TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024
Here's the part he leaves out: We agree with Charlie Warzel's basic point. As a matter of fact, it echoes what we've been saying about the Fox News Channel.
Donald J. Trump is worse than you think, Warzel says at The Atlantic. More specifically, he's talking about the candidate's Truth Social posts. Dual headline included, here's the gist of Warzel's piece:
The Trump Posts You Probably Aren’t Seeing
His Truth Social posts are even worse than you think.
[...]
Last Friday, I received an email with a link to a website created by a Washington, D.C.–based web developer named Chris Herbert. The site, Trump’s Truth, is a searchable database collecting all of Trump’s Truth Social posts, even those that have been deleted. Herbert has also helpfully transcribed every speech and video Trump has posted on the platform, in part so that they can be indexed more easily by search engines such as Google. Thus, Trump’s ravings are more visible.
Like many reporters, I’d been aware that the former president’s social-media posts had, like his rally speeches, grown progressively angrier, more erratic, and more bizarre in recent years. Having consumed enough Trump rhetoric over the past decade to melt my frontal cortex, I’ve grown accustomed to his addled style of communication. And yet, I still wasn’t adequately prepared for the immersive experience of scrolling through hundreds of his Truths and ReTruths. Even for Trump, this feed manages to shock...
On their own, each of these posts is concerning and more than a little sad. But consumed in the aggregate, they take on a different meaning, offering a portrait of a man who appears frequently incoherent, internet-addicted, and emotionally volatile—even by the extreme standard that Trump has already set...
"Even for Trump," his Truth Social postings are hard to believe, Warzel says. That echoes what we've been saying about the imitation of life which currently goes by the name of the Fox News Channel.
Warzel says he wasn't prepared for how erratic and bizarre Trump's full postings are. Here's what Warzel doesn't say:
Why are Trump's rantings so hard to believe--so surprising? In large part, because major orgs like the New York Times refuse to treat his bizarre behavior as a stand-alone, front-page news topic.
His rantings have been normalized through neglect. The same is true of the intellectual and moral squalor which defines the bulk of the programming (though not all) found on the Fox News Channel.
A cancer is growing on the presidency, John Dean once famously said. In our view, a pseudo-journalistic cancer is growing on the American public discourse, and it goes be such names as these:
Fox & Friends
Fox & Friends First
Fox & Friends Weekend
The Big Weekend Show
Life, Liberty and Levin
The Five
Jesse Watters Primetime
Gutfeld!
We'll take a guess—very few readers of the Times understand how fatuous, how journalistically corrupt, those programs (and others) actually are.
They think they know, but they have no idea—and their highly regarded, major newspaper keeps choosing not to tell them. The corporate stars on MSNBC also agree not to tell them.
We'll assume that Warzel is right about the full sweep of the Truth Social posts. We'll assume that what you see there is "worse than you think"—is more "extreme" and more shocking than you might imagine.
That said, why was Warzel surprised by what he saw when he looked at those posts? It's because the major news orgs with which he's familiar haven't reported on the bulk of those posts.
In our view, Donald J. Trump seems to need help—seems to be badly disordered. Instead, he's been relentlessly normalized, and the process continues. We'll guess that Warzel was right to be shocked by what he saw, but he should have been told long ago.
In our view, it's an ongoing news event when a major party nominee--or a major "cable news" channel—seems to be badly disordered. Just a guess:
Life is easier—and it's safer—when news orgs avert their gaze.
Somerby says:
ReplyDelete"We agree with Charlie Warzel's basic point. As a matter of fact, it echoes what we've been saying about the Fox News Channel."
...""Even for Trump," his Truth Social postings are hard to believe, Warzel says. That echoes what we've been saying about the imitation of life which currently goes by the name of the Fox News Channel."
...His rantings have been normalized through neglect. The same is true of the intellectual and moral squalor which defines the bulk of the programming (though not all) found on the Fox News Channel."
Warzel says Trump is more bizarre and weird than we can imagine when you hear his posts and rants together. Somerby immediately switches to talking about Fox News, while claiming that the news media do not take Trump seriously by talking explicitly about his disordered mind.
It seems to me that Somerby is doing the same thing. He averts his gaze from Trump in order to accuse Fox News of being just as bad (which equates the extremeness and weirdness of Trump with a right wing station that is arguably less weird and less extreme than Trump is, especially in the last few months). Then Somerby claims that our American discourse has become weird, watering down the weirdness even further because the left wing and mainstream media are not anywhere near as weird as Fox, much less Trump.
Somerby is demonstrating how that gaze gets averted. He needs to stick with analyzing Trump and let Fox be the right wing station it is. Otherwise he is in the position of calling millions of people who believe and support Trump equally weird and disordered and that is (1) unlikely to be true, and (2) impossible to address simply by encouraging the NY Times to run a headline about it, (3) partisan to the point that legitimate complaints about abandoning objectivity during an election will be made by the right, (4) difficult to document without watering down the definition of Trump's weirdness to Republican self-interest, which is NOT what Warzel is talking about either.
Somerby does this so often that it seems like his purpose is to deliberately dilute complaints about Trump's weirdness, shifting the focus to the left, which he always claims is just as bad as any weirdness on the right (when it manifestly is nothing like it).
People should read Warzel and skip Somerby.
shhhh. we're trying to have a sensible conversation
Delete"In our view, Donald J. Trump seems to need help—seems to be badly disordered."
ReplyDeleteDonald J. Trump is very satisfied with Donald J. Trump and doesn't think he needs any help at all. He is a billionaire who could have hired any number of therapists, had he felt the need. But that is true of many mentally ill people, except for being rich -- they think they are fine and have no problems with themselves, especially if they offload the blame for everything onto others.
Somerby neglects to mention that Donald J. Trump is also a criminal. In our society, we tend to put criminals in jail. Trump is "high functioning" so he will not be referred for treatment to any mental health professional during his encounters with the criminal justice system. He probably won't even go to jail. I have been wondering whether Trump complied with the pre-sentencing requirement to have a mental health evaluation and recommendation -- I suspect that was waived for him.
But Trump is now also very old. When people as old as Trump have mental health problems, it is chalked up to dementia and considered ameliorable but not curable. So Trump needs to be put in an assisted living facility, not referred for therapy. That isn't likely to happen either, unless a court orders it. He will be surrounded by hired staff who will try to talk him out of his weirder fantasies and try to limit his environment to executive time and golf, while friends visit less and less frequently (unless he gives them money). Then he will have some serious health event, such as a heart attack, and become a recluse. It can't happen to a nicer guy, nor soon enough.
But Somerby doesn't really care about Trump. He is trying to manipulate his audience for political purposes, in service of right wing interests who are funding his own retirement. As he gets older, he will have to come to terms with his own life achievements, but that will be between himself and his conscience. I wouldn't want to be him during that examination, but it is one we all must face, if we go slowly instead of unexpectedly, so I tend to pay attention to the balance sheet of good vs bad deeds. Somerby may be relying on bending his own sense of reality instead of taking responsibility for his actions. Either approach probably works, unless you believe in heaven and hell.
your comment is wrong, dumb, and a waste of space as usual
DeleteIf you are going to condemn Somerby to hell for manipulating his readers so he can cash checks from right-wingers, don't you think you should submit the smallest scintilla of evidence? Because, after all, St. Peter might ask.
ReplyDeleteYou read the same essays we do. Or maybe you don't? I have been forgetting to ask you whether you can read, but in my defense, I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt.
DeleteIf you have evidence that right-wingers are funding Somerby, by all means let's see it. Or, if you don't, I guess you can throw sand by questioning whether I can read. Your choice.
DeleteBTW, how much do you think right-wingers paid Somerby to write that Vance is morally inferior to Pontius Pilate?
DeleteDo you really think someone with Somerby's history would be saying right wing things for free?
DeleteI have never said that everything Somerby says is consistently right wing. I have said that each essay has a right wing talking point, meme or criticism of the left (Harris, other Democrats, Congressional acts by Dems), or a defense of Trump/Vance or some other Republican political issue (i.e., Moms for Liberty's censorship campaign, Kyle Rittenhouse's innocence, Ketanji Brown Jackson's inferiority for sitting on the Supreme Court).
He cloaks these talking points in enough shrubbery to seem vaguely liberalish (Bob Dylan quotes, lines from Robt Frost, Woody Guthrie songs) and now excerpts from White's book on 60s elections (more nostalgia than left wing), but his purpose for writing each essay is to support a right wing objective. That doesn't mean every word does that, and that seems to be confusing to you.
I doubt the people who would vote for Vance have any idea who Pontius Pilate was, much less what he did, which was trivial to the Christ story. The whole point of Christ's sacrifice for our souls was that he had to die, so Pilate did God a favor by sentencing Christ to crucification (if you believe the story). There was nothing morally wrong with what Pilate did from his own perspective or from a Roman perspective. He was doing his job, not being evil in any way that would make a meaningful comparison to Vance. The question you pose is ridiculous because Somerby doesn't know anything about Pilate's morality -- just Vance's. So when Somerby makes a comparison to an unknown quantity like Pilate, he may even be flattering Vance (in reality if not intent). Who knows? Somerby doesn't.
That's it -- Somerby was PRAISING Vance by saying he is morally inferior to the guy who killed Christ. That's a -- take, I guess.
DeleteThat’s where too much sarcasm and irony gets you.
DeleteFor you haters -- Who do you think paid Somerby to write this post, in which he says (a) that Trump "seems to be badly disordered" and engages in "bizarre behavior," and (b) that Fox News is a "fatuous," "journalistically corrupt" "cancer," defined primarily by "intellectual and moral squalor"?
ReplyDeleteThat was me.
DeleteRussia wiuld be my first guess (via an intermediary).
DeleteIt is possible he is a Trump supporter who gets a kick out of pretending to be liberal or vice versa, just for the fun of rube-running. Another name for that is “duper’s delight”. His opinions may be random. His Homer worship and incel misogyny suggests alt-right white supremacist views. I have no idea what is faked or real but it is definitely there. If you figure it out, let me know.
“I have no idea what is faked or real but it is definitely there.”
DeleteOn the other hand, anonymices are transparent scam artists.
Here is some real media criticism:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/new-york-times-washed-19780600.php
Most of the complaints here against the NYTimes apply to Somerby too.