SUNDAY: Vulgar and crass, the New York Times said!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2024

Though only on page A12:  We didn't get what we requested—but what we got was a start.

Once again, we refer to an (extensive) news report in the New York Times. Last Thursday, the report appeared online, beneath this dual headline:

Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity. Will He Alienate the Voters He Needs?
Donald J. Trump has been reposting racially and sexually charged insults of Kamala Harris, continuing a history of crass attacks...

We're dropping a part of that second headline in which, in our view, the Times chased pointless speculation. But at long last, the Times decided to treat the vulgarity of Candidate Trump—his history of crass attacks; his racially and sexually charged insults—as a stand-alone news topic all by itself:

As what it so plainly is!

When this extensive report appeared online, we said we hoped the Times would run it on the front page of Sunday's print editions.

As it turned out, the New York Times wasn't quite ready to exercise that much good judgment. Instead, the Times ran the report in Saturday's print editions—and only on paper A12.

This candidate's astonishing conduct deserves a higher profile. That said, we'll describe this lengthy report as a decent first step.

The report was written by Bensinger, Yourish and Gold. In our view, the report begins with an overly broad frame of reference:

Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity. Will He Alienate the Voters He Needs?
Donald J. Trump has been reposting racially and sexually charged insults of Kamala Harris, continuing a history of crass attacks...

Over his decades in the public eye, former President Donald J. Trump has a well-established history of making degrading and racist remarks about women, people of color and pretty much anyone else who crosses his path.

It is a proclivity that dates to his days as a reality television star and that has only expanded in the meme-driven era of social media. In the words of Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, Mr. Trump is “an equal opportunity offender.”

But in Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump has found a particularly complicated and risky target for his trademark brand of transgression, as more Americans are suddenly tuning in to what has become a highly competitive race.

Although there are no clear signs that Mr. Trump has increased the quantity of abuse he levels at his opponents, his decision to repost a string of sexually and racially charged broadsides in recent weeks suggests that he has turned up the dial when it comes to pure vulgarity and crudeness.

In our view, editors should have dropped the highly subjective reference to allegedly "racist" remarks. Also this:

In our view, there was no reason to talk about a decades-old "proclivity"—an alleged proclivity for which no examples are given.

At issue is Candidate Trump's behavior right now—the vulgar, crass insults referenced in that dual headline. That stream of invective from this candidate is, in fact, "particularly unusual in modern politics"—an accurate framework which appeared in a similar report in the Washington Post.

The fact that this behavior is so unusual is a large part of what makes the behavior news. In our view, that's where this important report should have begun—but soon enough, the three reporters went where the rubber has been meeting the road:

Since July 21, when President Biden stepped out of the race and endorsed Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump has directed a seemingly constant fusillade of invective at a challenger who happens to be Black, South Asian and female.

In a little over five weeks, in speeches, social media posts and interviews, Mr. Trump has called Ms. Harris a “wack job”; a “communist”; “dumb as a rock”; “real garbage”; “a bum”; and, employing a phrase he applies almost exclusively to women, “nasty.” In early August, he reposted an image depicting Ms. Harris as a dung beetle with her face covered in what appears to be blackface while astride a coconut. And he has made or amplified innuendo-laden references to his opponent’s long-ago relationship with the former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, suggesting she traded sexual favors to accelerate her political career.

“She had a very good friend named Willie Brown,” Mr. Trump said at a rally on Aug. 3. “He knows more about her than anybody’s ever known. He could tell you every single thing about her, could tell you stories that you’re not going to want to hear.”

At a convention for Black journalists in Chicago last month, he questioned Ms. Harris’s racial identity, saying that she only recently “became a Black person.” And in addition to a post on Wednesday on his Truth Social platform, which made a crude reference to Ms. Harris and oral sex, Mr. Trump this month reshared a video of a singer in a parody video saying that Ms. Harris has spent her life “down on her knees.”

By modern political norms, this is astoundingly unusual conduct. That's what makes this gruesome behavior a stand-alone news topic—a serious topic which, in our view, should be reported on the front page..

We think this should have been on page one! At any rate, as the Times report continues, so do the examples of this candidate's remarkable conduct:

Although he returned to the X platform this month, nearly all of the off-color content Mr. Trump has amplified has been confined to his own site, which has become a kind of echo chamber for MAGA content.

In that politically homogenous, criticism-free context, Mr. Trump’s posts are constantly answered with racist and sexist memes by ardent followers in hopes that the former president will repost them, a badge of honor in MAGA circles. In recent weeks, social media has been awash in digitally manipulated and crude images of Ms. Harris that were created by Mr. Trump’s supporters showing her in sexual situations, often unclothed or in lingerie.

The post that Mr. Trump shared on Wednesday on Truth Social—a screenshot from X that showed an image of Ms. Harris and Hillary Clinton and another user’s reply: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…” —was a reply to one of Mr. Trump’s own posts on the site.

Finally, the Times was willing to report the reference to "blowjobs" which this former president had reposted.  

As we've reported, the Fox News Channel opens a garbage can of this type every weekday evening at 10 o'clock. That should be treated as major news too—but in this case, the garbage can is being opened by one of our two White House candidates:

An anonymous account with the handle @beware_the_penguin posted the ["blowjobs"] screenshot on Truth Social. In recent weeks, that same account has uploaded and shared dozens of highly sexualized images about Ms. Harris on the platform. At least one other, more PG-rated post from that account, depicting Ms. Harris hiding from reporters under a table, was also reposted by Mr. Trump.

The oral-sex remark came from the account of a pro-Trump podcaster who calls himself Zeek Arkham. The comment alludes to Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, who admitted to having a sexual relationship with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and to Ms. Harris’s relationship with Mr. Brown in the mid-1990s.

We're sorry to see that the New York Times is still defining Monica Lewinsky as "a White House intern." In the realm of exciting tales, some designations are too time-honored to drop.

(In fact, she was a full-time federal employee during the ginormous bulk of her relationship with President Clinton.) 

That said, the reporters were correctly treating Candidate Trump's behavior as what it plainly is. It's a vast departure from conventional political norms—and on that basis, it qualifies as a stand-alone, highly important news topic

So is such remarkable conduct as this:

On Wednesday, he boosted at least four posts making reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory, as well as altered images depicting Ms. Harris and other Democratic leaders in orange prison jumpsuits and other posts calling for former President Barack Obama to be tried in a military tribunal.

Astonishing behavior of this type should be treated as major, front-page news. Yesterday, the Times took a halting step in that direction

As we've long noted, it has long seemed to us that Candidate Trump is badly disordered, in a clinical sense. (As you may recall, it had seemed to us, since last August, that President Biden might perhaps be cognitively impaired in some significant way.)

President Biden has dropped from the race. Candidate Trump remains.

In this, and in various other ways, this candidate's behavior is extremely unusual. We refer here to his endless, wild misstatements of fact, as well as to his endless string of crass, vulgar public insults.

Not being crazy ourselves, we regard such bizarre behavior as major, front-page news. In future reports about this stunning behavior, that's where the timorous souls at the New York Times should screw up their courage and place it.