Goodbye to commenter Michael K.

Other commenters mark his passing in the comments to Tuesday night's sunrise post and in this earlier post that day.

This morning I'm seeing Neo's blog post, "RIP commenter 'Mike K'": "RIP Mike K, and all the commenters here who may have died but all we know is that they disappeared never to return."

Yes, I've mourned the unexplained loss of Bissage for 15 years.

Bissage was a dearly beloved commenter on this blog who disappeared one day, when the uncooperative dear became uncooperative. I've tried to call him back: "Come back, Bissage. We're counting oranges again. Remember? 42. 42. 42..." To no avail.

I appreciate hearing the specific news that a commenter has died, like when Gahrie's brother's dropped into a comments thread: "Hello.... This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am...."

I miss Gahrie and Bissage and Michael K and many others who died or drifted away and even some of those who left in a huff. They, unlike the dead, can drop back in. Why don't they? It's not for me to figure out. The blog, like life itself, can only move forward, and the day will come when we will all be left behind. So thanks to all — except the actual trolls — who walked along this way as far as they did.

"Vice President Kamala Harris has gone 86 days as the presumptive, and now, official Democratic nominee for president without holding an official press conference."

Says Fox News, just Fox News, but isn't it true?

It seems impossible. I'm reading about this and that podcast, and an occasional interview with a mainstream newsperson, such as Fox's Bret Baier coming up, but never a news conference. How is it possible to rise to the presidency without one attempt at handling a press conference?

"Murdoch’s unhappiness and befuddlement is the throughline of... 'The Fall: The End of Fox News,' which is to hit shelves next week..."

"... days after Murdoch, 92, announced his retirement from the Fox Corporation and News Corporation boards. [The book] paints Fox’s owner as embarrassed by the channel’s vulgarity and horrified by its ultimate political creation, Donald Trump. Murdoch apparently very much wants to thwart the ex-president.... Though 'The Fall' is peppered with references to HBO’s 'Succession,' Murdoch comes off as the anti-Logan Roy, desperate for the approval of his mostly liberal children, with the hateful Fox News standing between them. 'He just wants his kids to love him,' Roger Ailes is quoted saying. 'And they don’t.'... ... Murdoch has... handed Fox to his son Lachlan... widely seen as the only true conservative among the Murdoch heirs.... The network may keep boosting Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but once the primaries are over, we can expect it to once again be the lucrative propaganda arm of Trump’s presidential campaign.... The electorate that Fox helped shape, and the politicians it indulges, have made this country ungovernable. An unbound Trump may well become president again, bringing liberal democracy in America to a grotesque end. If so, it will be in large part Murdoch’s fault...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Ludicrous Agony of Rupert Murdoch" (NYT).

"Candidates repeatedly disregarded the debate rules, with little in the way of an attempt to keep the proceedings on track."

"When candidates talked over moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as they tried to move on, the moderators often just relented and gave them the stage. But the problems were most evident in the moderators’ handling of hand-raising questions — a good and helpful entry at any debate. The first time they requested such responses, DeSantis objected to the format, and they let him do it, declining to make the request again. Later, they asked whether the candidates would support Trump in the general election if he is convicted. Only Christie and Hutchinson declined, but both DeSantis and Pence were slow to raise their hands. And for some reason, there was no follow-up with them."

 
In "The winners and losers from the first Republican debate" (WaPo), Aaron Blake counts Fox News among the losers.

In contrast to the loud chaos of the debate, there was the gentle fireside conversation between 2 calm men:

Ep. 19 Debate Night with Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/ayPfII48CO

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2023

"Tucker Carlson's glory days are over, and his new episodic Twitter show is the evidence of his fall from grace."

Writes Cheryl Teh, in "Tucker Carlson is nothing without Fox News, and his sad Twitter-broadcast debut proves it" (Business Insider).

First off, make no mistake: Carlson still gets the views.... 

The video, up for a day and a half, has over 100 million views. At the point Teh's column went up, it was it was at 11.2 million, already much more than he had on Fox News (around 2 million, which was about twice what Fox has without him).

But enough about numbers! Teh continues with her theory that Carlson is nothing without Fox News:

"Tucker Carlson, two weeks after being ousted by Fox News, accused the network Tuesday of fraud and breach of contract..."

"... and made a host of document demands that could precede legal action.... The aggressive letter from his lawyers to Fox positions Carlson to argue that the noncompete provision in his contract is no longer valid — freeing him to launch his own competing show or media enterprise...."

 
Axios reports.

It would be a loathsome position for Fox News to take: They've fired an important speaker from their platform and then they want to prevent him from speaking anywhere else. Many people want to hear from Tucker Carlson, and Fox would need to argue they've purchased his silence for the next 2 years. 

"In video obtained by The Times... Mr. Carlson is shown off camera discussing his 'postmenopausal fans' and..."

"... whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds 'yummy.' His texts could also factor in a pending defamation suit that the software company Smartmatic... as well as in a suit... alleging a hostile and discriminatory work environment. All this was in the mix when the network finally cut Mr. Carlson’s program this week, according to several people familiar with the internal discussions. And, the end of his run followed a pattern. His unceremonious departure made Mr. Carlson the latest in a list of prominent hosts and executives Fox has decided to show the door once the Murdochs concluded they were no longer worth the trouble: Glenn Beck (2011), Sarah Palin (2013), Roger Ailes, the network’s co-founder (2016) and Bill O’Reilly (2017). Despite the political clout he could exercise and the money his top-rated show brought in for the network, ultimately, Mr. Carlson learned that he served at the pleasure of the Murdochs."

 
From "On Eve of Trial, Discovery of Carlson Texts Set Off Crisis Atop Fox/Private messages sent by Tucker Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive remarks that went beyond the comments of his prime-time show" (NYT).

With that headline, I was expecting something way more awful than "postmenopausal fan" and "yummy." What are the worst things you say in private conversations? Surely, we all say things that — if clipped out of context — are at least as bad as "postmenopausal fan" and "yummy"!

He served at the pleasure of the Murdochs makes the most sense. We really just shouldn't care about the pleasure of the Murdochs. But the Murdochs must care about somebody still wanting to watch Fox News. If they're not going to rely on the viewers who liked Tucker Carlson, who are they hoping to attract, and how do they think they can accomplish that? Or are they just focused on surviving those lawsuits?

"Tucker Carlson is leaving Fox News."

WaPo reports.

[I]t was Carlson’s comments about Fox management, as revealed in the Dominion case, that played a role in his departure from Fox, a person familiar with the company’s thinking told The Post.... His Fox News colleagues were stunned by the departure, which seemed out of the blue.

He's already done his last show, and there's no one cued up to take his slot, which will just be filled with "rotating Fox News personalities" for now.

The NYT article brings up a lawsuit filed by "a former Fox News producer, Abby Grossberg, who claims that he presided over a misogynistic and discriminatory workplace culture." She says "that on her first day working for Mr. Carlson, she discovered the work space was decorated with large pictures of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wearing a swimsuit."

Also at the NYT, there's a piece by Hart Seely that went up 2 days ago — "The Fearful Verses of Tucker Carlson" — consisting entirely of overheated sentences spoken by Carlson, mostly begin with the words "This is" (each linked to video): "This is chaos," "This is shocking," "This is what the collapse of civilization looks like," etc. etc.

"Many of Fox’s arguments had been crippled in pretrial hearings, and the company was facing the likelihood that some of its top stars, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity..."

"... would be called to testify, along with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the father-and-son pair who run Fox News’ parent company.... ...Rupert Murdoch, who is ninety-two, would have to sit in a witness box and answer questions as dozens of journalists looked on.... At the press conference, Steven Shackelford, another Dominion attorney, told the assembled crowd, 'Money is accountability. And we got that today from Fox.... 'Is there anything else in this settlement besides money?' someone asked from the crowd. Would Fox air an apology? Issue a retraction?"

 
Writes Clare Malone in "The Stunning End of Dominion’s Case Against Fox News/The voting-machine company has agreed to a seven-hundred-million-dollar settlement in its defamation suit against Rupert Murdoch’s cable news network" (The New Yorker).

"The Dominion team walked away from the microphone.... Shackelford... seemed genuinely giddy and did a comic exhalation of breath, bending over and sort of shaking out the sillies. I asked if we would see an on-air apology. Shackelford smiled and snapped back into friendly professionalism—he wasn’t the right person to ask.... At my hotel, I got to the elevator bay at the same time that an entire team of pleased-looking Dominion lawyers did. As they filed in, I introduced myself and wanted to know if they had any answer to my questions about apologies.... They all just smiled as the elevator door closed on my face."

"Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. 'Crazy Stuff.'"

"The comments, by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and others, were released as part of a defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems." The NYT reports.

"Given the app’s use by about a third of the U.S. population and its association with the everyday expression of political and personal views..."

"... outlawing TikTok would constitute a disproportionately greater move toward decoupling [from China] and might invite retaliation — as compared with outlawing commercial hardware containing surveillance-capable chips.... The optimal way forward would be for Congress to enact a law governing the collection and misuse of online personal and commercial data that would apply not only to current apps such as TikTok but also to future digital apps (whether or not foreign-owned) posing security or privacy concerns. Without such congressional action, the next best outcome would be for ByteDance, recognizing that the status quo is untenable, to sell the app to an American company. ByteDance has resisted that.... If neither is possible, only then should we resort to an outright TikTok ban — recognizing that choosing an expedient, simple solution for one national security problem might generate a more complex and enduring one."

 
From "The Problem With Taking TikTok Away From Americans" by Glenn S. Gerstell (of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, former general counsel of the National Security Agency and Central Security Service).

This comment over there has a lot of "up" votes:

I wonder: Rewrite that headline.

If you puzzle: A command is not a wondering, you see my problem — one of my problems — with the headline "Why hasn't Sam Bankman-Fried already been forced back to the US for FTX fiasco, critics wonder: 'Lock him up'/SBF's father, Joseph Bankman, notably helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren draft tax legislation." (Fox News).

1. Whether you're a "critic" or not, you can't "wonder" "Lock him up." You might wonder why he's not locked up. But you can't wonder an imperative.

2. I guess you could ignore the colon — which indicates that what the critics wonder is "Lock him up." Then you could see the critics as wondering why SBF hasn't been "forced back to the US." That is something that can be wondered. A question mark might help.

3. I find it hard to believe anyone is wondering that. There are no charges against SBF — not yet. I found that article because I was googling to see if SBF was actively fleeing from legal consequences. Isn't that what most of us would expect him to do — what we would do under the circumstances?

4. And that subheadline! What's the point of that if not to insinuate that SBF has political connections that are the reason he's not already extradited and locked up? It's such a weak insinuation. SBF's father is eminent enough to have some connection to drafting a tax bill, and — if you go to the link in the article — you'll see it was just about simplifying tax filing.

5. If you go on to read the article, you'll see it's not really about what "critics," plural, are saying. It's just about what Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News, on "The Five." And Jesse Watters "agreed."

6. Here's something to wonder: Why is Fox News so trashy?

"The hearings starting Thursday will feature a documentary filmmaker who has new video evidence of the violent mob assault incited by Donald Trump..."

"... and extensive advance planning among paramilitary-type groups. Riveting material about Trump’s corruption and the GOP’s enabling of it will follow. By contrast, Fox hosts are gearing up to substitute a propagandistic alternative story in which the only real victims related to Jan. 6 and the hearings are Trump and his supporters. House Republicans allied with Trump will manufacture material for this disinformation push designed to keep the truth from the base at all costs."

Writes Greg Sargent in "Fox News’s blackout of Jan. 6 points to a hidden crisis for Democrats" (WaPo).

A propagandistic alternative story or an alternative propagandistic story?

WaPo goes after the Twitter feed "Libs of TikTok" — tracing and revealing the name of someone who had been anonymous.

"Meet the woman behind Libs of TikTok, secretly fueling the right’s outrage machine A popular Twitter account has morphed into a social media phenomenon, spreading anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and shaping public discourse" by Taylor Lorenz. 

Last Thursday, the woman behind the account appeared anonymously on Tucker Carlson’s show to complain about being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s community guidelines. Fox News often creates news packages around the content that Libs of TikTok has surfaced.... 

[T]he identity of the operator of Libs of TikTok is traceable through a complex online history and reveals someone who has been plugged into right-wing discourse for two years and is now helping to drive it.... 

A woman at the address listed to [this] name in Los Angeles declined to identify herself. On Monday night, a tweet from Glenn Greenwald confirmed the house that was visited belonged to [her] family....

I guess Lorenz (and WaPo) think this doxxing is acceptable — and good journalism — because the person is opposed to the left and giving visibility to its TikTok videos that might otherwise escape notice. There's this implicit justification for doxxing:

"On the flip side, CNN engages in this partisan coverage filtering as well."

 

ADDED: Here's the WaPo opinion piece on that segment: "CNN’s Brian Stelter blindsided by co-author of Fox News study" by Erik Wemple. CNN's Brian Stelter was "blindsided" because the researchers who were expected to criticize Fox News proceeded to say CNN does it too.

Let's take a closer look at CNN+.

Yesterday, we talked about the news that CNN's new streaming service had only picked up 10,000 subscribers, and I wrote: "$5.99 a month for CNN is pretty ridiculous. 10,000 subscribers... hilarious."

But — curious about what was actually on CNN+ — I looked at its webpage and was surprised to see that you can subscribe for only $2.99 a month — and "save 50% for life" — if you sign up by April 26. So there has been pressure to sign up before that offer ends. That makes the 10,000 number look much worse.

Anyway, what is on CNN+?

"In an unusual, and labor intensive, project, two political scientists paid a group of regular Fox News viewers to instead watch CNN for a month."

"At the end of the period, the researchers found surprising results; some of the Fox News watchers had changed their minds on a range of key issues, including the US response to coronavirus and Democrats’ attitude to police. 

From "What happens when a group of Fox News viewers watch CNN for a month? A study that paid viewers of the rightwing cable network to switch shed light on the media’s influence on people’s views" (The Guardian). 

David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, political scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale university, respectively, paid 304 regular Fox News viewers $15 an hour to instead watch up to seven hours of CNN a week during the month of September 2020....

By the end of September, the CNN watchers were less likely to agree that: “It is an overreaction to go out and protest in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin” and less likely to believe that: “If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists”, when compared with their peers who continued watching Fox News... In addition the CNN viewers were 13 points less likely than the Fox News viewers to agree that: “If Joe Biden is elected President, we’ll see many more police get shot by Black Lives Matter activists.”...

But once it was over, and the $15 an hour was taken away, “viewers returned to watching Fox News”, Kalla said....

Maybe if there were a news channel that gave the news straight and didn't lean either way, after exposure to it, people would stay with it, rather than return to the channel that tracked their political inclination. The subjects of this study may have moderated some of their more extreme views, but I presume they were also continually irritated by the liberal bias of CNN. Were they surveyed about that?

"Good luck, Fox News, trying to find someone to replace [Chris] Wallace. The Sunday political shows are places where the networks have traditionally slotted broadcasters with established credentials."

"It’s not a tryout sort of gig. That means the network must attempt to find a heavy hitter who has compiled years of experience in Washington — meaning, someone who’s fully aware of Fox News’s descent into anti-democratic Carlsonian madness. Perhaps a nine-figure contract will help that someone look the other way. Or it could turn to Baier, the veteran host of the nightly 'Special Report.' Beyond that, the Fox News payroll is thin on potential successors — which is what happens when you fork over your corporate identity to a flamboyant conspiracy theorist."

Writes Erik Wemple in "Chris Wallace bolts Tucker Carlson’s Fox News" (WaPo).

Chris Wallace is leaving "Fox News Sunday" to work on CNN's new streaming platform, CNN+.

NBC News reports. 

"I want to try something new to go beyond politics, to all the things I’m interested in. I’m ready for a new adventure."...  He noted that when he joined the network, he was promised by Fox News executives that they would not interfere with his work and that they have "kept that promise."...

Jeff Zucker, CNN chairman, described it as a rare opportunity to bring someone of Wallace's "caliber" to such a new project.... 

"This Fox weather bitch... Any help painting her as a far right crazy?"

Chris Cuomo allegedly texted an Andrew Cuomo staffer, quoted in "Chris Cuomo allegedly blasted Janice Dean as ‘that Fox weather bitch’ in smear plot" (NY Post). 

The "weather bitch" he wanted to discredited Fox News, meteorologist Janice Dean, had criticized Governor Cuomo for his policy of putting Covid patients in nursing homes. Her husband's elderly parents had died of Covid in March and April of 2020, and she said this in March 2021 on "Fox and Friends":

“We knew he was covering up the numbers and now we are getting more and more information and facts to prove this is true. And the fact that his top aide Melissa de Rosa was in on it to help cover up the numbers, to downplay them.... They have never apologized to the families, 15,000 that deserve an apology. The only thing the governor is going to be sorry about is that he got caught. You know what — he needs to go to jail and all of those around him.... Promoting that book and making money off of COVID and the deaths of our loved ones is disgusting, corrupt and it needs to be investigated."

Interviewed yesterday, Dean said: