Scott Adams imagines what the news would be like if it stopped "mind-reading" and reported only "facts."

See if you can read my mind about why I put "mind-reading" and "facts" in quotation marks.

Here's Adams's blog post. Example:

Birtherism

Factual Report: Donald Trump exploited doubts within the Republican base about President Obama’s birth certificate to gain a political advantage. This is a common political tactic. Candidate Trump used the same strategy against Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada but is an American citizen.

Mind Reading: We can read Trump’s inner racist mind and we know the real reason he was involved with birtherism is to send a silent dog whistle to the racists in the Republican party.

That "factual report" contained mind reading: Trump did what he did "to gain a political advantage." If you're going to strip away the mind-reading, you can't leave traces of mind-reading that skew the so-called "facts" away from the direction where the MSM's mind-reading tries to take us.

Other examples at the link are "Some illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals and some are not," "Charlottesville," "KKK Disavowal," "Judge Curiel," and "Shithole Countries."

Adams's point is that "the anti-Trump media created the 'monster' version of Trump based on mind-reading punditry" and, that "Factual reporting would not have created that impression in the public’s mind."

Notice that Adams is reading a mind even more inscrutable than Trump's — "the public's mind."

Is there such a thing? I don't believe in that monster (I assert, but you don't know if I'm lying).

Inside that mythical beast — "the public's mind" — there is a "monster" that Adams purports to see. And Adams even purports to read the public's mind as it would exist if only the news media had not presented the news as if it could read Trump's mind. Adams is the master mind-reader.

I'm sure Adams is already aware of all these insights, because I'm reading his mind.

The power of women to read the minds of men.

1. Power Line's John Hinderaker has a lot of problems with Hillary Clinton's story of what it was like for her to take the LSAT in 1968. Last May, Hillary said: "We were in this huge, cavernous room... And hundreds of people were taking this test, and there weren’t many women there. This friend and I were waiting for the test to begin, and the young men around us were like, ‘What do you think [you’re] doing? How dare you take a spot from one of us?’ It was just a relentless harangue.' Clinton and her friend were stunned. They’d spent four safe years at a women’s college, where these kinds of gender dynamics didn’t apply." Were the young men actually saying those things to her and her friend? We see the usage "were like" followed by statements a magazine (New York) put in quotes, but it's not quite an assertion that these words were said. It's more of a dramatization of what Hillary felt at the time, perhaps because of something they said — "harangue" implies some speaking on the part of the men — but perhaps Hillary is relaying only her sense of what they must have been thinking.

2. Recently, Lena Dunham described her experience at the very swanky Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala sitting at a table next to the talented, attractive football player Odell Beckham Jr. She said: "And it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like: 'That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.' It wasn’t mean. He just seemed confused." Again, we see something in quote marks with a to-be-like intro: "He was like." He didn't actually say those words. Dunham was simply performing her subjective ideation around what he might have been thinking about her. It's comical and she's a comedian. It has the advantage of being self-deprecating. But it attributes mean thoughts to him. He never said those things, and it's not that hard to tell that the quotes are not real quotes. But it takes a liberty with another person's mind.

3. I'll be looking for things to add to this list. I just noticed #1 today, and it made me think of #2. Send me suggestions. I'm especially interested in the "He was like" usage to grab the female privilege to present mind-readings of men. I'm not totally condemning the belief in and use of this power of women to read the minds of men. Figuring out what's really going on in other people's minds is one of the highest levels of human thought. It is what great novelist do. The key is doing it well and doing it ethically. Like a great novelist. Or a great comedian. Or great feminist scholar. But you have to work on that power, and it's not easy to be great, and even when you are great, you're going to annoy and outrage a lot of people, and they're not all going to bow down and acknowledge your greatness.

IN THE COMMENTS: I went first with:

An award will be given to the first person to make what I believe is THE most predictable comment.

After a number of incorrect efforts, I wrote:

Prize not yet won.

Thanks.

When I posted that, I read a couple more comments including the winner, by campy:

Predictable comment: there are no great feminist scholars.

The prize is front-paging. Congratulations, campy. And I appreciate that you put your award-winning comment in the voice of someone else making the wisecrack that pre-annoyed me and not as your own disparagement of feminist scholarship. Huzzah!