The Fourth Estate and Politics

[youthathletics]

Is that Seka?

[dislaxxic]

Might be Charlize Theron playing Seka!



..

[youthathletics]

Interesting lyrics: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cg_KURTK ... MyMTA2M2Y=

[dislaxxic]

MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"

Last weekend the American mainstream news media, especially its elite agenda-setting outlets such as the New York Times, had a choice to make. They could repeat and amplify the nakedly partisan, inaccurate, unprofessional, editorializing, “report” by former Trump regime member special counsel Robert Hur about President Joe Biden’s non-existent classified documents “scandal” and his supposed “memory problems,” or they could instead focus on how Donald Trump is continuing with his threats and promises to be a dictator, create a concentration camp system and engage in illegal mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of black and brown undocumented residents that will involve martial law and an invasion by the military of “blue states” before giving Vladimir Putin permission to attack Western Europe.

Predictably, the American mainstream news media chose the first option.

"The anti-establishment rage is one of the more potent forces for mobilizing voters in today’s politics, and if many voters think that the system is horrible, then they will vote for the candidate who is vowing to crush it."

"The anti-establishment rage is one of the more potent forces for mobilizing voters in today’s politics, and if many voters think that the system is horrible, then they will vote for the candidate who is vowing to crush it."

In terms of the mainstream news media as an institution, and its centrists and careerists especially, their behavior is odious as they appear to be actively diminishing President Biden and his successes and further normalizing Donald Trump’s dangerousness in order to create a horse race narrative that they believe will be most financially and personally profitable for them even as it imperils American democracy and the future of the country. The recent coverage of Biden’s supposed “memory problems” by the New York Times – what is clearly a coordinated act of political character assassination – is almost stupefying in its irresponsibility.

..

[runrussellrun]

MAGA fatigue and the "exhaustion of outrage addiction"

Last weekend the American mainstream news media, especially its elite agenda-setting outlets such as the New York Times, had a choice to make. They could repeat and amplify the nakedly partisan, inaccurate, unprofessional, editorializing, “report” by former Trump regime member special counsel Robert Hur about President Joe Biden’s non-existent classified documents “scandal” and his supposed “memory problems,” or they could instead focus on how Donald Trump is continuing with his threats and promises to be a dictator, create a concentration camp system and engage in illegal mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of black and brown undocumented residents that will involve martial law and an invasion by the military of “blue states” before giving Vladimir Putin permission to attack Western Europe.

Predictably, the American mainstream news media chose the first option.

"The anti-establishment rage is one of the more potent forces for mobilizing voters in today’s politics, and if many voters think that the system is horrible, then they will vote for the candidate who is vowing to crush it."

"The anti-establishment rage is one of the more potent forces for mobilizing voters in today’s politics, and if many voters think that the system is horrible, then they will vote for the candidate who is vowing to crush it."

In terms of the mainstream news media as an institution, and its centrists and careerists especially, their behavior is odious as they appear to be actively diminishing President Biden and his successes and further normalizing Donald Trump’s dangerousness in order to create a horse race narrative that they believe will be most financially and personally profitable for them even as it imperils American democracy and the future of the country. The recent coverage of Biden’s supposed “memory problems” by the New York Times – what is clearly a coordinated act of political character assassination – is almost stupefying in its irresponsibility.

..

Our nations leading institutions, seem to be firing lots of its staff. Disslax....something about "dictators". What an embarrassing post for you.

what actions is tRump gonna take, to create this "dictatorship", that he didn't take in his first term ?

Meanwhile, in real world, fascist dicktators are doing fascist firing censoring stuff.

[runrussellrun]

Interesting lyrics: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cg_KURTK ... MyMTA2M2Y=

Primary reason suck sent his offspring to a private schoola:

A tour of the public school, every classroom had "free", donated by the wonderful Bill Gates, electronic devices.

For, "learning". Of course, "certain" websites, would be blocked. Ya know, to protect the kids.

20 years later.....howz the "internet" and "laptop" learning going for ya, America?

"....a simple google search will show....."

[dislaxxic]

MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS OMIT MENTION OF TRUMP’S ALLEGEDLY CRIMINAL EXPLOITATION OF 2020 DEBATES

Twelve media organizations are clamoring for another set of debates between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In their naive call for debates, they claim that because the stakes on this election are so high, “there is simply no substitute” for the candidates “debating” each other, presenting, “their visions for the future of our nation.”

[snip]

I mean, they’re not wrong that debates provide an opportunity to display a candidate’s vision for America.

In the first debate in 2020, for example, Biden asked Trump to disavow right wing violence, and instead, Trump told the Proud Boys to “Stand Back and Stand By.”

Stoking political violence certainly is part of Trump’s “vision for the future of our nation.”

[snip]

It was another instance of an attempt to falsely frame his opponent.

So let’s grant the media outlets that Trump has gleefully displayed his vision of America at the 2020 debates with Joe Biden by serially attempting to frame his competitor and inciting violence.

But what I don’t understand — what makes me genuinely embarrassed for the group of good journalists who work at some of these media outlets — is why they believe there is “no substitute” for debates to tell such a story.

Are you telling me the only way you can convey to voters that Trump’s vision for America is violence, fraud, and revenge is by giving him a platform to engage in such activities? Why wouldn’t you instead pursue aggressive journalism to tell more of these stories?

Twelve media outlets claim that the only way they can display Trump’s dystopian vision for America is by being complicit in it.

..

[dislaxxic]

Speaking of election interference...

The Most Successful Man on Fox News Is Almost the Dumbest. This Is Not a Coincidence.

On any given weeknight on Fox News, at any given moment on the two programs he hosts—The Five, a panel show that airs at 5, and Jesse Watters Primetime, his solo joint, which airs at 8—the odds are pretty good that Watters is smirking, or sneering, or chuckling, or otherwise evincing censorious glee about the shameful doings of hoaxers, weirdos, migrants, protesters, media elitists, loony liberals, and other such partisan straw men. On The Five, Watters plays the nominal ringmaster, smugly opining from the center seat as he loosely guides the panel through breezy discussions of the day’s top stories in conservative triggerdom. On Jesse Watters Primetime, the host’s glib punditry and C-students-run-the-world charisma take the spotlight; in his nightly opening monologue and the show’s subsequent interview segments, Watters seeks less to persuade than to jeer the liberal malefactors whose alleged misdeeds he is lazily exposing. “A night of anarchy on the West Coast, as ‘kaffiyeh antifa’ got their hands on more weapons than Zelensky” was his derisive, and confusing, intro to a recent segment on the Gaza protests at UCLA. Kaffiyeh antifa. Got ’em, Jesse!

Of late, Watters has been turning his oafish bemusement to Donald Trump’s in-progress New York criminal trial—and the jurors charged with determining Trump’s fate. In a mid-April episode of The Five, after praising Trump for holding a photo-op at a New York bodega and complimenting the ex-president’s poise while facing dozens of felony criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions, Watters asserted, “They are trying to rig this jury. They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge.” (“They” were doing no such thing, of course—but the emptiness of Watters’ accusation didn’t stop Trump from passing along an embellished version of it on his Truth Social account soon thereafter. This “very troubling” post later became one of the key pieces of evidence offered by prosecutors in Trump’s first contempt-of-court hearing, in late April.)

Endlessly bashing and belittling anyone to the left of Jim Jordan is, of course, the Fox News formula more generally, and every prominent opinion host on the network interprets this brief in a slightly different way. Sean Hannity relies on choleric theorizing; Laura Ingraham deploys smart-girl sarcasm; Greg Gutfeld tosses off curdled libertarian open mic riffs; the Fox & Friends hosts (Steve Doocy occasionally excepted these days) give their early-rising viewers a cheery cryptofascist kaffeeklatsch.

Watters isn’t as angry as Hannity or as smart as Ingraham; his riffs aren’t as funny as Gutfeld’s, and he’s nowhere near as chipper as Fox News’ morning crew. His immediate predecessor in the 8 p.m. weeknight slot, Tucker Carlson, spun baroque ethnonationalist theories while fluffing dictatorial strongmen—but Watters is hardly articulate, imaginative, or ambitious enough to follow in Carlson’s jackbooted footsteps. Instead, Watters relies on low-effort mockery and lazy analysis, delivered in a mellow tone, often paired with a mirthless laugh. It is the mean-spirited snort of the frat brother when he spies a man with long hair; the smarmy chuckle of the righteous prick, intent on mocking, rather than forgiving, all those who trespass against him—even and especially if those trespasses are purely imaginary ones.

[a fan]

Speaking of election interference...

The Most Successful Man on Fox News Is Almost the Dumbest. This Is Not a Coincidence.

On any given weeknight on Fox News, at any given moment on the two programs he hosts—The Five, a panel show that airs at 5, and Jesse Watters Primetime, his solo joint, which airs at 8—the odds are pretty good that Watters is smirking, or sneering, or chuckling, or otherwise evincing censorious glee about the shameful doings of hoaxers, weirdos, migrants, protesters, media elitists, loony liberals, and other such partisan straw men. On The Five, Watters plays the nominal ringmaster, smugly opining from the center seat as he loosely guides the panel through breezy discussions of the day’s top stories in conservative triggerdom. On Jesse Watters Primetime, the host’s glib punditry and C-students-run-the-world charisma take the spotlight; in his nightly opening monologue and the show’s subsequent interview segments, Watters seeks less to persuade than to jeer the liberal malefactors whose alleged misdeeds he is lazily exposing. “A night of anarchy on the West Coast, as ‘kaffiyeh antifa’ got their hands on more weapons than Zelensky” was his derisive, and confusing, intro to a recent segment on the Gaza protests at UCLA. Kaffiyeh antifa. Got ’em, Jesse!

Of late, Watters has been turning his oafish bemusement to Donald Trump’s in-progress New York criminal trial—and the jurors charged with determining Trump’s fate. In a mid-April episode of The Five, after praising Trump for holding a photo-op at a New York bodega and complimenting the ex-president’s poise while facing dozens of felony criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions, Watters asserted, “They are trying to rig this jury. They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge.” (“They” were doing no such thing, of course—but the emptiness of Watters’ accusation didn’t stop Trump from passing along an embellished version of it on his Truth Social account soon thereafter. This “very troubling” post later became one of the key pieces of evidence offered by prosecutors in Trump’s first contempt-of-court hearing, in late April.)

Endlessly bashing and belittling anyone to the left of Jim Jordan is, of course, the Fox News formula more generally, and every prominent opinion host on the network interprets this brief in a slightly different way. Sean Hannity relies on choleric theorizing; Laura Ingraham deploys smart-girl sarcasm; Greg Gutfeld tosses off curdled libertarian open mic riffs; the Fox & Friends hosts (Steve Doocy occasionally excepted these days) give their early-rising viewers a cheery cryptofascist kaffeeklatsch.

Watters isn’t as angry as Hannity or as smart as Ingraham; his riffs aren’t as funny as Gutfeld’s, and he’s nowhere near as chipper as Fox News’ morning crew. His immediate predecessor in the 8 p.m. weeknight slot, Tucker Carlson, spun baroque ethnonationalist theories while fluffing dictatorial strongmen—but Watters is hardly articulate, imaginative, or ambitious enough to follow in Carlson’s jackbooted footsteps. Instead, Watters relies on low-effort mockery and lazy analysis, delivered in a mellow tone, often paired with a mirthless laugh. It is the mean-spirited snort of the frat brother when he spies a man with long hair; the smarmy chuckle of the righteous prick, intent on mocking, rather than forgiving, all those who trespass against him—even and especially if those trespasses are purely imaginary ones.

It's hard not to laugh at the nonstop hypocrisy of MAGA. Where they claim that Cancel Culture it the provenance of the left---when the right not just practiced it...they PERFECTED it, and made it into law. Can you fire someone for siding with Trump? Nope. But you could absolutely get fired for being gay. THAT is cancel culture.

Then there's the above....where they claim that the left is all about "victim culture". Forgetting, of course, that they've been playing this card for far longer. The War on Xmas ring a bell?

But there is no greater martyr and fake victim than Trump. The ENTIRE current zeitgeist of the Republican party is: "poor ol' Donnie Trump is being forced to follow the same laws that the rest of us have to follow".

Oh no. Not that. Is there no end to the tyranny of folks trying to hold a 1%er to the same laws that they have to follow?