BREAKING: We can't make ourselves go there again!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018

Quick overview of the loathing: At the end of last week, we made a promise we won't be able to keep.

We said we wanted to discuss Michelle Cottle's recent editorial in the New York Times about Hillary Clinton. We said we wanted to relate it to this New York Times front-page report in October 2016, a report which vouched for Gennifer Flowers all over again and battered Candidate Clinton in the process.

Twenty-four years of such work by the Times explains why Trump is president. We even said we'd relate the endless vouching for Flowers to Carl Bernstein's account of the Clintons' apparent actual marital problems during the Arkansas years, a report he presented in his 2007 biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge.

We said you've never seen Bernstein's report discussed. We even explained why that is—because our press corps lives off novelization and narrative while eschewing normal journalistic behaviors and assessments.

We promised to run through all this material for the ten millionth time. Yesterday, we tried to start that process, but we simply couldn't make ourselves go there again. Our last remaining shreds of sanity won't allow us to do that.

We'll make these quick suggestions:

In October 2016, we did a three-part series in the wake of Megan Twohey's front-page report in the Times. Twohey beat up on Hillary Clinton because Clinton had allegedly beat up on several of Bill Clinton's sex accusers in the distant past. Cottle returned to this treasured claim in her recent editorial.

Twohey focused on Flowers above all. We know of no particular way in which Hillary Clinton ever beat up on Flowers, whose claims were almost surely false and who performed like a total crackpot over the course of quite a few years, as we've detailed about a million times in the past.

In Part 2 of our series (links below), we reported the gist of Bernstein's account of the Clintons' marital troubles in Arkansas, which, he says, had them seriously considering divorce at one point, as many people do. Having said that, let us also say this:

If Bernstein's reporting was accurate, you're invited to figure how Bill Clinton could have had the torrid, twelve-year love affair with Flowers which the extremely shaky Flowers seems to have invented for purposes of major profit. Our guess would be this:

Our guess would be that Hillary Clinton always knew that Flowers' claims were bogus. This is the possibility you aren't allowed to contemplate within the very strange novelized world of our deeply strange "mainstream press."

This whole slimy gong-show topic involves anthropology lessons. Some of those lessons are highly counterintuitive, but here are two:

First anthropology lesson: It's true! Some people do invent crazy claims in pursuit of fame and cash! It's entirely possible that the extremely sleazy Flowers is and was one such person.

Our second lesson is more deeply puzzling. Here it is:

Second anthropology lesson: At this point in time, members of our upper-end press corps routinely engage in crackpot behavior concerning pols they dislike.

Also, they love to churn tabloid novels about sex. In fact, they often have a very hard time focusing on anything else.

Children are dead all over the world because these very strange people have behaved this way for decades. That said, this strange behavior creates a major problem:

For most people, it's very, very hard to believe that "educated" "professional" people actually do things like this.

We understand that difficulty, but "educated" "professional" people do behave this way! (Or do you believe that Candidate Gore said he invented the Internet? That he said he inspired Love Story? That he said he discovered Love Canal? That he lied about the union lullaby? About the cost of the doggy arthritis pills?)

Our journalists do behave this way, and they do so as a group. Children are dead all over the world because of that highly puzzling fact. It's hard to understand this behavior, but it plainly does exist, helped along by career ambition and a potent group dynamic.

You've never seen Bernstein's account discussed within the mainstream press corps of which he's a high-ranking member! Once again, that's because our discourse runs on thrilling novelizations, not on normal journalistic behaviors.

It's very, very hard to believe that our "journalists" behave as they do. It's very, very hard to believe.

Weirdly, though, it's true.

Visit our incomparable archives: In October 2016, the children began to tell their favorite stories again. Eventually, there was Twohey, on the front page, vouching for Gennifer Flowers.

This bullshit was tied to Donald Trump's claim that he was going to bring Flowers to his first debate with Hillary Clinton. He never did that. But the children became very excited and started repeating their tales.

For perhaps the ten millionth time, we tried to establish the more accurate record. For starters, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/30/16, with links to the previous day's post.

Sadly, on October 3, Twohey's front-page report appeared. We discussed it in three reports: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Bernstein's published report is summarized in Part 2. You've never seen his report discussed in the mainstream press for the reasons we've cited above.

Ours is a deeply disordered species. That's especially true the higher you go within our "mainstream press," which sat around for all those years covering for their twin multimillionaire gods, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer.

They endlessly covered for Charlie and Matt, told thrilling tales about others. This is what our species does. Anthropology teaches us that.

In which we take a bow: In Part 3, we really walked the talk! Skillfully, we typed this:

DAILY HOWLER (10/7/16): The career liberal world has sat and stared as this gong-show has unfolded. It's what the Chaits, the Dionnes, the Marshalls and even the Krugmans have done for the past twenty-four years. This has led to the current state of loathing of Candidate Clinton, a state of loathing which means that Candidate Trump could still emerge as the winner of this year's White House campaign.

Elsewhere, you were getting upbeat weekly reports about the fact that Candidate Trump couldn't possibly win.

We liked it when we read stuff like that. This brought us back to those sites and channels for more.

It was wonderful business practice. All hail President Trump!