Our Liberal Media

I'm obviously not a fan of "celebrity journalism" -- gossip tabloids and such, but it does have its place, and at least shows the double-edged-sword side of fame and publicity. I don't read it, and it seems like the practitioners of that particular dark art should go out and find respectable work, such as giving handjobs for crack in a needle-strewn gutter. But it's easy to see how people can enjoy the temporary rush of reading tacky, scurrilous innuendo about the hapless souls who are at some indefinable -- even to themselves -- point on a predictable arc from discovery to love to loathing to (maybe) redemption.

But what really makes this Esquire profile of the Page Six tabloid is how eager these celebro-journos were to compromise themselves ethically, and then how many of them made the jump to other areas of manufacturing consent.

Toward the end of the article, it mentions how many of these turds would show up at Harvey Weinstein's big parties, with many popular stars in attendance, and omit details about Weinstein's frequent abusive outbursts, and accusations of physical and sexual assault, in order to ensure their invite to the next one. This appears to be the rule for these people, rather than the exception.

Earlier in the piece, it mentions how one of the tabloid writers, Tara Palmeri, eventually got on with ABC News, covering the White House. Now, this is not to single out Palmeri as a particularly noteworthy offender (especially since, frankly, she's fucking hot), but to suggest her as a rather mundane example of how "journalists" as a general class become accustomed to operating. They take the same shoddy ethical standards and style of coverage with them from entertainment to sports to news.

And that is the problem with the American corporate media ecosystem, right there in a nutshell. You cannot cover the people who run the damned country in the same way you do PR puff pieces on Matt Damon or LeBron James, and expect to maintain any sort of rigorous standard in the content you produce.

This is how the New York Times has been compromised so badly, and it seems that the Washington Post is sliding back under that low bar as well. Both papers (but especially the Times) tend to rely heavily on unnamed sources "speaking on background" regarding whatever bombshell-of-the-day they're peddling. As stupid and oafish as Trump may be, he at least understands, as Jimmy Breslin pointed out decades ago, that the media monkeys come cheap and easy -- all you have to do is return their phone calls.

So what do you think the likelihood is that Trump has people all through his inner circle who understand just how to use the credulous dupes at the Times to broadcast their messaging for free, in the guise of "reporting"? How much fact-checking do you think Maggie Haberman bothers with, to corroborate or refute whatever White House shithead "leaked" to her? The only thing this human centipede of an administration does competently is propaganda, and they know how to use the Times for their own means, just as Harvey Weinstein knew how to use Page Six for his.

But in the end, it's a free market, and companies don't sell what people won't buy. Jabbering assholes like Tweety Matthews are still on the air because someone's dumb enough to keep watching him, even though he has yet to have a fresh or interesting observation on any subject. Vulture capitalists are tearing through local and regional newspapers like a swarm of army ants because they can, and because no one will stop them.

This situation will never get better until enough people become more discerning consumers, and stop rewarding shoddy, cynical hacks like we have now.

Dubya and Me

To be a talk-show host, to state the painfully obvious, must be a very weird experience. It is literally your job to get along with everyone you encounter, to always have to know what to say and how best to say it. Since the majority of your guests are simply there to plug their latest projects, which you may or may not check out and may or may not enjoy, you also are put into the position of having to pretend the affirmative on both of those things. I just loved your [movie/teevee show/album/book], really! Eventually, as David Letterman showed us, such a thing wears a normal person down.

The personality traits seem by definition to be heightened in the daytime arena, where the fluff is even fluffier, and the goal seems to be to provide solace and affirmation to whatever the audience is stuck spending their afternoon tuning into such a thing. Daytime hosts are the hype people for video wallpaper, essentially. And they do it with the persona of being everyone's friend.

Oprah is the queen of this sort of thing, of course, and she's very good at it. She has cemented herself in the American psyche as a goodwill ambassador, someone whose work ethic and positive attitude has transformed lives.

But she has also inflicted Doctors Oz and Phil on an unsuspecting nation, so there's that. She is tight with Tyler Perry, who poses as a champion for black artistes, while simultaneously building an empire on the backs of non-union contract workers.

So when we all saw Ellen DeGeneres sitting next to ol' Fredo Arbusto at the Cowboys-Packers game last Sunday, one instantly assumed the requisite round of side-taking and tribal affirmation. I think it does say something about Ellen, but it also says -- as these things always do -- so much more about us, and our supposed deep concerns, and how impotent online twitrage is supposed to equal some sort of constructive action or activity.

Mediocracy

I bet you won't fall on your face, your belly will hold you in place. -- Iron Maiden Be Quick or Be Dead<./I>

Since we're talking about the importance of accountability for a bunch of dipshit teenagers, let's also mention how much more important that ideal is for the cadre of adult professionals who monger opinions and convene panel circle jerks and such like. Obviously the Covington Catholic controversy sets right in their collective wheelhouse. They can spend the next week going over video swatches like the fucking Zapruder film, frame-by-frame analysis that ultimately confirms whatever a given observer has already chosen to believe beforehand.

I guess it beats reporting on whether the school is tax-exempt, as many religious schools are, and if so, how that status squares with the school bussing children wearing political endorsement swag to a political protest to advocate a highly specific -- and contentious -- point of view. But then again, let's face it -- the 501(c)(3) status that churches and religious organizations enjoy is one of the most ridiculous and least enforced legal fig leaves in existence. It barely falls under the scope of pro forma.

Zen and the Art of Court Stenography; Or, Schmidt Happens

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.

Our Liberal Media

Good to know that the New York Times is now finding "stories" by reading asswipe RWNJ sites like Right Wing News and Newsmax.

Here's the key excerpt from the Times article that demonstrates how thoroughly the journamalists have forgotten what their actual job is:

The question has gained momentum in the weeks since Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Trump, a Republican. It began quietly at first, then grew louder among the conservative media outlets and pundits who hold her and Mr. de Blasio in disdain.

I'll never link to them, but I invite you to go to RWN and Newsmax and see for yourself what they are: poorly written, rarely bylined, loosely attributed, never corroborated.

Put more clearly: no reputable journalist should ever cite these websites for any sort of information, knowledge, or empirical fact. They are liars, calumniators, prevaricators and provocateurs. Their aim is not to inform, it is to disinform, to agitate, to stir up shit. They do not remotely care whether Hillary Clinton might actually be planning to run for mayor in NYC; all they care about is making the usual media monkeys go "Squirrel!" and chase the phantom distraction.

I have a polite (for now) request for Amy Chozick, J. David Goodman, and every other so-called reporter who deals in this sort of bullshit non-story:

Quit your jobs, because you're fucking terrible. What you do has already harmed this country, and continues to do so. Go make sandwiches, be plumbers, write shitty novels. Anything but what you're doing now. Because did I mention that you're fucking terrible at your jobs? When you cite internet agitprop outlets as "sources" of any type, all you do is legitimize them, give them credence, give the innuendo and lies that they manufacture the very thinnest veneer of credibility. Your job is not to repeat what random internet morons are spewing, your job is to point out the veracity of what they spew, to point out that they routinely lie, that they are never objective, that they have an overt agenda, that facts do not and have never played into their content format.

Starbucks needs you, much more than we do. Make yourselves useful and get me a fucking venti dirty chai, three shots.

Seriously, I've never been a letter-to-the-editor writer or a boycott monger, but maybe it's time to start. Because fuck these people. Shame on them and their editors for pushing this nonsense as a legit story. Some fucking clown at Right Wing News pulled something out of their asshole, and didn't even have the common courtesy to brush off the peanuts and corn? Well fuck, let's publish that motherfucker.

One thing is frighteningly clear -- ol' Tweety McTinyhands and his internet minions are going to have grand fun for the next few years, making these scrivening dipshits dutifully repeat every online snipe and fnord they can conjure. Why aren't the Democrats any good at this game?

Word Smoothie

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right — who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

I can't believe we didn't catch this a year ago, when it actually happened, not that he's gotten any better since. Jesus H. Christ, it's like a three-year-old took a handful of those word magnets you get at Barnes & Noble, and just hurled it at the refrigerator. Read it aloud in your best Drumpf voice to get the best effect -- merely watching the video doesn't do it justice, you have to concentrate to spout a drool of consciousness like that. It takes effort. I'm guessing it has something to do with how the crafty Persians rooked us on the nook-ya-ler deal,

Even Sarah Palin at her methiest makes more sense than this fuckin' jamoke. Fucking Fredo Arbusto never sounded this flat-out stupid.  Picture every speech, every ceremony, every diplomatic negotiation that a president must do, being done for the next four years -- hell, four weeks -- by the font of this supreme babble. Every phase of Donny Boy's game is completely, irrefutably incompetent. His business acumen, his common sense, his knowledge of the world, of foreign and domestic policy. He's an incompetent writer and speaker because he's an incompetent thinker.

Successful business people don't speak like this, to point out the obvious; their stakeholders would laugh them out of the room and then divest immediately. You wouldn't invest a roll of nickels with someone who sounds like a raving asshole on a sidewalk wearing a "The End Is Near" sandwich board. But then, Drumpf doesn't have stakeholders, because no one with any sense would put their money in one of his ventures. The long-standing joke is that he's a free-riding clown who lives on other people's money. That sounds about right. I hope Deutsche Bank eats every dime he's borrowed from them. It would serve them right.

Millions of morons want this man to lead the country, and he's probably not qualified to lead his own company. His defenders keep touting his streams of inarticulate chunder as some sort of "common man" qualifier, as if average people went off on random, incomprehensible tangents routinely, as if being clear and articulate with language wasn't, you know, one of the most vital components of the job.

Burying the Lede

While the media chases its collective tail over Drumpf's Second Amendment, amirite? wink-and-a-nod to the (judging from the number of applause breaks) crowd of drooling morons, they're missing the real story here. Throughout the entire speech, he's either incoherent or flat-out lying, there's simply no in-between whatsoever. Many people are saying he's a fucking moron who can't stop lying. Sad!

Here's a fun incoherent part, where he talks about Carrier air conditioning moving a manufacturing plant to Mexico, and how he'd single-handedly stop it all (unless, of course, they were Drumpf Signature Line Air Conditioners, the classiest and coolest air conditioners you can find, they're tremendous, believe me):

And two things are gonna happen, one of two things — one of two things are gonna happen. Number one, if you get them in time, they’re not moving. Throws it all off-balance, since they’re all off-kilter. Number one they’re not — now, nobody — people would say well, why doesn’t anybody use this? Why doesn’t anybody mention it?

SPOILER ALERT -- he never makes it to number two. Sad! I think we all needed to know that second thing that was totally gonna happen.