So who’s gonna complete the trifecta by calling il Doofus an “imbecile”?
I’d be happy to do so, to his face no less, if we can get him to hire me.
…but that isn’t what happened.
Michelle made jokes.
She joked about Donald Trump.
She joked about Mike Pence. “He thinks abortion is murder, which, first of all, don’t knock it till you try it. And when you do try it, really knock it. You know, you’ve got to get that baby out of there.”
She joked about Roy Moore.
She joked about Reince Priebus.
She joked about Michael Cohen.
She joked about Jake Tapper.
She joked about Hillary Clinton.
She joked about Don Jnr.
She joked about Al Franken.
She joked about Ted Kennedy, and how he killed someone.
She joked about Mitch McConnell, she joked about Paul Ryan, she joked about Chris Christie.
She joked about Kellyanne Conway. And she said how perfect her last name is, and that if she had a last name like hers it would be Michelle Jokes Frizzy Hair Small Tits.
She made fun of Ivanka Trump. She described her as “the Diaper Genie of the administration: on the outside, she looks sleek, but the inside, it’s still full of shit.”
She joked about Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
She joked about CNN and Fox News and Sean Hannity.
She joked about Morning Joe. “We now know Mika and Joe are engaged. Congratulation you guys, it’s like when a #MeToo works out.”
She joked about Rachel Maddow.
She joked about Megan Kelly.
Why did this story become about Sarah Huckabee Sanders?
It wasn’t because of Michelle Wolf. She took shots at everybody.
So how did the story become about SHS?
Because of things like this.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/daniel-halper/republican-talking-points
http://gawker.com/5461548/how-your-right-wing-talking-point-sausage-is-made
Its how the Republicans stay on message. They literally craft talking points for no other reason but to win the daily news cycle. It doesn’t matter if the talking points are truth or lies, they simply stick to them. When Chris Cuomo held Matt Schlapp’s “feet to the fire” today on CNN about the hypocrisy of his reaction to Wolf compared to his reaction to any one of Trump’s objectively worse insults: Schlapp simply pivoted to the next talking point. He then started claiming he left because of the abortion joke.
Because thats how it works. If SHS didn’t gain traction, they would have used the abortion angle. Or “how dare she attack Ivanka!”
So why has it worked so well for them this time?
Because of access.
It has become crystal fucking clear that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is probably a major “behind the scenes source” for many of the White House Correspondents. They’ve become close. In my most humblest of opinions, they are “compromised.” We’ve seen it in their writing for years. So their instant, gut reaction when SHS was attacked was to not just defend SHS, but to attack Wolf, and to demand an apology. The White House Correspondents’ Association put out a press release that threw Wolf under a bus. The press: and their complicity with the Trump administration, has become part of the story.
So did Michelle Wolf turn Sarah Huckabee Sanders into a sympathetic character?
No she fucking well did not.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a liar. She is the mouthpiece for the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States of America. She is part of an extremely well-executed propaganda campaign and she is a “sympathetic figure” precisely because of that propaganda. Congratulations on getting taken in.
I’m sorry, did you hold the same opinion when Colbert skewed George Bush, when Larry Wilmore called the President "“my n$gga”, when Joel McHale made fun of Chris Christie for being fat?
You are aware that this is exactly what happens at this event, don’t you?
Unfortunately, they have been inviting comedians to speak at the dinner since Bob Hope at the very first one in 1944. If this was supposed to be an event of journalists, by journalists, and for journalists, then someone forgot to send them the fucking memo.
Hilariously, Donald Trump directly verbally assaulted the free press in a rally at the same time as this event. And the “Justice Department Deleted Language About Press Freedom And Racial Gerrymandering From Its Internal Manual.”
And we should be skeptical of conventional press figures and outlets. And the reaction by the press to Michelle Wolf’s set is exactly why we should be skeptical. We are being “stage managed.” You shouldn’t be comfortable with that.
They didn’t invite a comedian to “maul the White House press secretary.” They invited a comedian to make jokes, which is what comedians do every single time they come to speak at this event. And every single time they come to these events these comedians “poke holes” at the insider elitism that is on display at the WHCD. Which is why Wolf went after everyone. Its why Wolf went after CNN and Fox and Maddow and Hannity, and its why she ended with the line “Flint still doesn’t have clean water.” It was a direct-smackdown of the elitism at play here. That everybody in the room are too busy “patting themselves on each others backs” that a fixable crisis that would cost (comparatively) a tiny amount of money to fix is playing out just beyond the doors.
Your characterization of many of the Washington Press Corps as “brutal, personal partisans” is accurate. Your mistake is pretending that it is not.
THAT’s your takeaway from this?
The problem is the court jester, not the emperor with no clothes?
You correctly characterize the WHCD as “smacking of insider elitism”, and your solution is to remove the only person in the room who is pointing this out to everyone?
“Raise their game?”
Fuck that.
They need to forget about “how they are perceived” and simply do their job. That really isn’t a lot to ask of them.
You’ve just characterized this event as "“smacking of insider elitism”, and that is exactly what it is. Journalists have every fucking opportunity to ask Sarah Huckabee Sanders “Why do you say things that are demonstrably false every fucking day?” They don’t need to wait for a fucking dinner to ask that question. Do you know who doesn’t have access to Sarah Huckabee Sanders on a daily basis? Me. Or you. Or almost everybody in the United States of fucking America. So when it falls to the comedian to stand up on stage and point to the Press Secretary and say “you lie to the American people every day” that means the press has fucking failed in doing their job.
A year and a bit ago we were all saying “we can’t normalize Trump.” Well we are fucking beyond that now. Trump is so normalized that Trump could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose any voters. Trump is so normalized that he can spout utter nonsense, get crowds to “boooo” at the mere mention of the word Mexicans, and the press will ignore that, and instead loose their shit over a comedian who made a decision to “punch up.”
They need to stop trying to “fight him.” The Trump administration has set the narrative, that this is a battle. Accepting the narrative that “this is a fight” is exactly what the Trump administration wants, and while the press try to figure out “how to fight him” the Trump administration just keep on doing their thing.
This is how they work. They create a narrative, and while you are busy trying to combat that narrative, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants financial hardship waivers to an oil refinery owned by a billionaire. Its the oldest trick in the book and you are still falling for it.
I agree you are in serious trouble. But the press aren’t weakened because they are “confounded”: they are weakened because information is power, and the White House controls access to information, and (some) of the media are shit-scared of loosing access to information.
This is profound.:rolleyes:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you flounce out of a thread!
Bravo! 10/10!
…why would I include it? You asked me to show you where you said “The amount of responsibility you put on her shoulders is complete fucking bullshit.”
I showed you where you said that.
And saying “and I know that as a professional comedian she shouldn’t worry about this, but as someone who cares about more than her career, I do worry about it” doesn’t change that one fucking bit.
You actually literally said “The Democratic Party’s chances of taking the House (and the Good Lord willing the Senate) went down because of her performance.” So what exactly is it you want us to take away from that statement?
So thanks for clearing that up. She’s not on your side. And despite you “claiming” that you are “on my side” its pretty crystal clear that you aren’t on my fucking side either. I’m with her.
Oh grow the fuck up you whiny little snowflake. Oh…and BYE!
Of course I’m directly impacted by it. The United States is the most powerful country in the history of the world, and everything you guys do has a ripple effect all around the world. The only difference is that I don’t get a vote.
I would suggest that a much better strategy to adopt is the one that China Guy suggests: “focus first and foremost on getting out the vote and doing all they can to reverse the gerrymandering and vote suppression.” When you say that the next election is likely to play out on the margins I think you are entirely correct. I also think that it is possible to “convince some people” to change their vote, and if you want to do that then all power to you.
But its a high risk strategy. The reality is that there are plenty of people who like Trump and will vote for Trump again at the next election. And there are plenty of people who don’t like Trump and will vote for Trump at the next election. There are people on these boards, smart, intelligent life-long republicans who were well aware of everything Trump stood for, who went to the polls with the intention of voting for Clinton but very nearly voted Trump: not for any logical reason, but because they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a democrat.
You can try and reach out to people who are so “tribal” that they will vote Republican, not because its the “logical choice”, but because its what “they have always done, and what they will do until the day the die.”
Or you could instead put your efforts into getting some of the 100 million people who didn’t vote last year out to vote at the next elections. Get stuck in at the grass-roots level to fight gerrymandering and vote suppression. You do what you want to do.
My favorite line in the speech was one that has gone largely unnoticed. Wolfe said, in reference to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski - “ “it’s like when a Me Too works out”.
Now if J and M had remained Trump supporters there would be OUTRAGE —-How dare the bad comedian accuse the fiancé of a “wife and mother” of sexual assault!! ( OK, ex-wife or soon to be wife). But since these two former Trump supporters split with him after the election, it’s OK. Just like it was OK for Trump to use The National Enquirer and extortion to try to get them back.
I disagree with the assessment that Mika is defending SHS just to maintain access to the White House. That ship sailed about 14 months ago and Morning Joe could easily be renamed “What Did the America-Fucking Asshole Lie About Today?”
The contretemps about the WHCD is kinda predicated on the assumption that: the strategy for dealing with Trumpism at the WHCD dinner is parallel and equivalent to the strategy for dealing with Trumpism in the November mid-term elections – which may or may not be a valid assumption.
Assuming it is: Robert Reich has said that the way for Democrats to win in November is not to be the party of Not Trump, but to present alternative, progressive ideas. To appeal to the disaffected middle class that put him in office, in ways that address their concerns without attacking Trump.
And if you buy that strategy (and I do), then Michelle Wolf’s performance was counter-productive.
…jesus-fucking-jack-shit-on-a-fucking-pogo-stick-christ.
I literally don’t know how to respond to this.
We don’t have access to the White House. I’m not trying to be “profound.” Its reality.
As people who don’t have daily access to the White House we are reliant on the press to ask the questions we want answers to, we are reliant on the press to hold these people to account.
If anyone should be pointing at the White House and calling them out on their lies, it should be the fourth estate.
Instead many have abdicated that responsibility to the comedians, to the late-night talk hosts.
The idea that you had:
Is just fucked up in the context of this discussion.
They don’t need to invite her to dinner to ask her that question. They see her every fucking day.
They have access. The over-reaction to Wolf’s comedy routine is a direct response to the threat to that access.
Wolf did what the journalists should be doing: she held SHS to account. She had the very rare and privileged opportunity to call her a liar to her face and so she did.
…any strategy predicated on “not attacking Trump” is doomed to fucking fail.
The year is 2018. You can’t stop people from “attacking Trump.” I can log into twitter right now and when I start scrolling every third tweet will be someone attacking Trump. There are blog posts and medium posts and gifs on tumbler and “talking heads” on TV who are all right this minute attacking Trump.
People are going to attack Trump. We are in a thread on the internet that is nearly 400 pages long that is dedicated to attacking Trump.
It wasn’t the “disaffected middle class” that put Trump into power. It was rich, white people with authoritarian inclinations.
So what are you going to do about it?
No seriously: if your strategy is dependent on comedians “not attacking Trump”, then how the fuck are you going to make that work?
It isn’t remotely realistic, not in 2018, not in a world where any random nobody can have their opinion heard all around the world.
I suggest you get a new strategy, and quick.
It’s hard to run honestly against a liar. Say you want to run for junior high school President and you have lots of great ideas, such as a casual Friday dress code and more electives in the curriculum. But your opponent is a blowhard juvenile delinquent promising to put Coca-Cola in the water fountains and to “give all the teachers detention.” And he wins. Are you going to try the same tactic next time or do you need to convince his supporters that he’s full of crap?
quoted for truth, you GO Banquet Bear
We need to be the emulate the party of polite people and graphically mock the disabled a bit more.
They are tough to watch though.
Indeed. I am reminded of the Adam West “Batman” episode where Batman and the Penguin were running for mayor, and the Penguin presented the argument that he was more trustworthy because Batman was regularly seen in the company of criminals while he himself was regularly seen in the company of police officers.
I like your whole post, but these two paragraphs especially.
Someone had to say to Sanders “you’re a fucking liar.” Not that she doesn’t know it, but she needs to know that everyone knows it.
That was the day the Penguin became Mayor.
Betsy DeVos wants to do away with public schooling for military families and replace them with vouchers.
https://www.thenation.com/article/betsy-devos-is-facing-backlash-for-her-plan-to-push-school-vouchers-on-military-families/
2 top aides leave EPA amid ethics investigations:
On Perrotta:
On Kelly:
And the article ends with:
I find myself in agreement with Rep. Beyer on this issue.
A lightweight piece of fluff for your enjoyment – just an example of how this administration could screw up a one-car funeral.
Trump had a staged event today, congratulating the crew of that Southwest flight with the exploding engine. I won’t go into his inane babble – the usual, of no consequence. It was the staging that was weird.
For some reason, they set it up like a bill signing ceremony: Trump seated at his desk, with a crowd of people (the crew and, I believe, some passengers*) behind him. So Trump would speak, and talk about particular individuals on the crew: but to make eye contact with those individuals he needed to swivel from side to side and crane his neck looking over his shoulder.
WTF? Why not just, I don’t know…stand at a podium?? You’re not signing anything, you idiot…you don’t need a desk!
*Trump often referred to the heroic passengers on the flight. I was under the impression that they were primarily concerned with screaming and praying, but that’s neither here nor there.