STARTING TOMORROW: Back to Olympus!

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2022

For today, Muskie (still) wept: Tomorrow, as we've done on occasion, we'll be launching a bit of a side trip.

You'll see our focus as our focus forms. At least for a while, our utterly futile standard fare will be relegated to afternoon-only status.

For today, we'll help you see the sheer futility of anything like "press criticism." We start by telling you this:

Vast amounts of what you read and hear are basically Storyline. You're offered mythology, fable, memorized cant—Standardized Standard Press Script.

You're offered Storyline, all the way down. So it was when Woodward and Bernstein fronted the Outlook section of yesterday's Washington Post.

Their essay consumed the top eighty percent of Outlook's first page. Inside the high-profile weekly section, their essay consumed two more full pages—pages B2 and B3.

Woodward and Bernstein are extremely famous. In their essay, they draw amateur psychiatric comparisons between two United States presidents—Presidents Nixon and Trump.

Along the way, they describe one of the ways Nixon achieved re-election in 1972. More precisely, they return to the very familiar standardized tale of the time Muskie Wept.

They tell you the tale for the ten millionth time. What they offer in this passage is one more example, fifty years later, of Standardized Standard Press Myth:

WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN (6/5/22): The heart of Nixon’s criminality was his successful subversion of the electoral process—the most fundamental element of American democracy. He accomplished it through a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and disinformation that enabled him to literally determine who his opponent would be in the presidential election of 1972.

With a covert budget of just $250,000, a team of undercover Nixon operatives derailed the presidential campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, the Democrats’ most electable candidate.

Nixon then ran against Sen. George McGovern, a South Dakota Democrat widely viewed as the much weaker candidate, and won in a historic landslide with 61 percent of the vote and carrying 49 states.

We greatly admired McGovern. That said, we remember the dispatching of Candidate Muskie with a great deal of chagrin. 

In their essay for the Post, Woodward and Bernstein describe an extensive "dirty tricks" campaign conducted by the Nixon campaign against Candidate Muskie. It led to the vastly damaging incident described below.

It was a very big deal at the time. Warning! As presented by Woodward and, Bernstein, this seems to be a typical case of Standardized Standard Press Myth:

WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN: Muskie and his staffers were spooked. At a rally in New Hampshire, standing on the back of a truck, the candidate expressed how upset he was by published slurs on his wife, Jane. A gossipy editorial published by conservative William Loebin the Manchester Union Leader, headlined “Big Daddy’s Jane,” had suggested that the senator’s wife drank, smoked and liked to tell dirty jokes. The story was also published in Newsweek. Around the same time, Muskie had appeared to condone the use of the word “Canuck,” a derogatory term for Canadians, in a forged letter drafted by a Nixon White House aide.

Under assault, Muskie openly cried at the New Hampshire campaign stop. David Broder, The Washington Post’s senior political reporter, wrote in a front-page story that Muskie broke down three times, “with tears streaming down his face.”

Drip by drip, all this added to the implosion of the Muskie candidacy. 

Muskie's weeping was gigantic news at the time. It was David Broder's front-page "story" which drove this deeply damaging piece of myth.

Why do we say that Broder's front-page report really created a myth? We say that because of a remarkable admission Broder made fifteen years later.

For reasons which may seem fairly obvious, Broder's belated confession has been ignored—disappeared—ever since. Here's the start of that later admission, offered in a lengthy essay about the Muskie incident for the Washington Monthly:

BRODER (2/1/87): Within 24 hours, Muskie's weeping became the focus of political talk, not just in New Hampshire, but everywhere the pattern of the developing presidential race was discussed. His tears were generally described as one of the contributing causes of his disappointing showing in the March 7 primary. Muskie beat McGovern by a margin of 46 to 37 percent, but his managers had publicized their goal of winning at least 50 percent of the New Hampshire Democratic vote. Underdog McGovern claimed that the results showed Muskie's weakness and his own growing strength. Muskie never recovered from that Saturday in the snow.

In retrospect, though, there were a few problems with the Muskie story. First, it is unclear whether Muskie did cry.

Say what? In real time, on the front page of the Washington Post, Broder had written that Muskie had broken down repeatedly, "with tears streaming down his face."

Fifteen years later, a clarification! Fifteen years later, Broder wrote that it isn't clear whether Muskie cried it all! 

In real time, the excitement about the way Muskie wept had driven Nixon's most credible challenger out of the White House race. Fifteen years later, in his astonishing essay, the dean of Washington journalists said it wasn't clear that Muskie had cried at all!

Broder described this minor point as one of the "problems" with his initial "story." Please don't make us say more.

You can read Broder's 1987 essay yourself. In our view, virtually every paragraph involves a confession of major journalistic misconduct—a confession of the type of misconduct in which major journalists novelize the news in line with their own preconceptions.

Perhaps for that reason, Broder's confession—indeed, his entire essay—has been wholly disappeared. In yesterday's Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein blew past the dean's confession. 

Instead, they printed the legend. Over and over and over and over, that's how our "journalists" roll.

Just for the record, what might explain it? Why would Broder have written that Muskie wept if it isn't even clear whether he cried at all? Where did that colorful claim come from?

Thank you for asking that excellent question! Back in 2011, the Washington Post's Paul Waldman may have provided the answer.

To his credit, Waldman wrote an instructive essay about the utter silliness of the mainstream press corps' Gaffe Culture. Somewhat oddly, he included Muskie's weeping as a "gaffe."

Indeed, Waldman called Muskie's weeping "the most consequential presidential campaign gaffe of the modern era." In this astonishing passage, he tells the astonishing story of where the claim that Muskie wept may have come from:

WALDMAN (8/14/11): If you aren't old enough to remember it, you've probably heard the story of the most consequential presidential campaign gaffe of the modern era. In 1972, Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie responded to a series of attacks by the Manchester Union Leader with a news conference outside the paper's offices. Standing in the New Hampshire snow, the candidate for the Democratic nomination condemned the paper for, among other things, attacking his wife. The Washington Post's David Broder began his story about the incident this way: "With tears streaming down his face and his voice choked with emotion…"

Though Muskie insisted that his facial wetness came from the snow, the idea that a candidate would cry created a scandal. Muskie, thought until that moment to be his party's inevitable nominee, soon saw his campaign flounder and die.

The less well-known part of this story is that some influential journalists had decided long before that there was something slightly off about Muskie. In his 1977 book "Reporting: An Inside View," legendary journalist Lou Cannon wrote that, after playing poker with Muskie, he concluded that the senator was too temperamental to be president. "What does a political reporter do with this kind of insight?" Cannon asked. "As in this instance, it is rarely written as a hard news story the first time the thought arises…What we reporters tend to do is to store away in our minds such incidents and then use them to interpret—to set a context—for major incidents when they occur.”

We've long admired the bulk of Cannon's work, but Waldman's report is simply astounding. Here's what Waldman seems to have said:

Along the way, Cannon and some other major journalists had decided that the highly-regarded Muskie was too temperamental to be president. Pathetically, they had formed this impression based on Muskie's reactions during a poker game.

Quoting from Cannon's book, Waldman suggested that this preconception may explain the giant focus brought to bear on the claim that Muskie had "tears streaming down his face" that day—the claim that Muskie wept. People like Cannon had formed an impression, and they'd put that impression to use as they novelized this highly consequential tale.

Like everyone else, Waldman didn't mention Broder's subsequent admission that Muskie may not have cried that day at all. It may be that Waldman was unaware that Broder had made that statement. As noted, Broder's astounding confession was quickly disappeared.

Muskie wept, the journalists cried, and this reporting was vastly consequential. Other standardized myths widely prevail, including these standard groaners: 

Nixon won the first debate among people who listened on the radio! 

Clinton would have lost to Bush except for Ross Perot! 

Al Gore said he invented the Internet (and three thousand other strange things)!

Michael Dukakis should have punched Bernie Shaw in the mouth! 

Fifteen years later, Broder confessed. Yesterday, in the Washington Post, his confession remained disappeared.

All in all, the children never abandon their memorized tales. According to major experts, this is simply the game our brains are wired to play.

Tomorow: Back to the heights of Olympus


50 comments:

  1. "Vast amounts of what you read and hear are basically Storyline. You're offered mythology, fable, memorized cant—Standardized Standard Press Script."

    Just like Somerby offered us on Saturday about Babe Ruth, Bill Russell and Steph Curry.

    Meanwhile, No More Mister Nice Blog engages in real media criticism today, as it points out that Republicans are using small town papers as supposed sources for their made-up disinformation about liberals and wokeness:

    https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2022/06/disinformation-wants-to-be-free.html

    That is what actual media criticism looks like, not the shit Somerby shovels against the mainstream press, intended to undermine confidence in unbiased news and soften people up for the Republica noise machine.

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  2. "In their essay, they draw amateur psychiatric comparisons between two United States presidents—Presidents Nixon and Trump."

    Just like Somerby's amateur psychiatric analysis of Trump during his presidency, musing about whether he believes the lies he tells, and whether someone who is crazy should be pitied.

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  3. "...describe an extensive "dirty tricks" campaign conducted by the Nixon campaign against..."

    Meh. After your liberal tribe's scams of the last decade -- "Russiagate" being the biggest one, of course, but all the rest of them as well -- the concept of "dirty tricks" is completely different.

    Compared to your liberal tribe's trickery, Tricky Dick is a helpless child, dear Bob. But of course you know it...

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    1. Mao, I always thought the whole Russian thing that was flogged by dem politicians and mainstream media was manufactured and irrational. Worse is Trump and his MAGA flock's vile Goebbelsian attacks on the validity of the 2020 election.

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    2. Did you think that before or after you read the Mueller Report? Oh, you didn't read it? No surprise there.

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    3. anon 9:56, both

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  4. "Broder's belated confession has been ignored—disappeared—ever since."

    Somerby has to explain who Muskie is, because those born since the 1970s won't know. Muskie faded from history because he was an unsuccessful candidate. If Muskie was not important to history, why should Broder's confession about him attract any interest FIFTEEN YEARS LATER? For that matter, Somerby doesn't explain who Broder is either.

    This is ancient history. Today, the important news is that some Republican ratfucker made up a story about Oak Park Illinois schools implement race-based grading and the right lapped it up, because it was consistent with their dislike of liberals and their beliefs about storyline wokeness. It was entirely untrue, but that didn't stop Andrew Sullivan, one of Somerby's favorite pundits, from tweeting about it, swallowing it whole cloth without suspicion.

    But Somerby wants to talk about Muskie instead of modern examples of ratfucking, again from the right wing. Because Muskie's problems are attributed to the mainstream press, not the Nixon campaign where they originated. That is the only way Somerby can shift blame for such activities from the right to the left (even though the mainstream media is not part of the left or middle, but attempts to remain non-partisan.

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    1. ?

      It turned into a press campaign against Muskie. Same thing happened with Carter in 1980 and Gore in 2000.

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    2. It always came from the Union Leader but that isn’t the mainstream media. Somerby is arguing bad faith on Broder’s part but he presents no support for that idea. Watch what Milne said. Different people saw tears vs snow. No conspiracy to get Muskie except by Nixon and the Union Leader. Today, Somerby spends no time complaining about Republican dirty tricks. None.

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  5. The media has had this narrative for a long time. They never wanted to give the McGovern Campaign credit for out organizing every other Democratic candidate, that Nixon and the Republicans manipulated the primary process because in their narrative, McGovern could not have otherwise won the nomination. I was there. WRONG!

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    1. The 1972 campaign was complicated. First, Nixon was running as an incumbent, which gave him the edge. Second, civil rights complicated the election. Wallace ran as a third-party Southern candidate and his shooting was made to appear motivated by McGovern support. Third, the women's movement was not behind McGovern because of his treatment of Gloria Steinem and women's support for Shirley Chisholm. Fourth, the Vietnam war was still going and Humphrey had attracted pro-war support while McGovern was the anti-war candidate, splitting his Democratic support. That made McGovern appear more radical to the blue collar part of the base. Democrats were too fragmented to beat Nixon.

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  6. Thanks for documenting this latest example of journalistic misconduct. It's simply incredible that journalists thought and continue to think that they can get away with stuff like this, especially when it affects a national election. Disgusting!

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    1. If you think this was "journalistic misconduct" based on Somerby's say so, you are being gullible. The misconduct came from Nixon's staff, who played dirty tricks and set off Muskie's tirade. It is part of why Nixon had to resign. It would be nice if people like you considered the much worse dirty tricks by today's republicans to be similarly disgusting, but you seem to reserve your disgust for the press, following Somerby's lead. Was it not "disgusting" when Bernie broke into Hillary's DNC database? Was the hacking of Podesta's email account and publication of private emails by Wikileaks not "disgusting"? How about the funneling of Russian campaign contributions to Republican candidates via the NRA, disgusting too? How about the fake elector slates created by Trump, even before the election, to make it appear he won when he didn't? Disgusting?

      Or do you only reserve your disgust for the press?

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    2. I am actually able to be disgusted by multiple things at once, for example: journalists, Nixon's dirty tricks, and even your comments.

      I may have advanced skills in this area.

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    3. Voting rights are under assault, abortion is about to be illegal, SC has become ruled by highly politicized and activist right wingers, Fox News has helped convince a larger portion of the public that all this nonsense is good, and worse!

      But Somerby repeats the same misguided notions about Muskie for years and cons suckers like 12:57.

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  7. I saw Muskie's press conference. I didn't think about whether he was weeping or not, but thought that he was whining and complaining in a manner that made him appear helpless and weak. Sort of like when a bunch of kids provoke an adult into yelling at them -- the adult appears powerless and preoccupied with something that is unimportant. For Muskie to call a press conference because someone said something critical of his wife made him appear unfit as a candidate, not thick-skinned enough for politics, weak. Yes, Nixon's ratfucking provoked him, but he should have ignored it. Muskie put himself out of contention with his own behavior and poor judgment.

    Somerby wishes to blame the press for this, but you didn't have to read any of their accounts to find Muskie's press conference an over-reaction to a minor provocation. Whether he had snow on his face or tears, his entire statement and demeanor condemned him as unfit to hold a position where restraint and a sense of proportion are needed. Somerby wants to blame a poker-playing member of the press for derailing Muskie, but Muskie did it to himself. Look at the things they called Hillary, which she wisely ignored! Muskie taught subsequent politicians the dangers of making a fuss over something trivial and making yourself look ridiculous in the process. A few positive press interviews with his wife could have counteracted the negatives, but Muskie took things personally and let himself be provoked into an intemperate response. Not presidential at all. It wasn't about the crying.

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    1. You can watch Muskie for yourself and hear the account of someone who was there:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoEEs9cD4JI&ab_channel=WMUR-TV

      John Milne (UPI reporter) says Muskie was "choked up" and says that the further away you were, the more likely to see tears not snow. Broder set the tone because he was with the Washington Post and had stature. Also, he says Muskie already had a reputation as an emotional guy, based on previous incidents. The Union Leader emphasized the crying. The letter about Canucks wasn't only about Canadians but also African Americans, about racism.

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  8. "As noted, Broder's astounding confession was quickly disappeared."

    Just as Somerby has disappeared the context of this event. No one cared about Broder's so-called confession (which is an off-hand remark that it was unclear whether Muskie was actually crying) because the press doesn't consider itself to blame for Muskie's actions. The press didn't torpedo Muskie. Muskie's behavior hurt him with the public. Recall that the press reported everything that happened -- not just a casual mention of his crying. The crying later came to stand for the tantrum he threw about criticism of his wife. People at the time saw what Muskie did. It was televised. The reporting didn't matter and wasn't pivotal in Muskie's sinking in the polls, his loss of votes. He rose quickly as a regional favorite and disappeared just as quickly.

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  9. "Muskie wept, the journalists cried, and this reporting was vastly consequential. Other standardized myths widely prevail, including these standard groaners:
    ...Fifteen years later, Broder confessed. Yesterday, in the Washington Post, his confession remained disappeared."

    If this is a standardized press myth, a groaner, why should anyone care about Broder's confession?

    Somerby cannot have this both ways. In order for the confession to be consequential, the reporting had to have affected the presidential campaign outcome. But Somerby says that is a myth. If it had no impact, then perhaps Broder's non-confession confession was ignored because it was inconsequential, not because anyone was trying to conceal anything about the reporting of Muskie's press conference -- where he complained about his wife's mistreatment and was emotionally distraught, for everyone to see, whether there were actual tears or not.

    Why doesn't Somerby recognize that when a press person writes a book about his career, he may be likely to overestimate the impact of his own work on events he reported on? Everyone seems to magnify their own importance, even when stating such things as "I knew Muskie was temperamental" even before he showed everyone else his true nature. Somerby works very hard to make the press seem more influential than it every is, including in Al Gore's campaign, where Gore committed many errors that led to his loss, not least failure to fight for his win when it was stolen by Bush, his brother Jeb, and the Supreme Court.

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  10. "All in all, the children never abandon their memorized tales."

    Neither does Somerby.

    Where does Somerby get off calling major journalists "children"? Why does he say this was a memorized tale when it consisted of accepting the account of someone who was there (Broder) by those at other papers and sources (AP picked it up from Broder and was a source for those without their own reporters at the scene)? Somerby repeats a variety of revisionist accounts of Muskie's press conference that demonstrate conflicting views, not memorized at all, then concludes this is a memorized tale! His own evidence conflicts with that assertion.

    It seems to me that Somerby does a lot of his own rounding off of the corners, to make his own favorite narrative fit his claims -- but they never quite do.

    I recall when the press made a fuss about Gore's claim to inventing the internet. I knew who actually started the internet (dARPA.net) and I considered it bunk at the time. Gore's actual words clarified the situation. Thereafter, when I heard someone mocking Gore over that, it seemed clear to me that those folks were just announcing their opposition to Gore as a candidate. The same is true when I heard someone call Hillary a crook or a ballbuster, or heard someone call Trump a guy who tells it like it is. It is an announcement of partisanship. The people doing that in the press were opinion columnists, not reporters. Folks like Maureen Dowd.

    Somerby may be unhappy that people held differing opinions about Gore from himself, that they said mean things about him. But Somerby himself sounds a lot like Muskie defending his wife from mean attacks. I picture Somerby with tears running down his cheeks as he defends Gore from the kind of routine political attacks that happen during campaigns, back in 1980, 40 years ago. Gore should have ignored them, and Somerby should understand that politics is a rough business, no one comes out unscathed. The press does its best to sift truth from fiction, but it doesn't exist to defend Muskie or Gore from partisan attacks by their opponents. Hillary won her election and history will vindicate her. Gore won his too, but he failed to fight for his victory. History sees that already and holds him accountable for his own failure. Somerby needs to move on before someone else notices that his emotionality over Gore is disproportionate to their long-ago relationship as Harvard roomies, and wonders what is up with him. Somerby has never married, although Gore seems to have moved on with his life. Clinging to this particular narrative may not be good for Somerby's mental health.

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    1. What happened with Gore was hardly a routine political attack. It was a campaign fomented by the PRESS, not just the opponents.

      Now I know who so many of these hostile commenters are here. They're press people on the defensive. Who else would spend all this time concentrating on Bob Somerby?

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    2. nice theory but do you have any evidence? or do you not require any — like Republicans & their conspiracies?

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    3. As much as I hate the media, I wouldn’t suggest that any of them are as ludicrous as anonymices.

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    4. Nah. I take that back.

      How could I forget Brian Stelter.

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  11. Broder doesn’t quite “confess.”

    The “tears” which may have been snowflakes are uncertain, but it is clear to anyone who views the tape of Muskie’s speech that Muskie choked up at one point, unable to continue speaking.

    Muskie himself said this later:

    Loeb (the conservative New Hampshire newspaper publisher) was “just deliberately slurring …a good woman … deliberately cutting down her character just to get to me. I guess the full realization of what he’d done just hit me this morning, suddenly, and I couldn’t go on.

    (Sounds like Loeb was successful…)

    Also, Somerby says “Pathetically, they had formed this impression based on Muskie's reactions during a poker game.”

    This isn’t entirely true. Broder (not Waldman) says this, reprinting what he wrote during the campaign: “Several times this week, Muskie reacted with anger to questions from high school students he charged were `planted’ by the McGovern camp”

    “At one school, a teenager who asked an uncomfortable question was interrogated by the senator as if he were a prosecutor trying to shake the alibi of an accused wife-killer. Lou Cannon witnessed those high school blowups and gained further insight into the state of Muskie’s temper when he was invited to join in a friendly poker game…”

    So, there’s a bit more context to the poker game story.

    Broder’s main point in his so-called confession is that no one knew about the ratfucking by the Nixon campaign, which included forging the “Canuck letter” and getting slanderous stories about Muskie’s wife published (among other things). These things were clearly weighing on Muskie.

    I also wonder why or how Muskie choking up while defending his wife was seen as a bad thing by voters. Is that all it was?

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    1. Somerby always puts his thumb on the narrative scale and ignores the irrational flaws in his own nonsense.

      Somerby does help sharpen our tools for confronting right wing nonsense, I doubt that is his intention; and the comments critical of Somerby are generally excellent and elucidating.

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    2. I don't speak for anyone else voting in that election, but here are some reason why his defense of his wife might have come across badly:

      1. The attacks against his wife weren't for anything that terrible. They did go counter to stereotype, but swearing and drinking alcohol are things many women do without needing to be defended.
      2. Sometimes a woman needs defending, but often a man who is touchy about what people say about his wife is taking the attacks personally, as if the wife were an appendage or extension of himself, not a person in her own right. That comes across as sexist to many women. Would she have wanted him to defend her? Did he even ask her?
      3. It may have seemed like Muskie was making an attack on his wife all about himself and not about her. In that case, complaining about being attacked may have made him seem like a whiney ass baby. Insisting that one is above attack during a campaign asserts a privilege that no one gets in the rough-and-tumble of politics. Insisting on "respect" may have made him seem ridiculous.
      4. Because he lost votes among New England voters, he may have lowered his appeal to blue collar male voters by showing that he couldn't take it after minor provocation. It wasn't as if they attacked his mother, after all.
      5. When a person is being accused of being temperamentally unfit for the presidency, choking up isn't the best idea. He said he choked up out of anger, but that is worse because it demonstrates lack of control under minor provocation.
      6. If he lost female votes, it was most likely because many women think it is stupid when men fight over them, because fighting is stupid and because who asked them to?

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    3. Absolutely. Mrs. Muskie’s was offended by her husband’s misogyny in defending her, and he was correctly judged as sounding unmanly for being offended over her treatment.

      You’re on it as usual.

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    4. Interesting. Gov. Michael Dukakis would be interested in this theory.

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    5. Yes, Dukakis was accused of being weak in a hypothetical scenario involving his wife and that was a decade after Muskie.

      No, one thought Muskie was being patronizing toward his wife in 1972. They thought his purported tears were weakness and that he was petulant in general.

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    6. Cecelia, you think you are joking, but the heyday of the women's rights movement was 1972. There were more radical feminists then than now. You have no idea what women thought of Muskie's behavior in 1972. I do because I was there, and active in the women's movement as well.

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  12. Kyle Rittenhouse keeps lying about his education. He was a high school dropout at the time he killed two people and shot another at a BLM protest. During his trial, he said he was attending an online nursing program at ASU, but the university said he had no association with it. Lately he has been saying that he will be attending Texas A&M, but they say he has not been accepted or enrolled there, so he is now saying he will attend Blinn College, an open enrollment school, Rittenhouse claims is a feeder school to Texas A&M. Blinn however says they have received his application but he is not enrolled there for fall.

    Obviously, being seen as going somewhere is important to him, but he cannot seem to do anything but lie about it. I wonder what else he has been lying about? When someone tells repeated gratuitous lies, they are considered to be a liar. It is part of the behaviors that constitute sociopathy, especially lies with no particular personal gain. What else is part of sociopathy? Somerby doesn't care, as long as young white men don't go to jail when they commit serious crimes (or have their swimming careers derailed).

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    1. Rittenhouse also chased and taunted Rosenbaum, there is video of this, shot him in cold blood, and then galloped away like he was celebrating scoring a touchdown. He is a psychopath but right wingers do not care because they successfully used him to further their push to decriminalize murder for white people.

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    2. Liberals deny how cute Rittenhouse has been and continues to be.

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    3. People act like it's Rittenhouse's fault Build Back Better failed and Hispanics are quitting the Democratic Party.

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    4. Rittenhouse went to Wisconsin to protect racial hierarchies.

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    5. I hope Rittenhouse poses for Playgirl.

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    6. Rittenhouse doesn't even hate black people. He just pretends he does, so he can be a Republican Senator.

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    7. He's no drop-dead gorgeous beauty, like Hillary Clinton, but I can see him having a certain appeal.

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    8. I don't think Rittenhouse is too hot, but I totally get the Right hating Hillary, because they are jealous of her beauty.

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    9. His hair is lustrous.

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    10. I'd go down on him in a minute

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    11. "Liberals deny how cute Rittenhouse has been and continues to be."
      No doubt, his looks are the best thing about the fugly little shit stain.

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    12. Rittenhouse's great great uncle invented nougat.

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  13. Is this what Bob wants to replace Nichole Wallace with? Does this mean he thinks Jan 6 didn’t happen and the press is ganging up on poor Trump who just has a few mental problems? Or…. What?

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    1. I bet Somerby will not comment on the 1/6 hearings later this week. The talking points require that he distract from them, or portray the left as election-stealers, not the Republicans. Somerby might say something about Johnny Depp. Normally he would be above that, but that is the best deflection material, short of talking about Einstein's dumbness again.

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    2. Egypt is in Japan.

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  14. Bob may have gone on a drinking binge after the Sussmann verdict.

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