Who's couping who?

I'm trying to read Raw Story, "'The feel of a coup': Elon Musk said to be poised to 'defy' major judicial order":

ADDED: More "coup" talk:

Swisher & Galloway are threatening talented, young software engineers who are gave up high compensation for death threats in order to help the American people.

Shame on Swisher & Galloway, cruel, mean & deceitful human beings that they are! https://t.co/50MdPfsOQl

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 8, 2025

Galloway envisions the legislative branch physically attacking the executive branch:

"I'd like to see all — whatever it is — 48 or 49 U.S. Senators and any Republicans who want to join, I'd like to see 100 members of Congress go to the fucking building where this is and demand to go in and physically stop this, and let them arrest you."

It's so January 6th. 

"The House’s Jan. 6 committee is going prime-time.... But will Americans watch? Or care?"

That's from the written introduction to "Will Prime Time Undermine or Elevate the Jan. 6 Hearings?/Our panelists discuss how televising the House committee sessions could shape the long-haul defense of democracy" — the new episode of the NYT podcast "Sway."

Panelists, we're told, "talk about what key moments and witnesses to watch for in the hearings and whether any revelations will, as one committee member, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, suggested, 'blow the roof off the House.'"

Will Americans watch? I won't. If there's anything that blows the roof off the House — funny to use the metaphor of an explosion in the Capitol building — I'll read about it in the news. I'm not interested in pyrotechnics. I don't put up with committee hearings anymore. I'm sure the highlights will be unavoidable clips, and I'll play those when the time comes. But I won't sit still for the politicians' presentation.  

Will Americans care? I care about something, but I won't care in advance and place myself in the hands of partisan Congresspeople who want to push me around until I care about it their way.

ADDED: I will try to listen to this podcast... at least until I can't stand it anymore. Quite aside from the content, the sound quality is very poor, at a level that the most small-time podcaster would want to avoid. Why is the NYT putting out such low quality audio? 

AND: Kara Swisher (the host) asks: "Is it good or bad that it's being produced like a TV special?"

ALSO: It's a 41-minute podcast. I almost made it to 9 minutes. That's it for me.

"But anyone who has spent a small amount of time with Mr. Zuckerberg knows that he’s uncomfortable with his immense power..."

"... he agonizes deeply about his every step. In my innumerable conversations with him over many years — often late at night over a phone, giving them the feel of a college-dorm jaw session — he maintained that he trusted Facebook’s larger community to clean out the vile, often-toxic dreck that flowed over his ever-larger platform. Mr. Zuckerberg believes in the perfectibility of man. I have studied the use of propaganda in Nazi Germany and during China’s Cultural Revolution. I told him that there is no low that some people will not sink to if it is in their interests to do so. Once, when Mr. Zuckerberg was still talking to me, we argued about some much-less-serious violation of rules on Facebook, issues that now seem quaint in comparison. Trying to lighten the mood, I invoked the old journalism bromide: He should trust, yes, but always verify. 'If your mother says she loves you, check it,' I said to him, trying to convince him that he could not rely on the community or algorithms or anything else but his own decision making when push from bad actors inevitably came to shove. He did not get the joke at all. He also missed my larger point that the world was an ugly place and that he had handed some very bad people in it a potent weapon of destruction. They would take advantage of his belief that the truth will always out. Even now, I have a hard time describing the blank stare on his typically blank face. It was as if I was talking in another language to another species on another planet."

From "The Terrible Cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s Naïveté" by Kara Swisher (NYT).

Notice what she's saying — that the traditional liberal principles of freedom of speech are stupidly naive.  I think! She isn't fairly representing Z's side of the conversations (the "jaw session," as she calls it), but I think his position was the classic belief in the marketplace of ideas, where all the ideas come out and are heard and responded to and people make their choices about what to believe, rejecting what is bad and selecting what is good. That's what I'm guessing is behind Swisher's assertion "Mr. Zuckerberg believes in the perfectibility of man" and "his belief that the truth will always out." 

The most obvious response to the marketplace of ideas concept is that people are not necessarily shopping for truth and even if they are, they might be distracted into making an impulse purchase of something more exciting or soothing, like the way you go into the grocery store thinking of buying fresh fruits and vegetables and end up buying Coke and Tostitos. But that doesn't mean that everyone who's sticking with free speech and citing the marketplace of ideas theory is naive. The nonnaiveté lies in the understanding that the alternative approaches are worse. 

Swisher seems to be saying that because the world is "an ugly place" with "some very bad people," censorship is better than free speech. She's just as open to an accusation of naiveté as he is. What depth of understanding is she showing about the harms of the suppression of speech? The question isn't what's perfect, but what's better. And instead of facing that, which I would call the real world, Swisher reverts to the standard bashing of Zuckerberg: he seems like "another species on another planet." He doesn't seem normal. 

Here, there's room on the couch with these guys:

In case the idea of Don Lemon leaving CNN is distressing you, Don Lemon says "Relax! I'm not leaving," smiles a charming smile, and says he'll explain everything on Monday.

Hey everyone. Not what you think. I’m not leaving CNN. Tune in for the handoff on Monday at 10pE and I’ll explain. pic.twitter.com/oOwDferY2i

— Don Lemon (@donlemon) May 15, 2021

Okay. That's what I got from clicking on the Twitter sidebar. Here's the NY Post article on the subject:

Lemon shocked viewers by ending his news show Friday with... “It’s been really, really great. This is the last night that will be ‘CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.'” he said. “So, I appreciate all the years of ‘CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,’ but changes are coming, and I will fill you in.”

No NYT article yet, but I see something there from a month ago: "CNN Is in a Post-Trump Slump. What Does That Mean for Don Lemon?/The prime-time host on the future of cable news, the urgency of conversations about race and whether CNN is a boys’ club." It's a podcast interview. Excerpt: 

I'm so old-fashioned, I thought that, when Don Lemon said "I have a lot of support from the Big Guy," he was talking about God.

I'm in the middle of listening to the NYT podcast — which you can play and read a little about at "CNN Is in a Post-Trump Slump. What Does That Mean for Don Lemon?/The prime-time host on the future of cable news, the urgency of conversations about race and whether CNN is a boys’ club."

  

Kara Swisher is interviewing Lemon about his ranting on his CNN show, specifically the time he called President Trump "a racist." That must have been difficult, hmmm? 

Lemon pauses, then ventures: "I have a lot of support from... the Big Guy." Does Don Lemon get his strength from religious faith? That's what I thought. 

But Swisher gets him. She immediately says, "Jeff Zucker?" and he says "yeah" blah blah blah. 

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"Casting itself as the protector of small businesses... Facebook is criticizing Apple for planning to give users of its popular devices like the iPhone more control..."

"... over the data they share with third-party apps. Starting next year, Apple will ask mobile users to 'opt in' to accept third-party tracking of their digital activity (right now, the system defaults to tracking and requires users to 'opt out' if they don’t want to be followed). Facebook relies on tracking to target ads at customers. Facebook declared in the newspaper ads that it was 'standing up to Apple and warned that such a change will be the ruin of small businesses....  Let’s be clear: Apple is no saint. While looking and acting like a defender of user privacy has long been a core tenet of the company, its bottom line does not depend on advertising, and ridding the world of intrusive marketing by kneecapping Facebook is good for its business.... Apple, pointing out Facebook’s data gluttony, and Facebook, in turn, noting Apple’s hegemony over mobile, make one thing clear: These tech companies have too much power. And no matter how you slice it, they are all in dire need of government regulation."

From "Facebook’s Tone-Deaf Attack on Apple/The company declared in newspaper ads that it was “standing up to Apple.” It’s a desperate ploy that’s unlikely to work" by Kara Swisher (NYT).

The topic is not free speech and censorship, but Swisher goes on to criticize Mark Zuckerberg for "stubbornness in the face of persistent criticism" — which may be relevant to the topic under discussion — and to justify that characterization by pointing to his company's support for the user's free speech: 

It delayed for years before finally tackling disinformation on its platform. The company continued untoward cozying up to the Trump administration. I am almost never surprised to see Facebook take the hard line when taking a softer one might do. 

Support for freedom of speech is only "delay" if you believe we are on track to suppress that freedom and it's just a matter of time. As for "untoward cozying up to the Trump administration" — it seems designed to push NYT readers to take the Apple side in this dispute. I'm already inclined to side with Apple on the privacy issue, but I don't like seeing freedom of speech processed into cozying up to Trump! That's a low move.

"The boogeyman plunging him and the family of his late wife into the very worst of memory holes is a conspiracy-theory-loving, twitchy-fingered and often shameless tweeter who also happens to be the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump."

Writes Kara Swisher in "Twitter Must Cleanse the Trump Stain/The president is spreading a vile conspiracy theory on the platform. Maybe Twitter should finally hold him to its rules" (NYT).

The "conspiracy theory" in question is that Joe Scarborough had something to do with the death of a woman long ago. The woman's husband wants some Trump tweets deleted. There's also the idea — pushed by Mika Brzezinski (Scarborough's wife) — that Twitter should throw Trump off the site entirely.

But what exactly did Trump tweet? The woman's husband is quoted saying that Trump "allud[ed] to the repeatedly debunked falsehood that my wife was murdered by her boss, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough." Alluded! We need the text of the tweet, but, incredibly, it's not in this long column.

I had to look it up. I found: "A blow to her head? Body found under his desk? Left Congress suddenly? Big topic of discussion in Florida...and, he’s a Nut Job (with bad ratings). Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!"

One reason not to quote the tweet is that it's just asking questions, and we'd have to spend time going into a subject we don't know. The woman's husband implies that the questions have all been asked and answered, but all he says is that there is one "falsehood" — that Joe Scarborough murdered the woman (Lori Klausutis). But Trump didn't tweet that statement. Does the debunking of the idea that Joe Scarborough murdered the woman make the things Trump actually did tweet into the sort of statement Twitter should take down?

First, Trump just asked questions, but even if we reject that loophole — I'm only asking! — it is true, I take it, that the woman suffered a blow to her head, that her body was found under his desk, that he left Congress suddenly, that it's a big topic of discussion in Florida, and that "Morning Joe" has bad ratings. And it's nothing but inane opinion to call Joe Scarborough "a Nut Job." Trump is called things like that constantly on Twitter, so there's no way there's a Twitter policy against calling famous people mentally ill.