October 27, 2019

"You’re canny about media. You know that you can’t hurt The Times and The Post by having a childish fit of pique..."

"... that just sells more newspapers. The only way you could cut the clicks is if you calmed down, behaved properly and acted like a decent human being, so that there weren’t always 20 breaking news stories every day about your conspiring and grifting and lying and lunacy."

That's from "Extra, Extra! Prez Won’t Read All About It/Snowflake Trump wants us off his lawn" by Maureen Dowd.

And that's exactly what gets my tag "civility bullshit." It's a little too obvious, though, this demand for a unilateral disarmament. She's going for a Trumpishly trash-talking style — "conspiring and grifting and lying and lunacy" — but he needs to stand down and speak in a dignified, moderate way.

Notice how she's confessing to the media's dependence on Trump. He gives good clicks. I've watched a lot of Trump rallies, and he often riffs on this topic. He's got the media secretly in love with him because he's giving them so much to talk about. It's so entertaining that people keep eating it up. Dowd acts like ha ha that's great, my side is winning.

38 comments:

The Bergall said...

Point on!

rehajm said...

Economically, you can...

Wilbur said...

MoDo is no match for Althouse's cruel neutrality. It skewers the nonsense of Dowd like a ... skewer.

Civility bullshit indeed.

Laslo Spatula said...

The press acts like bitter ex-girlfriends.

That includes the female journalists, too.

I am Laslo.

Darrell said...

MoDo is funny. One day it may ever be said that she is humorous.

Drago said...

In Soviet America NYT and Washington Post find YOU!

tim in vermont said...

It’s always kind of amazing to me how people are blind to the next level. There is almost certainly a next level I am blind to, but still. Or maybe they are not blind to it, but just lying. I think they are bound by tendrils of a plant like Seymour, in that play Little Shop of Horrors, their need to feel superior... “Feed me!”

It seems obvious that there is an anti-Trump war room somewhere ordering up these thinly grounded stories day after day, pretending in each that earlier stories that are also groundless are true and building on those. Take a breath MoDo.

Marcus Bressler said...

She occasionally produces good copy when she puts down the gin and tonic.

THEOLDMAN

At least she isn't as vapid as many of the younger Times' writers.

tim in vermont said...

I am old enough to remember when Althouse was going to refuse to write about Trump, maybe he would go away.

samanthasmom said...

Maureen Dowdy is coming close to her sell by date, and she knows it. She just needs the NYT and WaPo to hang on a little longer.

tim in vermont said...

MoDo at least understands what the Clintons have done to her beloved Democrat Party.

tim in vermont said...

"every day about your conspiring and grifting and lying and lunacy.”

Always accuse the other side of what your side is doing, right MoDo?

Gilbert Pinfold said...

Everyone seems to forget that JFK made a big deal over publicly canceling the WH subscription to the NY Herald-Tribune. My mother wrote JFK a letter to tweak him about being afraid of a newspaper, and got a (gracious reply from the Press Secretary (Pierre Salinger) in return.

wendybar said...

WHY are taxpayers paying for such trash for all politicians??? They can afford to buy their own tabloids.

tim in vermont said...

The cat secretly loves the laser pointer. If Trump were a hedgehog, that would be his one powerful truth.

Michael K said...

MoDo reminds me of Grandma in "Parenthood" saying "She needs a man !"

tim in vermont said...

Here’s another take: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/10/26/trump-is-a-difficult-to-understand-genius/

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Grifting?

Trump loses money and doesn't take that 400,000+ per year clintonian government whore pay check.

MD Greene said...

Elie Wiesel had it right. "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference."

Political obsession is a mental disease, apparently a contagious one.

Danno said...

My thought just now was to eliminate the deep state by banning anyone in the U.S. government who subscribes to these rags from entering federal buildings. You wouldn't even have to fire them, just pay them to stay home while disconnecting their government phone lines and internet and email access.

Gahrie said...

Trump isn't a snowflake...he really is being attacked.

Yancey Ward said...

Again, is the offer of getting to read the NYTimes via Google/Facebook login new, or was it always there? I only noticed it yesterday, the day after Trump cancelled all the Administration's paid subscriptions.

Temujin said...

Note to Maureen. I quit the NY Times years ago after finally getting tired of overhyped columnists and horribly biased reporting on various subjects. Long before Trump, I found Dowd to be meh. Repetitive in style and substance. Not nearly as clever as she (and her sycophants) claimed. She (and the Times) became tedious reading, not all the news fit to print.

Apparently, I was not the only one as the Times has had numerous layoffs since those years.

I suspect Trump doesn't give a damn about what Maureen writes. Neither does al-Baghdadi.

Dave Begley said...

Yesterday I was in the Texas house chamber to see Rick Atkinson and the moderator praised Maureen Dowd as some kind of great thinker and writer. I laughed. She’s a washed up partisan loon and an old maid to boot.

Fernandinande said...

"Shut up" she explained.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

"conspiring and grifting and lying and lunacy"
Biden, Sanders, Warren and Harris?
Or is it the platform of the democrat party?
Maybe it's the mission statement of American media.

Dave Begley said...

She could’ve been Mrs Michael Douglas.

Yeah, she’s bitter. Who wouldn’t be?

gilbar said...

samanthasmom said...
Maureen Dowdy is coming close to her sell by date, and she knows it. She just needs the NYT and WaPo to hang on a little longer.


Just How Old IS her NYT's picture? It's the same one i've ALWAYS seen
When composing this, i thought; what DOES she look like now?
So, i went to wikipedia; and THEIR picture shows a Much Older Dowdy.... And THEIR picture, is ELEVEN AND A HALF YEARS OLD (April, 2008). What the hell IS she? A Vampire? are cameras like mirrors?

tcrosse said...

"Fit of pique" always sounds like a spoonerism.

MD Greene said...

Like Temujin, our family quit taking the Times several years ago. Dowd wasn't a factor. The paper's news pages have abandoned even the pretense of objectivity. It has hired and promoted known cheats and shills who would have been run out of journalism as recently as 10 years ago. It ignores serious problems in local schools, public housing, and government. Its Sunday sports page isn't about sports. Its Sunday business page isn't about business. Its book review section covers books written and read by people in Brooklyn.

The Times business model now is preaching to a choir of self-styled elitists who seek ratification of what they already believe and who are actively hostile to any presentation of even mildly dissident views. The best thing that can be said for all this is that it's profitable, which is rare in news outlets these days.

Mainstream media, indeed.

Michael K said...

The thing that drives the media crazy is the knowledge that, their coverage of his campaign, which was done in the expectation it would end up with nothing, kept it alive and resulted in his win. His small team did a great job with planning and polling but without all the free PR, would probably have not been enough.

The irony is delicious.

FullMoon said...

Yancey Ward said...

Again, is the offer of getting to read the NYTimes via Google/Facebook login new, or was it always there? I only noticed it yesterday, the day after Trump cancelled all the Administration's paid subscriptions.
10/27/19, 9:07 AM


First time I have seen it, usually get a "you have used up your free views" type of message.

Incidentally, got a letter from San Jose Mercury News, big dog in SF bay area, full year of Sunday delivery and free online access, ten bucks.

Haven't subscribed since occasional AA commenter Joanne Jacobs stopped writing a column for them..

Leland said...

Seems like just this summer the Press was complaining that Trump made them sit on his lawn. By the way guys, winter is coming.

rcocean said...

Dowd should've retired December 31, 2008. she was good at going after the Bush Family and Bill Clinton, but she was worthless during the obama years and unfunny with Trump. She's gone from being quirky and occasionally funny - to predicable and dull. its like hearing your old aunt tell the same "knock knock joke" every Christmas and Thanksgiving for 10 years.

Peggy Noonan is the same. Her act should've ended in 2008, after the hate-Palin shtick. She's been a pompous bore ever since, becoming more and more disdainful of the "Riff Raff" spoiling her good times with her elegant DC establishment friends.

Gunner said...

Shouldn't MoDo have done her duty years ago and given up her job to some midget albino lesbian or something? Not very intersectional of her.

The fact that she still uses a picture of herself from the 90s is more ridiculous than any of Trump's aesthetic choices.

Lurker21 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
hombre said...

Interesting that Dowd fails to understand the damage Trump has already done to the Times and the Post. At least 50%, probably more, of the citizens view them as something other than newspapers - comic books devoid of pictures publishing false information at the behest of and promoting the corrupt Democrat Party.

Dowd and the other toadies will never regain the 50%+. They will simply lose more credibility until only academics, feminists, actors and LGBT activists look to them for facts. Hardcore Democrats know the papers lie, but look to them to further the cause.

Is “unselfaware” a word?

Lurker21 said...

She doesn't get it. Trump's animosity benefits the media that hates him, but their hate also benefits him. They get shown up for what they are, and the media's hatred energizes the president's supporters.

Trump knows that the mainstream media isn't going to like him or treat him fairly, so why should he behave as they wish in order to get a patronizing pat on the head from them that they aren't going to give him anyway?

Trump's a moving target who won't stand still and let himself get taken down by the mainstream media. Why would he want to stand still and make things easy for them?