeks, and ask yourself "What are these people seeing now that they weren't before?"

This looks like news to me. What if we just want some good news for a change? What if people are tired of being mad and just want nice things for a change? What if they want some truth? For a change?

You know, I could go with that. I think a lot of people could.

Fox, Untucked

 

You know, the sweetest thing about Tucker Carlson getting the axe was he didn't even seem to know he was on the block. He closed out Friday's show clearly expecting to be back on Monday, and apparently only found out he was going, going, gone ten minutes before Fox News officially announced it. So as far as the mutual agreement to part ways goes, it sounds like Fox wanted him to depart and Tucker Calrson wasn't starting it with the security taking his shit out of the building. 

So what makes a huuuuugggge cable media company part with their most recognizable figure? Oh, let me count the ways--wait a minute, how about I don't, but just suggest that the ledger, even if it suggested losing Carlson was a big loss, was nothing compared to his potential liability. The Dominion settlement was a big hit, the Smartmatic one promises to be even bigger, Carlson's former booker is suing, and Ray Epps already sent a cease and desist letter. 

Like Mom & Apple Pie

Just to get this off my chest--how did CNN find these ladies? Because Twitter figured out that they were activists of various shades. It shouldn't even be news to an outlet like CNN that when you see supposed "grassroots" movements spring up all over the country in the way school boards were hit by anti-mask, anti-shutdown, anti-CRT activism, like Tea Party activists swarming townhalls just about ten years ago over the ACA--maybe question what you're looking at?

Because while parents have great reasons to be frustrated lately, their anger is being deliberately shaped with outside help. 

Now, I feel extremely cynical writing about this. I'm the goddamn mirror image of the blonde ladies right there, except I'm more red-headed, and have no kids, and am atheist, and queer. But leaving all that aside, I'm culturally Catholic and damn-near white as nurses' shoes. So maybe I almost understand what kind of mistruths move these folks--but I don't. I can't. Lies are lies, no matter who tells them, and when they further marginalize people, I am not there for it. 

So anyway, back to the mom thing: remember this mom? Yeah, she was probably connected to Republicans too, and stuff, but you know what? McAuliffe could have blunted his "parents shouldn't determine what books" etc. soundbite with an ad with another white mom talking about freedom of speech. We don't have to assume all white moms are one way.

Fox News Viewers Know What This Meant

The chyron from Fox News shown in the picture above has not been altered in any way--it honestly did read "Trump cuts U.S. aid to 3 Mexican countries" and wow, that is really something. Of course, it should read "Central American countries", but the chyron writer doesn't care, and the viewers know what this meant--"some kind of foreign". 

We could go off and discuss whether cutting aid to these countries will do anything at all regarding the "migrant crisis", but all I really have to submit here is that Trump seems to make some of his policy decisions based on what the little people on his tv set tell him, and unfortunately, he has chosen to watch some of the dumbest people. 

Also he hires the people he sees on tv. I guess everyone knows this. It's just...unsettling, is all.

Fox News Does the Full Monty

It's always been just a little bit obvious that Fox News was more of a political advocacy outlet than a straight news organization, but if there was any doubt, popular Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro joined Rush Limbaugh in standing up for Trump and his party's candidates this evening (right before the midterm elections). They could maybe pretend they were just there to report from a very special vantage, but let's be really honest, that vantage was earned by being propagandists and useful to the party. This is what a wholly partisan effort would look like. They also derided other news outlets, laughably, as being "fake" while making this particular obvious show. 

I think people who really pay attention have some idea who the fakes are here. Pirro, Limbaugh, and Hannity might be popular, but they surely aren't honest, and what they do has never been about straight news. Limbaugh doesn't pretend to be an honest purveyor of the tea--he stresses from time to time that he is an entertainment figure (probably not to land his ass in trouble). But Hannity and Pirro?

While they are joke figures outside of the Fox milieu, among Fox news fans, the possibility that Hannity delivers real news is apparently some kind of open question, left open, deliberately, but Fox itself. (I think the same nebulous area exists for Pirro, to the extent that she is treated as being sober as a judge when both the "sober" and "judge" portions of that assessment appear to be way off.)

I may be off base for pointing out that while Brett Baier and Chris Wallace are probably kind of good, I'd really only consider Shep Smith actually wholly a journalist in the sense of not radiating bias. (That probably radiates bias in and of itself to some of Fox's conservative viewers, for a value of bias that reflects Steven Colbert's observation that reality has a liberal bias--and maybe it sort of does.) What Fox the tv channel was set up to do for people who care about these things was be a conservative and Republican-leaning outlet. 

Now, I don't want to reinvent the wheel, discuss the hack gap, broach the problem of right-wing epistemic closure, or even just point my English Lit degree-having white liberal finger at the tribe Morlock and curse their darkness while they eat my daywalking Eloi sibs. 

I just want to point out that Trump doesn't and never has had a problem in the world with fake news. He was best-buddies with the National Enquirer guy who kept hot shit-takes on Trump in a vault and is no stranger to just making shit up or repeating ridiculous conspiracy theories from the absolute underbelly of the fever-swamps--like birtherism. 

Trump loves fake news (like Alex Jones, even!) no matter what terrible things he says about the real news being terrible and fake. But you know what? That old devil "fake news"? When Trump surrounds himself with these Fox folk, he is soaking in it!

He just likes the news that magnifies him over the kind that tells bad stories about him. Only, there are plenty of bad, real stories about, and news isn't really about what Trump happens to like to hear. 

I'd like to hope this moment had any bearing on whether future news-watchers bothered with the Fox brand in the future, but, no. I doubt it. I believe they watch for reasons wholly unrelated to veracity. 

(UPDATE: It is possibly also objectionable if Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders do these things because of the Hatch act, but really? Are we going to expect the White House to actually be the paragons of virtue, here?)

UPDATE 2: See what I mean, Vern? Does saying it's not an endorsement really "disclaimer" it?

It's all Fun and Games until Someone Heils Hitler

Jeff Lord served exactly no purpose on CNN whatsoever besides being a not-terribly-bright knee-jerk Trump defender. His act was so tired that always-professional and not-terrible-person Anderson Cooper lost his shit at him, stating he would entirely defend Trump shitting on a desk. And he even sort of walked it back, despite entirely being true. The hypothetical Cooper posited probably had Lord sitting there, contemplating the circumstances under which the desk-deuce option was not only acceptable, but masterful and damn-near obligatory.

So, it really doesn't alarm me that CNN decided to part with Lord over what might have even been a joking castigation of regular RW target, alleged Soros-backed MMFA.

Sigh. He decided to be that guy who thinks Nazi symbolism is treated as "Funny:ha-ha" in the real world, when it is often seen as "Funny, HR will not approve" in the corporate world that was paying him.

Is this weak? Yes. The problem a lot of free speech-oriented lefties will have is why CNN gave this particular crap-for-brains  a berth when he was regularly racially offensive and intellectually dishonest for a long time. (The "Trump is the MLK of health care" nonsense is especially weird and a stretch and a great reason why this guy never needed to be taken very seriously. Ends have no qualitative merit in his world? All means are acceptable for what Trump intends--even if it means people lose access to health care? He's arguing a civil rights position for someone trying to deny access to a right. It's disingenuous and appalling.)

I'm all for free speech, but not everyone is entitled to all platforms. CNN gave this guy a platform, and he regularly proved to be both a vigorous partisan, but a poor commentator. His failure to be sensible to why Nazi humor isn't humorous was just the latest outrage--but it is questionable why CNN tried so hard to cater to Trump partisans, without regard to quality, in the first place.

President Trump's "Fake News" Weak Sauce

There's something really stupid about President Trump' latest iteration of the "fake news" war cry--he's not actually the straightest shooter in the rifle cabinet. Just take a look at the two Time magazine covers in the above pic. The one on the right is an authentic Time cover, which depicts an orange-hued cartoon Trump with his yawp barbarically open in the process of a "meltdown". The one on the left, however, is a mock-up featuring an air-brushy Trump photo and snippets of The Apprentice television show puffery, which was copied, framed and hung at several of Trump's golf resorts. The melty Trump is the real news version. The puffery is fake, and yet, it is the version of Trump that he wants people to see. So, fake or not, it's the one he (or the toadies and yes-entities under him) run with.

This is par, to use an apt metaphor, for Trump's particular course. Trump is no stranger to using fake news and celebrity to self-promote for gain. He really has used fake news considerably to advance himself--I mean, he made his mark with the "birther" nonsense, right? And promoted the sick idea that Ted Cruz's dad helped assassinate President Kennedy. He's been entirely open about his admiration for The National Enquirer and Infowars, which are not, strictly speaking truly great and reliable news sources, and is literally a political entity today in large part because of the efforts of Breitbart and Fox News. 

His war against the media has been duly noted, but it should be also noted that there have been outlets that have been extraordinarily solicitous of him. Among some of Trump's followers, though (and I don't mind calling them followers--there are supporters, who are just regular conservatives or Republicans who hope he does ok, and then there's the cultists for whom Daddy can do no wrong), the war on "fake news" includes violence ideation on mainstream media whilst actually being a consumer of literal fake news.

It's no wonder, then, that Trump's insistence on rejecting stories that don't flatter him with the cry of "fake news" entered Tuesday's press briefing, with some vociferous pushback from Brian Karem (May his Twitter followers increase and his reputation grow from this day on!) But what is uniquely galling about the briefing was that, after calling out "fake news", Sarah Huckabee Sanders invited people to check out Project Veritas' (James O'Keefe's) latest thing to try and debunk all of CNN. An edited taped talk with a CNN health producer who doesn't cover politics.

I don't know how you decry fake news with one breath, then advertise James O'Keefe with the next, but this is a pretty special administration, and they do special things. I do know that O'Keefe's relationship with CNN is probably weird.  Also, yeah. O'Keefe.

This president has been trying to play fast and loose with the idea of what "real" is. He's been trying it out with his "leaks are real, news is fake" line, by which he implies that leaks of inside information should be stopped (by plumbers, one wonders?) and yet, somehow, once this inside true info is filtered to the various news outlets, it somehow becomes made-up--I still aver one can not have this both ways: it's either made-up, or a leak!

But what I think what Trump and his folks have done is create a lot of smoke to try and obscure real news, and if there wasn't already hints of fire, this smoke is quite alarming.  But if Trump wants to use"fake news" to wave away the Russia investigation, it remains that two congressional investigations, an FBI probe, a special prosecutor, and the consensus of the US intelligence community are not about the news media or ratings, and are completely real. And even if one story here or there needs to be retracted for sourcing reasons, this does not invalidate all that has come before--in fact, what CNN has done by owning up to an error and accepting the resignations of three journalists is called accountability--and wouldn't I just love to see Trump and Co held to the same standard of "tell the truth or leave" as the media, the much maligned media, just displayed?

Trump's whinge, now filtered through his press office and the surrogates talking him up on Fox News, about biased fake media, aren't anything new. But they are far off the mark, and maybe transparently so. It pains me to see well-respected people like Brit Hume and Sean Hannity undermine their credibility in his dubious service (I am half-kidding, but I leave to my reader to determine the extent of my jest).

CNN is Making a Mistake, I Think

CNN cuts ties with Reza Aslan over anti-Trump tweet: https://t.co/Ob7M7lKWhw pic.twitter.com/8u9omQqdsh

— Slate (@Slate) June 10, 2017

I like Reza Aslan. He is a good writer and scholar. I enjoyed his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and think he contributes a lot to the discussion of how faith/belief intersects with politics. I like him as he is understood on the label--as an opinion correspondent. I do not expect Reza Aslan to be necessarily unbiased.  No person of education can be entirely unbiased. A life of the intellect means opinions have been formed.

The glib and not-informed opinions of American POTUS Donald Trump provoked a profane response from Aslan. I think I understand why it did. Trump responds to terror by reaching back to othering and discriminating against people who are Muslim or from Muslim-majority nations.  Aslan is Iranian-American, and exactly the kind of person Trump's "travel ban" type of bullshit, would discriminate against. He understands, as an American, how what Trump is doing by dividing people against Muslims, is dangerous and damages our discourse by cutting Islam-practitioners out and Arab and Persian ethnicities out. It is divisive by nature and design. What Trump has promoted is profane from his POV (and from mine, actually, as a very blue-eyed and Christian-cultural US-aian).  He shared a berth on CNN with Corey Lewandowski, who assaulted a reporter and somehow was nevertheless hired by a news channel, and Jeffrey Lord (who I have no respect for as an intellect of any kind) and Jack Kingston and Jason Miller and Rick Santorum and Scottie Nell Hughes and...

Really? I don't think I understand CNN's standards. Unless their rule is, hire two conservative jerkwagons for every liberal-leaning or intellectual correspondent you manage to fire. And never vet for quality opinions, just pretend balance.

I don't have cable and get all my news from memes and Twitter links and streaming. Aslan does useful informative good work. Trump is not a literal piece of shit, but is figuratively not a turkey dinner with all the fixin's either. Christ--is a little perspective that difficult? Why must CNN be pulling this PC card all of a sudden?