"So What if a Candidate Livestreamed Sex Acts with Her Husband?"

For this story, I'm linking to Jack Shafer at Politico, because his headline is — almost verbatim — the question I had for my search as I looked for an article about Susanna Gibson, a Democratic nominee for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.

"For all his accomplishments, Musk has no history of investing in mature companies."

"He’s the ultimate entrepreneur, having started, and this is a partial list, payments titan PayPal; rocket-maker SpaceX; brain-machine-interface start-up Neuralink; and the Boring Company, which aims to dig transport tunnels in big cities. Despite a claim on Tesla’s corporate website, Musk did not start Tesla. But he did invest early on, and Musk became Tesla’s driving force....  His tweet Monday following the disclosure of his Twitter stake was the cryptic 'Oh hi lol.'... He might simply feel he can do a better job at running Twitter.... Twitter also provides a potential launchpad for bitcoin, another of Musk’s obsessions.... It’s equally possible Musk isn’t serious about taking over Twitter and that instead he is probing, goofing, needling and otherwise entertaining himself, his fans and his antagonists.... Would owning all of Twitter give Musk more or less leverage with the SEC? Might his friendly relationship with the powers that be in China, where Tesla operates a factory, help Twitter enter that market, where it is now banned?"

From "Why Elon Musk is buying up Twitter" by Adam Lashinsky (WaPo).

Who can know the mind of Elon Musk? I realize I'm mainly just hoping he'll be a benefactor. I want free speech on Twitter.

Here's the #1 comment over at WaPo: "If Musk really wants to serve this planet he should buy Fox News. Then kill it."

My fellow citizens don't love free speech, so I'm looking to the mogul to protect what I can't trust democracy to protect. What a tenuous situation!

The second-highest-rated comment is: "Musk wants to own Twitter, so he can dictate the rules of self expression. I.e. provide a platform to Trump, without limitation. The ultimate libertarian dream!"

I don't think that commenter and its up-voters share the free-speech dream. I think they hate it! And I don't think the article-writer even mentions freedom of speech!

ADDED: Jack Shafer has this at Politico: "Why Elon Musk Is Buying into Twitter/Like other billionaires, Musk can’t resist the siren call of owning big media." 

Twitter is largely self-sustaining and needs no billionaire help to regain lost glory. Instead, Musk is that obsessive Twitterer who so loves its milk he wants to buy the cow.

The WaPo article-writer also used the milk/cow idea (which, by the way, is offensive to women). He said it's unclear "why Musk would need to own the cow when he drinks so freely of the milk."

Back to Shafer, who at least gets to the right point: "Musk look[s] like the person who doesn’t like the way Twitter censors messages, hence he’s buying the messenger." Yeah, cows make the same milk regardless of who owns them. A speech-platform is quite different.

"The social media bans bit hard into Trump’s visibility. But instead of reconstituting his following with the sort of show business flash and sparkle he brought to his White House years..."

"... and the 2016 campaign—rallies, press conferences, televised appearances—the former president spent most of his exile in the minimum security prison that is Mar-a-Lago, where he keeps a vigil over the banquet table, gives half-hearted speeches to tens of supporters about the 'stolen election,' exposes his kissable ring to the lips of supporters and golfs... Trump’s half-hearted attempts at gearing up his movement suggest he doesn’t really care as much about returning to Facebook as he lusts, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, to be a member of a club that doesn’t want him as a member. This half-heartedness informs almost every Trump move since the Biden victory was certified by Congress and the new administration took over. As Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw reported for POLITICO in mid-March, Trump has been adrift during his exile, indecisive, meandering and dawdling. Former CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta put it best by describing the Trump post-presidency as a 'sad old Elvis act,' adding, 'It’s like he’s an animatronic character, spewing out this stuff all over again like he has a string you pull behind him and replace the batteries when they’re low inside.' Trump’s sad old Elvis act has been performed with a limp and a hobble.... Although Trump’s Facebook account was popular... he never extolled it the way he did Twitter. ... Twitter was always Trump’s favorite child... his social media venue of choice. He will welcome Facebook reinstatement, of course, but will consider the honor a runner-up trophy. Twitter made him...."

From "Facebook Can’t Cure Trump’s Chronic Low Energy/It was Twitter that always gave him a reason to get up in the morning" by Jack Shafer (at Politico). 

Facebook's Oversight Board will announce its decision tomorrow morning. Trump could win, but — we're assured — that won't rouse him out of his pathetic malaise. He needs Twitter. He was Twitter. Without Twitter, he's a sad puppet...

An animatronic character, spewing out this stuff... like he has a string you pull behind him.... That's what they're saying he is now, and what he will be... unless he could get Twitter back. But the Twitter decision to oust him — unlike Facebook's decision — is permanent and unreviewable. So pathetic little man running out of batteries he is... unless he isn't.

FROM THE EMAIL: Alexander writes:

"CNN glowed almost as brightly about the event as a state media would have.... Biden’s perfectly fine if pedestrian speech earned instant accolades..."

"... from Wolf Blitzer, who jibbered that Biden had put 'his soul into his first address.'...  MSNBC worked from the same script, going gaga for not just Lady Gaga but the whole schmear. At day’s end, Rachel Maddow confessed to having worked her way through an entire box of Kleenex during the festivities and Joy Reid gushed like a partisan about the event.... The Washington Post got with the program, giving Biden credit for not waiting 'long to begin staffing up his administration, swearing in top White House aides,' as if previous incoming presidents had dilly-dallied about taking the reins. The New York Times swallowed whole the recent myth-making that has transformed Biden from a shifty politician into a statesman, conveying his call for civility and unity and portraying him as a disciplined, restrained character when anybody who has studied his career knows he’s anything but.... [B]y going overboard for Biden, the press was guilty of 1) hyping Joe; 2) inflating expectations to a volume he can’t possibly fulfill and 3) giving viewers and readers a reason to suspect if not distrust the gleaming Biden coverage. In an era when large portions of Americans think mainstream media is a tool of the left, a tad less bootlicking could help build trust among media skeptics.... [M]aybe we could embed a house cynic on each network and newspaper to police or at least tamp down the irrational exuberance that rains down on most inaugurations."

From "How About a Little Sobriety, Please?/At a time when large portions of the country think mainstream media is a tool of the left, perhaps it’s time to tone down the Biden adulation" by Jack Shafer (Politico).

Notice that he's only arguing about how to do propaganda well. If it worked in the stupidly gaga form we saw on Inauguration Day, he'd be okay with it.

The battering Trump is taking in the press is not hurting him.

From Real Clear Politics (which averages the polls):



I invite you to offer your own explanations, but I'm reading "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper" (NYT)...

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?”...

Republican voters repeatedly described an instinctive, protective response to the president, and their support has grown in recent months.... Mr. Trump has also retained support across a range of demographics other than the working-class voters who are most identified with him....

[A]s another immigration crisis of his own making smoldered this past week, critics inside and outside Mr. Trump’s party predicted another devastating, irremediable low point in his presidency. Yet many Trump voters said that they no longer had the patience or interest to listen to what they see as another hysterical outburst by Democrats, Republican “Never Trumpers” and the media....

For many Republicans, the audio of children sobbing at a migrant detention center barely registered, because these voters don’t pay attention to the left-leaning and mainstream media that have covered the family separation crisis far more than their preferred channel, Fox News....

Others said they saw a ploy by the president’s enemies to obscure news that was more favorable to him, like the internal Justice Department investigation that recently uncovered evidence of F.B.I. officials speaking disparagingly of Mr. Trump....

Then there's "Trump Loses His Superpower/The president’s tweets have been powerless against images of migrant children in the news media," by Jack Shafer (Politico) — which I feel like calling As Trump Supporters Resist the Assailing of Trump, His Antagonists Dig In Deeper:

The border story couldn’t have arrived at a worse time for Trump. After the inspector general’s report on FBI handling of the Clinton email investigation came out on June 14, Trump seized on it with his demagogic tentacles and started to score points with his misguided supporters about how the deep state had attempted to block his election....

But... the border story nullified Trump’s howling about the IG report and the evil James Comey. Nobody wanted to hear about the IG anymore; they wanted to hear Trump justify the border policy. Trump was now facing a story that couldn’t be diluted or contaminated with Twitter truculence....

For three years now we’ve been told that nothing bad sticks to Trump, that his mind games and double-talk make him invulnerable to the protestations of the righteous. That no matter how tight his detractors tie the knot, he’ll always slip out of it. This week we learned differently. Trump can reliably win the battle if it’s fought with words. But against images and descriptions of distraught and traumatized children and parents, Trump’s superpowers fail. If you want to beat Trump, hit him in the heart because he doesn’t seem to have one. He’s a man with zero emotional intelligence.

So... hit him in the thing that he doesn't have. Is that a Zen koan? I don't know. Jack Shafer just sounds... truculent. It's inspiring my instinctive, protective response. Shafer ought to see how battering Trump stimulates that feeling... but it would take some... emotional intelligence.

"This Pro-Hillary Website Looks Like North Korean Agitprop/Peter Daou, the prickly pro-Clinton operative, has launched a propaganda rag so shameless it would make Kim Jong Un blush."

A Politico headline. The article is by Jack Shafer:

A couple of days ago, Daou launched his self-funded Verrit.com, a slavishly pro-Clinton site (endorsed by Hillary!) to carry on her failed crusade.

The derision greeting Verrit is so universal it inspires sympathy for Daou, as Gizmodo, the Washington Post, Outline, New Republic, New York, The Ringer and others have broken its back with their snap judgments. “Verrit, a Media Company for Almost Nobody,” read one headline. “No One Asked for Verrit, But Here We Are,” stated another. “What Is Verrit and Why Should I Care? (Unclear; You Shouldn’t.),” said a third. “Peter Daou Continues to Embarrass Hillary Clinton,” asserted the best in show.

I'm not going to do links for all those articles, nor am I going to read them. I'll just idly theorize that Democrats really want Hillary to go away (see the top link in my previous post). What's so awful about Verrit? Shafer says:

Imagine if Matt Drudge created a Hillary fan site, only instead of listing news stories in a text-heavy fashion, he arranged them on the Web equivalent of 3x5 cards, and in addition to typing headlines onto the cards, he pulled out salient facts and stats from the stories (called “verrits”). Each card carries a unique serial number that you can plug into the Verrit database to prove … well, I don’t know exactly what it proves other than Verrit drew its facts and stats from the news source cited.

It sounds like a fact-checking site — a politically activated fact-checking site like Vox. Right? Verrit is a portmanteau of ferret and verify, I presume. The site is ferreting out the truth, right? It's a truth weasel, and it skews pro-Hillary.

As Daou’s Verrit manifesto puts it, the site hopes to become the trusted sourced for the 65.8 million voters who cast their ballots last November for Clinton and who seek verified “facts” they can use to argue politics. In theory, everybody needs a cheat sheet. In practice, the Verrit method is cringe-worthy. The headline to one early Verrit borrows from the literary methods of Kim Jong Un’s North Korea to assert, “Hillary Democrats Are the Heart and Conscience of America.” Does anybody outside of the Daou re-education camp really think this way?...

Daou's response to the criticism was an all-caps tweet: “PEOPLE ARE STILL TERRIFIED OF HILLARY. PEOPLE STILL WANT TO DESTROY HILLARY. PEOPLE WANT TO SILENCE ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS HER.”

He's yelling about silencing. Who's terrified of Hillary now that she's lost the election? Mostly just Democrats who are hoping to pull something together for the next election. I don't think they want to silence "anyone who supports" Hillary. They just want Hillary to go away so they can channel the erstwhile Hillary supporters into something that still lives and breathes within the Democratic Party. It is terrifying though, because what could that be?

Why shouldn't Daou provide a place for the Hillary lovers to rest and recover and preserve visibility as a group, a group that is holding back and available to vote for a Democratic Party that represents her values — or the values that they perceive her to embody. It's not easy to remember what the were, so why shouldn't Daou shape and rewrite the myth and run forward into the world to tell the story, like Tom of Warwick at the end of "Camelot"?

"The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think."

That headline for an article at Politico (by Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty) makes me say out loud, "Why do they think they know what I think?" And the answer is too obvious for me to leave it to you to write in the comments: They're in a bubble. (And it's worse than they think.)

But don't skip the article because of the irritating headline. Shafer and Doherty crunch some data. They conclude:

In a sense, the media bubble reflects an established truth about America: The places with money get served better than the places without. People in big media cities aren’t just more liberal, they’re also richer: Half of all newspaper and internet publishing employees work in counties where the median household income is greater than $61,000—$7,000 more than the national median. Commercial media tend to cluster where most of the GDP is created, and that’s the coasts. Perhaps this is what Bannon is hollering about when he denounces the “corporatist, global media,” as he did in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference. If current trends continue—and it’s safe to predict they will—national media will continue to expand and concentrate on the coasts, while local and regional media contract.

"He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob."

"According to Rhodes" — Ben Rhodes, "The Aspiring Novelist Who BecameObama’s Foreign-Policy Guru" — "the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.... Barack Obama is not a standard-issue liberal Democrat. He openly shares Rhodes’s contempt for the groupthink of the American foreign-policy establishment and its hangers-on in the press. Yet one problem with the new script that Obama and Rhodes have written is that the Blob may have finally caught on...."

Commenting on that long NYT piece: Thomas E. Ricks in Foreign policy:

Rhodes comes off like a real asshole. This is not a matter of politics — I have voted for Obama twice. Nor do I mind Rhodes’s contempt for many political reporters: “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

But, as that quote indicates, he comes off like an overweening little schmuck. This quotation seems to capture his worldview: “He referred to the American foreign policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.” Blowing off Robert Gates takes nerve.

Lee Smith in The Weekly Standard: 

[David] Samuels's profile is an amazing piece of writing about the Holden Caulfield of American foreign policy. He's a sentimental adolescent with literary talent (Rhodes published one short story before his mother's connections won him a job in the world of foreign policy), and high self regard, who thinks that everyone else is a phony. Those readers who found Jeffrey Goldberg's picture of Obama in his March Atlantic profile refreshing for the president's willingness to insult American allies publicly will be similarly cheered here by Rhodes's boast of deceiving American citizens, lawmakers, and allies over the Iran deal. Conversely, those who believe Obama risked American interests to take a cheap shot at allies from the pedestal of the Oval Office will be appalled to see Rhodes dancing in the end zone to celebrate the well-packaged misdirections and even lies—what Rhodes and others call a "narrative"—that won Obama his signature foreign policy initiative.

Jack Shafer in Politico:

Rhodes deserves his castigation. You don’t claim that the “average reporter” you talk to is 27 years old and they “literally know nothing” without suffering some blow-back. You don’t dismiss the American foreign policy establishment—including Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and editors and reporters at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker—as “the Blob,” and expect polite applause in response. And you especially don’t brag about leading a “war room” effort to turn arms-control experts and reporters into sock puppets, or admit to creating a false narrative about the Iranian nuclear deal to sell it to the public, as Rhodes does, without expecting return fire.

"The last person in the world who should be lecturing journalists on how to do journalism is President Barack Obama, Yet there Obama was Monday night at a journalism award ceremony, yodeling banalities about the role of a press in a free society..."

"... moaning over the dangers posed by 'he said/she said' reporting, and—to the delight of the assembled audience—attacking Donald Trump in every way but name. The press-heavy crowd, convened by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to give the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting to Alec MacGillis, clapped at Obama’s 30-minute address, encouraging his best Trump-baiting lines about 'free media' and the dangers of 'false equivalence.'"

Yodels and moans Jack Shafer (at Politico).

Go to the link if you want to see the argument that  that Obama is an anti-free-press guy. It seems to be mostly resentment that Obama isn't generous enough opening himself and his administration to the press. He's been successful at controlling information from his end: "Obama holds infrequent news conferences, and he wastes reporters’ time by refraining from answering questions with any candor." I can see whining about how that makes journalism harder to do, but not how it makes him anti-free-press. The press is still free. Freedom doesn't mean everyone else is making it easy to do all the things you're free to do. You've got to step up, not demand cushier spoon-feeding.

"There has been much discussion about a media double standard where Republicans are covered differently than Democrats, asked to weigh in on issues the Democrats don't face."

"As a result, when we refuse to take the media's bait, we suffer. I felt it this week when I was asked to weigh in on what other people said and did and what others' beliefs are. If you are looking for answers to those questions, ask those people. I will always choose to focus on what matters to the American people, not what matters to the media."

Writes Scott Walker (in USA Today).

ELSEWHERE: In Politico, Jack Shafer purports to give advice on how to answer the "gotcha" question. He holds up LBJ as a model: "Here you are, alone with the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, and you ask a chicken-shit question like that." Oh, yeah, wouldn't you just love for the Midwestern son of a preacher man to suddenly emit an LBJ-style outburst full of Texas swagger and farm excrement?

And Ron Fournier has a "Defense of Gotcha Questions." He begins:

Years ago, an Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton walked into the state Capitol media room at the end of a hectic legislative session and asked the journalists if we needed anything else from him.  We had asked Clinton questions all day. We were tired. We wanted him to shut up and go home.

So I said, "Yes, governor. I know you don't know much about baseball, but when there's a pop-up behind the third baseman, whose ball is it?" The other reporters snickered. Finally, they figured: a gotcha question Clinton wouldn't answer.

Bill came up with an answer that seemed amiable and made him look good. But I don't think that's a gotcha question. It's just a casual, irrelevant question that might bring out some personality. It's the sort of question Barbara Walters used to be associated with.... What kind of tree are you?

"Our spirited political discourse, complete with name-calling, vilification—and, yes, violent imagery—is a good thing."

"Better that angry people unload their fury in public than let it fester and turn septic in private. The wicked direction the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger but of freedom. And I'll punch out the lights of anybody who tries to take it away from me."

Slate's Jack Shafer comes out in favor of free speech.

Can you imagine writing about politics without the violent metaphors (and dead metaphors... yikes!)? You'd have to give up words like campaign! From the Online Etymology Dictionary:

campaign

1640s, "operation of an army in the field," from Fr. campagne "campaign," lit. "open country," from O.Fr. champagne "open country" (suited to military maneuvers), from L.L. campania "level country" (cf. It. campagna, Sp. campaña, Port. campanha), from L. campus "a field" ... Old armies spent winters in quarters and took to the "open field" to seek battle in summer. Extension of meaning from military to political is Amer.Eng. 1809. ...

And you know damned well that the people who are calling for the abandonment of violent metaphor are setting themselves up for hypocrisy when they go back to it. It will be so tedious to point it out when the time comes.

"Argument is war" was used as the first example of a metaphor we live by in the book "Metaphors We Live By":

"The bogusity of the New York Times' story about how technology leads more park visitors into trouble."

Nice takedown by Jack Shafer. (But isn't the correct spelling "bogosity"? Try saying it. I know the adjective is "bogus," but people don't say "bogusity." They might say "bogusness," but not "bogusity.")

Anyway, the problem is something that's common to journalism about trends (including that ridiculous Daily Caller piece about blog payola). A headline declaring a trend gets readers' attention, but then you need a lot of examples of the things that constitute the trend. The writer has some things that look like a trend, but he's got to beef up the article with more examples or it's not a trend. But he's itching to get to trend!!!! so he includes things that don't really fit, and then the whole thing looks stupid.

It's really annoying for the reader, because the trend!!!! declaration worked, and you've already read it and rewarded the website with traffic before you realize it's not quite a trend. What can you do? Resolve not to read trend pieces anymore? But then you still see the headline and it makes the impression that there is a trend!!!! and now you're been deprived of the evidence that there isn't a trend.

Now, I'm reading the comments at the Shafer piece and see that some of his readers are pouncing on the "bogusity/bogosity" spelling issue. I'm glad to see that others share my priorities. There's also this from one "nerdnam":

Well, what's her name's plastic surgeon just died after driving off a cliff immediately after twittering a picture of his dog at the beach. The dog survived, luckily. So I see a trend here.

Oh?! "Heidi Montag Mourns Death of Her Plastic Surgeon." Oh, lord, look at the expression on her face! Isn't it ironic? You plastic-surgerize — what's the verb for "surgery"? — somebody's face and then you die and her face is incapable of looking convincingly sad. Her gigantic breasts don't look sad either, but they make it into the People Magazine photograph, and because they stand as monuments to your work, that's not ironic at all.

Hmm. That People article no longer contains the information about tweeting that is referred to here:

According to People, Dr. Frank Ryan's jeep Wrangler careened off of the Pacific Coast Highway on Monday....

People later reported that Ryan's former girlfriend confirmed that his accident was caused by texting and driving. He had posted a Twitter message about hiking with his dog just before the accident. The dog survived the crash.

One more dubiously technology-related death. Maybe confirmations from former girlfriends don't cut it anymore.

When Hillary runs for President, we'll have to talk endlessly about her relationship with Bill...

So why wait? The NYT throws a big, front-page article at us:

[Bill Clinton] has told friends that his No. 1 priority is not to cause her any trouble. They appear in the public spotlight methodically and carefully: The goal is to position Mrs. Clinton to run for president not as a partner or a proxy, but as her own person....

Since the start of 2005, the Clintons have been together about 14 days a month on average...

Rarely, however, do the Clintons appear in public when they are together. That is largely driven by their careers, but it is also partly by choice.

It's a long article, but there isn't much meat in it, presumably because the Clintons have a strategy and are implementing it. Much of the article is speculation about what people will think once the presidential campaign gets started. How will what we already know and think of their relationship affect our assessment of her as a candidate?

Right now, we're in a long period of thinking about her without noticing him. That is, their strategy has been working. But at some point, when we concentrate on the campaign, the image of Bill Clinton back in the White House will become quite real. Do we have a problem with that? We've never had a woman President, but we've also never had a former President, who is disqualified from running for President again, back in the White House, in some quasi-President capacity that we can't quite know.

Remember that Bill once said that in voting for him for President, we'd also get Hillary for President, "two for the price of one." We will be getting the two-fer back, but they don't want you to think about it.

Interestingly, the NYT does.

UPDATE: Slate's Jack Shafer tries to read the NYT's "own private code."

Healy could directly ask, "Is Bill cheating?" Instead, he writes a donut around the subject...

Healy writes, "Nights out find [Bill] zipping around Los Angeles with his bachelor buddy, Ronald W. Burkle, or hitting parties and fund-raisers in Manhattan." Given the context, what literate person won't make a connection between "zipping" and "zipless," especially when the person with whom Clinton is zipping is a billionaire bachelor buddy?...

[W]hy make any fuss about Bill not being at Hillary's side? Few members of Congress appear in public with their spouses, except during campaigns, and even then many campaign alone. Unless, of course, the Times intends a secret message with this piece: They spend lots of time together, he keeps a tactful distance from her career by mutual agreement, and he cheats.

Shafer concludes that the Times has sources who say Bill is cheating and that there's no other reason to write an article like this.