And I didn’t mean to critique you for it; just to point out that any move by Clinton to question Trump’s changing motivations would have likely just blown back on her. Donald Trump is the idiot savant of the news pivot; he has no real master plan or strategy but he knows how to keep talking and talking until the conversation switches to something else without every actually answering the question (he literally did this during the debates). Hillary Clinton is the polar opposite; the thinks that by stating facts and carefully crafting her words into a measured explanation as if in a courtroom she’ll diffuse the allegations, when what she really gets in response is critics thinking (sometimes correctly) that’s she’s trying twist them into semantic agreement. Even when she’s being totally honest and inarguably factual (as she was many times in the debates) it often came off to people inclined to think of her as an elite as if she was trying to hide something else behind the facts, while Trump is completely unfazed by being caught in a bald lie. He has the countenance of the cat who ate the canary and is so pleased with himself that he engenders admiration from…well, from assholes. But there are a lot of assholes.
Here is an New York Times Magazine article by Maureen Dowd that discusses how the Clinton’s initially came to New York and became associated with Trump. Take it with due notice of the author (Dowd came to prominence and won a Pulitzer for writing about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and has been noted for writing caricatures of public personalities) but it does illustrate how Trump and the Clintons, despite having very different backgrounds, had certain interests in common and a mutual sense of being outsiders in the New York political and social scene. The article doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of either, and the fiscal incestuousness of both could give rise to any number of conspiracy theories if you subscribe to the notion that either side really thinks that far ahead (a hypothesis not really substantiated by the actions of either side).
Speaking for myself, I don’t think the actual scandals have nearly the same emotional hook as the trivial bullshit. That’s really what the media has to navigate if it’s going to take any ethical responsibility in this fiasco – how do you give the people something they don’t really want? I feel like we’ve fallen down this rabbit hole of superficial, sensationalist garbage and don’t know how to get out.
It’s a fair observation; even in a time before round-the-clock news coverage of world events and social media, complex news stories like the Iran-Contra crisis or the subtext behind the Falklands War was difficult to follow, and people largely don’t remember details or causes today. It is instructive, however, just how many people have tuned into shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight for actual content, despite the fact that Jon Steward and John Oliver have enthusiastically (and correctly) protested that they are not journalists. The problem with a lot of media stories is that they just come off as repetitive. CNN and MSNBC ‘news’ shows are largely the same talking heads repeating the same stories with the same tenor over and over again, so even if viewers care about the issues they become jaded and indifferent.
I think the answer is to make viewers feel like they can do something about the story. This gets perilously close to the ‘advocacy journalism’ that is as divisive as campaigns, but in some respect in a complex story there needs to be someone breaking down the story and providing a narrative with actionable response. There has been a kind of backlash in media where it is okay to prove an ‘opinion’ (as long as it doesn’t hew too far from what is accepted) but not advocate personal action, which is exactly the opposite of what media icons like Ed Murrow advocated. The function of the media shouldn’t be to just provide facts (and yes, they are responsible for checking the statements of politicians against actual facts) but to press for action, especially when there is an issue or actor who affects and threatens the public as a whole across partisan lines, such as McCarthyism or global climate change.
this might be completely inappropriate, and I will trust the mods to do with it what they see fit, but I want to state unequivocally that I now worship Stranger on a Train. I agree with every single word s/he wrote, I am overwhelmed by both the style and the content of his/her posts and I want him/her to be my next-door neighbor, husband, bff, boss or all of the above.
The only response to Trump demanding an apology from anyone should be to say that you will apologize as soon as Trump begins apologizing to the people he has attacked and offended.
Since Trump refuses to apologize for anything even when he is clearly in the wrong, he has no business requesting apologies from anyone else.
But it’s OK if the Prez-elect of the U.S. gets butt hurt and tweets that anything less than an absolute ass kissing is “terribly so unfair” … or some other whiny bitch bullshit.
It’s not like it’s one or the other. You can focus on the scandals too. But what I see is a president-elect who is quick to try to suppress freedom of speech. He’s tweeted more in recent days about Hamilton and SNL than he has that racist fuck who’s been “Heil, Trump”-ing him.
Seems in one of his recent tweets, he’s asked for Nigel Farage to be the British ambassador to the US. This is the first time in history that an American president or president-elect has asked a country for a specific person to be ambassador.
The queen was not amused, nor are the British public from what I hear.
