PROMISICUITIES: Scarborough's bombast, plus two confessions!

FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2023

As cultural norms decay: Our cultural norms, such as they were, have been in a visible state of decay. 

For one example, consider the recent, videotaped deposition of one Donald J. Trump.

Over the course of the past two days, parts of the deposition were played for the jury in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit trial. In this morning's New York Times, Weiser et al. report the contents of what was shown, starting with this:

WEISER ET AL (5/5/23): The defendant has been absent throughout, but he still loomed over the proceeding in federal court. He has been cited in testimony, photographs and legal arguments. And over two days this week, he appeared in a different form, as Ms. Carroll’s lawyers played for the jury excerpts from a video deposition they had taken of Mr. Trump in October.

In the video clips, he sits at a table, dark-suited and solemn, answering questions posed by Ms. Kaplan. He calls Ms. Carroll “a wack job,” “sick” and “a nut job” and turns his disdain on Ms. Kaplan, calling her a “political operative” and a “disgrace” and insulting her to her face.

According to the Times report, Trump went on to insist that no such event had ever occurred. You can read the transcript of the deposition here, though it doesn't seem to be searchable. 

Meanwhile, how deep was the defendant's "disdain" when aimed at Roberta Kaplan, Carroll's attorney? Weiser et al. say this:

WEISER ET AL: At one point, Ms. Kaplan asks about a statement Mr. Trump made in June 2019, after Ms. Carroll first told her story in a magazine. At the time, Mr. Trump denied that the encounter had even occurred and added that he could not have raped Ms. Carroll because she was not his “type.”

Ms. Kaplan, in an excerpt the jury was shown on Thursday, asks him to explain that statement.

“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest,” Mr. Trump tells her. “I wouldn’t under any circumstances have any interest in you.”

So it goes as norms of behavior decay in astonishing ways.  Even Olbermann and Musto were never that deranged, one of the analysts sighed.

At this point, we'll add a familiar suggestion:

We can't have a serious discussion of such behavior until one journalistic norm is amended or abandoned—until we find a way to discuss such apparent "abnormal psychology" through the help of (carefully selected) medical specialists.

Our journalists still refuse to do that. In the place of such discussion, we're strongly inclined to resort to the time-honored calling of names.

Norms of behavior have been decaying around us in visible ways. That's true of Donald J. Trump's behavior, but it's also true in the case of Tucker Carlson—and the behavior of Justice Thomas doesn't seem to be real far behind.

Norms of behavior are decaying almost wherever we look. In fairness, that includes the opening segment of last Friday's Morning Joe, where the program's host went on a pleasing but factually challenged rant as seven onlookers looked on.

That rant was an artifact of a new journalistic norm. In this new journalistic norm, the age of Crossfire was thrown away in favor of The Age of Tribe—an age in which political discussion is increasingly segregated by viewpoint.

Red tribe voters tune in to Fox. We blues have MSNBC.

Each of these corporate entities hands its viewers the stories they like. At Fox, "seldom is heard a discouraging world." At MSNBC, the more accurate word would be "never." 

At MSNBC, we're handed the novelized stories we very much like, with few embellishments left behind. And so it went as a person who is actually very bright screamed and yelled last Friday, in pleasing ways, about someone who apparently didn't.

There is, of course, no perfect was to discuss news events and news topics. That said, our current way is a disaster, a joke. 

In our tribe, we hear about Trump Trump Jail, and we hear about little else. Real world problems don't exist, unless they serve Storyline.

So it has gone, within the past week, as our tribe has pretended to discuss the Carroll lawsuit and the red tribe has tried to ignore it. 

For ourselves, we would have liked to hear serious discussions about the best ways to handle claims of sexual assault—more specifically, to handle such claims in circumstances where there may be little hard evidence.

We'd also like to hear discussions about the best ways to create a world in which victims of sexual assault know they will be treated with respect when they come forward with their claims.

Instead, our tribe's discussion began with the screaming and yelling, then sometimes descended from there. This past Monday, an unfortunate bit of comic relief was thrown in the stew when "legal analyst" Katie Phang spoke with TV's Nicolle Wallace.

Phang is one of Wallace's "favorite reporters and friends." As if that embarrassing phrase wasn't awful enough, Phang now copped to this:

PHANG (5/1/23): Nicolle, I kind of wanted to start today by saying apparently my name came up today during the trial. It was name-dropped by Joe Tacopina in an attempt, I think, to distract from the issues in this case, about a dinner than never happened that I attended with E. Jean Carroll. 

So I wanted to make sure that everybody knew that I am friends with E. Jean Carroll. But that doesn't distract, in my humble opinion, when it comes to my legal analysis. And to answer your question... 

In Phang's (barely discernible) humble opinion, she wanted us to know that her personal friendship with the plaintiff doesn't affect her legal analysis. 

(All right, then! Good to know!)

Also, the villainous Tacopina had been at it again! Pleasingly, we were told that he'd been "attempting to distract from the issues in this case!" He had "name-dropped" Phang in court, possibly trying to make himself famous!

Should NBC News have a legal analyst cover a trial in which she's friends with the plaintiff? By traditional norms, it seems to us that the answer is probably no—and surely, this would have been seen as a matter for disclosure, of the kind we demand of the badly compromised Thomas.

In this case, Phang was making her admission only after Tacopina had engaged in his latest misconduct! (We'll guess she'd been told she had to.) 

And then, good God! The very next day, a second legal analyst told Nicolle Wallace this:

WALLACE (5/2/23): Take me inside where you think this case stands so far.

VANCE: Right. So absolutely—and Tacopina, I'm told, actually mentioned my name yesterday in court, raising the notion that a small group of E. Jean Carroll's close friends supported her during the Second Circuit argument. 

We've been friends for years, and I think that whole situation really goes to what you're saying here, this notion that they wanted E. Jean Carroll to react in the way that they thought a rape victim should, and E. Jean Carroll apparently reacted and has testified in a manner that is authentic for her...

Go ahead! This lawsuit concerns a very serious matter, but you're briefly allowed to laugh.

As with Phang the day before, Vance offered this bit of disclosure only after her name had been dropped in court. Meanwhile, does MSNBC have anyone "analyzing" this trial who isn't a long-standing personal friend of the plaintiff?

We don't know the answer to that. But on Tuesday, Vance made a belated, hurried admission, then rushed ahead in a transition which didn't much seem to make sense.

First Phang confessed, then Vance followed. This constitutes a bit of unfortunate comic relief, spinning off from a federal trial about one of the human race's most grievous forms of criminal misconduct.

Can anyone here play this game? Casey Stengel once asked. By traditional norms, the answer may be no at MSNBC in these brave new days of journalistic segregation.

Good God! Phang is a personal friend of the plaintiff, but then again so is Vance! We're prepared to assume that Lisa Rubin is not—and Rubin, like the other two legal analysts, is plainly a good, decent person.

That said, she's strongly devoted to certain feminist issues, and she has been all her life. 

In our view, she should be devoted to such issues, but does that help her journalism? As we've scrolled through the tweets of this good, decent person, we've found ourselves reading this:

RUBIN (4/30/23): If you’ve seen my coverage, it’s apparent I have strong feelings about the case. That’s partially because Carroll herself is compelling, in no small part because of her imperfections. She knows she doesn’t adhere to cultural expectations of victims, and she aims to upend them.

But it’s also because of what a victory in her case could signify for victims writ large. If a 79-year-old woman can hold a former president and the dominant figure in Republican Party politics liable, other women might find it less daunting to voice their own truths.

I am not a survivor. But I have been surrounded by their stories since my teens. A roommate raped by her uncle. The classmate groomed by our high school biology teacher. A friend assaulted by a ride-share driver. The list goes on and on and on.

For all of them and for all of you, I’ll keep breaking down the courtroom action and bearing witness. Stay tuned. FIN.

Is "bearing witness" to one's "strong feelings" a form of reporting or analysis? We aren't sure that it is. That said, Rubin offered this highlighted bit of advice last Friday, even as our tribe thrilled to claims about all the screaming and yelling:

RUBIN (4/28/23): If you were a trailblazing Emmy winner once known as the "coolest woman in journalism" by a woman who herself redefined the zeitgeist for a generation of New York women, ask yourself whether you'd risk that legacy all for a lie. Yeah, I didn't think so. Trust women. FIN.

Try to ignore the somewhat embellished lionization of the plaintiff in this very serious case. 

Rubin ends by telling us this: "Trust women." Was she saying that President Biden really did assault Tara Reade, as Reade still insists?

We know of exactly zero reason to think that E. Jean Carroll is lying in the claim at the heart of this case. Sometimes, though, some women haven't been telling the truth when they've made claims about such assaults. 

We've had several high-profile examples of this in recent years, but nothing on earth can make our tribe come to terms with such complexities. As humans, we're wired for tribal true belief—or at least, so all the experts keep saying.

Cultural norms, such as they were, have been breaking down. A great deal of Crazy can be found Over There.  But then again, this is Us:

Wallace will keep introducing groups of "our favorite reporters and friends." (On the brighter side, it begins to seem that she really did mean the part about all the friends.)

Branding like that will continue, creating a warm clubhouse feel.  But as people like Trump and Carlson drag our norms deep into the ground, our own careerist blue tribe tribunes will continue to parade about the countryside, saying the things we want to hear and dumbing us way, way down.

(As they do, they keep convincing us of a troubling possibility—Joe Biden could lose next year!)

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Having said that, go ahead:

On Monday afternoon, Phang copped. The very next day, Vance followed. In this one instance, you're allowed to laugh, though mordantly, and only for a brief moment.