MEMPHIS / STORYLINE: The Washington Post lets Memphis go!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2023

Here's the garbage they're serving instead: The events in Memphis have largely vanished—have been consigned to the past.

In part, that has probably happened because the events in Memphis were an insult to Storyline. But whatever the cause, those recent, brutal events are no longer being widely discussed.

Instead, consider what was being discussed this very morning in the (online) Washington Post.

We turned to the online Post to doublecheck a news report in the New York Times. That report concerned yesterday's congressional hearing concerning Twitter's widely bruited handling of the Hunter Biden laptop matter in the fall of 2020.

For one day in the fall of that year, Twitter refused to link to a New York Post report about that "laptop from Hell." The one-day event has become a cause célèbre in red tribe circles. 

As we read this morning's report in the Times, we were surprised by the omission of that fact—of the fact that Twitter's blockade of the laptop report had lasted for only one day—for only 24 hours.

It seemed odd that the New York Times had omitted that one basic fact. We decided to see whether the Washington Post had included that basic fact in its report on yesterday's hearing.

We turned to the (endless) front page of the devolving newspaper's website. Remarkably, there was no report, on the endless front page, about yesterday's congressional hearing—no report at all.

Instead, we encountered this failing newspaper's newly mandated endless low-IQ piffle. Believe it or croak, these were the top three news reports featured on the online Post's endless front page:

First U.N. aid convoy enters rebel-held Syria as quakes’ toll passes 17,000
The convoy of U.N. aid trucks is the first in northwest Syria since the earthquakes flattened neighborhoods there and in Turkey.

Social Security, Medicare brawl awaits Washington, even if not this year

Department of Data / Analysis
The collegiest college town in every state, and more
Some places are way more gown than town. In other places, the deer and the antelope may play, but bears and beavers are mentioned more often.

Sure enough! As of 7:30 this morning, yesterday's hearing couldn't be found anywhere on the online Post's (endless) front page. 

Instead, the paper was featuring the Department of Data's "analysis" of the "collegiest college town in every state." And more!

As of 7:30 this morning, the nation's "collegiest towns" were the topic of the third headline at the top of the Post's front page! Inevitably, things got even worse after that:

Lower on the endless front page, this brainless imitation of a news report was listed as the third MOST READ article in the whole of the Washington Post! Democracy dies when the droogs who work for Jeff Bezos treat the public this way—but also, when we the people lap this porridge up.

Memphis was absent from the (endless) front page, but one other topic was not. We refer to the big white coat which turned up at the State of the Union address.

Sure enough! As we looked for a report on yesterday's hearing, we stumbled instead upon this garbage can pseudo-report:

STYLE / Marjorie Taylor Greene’s coat sent a message even before she heckled Biden
At the State of the Union address, the congresswoman’s striking white outfit evoked religious imagery—-and the infamous Chinese spy balloon 
Perspective by Ashley Fetters Maloy

In a "perspective" piece, the embarrassing Fetters Maloy explained the way Marjorie Taylor Greene's white coat had somehow managed to evoke the infamous spy balloon.

Democracy dies in the dumbness when the droogs who work for Bezos are willing to function this way. Apparently, though, one such piece wasn't enough for the new and devolved (online) Post. 

One such essay wasn't enough! Soon, we hit upon this second "perspective" piece concerning the big white coat:

THE CRITIQUE 
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s big mouth and her big white, fur-rimmed coat 
Perspective by Robin Givhan

This second bit of "perspective" came to us courtesy of Givhan. In this case, the headline referred to Taylor Greene's big white coat, but also to her "big mouth!"

(For the record, Givhan has been at this sort of thing dating all the way back to late 2000. At that time, her acerbic critique of the makeup and wardrobe of a Florida official created a major distraction as Candidate Gore sought a recount in that state.)

Hard to believe, but true! As the online Post sinks toward the sea, its endless front page contained two (2) "perspective" pieces on the meaning of Taylor Greene's coat—and nothing about that congressional hearing, or about what happened in Memphis a million years ago.

Memphis seems to be dead and gone; the sheer stupidity isn't. Indeed, as we scrolled down the Post's (endless) front page, we saw five (5!) photographs of Taylor Greene on Tuesday night, appearing above five (5) separate articles about Tuesday night's event.

What we didn't see was any report about yesterday's congressional hearing—or about the brutal killing of an innocent person which took place in Memphis.

In fairness, that brutal killing in Memphis—a brutal killing of an innocent person—did put a bit of a strain on Preferred Blue Tribe Storyline. Beyond that, the videotape of the brutal killing created a set of images which don't comport with the simplified story our tribe prefers to tell.

Perhaps for those reasons, talk about Memphis has gone away, replaced first by a big white balloon and now by a big white coat.

Let it be said that Memphis isn't "the collegiest college town" in the state of Tennessee. 

It's one of the two biggest cities in that state.  Tragically, its murder rate is roughly three times that of Nashville, a city of similar size. 

Indeed, Memphis is a deeply challenged major city. It's deeply challenged in the way David Graham described in a lengthy report in The Atlantic last November.

In what way is Memphis challenged? Yesterday, we posted this excerpt from Graham's report:

GRAHAM (11/2/22): [Mary] Wainwright is the kind of person you’d want as a neighbor: She’s quick with a joke, blunt and no-nonsense, and ready to help out. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, she canvassed the neighborhood handing out masks. When vaccines first became available, she knew that many of her neighbors didn’t have computers or internet access to make appointments, so she convinced officials to set up a pop-up clinic at her church. The line stretched around the block.

Even so, you might not want to live near her in Smokey City these days. Crime and violent-crime rates in the area and its next-door neighbor Klondike are routinely two to three times as high as in Memphis overall, according to statistics gathered by Whole Child Strategies, a nonprofit that works in the neighborhood. The homicide rate is four to five times as high.

When Wainwright got a new car not long ago, her son begged her to get something other than the Infinitis she’s long preferred—drug dealers like them too much and she might get carjacked, he warned. Wainwright has seen two people killed on her street. “One was laying up under my car. The other one, he got shot, ran around the church,” she recalls.

Wainwright’s sister, who lives nearby in the house they grew up in, is paralyzed on one side, but she doesn’t want to leave the neighborhood where she’s always lived, and her disability checks won’t cover much else anyway. “She spends 40 percent of her time on the floor, because of guns, shooting, just every day. During daylight hours,” Wainwright says. “That’s how bad it is in the neighborhood. You know, it is what it is. We live from day to day, and we pray at night, pray all day, pray in the morning when we get up, that we can survive the neighborhood.”

Presumably, that passage helps explain one of the (accurate) talking points our tribe prefers when we talk about events like the brutal killing in Memphis. If so, it helps explain that (accurate) point in a way which cuts against the simplified story our appalling blue tribe prefers.

Also, our tribe doesn't like to waste its time discussing people like Mary Wainwright and her terrified sister. Down through the years, we've displayed that fact again and again—and again and again after that.

We just don't like to go there! Perhaps for that reason, we've pretty much disappeared Memphis from the list of topics we like to pretend to discuss.

There's a talking point we like to insert into our discussions of deaths like that of Tyre Nichols, an innocent person. That talking point serves Storyline in its most simplistic form.

Unfortunately, events in Memphis made it harder for our tribunes to employ that bit of script in the way we most prefer. Perhaps for the reason, the horrible people we watch on cable have stopped discussing Memphis at all.

The Washington Post has rarely displayed its braindead new culture more clearly than it did this morning. 

In our view, it's astonishing that the Washington Post is willing to devolve in this way. It even more astonishing that this can occur with no one calling attention to the paper's jaw-dropping decline.

That said, events in Memphis put a bit of a strain on preferred tribal Storyline. Perhaps for that reason, events in Memphis have largely been given a merciful death.

Tomorrow, we'll try to get it all in—we'll try to discuss what we can imaginably learn from those events, and what we can imaginably learn from John McWhorter's new essay on this general topic in the New York Times.

We'll be talking about what we can imaginably learn about a major American problem. Within the tents of our failing blue tribe, you rarely hear that problem discussed except in the most tribally pleasing way.

Our tribe prefers to discuss that state of affairs in the most simple-minded way possible. That reflects our love of Storyline, but also our tribal disregard for people like Mary Wainwright.

Experts say they know what we need. The Washington Post and blue tribe cable may be a bit more attuned to what they believe, or may even know, that we actually want.

Tomorrow: The novelization of news


93 comments:


  1. tl;dr
    "We turned to the online Post to doublecheck a news report in the New York Times."

    Ha-ha. Hilarious, dear Bob.

    ...thanks for the laughs, we sure appreciate it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. tl;dr -- If you don't read the essay you don't get to comment on it.

      Delete
  2. Here is the story being run in the Washington Post about Memphis today:

    "national
    Memphis officer texted a photo of bloodied Tyre Nichols, records show
    Demetrius Haley is accused of taking photos on his personal phone of an “obviously injured” Nichols handcuffed and propped up against a police cruiser.
    By Timothy Bella
    February 09, 2023 at 7:24 AM MST

    I found this in less than 10 seconds using the Search feature at the top left of the page.

    Somerby really should check before he repeats nine times that the Washington Post has moved on from reporting about Memphis, has disappeared it, has "given it a merciful death" from reporting on it. This story was in the National section.

    The new information about the Memphis story is that one of the police officers took pictures of Nichols as he sat at the curb and sent them to his friends, apparently proud of having beaten him so badly.

    New stories appear when there is new information to convey. Because the word "news" implies that there is something new about a previously reported event. The reporting of news depends on information, not whether people are still interested in how police conduct themselves.

    Somerby's main interest today is in claiming that liberals no longer care about Tyre Nichols. He presents no evidence to support that attack on liberals. This has nothing to do with the "organization" of the Washington Post's front page and everything to do with calling liberals hypocrites because not everything can be the top story on any given day.

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    Replies
    1. Here’s another, from 2/8/2023 8:43pm:

      “Tyre Nichols documents: Officer never explained stop to him”

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/officer-never-told-tyre-nichols-why-he-stopped-him/2023/02/08/5e21ac48-a7ef-11ed-b2a3-edb05ee0e313_story.html

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  3. Here is the report that was run by the Washington Post yesterday about the Twitter congressional hearing:

    "technology
    At combative hearing, GOP fans allegations of collusion by government, Big Tech
    A House Oversight hearing shows Elon Musk's Twitter working with the GOP to embarrass its previous leadership--and the president.
    By Will Oremus, Cat Zakrzewski and Cristiano Lima
    February 08, 2023 at 4:02 PM MST"

    I found this in less than 10 seconds using the Search feature in the upper left of the Washington Post front page

    The article appeared in the Technology section, not on the front page. Somerby could have found it with minimal effort and no scrolling required. But it is more fun to pretend the Washington Post didn't cover the hearing, when it clearly did.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymouse 10:28am, did you read anything else today about Twitter that may be surprising?

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    2. I addressed Somerby’s claim about the Washington Post.

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    3. All I read about the hearings is that Trump and the Republicans were begging Twitter to take down posts that hurt their feelings. So no, nothing surprising at all.

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    4. Your reading comprehension skills are astoundingly weak.

      Delete
    5. 12:18,
      Please go back to stopping CRT from not being taught in K-12 schools.

      Delete
  4. "Hard to believe, but true! As the online Post sinks toward the sea, its endless front page contained two (2) "perspective" pieces on the meaning of Taylor Greene's coat—and nothing about that congressional hearing, or about what happened in Memphis a million years ago."

    Maybe this is hard to believe because it isn't true. Somerby is lying that there were no stories about the Memphis beating by police and nothing about the congressional hearing.

    And Givhan was right about Marjorie Taylor Green's big mouth. It was on display for everyone to hear during the State of the Union speech as she shouted at the president relentlessly, despite McCarthy's attempted shushing.

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  5. "We just don't like to go there! Perhaps for that reason, we've pretty much disappeared Memphis from the list of topics we like to pretend to discuss."

    Who is this "we" that Somerby refers to? As my father used to say, "does he have a mouse in his pocket?" Somerby is not one of us liberals. He is not part of the mainstream press either. So who is he talking about when he says we are pretending to discuss Memphis?

    I think it is certainly true that Somerby has never seriously discussed Memphis himself. He is today pretending that we have disappeared Memphis from our awareness. An obvious lie that anyone can fact-check by using the Search feature at the Washington Post. The most recent story on Memphis appeared this morning.

    This is what manufactured news looks like -- not the Washington Post but Somerby's made up complaint about what has been reported and what has not. This is disinformation intended to attack liberals and the Washington Post (and other papers to which he generalizes) for being insufficiently interested in police misconduct -- when the actual job of a newspaper is to report the news, which is exactly what the Washington Post does. None of the mainstream media are liberal outlets aimed at liberal audiences and reporting on liberal concerns. They are national newspapers aimed at the general public, attempting to report in a non-partisan and unbiased manner.

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  6. "On Jan. 7, several MPD officers pulled over 29-year-old Tyre Nichols in a traffic stop in the Hickory Hill neighborhood."

    Somerby attempts to link Nichols with Wainwright, implying that the police beating of Nichols (from which he died) was justified by the gun violence in black neighborhoods. He juxtaposes the interview with Wainwright about hiding from bullets on her floor, with a murky statement about something liberals don't want to discuss in the Nichols case:

    "There's a talking point we like to insert into our discussions of deaths like that of Tyre Nichols, an innocent person. That talking point serves Storyline in its most simplistic form.

    Unfortunately, events in Memphis made it harder for our tribunes to employ that bit of script in the way we most prefer. Perhaps for the reason, the horrible people we watch on cable have stopped discussing Memphis at all."

    Somerby is transparently trying to imply that Nichols was a gangbanger or participant in the crime that is rampant in black neighborhoods. Unfortunately, Nichols was beaten while steps from his parents home in Hickory Hill, NOT in Smokey City or Klondike, the neighborhoods mentioned in the Atlantic article about high crime in Memphis. Hickory Hill is known for robberies, but there is no evidence Nichols was involved in any crime, given that he was going to visit his parents when stopped. The police did not tell Nichols why he was being stopped, based on video.

    For Somerby to imply that there is something horrible about Nichols that may have justified his beating, and that is why liberals no longer want to discuss it, without any evidence whatsoever other than Wainwright's plight, which is entirely unrelated to Nichols, is beyond outrageous. And this is what bigotry looks like. Somerby thinks Nichols must have been a criminal and deserved to be killed by police because two old ladies have to hide from bullets in a different black area. His argument is essentially that Nichols must have been doing something wrong, because he is black and in a dangerous neighborhood (high robberies but fewer murders). Somerby's assumption are the kind of beliefs that get black unarmed men shot in the first place.

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    1. I don't think Somerby was trying to imply that Nichols was a gangbanger, I understood his essays to mean that mainstream media doesn't care about the plight of people like Ms. Wainwright and her sister, who have to lay on the floor because of crime. I agree it isn't clear in today's essay, but I think it is clearer if you look back on his writing over the past few days where he discusses this article about her.

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    2. The NYT ran an op-ed by John McWhorter that addresses some of Bob’s contentions.

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    3. John McWhorter? Maybe the NYT really DOES care. ♥️

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    4. How then is Somerby's cryptic remark about the reason why no one wants to talk about Nichols any more to be explained?

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    5. Anonymouse 1:33pm, he could have missed it or didn’t think it was helpful.

      Delete
    6. You have no idea what I'm referring to, based on your comment, but you defend Somerby anyway.

      Somerby said:

      ""There's a talking point we like to insert into our discussions of deaths like that of Tyre Nichols, an innocent person. That talking point serves Storyline in its most simplistic form.

      Unfortunately, events in Memphis made it harder for our tribunes to employ that bit of script in the way we most prefer. "

      What talking point is he referring to? This follows right after the discussion of Wainwright. Somerby refers to Wainwright's problems using the word "also," so that cannot be the point he means. But he doesn't and will not come right out and explain what he means. He only hints.

      That's why I suspect that the point which can never be mentioned must be the fact of black-on-black crime. But that doesn't excuse beating up Nichols simply because he is black and in the neighborhood. It cannot. This is when Somerby's coyness becomes frustrating. How am I (or anyone except Cecelia) to understand what he is saying if he won't make his meaning plain? Beyond that, I cannot see a meaning that fits these circumstances that would not be racist on Somerby's part.

      If Somerby refers to sociological problems and poverty being greater among black people, that still doesn't excuse cops beating Nichols without cause. The unfortunate sociology of bigotry among white people in the South could explain it, but the cops in question were black. Is Somerby suggesting that these cops learned bigotry from their fellow white officers? He needs to be more explicit, if so, since he has never said anything like that here before.

      These ambiguous remarks would allow Somerby's conservative readers to hear whatever they want in his remarks, while attacking liberals without having to commit himself. But it is dishonest.

      And no, I don't want to hear Cecelia's interpretation. I would like to know from Somerby what he is talking about.

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    7. Anonymouse 3:28pm, I thought your comment was from the anonymouse who posted at 11:42 am.

      I thought THAT anonymouse was addressing my remake that the NYT HAD published an editorialist who had broached the impact of poverty and high crime areas on the people living in those places and policing those areas.I thought that Bob hadn’t seen the piece or didn’t find it helpful.

      I didn’t know that I was talking to the same old self-righteous anonymouse who daily asserts that she and all liberals are the only people who understand and care about such influences, but then disingenuously suggests that factoring poverty into the examination is just a diversion tactic to blame the victim.

      See what confusion anonymices can cause without any way to track what they say.

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    8. No one has been talking about McWhorter except you.

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    9. Anonymouse 4:25pm, and that negates even the possibility that an anonymouse who had defended Somerby could possibly have been responding to my remark pointing out that NYT opinion piece?

      Reason or being reasonable is not your strong suit.

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    10. What are you talking about? You aren’t making any sense.

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    11. Anonymouse 4:35pm, that’s your reasoning thing that I mentioned.

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    12. No, it is your failure to communicate. You are no better than the troll who keeps repeating Corby’s name (one reason not to use a nym), with your incoherence. You are only here to disrupt what others are talkng about.

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    13. Anonymouse 5:07pm, I made the point days ago that anonymices are like that cretin in that you write the same post over and over again.

      I guess that analogy finally sunk through to you.

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    14. Nobody is writing the same post over and over again, Cecelia. (There WAS that weeks-long series that Somerby wrote trying to debunk that UVa study. But I digress.) in general, the anonymous commenters (well, the ones you DON’T like) are responding to Somerby’s post du jour. Now, you must admit that Somerby tends to make basically the same point with every post, so there’s bound to be some repetition in the critical comments.

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    15. mh, Somerby focus is on our political culture and the media, and every day you and/or anonymices call him a stealth conservative in response. As well as working for Putin and lusting for underaged girls.

      The cretin anonymouse looks less rote and magnanimous in comparison

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    16. I think you are the cretin.

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    17. Ok?? And I too look less rote and positively magnanimous as compared to anonymices.

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    18. 11;02,
      Don't sell yourself short. You're a tremendous piece of shit.

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    19. Anonymouse 11:39pm, I didn’t sell either of us short.

      Delete
  7. "In a "perspective" piece, the embarrassing Fetters Maloy explained the way Marjorie Taylor Greene's white coat had somehow managed to evoke the infamous spy balloon."

    In fairness, Marjorie Taylor Green arrived at the speech along with a large white balloon on a string, meant to remind everyone of that spy balloon. Like Mao, Somerby doesn't think he has to read an article before commenting on it.

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  8. Tyre Nichols was not, as far as anyone knows, a criminal or engaged in criminal activity when he was stopped and beaten.

    As I said yesterday, the problems in the Smokey City area of Memphis are quite real, including high crime, poverty, and unemployment, but that doesn’t eliminate the fact that there is a systemic problem with policing independent of conditions there. Somerby is seemingly trying to connect Nichols and the behavior of Memphis police with Smokey City’s problems.

    His notion of “storyline” is actually a true statement: that blacks are disproportionately killed by police. Again, it may be useful to examine the role played by urban conditions, but it does not explain away or justify that there is a policing problem in America separate from them.

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    Replies
    1. I don't think Somerby was trying to connect Mr. Nichols' death with Smokey City's problems. I understood his essay to mean that mainstream media and pundits rarely explore the problems plaguing Smokey City and many other cities - e.g. high crime, poverty, unemployment, etc.

      Delete
    2. That may or may not be true about the media, 11:46, but Nichols’ death at the hands of the Memphis police shows a policing problem that is not necessarily related to conditions in Smokey City.

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  9. Somerby puts every mention of clothing into the Al Gore file, as if it’s all essentially identical. He criticized reporting about Sinema’s outfits.

    Did you see what she was wearing at the speech? It was some outlandish yellow thing. I’m all for unique self expression through clothing, but I also can sense that people who dress like Sinema (and Greene last night) are trying to call attention to themselves. What other female lawmaker wears the kinds of flamboyant stuff Sinema does? Is she trying to look like Taylor Swift? Who doesn’t notice that and wonder about it?

    And her record as senator is anything but satisfactory.

    And Greene is clearly engaging in stunts.

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    Replies
    1. So you’re ok with the media giving a nod to the importance of examining law enforcement culture within the context of race and socioeconomics and now moving on to an alpaca fur coat and a parakeet costume.

      Delete
    2. Cecelia, No one has moved on. Somerby failed to inform you about two additional stories relating to Nichols. The media can (and does) report on many things at once. Um, duh.

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    3. Cecelia, read the comment at 10:21 and my reply at 11:21. You’ll find links to both stories there.

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    4. As if you can’t Google “Tyre Nichols Washington Post” yourself…

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    5. mh, Bob seeks discussion/ coverage that includes both race and socioeconomics.

      That’s why he linked to the piece about this Memphis neighborhood.

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    6. Really, Cecelia? Is that why? You are linked to his brain telepathically? And, by coverage, you mean that piece that he saw that covered those very issues in the Atlantic, famous mainstream publication? That piece? My feeling is that Somerby does not want to discuss systemic problems with the police, because he thinks the only issue is urban poverty/crime.

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    7. The Atlantic is not a mainstream outlet in the sense of national newspapers.

      If you bothered to read him for pov and information, rather than for attack fodder, you would need such explanations.

      When did the WP and the NYT last endorse a Republican for president?

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    8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    9. The term "Media" encompasses all of the media, not just newspapers.

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    10. Often, as today, Somerby will make some point about the Washington Post and then generalize it to cable news. I think that if he is going to criticize cable, he should present evidence from cable. Otherwise this is a kind of bait-and-switch argument. If dogs have fleas and you have shown that by picking a flea off a dog's back, you cannot then go on and say that cats have fleas too. It may be true, but dog evidence proves nothing about cats.

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    11. Anonymouse 2:24pm, bad analogy.

      People can have fleas too, but they aren’t intrinsic to human (or to animal) behavior. To the patterns of our thinking and the actions that arise from that.

      If we started calling it the “institutional media” or the “structural media culture”, you’d get it.


      Delete
    12. Whenever you miss the point you write gibberish.

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    13. Anonymouse 7:31pm, I didn’t miss the point about there being a difference between cable news and print media,

      I don’t agree with it.

      There’s very little difference between Joy Reid, Nicole Wallace, and Charles
      Blow.

      There’s little difference between Jonathan Capehart and Maureen Dowd. They are matched by Chuck Todd at MSNBC and Jake Tapper at CNN.

      David Brooks of the NYT is matched by George Will at the WP. Who is matched by Oliver Darcy at CNN and Joe Scarborough at MSNBC.

      I’m not speaking jibberish. You’re just dim as dirt.

      Delete
    14. Then you are piss poor at explaining yourself.

      If you find no differences between any of the people you list, then you won't find any differences between politicians either and you might as well vote Democratic as Republican. Or better yet, join the bothsiderists and vote for their no-label centrist candidate as a third party voter. That will put the nail in Trump's coffin.

      Look how you put all the names of black cable news hosts in a single group, segregating and ghettoizing them in your essay. Isn't that cute! Racism always has a way of leaking out, even when someone is pretending to know the names of multiple news analysts. And George Will and David Brooks are certainly the same because they are both non-trump conservatives masquerading as moderates. But that doesn't make them anything like Joe Scarborough.

      And yes, you are speaking gibberish, but it is more amusing when you pretend to know things than when you just spout double-talk and pretend it is an opinion.

      You have stated that both print and cable news people have opinions, but you are very fuzzy about what they are, and you gloss the differences between the purposes and realities of print vs cable as if you knew nothing about the two at all. For one thing, print is limited in space and values conciseness. Cable runs on entertainment value and tries to keep drop-in viewers. Online news (which is not the same as cable and you didn't mention at all) has unlimited space but has to deal with "clutter" and generate clicks for advertisers, so it is different than print in major ways but not like cable either, where personalities dominate all else.

      Don't try to think, Cecelia. You aren't good at it. Just read and try to learn things. Like Boebert and MTG, you do too much talking and not enough listening. People thank God they don't have to be around you in real life.

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    15. Anonymouse 11:20pm, I know the difference between conservative David Brooks and Sen. Tom Cotton.

      One conservative is an anti-Trump regular editorialist at the NYT, the other conservative is a pro-Trump politician whose appearance in the opinion section caused a long term NYT editor to be fired.

      I know Jonathan Capehart is black and Maureen Dowd is not.

      I thoroughly know you and your crap.

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    16. The difference between David Brooks and Sen. Tom Cotton, is David Brooks isn't a fascist.

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    17. Cecelia is really good at pointing out superficial and totally obvious differences. Maureen Dowd is also female and Capehart isn't. And Rin Tin Tin was a dog. Cecelia is such a moron.

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  10. “our tribal disregard for people like Mary Wainwright.”

    Somerby only learned about Mary Wainwright by reading about her in the Atlantic. The reporter sought her out to tell her story and the Atlantic, a longtime mainstream publication (ie “blue” in Somerby’s parlance) decided to publish it.

    He didn’t read about Ms Wainwright in the Wall Street journal, after all.

    It is such a tiresome trope that Somerby keeps regurgitating, that the liberal “tribe” doesn’t care about “people like Mary Wainwright”.

    It may be true, although not shown to my satisfaction, that the Washington Post or the New York Times don’t care about “people like Mary Wainwright.” An accurate survey of all the stories they’ve run about “people like Mary Wainwright” (however you would go about defining such stories) would give a better idea of their commitment to such coverage. But since Somerby missed (or “missed”) a couple of important updates to the Tyre Nichols story, I wouldn’t necessarily trust any evaluation that Somerby did.

    And as I and many others keep pointing out, those newspapers are not members of the blue tribe, nor is MSNBC, so you cannot judge “blue tribe” priorities by their content.

    The anon commenter yesterday provided an ironic proof of this: “Trump Trump Trump all the time” (Somerby’s claim about MSNBC) has resulted in a drop in ratings.

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    1. “The anon commenter yesterday provided an ironic proof of this: “Trump Trump Trump all the time” (Somerby’s claim about MSNBC) has resulted in a drop in ratings.”

      Conversely, Fox News beat cable news and the big three networks out in SOTU audience share.

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    2. Fox “News” IS cable news, for chrissakes. At any rate, Fox’s “Biden is a tyrannical all powerful hatemonger who is also weak and senile and wants to turn your children trans” all the time continues to draw in the eyeballs of right wing victims, don’t they?

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    3. mh, my guess is that people of all political persuasions wanted a focus on Pres Biden’s handling of the country, rather than pretending that Trump is still POTUS.

      It may finally be that Trump is no longer their cash cow.

      Delete
    4. No liberal watched fox for the speech. Fox is narrowly focused on hatred of Biden. That is THEIR cash cow, just as Hillary was for 25 years.

      Delete
    5. I’m not talking conservatives or liberals.

      More “folks” did.

      Delete
    6. If you are comparing one conservative cable news station against three non-conservative ones, the non-conservative audience is being split three ways. It may be that there are more non-conservative folks out there, but there is no competition on the right for viewers.

      These figures show that more "folks" watched the other stations (combined) than watched Fox, so you are wrong, even if you do away with the political labels:

      "Fox News had the largest for the speech with just under 4.7 million viewers, beating out ABC’s 4.41 million for the top spot. NBC finished third with 3.78 million viewers, followed by CBS (3.64 million), MSNBC (3.57 million), CNN (2.41 million) and the Fox broadcast network (1.66 million). Spanish language broadcasters Univision (1.08 million) and Telemundo (836,000) added about 1.9 million viewers to the total. The rest came from NBCLX, PBS, CNBC, CNNe, Fox Business, NewsMax and NewsNation."

      Delete
    7. Anonymouse 2:29pm, but tv ratings aren’t gauged like that. No rating system would be.

      With that logic, it would be meaningless if the tv show Friends came in at #1 in their time slot, because a far greater number of people were spread out over a plethora of different network outlets and streaming channels.

      The Neilson would mean nil.

      Delete
    8. Speaking of bad analogies, Cecelia: your Friends example is irrelevant.

      Delete
    9. https://www.politico.com/amp/news/magazine/2022/02/02/democrats-fox-news-entertainment-conservative-liberal-00004843

      Delete
  11. "Let it be said that Memphis isn't "the collegiest college town" in the state of Tennessee."

    There is no need to knock the University of Memphis. That seems like a gratuitous put-down of an innocent-bystanding college simply because Somerby is trying to show that no one cares about Memphis any more. And anyway, Memphis has blues and jazz, for which it can thank its black community going way back.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Bob has so often been suspicious ( sometimes rightfully so) of the saturation reporting on a Police killing. Here, because the cops were black, he demands more, more, more! He really
    demands the Post cover that and only that.

    ReplyDelete
  13. “When did the WP and the NYT last endorse a Republican for president?” sez Cecelia. Hoo boy.

    They endorsed Bill Clinton and Al Gore too.

    But you have to be brain dead, ignorant, or new to Somerby’s blog to miss one of the foundational reasons he started his blog back in the 1990’s: to show how the mainstream media was not liberal. He explicitly stated that back then.

    That he fails to mention that anymore doesn’t change the truth that he understood years ago.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, the conservative NYT and the WP endorsed yet another Democrat team for the WH.

      Thirty- three years since the Clinton Admin, Somerby thinks there’s been changes.



      Delete
    2. It would be a waste of time explaining to you why the NY Times was against Hillary and how it helped to torpedo her campaign (Benghazi, emails, Clinton Cash, corruption between the Clinton Foundation and her activities as Sec of State, Bill & Jeffrey Epstein, Huma Abedin's husband and his computer, Comey). And you wouldn't understand the difference between an editorial and news content. So why bother? Just like Judith Miller provoked the Iraq war on behalf of Bush. And the NY Times promoted the idea of inflation and recession during Biden's first years to undermine Democrats in the midterms.

      You are the most ignorant person on the face of the earth. You come across that way because you are trolling, not discussing anything. That's why you never seem to learn anything. Like Boebert and MTG, you are a giant mouth spewing right wing hate. It would be nice if you would go away, but your Russian overlords probably won't let you do that. Because those who are working so hard for the right wing ARE doing Putin's bidding.

      Delete
    3. Anonymouse 11:10pm, you’re saying why bother with me, but you’re bothering, right?

      That’s you to a tee.

      It’s your job to bother. It’s why you’re home composing ten paragraph posts based upon Bob’s 24 hour notice of what he might blog about.

      You don’t have to explain to me the way you guys do business.

      I saw it in 2008 when HRC was running against Obama and the media and her former supporters were calling out the “racial overtones” of both Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro.

      Goddamn. Gerri Ferraro, a trail blazer, being called a racist by your lot.

      I know you like the back of your posterior.

      Delete
    4. Cecelia,
      Of all the people in this great big world of ours who have feelings, you are certainly one of them.

      Delete
    5. Anonymouse 11:43 pm, not you.

      Delete
    6. Cecelia, it simply illustrates the dogged virtue of liberals that we spend time on you while admitting you are a waste of time. Now, from Whitwater on, do you really deny the NYTs malpractice in its approach to the Clintons?

      Delete
    7. See, a total waste of time.

      Delete
  14. Bob writes as if he's surprised at the discrepancy in coverage. It's huge news when whites kill a black, but it's not news when blacks kill a black. This is muzzle that the media imposed on itself decades ago. Supposedly the reason was to avoid stoking racial prejudice against blacks.

    It didn't work. Everybody knows that black neighborhoods tens to be more crime-ridden. However, the impact of this media practice was more subtle. It gave the message that it's taboo to talk about the high black crime rate. Anyone who does so is branded a racist.

    Making it impossible to have an honest discussion on this topic makes it hard to take action that will reduce the black crime rate. That's too bad for all the black murder victims who live in these neighborhoods. Bob might call this an example of how liberals don't really care about black people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is racist to attribute the higher crime rate to race. Would you like it if the much higher number of white mass shooters and serial killers were attributed to their whieness? For that matter do you think the much higher crime rates of men compared to women is because men are inherently violent, murderous, unable to control themselves as a sex?

      Delete
    2. Anonymouse 7:48pm, where have you been?

      Delete
    3. If you have nothing to say to David or me, why not keep silent so others won’t see how empty-minded you are?

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    5. Anonymouse 8:10pm, read what you wrote to David.

      You essentially accused David of being a racist by suggesting that he’s attributing a high crime rate in the black community to their race. Not poverty, not the effects of discrimination, just race.

      However, anonymices attribute the black crime rate to institutional white racism.

      Excluding their lilly white selves, of course

      Delete
    6. 1. I didn’t accuse David of anything.
      2. I haven’t excluded anyone from my definition.

      Lily is spelled “lily”.

      Delete
    7. Cecelia has no idea what “institutional” means.

      Delete
    8. Anonymouse 8:50pm, yes, you did suggest that David is being racist.

      You told him what he said is racist and asked him if he’d appreciate the same treatment.

      “It is racist to attribute the higher crime rate to race. Would you like it if the much higher number of white mass shooters and serial killers were attributed to their whieness?”

      That is already done continuously. You know that.

      By the way, it’s whiteness not “whieness”.

      Delete
    9. I told him my def of racism and asked how he would like it if I applied such reasoning to the crimes disproportionately committed by whie people, or by men.

      Not surprising that you can’t tell apart a typo from a spelling error. You have to be able to spell for that.

      Delete
    10. David in Cal has HUGE problems with the inherent violence of white people, based on the epidemic of mass shootings perpetrated by whites. After all, he's not a bigot.

      Delete
    11. Anonymouse 11:46pm. at 7:48 pm, David was being lectured about attributing higher crime rates to black people. He was asked how he’d feel about that as regards white mass killers.

      Since you and the media have made such a comparison a million times, the answer would be “I’m use to it”.

      NOW (for 12 hours only) “ratfucker” David is “not a bigot”.

      This is the sincerity and the gravitas that comes from being just one more anonymous, folks.

      Delete
    12. 12:15,
      I'm having a difficult time following your gibberish. Do you, or do you not, agree with 11:46's claim that David in Cal is not a bigot?

      Delete
  15. Biden blew up the Russian pipelines. That makes him and all of us war criminals and citizens of a psychotic, violent, military empire. Which makes sense since our country and what we have now started when we committed a violent, psychotic genocide. All of us are citizens of a violent, psychotic, genocidal military empire. That's why you all act so crazy and neurotic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You need to get a big sign that says “The End is Near” and wander around Time Square.

      Delete

    2. Meh. We didn't blow up any pipelines. Dear Bob's war-mongering tribal chiefs did. The liberal establishment.

      ...we will, however, probably have to suffer the consequences. Oh, well...

      Delete
    3. Republican Sugar Daddy, Vlad Putin, likes the cut of your jib, Mao.

      Delete