On Fox, it's a whole different world: We Americans! The last two nights, on cable news, we've been living in two different worlds.
On MSNBC, we liberals got to enjoy an exciting car chase. This car chase began Thursday night.
According to Michael Flynn's lawyer, the general wants to tell his story, but he'll need immunity first. An embarrassing number of major liberals rushed to cable to say or suggest that the general, who strikes us as basically nuts, had thereby confessed to a crime.
Over the past two nights, MSNBC has entertained us rubes with the hunt for Flynn. (Undercard: the hunt for Nunes.) By the end of last evening's Last Word, guest host Joy Reid was pretending to sip a large cup of tea as she played tape of the various jokes the Kimmels and Fallons had told last week.
In such ways, the cable suits dumb even their brighter stars down.
The Last Word's hour had been built around the thrill of the chase. Over on Fox, in that same hour, Sean Hannity's viewers were being treated to an entirely different set of concerns and a whole different set of facts.
In separate segments, Hannity chatted with Monica Crowley, then with Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, about President Trump's various great achievements so far, and about the real scandal here—the scandal surrounding the illegal leaking of General Flynn's past remarks.
Viewers were told that Flynn was right to seek immunity, given the "witch hunt" which is unfolding. Viewers were also told about the criminal conduct of former Obama aide Evelyn Farkas, concerning whom more below.
In short, viewers of these profit-making channels were living in two different worlds. This brings us to Paul Krugman's latest column, in which Krugman seemed to explain the foolishness of West Virginia's voters.
Why did so many West Virginian vote for Trump last fall? That's a very important question. Krugman's attempt to answer the question was amateurish in the max extreme.
Don't get us wrong! As far as we know, Krugman's column was highly informative on the substance—the substance being the diminishing role of coal in West Virginia's economy. On the substance, we will assume that Krugman was totally right and highly informative.
His column was amazingly amateurish when it came to the politics. Headline included, this is the puzzling way the MVP's column began:
KRUGMAN (3/31/17): Coal Country Is a State of MindAs you can see, Krugman's presentation is murky in certain ways. But it's perfectly clear, if you read the whole column, that Krugman is saying that the coal industry "led [West Virginia's] residents to vote overwhelmingly against their own interests" last year, full freaking stop.
West Virginia went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in November—in fact, he beat Hillary Clinton by almost a three-to-one majority. And it may seem obvious why: The state is the heart of coal country, and Mr. Trump promised to bring coal jobs back by eliminating Obama-era environmental regulations. So at first glance the 2016 election looks like a political realignment reflecting differences in regional interests.
But that simple story breaks down when you look at the realities of the situation—and not just because environmentalism is a minor factor in coal’s decline. For coal country isn’t really coal country anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time.
Why does an industry that is no longer a major employer even in West Virginia retain such a hold on the region’s imagination, and lead its residents to vote overwhelmingly against their own interests?
No other explanation is offered for the way West Virginians voted. In this column, Krugman replaces our tribe's favorite single-explanation explanation (West Virginians are a gang of slobbering racists) with a new single-explanation explanation:
West Virginians voted for Trump "because Donald Trump successfully pandered to cultural nostalgia, to a longing for a vanished past when men were men and miners dug deep."
End of column, full stop.
According to the leading authority, West Virginians cast 489,371 votes for Donald J. Trump last fall. No other possible explanation is offered for any of those votes.
No effort is made to estimate the number of votes which turned on Candidate Trump's foolish claims about coal. We're told that Those People voted on coal, and we're told nothing else.
What makes a very smart person present such an underfed bit of "analysis?" Would anyone offer a column like this except in such tribalized times?
We'll let you answer those questions. For ourselves, we'll cite one obvious possible explanation for West Virginia's steady turn to the right on the presidential level. This obvious possible explanation involves the rise of Fox News.
As Charlie Peters noted in his recent piece in the New York Times, West Virginia used to vote Democratic. In 1952, the state even voted for Adlai Stevenson over the otherwise well-liked Ike.
As recently as 1988, the state even went for Dukakis.
West Virginia used to tilt blue. This is the way the worm has turned over the past twenty years:
West Virginians' picks in White House electionsThe state supported Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan, but only in their blow-out re-election wins. On balance, West Virginia tilted toward blue.
1960: Kennedy, 53-47
1964: Johnson, 68-32
1968: Humphrey, 50-41
1972: Nixon, 63-36
1976: Carter, 58-42
1980: Carter, 50-45
1984: Reagan, 55-45
1988: Dukakis, 52-47
1992: Clinton, 48-35
1996: Clinton, 52-37
2000: Bush, 52-46
2004: Bush, 56-43
2008: McCain, 56-43
2012: Romney, 62-36
2016: Trump, 69-26
The state flipped to red in 2000 and it has never looked back. The red-blue gap keeps getting larger. A note on Campaign 2000:
The night that Candidate Gore conceded, we were told by a major campaign spokesman that West Virginia and Tennessee had been lost because of giant ad campaigns by the NRA.
We were told that we'd never see another Democrat run on gun control, as Candidate Gore had done in the wake of the Columbine killings. That prediction largely held through Campaign 2012.
(In 2013, President Obama proposed a gun control measure in the wake of the Newtown killings. The predictable outcome occurred.)
In 2000, we were told that West Virginia had flipped because of an ad campaign about guns. (That didn't mean that everyone had voted on that basis.) Yesterday, Times readers were told that West Virginians voted for Trump because of coal, full stop.
We would assume that guns and coal have played roles in this state's recent elections. That said, there's a likely factor which is constantly missing in action when tribal pundits in big major cities explain West Virginians' votes.
We're going to take a wild guess! Over the course of the past twenty years, an increasing number of West Virginians have become viewers of Fox. They've also become consumers of "news" from comparable partisan sources.
Last night, we liberals enjoyed the pleasing car chase we were being served. We'll guess that, across the Mountaineer State, many voters were ingesting the alternate story-lines, assertions and chases being transmitted by Fox.
They may have gone to Fox for the guns; they've stayed for the chase after Farkas. Last night, Reid pleasured us liberals in various ways. West Virginians watching Fox were ensconced in a whole different world.
Krugman's explanation of Those People's half million votes was amazingly amateurish. Would a college sophomore receive a good grade if he or she offered such work?
As with many such "explanations," Krugman failed to mention the role which is presumably being played by the rise of partisan news orgs like Fox. On the front page of this morning's Times, a similar pattern obtains.
On the front page of this morning's Times, Shear and Davis offer a somewhat peculiar report about our two different worlds. In the passage shown below, and elsewhere, they detail the way one of these worlds is getting pimped by Sean Spicer:
SHEAR AND DAVIS (4/1/17): At Mr. Spicer’s news conference, the press secretary chastised reporters for failing to accept that Mr. Trump had been right all along [about his "wire tapping" claims]. “The substance we are talking about continues to move exactly in the direction that the president spoke about in terms of surveillance that occurred,” Mr. Spicer said, even as he deflected questions about the White House’s role in providing intelligence reports to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.The reporters mentioned The Gateway Pundit; they also mentioned Hugh Hewitt. They never mentioned the Fox News Channel, which has been aggressively pushing all the themes which have emerged from Spicer.
[...]
Mr. Spicer provided no evidence of the surveillance allegations. But he pointed several times to news reports that he claimed backed up the president’s accusations.
One was a March 2 interview with Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration until leaving the government in September 2015.
TheGatewayPundit.com, a right-wing site, called it a “notorious” interview and said it proved Obama administration officials had disseminated “intel gathered on the Trump team.” Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that Ms. Farkas had made “just an incredible statement.” Breitbart News reported on Mr. Priebus’s comments.
It has seemed to us, for many years, that major orgs like the New York Times have avoided reporting on powerful figures like Rush Limbaugh (at one time) and Fox News (today and always). We've long complained about this apparent game of duck-and-cover.
It ought to be viewed as major news that we're living in two different worlds! For almost twenty years, we've said that this sort of thing should be front-page news. The Times has this phenomenon on its front page today, but fails to mention Fox.
The Gateway Pundit rated a mention. The Fox News Channel did not.
The fact that we live in two different worlds is major gigantic news. The recent broadcasts by Fox are news. In our view, Reid's tea cup play last night deserves some mention as well.
Reid, who is very bright, was told to do that by the suits. Last year, Steve Kornacki, who is very bright, was trained to stand before "the big board" with shoulders hunched, leaning forward, talking too fast and talking too loud, pretending to be a stereotypical car salesman. In this way, again and again, a smart person relentlessly sold us the pleasing polling data which turned out to be wrong.
Reid and Kornacki were told, by their owners, to behave in these silly dumb ways. Given the status and money involved, very few people refuse.
When people agree to behave in such ways, do you trust their representations concerning the world's basic facts? Do you start to wonder where such players, along with their owners, may be putting their thumbs on the scale?
We liberals enjoyed our car chase this week. More and more, we're being massaged and cultivated by the corporate suits, as are the viewers of Fox.
Fox belongs on the Times' front page. Our clowning belongs there too.
Frisking West Virginians: Why did West Virginians vote as they did? For starters, if you want to know, you might want to show up there and ask them!
Last October, The New Yorker's Larisaa McFarquhar went to West Virginia and asked. Ich bin ein West Virginian, she said.
Even then, needless to say, there is no way to know "the answer" to such a sweeping question.
We liberals seem to enjoy explaining Those People. More precisely, we seem to like to pretend.
West Virginia's "red" vote just keeps going up. If we were asked to venture a guess, we'd guess at the role played by Fox within our highly dangerous and destructive two different worlds.
Putin wants to undermine our democracy? Cable does that every night!
I don't give a damn why West Virginians voted for Trump. They shouldn't have done it.
ReplyDeleteTwenty years ago I bought a pickup from a guy who told me that the radios in the auto-fix-it shop where he worked were tuned to Rush and the rest of the rightwing hate team all day long. That was metro Atlanta, but you know it’s happening in WVA and all over the USA. Where is the Democratic Party’s equivalent of that? I now live in a very liberal city and I can’t get liberals 24-hours a day in my car, but I can get conservatives anytime, anywhere on the AM radio. That rightwing megaphone reaches twenty times the ears of the most popular liberal cable pundit. Yet TDH types a million words a year on Rachel Maddow. It’s like reading a historian whose pet theory is that the key to WW2 was the Romanian army.
DeletePerhaps you are unable to see the forest for the trees.
Delete@1:38 better trolling please
Delete"lead its residents to vote overwhelmingly against their own interests?"
ReplyDeleteWhen wealthy one percenters vote in their own interests the left squeals.
We are not going to get Fox to stop spreading lies and we are not going to be able to get people to stop watching Fox. So, what does Somerby propose as a solution to our problems?
ReplyDeleteI take no pleasure in the many dumb things Trump does and the downfall that is coming for him and his cronies. Our country is being held hostage. It is insulting every time Somerby claims we are being pleasured by MSNBC. This isn't fun at all. It is scary and sad.
I don't need to be insulted by someone on the left who seems convinced he understands the motives of liberals and that they are so ugly. I used to enjoy reading this blog but I have come to dislike Somerby intensely.
Krugman was our MVP but Somerby has decided to take him down a peg. On what planet do we need that to happen? I suspect Somerby is on the Russian payroll too. It is the only explanation for his repeated attacks on liberals. Like Bernie, his favorite politician, Somerby has sold out for cash and is working for a foreign interest to subvert our next election cycle. It is the only explanation for his repeated rants against liberals pundits.
Is this satire?
DeleteAre you?
DeleteI laughed at the idea of Somerby being on the Russian payroll, because it crossed my mind too. I don't think it's the case, but he shares with Russian trolls and bots the objective of wearing down and demoralizing the "enemy", while pretending to be on "our side".
DeleteYeah, I'm getting pretty sick of Somerby's constant attacks on liberals like Krugman- I have no idea why he thinks Krugman was wrong, he failed to prove his point. This constant drumbeat of how liberal pundits are all idiots and fools, while he absolutely ignores the goddamn circus of Fox News propaganda poisoning the country. Bob's too scared and lazy to even try to critique that. He prefers attacking "our" side, but Somerby really isn't on our side at all. He's tremendously petty and smug and repetitive, all the greatest hits rolled out constantly about how it's liberals who are in the wrong, always. Because we don't genuflect to dumb fucking bigot hicks who vote for the worst and most hateful destructive policies possible, you see it's always liberals who are the REAL problem! It's a really tired schtick.
Krugman is not infallible. The GREAT noble laureate once proposed, to get the economy going, raising the middle term interest rates while keeping the long term 30 years rates low!!! No he is not infallible.
DeleteAnd he has been selective in his criticism. He was gentle on Obama. Quiet on Hillary.
Dr.Krugman needs to focus on REAL reason the Dems lost. He seems taking the easy way out by pushing the Coal and Voter stupidity.
He was enthusiastic about Hillary, not quiet.
Delete
ReplyDelete"The Gateway Pundit rated a mention. The Fox News Channel did not"
Nor did anyone at our national gulag of hate, lies, and misinformation at www.toptalkradio.com
The polling data wasn't wrong. If you think that, Somerby, you didn't read the after-election analyses. Remember that Clinton lost the election in the electoral college, not in the popular vote, which was consistent with the polls. If you don't understand the technicalities, please stop making incorrect generalizations and then using them to attack people you aren't sufficiently educated to understand.
ReplyDeleteAnon 2:57, the polling data said Clinton would win the election, i.e., win in enough states so that she'd have an electoral college majority. The polling data was wrong. If the polls just reflect who would win the national popular vote, what good are they as far as predicting who would win the election, when it's the electoral college, not the national popular vote that matters?
DeleteTake this up with Nate Silver. The polling data was correct right up until Comey made his second announcement. The impact of that cost her the election. The timing was such that the polls could not catch up. But there are some very persuasive analyses showing exactly how much that announcement hurt her and showing that without it, the polls would have been highly accurate. The polls did predict the national outcome, but you are correct that it is the electoral college that matters. Go back and read the back and forth at his website. It would be wrong to conclude that the polls were not doing their job. This election was tampered with in ways that were not reflected by the analysts models. Whose fault is that?
DeleteI checked into 538 every few days and Clinton held a consistent lead in electoral votes until the election. There were many factors, some going back decades, but I believe Comey's last-minute October Surprise was the final straw that pushed Trump over the top. I read it the same as Anon 6:41.
DeleteWhat factors have been causing the South in general to trend red since the 1960's? Why should West Virginia be any different?
ReplyDeleteI don't think you can lump WV in with the South for purposes of the Southern Strategy. It voted strongly for the Democrat in 1960, 1964 and 1968, when many of the Southern states began abandoning the Party.
DeleteIt still voted for Clinton in 1996 -- 32 years after the Democrtic Party became firmly associated with civil rights. WV is not the South. Read interviews and you could guess there's a feeling that the Democrats abandoned states like that not over racial issues but economic ones.
DeleteIn what way did Clinton abandon WV, given that she visited it and spoke to the issues of the people there? She had specific programs to address their economic concerns -- she just wouldn't promise them that coal jobs would return. But she was there and she did address their economic concerns. There needs to be another reason why they didn't vote for her.
DeleteHillary and Bill Clinton were both in WV May 1-5 2016 and they were booed.
DeleteBill Clinton said: "But they were there for Bill Clinton, who elided a debate about the environmental impact of coal -- the issue Republicans had used to end Democratic supremacy in the state -- by noting that its production peaked in 1950. West Virginia needed "universal broadband," he said, and places that had lost energy jobs needed to "get preference" for windmills and other alternative sources of power and jobs."
On Mar 25, Hillary made the comment about putting coal out of business. That upset Manchin and others in WV. As a result, she was met by protesters when she visited in May, supporting the coal industry. She apologized on May 3 and was endorsed by major WV newspapers but she didn't win a single county. WV rejected Clinton, not vice versa.
And the irony is that Hillary Clinton was constantly being accused of pandering.
DeleteIs coal good or bad? Democrats tend to focus on the bad aspects: black lung, pollution, global warming, etc. Democrats have passed legislation and enacted regulations to deal with these bad aspects.
DeleteBut, there are good aspects of coal: providing employment, paying taxes, and providing energy. I think if Hillary had thought more about the good aspects of coal, she wouldn't have made a remark about putting coal out of business.
Coal is bad compared to other sources of energy.
DeleteComrade DinC strolls by to favor us with his Dick & Jane level understanding of the coal industry.
DeleteDemocrats have passed legislation and enacted regulations to deal with these bad aspects.
Which republicans (the people you reliably vote for) fight tooth and nail against.
The difference is comrade DinC, Democrats tend to want to deal with these external costs to the general population and the workers in the coal mines, while republicans demagogue the issues and work to confuse the persons most impacted by these external costs, which republicans would prefer to ignore to help the owner's bottom line. Period.
**************
The ACA included a provision meant to reverse the difficulty coal miners experienced when applying for compensation for black lung disease. Before 2009, “miners had to prove not only that they were disabled because of breathing problems, and that they had coal workers’ black lung, but that their disability was caused by their years in the mine,” writes a journalist at the online publication Stat.
The Affordable Care Act changed that. Under “Miscellaneous Provisions” is a small section sponsored by a self-proclaimed “child of the Appalachian coalfields,” the late West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.
**********************
It's unfortunate that these WV's are too stupid to recognize who is in their corner and who is not.
Just this morning I saw on CNN coal miners hoping loosening of environmental regulations will bring back their jobs, which are never coming back.
Most of us are not hunting Flynn. We are hunting Trump. Flynn is a means to that end. Flynn is not the quarry.
ReplyDeleteYes, far be it from Bob to simplify the issue of why people vote for a clod like Trump. Obviously, there are several DIFFERENT reasons it is all the fault of mean liberals.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, more sleazy payouts from Fox for their big ratings winner, they could be paying off twice as many abused women in the workplace, and we would still have to remember "O"REILLY GETS A PASS!!!"
Actually, Bob, I think Reid acts that way on her own. Damn, she's a dumb fück.
ReplyDeleteSomerby seems to think that the best way to find out why people do something is to ask them. That isn't necessarily true. First, it implies that people know their own motives. Second, it implies that they don't lie in response to questions. It has taken psychologists a lot of time to realize that people don't always know their own minds and that they frequently present themselves in a better light than they deserve, conform to social expectations instead of telling the truth about themselves.
ReplyDeleteIf someone actually is a racist or bigot, will they admit it to themselves? Will they tell you? If they actually don't give a damn about others, will they admit that or will they make up a cover story about the importance of self-reliance?
I am so tired of Somerby's insistence that we not only interview Trump voters but take their answers at face value. I wish he had studied social science instead of philosophy at Harvard, so that he would understand the folly of his current obsession.
Bob drops another of his "S" bombs.
ReplyDelete"Reid and Kornacki were told, by their owners, to behave in these silly dumb ways. Given the status and money involved, very few people refuse."
Liberals in the media who are "S"uccessful are slaves. People who have "F"ailed are free.
Bob, of course, is free.
This might be the dumbest comment in this blog's history.
DeleteGreat piece. So true on Krugman's incompetent W. Virginia vote non-analysis, the Times not reporting on Fox News (but then the Times editorial view of the world — what it chooses to cover and not to cover — is not known for its imagination or courage—see the Guardian), and the invasive power of cable news. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou can perhaps tell the source of the trolling by the time zone of the comments.
ReplyDeleteStill talking about Rs who voted for the one holding their flag ,and not talking about the democrats who didn't vote for theirs. Why is that?
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Flynn isn't black or poor. Ergo, he should not be held accountable for his actions. Besides, he was acting as a traitor to his country, not selling loosey cigarettes.
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