How did the malpractice get this far?

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2017

Pierce, Drum and Krugman explain and fail to explain: In his latest column, Paul Krugman made several charges about the press corps' behavior.

"America is rapidly turning into a [banana republic]," Krugman wrote. "This debacle didn’t come out of nowhere," he further alleged.

Krugman said this state of affairs has been developing for decades. He fingered "the supine news media" as a major player:

KRUGMAN (1/2/17): How could this happen in a nation that has long prided itself as a role model for democracies everywhere? In a direct sense, Mr. Trump’s elevation was made possible by the F.B.I.’s blatant intervention in the election, Russian subversion, and the supine news media that obligingly played up fake scandals while burying real ones on the back pages.

But this debacle didn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve been on the road to stan-ism for a long time: an increasingly radical G.O.P., willing to do anything to gain and hold power, has been undermining our political culture for decades.

People tend to forget how much of the 2016 playbook had already been used in earlier years. Remember, the Clinton administration was besieged by constant accusations of corruption, dutifully hyped as major stories by the news media; not one of these alleged scandals turned out to involve any actual wrongdoing. Not incidentally, James Comey, the F.B.I. director whose intervention almost surely swung the election, had previously worked for the Whitewater committee, which spent seven years obsessively investigating a failed land deal.

According to Krugman, the age of "fake scandals" dates at least to Whitewater, which began (in the New York Times) in early 1992. He says "the supine news media" has "obligingly played up" these fake scandals while "burying real ones on the back pages."

According to Krugman, the press corps behaved this way this in the 2016 campaign, and in the original Bill Clinton era. Krugman is thereby alleging a cultural spiral which has been underway for at least twenty-five years.

We think Krugman's history is basically accurate. We also think that mainstream and liberal journalists don't like discussing this topic.

According to a recent release by the New York Times, Krugman's most widely read column in 2016 was the September column which carried the headline, "Hillary Clinton Gets Gored." In that column, Krugman said the press corps was treating Candidate Clinton the same way they treated Candidate Gore during Campaign 2000. He ended up making this connection three separate times this fall.

At the time, we noted a bit of a problem. Very few people had ever heard about the press corps' War Against Gore, we brightly alleged. For that reason, it seemed to us that Krugman's warning might tend to fall on deaf ears.

Is it true that very few people have heard about the War Against Gore? Consider the way two liberal journalists recently described that phenomenon. This may help you see why the misconduct Krugman describes somehow managed to survive for a full twenty-five years.

We'll start with Charlie Pierce at Esquire. In the week before Christmas, Pierce savaged the mainstream press corps' treatment of Hillary Clinton, and of Candidate Gore before her. Here's part of what he wrote:

PIERCE (12/20/16): [T]he 2000 election is instructive. There was no question that Al Gore was the victim of extraordinary media malpractice. There was no question that [George W. Bush] won because he carried Florida, and there was no question that he carried Florida through various schemes arranged in that state in which his brother was the governor and his state chairman was secretary of state. There was no question that a perfectly legal recount in that state was stopped by the unprecedented—and non-precedential—intervention of a Scalia ex machina Supreme Court, several justices of which had naked conflicts of interest. Some 100,000 people showed up in Washington to protest the inauguration, and TV showed them hardly at all.

Soon, all of this was obscured by the fact that Al Gore had "lost his home state," that he had failed to use Bill Clinton properly, and that he had failed to counteract the stupid caricature of himself that was presented to the voters in the guise of campaign journalism. The unique circumstances of how his loss had been calculated and certified were just one factor among many, and it was time to move forward as a nation.

We are seeing much the same thing at work today. There is no question that Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular balloting by almost three million votes. There is no question that she did this despite extraordinary media malpractice dating back 25 years...

Pierce specifically said that the media malpractice against Hillary Clinton "dated back 25 years." Beyond that, you'll never see a career journalist describe the War Against Gore more clearly.

According to Pierce, Candidate Gore had to battle a "stupid caricature of himself that was presented to the voters in the guise of campaign journalism." According to Pierce, "there was no question that Al Gore was the victim of extraordinary media malpractice."

For ourselves, we had a slight problem with that.

Maybe it's all a matter of what the meaning of "was" is! Reading that passage, a reader would almost surely think that the "media malpractice" described by Pierce was widely discussed and understood in real time.

Obviously, any such idea would be totally false. At this site, we tried for years to get career journalists to discuss the phenomenon Pierce correctly describes in that post. (We started in March 1999, in the very week when the attacks against Candidate Gore began.)

For the next ten years, we tried to get career journalists to discuss the phenomenon Pierce correctly describes. We found that it simply couldn't be done, that mainstream and liberal writers simply refuse to go there.

As an apparent example of what we mean, consider Kevin Drum's recent discussion of this same topic.

Drum's post appeared on New Year's Eve. In it, he offered a somewhat odd assessment of the reasons for Candidate Clinton's loss to Candidate Trump.

Along the way, Drum mentioned Candidate Gore. In this passage, you see the way career liberals have persistently curried defeat:

DRUM (12/31/16): ...I want to suggest something the 2016 election does teach us: persistent, obsessive investigations pay off. In the 90s, Republicans started investigating Whitewater. Even Ken Starr knew there was nothing to this after a couple of years, but he was put under pressure to keep at it, and eventually he hit some fluke paydirt: Monica Lewinsky. This had nothing to do with Whitewater, but who cares? Scandal is scandal, and it rubbed off enough on Al Gore that Republicans took back the presidency in 2000.

Fast forward to 2012. Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong related to Benghazi. That was clear pretty quickly, but Republicans kept at it. I laughed at them at the time, but they had the last laugh when they once again hit a fluke bit of paydirt: Clinton's private email server. Clinton didn't really do anything seriously wrong here either, but it didn't matter. Republicans kept at it for the next year and a half, and that was enough to convince a lot of people that Clinton was, somehow, corrupt and untrustworthy. That allowed Republicans to retake the presidency.

In the narrow sense, Drum is certainly right. "Persistent, obsessive investigations" did pay off for Republicans, first in the case of Candidate Gore, then in the case of Candidate Hillary Clinton.

But according to Krugman and Pierce, that "persistent, obsessive" behavior only had the desired effect because of "extraordinary media malpractice" by the "supine news media." Drum blows right past that factor in his description of Campaign 2000. He simply says that the Whitewater/Lewinsky fluke "rubbed off on" Candidate Gore in some unspecified way.

Good God! At this site, we spent years describing the ways the earlier pursuit of the Clintons managed to "rub off on" Gore. It involved twenty months of outrageous media malpractice, in which a "stupid caricature of [Gore] was presented to the voters in the guise of campaign journalism."

This presentation was made again and again and again and again, over and over and over and over, in journalistically outrageous ways in every available medium. For whatever reason, people like Drum have always preferred to bury that outrageous malpractice, as he did in that silly account of what happened in Campaign 2000.

And yes, the disappearing of that media malpractice in Campaign 2000 has always been the overpowering norm. To state the obvious, this helps explain how similar conduct could have been directed at Candidate Clinton sixteen years later.

What can you say for a liberal world which operates this way? Only that its major career players have long been complicit in its disastrous defeats, and that its rank and file are unable to notice this conduct.

For ourselves, we were struck by Pierce's suggestion that the media malpractice directed at Gore was discussed and understood at the time. Plainly, it was not.

Eleven days later, we were struck by the familiar way Drum disappeared this entire kettle of fish. But then, let's state the obvious:

Our leading stars have behaved this way from 1992 forward. That's true of our major mainstream journalists, and of our liberal journalists. We've explained the presumptive reason for this until we're blue in the face. Nothing affects our tribe's remarkable lethargy.

Krugman's column alleged journalistic malpractice which continued for twenty-five years. "How could that possibly have happened?" a thoughtful reader might have asked.

Simple! A code of silence has long obtained, enabling this malpractice. For that reason, when Krugman alluded to Gore this fall, we said the same thing every time: Very few people are going to know what he's talking about!

Everyone, Krugman included, has played a sick role in this horrible game, which, as Krugman correctly describes, has led to the edge of disaster.

Tomorrow: Different strokes? Amazingly, the New York Times bungles Trump's birtherism again!

THE PROBLEM INCLUDES US: Professor Lilla and one other person!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2017

Part 2—Should he care about her: Did Professor Lilla actually mean what he seemed to say?

Back in mid-December, he spoke with Sean Illing for Vox. As we noted yesterday, we thought the remarks shown below were strange, but familiar and perhaps instructive.

Within the context of the full discussion, "these people" were, quite plainly, the white working class. For full transcript, click here:

LILLA (12/16/16): The bottom line is that we can't win [elections] without these people...

So if we care about the people we say we care about—African Americans, women, LGBT people, Latinos—if we want to protect them, symbolic victories won't do. We have to be competitive and we have to win at every level of government, and that means sucking it up and getting the votes of everyone.

[...]

Political work is only about acquiring and using power to protect the people you want to protect.

An election is not a seminar. It is not a therapy session. It is not a chance to rewrite history. An election is only about winning, and you do what you have to do. And yes, that doesn't mean you have to pander to people, but it may mean you have to be silent about certain things and get your apron dirty.

If you want to reform the American soul, become a minister. But if you're serious about politics, you have to go where the people are and find a way to reach them, and not be afraid to get dirty.

Did Lilla actually mean what he seems to have said? He seems to have said that we liberals "care about," and "want to protect," a finite number of groups.

He seems to have said that we have to seek the votes of the white working class so that we can protect other groups. He seems to have said that we don't care about, or want to protect, people in the white working class. He seems to have said that we may dirty ourselves as we seek their votes.

Can that be what the professor meant? We only ask because, rather clearly, that seems to be what he said.

Briefly, let's be fair. In the vast sweep of things, very few people will note or remember the various things Lilla said in this particular exchange. That said, comments like these sound to us like an invitation to the white working class—an invitation to vote for conservatives right down the line, and never to listen to Us.

That may not be what the professor meant. That said, we liberals make remarks of this general type all the time. Once again, let's recall the unfortunate thing Candidate Clinton said:

CLINTON (9/9/16): You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call "the basket of deplorables."

[APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER]

Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up....Now some of those folks—they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

For transcript and tape, click here.

Bombs away! In fairness, Clinton said that only half of Trump's supporters belong in the "basket of deplorables" and therefore seem to be "irredeemable." In comment threads, we everyday liberals routinely say or suggest that all of Donald J. Trump's supporters should be regarded this way.

In fairness, Candidate Clinton only consigned half Those People to a place in Hell. Still, we'd also describe her remarks as an invitation to vote for the other side and never to listen to Us.

We libs can be highly censorious! On December 29, the New York Times rang out the old year with a letter from Woodbury, Minnesota—and from an all-too-familiar Salem Village of the liberal/progressive mind.

The letter writer went out of her way to say that Trump voters "may not believe they themselves are bigoted." "Every Trump voter claims to have voted for the right reasons," she also mordantly said.

Still, this writer was willing to consider no framework, experience or point of view other than her own. As with the parsons and goodies of old, she made Trump voters complicit in, and responsible for, every imaginable evil event from this moment forward—and as with the parsons and goodies of old, she was willing to imagine quite a few such events.

The Others would be fully responsible. No possible error was hers.

"Easy to be hard," the poet once thoughtfully said. We liberals frequently choose such roads, inviting The Others out.

Did Professor Lilla mean to do some such thing in his remarks to Vox? Did he really mean that we "care about" and "want to protect" African Americans, women, LGBT people and Latinos, but that we don't care about members of the white working class, in the pursuit of whom we're likely to get ourselves dirty?

On their face, we thought his remarks were unfortunate. That made us think of a person we've heard about—a woman Professor Lilla should probably want to protect.

This woman lives in Kentucky; on the downside, she seems to be from the white working class. Still, she can't afford to go to the doctor. She doesn't avail herself of free diagnostic services because she knows she couldn't afford to pay for treatment if a medical problem was found.

Sarah Kliff described that woman's plight in a different report for Vox. In his remarks to Illing, it almost sounded like the professor might be cuffing this person to the curb.

The woman in question voted for Trump; she's from the white working class. Should liberals "care about" and "want to protect" her, even in spite of that?

Tomorrow, we'll show you why we think the answer is plainly yes. We'll also discuss the ridiculous way our multimillionaire corporate liberals—and even our highest ranking professors!—keep us liberals barefoot and clueless about the powerful interests at play in matters like this.

In part because of our corporate liberals, we liberals can be amazingly dense. Once again, we suggest a theme:

Our political culture lies in ruins. The problems, in part, lie with Us.

Tomorrow: Revisiting Michael Moore's film

Welcome to the same old year!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017

What narcissism looks like: Is Donald J. Trump a narcissist of some kind?

We don't know how to assess that. That said, we do know what narcissism sometimes looks like. Last night, at 9 PM Eastern, we'd say it looked like this:

MADDOW (1/2/17): Good evening, Ari. I want to thank you in particular for all you did to fill and hold things together last week. It was great. Thank you, my friend.

MELBER: Great. Thank you. Happy New Year.

MADDOW: Thanks. And thanks to you at home for staying with us for the next hour.

It was really nice to have a few days off. It is really, really nice to be back. I keep running into old friends and family members and people on the street and people like, you know, out on the dog walk and stuff. People want to talk to me about politics. They say, with concern in their eyes, "How are you feeling about 2017?

And I found myself by the end of my vacation saying, "I'm really excited for 2017." I am. My job is to explain stuff. And oh, my God, is that a good job to have this year already?

As we've mentioned in the past, Rachel Maddow never stops discussing herself. Our analysts always launch their patented cry:

"I I I I I I I!"

Perhaps it's just a branding tool, a way to pose as the viewer's friend. In this case, she made it sound like she'd returned home after an absence of years.

More striking was the way Maddow described her excitement concerning the new year.

Sensible liberals are very concerned about the coming year. As Maddow has noted in the past, she's taking a different approach. She's excited about the new year. Given the multimillion-dollar job she holds, she thinks the new year should be both exciting and fun!

(Will millions of people lose their insurance? It should be fun to find out!)

In our view, liberals should be very concerned about the peculiar actions, reactions and outlooks of Donald J. Trump. Liberals should also be concerned about the peculiar instincts of Maddow.

Late in the show, she did it again, telling us about the brilliant past work of "the great Steve Benen, who writes the blog for our show." As usual, the statements which followed struck us as perhaps a bit misleading. (This isn't Benen's fault.)

Maddow is constantly selling the car. In this, a deeply troubling new year, it's time for the liberal world to grow up and see her self-dealing behaviors and instincts as a point of concern.

Krugman makes several important points!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017

Concerning "supine news media:" Is the United States becoming a gong-show version of Greater Tinpotistan?

In yesterday's column, Paul Krugman said the answer is yes. "America is rapidly turning into a stan," he wrote, using a nickname for tinpot feudal states.

"Everything we know suggests that we’re entering an era of epic corruption and contempt for the rule of law," Krugman said. At this point, he failed to mention the gong-show intellectual practices which are a key part of the decline.

That said, he only gets 800 words.

Eventually, Krugman reviewed the history of this decline, and he mentioned the press. In this passage, he's making two different key points:

KRUGMAN (1/2/17): How could this happen in a nation that has long prided itself as a role model for democracies everywhere? In a direct sense, Mr. Trump’s elevation was made possible by the F.B.I.’s blatant intervention in the election, Russian subversion, and the supine news media that obligingly played up fake scandals while burying real ones on the back pages.

But this debacle didn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve been on the road to stan-ism for a long time: an increasingly radical G.O.P., willing to do anything to gain and hold power, has been undermining our political culture for decades.

People tend to forget how much of the 2016 playbook had already been used in earlier years. Remember, the Clinton administration was besieged by constant accusations of corruption, dutifully hyped as major stories by the news media; not one of these alleged scandals turned out to involve any actual wrongdoing. Not incidentally, James Comey, the F.B.I. director whose intervention almost surely swung the election, had previously worked for the Whitewater committee, which spent seven years obsessively investigating a failed land deal.

Krugman makes two key points in that passage:

First, the gong show within we live has been underway for decades. It dates at least to the pseudo-scandals of the 1990s.

(Whitewater began on the front page of Krugman's own paper—in early 1992, long before he got there.)

Second, a "supine news media" has been a key player every step of the way. Krugman says this was true in the 1990s, the age of the Clinton pseudo-scandals. He says it was true this past year.

Krugman only gets 800 words. You can't expect him, or anyone else, to provide a detailed discussion of this cultural breakdown when writing at that length.

That said, we'll offer a few observations as we prepare to use his column as a framework over the next several days:

This column provides no specifics concerning that supine news media. Only one "fake scandal" is cited by name.

No individual journalist or news org is named. No specific performance is mentioned.

Krugman only gets 800 words. That said, let's ponder this:

According to Krugman, the "supine news media" has been pimping "fake scandals" for more than twenty years. If we start our clock with the one fake scandal he names, the supine media has been playing this role for the past 25 years!

With that in mind, this is the question we ask:

Krugman gets only 800 words. That said, people like Matthews, Maddow, O'Donnell and Hayes get a full hour each night.

Twenty-five years into this descent, can you name a single high-profile journalist who has addressed the state of affairs Krugman describes? Do our journalists ever critique their own guild? Or do they avoid such discussions?

Moving right along:

Have you ever seen anyone on MSNBC address the state of affairs Krugman describes? Do "corporate liberal" journalists avoid these discussions too?

Krugman is right, of course. The press corps has played a leading role in the disintegration he described. And the corps has been playing this leading role for at least 25 years.

In the next few days, we'll look at some recent work to show you the way the press corps avoids addressing these facts. We'll focus on leading liberal journalists, the people our team hails and trusts.

THE PROBLEM INCLUDES US: Professor Lilla's strange remarks!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2017

Part 1—Strange, but perhaps instructive: In mid-December, as the year neared its end, it seemed to us that Professor Lilla made some strange remarks.

Back in November, the Columbia professor turned heads with a front-page piece in the New York Times Sunday Review—with an essay concerning a practice he called "identity liberalism."

In our view, the professor made one blindingly obvious statement in that November piece. (If you're going to name some groups, you'd better name them all.) For our money, much of the rest of what he wrote at that time was a bit unclear.

That said, Professor Lilla had seemed to criticize the practice of "identity politics." Inevitably, one of his colleagues knew what that heresy meant.

With lightning speed, Professor Franke produced a piece which linked her colleague to David Duke. So it currently tends to go over here in our part of the world.

Just like that, Lilla became a running dog accomplice of the Klan! At Vox, Sean Illing decided to check him out.

Illing interviewed Lilla at some length; if you want to read the full interview, you can do so here. But during that exchange, Professor Lilla said some things which struck us as strange—and perhaps as instructive.

Illing and Lilla were discussing Those People, the white working class. At one point, Lilla warned against "writing off a whole group of people that you need to reach if you want to be elected."

To us, that seems to make obvious sense. Soon, though, Lilla seemed to state a somewhat condescending assumption. ("People in these communities" are "voting against their own interests," he seemed to say.)

And then, the professor made the remarks shown below. These remarks strike us as strange, but also perhaps as instructive:

LILLA (12/16/16): The bottom line is that we can't win without these people. And when I'm talking about winning, I'm not just talking about presidential elections—we pay too much attention to that. The things that get done in this country are done through legislation, which means you have to win the Congress and you have to go every state in the country. The laws, moreover, get enforced in state governments, and so you if you're not competitive there, you can't guarantee that the laws you pass will get enforced.

So if we care about the people we say we care about—African Americans, women, LGBT people, Latinos—if we want to protect them, symbolic victories won't do. We have to be competitive and we have to win at every level of government, and that means sucking it up and getting the votes of everyone.

Can that be what the professor meant? On its face, he almost seems to have said that we liberals care about African Americans, women, LGBT people and Latinos—apparently full stop.

Based on what the professor said, we don't seem to care about "these people" (his term), the white working class! But since we can't win elections without them, we have to "suck it up"—degrade ourselves—and go after their votes too.

That's what the professor seems to have said. Can that possibly be what he meant?

As Professor Lilla continued, he almost seemed to express this general viewpoint again. We liberals may have to "get dirty" pursuing the white working class, he repeatedly said:

LILLA: There are all sorts of ways we can work to make America more tolerant and inclusive. But we can't confuse that work with political work. Political work is only about acquiring and using power to protect the people you want to protect.

An election is not a seminar. It is not a therapy session. It is not a chance to rewrite history. An election is only about winning, and you do what you have to do. And yes, that doesn't mean you have to pander to people, but it may mean you have to be silent about certain things and get your apron dirty.

If you want to reform the American soul, become a minister. But if you're serious about politics, you have to go where the people are and find a way to reach them, and not be afraid to get dirty.

In context, he almost seems to have said it again. "We want to protect" African Americans, women, LGBT people and Latinos. We don't seem to want to protect the white working class. Talking to them may make our aprons dirty!

That's what the professor seems to have said. Can that possibly be what he meant?

Briefly, let's be fair. In at least one basic respect, Professor Lilla's formulation doesn't exactly make seems to make sense. So maybe it's not what he meant!

What doesn't make sense in Lilla's remarks? Roughly half the members of the white working class actually are women! Meanwhile, a smaller proportion of "these people" are LGBT—and we do care about such people, according to his remarks.

Such apparent contradictions may arise when we start picking winners and losers—when we start saying we "care about" certain people and groups, but not about certain others. This may suggest that the things we seem to have said may not quite be what we meant.

In these exchanges, Professor Lilla doesn't sound a whole lot like David Duke. He does sound like the kind of figure who signals to folk in the white working class that they should listen to and vote for Republicans, right on down the line.

We liberals frequently send these whistles, perhaps not realizing that we do so. This calls a basic fact to mind as we enter a troubling new year:

Our journalistic and political systems lie in shambles. As Paul Krugman noted in yesterday's column, this state of affairs has been developing for decades.

Our journalistic, intellectual and political systems lie in ruins. All month, we'll discuss a basic point, a basic fact which can be hard for us liberals to see.

Here is the point we plan to discuss, though we know such discussion is bound to be fruitless:

A significant amount of this terrible problem may perhaps lie with Us.

Tomorrow: Should we "want to protect" this person?

Dramatis personnae to date: According to the leading authority, Professor Lilla is a political scientist, an historian of ideas, a journalist and a professor of humanities at Columbia. In the 1990s, he wrote widely on twentieth-century European philosophy, at least to the extent that such a critter exists.

During that period, he wrote The Reckless Mind, a meditation on the "philotyrannical" bent of twentieth-century continental philosophy. His most recent book, The Shipwrecked Mind, is a study of how nostalgia has shaped modern politics, from Middle America to the Middle East.

According to her Columbia Law School profile, Professor Franke is the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law, where she also directs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and is the faculty director of the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project. It seems to us that she serves on a large number of steering committees, but that could just be us.

By Columbia's admission, she is among the nation's leading scholars writing on law, religion and rights, drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory. With intellectual leaders like Lilla and Franke, it's hard to see how we liberals and progressives ever find ways to lose.

YEAR(S) IN REVIEW: Utter dismay in Tinton Falls!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2016

Conclusion—Those by whom you've been failed: Last Sunday—it was Christmas morning—Name Withheld was pulling very few punches.

Her letter, to the New York Times Book Review, came from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, a borough in Monmouth County. We reprint that letter in full:

To the Editor:

I was utterly dismayed when I read the list of the 10 Best Books of the year. This is the worst selection in over 40 years. However, I should not have been surprised, as I have been very disappointed in the Book Review for some time.

Name Withheld
TINTON FALLS, N.J.

We're not sure why you'd publish that letter. But publish that letter they did!

On that same day, the Book Review published responses by 47 people to a hard-hitting year's-end question.

"In this season of giving," the Book Review said, "we asked some notably avid readers—who also happen to be poets, musicians, diplomats, filmmakers, novelists, actors and artists—to share the books that accompanied them through 2016."

Hours north of Tinton Falls, at least one reader had an uncharitable reaction to the sharing which ensued.

"These are the notably avid readers who failed us through all these year(s)," this tough-talking analyst said.

On the penultimate page of that same Book Review, The Year in Reading 47 were joined by The Bookends 16, who'd been asked a similar question.

"All those avid readers and not a drop to drink," one underwhelmed thought leader said.

Down through the years, these are (among) the many people who failed you! In fairness, we counted fourteen of The Year(s)' End 63 who found a way to signal membership in the club by saying how awful this past year has been. But we found very few notably avid readers who went even one step past that.

At the start of that Book Review section, Open Book columnist John Williams discussed his own year in reading. This is the way he began:

WILLIAMS (12/25/16): This year we asked some notable writers, musicians, actors and others to tell us about their year in reading.

I started the year vowing, arbitrarily, to read more philosophy. If this sounds overly ambitious, that’s only because it was. After chewing on just a bit of Kant and an even smaller bit of Hegel, I satisfied my appetite with something more digestible: “Irrational Man,” by William Barrett, a 1958 primer on existentialism’s roots and branches that might pair well with one of our 10 Best Books of 2016, Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Café.”

"The foppishness is everywhere," at least one reader said.

For ourselves, the Bakewell book may have been the most memorable book of the year. That said, we found it memorable due to its highly instructive and world-class complete total incoherence.

Needless to say, this caused reviewers all over the world to praise the book's lucidity. Inevitably, this caused the Times to pick it as one of the year's ten best!

In Tinton Falls, one tough-talking reader pushed back hard. But make no mistake:

The Times had assembled a gaggle of giants to discuss The Year in Reading. Over the past twenty-five years, these are the people who didn't have a thing to say about the trends which have now produced the ascent of Donald J. Trump.

The foppishness was general as we read Sunday's Book Review. So were the scripted howls about this extremely bad year, which gave at least one avid reader "a feeling akin to seasickness."

Or so this reader said.

Next week, we'll start up again; we may start with the pleasing phrase, "mass poisoning of the entire city." That said, a bottom line is already clear. Simply put, our self-impressed tribe simply lacks the tools to perform on the national stage.

Some may suspect this in Tinton Falls. Possibly nowhere else.

YEAR(S) IN REVIEW: Post columnist pushes back!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2016

Interlude 2—The late Debbie Reynolds and health care: We always knew that Catherine Rampell was likely to push back hard.

She does so in today's Washington Post. In her new column, Rampell says that Singin' in the Rain has always been her favorite film.

We've always found the film to be unwatchable. (In part, our gender politics are probably tougher than Rampell's.) As such, it's obvious that this column constitutes Rampell's response to our earlier post, in which we challenged her portrait of the racist stupidity of the white working class.

In the column we challenged, Rampell discussed Sarah Kliff's intriguing report about certain Trump voters. In the face of November's election debacle, Kliff's report has turned out to be an "inkblot test" for us upper-class liberals.

Live and direct from Corbin, Kentucky, Kliff's report for Vox appeared beneath these headlines:

Why Obamacare enrollees voted for Trump
In Whitley County, Kentucky, the uninsured rate declined 60 percent under Obamacare. So why did 82 percent of voters there support Donald Trump?

Why would Obamacare enrollees ever have voted for Donald J. Trump? Kliff was asking a very good question. We liberals have proven unwilling, or perhaps unable, to process the possible answer.

Why would an Obamacare enrollee have voted for Donald J. Trump? Along the way, Kliff described the unfortunate situation of one woman in Corbin.

Again and again, then again and again, we liberals have failed to see that the following passage describes a serious problem. Because our liberal blindness has been so widespread, we post the relevant passage at some length:

KLIFF (12/13/16): [Health care worker Kathy] Oller renewed a 59-year-old woman’s coverage (who asked her personal information be left out of this story) just after lunchtime on a Tuesday. She and her husband received a monthly tax credit that would cover most of their premium. But they would still need to contribute $244 each month—and face a $6,000 deductible.

[...]

The deductible left [the woman] exasperated. “I am totally afraid to be sick,” she says. “I don’t have [that money] to pay upfront if I go to the hospital tomorrow.”

Her plan did offer free preventive care, an Obamacare mandate. But she skips mammograms and colonoscopies because she doesn’t think she’d have the money to pay for any follow-up care if the doctors did detect something.

The woman said she only buys insurance as financial protection—“to keep from losing my house if something major happened,” she says. “But I’m not using it to go to the doctor. I’ve not used anything.”

The woman was mad because her costs felt overwhelmingly expensive. These are some of the most common frustrations with the Affordable Care Act. Surveys show that high deductibles are the top complaint; 47 percent of enrollees told the Kaiser Family Foundation they were dissatisfied with their deductible.

A study from the Commonwealth Fund earlier this year found that four in 10 adults on Affordable Care Act plans didn’t think they could afford to go to the doctor if they got sick. Fewer than half said it was easy to find an affordable plan.

But her frustration isn’t just about the money she has to pay. She sees other people signing up for Medicaid, the health program for the poor that is arguably better coverage than she receives and almost free for enrollees. She is not eligible for Medicaid because her husband works and they are above the earnings threshold.

Medicaid is reserved for people who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line—about $22,000 for a couple. This woman understood the Medicaid expansion is also part of Obamacare, and she doesn’t think the system is fair.

“They can go to the emergency room for a headache,” she says. “They’re going to the doctor for pills, and that’s what they’re on.”

She felt like this happened a lot to her: that she and her husband have worked most their lives but don’t seem to get nearly as much help as the poorer people she knows.

In that passage, Kliff was describing a serious problem. That 59-year-old woman has insurance. She just doesn't have health care!

That said, Kliff didn't specifically describe this situation as a problem, and a raft of us upper-end liberals have turned out to be unable to see it as such.

Perhaps because we loathe Those People, we can't seem to see that it's a problem when a 59-year-old woman can't afford to go to the doctor. Instead, we start saying or implying that the woman is racist, even though "the poorer people she knows" are almost surely white.

(Increasingly, this seems to be the only thing we liberals know how to say or imply. We know this one play, nothing else.)

We love to loathe Those People! Indeed, Rampell was hardly alone in her unsympathetic reaction to this part of Kliff's report. A raft of liberals have cited Kliff's work, aparently without being able to see that a problem was being described in the passage we've cited.

That brings us back to Rampell's column about Singin' in the Rain. More precisely, the column concerns the late Debbie Reynolds, a person Rampell has always admired for the courage she showed when she was suddenly selected for stardom as a teen.

We're willing to go with that too! But we've long been intrigued by Reynolds' bio for a different reason—because she was one of the many stars of that general era who emerged from Los Angeles-area high schools, right in the shadow of Hollywood.

Reynolds was discovered while a student at Burbank High. (Four years later, Robert Redford graduated from Van Nuys High.) That said, she wasn't born into the Hollywood system (neither was Redford). According to the leading authority, her family background went something like this:

Mary Frances Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Maxene "Minnie" (née Harman) and Raymond Francis "Ray" Reynolds, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She was of Scottish-Irish and English ancestry and was raised in a strict Nazarene church. She had a brother two years her senior, and Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout. Her father was a ditchdigger and her mother took in laundry for income while they lived in a shack on Magnolia Street, in El Paso. "We may have been poor," she said, "but we always had something to eat, even if Dad had to go out on the desert and shoot jackrabbits."

[Quote from Reynolds]: "One of the advantages of having been poor is that you learn to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar, and poverty holds no fear for you because you know you've gone through it and you can do it again...But we were always a happy family and a religious one. And I'm trying to inculcate in my children the same sense of values, the same tone that my mother gave to me."

Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939. While a sixteen-year old high school student, she won the Miss Burbank beauty contest in 1948. Soon after, she had a contract with Warner Bros and acquired the nickname "Debbie" via Jack L. Warner.

One of her closest high school friends said that she rarely dated during her teenage years in Burbank. "They never found her attractive in school. She was cute, but sort of tomboyish, and her family never had any money to speak of. She never dressed well or drove a car."

Was Reynolds' father a carpenter, or was he a ditchdigger? The leading authority has decided to let us decide.

Either way, she came from Those People, even including all the religion! Last week, Rampell joined a raft of ranking liberals in offering an unsympathetic, insulting reaction to another such person's plight.

Debbie Reynolds seems to have been a good person. In fairness, no one is ever as good as We are. But just last year, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, presumably for a lifetime of work on behalf of people with mental health problems.

That said, we're willing to guess that the woman in Corbin is a good person too. Had she only been selected for stardom, we liberals might like her more!

We've always been fascinated by the number of stars of that general era who emerged from Los Angeles high schools. As this year drew to an end, we became fascinated by something else—by the number of upper-class liberals who couldn't seem to see that a problem was being described in Sarah Kliff's report.

We thought Rampell was especially blind to this state of affairs, but she has had plenty of company. This morning, she has pushed back hard against our critique, as she of course should have done.

That said, the passage we've posted became a year(s)-end inkblot test for us upper-class liberals. For years, we've loved to loathe Those People, The Others. Along the way, our loathing has possibly made us blind to a wide range of problems, including the political problems which let Donald J. Trump slither through to the White House this year.

This year, the loathing hit the fan. Why didn't Those People, The Others, vote the way We told them to vote? Despite our tribe's admitted brilliance, we can't seem to figure it out!

The twice-told tale: We've long admired Robert Redford for a specific reason. On two occasions, despite his vast stardom, he devoted a year to making a film about a suffering (teen-aged) child.

Big huge gigantic Hollywood stars don't have to do that. We refer to Ordinary People (1980) and to The Horse Whisperer, which appeared eighteen years later. (Redford directed each film.)

The later film re-explores the earlier film's story line; in our view, it does so in remarkable detail. Most broadly, the suffering in the earlier film stems from the drowning death of a teen-aged boy's brother. The suffering in the later film stems from the horseback-riding death of a teen-aged girl's best friend.

(In the earlier film, the child is saved in part through the intercession of a psychiatrist. In the later film, which we prefer because it's less literal, the child is saved through the intercession of a person who's caring and wise.)

Why did Redford visit this story two separate times? We'd never found an explanation. Indeed, we'd never even seen a profile which described this as a twice-told tale.

Upon our return from the North Pole last night, we rechecked the facts about Debbie Reynold's Hollywood-area high school story; we rechecked Redford's as well. In this recent profile from The Daily Mirror, we thought we may have spotted the start(s) of an answer to the question we've never seen asked.

Whatever the answer may be, we admire Robert Redford. Big huge famous Hollywood stars don't have to make films like that.

Christmas falls on the 25th again!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2016

Producing holiday travel: Just as predicted by major news orgs, Christmas had fallen on the 25th once again. This has us heading for the train and for northbound travel.

We don't expect to post again until the end of the week. At that time, we'll continue our posts about the year(s) in review.

We spent two years pretending to conduct an election. During all the folderol, which topics didn't you hear discussed?

Which topics never get discussed? Which facts never get explored, even by liberals and progressives? If we liberals could get people to listen to us, which we can't, which topics would we have a hard time explaining?

We'll plan to pick up there. It's relatively easy to react to the things which do get said. Sometimes it's more instructive to go in search of the things which get disappeared.

On that cheerful, upbeat note, we head off for a family romp.

YEAR(S) IN REVIEW: Visited, possibly in a dream!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2016

Interlude—The Ghost of Losses Past: Early this morning, we were visited by The Ghost of Progressive Losses Past, possibly in a dream.

As the chain-clanking spirit appeared in our chamber, we activated the taping device built into the mirrored ceiling above our quilt-festooned bed.

For that reason, we're able to quote the specter directly. Here's the first thing she or he said:

"You liberals! You just managed to lose an election to the craziest candidate in history!

"And yet you still insist that the problem can't possibly lie with you! By definition, you insist that the problem lies with Them!"

We couldn't imagine what our visitor meant. Then this:

"Read Catherine Rampell's new column," the thoughtful intruder suggested.

We're guessing that the sepulchral figure was citing the column in today's Washington Post. Two paragraphs into Rampell's piece, we began to sense what the spirit may have meant.

Here's the way the column begins. Headline included:

RAMPELL (12/23/16): Why the white working class votes against itself

Why did all those Economically Anxious (TM) Trump voters reject policies that would have helped relieve their economic anxiety?

Maybe they believed any Big Government expansions would disproportionately go to the “wrong” kinds of people—that is, people unlike themselves.

Did the white working class "vote against itself" when it voted for Trump? That's what the headline seems to say, though Rampell may not have written it.

Meanwhile, a careless reader might get the impression that everyone in the white working class voted for Candidate Trump.

Rampell doesn't explicitly say that, of course. But so far, she has made no attempt to qualify an impression which may be lurking in her presentation—the impression that all Those Consummate Working-Class Dopes voted for Candidate Trump.

A third problem lurks in those opening paragraphs. Rampell explains why all those voters may have done what "they" did:

They may have voted for Candidate Trump because they believed that any Big Government expansions would disproportionately go to the “wrong” kinds of people. Or so Rampell says.

Everyone alive on the planet knows what that ugly line says. Rampell is painting a portrait which has prevailed within our tribe through decades of Progressive Losses (TM). She's painting a careless, sweeping portrait in which All Those (Dumb-Assed) People cast their self-defeating votes on the basis of race.

In this morning's New York Times, Paul Krugman writes a much more informative version of this same column. Krugman drops his first R-bomb in paragraph 2 after having suggested, in paragraph 1, that Trump voters voted for Trump thanks to "an animus against ethnic minorities."

These associations, which are never explicit, continue all through Krugman's column. We liberals have been writing such columns for a great many years. This may be why The Ghost of Progressive Losses Past was clanking her chains this morning.

Let's return to Rampell's column, the work of a Princeton grad.

Just for the record, Candidate Trump received only 66 percent of the white working class vote. (That is, of whites without college degrees.) No such information, explicit or implied, intrudes on Rampell's column.

Still and all, what can we say about the 66 percent with whom we're left? Were they (dumbly) voting against their own interests when they voted for Trump? In an uglier vein, were they spiting themselves in this way because they don't like black people, as Rampell plainly implies all through her column?

Instantly, Rampell starts churning anecdotes to teach us to think that. Like a wide range of Ivy League typists before her, she immediately turns to Sarah Kliff's trip to Corbin, Kentucky, which Kliff reported for Vox.

Briefly, Rampell lists some Democratic policies which went down the drain with Candidate Clinton's loss. She then flies to the Kentucky of her apparent dreams:

RAMPELL: Here’s the problem. These Democratic policies probably would help the white working class. But the white working class doesn’t seem to buy that they’re the ones who’d really benefit.

Across rural America, the Rust Belt, Coal Country and other hotbeds of Trumpism, voters have repeatedly expressed frustration that the lazy and less deserving are getting a bigger chunk of government cheese.

In Kentucky, consumers receiving federal subsidies through the Obamacare exchanges complain that neighbors who are less responsible are receiving nearly free insurance through Medicaid.

“They can go to the emergency room for a headache,” one woman told Vox’s Sarah Kliff.

Everyone alive on the planet knows what our Princeton grad is saying. (Before that, she prepped at Andover.) She's saying Those People—people like the woman who spoke with Kliff—voted against their own interests because they didn't want Those People, the blacks, getting that government cheese.

This is ugly conduct—on our team's part, that is.

In fairness, Rampell correctly records what that Kentucky woman is said to have said to Kliff. That said, Kliff has a much bigger heart. She reported the misery that 59-year-old woman has been experiencing with her Obamacare coverage. She pays a premium every month, but can't afford to go to the doctor because of her $6000 deductible.

Rampell, who's roughly 31, can't seem to care about this. The professors didn't teach her to care about people with problems like this.

Kliff also explained what that woman meant about the luckier duckies who get help for their headaches. Because they qualify for Medicaid under Obamacare, it sounds like they get a substantially better deal than that woman does.

According to Kliff, those lower-income Medicaid recipients receive "arguably better coverage than she receives and [it's] almost free." According to Kliff, this is why the 59-year-old Kentucky woman "doesn’t think the system is fair."

It's hard to say that this woman is wrong in that judgment. It's obvious why such a person might think that there must be a way to improve this.

One additional point. In the 2010 census, Corbin, Kentucky was 96.69 percent white, 0.26 percent black. When that woman referred to lower-income neighbors, there is a tiny, minuscule chance that the neighbors in question are white.

In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance describes his working-class disgust with the white freeloaders he says he saw all around him. Our Princeton grad seemed more eager to paint a familiar old portrait, a portrait we liberals adore.

The woman Rampell brushes aside is in a bad situation. For her, Obamacare ain't been no crystal stair. Rather than acknowledge this fact, Rampell plays an easy old card. She continues playing that card right to the end of her column.

Mom and Dad both went to Princeton; Rampell went there too. Reflexively, she expresses scorn for those who are stationed below her. That said, we liberals have endlessly played the game this way. This may be why The Ghost of Progressive Losses Past appeared in our chamber today, possibly in a dream.

Throughout her column, Rampell scorns the numbnuts who voted for Trump, endangering their own magnificent coverage. Although she presumably read Kliff's piece, she didn't seem able to process the part which explained the way the program actually works for the 59-year-old, lower-class woman she chose to cuff to the curb.

Nor does Rampell explain the other reasons Corbin people cited for their votes, some of which involve coal. When we liberals tell this story, only one reason survives.

Regarding Obamacare, Rampell plays a game many others have played of late. She scorns the manifest dumbness of those who doubted that Trump would repeal Obamacare, as he kept saying he would.

Like others before her, she doesn't say what everyone knows. Trump said he would repeal and replace Obamacare! Does that tiny disappeared fact possibly alter this tale?

In his own column, Krugman explains, for the millionth time, that Trump won't be able to replace Obamacare with something as good or better. We assume his assessment is right. But is there anything worse than an Ivy League grad who scorns the lower breed because their grasp of policy may not be fully refined? But oh, what kind of education is this, which goes from bad to worse?

We liberals have written these columns forever; they're part of our DNA. This may explain the last few words The Ghost emitted last night.

"It's why they won't listen listen listen...," the apparition seemed to say as she exited through our walls. Indeed, why would anyone listen to Us, considering the way We behave?

There's nothing we liberals like as much as trashing Those People as racists. When we read these persistent pieces, we often find ourselves asking a thoughtful question.

How insecure must we liberals be concerning our racial good faith, we ask, if we're so eager to insist that the racists are all Over There?

It all comes flooding back: As we read Rampell's piece, details of this morning's visit kept flooding back. When we read the following passage, we recalled something else The Ghost of Past Losses said:

RAMPELL: We’ve known for a long time, through the work of Martin Gilens, Suzanne Mettler and other social scientists, that Americans (A) generally associate government spending with undeserving, nonworking, nonwhite people; and (B) are really bad at recognizing when they personally benefit from government programs.

Hence those oblivious demands to “keep your government hands off my Medicare,” and the tea partyers who get farm subsidies, and the widespread opposition to expanded transfer payments in word if not in deed.

Those Americans! They're "really bad at recognizing when they personally benefit from government programs," our haughty know-it-all says.

"Look who's talking," the specter had muttered at one point. "These liberals are really bad at recognizing how they manage to lose to crackpots like Trump!"

Meanwhile, Rampell even returned to that shallowest well. She even quoted the cracker who made that comical statement, years ago, about keeping the government's hands off her Medicare!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ohourgod! So stupid!

Why would anyone listen to us? We love to say how dumb They are! We also love to showcase the ways We scornfully manage to lose.

Still coming: Conclusion to our award-winning Year(s) in Review report!

Three of the world's most wonderful places!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2016

You're only told about two: Propaganda is often about the things you aren't allowed to know.

With that in mind, let's return to Amanda Ripley's recent report in the New York Times about last year's Pisa.

Public school students in the world's developed nations take part in two different sets of international tests—the Pisa and the Timss. Ripley disappears the Timss, only mentions the Pisa.

In her recent report for the Times, she followed the standard "ed reform" line. In this passage, she mentioned a wonderful "handful of places" which help put the U.S. to shame:

RIPLEY (12/8/16): For now, the PISA reveals brutal truths about America's education system: Math, a subject that reliably predicts children's future earnings, continues to be the United States' weakest area at every income level. Nearly a third of American 15-year-olds are not meeting a baseline level of ability—the lowest level the O.E.C.D. believes children must reach in order to thrive as adults in the modern world.

And affluence is no guarantee of better results, particularly in science and math: The latest PISA data (which includes private-school students) shows that America's most advantaged teenagers scored below their well-off peers in science in 20 other countries, including Canada and Britain.

The good news is that a handful of places, including Estonia, Canada, Denmark and Hong Kong, are proving that it is possible to do much better. These places now educate virtually all their children to higher levels of critical thinking in math, reading and science—and do so more equitably than Americans do.

Ripley's report was the New York Times' only report about last year's Pisa and Timss. (She never mentioned the Timss.)

As we noted in an earlier post, we have no idea why Denmark was listed among that "handful of places" (data below). For today, let's focus on little Estonia, which is now clearly being sold as "the New Finland."

Let's also focus on Finland itself, which, for the past fifteen years, has been sold as a public school superpower. And let's focus on a third place. Let's focus on Massachusetts, whose population (6.8 million) matches that of tiny Estonia and little Finland combined.

We've all been propagandized for years concerning miraculous Finland. It's now clear that tiny Estonia is the new international sell.

We want to give you a fuller look at the way Massachusetts students have performed as compared to their peers in those other places, which may well have excellent schools. As we do, we're hoping to help you see what propaganda looks like.

Massachusetts participated in last year's Pisa as an independent entity. Below, you see the way its students scored as compared to those in Estonia and Finland.

According to Ripley, 39 points on the Pisa scale is equal to one academic year. We're including scores for Massachusetts' white students for reasons we've explained many times, and will explain again down below:

Average scores, Pisa 2015
Science literacy:
Estonia: 534
Finland: 531
Massachusetts: 529
Massachusetts, white students: 546

Reading literacy:
Massachusetts: 527
Finland: 526
Estonia: 519
Massachusetts, white students: 540

Math literacy:
Estonia: 520
Finland: 511
Massachusetts: 500
Massachusetts, white students: 514

In science literacy and reading literacy, the scores are basically the same. Using Ripley's rule of thumb, Massachusetts is about a half-year behind Estonia in math literacy.

The Bay State's white students—the state's "majority culture" kids—outscored their peers in these ballyhooed lands in both science and reading. We offer this comparison because, in Finland and Estonia, the students are pretty much all "majority culture" kids.

Those were the results on last year's Pisa. That said, U.S. kids tend to do better on the Timss, the test Ripley disappears.

Massachusetts took the Timss as an independent entity in 2011. This is the way its scores compared to those from Finland. Estonia didn't take part:

Average scores, Timss 2011
Grade 8 math:
Massachusetts: 561
Finland: 514
Massachusetts, white students: 572

Grade 8 science:
Massachusetts: 567
Finland: 552
Massachusetts, white students: 587

Estonia took the Timss only once, in 2003. (The Timss is administered every four years.) Here's what their scores looked like:

Average scores, Estonia, Timss 2003
Grade 8 math: 531
Grade 8 science: 552

Massachusetts participated as an independent entity for the first time in 2007. These were the Bay State scores:

Average scores, Massachusetts, Timss 2007
Grade 8 math: 547
Grade 8 science: 556

Massachusetts is bigger than Finland. It's five times Estonia's size.

Its demographics are more challenging, but it has performed at least as well as these storied locales on the world's international tests. But, for whatever reason, you're not allowed to know that. Our education experts fly from Logan, eager to learn from that handful of places located Over There.

Bay State scores are disappeared. There's a word for this practice, which is quite uniform. It looks to us like propaganda, of the ed reform kind.

There's something quite average in Denmark: In the New York Times, Ripley talked up Denmark. She said it's one of "a handful of places" which are proving that we can "do much better."

We have no idea why. These were Denmark's average scores on last year's Pisa:

Average scores, Denmark, Pisa 2015
Science literacy: 502
Reading literacy: 500
Math literacy: 511

Why was Ripley peddling Denmark? We don't have the slightest idea. You will have to tell us!

Reporting the new indictments in Flint!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2016

In search of explanations and facts: New indictments were announced this week in Flint.

On Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow devoted more than half her program to the general topic. (Huge chunks of time were burned.) On Wednesday morning, the new indictments were reported in the New York Times.

The reports were instructive and not so instructive. Let's start with the Times.

Below, you see the start of Monica Davey's news report, which got prominent placement in the hard-copy Times. So far, we'd call this instructive and not so instructive. Hard-copy banner included:

DAVEY (12/21/16): 2 Former Flint Emergency Managers Are Charged Over Tainted Water

A criminal investigation into this city’s water crisis reached into the top ranks of supervision over Flint on Tuesday as Michigan officials announced felony charges against two former state-appointed emergency managers, accusing them of fixating on saving money rather than on the safety of residents.

The managers, who were appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to lead Flint out of fiscal distress, were charged over their roles in the public health crisis prompted by the city’s switch to a new water source, as well as the delays in responding to residents’ complaints as they suffered the devastating effects.

Announcing the charges at a banquet center not far from the Flint River, Bill Schuette, the state’s attorney general, described “a fixation on finances and balance sheets” as at the root of what happened in Flint, where the water has been tied to the lead poisoning of children and the deaths of 12 people from Legionnaires’ disease.

“All too prevalent in this Flint water investigation was a priority on balance sheets and finances rather than health and safety of the citizens of Flint,” said Mr. Schuette, a Republican who is seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018.

Here's what we've seen so far:

Two former emergency managers have been "accus[ed] of fixating on saving money rather than on the safety of residents."

That sounds like a bad thing to do. On its face, that isn't a crime.

We note that prosecutor Bill Schuette is "seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018." Might this explain the political assessments which seem to dominate his first quoted remarks?

Please note: We don't know who did what in the case of Flint. We don't know who may or may not have engaged in criminal conduct—but as Davey began explaining the charges, we weren't even sure we knew what's being alleged.

In Davey's next graf, she reported that the two emergency managers face "charges of false pretenses, conspiracy to commit false pretenses, misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty." So far, we found this unclear.

That said, the two emergency managers seem to be joining a cast of thousands. In paragraph 10, Davey began calling the roll of the indicted:

DAVEY: The state criminal investigation into Flint’s water crisis, opened in January, previously had led to charges against one employee of Flint’s water plant and eight state officials, including a state epidemiologist and the former leader of Michigan’s municipal drinking water office.

Of those nine, two have accepted plea deals. The rest are awaiting trial, and some have sought the dismissal of the charges against them.

On Tuesday, two additional Flint officials were also charged with crimes. Howard Croft, a former director of the city’s Public Works Department, and Daugherty Johnson, a former utilities director for the department, were accused of false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses.

By our count, this means that thirteen city and state officials have now been charged with criminal conduct. Needless to say, Maddow's show was dominated by the prayer that Governor Snyder might be added to the list.

Did thirteen different officials (and counting) actually commit crimes? We have no way of knowing. Beyond that, we have no real idea what a charge of "false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses" actually consists in.

At this point, Davey began detailing the charges against emergency managers Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose. For ourselves, we were struck by the lack of clarity at the end of this passage:

DAVEY (continuing directly): Mr. Earley oversaw Flint as its emergency manager from late 2013 until early 2015...Mr. Ambrose worked as a finance director under Flint’s emergency managers and then was appointed in 2015 to become the emergency manager. The state charges allege that they used a false story to secure an unusual bond deal so Flint could take part in a regional water pipeline plan.

Since it was in financial distress, Mr. Schuette said, Flint was not permitted to borrow money unless it could prove a significant emergency. To get a state waiver, the city claimed it needed the money for an emergency cleanup of a retention pond. But Mr. Schuette said the money was actually intended for the long-term water project.

Mr. Schuette said they also agreed, as part of that project, to switch temporarily to Flint River water, even though they knew the city’s treatment plant was not ready to handle the treatment necessary to prevent contamination.

In the end, officials failed to properly treat the new water with chemicals that would prevent materials from corroding and leaching metals like lead.

In the first two paragraphs, the managers stand accused of seeking money for one purpose, using it for another.

We'll assume that this may happen fairly often. On its face, such conduct is illegal, of course. That said, depending on what you think of the projects at issue, you may not find this kind of conduct so awful.

In the last two paragraphs, the rubber starts hitting the road. Or does it? We were struck by something resembling a contradiction of sorts:

In the third paragraph, we're told that the emergency managers switched Flint over to river water "even though they knew the city’s treatment plant was not ready to handle the treatment necessary to prevent contamination."

That sounds like a bad thing to do. On the other hand, we're immediately told that "officials"—we aren't told which officials—"failed to treat the water with chemicals" which would have prevented the leaching of lead.

Here's our question:

If those chemicals had been used "in the end," would everything have been OK? Do you mind if we suspect that Davey may not exactly know?

Years later, can anyone explain the basics of what happened here? If we're talking about journalists, we'll guess the answer is no.

For starters, no one actually cares about what happened here. That's fairly obvious, especially if you've watched the Maddow Show.

Don't get us wrong—Maddow seems to exude concern. That said, her intermittent "reporting" on Flint turns on one obvious burning passion—her desire to see Governor Snyder thrown head-first into jail.

Because it's so clear that this is her interest, we would say that her treatment of this topic has tended toward repulsive. We'll cover this in more detail in tomorrow's "Year(s) in Review."

On Tuesday night, Maddow prayed for Snyder's scalp. She dreamed of lengthy prison terms for the emergency managers. She demonstrated her lack of interest in the key word "alleged."

She let us see how much she loves the deeply upsetting word "poisoned." She actually said what's shown below. It's why she should be off the air:

MADDOW (12/20/16): And, of course, famously, there was the mass lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint, including thousands of kids who will live for the rest of their lives with the consequences of having been poisoned by lead, having lead exposure in their drink water when they are kids. It is something you don`t grow out of. It is something for which there is no magic anecdote.

"The mass lead poisoning of the entire city of Flint?" Maddow, AKA The Nun, lives for such thrilling descriptions. The key word "poisoned" does lots of work when she sells us this car.

It's time to tell the truth about Maddow. She turns out to be a bit unhinged. In the absence of supervision, she shouldn't be on the air.

Over the past few years, Kevin Drum has been cast in the role of Gallant, playing opposite Maddow's Goofus, on the subject of Flint. Maddow dreams of locking them up. Drum has supplied basic facts.

More tomorrow as we finish our award-winning Year(s) in Review reports.

YEAR(S) IN REVIEW: Most Consequential Absence of Skill!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2016

Part 4—Most Consequential False Facts: Sometimes, if it weren't for the press corps' lack of skill, there would be no skill at all!

Lack of skill is on constant display within our mainstream press corps. And not only that! In the beginning was the end, much as Eliot said!

We keep those bromides in mind today as we announce an array of year(s)-end awards. For starters:

In the opinion of our judges, this year's Most Consequential Absence of Skill happened in 2012!

The judges refer to a conspicuous absence of journalistic skill which surfaced, with killing results, on and after September 16, 2012. On that day, Susan Rice appeared on all five Sunday news shows. She discussed the previous week's attack in Benghazi on four of those network programs.

Immediately, John McCain and the great Bob Schieffer began misparaphrasing what Rice had said. But alas! As had become all too clear in 1999 and 2000, mainstream journalists lack the skills which are required to address or correct such deceptions.

In 1999 and 2000, Candidate Gore was misquoted and misparaphrased, in a number of high-profile instances, for a period of twenty straight months. Many of these misquotations were generated by the mainstream press corps itself. No major journalist displayed the skills which are required to straighten such nonsense out.

(Full disclosure: It is often difficult to separate absence of skill from absence of will. Some journalists may have possessed the requisite skills, but decided not to employ them.)

In 1999 and 2000, Gore was constantly misparaphrased and misquoted. Now, in September 2012, it would be Rice's turn.

McCain, of course, is an established figure of moral rectitude within elite Washington culture. Taking advantage of that designation, he began misstating what Rice had said as soon as she finished her segment on Face the Nation.

Poisonous scripts about Benghazi were developed from there. These scripts hardened, then turned to stone, over the next few months.

As this happened, the mainstream press corps sat and watched. So did the "corporate liberal" cable star, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

Caught in a re-election campaign, President Obama chose to let Rice be thrown under the bus. This may have been the best political move. But when people like Maddow aped the White House, they committed a familiar journalistic abomination.

Twelve years before, they had done it to Gore; now they did it to Rice. Scripts about Benghazi were born. This year, those punishing scripts helped sink Candidate Clinton.

Could that "conspicuous absence of skill" possibly have been this year's greatest absence of skill? The judges have paired it with the conspicuous silence which occurred when James B. Comey—Comey the God—issued an irregular denunciation of Candidate Clinton on July 5 of this year.

Comey's irregular denunciation produced the year's most appalling political event—the fawning tributes to his moral greatness offered by a string of Democrats during his July 7 appearance before a House committee. To cringe with embarrassment about this behavior, you can just click here.

That was a deeply embarrassing political moment; it shone a spotlight on several decades of Democratic Party submission to power. Still, that was a political abdication. There was no reason why journalists should have copied this conduct.

Inevitably, that's what they did.

What an embarrassing story! On July 6, Fred Kaplan published this report at Slate. In it, he challenged the basic claims and accusations made by Comey the God.

Kaplan challenged Comey's claims—but all across the mainstream press, it was 2012 all over again. This was most glaringly true on MSNBC, where the weirdly grinning Rachel Maddow didn't so much as mention Comey's name until he struck again in late October.

Kaplan's name was never mentioned on this quisling corporate channel. Once again, the children paid to play liberals on TV simply refused to perform.

Was Maddow's silence due to a lack of skill? Or did it represent a decision to avoid conflict with the corporate world's most favored elites? (Our judges have awarded Comey their Most Favored Player Status award for the year 2016.)

There is no way to answer that question. As a courtesy, the judges have decided to honor this two-part journalistic silence—this journalistic refusal to serve—with a less accusatory designation:

They're hailing the refusal to respond on Benghazi and on the emails as the Most Conspicuous Absence of Skill of the Year(s).

Maddow's silence enabled the invention of an array of fake facts. Fake facts about Benghazi, then about those damn emails, have helped send Donald J. Trump to the White House, just as that array of fake quotes by Candidate Gore sent George W. Bush to the same place.

That said, the judges have made a surprising pick this year in their Most Consequential False Facts category.

Yes, the discourse teems with bogus facts which come from the "conservative" realm. But the judges have announced a special lifetime achievement award for the bogus facts which we liberals enjoy so much Over Here on Our Side.

In making this surprising award, the judges cite the liberal world's unparalleled ability to spot bogus facts as long as they come from The Other Side. They seek to call attention to the liberal world's inability to perceive "our own twaddle."

The judges note that most of our "liberal" false claims in recent years have concerned matters of gender and race. They further note an important point:

Even though we liberals are unable to see these bogus facts, the rest of the public is made aware of the bogus claims our side spawns.

The judges sought to draw special attention to three such performances, although they noted there were many other bogus facts worthy of celebration:

First, they noted Maddow's clownish performance in 2012 after she mistakenly described the gender wage gap on Meet the Press.

("Most ridiculous refusal to correct," one judge sadly said.)

They noted the way Ta-Nehisi Coates' award-winning book, Between the World and Me, starts with an utterly bogus account of an appearance by Coates himself on Face the Nation.

("He had transcripts he could have read, and videotape he could have watched. It's a statement about the flaws of the liberal world that he chose to ignore them," this puzzled judge ruefully told us.)

Finally, the judges cited our tribe's most consequential false fact of the year(s)—the inaccurate claim that the late Michel Brown said, "Hands up, don't shoot." The judges especially noted the way liberal journalists avoided discussing the Justice Department's eventual account of what happened in this incident.

("Everyone else hears about this type of liberal conduct," one judge insightfully said. "It helps teach voters that liberals' claims about various matters can't be believed or trusted.")

Other awards followed. Despite recent termination of Krystal Ball, Ronan Farrow, Alex Wagner, Abby Huntsman (now of Fox News) and even Toure, the judges hailed MSNBC as Most Ridiculous Emerging News Org. "Basically, this prize awards itself" one judge thoughtfully told us.

In their Least Authentic Cohort category, the judges selected the "corporate/careerist liberal world."

Tomorrow, we'll review some of the reasons for the judges' controversial decisions in those last two areas. Spoiler alert: we'll discuss their top choices for Important Topics You Aren't Even So Much As Allowed to Learn About, Discuss, Review or Consider.

For ourselves, we'll cite a pet peeve which reinforces the judges' decisions. And no, we aren't making this up:

Last night, Rachel Maddow sang the praises of "my friend," "the great Greta Van Susteren," on her increasingly ridiculous cable news program. Our statement in the form of a question:

How much abuse will we liberals endure before we decide it's time to leave this abusive home?

Tomorrow: The things you'll never hear

Maddow among the greats: Why in the world would Maddow want to hail "the great Greta Van Susteren?"

We'll guess it's all part of selling the car. Last evening, Maddow inferentially praised herself for not feuding with Fox, where Van Susteren worked all those years.

For a review of Maddow's fawning to the greats, the geniuses and the treasures, you can just click here.

We'll guess it's just part of selling the car. That said, the analysts had to run into the yard after last evening's example.

The liberal world is not in good hands. Now that we've lost an election to Trump, even we liberals ought to be able to see that!

Professor Dyson attempts to sound off!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2016

We need some clarity over here: For decades, we liberals have been poorly served by our comedians. Also by our professors!

Earlier this year, a University of Missouri professor made the most embarrassing statement yet. "I need some muscle over here," she embarrassingly said.

Conservatives hear about statements like that. So do unaligned voters. In the process, they come to believe that we liberals are full of crap.

That professor said a dumb thing, but we were sorry to learn that she lost her job. Everybody makes mistakes. That's even true of Professor Dyson and his admirers.

Thus Sunday, Professor Dyson sounded off in the Sunday New York Times. He was on the front page of the Sunday Review. His headline said this:

"What Donald Trump Doesn’t Know About Black People"

For ourselves, we don't know what Donald J. Trump doesn't know about black people. We do know that the professor's headline didn't quite match his essay, which struck us as typically bumptious and unhelpful.

The professor emitted plenty of heat, but may have been a bit short on the light. "I need some clarity over here," one of the analysts said!

In fairness, the professor started by banging on Trump, but then he made a turn. He began to bang on "liberals and the white left" while quoting just one such person:

He quoted only Bernie Sanders. We'd have to say he almost made it sound like Bernie's as bad as Trump.

Is Bernie Sanders as bad as Trump? One way to give that impression is by quoting the former out of context. Also, by dishing some very strong snark. This is the passage in question:

PROFESSOR DYSON (12/18/16): The road ahead is not easy, primarily because Mr. Trump’s ignorance about race, his critical lack of nuance and learning about it, exists among liberals and the white left, too.

From the start of his 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders was prickly about race, uncomfortable with an outspoken, demanding blackness, resistant to letting go of his preference for discussing class over race. He made efforts to improve the way he spoke about the realities of racial discrimination. But Mr. Sanders seemed to remain at heart a man of the people, especially if those people were the white working class.

Since the election, Mr. Sanders has sounded an increasingly familiar theme among liberals that they should “go beyond identity politics.” He warned that “to think of diversity purely in racial and gender terms is not sufficient,” and that we need candidates “to be fighters for the working class and stand up to the corporate powers who have so much power over our economic lives.”

In a recent speech in California, Mr. Sanders said that it is “very easy for many Americans to say, I hate racism, I hate homophobia, I hate sexism,” but that “it is a little bit harder for people in the middle or upper middle class to say, maybe we do have to deal with the greed of Wall Street.”

This is a nifty bit of historical revisionism. For the longest time there was little consideration for diversity, even among liberal elites, much less the white middle and working classes. It seems more than a little reactionary to blame the loss of the election on a brand of identity politics that even liberals were slow to embrace.

"Especially if those people were the white working class?" Thus spake Snarkathustra!

Liberals need to tell our bumptious professors to stop shoveling pellets like that. White liberals need to come to terms with the fact that black professors can be just as full of hot air and bad judgment as their white counterparts have been.

The professor's typically bumptious work doesn't make much sense. Let's start with those last two paragraphs.

In that passage, the professor seems to say that Sanders was "blaming the loss of the election on a brand of identity politics." He seems to say that Sanders was making that claim in the statements he quoted.

Let's be clear. It's possible that "a brand of identity politics" did cost Clinton the election. It's virtually impossible to measure such things. It's possible that she would have won had she taken a different approach to something someone might want to describe that way.

That said, was Sanders making some such claim in those quoted statements? In the quoted statement about "identity politics," he was giving advice to a young woman who said she was thinking about running for office.

The professor quotes Sanders saying these things: “to think of diversity purely in racial and gender terms is not sufficient," because we need “to be fighters for the working class and stand up to the corporate powers who have so much power over our economic lives.” Why would a fiery black progressive want to argue with that? Is it OK to run on issues of gender and race while kissing the hems of Big Corporate Power?

How about what Sanders said in that "recent speech in California?" In that speech (click here), he seemed to be criticizing the values of upper-class Democratic leaders in Washington—people like Nancy Pelosi.

Why exactly would it be wrong to say that these people find it easy to reject racism, homophobia and sexism, but are less inclined “to deal with the greed of Wall Street?” The professor might not agree with that assessment. But why would it strike him, or anyone else, as an act of racial bad faith?

Once he's finished with all this crap, the professor moves in for the kill. This is the way he closes:

PROFESSOR DYSON: Now we hear again the cry that the neglected white working class is the future of American progressive politics. The tragedy is that much of the professed concern about the white working class is a cover for the interests of white elites who evoke working-class solidarity to combat racial, sexual and gender progress.

Identity has always been at the heart of American culture. We must confront a truth that we have assiduously avoided: The most protected, cherished and nurtured identity of all has been white identity. After all, the needs of the black and brown working classes, which are not exclusively urban, are, again, even in progressive quarters, all but forgotten.

Mr. Trump, and to a degree, the liberals and progressives who advocate a vision of America that spurns identity politics, make one thing clear: The real unifying force in American political life is whiteness, no matter its party, gender, region or, at times, even its class.

New York Times readers, please! Who exactly has said "that the neglected white working class is the future of American progressive politics?"

Professor Dyson names no names as he dispatches this straw man. What grade would a professor give a student who assembled a case this way?

Is it true that "much of the professed concern about the white working class" is a cover for white elites who want to combat racial, sexual and gender progress? If so, would that mean that progressives can't show concern for that same white working class?

Isn't the white working class getting ripped off by the same interests who rip off the black working class and overpay people like Dyson? Why shouldn't a progressive of whatever race be concerned about that?

Professor Dyson tends to be full of the sound and fury. As you can see in the comments to his cry, we white liberals can't seem to discern this fact.

We liberals have been badly served by our professors down through the years. Key learning:

Black professors can sometimes be unclear and unhelpful too.

Two comments to Dyson's piece: Below, you see a comment about the professor's essay from a reader in DC. Then, you see a fascinating rebuttal to that first comment:

COMMENTER FROM DC: Professor Dyson seems to have made the correct judgment that Donald Trump has little sympathy or understanding for the needs and aspirations of black Americans...At the same time, Professor Dyson is wrong to castigate the Democratic Party's renewed recognition of the needs of white, working class Americans. There is no conflict between Democratic support for racial minorities and working class whites. Progressive economic policies and progressive stances on civil rights are both positions that increase opportunity. The Democratic Party is at its strongest when it champions both broad economic opportunity and the rights of racial, religious and LGBTQ minorities.

COMMENTER FROM FLORIDA: The Party may try to champion both positions, but as long as working class white identity includes a belief in the inherent privilege of their color, making them easily manipulated by racist (however coded) bombast, why would they join forces with those who are "different" from them?

They see the world as a vertical hierarchy and they are fighting for their place in it, an unassailably reserved seat for whites only. Upward mobility is a zero-sum game—the less others have, the more they have. This is reinforced by their most powerful communities (churches) and, more recently, by their access to a post-truth world of fake news and emotional propaganda. As a result, it remains unlikely that they will be able to objectively identify the real source of their economic woes. That's why they elected a con man who's not going to do anything for them, who's part of their problems: he validated their feelings and their problematic worldview.

The Democratic party you envision might become possible simply through shifting demographics and an intense effort to get out the vote, but it will not be without its problems, either—such as the anti-LGBT sentiment among some of the other groups.

If we as a species can't adapt out of tribalism—useful at one time—we'll probably drive ourselves to extinction one way or another—fire or ice.

Gallant says Democrats can, and should, champion issues involving race and class.

Goofus takes a different tack. Right away, he issues sweeping generalizations about what Those People think, even about the way They all go to church. "Them" and "they" are his favorite words.

After issuing these denunciations, he says we need to stop being so tribal! In his familiar way of thinking, the propaganda-prone tribal types are all of course Them, Over There!

George Washington couldn't tell a lie!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2016

Some others can't tell the truth: Rather famously, George Washington, the nation's first president, couldn't tell a lie.

We know that because he said so—more precisely, because he was said to have said so. At any rate, Washington's reported statement defined a powerful norm. It was long believed to be a virtue—public figures should tell the truth.

"I will never lie to you?" In 1976, Candidate Carter actually did say that, or at least we think he did. Indeed, as recently as 1999 and 2000, reporters were so committed to the concept of telling the truth that they invented a series of lies by Candidate Gore, then complained about the mere idea that he had actually told them!

In those days, telling the truth was a powerful press corps norm. Now, we have Donald J. Trump, whose behavior lies so far outside traditional norms that it's hard to know how to describe it.

At New York magazine, Eric Levitz noticed something we noticed too. He noticed Trump's latest strange account of the size of his win over Candidate Clinton.

Trump's latest alleged strange account was allegedly made this Monday. This is The Hill's account of what Trump said after Monday's vote by the electoral college, a satellite campus of the better-known Trump University:

HELLMAN (12/19/16): President-elect Donald Trump touted his Electoral College victory Monday as a "historic electoral landslide" and a next step toward a brighter future.

"I thank the American people for their overwhelming vote to elect me as their next President of the United States," Trump said in a statement.

"The official votes cast by the Electoral College exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large margin, far greater than ever anticipated by the media."

According to The Hill's Jessie Hellmann, Trump said that in a statement! She's in her second year out.

Hellmann didn't provide a link to Trump's alleged statement. Having said that, she's hardly alone. In the past few days, we haven't been able to find anyone who did provide such a link.

That includes MSNBC's Steve Benen, who attributed the "written statement" to "Trump's transition team," not to Trump himself. That said, Benen recorded the start of the statement like this:

“Today marks a historic electoral landslide victory in our nation’s democracy. I thank the American people for their overwhelming vote to elect me as their next President of the United States. The official votes cast by the Electoral College exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large margin, far greater than ever anticipated by the media...”

We'll assume that someone actually made and distributed that statement. That said, we don't exactly know who exactly it was. Beyond that, we don't know why no one has produced a link. Was this "written statement" written in crayon? Was it written by hand on an index card, then stealthily passed all around?

We have no idea where that statement came from. That said, the statement is crazily wrong in several respects.

If we're all still speaking English, Trump's victory over Candidate Clinton wasn't "an historic electoral landslide" in any recognizable respect.

If we're all speaking standard English, he didn't receive an "overwhelming vote" from the American people. By normal standards, it's a stretch to say that he exceeded the required 270 electoral votes "by a very large margin."

By normal standards, that statement by Trump, or by his team, is hard to square with elementary facts. That said, it lies within an unfortunate context. It follows decades of strange behavior by the press corps itself.

George Washington couldn't tell a lie. It often seems that Donald Trump is unable to tell the truth. But then, the weird behavior of the press has set the stage for this strange aspect of Trumpism. Again:

In 1999 and 2000, they invented lies by Candidate Gore, then pretended to be outraged by the invented lies. In 2015 and 2016, they went a million miles out of their way to avoid confronting obvious misstatements by Candidate Trump.

Donald J. Trump seems to be redefining the concept or practice of truth. That said, the press corps almost beat him to it. Would you say the behaviors of Trump and the mainstream press are more alike or more different? Weirdly enough, we'd have to say the answer's not perfectly clear.

In the next few days, we'll continue exploring this theme with reference to yesterday's indictments in Flint. On last night's Maddow Show, a cable star picked and chose her facts in her usual cavalier manner. Beyond that, an obvious question arose once again:

Is the word "allegedly" even part of this star's lexicon? Is Maddow aware of the basic concepts which lie behind the word's use?

Over the course of half an hour, Maddow picked and chose her facts as she discussed, or perhaps as she seemed to discuss, the indictments in Flint. As always, she treated accusation as fact.

This morning, we were struck by the underwhelming level of skill with which the New York Times reported the facts about these indictments. They reported more facts that Maddow did, but we thought their overall performance was strikingly poor. (More on this to come.)

George Washington couldn't tell a lie. Donald J. Trump can't tell the truth. Where does the press corps lie on this scale? At this point in their devolution, which of these famous American figures do they more closely resemble?