"Fields once wide open to English majors — teaching, academia, publishing, the arts, nonprofits, the media — have collapsed or become less desirable."

"Facing astronomical debt and an uncertain job market, students may find majors like communication arts and digital storytelling more pragmatic.... And yet another important and dispiriting part of the story is that the study of English itself may have lost its allure, even among kids who enjoy reading. They are learning to hate the subject well before college. Both in terms of what kids are assigned and how they are instructed to read it, English class in middle and high school — now reconceived as language arts, E.L.A. or language and literature — is often a misery.... By high school, 70 percent of assigned texts are meant to be nonfiction. Educators can maximize the remaining fiction by emphasizing excerpts, essays and digital material over full-length novels... A typical high school assignment now involves painstakingly marking up text with colored pencils in search of 'literary devices' — red for imagery and diction, yellow for tone or mood, etc. Students are instructed to read even popular fiction at an excruciatingly slow pace in the service of close reading in unison. They’re warned not to skip ahead. You wouldn’t want anyone to get excited!"

Writes Pamela Paul in "How to Get Kids to Hate English" (NYT).

The deceptiveness of Politico's claim that Trump called the coronavirus "a hoax."

I watched the Trump rally last night, so I knew as soon as I saw this that it was a serious distortion. Headline: "Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'"

Here's how the text quotes him:

"The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. They're politicizing it,” he said. “They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That did not work out too well. They could not do it. They tried the impeachment hoax.”

Then Trump called the coronavirus “their new hoax.”

The fact that the quote doesn't continue and  "Then Trump called the coronavirus" is inserted before "their new hoax" should make you suspicious, whether you've heard the original or not. But the purportedly verbatim text above it is not, in fact, verbatim.

Here's the original:



I'll have more to say about all that is left out. But let me give you this for now.

ADDED: Let me do a transcription, restoring the words that Politico elided (without using ellipses to show where they're dropping words and changing the flow of the meaning). The embedded video above has its own cuts, so I found uncut video. Here:



Trump is clearly not calling the virus a hoax. What he's calling a hoax is the political talking point that Trump has been failing to protect the country from the virus!

Now, Politico is pushing a hoax hoax — it's putting out a false story about what Trump called a hoax.

Trump is certainly not "rall[ying] his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'" Trump is rallying his base to believe that he's doing an excellent job of handling the problem and to see the criticism of his work as a hoax. He's not saying they should "treat" the virus as a hoax!

AND: Here's my transcription, with boldface for what Politico left out:

"Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say: 'How's President Trump doing?' They're going: 'Oh, nothing, nothing.' They have no clue. They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. They can't even count. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They've been doing it since you got in. It's all turning. They lost. It's all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. There's 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early. We could've had a lot more than that. We're doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified. The Republican Party has never been more unified than it is now." 

PLUS: Trump really is hard to transcribe. And when you see the transcription, you see the strangeness of his speech. It's impressionistic — short phrases with easy words and lots of repetition. I think it's mesmerizing if you're on his side and incredibly annoying if you are not. He jumps from one idea to the next and makes things feel as though they go together — if you're with him. If you are not, it's crazy talk. Word salad. And you may be grossed out by the people who love the salad. I'm writing from a position of cruel neutrality. I like observing how this salad is made, and I understand liking it and resenting people who don't get it, but I also understand the people who are horrified.

Let me tear into that paragraph. I object to the deceptions in the Politico presentation, but I also see that Trump doesn't make it easy for reporters who are trying to tell it straight. I would suspect that Trump is deliberately laying down traps for them so they'll screw up and he can hit them again for being "fake news." But I've listened to him so many times, talking for so long, and I tend to believe he just flows words and this is the form they take. It's working for him, and he keeps it up and gets energized and inflated by his own distinctive stylings.

But forget Politico for now. I know I've got an accurate transcription, so let me move forward and just criticize this text:

Now, the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. 

This is the big thesis. The implication is that the other party is politicizing something that should not be part of politics, but he's criticizing his political rivals, and that's political too. There's an inherent contradiction.

You know that, right? Coronavirus. They're politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say: 'How's President Trump doing?' They're going: 'Oh, nothing, nothing.' They have no clue. They don't have any clue. They can't even count their votes in Iowa. The can't even count. No, they can't. They can't count their votes. 

The can't-count-Iowa line is something he plugs in whenever he wants to note that the Democrats are incompetent. It's a little hard to follow: How did Iowa get mixed in with coronavirus? But I'm used to his rhetoric. Instead of saying the Democrats are incompetent, he leaps back to this notable instance of incompetence. He's using very simple language, but he still trusts listeners to keep track of what's being talked about. Suddenly, we're in Iowa and when you think he might quickly get back to the coronavirus, he's off to Russia:

One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn't work out too well. They couldn't do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. 

"Russia" stands for the proposition that the Democrats are out to get him: They'll take whatever raw material appears and they'll beat it into an anti-Trump weapon. They tried Russia, and when that didn't work, they tried Ukraine (AKA the impeachment). His next line states the generality:

They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They've been doing it since you got in. It's all turning. They lost. It's all turning. Think of it. Think of it. 

That repeated line, "It's all turning," is the most dreamily impressionistic line in the passage. It's like a line from a psychedelic tune by The Byrds. I sense that it's a view of the swirl of thoughts inside his head, but he's trying, I think, to create a picture of the dizzy disorientation in the mind of Democrats. They're losing everything! Think of it!

As they spin and tumble, they're grasping after anything, everything:

And this is their new hoax.

But all he means is that they're saying he did a bad job — and, of course, they will — when he really did a good job:

But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing. There's 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we went early. We went early. We could've had a lot more than that.

That is, we've only found 15 people with coronavirus in the U.S., and without the things he did, we might have had a lot more. He doesn't specify what he did, other than that he did it "early." From there, he jumps to the most generic statement of his overarching idea of American greatness:

We're doing great. Our country is doing so great. 

Then he says something that's completely out of line with the idea that the Democrats are out to get him for anything that happens:

We are so unified. We are so unified. 

Thanks for the repetition, but how can that be true? Oh, I see:

The Republican Party has never been more unified than it is now.

"We" = the Republicans.

"The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else/Political nihilism is one of the president’s strongest weapons."

Headline for a NYT op-ed by Thomas Edsall. I'm blogging this because an order-and-chaos theme has happened to emerge on the blog this morning and also because I think it suggests that Trump voters are not fascists. I'm assuming fascism is grounded in an excessive need for order.

Let's read:

Last week, at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, the winner of the best paper award in the Political Psychology division was “A ‘Need for Chaos’ and the Sharing of Hostile Political Rumors in Advanced Democracies.”... [Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen, and Kevin Arceneaux argue] that a segment of the American electorate that was once peripheral is drawn to “chaos incitement” and that this segment has gained decisive influence through the rise of social media.

I don't know about "decisive," but otherwise this seems like a good observation. But I'm going to resist Edsall's idea of making the problem specific to Trump voters.

The circulation of [conspiracy theories, fake news, discussions of political scandals and negative campaigns] has been “linked to large-scale political outcomes within recent years such as the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

But that doesn't mean that only the winner's voters were susceptible to that sort of material! Also, I wouldn't limit the problem of "chaos incitement" to social media. Mainstream media does it too.

The authors describe “chaos incitement” as a “strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers,” willing to adopt disruptive tactics. Trump, in turn, has consistently sought to strengthen the perception that America is in chaos....

That sounds like an appeal to people who don't like chaos! Does Edsall even notice this blatant contradiction?

About "those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy..."

That's a phrase bestowed on our political discourse by this Alabama Congressman, Mo Brooks, who's looking to "allow insurance companies to require people who have higher health care costs to contribute more to the insurance pool that helps offset all these costs, thereby reducing the cost to those people who lead good lives, they’re healthy, they’ve done the things to keep their bodies healthy."

That hits the news the same day as Jimmy Kimmel's story of the emergency heart surgery needed by his newborn son, a story that segued into a plea to preserve the existing protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

I suppose Brooks thought the un-good people he was talking about were smokers, drug and alcohol users, the obese, and people who engage in the wrong sports (or sports the wrong way), but what's our motivation to give this guy a sympathetic reading? Not all pre-existing conditions are the consequence of something bad a person has done. For example, Brooks may be laboring under the disability of a low-powered brain. And yet he's to blame for running for office, taking a seat that could be occupied by somebody better able to carry out its responsibilities.

There's also the notion that Mo Brooks is beset by the worse-than-medieval belief that a sick person really is someone who hasn't led a good life — that the illness is divine punishment that is deserved. That's the kind of ugly comfort that I could understand people cooking up in places where there is no medical care, but it's not an idea that could improve my opinion of Mo Brooks.