Scott reviews Moonlight; his commenters muse!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2017

Solomon savages Maddow: After seeing Manchester by the Sea, then Moonlight, we've come to believe that we've discovered the oddest place in the whole world of modern mainstream journalism.

The oddest place in that world is the intersection between 1) an A. O. Scott review in the New York Times; 2) comments by Scott's readers; and 3) the marks reviewers were told to hit in the film's press release.

This is especially true if the film in question concerns matters of race, or can be made to seem so, and if the film is critically favored. In such circumstances, Scott is prepared to turn day to night in pursuit of establishment script, and his readers will praise him for this.

With regard to Moonlight, we were especially struck by Scott' ability to glide past the suffering on display in every frame of the film, starting when the central character is only 9 years old. In fairness, other reviewers seem to have done the same thing.

We're commenting on Scott'e review, not on the film itself. Also, on the endless power of mainstream press narrative, especially of the pseudo-liberal persuasion.

We may write more about Scott's review at some later date. Truly, though, our journalism, and our liberalism, are narrative all the way down.

We also link you today to a piece by Norman Solomon, the longtime progressive activist and journalist. He batters an unnamed major cable star up one side and down the other.

Because this major cable star is a liberal untouchable, you rarely see such comments in print. Warning! This unnamed liberal TV star gets compared to Glenn Beck!

We began telling you, years ago, that you can't believe a thing this major cable star says. Solomon makes similar comments. We won't tell you whether he's right in the particular matter under review. But we think it's healthy for liberals to see that things like this can be said, even about our biggest corporate stars.

We liberals! We've spent the past twenty-five years bringing Donald J. Trump to power. Now that it's too late to do any good, we're energetically marching, en masse. We're shouting complaints far and wide.

(Last week, the unnamed cable star in question used her toy xylophone to tell us that Mark Dayton has been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Could something be "wrong" in this cable star's head? We've often wondered about that. Today, we'll let Solomon do all the lifting.)