MSM Coverage of the Presidential Debate, June 2024

 Over and over, I'm seeing descriptions of the debate which go much like this:

"Donald Trump, former President and convicted felon awaiting sentencing, lied his ass off, as he always does -- but Joe had a cold and stuttered. A clear, crushing win for Trump!"

How about if you focus on those lies Trump told, go through them and refute them one by one, mainstream media -- you know: how about if you did your job for once? Remind people of what a disaster Trump's presidency was, and how another term under Trump would definitely be worse? 

You know: the way you did for about 12 hours on January 6, 2021, when Trump's lunacy finally hit home close enough to you that it scared you into actually talking about what had been going on under your noses for 5 years, instead of your endless, useless twaddle about polls and trends and images and perceptions? When the tide of Trumpian crap temporarily scared you into letting your actual opinions show, your opinions about what you study all day every day for a living, letting them show on actual TV, where they might benefit people who are busy with a lot of other things, but who would nevertheless care greatly about politics if you simply talked to them about it? If you would simply, finally do your jobs.

Trump tried to shut down the EPA, called climate change a hoax, he separated refugee children from their parents at the border, he waged a cold war against American Muslims, he let countless people die of COVID because those people simply weren't nearly as important to him as his delusional self-image -- and a second Trump term would be much worse, but it's more important to you to focus on every single time Joe stutters! You're so much worse than useless!

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Coincidence?

Two headlines on the front page of Yahoo! First:

Washington Post Editorial Board Shreds Donald Trump: "Stark Incapacity For Leadership"

And then, immediately below that story, the next headline reads:

"America, Throw Out This Vegetable Immediately"

Allegedly, the 2nd headline has nothing at all to do with politics. Allegedly. It's about some "Leading Gut Expert" who is frequently on Dr Oz' show.

So what is this really about? Nutrition? Or what the leadership of Yahoo! really thinks of Trump, but doesn't have the guts to say clearly in a 2-inch-high banner headline?

Is this an example of Yahoo! almost having had the guts to do away with the horrible thing which has enabled Trump so much: "objective journalism"?

Michelle Wolf and Chris Matthews

Like many of you, I'm disgusted by the expressions of disgust at Michelle Wolf's stand-up comedy routine at the latest White House Correspondents' Dinner. You'd expect Republicans to complain, but even some Democrats didn't get it. Like Chris Matthews. My God, does he ever not get it! Michelle wasn't making fun of Sarah Huckabee's appearance, the way Trump makes fun of women's appearance. Michelle was complaining about how Ms Huckabee lies non-stop, something which journalists like Matthews should do much more often, since Ms Huckabee is the spokesperson for the head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the US, and since Matthews hosts an hour-long show every day whose supposed purpose is to inform the public about what's going on in American politics.

It'd be one thing if Matthews lectured others about decorum and was decorous himself. But nooooo. One night he ends his show by calling Ms Wolf a disgrace, and the very next night he plays a game with his guests, saying something like "idiot" or "moron" or "dumb as shit" and seeing which guest can guess which Trump staffer called Trump that. I guess he'll claim that HE wasn't saying those things about Trump. HE was only QUOTING other people. Michelle Wolf and Chris Matthews both criticize the Trump administration very harshly; some differences are that Michelle is much funnier while doing so, and Matthews doesn't admit that he's doing it, in the name of that insane, utterly counter-productive game known as "objective journalism." Objectivity doesn't exist. Werner Heisenberg PROVED that 80 years ago. "Objective journalism" is just one giant step away from journalists being as clear and informative as they could be. Such clarity about politics is extremely important right now, and, as usual, we're getting it from comedians, plus a very few journalists.

When will Matthews finally retire so he can devote all of his time and energy to his favorite cause: plugging the latest book he wrote about the Kennedys? (To be clear: I'm not saying that people shouldn't read about the Kennedys, or that there was/is no greatness in them. I'm not saying that at all. I am, however, snarkily suggesting that that there may be better sources of information about the Kennedys than fatuous old bores like Chris Matthews.)

Hopefully, "Objective Journalism" is On the Decline

A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.

This isn’t about the policy differences we have with all presidents or our disappointment in some of their decisions. Obama and Bush both failed in many ways. They broke promises and told untruths, but the basic decency of each man was never in doubt.

Donald Trump, the man, on the other hand, is uniquely awful. His sickening behavior is corrosive to the enterprise of a shared governance based on common values and the consent of the governed. -- That's from a refreshingly direct and concise USA TODAY editorial.

Brian Williams discussed this editorial on his show last night with Robert Costa. Williams read some of the article aloud, and Costa said something about "wince-inducing." Williams didn't press Costa to expand on that point, which disappointed me, because it wasn't clear to me whether Costa was saying that is was Trump's behavior, or the editorial referring to it, was wince-inducing, and I'm actually afraid it may have been the latter. This would be an extreme example of "objective journalism" madness, saying that journalists can't call Trump a pig.

The USA TODAY editorial tells readers -- clearly and plainly -- what the President is like. I think that champions of "objective journalism" often forget that the vast majority of the public don't have all that much spare time to give to the politics which they, the reporters, study 24-7-365. Those reporters often seem to expect the public to read between the lines as well as they do.

I really like those skits by Jonathan Pie where he plays a political reporter for television, who says a lot of interesting and important things about politics as long as he's off the air, and the instant he goes back on the air he switches back to the typical "objective" zombie-journalist who is at great pains never to come right out and show what he actually thinks or feels about the politicians he reports about all day every day, feeling that he needs to put what he actually knows through the ridiculous filter of "objective journalism," so that only a tiny fraction of it reaches his viewers. Please, please, watch this:



Hunter S Thompson was explicitly opposed to the attempt on journalists' part to be objective, and stated that apart from things like box scores and stock-market results, there was no such thing as objective journalism. I completely agree, and I don't think I'm the only one who ever has -- for example, Jonathan Pie might agree. Still, 45 freakin years after Thompson wrote about it, laying out the case as reasonably, rationally and clearly as could be, it still appears that the number of political journalists who oppose the "objective journalism" policy are a tiny minority in their profession.

Why should political journalists give up "objective journalism"? Because it would be a tremendous help to the general public in understanding politics. That's all.

Of course, if I got it backwards last night, and what Costa was referring to as wince-inducing was not the USA TODAY editorial, but Trump's disgusting behavior, then I apologize to Costa.

Don Lemon on Trump's Speech in Phoenix

It's a few months into the future. Trump has nuked the world back into the Stone Age. (This is a very optimistic post, because, as Carl Sagan told us all decades ago, any nuclear war will likely result, not in the Stone Age, but in the eradication of all life on Earth: people, cockroaches, bacteria, viruses, everything.)

A few former journalists are sitting around in front of their cave after the day's unsuccessful search for food. There are no journalists anymore, only former journalists, because there is no television, radio, Internet, newspapers or magazines. There is no time right now to even think about trying to start to re-create such things, because the few surviving people are much too busy doing things like looking for food and trying to make weapons out of sticks and rocks before they're eaten by the few surviving man-eating carnivores.

These former journalists are proud. Hungry at the moment, but proud, because they never violated their sacred principles of "objective journalism" by warning their viewers and readers that Trump would most likely kill most or all of them if given the chance. Off the air, off the record, not in print, amongst themselves, they were pretty sure that Trump would end civilization if his political power were not checked soon enough. But they never let their viewers and readers know that they thought so, the same way that they never let their viewers and readers know how much they despised Trump. That would not have been "objective journalism" as they knew and revered it.

There were a few exceptions to this "objectivity." For example, Keith Olbermann spoke as directly about politics on air to his viewers and his did off the air to his personal acquaintances. Actually, sometimes Keith spoke even more directly and clearly on air, because he thought it was important. And from 2015 to 2017 Keith minced his words especially not at all when it came to Donald Trump and the clear fact that Trump was crazy and that a crazy person shouldn't be President of the United States.

But after a career of such directness about political things, Keith went from hosting his own hour-long prime-time show 5 nights a week on MSNBC, to losing that gig in 2011 and going to Current TV until 2012, and then from 2013 to 2015 he had a sports show on ESPN, but a show on which he had promised ESPN that he would not mention politics at all, and then in 2016 and 2017 he went back to speaking plainly and directly about politics, but he was only doing it on a podcast for GQ. Big-time political journalism had made it as clear as could be that anyone who spoke in public as clearly about politics as Keith did had no place in big-time political journalism. Keith violated the principle of "objectivity," of "letting the viewers make up their own minds," and doing everything possible to make sure that they didn't have too much to work with when making up their minds. Everything Keith said was completely accurate, of course, but that was not the point!

All of the above is my sarcastic reaction to the alarmed reaction by many in political journalism to the way that CNN's Don Lemon reacted to Donald's speech, which was full of lies and an embarrassment to the US, by saying, on the air, as the host of his own hour-long prime-time news program, that it was full of lies and an embarrassment to the US.

Every speech Trump has made as President has been full of lies and an embarrassment to the US. The 94% or so of America's political reporters who aren't idiots or Republican tools, or both, should have been reacting constantly the way Lemon reacted last night, since long before he was elected.

Well. Thank goodness that at least a few journalists, here and there, now and then (under extreme circumstances, mostly), are re-thinking the "objective journalism" nonsense.

Politics Is Depressing

Because it reminds you how much stupid there is in the world. Take the Republican Party. First they were stupid enough to let Donald Trump become their Presidential candidate, now more and more of their leaders are stupid enough to endorse him.

But even Republicans did the delegate math so much better than Bernie and his supporters. When the other Republican candidates had all dropped out of the race, Trump was much, much farther from being nominated than Hillary is now. There are 913 delegates still up for grabs in the Democratic race. Hillary needs 73 of them to clinch the nomination. Bernie needs 841. That means he needs over 92% of the remaining delegates.

There was a way in which the Republicans could've prevented Trump from getting the nomination, and it was hardly brain surgery: more of them just needed to remain in the race as candidates for the nomination against him. When there were still a dozen or so candidates in the Republican contest, Trump often led the results for a particular state's primary or caucus, but he would lead with far less than 50%. He never got close to a majority of the vote until he was close to the only candidate left. Kasich, Cruz, Rubio, Christie & Co wouldn't even have had to keep spending any money or time on their campaigns, wouldn't have had to keep buying ads or making speeches: just don't say they were withdrawing from the race, and a big majority of Republicans would've kept voting for someone other than Trump, and the #1 choice of all Republicans would have still been -- as I suspect it would still be in a make-believe what-if world -- anybody but Trump. Then all that would be left for the big shots to do is negotiate who would win at the convention on the 2nd ballot.

IS that brain surgery? AM I really that much smarter than everyone else? I really don't think so... Still, somehow, things go horribly, stupidly wrong.

As I have mentioned already several times in this blog, Hillary clinched the nomination quite a long time ago. The assertions that Bernie could still be the nominee are, just like the accusations against Hillary that she did something wrong in the case of Vince Foster or Whitewater or Monica Lewinski or Ben Ghazi or Lehman Brothers, straight-up bullshit. And the same way that you have to be really stupid to believe that Hillary did anything wrong in any of those cases, you have to be really stupid to believe that Bernie could be the nominee.

I wish journalists would say more often that great swaths of the public are being stupid when it's true.

I wonder how often they say it when they're not on the air or writing for public consumption.

Imagine a world in which journalists told the truth, instead of adhering to that bullshit they erroneously refer to as "objective journalism."

Then again, I'm assuming that most political journalists actually do know their asses from holes in the ground. Many times in my life I've been overly optimistic.