Here's a fun weekend tale of three Twitter threads: the ambitious Vichy Times journo who tried to pass off an idle, meaningless conversation as an interview; his hack colleague reflexively defending his hackery because, as I said, she too is a hack; and someone who actually knows what journalism is supposed to mean, used to mean in some circles.
The Times' strategery for communicating with this venal, dismal, overgrown infant essentially boils down to just get him talking and he'll reveal himself. Are you fucking kidding? What new thing could this tedious asshole possibly "reveal" about himself that would be of any use? How is it of greater (or any) value for a Very Serious Journamalist to faithfully record his lies and not only not bother to even lightly challenge any of them, but to give verbal assent to some of the worst of the spew?
Snark and insults aside, there really seems to be some dispute among supposedly professional reporters as to what their job actually entails. Heidi Moore lays these duties out methodically in the third link above, so I won't belabor it here; take two minutes and go read her thread. But this is the same sort of crap as the Cletus safari articles -- the responses are overwhelmingly negative, and nothing changes. The journos get defensive and pissy and miss the points and critiques entirely, and then go right back to what they were doing.
We are in the midst of a slow collapse of major institutions we were previously reliant on. The various news corporations are already morally compromised by their respective owners' various fiduciary needs for cordial relationships with gubmint entities. Their inability to update their historical revenue model sufficiently has translated in no small part into counting access as their primary currency. It is more important to them to be seen as available and willing to print a spew of self-serving lies, than to contest even just the most obvious of those lies and false assertions, y'know, during the interview.
Again though, this was not an interview, because interviews have questions and responses and narrative paths inscribed by the give-and-take between the two interlocutors. This was none of those things; this was someone who tells chicks he's a reporter for the New York Times, being used as a patsy by a lifelong professional liar and his servile toady. After saying he would be heading back to work the day after Christmas, the emperor promptly went back to working on his golf game for the rest of the week. Mike Schmidt happened to be a convenient way to keep his name in the news, and all it cost him was a half-hour of regurgitating his usual rally jabber.
The other major institution in slow-motion implosion is the political system, pretty much the entire thing if we keep going along like this. One political party has lost its fucking mind -- its members have decided to sell out the country for a tax cut for billionaires, and its constituents sold out their country for free, just for the feeling of pissing off librul caricatures. The other party tries vainly to figure out how they fucked the proverbial dog so badly, and find their collective spine, as well as conjure up someone younger than retirement age to rally around for the next election cycle.
Now, with the political bastards, all you have to do is follow the proverbial money. That at least is a rationale that makes some sense. They all have to raise a ton of money every day just to run for office, just to keep their seats. It sucks, but there is some logic behind it, however bent.
Ordinarily, you would want to ascribe that motive to the Vichy mediots as well. But it doesn't make sense at all -- the commenters hate this shit at literally a 95+% rate, and are not shy about saying so. And it's not like the Clownstick fantards and the Cletus demographic from the safaris are ever reading the Times or the Post.
So what in the hell is the motive behind this nonsense, for the reporters, the editors, the publishers? In what universe does it make any sense to keep pissing off your own strongest supporters with shoddy, cynical work? No one is saying they can never run out to Pig's Knuckle to take the tempacher at the local grange hall, but there's not even the pretense of balance, the attempt to round up a few people who did not vote for this monster, and see what they think after six months or a year of this daily idiocy.
To be sure, there are still some genuine nuggets of value, the investigative stories that pop up. They can and should keep doing as many of those as possible. Good investigative pieces will always have lasting value. But they are playing a weird game with Mister Man, afraid to upset him. And I can't for the life of me figure out why that is. If he gets pissed and throws them out, that's the story.
He and his minions give nothing of value. They should stop talking to him if he's not going to tell them anything useful. They should stop attending the "press conferences" if Huckabee Junior is just going to lie to them. Who needs it? We already know they're pathological liars; there is no point in hanging around waiting to hear more and dumber lies.
It's not just that those pieces are dumb and useless, they are destructive -- they undermine credibility and trust in the media outlets themselves, because we already know he's a liar who is somehow immune from any and all accountability for his words and actions, so there is no point in reiterating that.
I still hold out some measure of hope for the supposed blue tsunami next year, but if it doesn't come through, you can be almost certain that much if not most of the blame can be put on these limpdick purveyors of state-sanctioned bafflegab, who let themselves get turned out by a senile cheeto-colored old man.
The Times' strategery for communicating with this venal, dismal, overgrown infant essentially boils down to just get him talking and he'll reveal himself. Are you fucking kidding? What new thing could this tedious asshole possibly "reveal" about himself that would be of any use? How is it of greater (or any) value for a Very Serious Journamalist to faithfully record his lies and not only not bother to even lightly challenge any of them, but to give verbal assent to some of the worst of the spew?
Snark and insults aside, there really seems to be some dispute among supposedly professional reporters as to what their job actually entails. Heidi Moore lays these duties out methodically in the third link above, so I won't belabor it here; take two minutes and go read her thread. But this is the same sort of crap as the Cletus safari articles -- the responses are overwhelmingly negative, and nothing changes. The journos get defensive and pissy and miss the points and critiques entirely, and then go right back to what they were doing.
We are in the midst of a slow collapse of major institutions we were previously reliant on. The various news corporations are already morally compromised by their respective owners' various fiduciary needs for cordial relationships with gubmint entities. Their inability to update their historical revenue model sufficiently has translated in no small part into counting access as their primary currency. It is more important to them to be seen as available and willing to print a spew of self-serving lies, than to contest even just the most obvious of those lies and false assertions, y'know, during the interview.
Again though, this was not an interview, because interviews have questions and responses and narrative paths inscribed by the give-and-take between the two interlocutors. This was none of those things; this was someone who tells chicks he's a reporter for the New York Times, being used as a patsy by a lifelong professional liar and his servile toady. After saying he would be heading back to work the day after Christmas, the emperor promptly went back to working on his golf game for the rest of the week. Mike Schmidt happened to be a convenient way to keep his name in the news, and all it cost him was a half-hour of regurgitating his usual rally jabber.
The other major institution in slow-motion implosion is the political system, pretty much the entire thing if we keep going along like this. One political party has lost its fucking mind -- its members have decided to sell out the country for a tax cut for billionaires, and its constituents sold out their country for free, just for the feeling of pissing off librul caricatures. The other party tries vainly to figure out how they fucked the proverbial dog so badly, and find their collective spine, as well as conjure up someone younger than retirement age to rally around for the next election cycle.
Now, with the political bastards, all you have to do is follow the proverbial money. That at least is a rationale that makes some sense. They all have to raise a ton of money every day just to run for office, just to keep their seats. It sucks, but there is some logic behind it, however bent.
Ordinarily, you would want to ascribe that motive to the Vichy mediots as well. But it doesn't make sense at all -- the commenters hate this shit at literally a 95+% rate, and are not shy about saying so. And it's not like the Clownstick fantards and the Cletus demographic from the safaris are ever reading the Times or the Post.
So what in the hell is the motive behind this nonsense, for the reporters, the editors, the publishers? In what universe does it make any sense to keep pissing off your own strongest supporters with shoddy, cynical work? No one is saying they can never run out to Pig's Knuckle to take the tempacher at the local grange hall, but there's not even the pretense of balance, the attempt to round up a few people who did not vote for this monster, and see what they think after six months or a year of this daily idiocy.
To be sure, there are still some genuine nuggets of value, the investigative stories that pop up. They can and should keep doing as many of those as possible. Good investigative pieces will always have lasting value. But they are playing a weird game with Mister Man, afraid to upset him. And I can't for the life of me figure out why that is. If he gets pissed and throws them out, that's the story.
He and his minions give nothing of value. They should stop talking to him if he's not going to tell them anything useful. They should stop attending the "press conferences" if Huckabee Junior is just going to lie to them. Who needs it? We already know they're pathological liars; there is no point in hanging around waiting to hear more and dumber lies.
It's not just that those pieces are dumb and useless, they are destructive -- they undermine credibility and trust in the media outlets themselves, because we already know he's a liar who is somehow immune from any and all accountability for his words and actions, so there is no point in reiterating that.
I still hold out some measure of hope for the supposed blue tsunami next year, but if it doesn't come through, you can be almost certain that much if not most of the blame can be put on these limpdick purveyors of state-sanctioned bafflegab, who let themselves get turned out by a senile cheeto-colored old man.
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