WE READ THE SUNDAY REVIEW: Bruni arrives at the scene of the crime!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2016

Part 1—Terrified in Columbus:
Two days before Election Day, we read the Sunday Review.

We were struck by what we encountered there.

The Sunday Review is one of the New York Times' highest weekly platforms. It's the Sunday section which includes the editorials and the opinion columns. It also includes a range of essays and opinion pieces which help define the intellectual functioning of a feckless, unskilled elite.

What did we encounter when we read the Sunday Review? On its front page, we encountered its featured piece, this 1250-word opinion column by the award-winning Maureen Dowd.

This essay, the Sunday Review's featured piece, was a vintage effort by Dowd. It started with a tightly crafted piece of "moral equivalence" concerning Clinton and Trump.

This initial feint led to a final judgment in which, inevitably, Candidate Clinton turned out to be a worse bet than Trump. As it turned out in this column by Dowd, Candidate Trump may not be the person he's pretended to be on the trail!

As we'll note in more detail tomorrow, Dowd's column was a classic gong show—a vintage example of the "Dowdism" Katherine Boo warned about in 1992. It shared the front page with this essay by Jill Filipovic, a youngish journalist who, like the even younger scribe to whose work she links, seems to possess one analytical skill—the ability to fashion images of Us and Them from any data she's handed.

On page 2 of the Sunday Review, we encountered a standard cringeworthy headline: "Schools That Work." For decades, journalists have piled predictable rubble under headlines like that.

Yesterday's skill-free journalist was the Times' award-winning David Leonhardt. As the week proceeds, we'll examine his work.

On page 3 of the Sunday Review, Frank Bruni's column appeared. Arriving on the scene more than twenty years late, the fellow who praised George Bush's shoes shared an important discovery.

Bruni is terrified by much that he's seen and heard this year. Recently, he encountered The Crazy. Live and direct from Columbus, Ohio, this was the start of the column:
BRUNI (11/6/16): Why This Election Terrifies Me

[...]

Election Day will redeem and settle nothing, not this time around. No matter who declares victory, tens of millions of Americans will be convinced—truly convinced—that the outcome isn’t legitimate because untoward forces intervened. Whether balloons fall on Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, there will be bolder divisions in America than there were at the start of it all and even less faith in the country’s most important institutions.

The person taking office will do so not on a wave of hope but amid tides of disgust, against fierce currents of resistance. Tell me how she or he moves forward. Tell me how America does.

After I typed that last sentence, I paused for a sip of coffee and randomly tuned in to the conversation at a nearby table in the lobby of my Hampton Inn. A primly dressed, neatly groomed woman in her early 60s (I’m guessing) was complaining about election coverage: what an incomplete picture the media paints; how uninformed most voters are. If she herself weren’t so alert to a full range of facts, she said, she would never have examined a list posted on a relative’s Facebook page.

It named people connected to the Clintons “who died suspicious deaths,” she told her companions. “It sounds absurd to us, because we can’t imagine things like that going on, but we can’t dismiss it. There’s too much evidence.” They nodded raptly.
Why is Bruni terrified? Roughly 22 years later, he has discovered The Crazy.

That's Bruni's full treatment of the conversation he overheard. He never specifically says what we should think about that woman's remarks.

Presumably, we're supposed to think that her remarks are insane. We're supposed to think that those remarks are an emanation of The Crazy from the people he later calls "Trump's angry troops."

Don't get Bruni wrong! Out of deference to the god Equivalence, he lists examples of apparent corruption on the part of the DNC and Bill and Hillary Clinton. But he focuses on the angry Trump troops—in this extended passage, for instance:
BRUNI: The America on display in this election isn’t a fair or ethical place.

And it seethes with hate. Trump has certainly shown us that. His incendiary words and unconscionable silences gave a green light to bad actors who existed before him but were never so encouraged: the anti-Semites who harassed Jewish journalists on Twitter; the white nationalists who threatened to intimidate minorities at the polls; the misogynists who hurled unprintable slurs at Clinton.

Last weekend a man who was getting a head start on Halloween attended a University of Wisconsin football game in a costume that depicted Barack Obama with a noose around his neck. That’s the kind of depravity we seem to be witnessing more of since Trump came down his gilded escalator and began ranting about Mexican rapists.

He has modeled contempt for civilized norms and even the rule of law, endorsing violence against protesters, expressing admiration for a Russian autocrat, pledging a clampdown on the press, suggesting that Second Amendment enthusiasts might want to take a shot at Clinton, and promising to throw her in jail.

I’m not terrified that he’ll win, because I’m stubbornly confident that Americans aren’t that far gone. But I’m terrified by how lost we nonetheless are, by how little clear direction we have.
Just for the record, there were misogynists on the scene when Clinton ran for president in 2007 and 2008. Journalists didn't mention them much, perhaps because several were high-ranking players within the mainstream press corps.

(According to the Times' public editor, one such player was Dowd!)

That said, there have been quite a few "bad actors" on the scene this year, like that fellow in Wisconsin. This is especially true if we seek them out, as we love to do, perhaps creating the impression that, as Bruni puts it, "we seem to be seeing more of them" in this deeply ridiculous year.

Bruni is certainly right on one score; we are terribly lost as a culture. That said, yesterday's Sunday Review struck us as a deeply ridiculous publication. For today, we'll focus on Bruni's experience at his modest hotel.

Bruni overheard a version of The Crazy at that Columbus hotel. That said, the version of The Crazy he overheard has been around, and has been destroying the nation's brain cells, since 1994, when Jerry Falwell, a major figure, began peddling it all around.

A Nexis search shows that the Times almost wholly ignored The Crazy back then. By the end of the 1990s, Gennifer Flowers was peddling this version of The Crazy on two major "cable news" programs. As she did, Bruni's guild was hailing her as someone who, the pundits now knew, had been telling the truth all along.

(Before long, Kathleen Willey began selling this form of The Crazy too; the Clintons had even murdered her husband! Even as it reintroduced Flowers and Willey this year, the New York Times refused to mention such prior "bad acting." This deference to craziness helps explain the conversation Bruni heard.)

Major players have been selling The Crazy for many years. Yesterday, Bruni arrived at the scene of one such crime 22 years too late.

In this morning's Times, Jim Rutenberg specifically hails Bruni's catch in an astonishing essay about the spread of "fake news." The Times has been spreading fake news for decades. But today, Rutenberg praises the Times as the type of org which can make all the fake news stop!

When we read the Sunday Review, we surveyed a journalistic elite which seems to possess almost no skills. In a word, Filipovic's essay struck us as hapless. Leonhardt's struck us as worse.

We'll review those pieces as the week proceeds. They paint a portrait of a major elite which possesses almost no recognizable journalistic / intellectual skills. But good God! How the tires screech as the Times keeps arriving at the scenes of various crimes!

Since Labor Day, Paul Krugman keeps alluding to the way the mainstream press corps treated Candidate Gore. What he's saying is perfectly accurate, but he's arriving seventeen years too late. In all honesty, most of his readers have no idea what he's talking about.

Yesterday, Bruni went Krugman several years better. He reported something he overheard roughly 22 years too late.

For ourselves, we began building this site in 1997. We'd heard that version of The Crazy, and quite a few more, way too many times, even by that ancient date.

Who wouldn't have known where The Crazy could lead? How many names do you want?

Tomorrow: We read the first page of the Sunday Review

8 comments:

  1. When I read Dowd's essay, the comments were running about 20:1 against her. That is reassuring. If the paper cannot recognize craziness, most of the readers could. As John Oliver says, Why is she still a thing?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Leonhardt made the earth-shaking discovery that more teaching gives better results. Of course for-profit charter schools are always on the lookout for ways to hire more teachers and spend more money.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Krugman is the only Time's columnist I want to read, but I also remember the days of Anthony Lewis and Russell Baker.

    I still read the New York Times, but without enthusiasm.

    Dowd, mired in 1950's gender wars, is a disaster.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dowd's use of gender in her columns is interesting. Long ago she discovered that gender bending could be a literary device that would evoke strong reactions from readers. She has become something of a one-trick-pony that way. But her hatred of the Clintons has nothing to do with gender. She is mired in CDS not gender wars, in my opinion. Feminizing men and masculinizing women is her weapon of choice, not the reason she attacks people. I agree with Somerby that may lie in some shared Catholic pathology.

      Delete
  4. Thank you for your miracle Doctor Osemu Okpamen

    This article is dedicated to the Doctor Osemu Okpamen. I have been married with my wife for 5 years and recently she broke up with me and it hurt me deeply when she told me to leave her alone and that she does not love me anymore when i was always faithful and honest to her. I tried all the ways to get her back buying her what she wants like i always did and she still left me heart broken and she even has a new boyfriend which destroyed me even more until a friend of mine from high school directed me to this genuine spell Doctor called Osemu Okpamen. This man changed my life completely. I followed everything he told me to do and my wife came back begging for me back. I was stunned everything happened exactly like he told me. I had faith in everything he told me and everything was true. Also he was there every moment until i got my happiness back and he also provides spells that cures impotence, bareness, diseases such as HIV/AID E.T.C You can contact him via email at { Doctorokpamenspelltemple@yahoo.com } or visit his website http://www.doctorokpamenspells.com. He will help you in anything you need and quick to answer once you contact him. Call me for more info +1 (914)-517-3229..

    ReplyDelete
  5. Are you going through a break-up or divorce? Do you need your Ex back fast? do not cry anymore, contact Dr .Unity powerful Love spell that work fast now!! I was hurt and heart broken when my husband breakup with me, and i could not know what next to do again, I love my husband so much but he was cheating on me with another woman and this makes him break up with me so that he can be able to get marred to the other lady and this lady i think use witchcraft on my husband to make him hate me and my kids and this was so critical and uncalled-for,I cry all day and night for God to send me a helper to get back my man until i went to Texas to see a friend and who was having the same problem with me but she latter got her husband back and i asked her how she was able to get her husband back and she told me that their was a powerful spell caster called Dr.Unity that help with love spell in getting back lost lover back, and i decided to contact the same Dr.Unity and he told me what is needed to be done for me to have my man back and i did it although i doubted it but i did it and the Dr told me that i will get the result after 24hours, and he told me that my husband was going to call me and i still doubted his word, to my surprise my husband really called me and told me that he miss me so much, Oh My God! i was so excited, and today i am happy with my man again and we are joyfully living together as one big family and i thank the powerful spell caster Dr.Unity for bringing back my man and i decided to share my story on the internet that Dr.Unity is best spell caster online who i will always pray to live long to help his children in the time of trouble, If you have any problem contact Dr.Unity and i guarantee you that he will help you,Email him at: Unityspelltemple@gmail.com ,you can also call him or add him on whats-app: +2348071622464 ,visit his website:http://unityspelltemple.yolasite.com .
    Mary Wilkie from USA

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am Miss alisha,From USA. I will start by saying to all that have experience heart break and also cant do with out there lover should please stop here and read up my story, So as you will know how to go solving or getting your ex back from this spell caster..AND AGAIN I WILL WANT TO ALSO TELL ALL THAT THIS SPELL CASTER I WILL WANT TO TELL THE WHOLE WORLD ABOUT IS HARMLESS AND DO NOT HAVE ANY SIDE EFFECT, BUT TO RESTORE AND GIVE YOU BACK WHAT YOU DESERVE, COS WHEN I MEET WITH THIS SPELL CASTER THAT WAS INTRODUCED TO ME BY THE WIFE OF MY BOSS IN MY WORKING PLACE, HE MADE IT CLEAR THAT HE CAN CAST SPELL ON SO MANY OTHER PROBLEMS EXCEPT IN GETTING YOUR EX OR MAKING YOUR LOVER TO LOVE YOU MORE THAT WILL SUITE YOU. Last year December, My lover was cheating on me and was not also give me the attention that a man should give to a woman,And really that was troubling my mind and tearing my heart apart to the extent that i was not concentrating in the office the way i use to before the break up by my lover.And before that incident,I always see how my boss use to love his wife so much. I was bringing to think that i was not doing the right thing to him that will make him love me forever,So i really gathered my courage and went to my boss wife office to ask her the secret that made her husband love her so dearly,In the first place she refused in telling me,She asked me why i am asking her such a question,That if is it not normal for every man to love his wife.I told her the reason that made me ask her about this question,That my lover started cheating on me lately,When i knelt down before her for her to see my seriousness in this issue that i went to ask her,She opened up to me by telling me that i should not tell anybody about what she want to tell me,The wife to my boss started to say to me that she used a very powerful spell on his husband to love her,And the spell that she used is harmless, But the spell is just to make him love her and never to look for any other woman except her. I QUICKLY ASK HER HOW DID SHE GET TO KNOW THIS GREAT,POWER,DURABLE AND PERFECT WORK SPELL CASTER,she said that a friend of hers also introduce her to him. Then i also ask her how i can meet with this spell caster.SHE SAID EVERYTHING TO ME,THAT THE NAME OF THIS SPELL CASTER IS Dr.AZEN .My next question to her was how can i get this wonderful spell caster,She said she is going to give me the email of the spell caster for me to contact him for my problem,Really she gave to me this spell caster email:[azentemple@gmail.com]or what'sapp +2349038299828. and i contacted him and explained all to him,And after every thing that needed to be done by the spell caster, In the next two days, My lover that hated me so much came to house begging for forgiveness and i was so glad that i have finally gotten my heart desire..I was so grateful to this spell caster for what he has done for my life.. So i made a promise to him that i will always come.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I am Miss alisha,From USA. I will start by saying to all that have experience heart break and also cant do with out there lover should please stop here and read up my story, So as you will know how to go solving or getting your ex back from this spell caster..AND AGAIN I WILL WANT TO ALSO TELL ALL THAT THIS SPELL CASTER I WILL WANT TO TELL THE WHOLE WORLD ABOUT IS HARMLESS AND DO NOT HAVE ANY SIDE EFFECT, BUT TO RESTORE AND GIVE YOU BACK WHAT YOU DESERVE, COS WHEN I MEET WITH THIS SPELL CASTER THAT WAS INTRODUCED TO ME BY THE WIFE OF MY BOSS IN MY WORKING PLACE, HE MADE IT CLEAR THAT HE CAN CAST SPELL ON SO MANY OTHER PROBLEMS EXCEPT IN GETTING YOUR EX OR MAKING YOUR LOVER TO LOVE YOU MORE THAT WILL SUITE YOU. Last year December, My lover was cheating on me and was not also give me the attention that a man should give to a woman,And really that was troubling my mind and tearing my heart apart to the extent that i was not concentrating in the office the way i use to before the break up by my lover.And before that incident,I always see how my boss use to love his wife so much. I was bringing to think that i was not doing the right thing to him that will make him love me forever,So i really gathered my courage and went to my boss wife office to ask her the secret that made her husband love her so dearly,In the first place she refused in telling me,She asked me why i am asking her such a question,That if is it not normal for every man to love his wife.I told her the reason that made me ask her about this question,That my lover started cheating on me lately,When i knelt down before her for her to see my seriousness in this issue that i went to ask her,She opened up to me by telling me that i should not tell anybody about what she want to tell me,The wife to my boss started to say to me that she used a very powerful spell on his husband to love her,And the spell that she used is harmless, But the spell is just to make him love her and never to look for any other woman except her. I QUICKLY ASK HER HOW DID SHE GET TO KNOW THIS GREAT,POWER,DURABLE AND PERFECT WORK SPELL CASTER,she said that a friend of hers also introduce her to him. Then i also ask her how i can meet with this spell caster.SHE SAID EVERYTHING TO ME,THAT THE NAME OF THIS SPELL CASTER IS Dr.AZEN .My next question to her was how can i get this wonderful spell caster,She said she is going to give me the email of the spell caster for me to contact him for my problem,Really she gave to me this spell caster email:[azentemple@gmail.com]or what'sapp +2349038299828. and i contacted him and explained all to him,And after every thing that needed to be done by the spell caster, In the next two days, My lover that hated me so much came to house begging for forgiveness and i was so glad that i have finally gotten my heart desire..I was so grateful to this spell caster for what he has done for my life.. So i made a promise to him that i will always come.

    ReplyDelete