THE CREDULOUS APE: The criminalization of everything!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 2018

Part 4—The text of Inkblot 30121: Did Donald Trump Junior commit a crime when he held that now-famous meeting?

As part of the criminalization of everything, tis a glory devoutly to be wished! In this morning's New York Times, Gail Collins expresses the mindset in question as she starts her column:

COLLINS (8/9/18): This is not the very best week for political sons.

First we have Cameron Collins, the 25-year-old offspring of Representative Chris Collins of New York, indicted with Dad on an insider-trading scheme. It is possible that they’re the first pair ever to be accused of conspiring during a congressional picnic.

Meanwhile Donald Trump Jr. is twisting slowly in the wind while the president denies he’s worried that his kid will wind up in the clink.

Yay yay yay yay yay! It isn't just Rep. Collins (presumably no relation); it's also his son! So too with President Trump's son, who may "wind up in the clink," with a Watergate reference thrown in.

Our reflexively martial, warlike species has always played it this way. When we invaded The Others' cities, we would impale their offspring too. We would carry the women away, to cook and to clean and do such.

This same mindset obtains today. Anthropologically speaking, do you think we're getting out over our skis? Who's being naive now, Kay?

Let's return to our question. But before we try to puzzle it out, let's note one minor point:

Trump Junior and his associates didn't seem to think they were engaged in a crime when they conducted that meeting.
The meeting was held in broad daylight, right there in Trump Tower. Half the Russian diaspora was allowed to attend the affair, along with a goofy British music promoter—and three major figures from the Trump campaign.

As a general matter, this isn't the way you conduct a meeting if you think you're committing a crime. That doesn't mean that Trump Junior wasn't committing some sort of crime. It does go to "consciousness of guilt," which cable pundits are eager to cite when it tilts a tale in their favor.

Back to our basic question—was Trump Junior committing a crime? Again today, the New York Times writes on second grade level as it helps us believe—Yay yay yay!—that the answer is yes.

The low-IQ piece by Buchanan and Yourish is bannered across the top of page A11 in our hard-copy Times. For reasons we can't explain, it doesn't appear in the list of reports at the Times' "Today's Paper" site.

That said, you can read the report here. At one point, they return to the amazingly childish formulation of Shear and Schmidt:

BUCHANAN AND YOURISH (8/9/18): It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government.

Borrowing from their superiors, the pair of reporters offer that childish account. Along the way, they also absurdly pretend that a Trump Senior tweet in July 2017 differs from a recent Trump Senior tweet about what happened at the meeting.

In that instance, the scribes are playing the Anderson Cooper game. We'll show you their work below.

It's illegal to accept help from a foreign individual? That's second-grade work by the Times. But this is what our species does when we start "killing the pig," as you can see, on any night, for hours on "cable news."

Second-graders of the tribe, unite! Is it really illegal for a campaign "to accept help from a foreign individual?"

Presumably, the reporters are referring to "52 U.S. Code 30121," the statute about which Brian Williams inquired, by name, earlier in the week. Cable stars have spent the week pretending to interpret its provisions, rarely saying the same thing twice as they stage their latest cable charade.

At any rate, how about it? Do the provisions of 30121 render the Trump Tower meeting illegal? When Brian inquired, Joyce Vance seemed to say that opinions differ. In his full-length analysis piece for that very same New York Times, Charlie Savage seemed to say the same thing.

If cable news was actually news, you would have seen this matter discussed a thousand times by now. More precisely, you would have seen the matter discussed in a serious manner.

Alas! "Cable news" is tribal porridge designed to entertain and affirm the prejudices of some particular target audience. For that reason, you've never seen any such discussion of Ink Blot 30121, which every pundit describes his own way but which basically tells us this:

52 U.S. Code § 30121—Contributions and donations by foreign nationals

(a) PROHIBITION It shall be unlawful for—

(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make—

(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State, or local election;

(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party; or

(C) an expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication (within the meaning of section 30104(f)(3) of this title); or

(2) a person to solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1) from a foreign national.

As the inkblot continues, it defines the term "foreign national," directing us to consult the language of 22 U.S. Code § 611, which you can peruse right here.

Question: Does Inkblot 30121 say that Trump Junior committed a crime in connection with that meeting? Tribally speaking, tis a conclusion devoutly to be wished. But does the inkblot say that?

All through our liberal enclaves, we're being told that it does. Under terms of this inkblot, information is "a thing of value"—or so our historically martial species' latest lynch mob says.

Tomorrow: Qu'est-ce que c'est "thing of value?"

Working on second-grade level: What's it like when major reporters work on second grade level? Consider the way Buchanan and Yourish quote Trump Senior concerning the Trump Tower meeting.

First, they quote this tweet from July 17, 2017: “Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That's politics!”

Then they quote Trump Senior again, this time from August 5, 2018. In this recent tweet, Trump Senior said that Trump Junior went to the meeting "to get information on an opponent which is totally legal and done all the time in politics."

As any third-grader can see, those two tweets, separated by 13 months, say precisely the same thing. Except in this morning's New York Times, where the reporters make it sound like the second tweet represents some sort of shift in position on the part of Trump Senior.

As we noted yesterday, Anderson Cooper played this same game on his silly sardonic broadcast this past Monday night.
According to major anthropologists, this is what our species is like when we're killing the pig.

BREAKING: The most significant fact of the day!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2018

The Washington Post breaks the news: The headline appeared atop page one of today's hard-copy Washington Post.

It appeared in the top right hand corner of the page. It announced the top news of the day:

Gates admits to cheating on wife, bilking Manafort

Rick Gates admitted to cheating on his wife! At the Washington Post, it was the most important fact of the day, apparently on a worldwide basis.

The Post's news report began like this. It took four reporters to do this:

WEINER, ZAPOTOSKY, HELDERMAN AND BARRETT (8/8/18): The courtroom showdown between Paul Manafort and his former right-hand man, Rick Gates, grew painfully personal Tuesday as a defense lawyer forced Gates, the prosecution’s star witness, to admit he had a transatlantic extramarital affair and embezzled money to live beyond his means.

During his second day on the witness stand, Gates detailed the lies, phony documents and fake profits he claims to have engineered at Manafort’s direction. Manafort, seated at the defense table, at times stared intently at his former protege and business partner, who has assiduously avoided Manafort’s gaze despite their proximity inside the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va.

Just so you'll know, these are the topics which actually matter:

Paragraph 1: Did he have a sexy-time affair?
Paragraph 2: What sort of body language obtained inside the courtroom?

These are the topics which actually matter to members of our war-ridden species. Indeed, these were Nicolle Wallace's only three questions about the trial, as delivered to Josh Gerstein on Monday night, her final night of guest-hosting for Rachel Maddow:

WALLACE (6/6/18): Josh, take us through these dramatic points that are coming out in press accounts about Rick Gates, about the dynamic between Gates and Manafort, and about the larger picture that's being filled in through press accounts about Gates is an eyewitness to much more than Manafort`s crimes.

WALLACE: Take us through some of the emotions that went through this room. Was Gates—and did the jury pick up on any of that—was Gates acting fearful of what he was testifying to? Did Manafort seem angry? Were there any family members with any outbursts or emotions that they displayed in the courtroom?

WALLACE: Let me ask you how they deal with explaining to a jury that someone is a cooperating witness, that they`ve already pleaded guilty to committing some crimes. Does that change, or could you detect any change in any of the body language from the jury? Did they seem to, to listen less intently or did they—did they lean in as this was someone who had traded something?

Drama, emotions and body language—these are the issues which matter. Were there any outbursts from any family members?

Atop page one in this morning's Post, the fact that Gates had an affair was today's most important fact from all around the world. Meanwhile:

On page A3 of today's New York Times, we were handed yesterday's "Quote of the Day" (hard-copy editions only). Here it is—and no, we aren't making this up:

Quote of the Day
"Pound for pound, Stan Mikita was one of the greatest players of all time."

BOBBY HULL, the Hall of Fame hockey star, describing his teammate who was just 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds when he joined the Chicago Black Hawks.

On page A3 of the New York Times, that was yesterday's most important statement, also apparently on a worldwide basis.

According to Professor Harari, our smaller-brained Homo sapiens species eliminated the larger-brained Neanderthals thanks to our ability to "gossip" and to adopt group "fictions." According to Kevin Drum, people of a certain age were all exposed to much more lead than the children of modern-day Flint.

We offer those possible explanations for the strange state of our discourse. But when a nation's journalistic and academic elites behave in the way this nation's have done, can anyone really be surprised when we end up, after thirty-one years of girl friend chasing, with a President Donald J. Trump?

(We date that to the mainstream press corps' chase after Gary Hart, who had engaged in sexual acts without prior press corps permission.)

Our major elites have been deeply disordered for decades. We take this to be an obvious fact.

We've reported, you can explain. In our view, there's no obvious way to go back.

THE CREDULOUS APE: Beverly Hills 30121!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 2018

Part 3—Soap opera tackles the law: Did Donald Trump Junior break the law through his now-famous Trump Tower meeting?

Tis a conclusion devoutly to be wished! On Monday evening's Last Word TV show, excitable host Lawrence O'Donnell told us credulous liberal viewers what we most want to hear:

LAWRENCE (8/6/18): The legal implications of the president's tweet are gravely threatening to the president's son. [Quoting recent Trump tweet:] "This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics." But it's not done all the time in politics, and it's totally, totally illegal, if it is a meeting with foreign citizens trying to help the Trump campaign.

The conduct in question wasn't simply illegal, Lawrence said. It was "totally, totally illegal."

From there, Lawrence proceeded to pretend that he knew what he was talking about:

LAWRENCE (continuing directly): Federal law makes it a crime for a foreign national to, quote, directly or indirectly help an American campaign with financial contributions or, quote, an other thing of value. Federal election law recognizes opposition research as, quote, a thing of value. Federal election law makes it a crime to, quote, solicit, accept or receive a thing of value to a campaign from foreign nationals.

Etcetera, and so forth and so on. Do additional penalties obtain if the conduct in question is very, very illegal?

Lawrence, who isn't a legal expert, didn't presume to say.

Was Lawrence right in what he said? We can't tell you that. We can tell you that another non-expert gad sounded off over on CNN just two hours earlier.

In this case, the non-expert was Gloria Borger. She was speaking with Anderson Cooper, who has become a clowning, sardonic propagandist in these years of Trump:

COOPER (8/6/18): Gloria, I mean the fact the president is now admitting, in very clear terms, that this was all about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. How big a deal do you think that really is?

BORGER: ...There is a legal issue here. If this dirt or so-called dirt on Hillary Clinton was exchanged, it's illegal from a foreign country.

Does Borger know what she's talking about? We know of no reason to assume that she does, but she spoke with total conviction.

Meanwhile, for whatever it's worth, Borger's proclamation differed from that offered by Lawrence:

Lawrence decried the high illegality of "getting information" from a foreign national. Using a pleasing term of choice, Borger said it's illegal to receive "dirt" from a foreign country.

Those are very different claims. But as a general matter, such differences are close enough for cable news work—and each non-expert spoke with great certainty about his or her pleasing view.

Cooper, meanwhile, was clowning badly, as he now does every night. In the passage posted above, you see him saying that Donald Trump Senior is "now admiting" that the infamous meeting "was all about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton."

Throughout the evening's discussion, Cooper treated this as an exciting change of position on the part of Trump Senior. The problem is, Cooper had already played tape of Trump Senior making the same "admission" in July 2017, more than a year ago:

COOPER: So, now, soliciting government intelligence from a hostile foreign power to get elected president isn't a crime [according to Trump], which keeping them honest is far from clear. But it's the whole framing of it as a hypothetical that's really interesting, because the president actually flirted with admitting this meeting was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton when the story first broke last year.

Listen to him on the 13th of July last year, standing next to the president of France...

TRUMP (videotape): I do think this. I think from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting. It's called opposition research, or even research into your opponent. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it's very standard where they have information and you take the information.

Duh. These was Trump, in July 2017, "admitting" that the meeting was designed to get information about Hillary Clinton.

But so what? This is cable news. Cooper played last weekend's tweet as a flip on Trump Senior's part all through Monday's discussion. On cable news, the gullible viewer is asked to ignore such glaring contradictions.

Beyond that, note what Cooper said about the legality of the infamous meeting:

According to Cooper, the legal issue involves the question of soliciting information from a hostile foreign power. For the record, Cooper didn't say that such behavior actually is a crime. To his credit, he merely said it "isn't clear" that it isn't a crime.

So it goes on the teen drama shows which pose as "cable news." According to Lawrence, Gloria and Anderson, it either is, or it may be, a crime to receive or solicit information from a foreign national—or possibly from a foreign nation, or from a hostile foreign power.

Lawrence and Gloria said it is a crime to do such a thing; Anderson said it may be. Meanwhile, there's no obvious reason to assume that any of them know what they're talking about. Knowing what you're talking about stopped being part of our national discourse long ago, except for the Hard Pundit Law which holds that you must know prevailing scripts.

Judged by traditional norms, the boys and girls of cable news behaved rather badly this night. Judged by contemporary corporate norms, they were serving the corporate goal; they were feeding their loyal viewers the tribal porridge they like.

Can we talk? The cable stars to whom we've referred were players this night in an exciting new scripted teen drama, "Beverly Hills 30121." That's the number of the federal statute which they were clownishly, perhaps fraudulently, pretending to understand.

What does the statute in question actually say? What does it say about the legality of receiving information, dirt or so-called dirt on a political opponent from a hostile foreign power, or perhaps just from a foreign citizen?

Dies the statute say that such behavior is "very, very illegal?" Does it say that such behavior would be illegal at all? Just for the record, here's what happened when Brian Williams inquired about that provision of federal law on that very same brain-damaged cable news night. He was speaking with Joyce Vance, an actual legal analyst:

WILLIAMS (8/6/18): Let me ask you question about 52 U.S. Code 30121, which you, I have no doubt, have committed to memory years ago.

VANCE: I've read it a time or two, yes.

WILLIAMS: Yes, I figured. "It shall be unlawful for a foreign national directly or indirectly to make a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value"—we`ll come back to those words—"or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation in connection with a federal, state, or local election."

Joyce, my question to you...has this notion been litigated? Do we know that advice on your opponent from Russians could be construed in federal court as "a thing of value?"

VANCE: It's an interesting question. And under this statute, where there's been relatively little litigation, not a lot of a case law, certainly people will have different opinions.

Say what? Did Vance actually say those things? Right there on cable news?

Unlike Lawrence, Vance is presented by MSNBC as a legal expert. In response to a very sound question from Brian, she said the statute in question—U.S. Code 30121—has led to relatively little litigation. There isn't a lot of case law.

As a result, "people have different opinions" about the legal question involved in the Trump Tower meeting, she said. One hour earlier, on the same channel, Lawrence—loudly blustering, as he's paid to do—said something very, very different.

This past Monday evening, cable presented a new spin-off drama—Beverly Hills 30121. The original program was silly enough.
The dumbness of the exciting new spin-off threatens life all over the planet.

Night after night, our cable stars behave like upper-class gossiping high school kids. According to a range of zoologists, if you're swallowing what you see on these programs, there's a substantial chance that you're the "credulous ape!"

Tomorrow: Let's take a look at the text!

BREAKING: The mental condition of Donald J. Trump!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2018

McCaffrey gets it right: Last evening, Lawrence O'Donnell started The Last Word in an unfortunate way.

He started by posing as an authority on federal election law, specifically with regard to "contributions" of "things of value" from "foreign nationals." As he pontificated, he said "it's totally, totally illegal" to hold a meeting "with foreign citizens" who are trying to help an American political campaign.

In this way, Lawrence was feeding us liberal viewers the porridge we've come to love. The problem, of course, is this:

Lawrence isn't an expert or an authority on federal election law. Nor did he bother to interview people who do possess professional experience or expertise.

This same game was played on Anderson Cooper's program last night, including by non-expert Gloria Borger. As for MSNBC, one hour after Lawrence assured the world that the Trump Tower meeting was "totally, totally illegal," Joyce Vance appeared on The 11th Hour and, in fairness, said the matter isn't as clear as all that.

More on that tomorrow. For today, let's leave the realm of the emergent "cable news apes" and turn to Lawrence's second segment, in which a highly intelligent guest very much got it right.

The guest in question was Barry McCaffrey, a highly experienced retired four-star general. McCaffrey made it clear that he isn't professionally qualified to opine on the mental condition of Donald J. Trump. But after stating that disclaimer, McCaffrey voiced important counsel:

O'DONNELL (8/6/18): Tonight, retired four-star army general Barry McCaffrey [tweeted], "President Trump behavior becoming more alarming and illogical. In 55 years of service in the armed service, civil government and business, I have never encountered this level of anger, insulting behavior and outright separation from the truth."

And joining us now, General McCaffrey...

General McCaffrey, I want to get more of your reaction to what you are seeing from the president. I know you have been alarmed for a long time about what you hear from Donald Trump. But is this a new level of alarm for you?

MCCAFFREY: Well, look. I'm not qualified to talk about the president's mental state. I'm just talking about his behavior.

You know, I have been decades-long levels serving at the highest levels of the armed forces, civil government, the business community. I personally have never encountered this kind of behavior, the insulting nature dealing with—his clients are us. I mean, the business community does that, the armed forces, we would sack a commander who dealt that way with his soldiers.

So I think it's a great concern. We have got a couple of more years, at least, with President Trump as the chief executive. And it's looking very worrisome the way he's dealing with his domestic audience, as well as the international community.

[...]

MCCAFFREY: What we are now seeing is a complete separation between the facts on the ground in national security and foreign policy and what the president is saying. His team makes a lot of sense dealing with alliances, dealing with the real threat in North Korea and Iran. But the president's utterances—for example, coming home from Singapore and saying the nuclear threat is gone. Where did he come up with that? It is just hard to fathom what is going on.

To watch the whole segment, click this.

Quite correctly, McCaffrey acknowledged that he isn't professionally qualified to diagnose President Trump. But he went on to say that Trump's general behavior should be "a great concern."

He said he has never encountered such behavior from any authority figure. He said the president's behavior is "very worrisome"—that "it's hard to fathom what's going on."

Let us translate. McCaffrey was saying that something seems to be "wrong" with President Trump. Last Friday, Mika Brzezinski offered a similar appraisal at the start of the day's Morning Joe.

She said that Trump is "completely unhinged and getting worse." As someone who has known Trump for a number of years, she offered this appraisal of his "mental state:"

BRZEZINKSI (8/2/18): He's not well, that’s the bottom line. There’s no way anyone who knows Donald Trump, but has not bought in in some way, could watch him last night and not come away with the feeling that the president of the United States is completely unhinged and getting worse by the day...

Try to find someone who's not politically invested, or too fearful of Donald Trump or the Republican Party, who knew the man a decade ago who will tell you that his mental state has not deteriorated radically over the past few years, or changed, or come out in some way...You will not find that person from Donald Trump's past if they're telling you the truth.

To watch the whole segment, click here.

McCaffrey isn't a psychiatrist; Brzezinski isn't a clinician. That said, each was suggesting that something is seriously wrong with Donald J. Trump.

McCaffrey seemed to be talking about conditions resembling "mental illness;" Brzezinski seemed to be suggesting that Trump has suffered some sort of cognitive impairment. But they each suggested that something is wrong with the commander in chief—something which goes beyond bad politics or bad values.

We maintain our own long-held view. It seems to us that President Trump may be suffering from some version of "mentally illness." It seems to us that he may be suffering from some version of early-onset dementia. And it seems to us that these possibilities should be under discussion—though it's crazy to think that our press/pundit corps would ever be able to conduct such a difficult discussion.

Lawrence isn't an expert on campaign finance law; McCaffrey and Brzezinski aren't experts on the relevant medical conditions. But McCaffrey and Brzezinski were suggesting the need for a conversation. We think they each got it right.

Regarding Lawrence, he was spouting, very loudly, about a matter with respect to which he carries no particular expertise. As he did, he was serving the pleasing porridge his corporate owners want him to serve every night.

We liberal viewers were gulping it down. Are we just credulous apes?

BREAKING: The front page of our top newspaper!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2018

Drum lays waste to the Times: The New York Times is our nation's most famous newspaper.

It's also the most foppish and, perhaps for that reason, often the least competent. Silly piddle is everywhere in its big fat self-involved Sunday editions. And yesterday morning, on the Times' hard-copy front page, a heart-rending headline said this:

Bankruptcy Booms Among Older Americans as Safety Net Frays

On this morning's page A3 (hard-copy only), this shocking report is listed as one of "the three most read, shared and discussed posts from across nytimes.com."

The report "drew surprisingly little sympathy from commenters," the account on page A3 says.

There's only one problem with that front-page report. According to Kevin Drum, it's utterly, haplessly wrong. This is nothing new for the New York Times, as Drum perhaps seems to suggest.

You can read Drum's post yourself. We're guessing that Drum is right in what he says and that the glorious Times has managed to bungle again.

If Drum is right, that front-page report was grossly misleading at best, but mainly just hopelessly wrong. On that same front page, Shear and Schmidt offered their silly, second-grade level account of federal election law.

This past Sunday, one day earlier, the Times was crawling with utterly silly lifestyle/self-involvement reports. When a nation's alleged elites become this dumb and this self-involved, will that nation's Donald J. Trumps likely be far behind?

THE CREDULOUS APE: The rarest of "cable news" events!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2018

Part 2—Big star asks relevant question: Late last evening, we observed the rarest of cable events.

Shortly after 11 PM Eastern, Brian Williams asked a highly relevant question. Major "journalists" had been blowing past the basic key point involved in his question for months.

Brian spoke with legal commentator Joyce Vance. Incredibly, inexplicab;y, their exchange started like this:

WILLIAMS (8/6/18): Let me ask you a question about 52 U.S. Code 30121, which you, I have no doubt, have committed to memory years ago.

VANCE: I've read it a time or two, yes.

WILLIAMS: I figured.

Good God! Brian wanted to ask a legal question which cable had blown past for months!

Brian wanted to ask about 52 U.S. Code 30121, an important part of federal election law. Meanwhile, that exchange was designed to convince us viewers, the so-called "credulous apes," that we were being exposed to highly competent legal analysis.

Inevitably, Vance went on to interpret the law in such a way as to suggest that the Donald J. Trumps, Junior and Senior, will soon be rotting in jail.

So pleasing! But then, that's the product we liberals are served on this corporate "cable news" station. We return to the station night after night knowing which porridge is served.

Vance performed as expected. But the analysts had looked about in wild-eyed surprise even as Williams raised this highly relevant point.

For months, the nation's "journalists," cable and regular, had postponed discussion of this piece of federal law. Instead, they'd offered preferred accounts of what the law surely must mean.

All of a sudden, there was Brian, raising a highly relevant point! What could explain this behavior?

Our young analysts couldn't imagine where Brian had come by his question. But this morning, reading the New York Times, we saw this analysis piece by Charlie Savage, and the mystery had been solved.

Savage's legal analysis piece appears on page A14 of our hard-copy Times. He explores a basic question:

Does "a provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act, Section 30121 of Title 52," mean that Trump Junior broke federal law in seeking damaging information about Hillary Clinton from that Russkie lawyer? Is that what election law holds?

Savage's analysis is much less slanted than Vance's. (This may explain why Savage wasn't interviewed by Williams last night.)

You can read the Savage piece, some parts of which strike us as stronger than others. Even at 1200 words, Savage never fully quotes the relevant passage of 30121, and his clumsy semi-paraphrase strikes us as somewhat bungled.

That said, as he concludes his discussion of 30121, he quotes an expert who seems to be saying that this chunk of federal law doesn't forbid the whole Trump Tower fandango:

SAVAGE (8/7/18): Robert Bauer, a New York University election-law professor who served as White House counsel in the Obama administration, argued that the statute against foreign campaign assistance is so broadly worded that it covers Russia paying spies and hackers to collect and disseminate negative information about Mrs. Clinton to help Mr. Trump win the election—even expenses like their travel for the meeting.

But applying that law to negative information about a political candidate is a stretch, said Orin S. Kerr, a University of Southern California professor and former federal prosecutor.

“The phrase ‘contribution or donation’ sounds like a gift to help fund the campaign or give them something they otherwise would buy,” Mr. Kerr said.

Would 30121 render illegal what happened in Trump Tower? Savage presents a range of views, thus leaving the answer in doubt. By closing with Kerr, he may be suggesting that he tilts towards no.

At any rate:

Almost surely, Brian's staff saw Savage's piece on line last night and scripted Brian's question. Vance was there to offer us "credulous apes" the type of answer to which we've become accustomed.

We'll be talking more about 30121 as the week proceeds. For today, we ask you to recall that front-page report by Shear and Schmidt in yesterday's New York Times.

In this morning's New York Times, Savage offers a varied legal analysis, leaving resolution in doubt. As we showed you yesterday, no such scruples stopped Shear and Schmidt from presenting the simple-minded legal analysis they apparently like, or may even believe:

SHEAR AND SCHMIDT (8/6/18): While the president tried again on Sunday to portray the Trump Tower meeting as routine, it is being examined as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government. The president and his son have maintained that the campaign did not ultimately receive any damaging materials about Mrs. Clinton as a result of the meeting. But some legal experts contend that by simply sitting for the meeting, Donald Trump Jr. broke the law.

Really? It's illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual! Writing on something like second-grade level, Shear and Schmidt offered that childish paraphrase of the relevant federal law—of the unnamed 30121.

Shear and Schmidt were really keeping it simple. But is that conduct really illegal? Is it illegal for a campaign to accept "help" from a "foreign individual," if the help in question takes the form of information?

Is it illegal to receive information from a foreign individual! Stating what is blindingly obvious, the Clinton campaign solicited and received such "help" from an array of "foreign individuals" during its fateful campaign:

Christopher Steele is "a foreign individual!" So, presumably, were the unnamed sources for his famous dossier. Indeed, some of those sources may have been Russian individuals. They may have had "ties" to the Russkie government,as the Russkie lawyer allegedly does!

Is it illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual? The formulation strikes us as ludicrous on its face, but there it was, bold as brass, part pf a front-page news report in our dumbest, most famous newspaper.

One day later, a more specialized Times reporter basically said, Not so fast. Savage's lengthy analysis piece seemed to say that it's not that simple, and that it's not so stupid. That said, Savages piece appeared today on A14. Yesterday, the silly piddle by Shear and Schmidt was, inevitably, part of a front-page report.

Do the provisions of 30121 make Trump and Trump's conduct illegal? The multimillionaire corporate stars who pose as "cable news" journalists had been blowing past this question for months. (So, of course, had the New York Times, as we finally see this morning.)

In the absence of serious analysis, waves of corporate hacks had been paraded across our TV screens, offering highly slanted analyses which serve the tribal narrative. Across the globe, zoologists had watched these unfolding events. As they watched this steady stream of reassuring tribal porridge, they had begin to rethink the earlier breakthrough authored by Desmond Morris.

Morris had called us the naked ape. International experts are now widely subbing in a different word:

Credulous ape, these high-ranking experts have now widely said.

Tomorrow: Natasha had said the same thing!

Transcript of the Williams show: At some point, it should appear here.

BREAKING: The very rare Howler sports report!

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2018

Back when the Red Sox could hit: We rarely do sports reports around here. Recent reports about the Red Sox have led to today's rare exception.

We were triggered in part by Dave Sheinin's recent report in the Washington Post. Sheinin described the Sox as "this summer's top contender to join the list of the greatest teams in history."

Sheinin, please! Sure, the Red Sox are winning some games. But we prefer to recall the days when the Red Sox could actually hit!

Those days were before our time. But if you want to learn the basic history, let's start with the greatest slugging shortstop whose name you've never heard.

Over a three-season stretch, this slugging shortstop amassed 440 RBIs [sic] for the heavy-hitting Sox. Even so, you've never heard of Junior Stephens! His three-year stretch charts like this:

RBIs by Vern "Junior" Stephens
1948: 137
1949: 159
1950: 144

Did we mention the fact that Stephens was the Red Sox shortstop? Those numbers are hard to believe, but he played among so many hitters his statistics have been forgotten.

(In 1949 and 1950, Stephens led the American League in RBIs. But in each year, he was actually tied for the league lead by one of his Red Sox teammates!)

When were the Red Sox able to hit? We'll refer you to the 1950 squad, "one of only six MLB teams to score more than 1,000 runs in a season in the modern era (post-1900)."

The Red Sox could hit that year! Little-remembered Billy Goodman won the American League batting title. But there was no shortage of hitters:

Batting averages, 1950 Red Sox
Billy Goodman, Utility: .354
Dom DiMaggio, CF: .328
Al Zarilla, RF: .325
Walt Dropo, IB: .322
Ted Williams, LF: .317
Johnny Pesky, 3B: .312
Birdie Tebbetts, C: .310
Vern Stephens, SS: .295
Bobby Doerr, 2B: .294

How did Goodman get enough at-bats to win the batting title? Therein lies a tragic tale, a tale involving Ted Williams.

Williams had 159 RBIs in 1949, matching his teammate Stephens. Midway through 1950, he was on a pace to top that!

He'd missed seven early-season games with some sort of injury. But at the time of the All-Star game, with the Red Sox 154-game season exactly half over, his power numbers looked like this:

Williams at the all-star break, 1950:
Games played: 70 (out of 77)
Home runs: 25
RBIs: 82

"Ballgame" had amassed 82 RBIs in his first 70 games! If he'd merely matched that output in the remaining 77 names, he would have ended the season with 50 HR and 164 RBIs. If he'd been able to play in every remaining game, the projections would have bumped up from there.

Alas! Ballgame broke his arm in the All-Star game. He didn't return until mid-September. Amazingly, the Red Sox managed to score over 1000 runs with one of baseball's greatest all-time hitters restricted to 89 games.

As for Stephens, his career was compromised at its start by World War II, at its end by injuries incurred in 1951. (Playing for the Browns, he led the league in RBIs in 1944, one of MLB's asterisked "war years.") As a shortstop, he knocked in roughly ten million runs and nobody knows his name.

At any rate, the Boston Red Sox could really hit in those days! Every genuine Red Sox fan expects that kind of offensive performance, top to bottom in the lineup, pretty much every year.

Washington Nationals, please: A week or so back, the Washington Nationals beat the Mets, 25-4. We actually follow the Nationals now. But really—Washington Nationals, please!

Who will forget those back-to-back games in June 1950 when the St. Louis Browns were foolish enough to show up at Fenway Park? Little mercy was extended:

June 6, 1950: Red Sox 20, Browns 4
June 7, 1950: Red Sox 29, Browns 4

Those were midweek afternoon games. Baseball was different then. Total attendance for the two games: 11,764.

On June 26, the Red Sox got untracked again, beating the A's in Philadelphia, 22-14. They'd gone for 20 three times in three weeks! Sadly, they never broke 20 again after Williams got hurt.

In those days, the Red Sox could hit. In 1948 and 1949, they lost the pennant on the last day of the season. In 1950, the Yankees beat them by four games. Did we mention the fact that Teddy Ballgame was hurt?

These events were before our time. But in that era, unlike today, the Red Sox could actually hit!

BREAKING: A remarkable statement in the Times!

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2018

Shear and Schmidt stampede: On the front page of today's New York Times, Michael Shear and Michael Schmidt report on Donald J. Trump's recent statements about the meeting in Trump Tower with the Russkie lawyer.

We expect to discuss that meeting at length this week. For today, we'll only call attention to the remarkable highlighted statement:

SHEAR AND SCHMIDT (8/6/18): While the president tried again on Sunday to portray the Trump Tower meeting as routine, it is being examined as part of Mr. Mueller’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians to undermine Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government. The president and his son have maintained that the campaign did not ultimately receive any damaging materials about Mrs. Clinton as a result of the meeting. But some legal experts contend that by simply sitting for the meeting, Donald Trump Jr. broke the law.

"It is illegal for a campaign to accept help from a foreign individual or government?"

Do we really think that's true? Consider:

If the "help" in question takes the form of information, here's what the Times scribes have said:

It's illegal for a campaign to accept information from a foreign individual.

Could any sane person believe that? And by the way, just while we're at it—isn't that what Hillary did?

Alas! When we humans start killing the pig, our attention to detail goes by the board. Gathering in our tribal groups, we start making ridiculous statements—and everyone swears they make sense.

Over the July 29 weekend, we were struck by a similar statement by The Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand. Now the statement appears in a front-page report in the New York Times, waved into print by an unnamed editor.

Is it illegal for a campaign, or a candidate, to accept information from a foreign individual? Can any sane person really believe that? And isn't that what Hillary Clinton, perfectly sensibly, did?

More to come, all week.

THE CREDULOUS APE: Why did Manafort wear a suit?

MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 2018

Part 1—Rationalize this: Back in the 1960s, leading zoologist Desmond Morris had a key idea.

He wrote a book, The Naked Ape, based upon this idea. The leading authority on his book sums it up like this:

The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal is a 1967 book by zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris that looks at humans as a species and compares them to other animals. The Human Zoo, a follow-up book by Morris that examined the behaviour of people in cities, was published in 1969.

The Naked Ape, which was serialized in the Daily Mirror newspaper and has been translated into 23 languages, depicts human behavior as largely evolved to meet the challenges of prehistoric life as a hunter. The book was so named because out of 193 species of monkeys and apes, only humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are not covered in hair. Morris, the author, who had been the curator of mammals at London Zoo, said his book was intended to popularize and demystify science.

Morris said that Homo sapiens not only have the largest brains of all higher primates, but that sexual selection in human evolution has caused humans to have the highest ratio of penis size to body mass...

Forget that part about ratios! According to Morris, of all the species of monkeys and apes, only members of our own species "are not covered in hair."

The Naked Ape generated a lot of buzz. It even inspired a same's-the-same 1973 film starring Victoria Principal—a film which was "very loosely based on the book," according to the leading authority on the Tinseltown production.

That said, Morris' book is rarely discussed today. In this era, leading experts more commonly refer to our species as the gossipy or credulous ape.

Why have so many international experts adopted this weltanschauung—this framework, perspective, way of thinking, general understanding or possibly even this paradigm or heuristic? (Plural: "weltanschauungs.")

Why are international experts describing us as the credulous ape? According to two anonymous people who say they know what they're talking about, the framework arose from comments on "cable news" last Tuesday night concerning the Manafort trial. Even for cable, last Tuesday's statements were so odd that they have transformed international understanding of the nature of the human animal.

The first of these statements was made by Nicolle Wallace, guest host on the Maddow show that evening. Wallace's 4 PM program, Deadline: Kaffeeklatsch, is a rollicking album of current gossip about Donald J. Trump, the badly disordered yet captivating American head of state.

Last Tuesday night, Wallace was filling in Rachel Maddow, who had taken several days off to work on the hand gestures involved in her "performance of the Rachel figure." The Manafort trial had begun that day with rapid jury selection, followed by opening statements. As she spoke with Politico's Josh Gerstein, Wallace posed a puzzling question:

WALLACE (7/31/18): Can you—I read this and I wonder about this— If I read this correctly, he [Manafort] was wearing a suit today.

GERSTEIN: Right.

WALLACE: We've seen other photos where he's wearing a jumpsuit. The jurors will not be informed, or see any images of him wearing that jumpsuit. Why would that be?

Wallace asked why Manafort was wearing a suit in court instead of his all-green prison attire. An array of international experts have suggested that this may qualify as the dumbest question ever asked.

"Even on cable," one expert sadly said.

Gerstein offered a somewhat convoluted version of the blindingly obvious answer. Along the way, he even said that it might be "prejudicial" were the jurors to see the defendant "shackled," or even "in handcuffs."

Wallace then offered a jesting remark about the already famous "ostrich coat." Panelists enjoyed a good laugh.

Already, experts were shifting uneasily in their swivel chairs. But two hours later, it happened again!

Brian Williams spoke with Gerstein about the trial, but also with Cynthia Alksne. Turning to Alksne, he proceeded to ask the same ridiculous question, answering it as he did:

WILLIAMS (7/31/18): Cynthia, you're the lawyer here, so I got two more for you. Number one is another mechanical question. Tell the folks watching why it is that Paul Manafort—and we've established he likes him some high-end menswear—is able to wear a suit in court, even though we have seen his booking photo in the green jumpsuit that prisoners wear in that part of the state of Virginia.

Is it courtesy, and is it because coming in in a prison jumpsuit would be instantly visually prejudicial?

ALKSNE: Yes, it is. It's more fair for him to appear in front of the jury in a suit than it is an orange jumpsuit.

WILLIAMS: All right.

ALKSNE: And there's no reason to humiliate him in that way. There's enough happening in the courtroom as it is.

Williams answered his own question, then let Alksne say that he was right. In different circumstances, Alksne suggested, humiliation of the defendant might have been called for. This is why a cable channel brings legal experts in!

(Williams had already joked about the ostrich coat in an earlier exchange with Gerstein. This explains his entertaining aside about the way Manafort, unlike the clotheshorse Williams, "likes him some high-end menswear."

By now, jibes about the ostrich jacket were mandated by Hard Pundit Law. "Cable news" has long since established itself as a gossip/entertainent medium.

Even so, international obsevers were taken aback by the sheer dumbness of the question Wallace and Williams both asked:

Why was Manafort allowed to appear in a regular suit? Why wasn't he forced to appear in a bright orange prison jumpsuit?

Two major stars of "cable news" had actually asked this question! One of the stars had explicitly said that she was puzzled, perhaps even flummoxed, by this state of affairs.

The sheer absurdity of this question was noted by savants worldwide. "Surely, this is the gossiping, credulous, or even perhaps the braindead ape," successors to the late Desmond Morris were soon saying at sparely attended professional gatherings.

For today, let's state the obvious. Obviously, Wallace and Williams never thought that Manafort would appear before the jury in his orange or green jumpsuit.

No one thought he'd be presented in shackles or in handcuffs. No one thought he'd be frogmarched in, arms pulled back and head shoved very low.

(Abundant evidence made that unnecessary, Alksne seemed to suggest.)

It's hard to believe that anyone at The One True Channel actually thought that cable viewers, however gullible, distracted or dumb, would actually need this point explained. Still, the question was asked, on two separate programs!

Two cable stars asked the ridiculous question. Around the world, traditional weltanschauungs began to crack under the strain.

Morris said that we were naked. Aristotle is said to have called us "rational."

In the wake of last Tuesday's events, experts are aggressively throwing that earlier construction away. They're playing tape of Wallace and Williams, after which they're sadly saying:

Go ahead! Rationalize this!

Some of these experts have even asked an additional question: How credulous do we apes have to be to watch cable programs like these? Could it be that, in the end, we're just the credulous ape?

Tomorrow: Foer explains

BREAKING: The Manafort trial, round and flat!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018

Dumbnification is powerful: Dumbnification is powerful.

It's also semi-ubiquitous. Dumbnification seems to be an essential part of our so-called human nature, a fact the modern mainstream press corps has worked to make quite clear.

We marveled at the dumbnification as we watched Chris Hayes last night. (He was assisted in part of the dumbnification by NBC's Julia Ainsley.)

In today's hard-copy Washington Post, Alexandra Petri's op-ed column is a monument to dumbnification. All these acts of dumbnification involve the Manafort trial.

Within the workings of the mainstream press, dumbnification is quickly converted to script. For today, let's discuss the Post's hard-copy news report about the Manafort trial.

The report bears the bylines of four Post scribes, though it's less than 900 words long. In the news report's first ten paragraphs, we're offered some very basic facts.

No dumbnification intrudes at this point. Hard-copy headline included:

WEINER, ZAPOTOSKY, BALINGIT AND THOMPSON (8/4/18): Manafort jury told of false filings, undisclosed accounts

One of Paul Manafort's accountants testified Friday that she went along with falsifying his tax records because she was afraid to confront a longtime client.

Cindy Laporta said that in 2015, Manafort's right-hand man, Rick Gates, told her his boss couldn't afford to pay his taxes. To ease that burden, she said, Gates instructed her to misrepresent $900,000 in income as a business loan.

[...]

Laporta, who testified after she was granted immunity, said "I very much regret" the decision to go along with a plan that she estimated saved Manafort at least $400,000 in taxes.

[...]

[LaPorta] testified that she also helped Manafort obtain millions in loans fraudulently, including by representing rental property as a second home, sending a bank a loan-forgiveness letter she believed to be forged, and telling another bank Manafort expected a $2.4 million payment when she had "no idea" if it was true.

In those passages, readers are given basic information. Manafort's accountant testified that she helped Manafort and Gates 1) falsify tax records and 2) obtain bank loans through fraud.

That's basic information about what was said at the trial. Soon thereafter, the scripted dumbnification occurs. What follows is dumbnification:

WEINER, ZAPOTOSKY, BALINGIT AND THOMPSON: [Assistant U.S. Attorney Uzo] Asonye guided jurors through the details of the alleged tax fraud, showing them Manafort's personal and business tax returns. Even as testimony turned complicated, the jurors appeared to pay careful attention. Several took notes in black notebooks, and virtually all looked at the monitors in front of them as attorneys zoomed in on portions of documents they sought to highlight.

During recent years, Manafort reported making healthy incomes—$504,744 in 2010; $3,071,409 in 2011; $5,361,007 in 2012; $1,910,928 in 2013; $2,984,210 in 2014. But prosecutors say he was making millions more from his work in Ukraine, stashing it in foreign bank accounts and using it to buy luxuries such as a now- infamous $15,000 ostrich-leather bomber jacket.

According to the quartet of reporters, the jurors paid close attention to basic documentary evidence concerned the alleged tax fraud. They were being offered basic facts, and they were taking notes.

For us at home, a bit of thoroughly entertaining dumbnification followed. We were offered the entertainment, and the mandated gossip, involving the now-iconic ostrich jacket.

Just how dumb is the highlighted passage? The passage is this dumb:

According to the four reporters, Manafort was receiving millions of dollars in unreported income. And how was he using that money?

He used the millions of dollars to buy a $15,000 item! Obviously, this construction make no sense, except as an example of scripted dumbnification.

The mandate emerged quite quickly this week—the ostrich must always be mentioned. It's a way of entertaining us rubes. It's also an item of gossip, a way of "killing the pig."

In this case, the four reporters were even willing to identify the jacket as an artifact of irrelevant script. It isn't simply an ostrich-leather jacket, they say. They specifically say that it's the "now-infamous" ostrich jacket, the one that a cast of millions have been clowning about.

When reporters behave this way, they're telling you that they regard you as basically dumb. They're also saying that they regard you as lovers of gossip.

Beyond that, they're telling you something about themselves—that they themselves are creatures of gossip. According to Professor Harari, our warlike species, Homo sapiens, drove all other humans to extinction when this new capability emerged.

Those journalists! They regard you as the sort of people who enjoy killing the pig. In this particular case, the reporters gave us the basic facts—but then, we got our dessert!

The nature of that one "now-infamous" purchase has nothing to do with the basic elements of this trial. Undisclosed income does; so do fraudulent loan statements.

That said, reports of the use to which Manafort put his (undisclosed) income is purely an entertainment function. It's also a matter of gossip, in which legions of leather-wearing liberals are encouraged to see their moral superiority to That Guy, the one Over There.

Hayes should be ashamed of himself for various things he did last night. Petri's column is her usual piffle. That said, this sort of silly scripted gossip is what our press corps likes best.

We'll remind you again—it was Candidate Gore whose wardrobe was frisked by the "mainstream press" for two solid years in one recent election. That disgraceful, relentless conduct was accepted by one and all. In the end, it sent George W. Bush to the White House, where he started an ill-advised war.

People are dead all over the world because the children gossiped and invented fictions about various items of clothing. But it's the game they love the most.

The ostrich stays in the news report! By now, it's a matter of script.

The most faux moment of all: We're sure that Ainsley is a thoroughly decent person. That said, we'll ask you again: Does anyonee escape cable news with their basic values intact?

The analysts groaned at the exchange shown below. This moment was thoroughly faux, but also rather familiar:

HAYES (8/3/18): You know, there's something here as I, as I read testimony in the case and as I've sort of paged through some of the, some of the bits of evidence the government has entered, Julia, that there's a desperation here that's almost cinematic. I mean, you can feel it wafting off the e-mails right? These are people that are scrounging and starved for cash.

AINSLEY: Desperation is the word here, Chris. I'm glad you use that, because I think that's the one word that the prosecution wants to have sticking in the jurors' mind would they go to deliberate. They want to show that this man was desperate enough that he would have worked with these incredibly shady characters like Viktor Yanukovych, that he would have falsified his tax returns. He would have even put his whole business and family at risk because he was so desperate. There was even a point brought up yesterday, he got to a point he might not even be able to pay his own health care premiums, but he still wanted to be able to fund the lifestyle and keep the house in the Hamptons.

This was a man who was desperate, not only to survive, but to keep up his own image. He was desperate, not in a way that you or I might be financially desperate, but desperate to kind of hold onto this kind of pseudo-power that he had amassed around him.

Manafort wasn't financially desperate in the way Ainsley and Hayes might be! Our journos are working stiffs like us, such comments may seem to say.

In such ways, journalists may sometimes try to keep us from grasping the lay of the land in a big-money medium like cable news.

Chris Hayes is very bright; last night, he played it entertaining and dumb through various parts of his hour. How much money is he paid to make these adjustments to his substantial intelligence?

You aren't allowed to know such things! In fact, you're widely encouraged to misunderstand the size of the payments involved.

People will do lots of things for large amounts of cash. It seems that was true in Manafort's life. To what extent is that ancient fact true in the realm of entertaining, ratings-based "cable news?"

People are dead all over the world in part because we don't ask.

GOSSIP OR JOURNO: Burying our heads in the sand!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2018

Part 4—No ostrich left behind: "Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers [sic] brought forth on this continent a new nation..."

We believe Abraham Lincoln said that.

"About 70,000 years ago, Sapiens from East Africa spread into the Arabian peninsula, and from there they quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass."

Yuval Noah Harari said that. He said it in his widely-acclaimed 2011 best-seller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

By "Sapiens," Harari meant member of our widely-acclaimed and thus self-impressed species, Homo sapiens. According to Harari, chance mutations to our pre-existing "massive brain" gave our ancestors important new capabilities—the ability to "gossip," and the ability to create, believe and affirm highly potent group "fictions."

These emergent capabilities let our ancestors drive all other human species into extinction. Or so Harari says.

Homo erectus got wiped out. So did the Neanderthals. Today, we're left with Anderson Cooper, appearing on CNN last night beneath this pitiful chyron:

RICHES TO (OSTRICH) RAGS STORY

Sad! But that's the chyron CNN aired at 8:15 PM Eastern last night, as Cooper teased his upcoming report about the Manafort trial.

After a commercial break, Cooper displayed his trademark furrowed brow, the signal that he's now pretending to be serious. When Jessica Schneider made the report, the ostrich stayed in the picture:

SCHNEIDER: [Still no transcript. Sad!]

Quickly, Schneider got to the ostrich. Later, in fleeting fashion, she fleetingly mentioned the alleged crimes with which Manafort has been charged.

The ostrich is part of the entertainment; it's also part of the gossip.

According to Harari, the ability to gossip was one of the new abilities which let our species triumph long ago. Back then, it was a survival skill. Today, it's simply dumb—and it's found all over modern American journalism, wherever our sad species goes.

In 1999 and 2000, the gossip was about earth tones. The children kept it up right through election day, sending George Bush to the White House.

Today, the gossip and the fun concerns that ostrich jacket. In this morning's Washington Post, Robin Givhan offers one of the dumbest reports ever published, with the ostrich center stage.

Givhan's report is on the first page of the paper's pathetic Style section. Above it is another low-IQ report, this time about one of the stars of a 2004 teenage reality show.

Borrowing again from President Lincoln, a people willing to be this dumb is unlikely to "long endure." More likely, they'll produce a President Trump:

Who knows where it goes from there?

Go ahead—read Givhan's report. Would she be able to name the crimes of which Manafort stands acuused? There's very little sign that she could.

Instead, Givhan is dumbing the public down, in precisely the way the judge in the case is stopping prosecutors from dumbing the jurors down. In court, a judge can stop the dumbnification. But dumbnification has long been the fuel on which our press corps runs.

Does anyone in "cable news" escape the dumbnification? Sadly, evidence to the contrary only continues to mount.

Last night, Barbara McQuade discussed the trial on the Maddow Show, with Ari Melber guest hosting. Josh Gerstein appeared along with McQuade, who's a thoroughly competent "former federal prosecutor and MSNBC analyst."

Melber played the ostrich card early and often. Amazingly, McQuade specifically argued that letting the jurors see photos of the jacket wouldn't be "more prejudicial than probative."

It isn't enough to tell the jurors how much money Manafort was spending. By this theory, you have to show them photos of the items which were purchased.

The slowest of all pre-Neanderthals would have snorted at this idea But all three players—Melber, Gerstein and McQuade—pimped this silly idea, since this is what "cable news" does.

How does a photo of the ostrich jacket support the government's charges? And by the way-—amid all the enjoyable joking, to what extent have you even seen anyone explain what those charges are?

On cable news, on page one of Style, such things aren't at issue. These orgs exist to entertain, and they exist to spread gossip around.

The children are having lots of fun discussing the ostrich jacket. Heads have been buried for many years as to where this amusement is leading.

In 1999 and 2000, they amused themselves, and propagandized us, with the irrelevant earth tones. As late as July 29, 2007, the New York Times was still posting formal corrections of new misstatements about the tones. It was now almost eight years later. Their gossip never dies!

Long before that, people had died all over the world because of that these apes had done. But nothing stops them from their clowning when the next opportunity knocks.

Harai stresses the fact that we're "humans" and "animals." On a few occasions, he even lowers the boom, describing as one branch of the "genus of apes."

Seventy thousand years have passed since the chance mutations on which Harari places so much stress. At that time, we started to gossip, the gentleman says.

Next week, we'll examine what Natasha Bertrand wrote as we explore our big-brained species' "information aversion." Tomorrow, the rarest of all events at this site:

Mika Brzezinski gets it right! Indeed, on this morning's Morning Joe, she got it very right!

BREAKING: The judge is shielding the Manafort jury!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 2018

No one can is there to shield you: What hasn't Paul Manafort agreed to cop a plea?

The experts have been speculating about that question this week. Some have said that he may be hoping for a pardon. We've seen no one suggest that he may realize that it only takes one Trump supporter on a jury to kill a guilty verdict.

According to reports, Manafort was unusually active and animated during jury selection. Is he hoping that opponents of the "witch hunt" and the Deep State might make a conviction impossible?

Since cable news is round-the-clock speculation, we're amazed that we still haven't seen anyone speculate that.

Last night, Jill Wine-Banks was complaining that Trump was trying to poison the jury with yesterday's tweets. Please! He's been poisoning potential jurors for well over a year. The children are so busy laughing and playing that no one has thought about that.

In the courtroom, the judge is apparently shielding the jury from presentations that would be "more prejudicial than probative." He isn't letting the prosecutors use the loaded term "oligarchs." He isn't letting the prosecutors show the jurors all those photos of Manafort's fancy clothes. That includes the famous ostrich jacket!

In such ways, judges shield jurors from the occasional baser instincts of prosecutors, who are human like everyone else. But who will shield the "cable news" viewers from manifest bullshit like this?

MELBER (8/1/18): Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade and politico's Josh Gerstein, thank you both.

We have one more note as we've been talking all about this. Manafort has those expensive tastes and that includes, we're going to show you, a $15,000 ostrich coat. Josh just mentioned it.

[PHOTO OF OSTRICH JACKET APPEARS]

We want you to see it because you're not a juror. So, you have every right to the information out there. Here is, we submit to you, the ostrich coat in question, and we submit it to you without comment.

We'll be right back.

Sad!

Melber was guest hosting for Rachel Maddow, in whose world prosecutors are never out over their skis, let alone wrong in some way. Although she's very good at hiding it, Rachel is all about throwing The Others in jail.

In fairness to Melber, he was almost surely reading text prepared by Maddow's staffers. But when he showed you the ostrich "coat" "because you have every right to the information," you were being treated like children, also like fools.

You were being talked down to. It's a way of life on cable.

The judge is shielding the jurors, as judges should. No one is there to shield or protect the lowly cable viewer.

GOSSIP OR JOURNO: Good solid fun!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 2018

Interlude—Speculations, enjoyment, distractions: Did the events described below really occur?

Lawrence seems to thunk they didn't. The events are described right at the start of a New York Times news report:

SCHMIDT AND HABERMAN (8/2/18): President Trump pushed his lawyers in recent days to try once again to reach an agreement with the special counsel’s office about his sitting for an interview, flouting their advice that he should not answer investigators’ questions, three people briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Mr. Trump has told advisers he is eager to meet with investigators to clear himself of wrongdoing, the people said. In effect, he believes he can convince the investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, of his belief that their own inquiry is a “witch hunt.”

Has Donald J. Trump been flouting his lawyers' advice? Is he eager to meet with Mueller's maulers? Has he been pushing his lawyers to find a way to let the interview happen?

Please note! The New York Times hasn't reported that those events did happen. Schmidt and Haberman have merely reported that this is what "three people...said."

Who are those three people? Times readers aren't told. Also, please note this:

Based upon the attribution, the three unnamed people cited as sources didn't claim that they actually saw Trump making this heartfelt plea. The three people had merely been "briefed on the matter," the two Times tyros said.

The three unnamed people had been told that these events occurred. Or so they said, to the New York Times—and the Times then wrote it on up, without attempting to explain why we should believe this.

Let's be fair! It's always possible that the events in question really did occur. It's possible that Donald J. Trump really has been pushing his lawyers to get him a date with the witch hunt.

It's possible that these events occurred, but Lawrence O'Donnell's a skeptic. Last night, on his "cable news" show, he did something very rare—he openly mocked the work of the Times, though of course without naming scribe names.

Lawtence spoke with Tim O'Brien, a reliable "cable news" guest:

LAWRENCE (8/1/18): Tim, there's a report in the New York Times tonight about the status of the interview discussion, which this program's official position is, it's always been fraudulent. There's never a chance that Donald Trump would ever sit down for an interview with the special prosecutor.

There's an especially gullible passage in the New York Times report tonight saying, "Mr. Trump has told advisers he is eager to meet with investigators to clear himself of wrongdoing, the people said. In effect, he believes he can convince the investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, of his belief that their own inquiry is a 'witch hunt.' "

Now, I don't believe the New York Times has ever printed a more gullible sentence that [sic] Donald Trump believes he can convince Mueller's team that what they're doing is a witch hunt.

Lawrence said the New York Times had been especially gullible. He seemed to say there was no chance that Trump had actually pushed his lawyers in the way Schmidt and Habo described.

Lawrence may be right in his several speculations. That said, Tim O'Brien came right back with this:

O'BRIEN (continuing directly): You know, I'm going to surprise you, because I actually think that sounds very much like Donald Trump to me.

LAWRENCE (laughing): You think he's that sick! (Laughs again)

In effect, O'Brien went on to say that Trump is so crazily self-assured that he probably does want to meet with the Muellermen. David Corn joined Lawrence in enjoying a good solid laugh about the surprising demurral.

So it goes on "cable news," where speculation rules. So it goes in the New York Times, where news reports are based on what three unnamed people say that some other unnamed person said.

So it goes all through the upper-end press as The Chase provides readers and viewers with exciting "true crime" dynamics. We get to enjoy the thrill of The Chase as the artifacts of traditional news all but disappear.

Night after night after "groundhog night," the same conversations occur. These conversations are drawn from the same pleasing scripts. Attempts at developing real information very rarely appear. The entertainers rarely get around to important ancillary questions.

Does Donald want to sit down with Bob? Lawrence offered one speculation; O'Brien offered another. There's no way to know what's actually true, but laughter occurred all around.

That said, there was also plenty of good solid fun as Anderson Cooper spoke with Jessica Schneider about the Manafort trial. Schneider delivered a capsule report. Cooper provided distraction:

COOPER (8/1/18): I was very confused yesterday, as you know, about the notion of an ostrich coat, which I thought meant ostrich feathers. Sadly, it apparently doesn't. There were pictures introduced into evidence, right?

SCHNEIDER: So, there were pictures. Prosecutors have plenty of these pictures not only of that illustrious ostrich coat, but these luxury watches, all of the luxury clothing that Paul Manafort had. And what's interesting about this is they have entered it into evidence. However, the jury has not actually seen these photos...

However, the jury will see these pictures once they go back into the jury room after the case, both sides have rested. When they go into their deliberations, of course they're not allowed to watch TV, not allowed to see any of the news articles about this trial. So likely, Anderson, they won't be seeing it on your show or elsewhere. But yes, they will get these pictures that show just how lavishly Paul Manafort lived.

COOPER: The ostrich coat is a little disappointing, to be honest, now that I've seen the pictures. Did the prosecution say why they might not call Gates as a witness?

We're not sure if Schneider was right about the jury seeing those pictures. She didn't mention the fact that the judge has been treating much of this bullshit as a distraction—in effect, as "more prejudicial than probative."

Anderson used the non-existent ostrich feathers as a helpful distraction too. He livened up the dreary hour with some good solid fun concerning a humorous fiction.

He knew there were no ostrich feathers, but he played the card anyhoo. On Tuesday night, the silly featherweight piddle had made its cable debut:

COOPER (7/31/18): So what did we learn today at the trial?

SCHNEIDER: Anderson, we learned a lot. It was only the first day here, but this courtroom is definitely living up to its "rocket docket" reputation. They managed to whittle down this jury pool of 65 people down to 12 jurors plus four alternates, and then, of course, we heard the fiery opening statements here.

In this, prosecutors shed some light on Paul Manafort's lavish lifestyle, and they did it by talking about his 30 hidden foreign bank accounts they say existed in three different countries and they say that funded that lavish lifestyle that included seven different homes ranging from Virginia to Manhattan all the way to the Hamptons on Long Island.

They also talked about his $500,000 luxury clothing. They mentioned a $21,000 watch, and they even, yes, mentioned a $15,000 jacket made of ostrich...

COOPER: I've been thinking about a jacket the Paul Manafort is wearing, made out of ostrich, and when you said that, initially I thought you meant ostrich feathers, and I was like, "Oh please let there be a picture of Paul Manafort in a jacket of ostrich feathers!" I realize it's ostrich skin.

SCHNEIDER: There may be.

COOPER:It's probably leather. How does Rick Gates fit into all of this?

On Tuesday night, "Coop" was like, "Oh please let there be a picture of Paul Manafort in a jacket of ostrich feathers!" By that time, he already knew that there was no such jacket, but so what?

Coop knew there were no ostrich feathers, but so what? He played the amusing card again last night! In short, cable news is good solid fun—just as it was, back in the day, when it was the (perfectly normal) clothing of Candidate Gore these multimillionaire corporate idiots were endlessly clowning about, night after night, for months.

That horseplay sent Candidate Bush to the White House, and thus sent us into Iraq.

Cable news is fun—and it isn't just cable! This morning, the New York Times is also fun as Katie Rogers has some fun with Trump's latest ridiculous comment.

We refer to the commander's comment about needing ID at the grocery store. Rogers did a stand-alone news report in which she briefly discussed—and baldly distorted—past press corps amusements:

ROGERS (8/2/18): Past presidents have also faced charges of out-of-touch, knife-and-fork elitism.

President George Bush was teased for not knowing how to work a grocery store scanner—in his defense he was actually marveling over the newfangled technology—during his failed campaign for re-election in 1992. President Barack Obama was once heckled by Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump’s favorite human megaphone, for ordering Dijon mustard (too fancy!) on a cheeseburger.

Even Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s current personal lawyer who once had Oval Office ambitions, made headlines in 2007 when it was clear he had no idea how much a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk might cost a consumer.

It's true. People like Rogers have been pimping these inanities for the past 30-plus years.

Trump's statement this week didn't seem to make, like so many things he says. But back in 1992, President Bush was widely mocked—he was very much not "teased"—by a bogus report about that scanner, a bogus report which originated, where else, in Rogers' own New York Times.

Four years later, Candidate Lamar Alexander was mugged at the end of the New Hampshire primary by a press corps jihad about the price of bread and milk. It's entirely possible that this brain-dead press corps jihad swung New Hampshire to Candidate Pat Buchanan. To all appearances, the silly behavior by the journos badly hurt Alexander's chances.

The press corps' behavior that fateful week was silly, dumb, addled and stupid. They'd occasionally played the price of bread-and-milk card ever since David Broder invented it long ago.

According to Professor Harari, our species conquered, long ago, because our ancestors developed 1) the ability to "gossip" and 2) the ability to create, believe and affirm highly potent group "fictions." To this very day, our press corps tends to specialize in those very same low-grade skills.

As the journalists gossip, simper and play, little effort is made to explore extremely basic questions.

We'll try to list some such questions tomorrow. We'll start with what Natasha wrote.

Tomorrow: Isn't that what Hillary did?

The winter of 96: Back in the winter of 96, we parodied the assault on Alexander through our weekly hard-copy publication, The Election Town Crier.

Our award-winning headline winningly said, in part, "Witty scribes put the pun back in pundit." Our report went something like this:

DERRY, N.H.—What’s the price of milk and a dozen large eggs? And shouldn’t “outsider” hopefuls be able to tell you?

To USA Today’s Judy Keen and Joe Urschel, it was news when Lamar Alexander couldn’t answer. They filed page-one reports from New Hampshire this week that had candidates scrambling for cover.

Reporters love the old-fashioned “price-of-milk-and-eggs” story because it involves information so simple that even they can explain it. And it lets talented wordsmiths like Keen and Urschel showcase their staples-based punning.

On Wednesday, Keen milked the story for all it was worth, leaving the Tennessee walker with egg on his face. When the hard-boiled Urschel followed suit the next day, Alexander must have felt drawn and quart-ered!

The next hapless hopeful to be knocked “over easy” was the bumbling ex-front runner, publishing magnate Steve Forbes. He would be rendered a real Grade A foil by his collection of Faberge eggs.

Straight-faced reporters asked the whipping-boy Forbes what he thought a dozen large eggs might be running. When he priced the twelve “eggs” around six million dollars, his high-priced campaign was now toast!

Others would handle the question better, made aware of the mayhem out on the trail. Pat Buchanan received reports from the nation’s storm cellars describing the cost of survivalist rations. And Morry Taylor punished scribes with long-winded raps on the cost of a good set of tires.

But the press corps had worked its time-honored magic, forcing the hopefuls to focus on issues. For this wasn’t some silly straw poll, after all. This was New Hampshire—the cream of the crop!

Oh yes. Buchanan rolled to an upset win over Dole. Winning margarine? What else—one percent!

Let's face it, folks. That's entertainment!

BREAKING: The gods are laughing at us now!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2018

New York Times explores cats versus dogs: Amanda Hess graduated from George Washington U in 2007. That suggests that she isn't a child.

We can't necessarily say the same for her editors at the New York Times. Yesterday, we saw this on the Times' page A3, then quickly repressed the experience:

The Conversation
FOUR OF THE MOST READ, SHARED AND DISCUSSED POSTS FROM ACROSS NYTIMES.COM

[...]

4. Dogs Took Over the Internet. Our Souls Are at Stake.
Monday's most watched video was the first episode of the second season of "Internetting With Amanda Hess," in which Ms. Hess explains how "the online rivalry between cats and dogs plays out like a battle for the soul of the Internet."

It was Monday's most watched video! We marked this in our hard-copy Times, then skillfully repressed the memory of this thing we'd seen.

Just now, we stumbled across the video in question. We proceeded to watch as much of the piddle as we could bear.

The newspaper is the New York Times. The journalist isn't a child.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump is now the commander in chief. When you consider the sheer inanity of us the liberals and our upper-end journalistic elites, can anyone really fail to see how we all got to this place?

Trump had a girl friend back in 06! That, and the difference between cats and dogs, defines what we care about.

Back before Jason Zinoman: Long ago and far away, "Dogs are like X but cats are like Y" was one of the hackneyed premises that got a beginner comedian ridiculed at an open mike night.

Now, the sillybill premise rules the roost at the New York Times. Could we possibly build a world of this type without producing a Donald J. Trump? Have you ever read Kevin Drum's work on what lead did to our brains?

BREAKING: The gods must think we're crazy!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2018

As always, worst is more: If it's information you seek, here's some information. Joe Concha reports for The Hill:

CONCHA (7/31/18): Fox News continued its command of the basic cable landscape in July by topping its competition in total viewers, with Sean Hannity leading the way in prime time.

Hannity and Tucker Carlson took the top-two spots overall in the cable news ratings race, delivering an average of 3.37 million viewers and 2.70 million viewers respectively in winning their respective timeslots of 9 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow continued to have MSNBC's top-rated program, with the Oxford Rhodes Scholar registering an average of 2.67 million viewers per night in taking third place.

Laura Ingraham, coming off her highest-rated quarter since launching in October 2017, finished fourth overall while winning her 10 p.m. timeslot, averaging 2.61 million viewers per night and topping MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell's 2.117 million viewers.

She's still Our Own Rhodes Scholar! Marketing never dies!

Though they've taken different routes to the bottom, it's hard to dispute the idea that Hannity and Carlson are currently running the two worst programs in primetime "cable news." The gods on Olympus must be laughing as they scan these ratings.

"Overall, when comparing the numbers of each major cable news network in prime time, Fox News won by averaging 2.41 million viewers to MSNBC's 1.66 million and CNN's 891,000," Concha reported.

He didn't say what he considers "prime time" to be, or if the numbers he cited were for weeknights only. At The Hill, Concha's report was close enough for mainstream press corps work!

Thumping the shark: Regarding Hannity, "the staunch Trump supporter also topped Discovery Channel's ratings juggernaut 'Shark Week' with 3.15 million total viewers to Discovery's 1.69 million during the week of July 23-27," Concha reported.

Based on the other numbers, we'll guess that other cable news stars must have topped Shark Week too. That said, Concha had our current alpha shark right there.

GOSSIP OR JOURNO: Homo sapiens, working in groups!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2018

Part 3—Nothing too dumb to be said: Let's be fair to gossips.

Sometimes, gossips direct their wrath at worthy targets. Occasionally, the things they say about their targets are reasonably accurate.

That doesn't mean they aren't gossips! And in the case of the mainstream press, their judgment has been very bad, in the past thirty years, as they've chosen their devils and angels. (Hat tip, Bobby Vee.)

They gossiped about the Clintons and Gore for the better part of thirty years. This set the stage for the ascension of their current target, Donald J. Trump, to the Oval Office.

(Along the way, they'd named Jim Comey "the most upright man now living." This misjudgment didn't help either. But then, they've reached such gross misjudgments in spades. Warning! Robert Mueller is their current most upright person.)

When the press corps targets Donald J. Trump, they're targeting a deeply disordered person, one they helped elect. That doesn't mean that they aren't behaving like gossips. Just consider what Brian's guest said.

Back in the day, Brian spent a lot of time gossiping about Candidate Gore. Presumably, he did this in service to his corporate owner, Jack Welch, and perhaps out of some general, guild-wide distaste for the widely loathed Clintons.

In particular, Brian spent a lot of time gossiping about the candidate's wardrobe. Also, about the candidate's possible attendant psychiatric problems.

Sad! Candidates had campaigned in casual clothing for years, but in the fall of 1999, Williams was suddenly troubled by the disturbing practice. Gore was “wearing polo shirts twenty-four hours a day,” the anchor groused on October 6, 1999, on his nightly, little-watched, "cable news" program.

The polo shirts “don’t always look natural on him,” he weirdly complained two nights later.

For whatever reason, Williams thought Gore was wearing the shirts in some sort of effort to woo female voters. The anchor repeatedly stated this troubling theory, asking guests when Gore’s strategy would “all start becoming so transparent [that] no one is fooled” (October 6) or (October 8) whether the strategy was going to “become absolutely transparent when they go out into the hinterlands and try to sell it.”

On and on the grumbling went. Incredibly, Williams raised the question of Gore’s polo shirts on five separate programs in one eight-day period, with two nights off for weekend rehab. In such ways, the press corps gossiped about Candidate Gore's disturbing wardrobe—his suits, his boots, his shirts, his shorts, the number of buttons on his suit jackets—all through the fall of the year.

Years later, Brian invented so many tall tales about himself that he managed to get himself dumped from his $12 million job as anchor of NBC Nightly News. Today, he's back on corporate liberal cable. Once again, he's gossiping in all the approved ways.

Today, he's one in a nightly lineup of liberal "cable news" heroes and stars. Despite his astonishing history, we liberals admire his brilliance today because he gossips, and spins the news, in all the ways which please us.

Today, the press corps' gossips have set their sites on a deeply disordered man. That doesn't mean that they aren't gossips, enjoying the practice of gossip.

It doesn't mean they don't behave in the time-honored manner involved in "killing the pig." Consider the dumbest thing ever said on the planet, a statement offered and accepted on Monday's night program hosted by Brian.

Brian welcomed a new guest this night as part of his opening panel. By the rules of the game, his trio of panelists had been chosen because they were all guaranteed to agree with every word everyone said.

That's a basic rule of gossip. After a brief opening rundown, Brian listed his guests:

WILLIAMS (7/30/18): Well, let's, at this point, bring in our lead-off panel for a Monday night, shall we?

Jonathan Lemire, White House Reporter for the Associated Press. Elie Honig is here, former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former Assistant Attorney General of the great state of New Jersey. And Anita Kumar, White House correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers.

Honig was new. He had earned his way into the circle with an essay that day in The Daily Beast, a devolving org whose undisguised tabloidism helps define the state of our rapidly failing journalistic culture.

Honig has had an impressive career. Soon—perhaps he was simply trying too hard—he would be heard to say this:

WILLIAMS: Elie, once and for all, for all the non-lawyers watching who have heard Rudy Giuliani and others today say, more than once, "collusion is not a crime," what is it?

HONIG: He is right. Collusion is not a crime. It's something I think the president made up. You just showed the graphic.

The president is the only one who has ever said the word collusion. Robert Mueller and his team have never used that word, "collusion."

Of course, conspiracy is a crime and, of course, receiving aid from foreign nationals in an election is a crime. And obstruction of justice is a crime. But it's word play, and it's so flimsy, and it's so transparent. I think, again, it's another sign of desperation.

And, you know, as Jonathan said, they're trying to sort of—they have nowhere to go. And so they're trying to play semantics. And it's another sign that they're panicking.

No, really. That's what he said!

It's always possible that the new guest was simply trying too hard. But right there on corporate liberal cable, with 1.684 million people watching the original 11 PM Eastern airing, Honig declared that Donald J. Trump is "the only person who has ever used the word collusion." He said he figured that this was something the president made up.

(Taped rebroadcasts followed at 2 AM Eastern and 4 AM Eastern. On all three broadcasts, Honig made these remarks!)

On its face, Honig's basic statement was crazy. In fact, journalists had been talking about "collusion" for almost exactly two years as Brian's new guest threw his thunderbolt down.

Once in a while, on the rare occasion, some minor effort had been made to explain that "collusion" isn't a term from the criminal code and isn't the name of an actual crime—that a person would have to be charged with some sort of "conspiracy," presumably conspiracy in an illegal act, to attract the wrath of Mueller, the most upright person now living.

Some things had been explained. Generally, though, "cable news" isn't heavy on explanation, information, analysis or fact. It's heavy on the kind of gossip Honig was unleashing here, with the assertion that Trump had invented the use of the term; that no one else had ever used the term; and that current statements about collusion represented an act of desperation on the Trump camp's part.

That's the type of speculation on which cable feeds. Years ago, people like Brian—and much more influentially, Chris Matthews—had speculated again and again and again and again about the diabolical reasons for Candidate Gore's disturbing decision to wear three-buttons suits, one of which was olive or possibly tan, and for his disturbing decision to wear polo shirts.

The boots he wore had been too shiny; his pants were hemmed too high. Cokie sputtered and complained that he wouldn't have dressed that way at St. Albans, which had a wonderful dress code, at least back in the day.

Matthews said the choice of clothes defined Candidate Gore as "today's man-woman." For months, the gossips speculated about why the candidate wore his (unremarkable) clothes, and they discussed the psychiatric implications of these wardrobe selections.

Today, these beasts haven't changed. Their ancestors drove all other human species to extinction; Professor Harari attributes this demographic triumph to chance mutations which let the ancestors of these idiots "gossip" and adopt potent, widespread group "fictions."

According to Professor Harari, those emergent skills allowed our ancestors to cooperate in much larger groups than other human species. On Monday night, successors to the Neanderthals' slayers worked in a group again.

Even by the standards of cable gossip, this newest member of the circle had made a ridiculous statement. Perhaps he was simply trying too hard. Perhaps he had never watched cable news or read any mainstream news reports about the possibility of collusion with the Russkies.

That said, his statement was baldly absurd. But it had been adorned with all the mandated speculations, so no one said a word about the absurdity of what the new kid had just said.

Sometimes, gossips target disordered people. In our view, the current target of CNN and MSNBC is one of the most disordered people ever seen in American public life.

That said, these idiots and their predecessors had fed off his disorder all the way through his badly disordered career. Was it the best sex Marla ever had? One of the giants had asked the question in search of wealth and success!

It would be hard to maker a dumber statement than the one the new kid made. That said, when you watch corporate liberal, you're watching members of our officially "human" species cooperating in groups.

Information, facts and precision play little role in gossip games. Tomorrow, we'll look at what Natasha said—and we'll look at Honig's essay.

Tomorrow: But that's what Hillary did!