Two snapshots of the current age!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2017

Alzheimer's, wealth and fame:
This morning's New York Times contains two snapshots of the age.

One comes from David Brooks' latest column. Without citing a source, Brooks describes what some Republican senators thought they saw this week:
"The Republican senators went to the White House and saw a president so repetitive and rambling, some thought he might be suffering from early Alzheimer’s."
That's a snapshot from a potentially dangerous time.

The other snapshot concerns Mark Halperin's journalistic career. The values of our modern press corps litter this passage:
KOBLIN AND GRYNBAUM (10/27/17): His pioneering newsletter “The Note,” a political tipsheet that he started at ABC News, established him as an influential figure in the power circles of Washington and New York; who he quoted, and what stories he cited, mattered.

But it was his 2010 book “Game Change,” written with John Heilemann, that cemented the Halperin style. A juicy, melodramatic account of the 2008 presidential race, the book was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning HBO movie starring Ed Harris and Julianne Moore.

The book’s success—and the authors’ ability to infuse politics with reality show-like drama—led to contracts with Bloomberg News said to be in the $1 million range. The show Mr. Halperin and Mr. Heilemann developed for Bloomberg, “With All Due Respect,” was a dishy and sometimes whimsical political talk show that failed to attract a wide viewership; it ended after Mr. Trump’s victory.
Those are Koblin's opinions, of course. But according to that portrait, Halperin's work was dishy, juicy and melodramatic. It suffused our politics with drama, like in a reality show.

This led to million dollar contracts and access to power circles. Movie stars appear.

These values have suffused our "journalism" for a good many years, including our "liberal" versions of same. This has helped create a world where Alzheimer's, or the like, might go largely unnoticed during a juicy campaign. Its fruits might be hard to distinguish from the inanity the press corps produced down through the many long years.

As so many "journalists" told us, Al Gore hired a woman to teach him to be a man! Plus, why was he wearing those earth tones?

Did you hear Howard Dean's blood-curdling scream? And good lord! Mitt Romney strapped his Irish setter, Seamus, to the roof of his car! Fifty times!

Remember when Lawrence challenged Mitt's son to s fight? Talking his Dorchester accent? The same accent he brought out last week?

These have been entertainment values. Can you run a large nation this way?

By the way, have you caught Rachel this week? We've found her to be entertaining at times, if perhaps a bit less than precise.

21 comments:

  1. It is beneath you to level a diagnosis of Alzheimer's or any other mental illness against a politician whose personality you don't like.

    "During the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used to disable and remove from society political opponents ("dissidents") who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted the official dogma.The term "philosophical intoxication", for instance, was widely applied to the mental disorders diagnosed when people disagreed with the country's Communist leaders and, by referring to the writings of the Founding Fathers of Marxism–Leninism—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin—made them the target of criticism."

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    1. "...psychiatry was used to disable and remove from society political opponents ("dissidents")"

      ...or so the establishment media would have you believe. Check out this guy: Vladimir Bukovsky

      "On 12 December 2016 Bukovsky went on trial in Cambridge accused of 11 counts of making and possessing indecent images of children. He denied all charges. According to the prosecutor Will Carter, Bukovsky started downloading images in the late 1990s as "research into the issues of control and censorship on the internet", and explained to the investigators that "his initial curiosity turned into a hobby, rather like stamp-collecting"".

      Delete
    2. Not surprising that Mischa is well-versed in psychiatric disorders.

      Delete
  2. Good economic data today, and I'm sure every liberal zombie (including Mr Krugman) is cheering. Joking, joking, never mind.

    And since every piece of bad data would (no doubt) be personalized, it only feels fair to personalize this one too: not bad for an early Alzheimer’s sufferer, eh?

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    Replies
    1. Speaking of good economic data:

      Under Obama:

      Unemployment 10% to 4.7%

      75 straight months of jobs gains - a record ; all 8.7 million jobs lost under Bush gained back by 2014

      -0.3% GDP in Bush's last year to 2.5% in 2010;

      S&P gains 200%, making Obama one of the best presidents for the stock market in modern history

      Under Obama, American manufacturing was booming, up about 22% from when he took office

      Average Home price went from $172783 to $232000

      Gas prices an average of $2.40/gallon under Obama

      The debt did go up, but don't expect it to go down under Trump, especially if Republicans pass their lamebrained tax cut.

      All in all, not too bad for a Kenyan Muslim communist neoliberal community organizer.

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    2. Sorry, I didn't follow the data from Moscow, so I can't speak about the economic data 'Mao' is referring to.

      Delete
  3. Here's an article explaining how Trump is cleverly outdoing the rest of us. It's Scott Adams's article in WSJ. You can read the article for free going via Adams's twitter at. https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/922237847347740672

    Trigger warning - the article's thesis is that Trump is sophisticated and clever in the way he tweets. The reason his critics think he's dumb or crazy is that they're ignorant of his superior persuasion techniques. Don't read the article, unless you're willing to entertain the possibility that Trump is wiser than you are, in the field of persuasion at least.

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    1. "Here's an article explaining how Trump is cleverly outdoing the rest of us."
      Is outdoing a synonym for "fucking over?" Then, yes, you're right.

      Delete
    2. outdoing the rest of us...

      Bwahaha!! Us? You have your head so far up his ass you could lick his tonsils, dickhead. There is no "us" when you're concerned. You are a fucking unwelcome outcast, a lying sack of shit. You have already revealed yourself, you see no point in telling the truth, that is how you think. Why should anyone believe a fucking thing you say. You are not part of "us", got it dickhead? You are part of the deplorables, got it dickhead? You are to be shunned, away from civilized society, you got that dickhead?

      Delete
    3. Why do you persist in citing to this trash at this website? Can't you make better time during your declining years than trolling here?

      Sad.

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    4. If he has such Superior persuasion skills why has he not passed any major legislation?

      Delete
    5. AnonymousOctober 28, 2017 at 7:15 AM-- Touché!

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  4. "Here's an article explaining how Trump is cleverly outdoing the rest of us."
    Is outdoing a synonym for "fucking over?" Then, yes, you're right.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anon 3:23 -- I understand that Rush Limbaugh moves liberal callers to the head of the line, so they can be heard first. Apparently he feels that having a different POV presented leads to a more interesting discussion. And, he's confident of being able to refute liberal arguments.

    Responses like yours and mm's don't lead to interesting discussions. How about reading the linked article and telling why it's wrong?

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    1. I remember when Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a "slut" for advocating access to birth control. I also was watching his TV show in 1992 when he said 'Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?' before showing an image of 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton.
      Real classy guy, that Rush. What a card!

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    2. That early Rush Limbaugh TV show was produced by Rodger Ailes.

      Delete
    3. Limbaugh is ten times as funny as he is informed.
      10 x 0 = 0.

      Delete
    4. David in Cal-
      Anon 3:23 here. I don't feed obvious trolls, especially dishonest ones.

      Go to Limbaugh's site (instead of here) and pretend to be a liberal so you can move to the front of the line in order to make his discussions more interesting.

      PS. Adams is a self-absorbed hack.

      Delete
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    ReplyDelete