I mean this without the slightest trace of sarcasm or malice: what sort of person attributes any import or meaning to the endorsement of a newspaper for a given political candidate, except perhaps as a negative characteristic?
In other words, I would never vote for a particular candidate just because the New York Times gave them their seal of approval, but it would certainly speak volumes about them as a legitimate journalistic operation if, say, they lost their fucking minds and endorsed Trump or David Duke or something like that.
But for the most part, the Times has continued to distinguish itself rather poorly overall. For every in-depth story or weekend magazine deep-dive they manage, there are a dozen or more elisions, omissions, qualifications, demurrals, anonymously sourced "hackcess journalism" pieces that add nothing of value. And then there's the stable of columnists, half of whom should have been set free in a dark forest with a crust of bread decades ago. (Feel free to guess which half.)
The main problem with old-school corporate institutions like the Times is that they practice "gatekeeper" journalism -- not only do they deem themselves as the font whence all conventional narrative springs forth like the purest blessed water, but they take it upon themselves to decide for everyone what "counts" and what doesn't, and how it should be presented.
In a normal political climate, it's still not a good thing; consent is still being manufactured, as it were. But in a climate where one side has figured out how to weaponize the studied hypocrisies of fake objectivity, it's become a dangerous dereliction of duty. They know what's really going on, and do still have something of a national soapbox to tell it like it is, but are simply too cowardly to do so.
That's how you get these half-assed dual "endorsements," where they profess to approve of the idealistic campaign of Elizabeth Warren, but have decided also for the more "realistic" and "electable" Amy Klobuchar. Who says you can't have it all?
Whenever reporters and op-ed writers start talking about "electability" as a positive attribute, you can pretty much dismiss whatever it is they're trying to push on you. As Osita Nwanevu notes, the word is nothing more than a "poisonous shibboleth," a totem wielded by gatekeepers and institutionalists to booga-booga the rabble into voting for the candidate who literally promises to do the very least.
It should not be a surprise to the folks in steerage that the swells in the luxury cabins have no interest in rocking the boat.
But as we always say here, it takes two to participate in any given con -- the con man and the mark, one to lie and one to believe it. No one makes you send your hard-earned money to televangelist grifters or Trump University hucksters, and no one makes you cast your vote for who someone else thinks is the best candidate.
I have, from time to time, advocated for particular candidates, but it is always with the understanding that this is my opinion. You are not required to fall into lockstep with me. Your priorities might be different than mine.
Presumably we agree that the one common goal among supporters of the various primary candidates is that Trump must go, the sooner the better. The Republicans who continue to support his open corruption and mendacity need to leave as well. These are basic operational premises. All the specific policy preferences -- health care, climate change, student loan debt, etc. -- don't matter without the removal of those obstructions first.
And that's what the primary campaign is for, to test the messaging and see which candidate resonates with the most voters, to sort out all the practical and stylistic differences. But the core premises are the same regardless. Klobuchar might be down my personal list a bit, maybe fourth or fifth, but if she ends up getting the nomination I'm fine with voting for her.
The other problem with the "electability" game is that the gatekeepers really mean which candidate is most palatable to older white conservatives, preferably in the Midwest, where only real 'murkins live. This is the real shibboleth, eternal, deathless, zombie-like in its singular direction. The gatekeepers then reinforce this myth by venturing out of their glass skyscrapers not to talk to the people in their own city (New York City alone has more inhabitants than all but twelve states, and has more than the bottom nine states combined), but to the fist-shaking codgers festering out in the desiccated, depopulated zones of the country.
I don't give a fuck what those people think about anything, even as ragebait. They will never vote for a Democrat. There is no point in trying to woo them. We need to stop playing this game, and if that means writing off the gatekeepers, that's probably for the best.
It's really just news-cycle churn, make-work for these smart-set types who really don't know, empirically, all that much about anything more than you or I do. How will people vote? I don't know, let's ask this statistically negligible sample set of random idiots from the same demographic sliver, in an ethnically homogenous state with maybe two percent of the total population. Sure, why not?
After that, it's just the usual Monday-morning quarterbacking nonsense for the next electoral cycle. Nwanevu captures that in this passage:
That presumed credulity is at the heart of the gatekeepers' ministrations about "electability" and "realism." Convincing each individual reader separately that they should game their own vote based on the gatekeepers' cherry-picked analysis of bumptious flyover randos is the whole point of the game. It's an ongoing racket deliberately designed and deployed to discourage participation, and for those who do decide to participate after all, to second-guess themselves at all times.
Statistically, I should be a Trump voter -- white, middle-aged, above-median income, live in a conservative area. But I honestly cannot conceive of a single possible scenario, including a full-on invasion by outer-space aliens, where I can see myself voting for him, or anyone in that party. It would take a complete policy and attitude reversal on the part of them all, and frankly, an alien invasion is more likely.
So these empty assumptions are just that, and just because we see some poll numbers somewhere shouldn't change anything. If you stick to those core premises -- those fuckers have to go -- then the rest of it is clickbait and bullshit, and people need to recognize it for what it really is.
In other words, I would never vote for a particular candidate just because the New York Times gave them their seal of approval, but it would certainly speak volumes about them as a legitimate journalistic operation if, say, they lost their fucking minds and endorsed Trump or David Duke or something like that.
But for the most part, the Times has continued to distinguish itself rather poorly overall. For every in-depth story or weekend magazine deep-dive they manage, there are a dozen or more elisions, omissions, qualifications, demurrals, anonymously sourced "hackcess journalism" pieces that add nothing of value. And then there's the stable of columnists, half of whom should have been set free in a dark forest with a crust of bread decades ago. (Feel free to guess which half.)
The main problem with old-school corporate institutions like the Times is that they practice "gatekeeper" journalism -- not only do they deem themselves as the font whence all conventional narrative springs forth like the purest blessed water, but they take it upon themselves to decide for everyone what "counts" and what doesn't, and how it should be presented.
In a normal political climate, it's still not a good thing; consent is still being manufactured, as it were. But in a climate where one side has figured out how to weaponize the studied hypocrisies of fake objectivity, it's become a dangerous dereliction of duty. They know what's really going on, and do still have something of a national soapbox to tell it like it is, but are simply too cowardly to do so.
That's how you get these half-assed dual "endorsements," where they profess to approve of the idealistic campaign of Elizabeth Warren, but have decided also for the more "realistic" and "electable" Amy Klobuchar. Who says you can't have it all?
Whenever reporters and op-ed writers start talking about "electability" as a positive attribute, you can pretty much dismiss whatever it is they're trying to push on you. As Osita Nwanevu notes, the word is nothing more than a "poisonous shibboleth," a totem wielded by gatekeepers and institutionalists to booga-booga the rabble into voting for the candidate who literally promises to do the very least.
It should not be a surprise to the folks in steerage that the swells in the luxury cabins have no interest in rocking the boat.
But as we always say here, it takes two to participate in any given con -- the con man and the mark, one to lie and one to believe it. No one makes you send your hard-earned money to televangelist grifters or Trump University hucksters, and no one makes you cast your vote for who someone else thinks is the best candidate.
I have, from time to time, advocated for particular candidates, but it is always with the understanding that this is my opinion. You are not required to fall into lockstep with me. Your priorities might be different than mine.
Presumably we agree that the one common goal among supporters of the various primary candidates is that Trump must go, the sooner the better. The Republicans who continue to support his open corruption and mendacity need to leave as well. These are basic operational premises. All the specific policy preferences -- health care, climate change, student loan debt, etc. -- don't matter without the removal of those obstructions first.
And that's what the primary campaign is for, to test the messaging and see which candidate resonates with the most voters, to sort out all the practical and stylistic differences. But the core premises are the same regardless. Klobuchar might be down my personal list a bit, maybe fourth or fifth, but if she ends up getting the nomination I'm fine with voting for her.
The other problem with the "electability" game is that the gatekeepers really mean which candidate is most palatable to older white conservatives, preferably in the Midwest, where only real 'murkins live. This is the real shibboleth, eternal, deathless, zombie-like in its singular direction. The gatekeepers then reinforce this myth by venturing out of their glass skyscrapers not to talk to the people in their own city (New York City alone has more inhabitants than all but twelve states, and has more than the bottom nine states combined), but to the fist-shaking codgers festering out in the desiccated, depopulated zones of the country.
I don't give a fuck what those people think about anything, even as ragebait. They will never vote for a Democrat. There is no point in trying to woo them. We need to stop playing this game, and if that means writing off the gatekeepers, that's probably for the best.
It's really just news-cycle churn, make-work for these smart-set types who really don't know, empirically, all that much about anything more than you or I do. How will people vote? I don't know, let's ask this statistically negligible sample set of random idiots from the same demographic sliver, in an ethnically homogenous state with maybe two percent of the total population. Sure, why not?
After that, it's just the usual Monday-morning quarterbacking nonsense for the next electoral cycle. Nwanevu captures that in this passage:
.... The victory or defeat of any given candidate does not foreclose the possibility that they might have performed differently under slightly different circumstances and cannot tell us conclusively whether another candidate might have done better or worse. The 2016 election race drew us close, but not close enough, to understanding this. Any politically engaged person today can rattle off a list of factors that might have tilted the race: Russian interference, irresponsible coverage of the Clinton email scandal, Trump’s omnipresence on cable television, James Comey’s eleventh-hour machinations, the Clinton campaign’s inattention to the Rust Belt. ....Consider every one of those factors carefully. All of them rely on the credulity of the electorate. In other words, the majority of the vote went to Hillary Clinton, so clearly they were not swayed by those transparent gambits. You didn't fall for Russian Fakebook micro-targeting, you didn't fall for Jim Comey's stupid letter, you weren't affected by HFC's failure to genuflect to farm country.
That presumed credulity is at the heart of the gatekeepers' ministrations about "electability" and "realism." Convincing each individual reader separately that they should game their own vote based on the gatekeepers' cherry-picked analysis of bumptious flyover randos is the whole point of the game. It's an ongoing racket deliberately designed and deployed to discourage participation, and for those who do decide to participate after all, to second-guess themselves at all times.
Statistically, I should be a Trump voter -- white, middle-aged, above-median income, live in a conservative area. But I honestly cannot conceive of a single possible scenario, including a full-on invasion by outer-space aliens, where I can see myself voting for him, or anyone in that party. It would take a complete policy and attitude reversal on the part of them all, and frankly, an alien invasion is more likely.
So these empty assumptions are just that, and just because we see some poll numbers somewhere shouldn't change anything. If you stick to those core premises -- those fuckers have to go -- then the rest of it is clickbait and bullshit, and people need to recognize it for what it really is.
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