Krugman writes a piece in the NYTs that brings memories of the 2000 elections screaming in my head.
I have to admit I had just moved back from Chile , but I do recall all those small whispers and memes around Gore that made me ponder where reality ended and where the mythical character, the MSM created, started.
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.
Sound familiar? I mean this obsession with the Clinton foundation and the belief that it is almost a cartel/ human trafficking conglomerate. Then you have Trump, whose financial and corporate scandals are just part of the business folklore like mythological tales people know but don't connect with the reality of what they represent.
The bar for Trump is so low, if he doesn't insult a mother or a POC he has matured as a candidate .
If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
Speaking of myths and folklore , there is this notion perpetuated by the media that since the CF is huge and it involves the Clintons... There must be something juicy to report on, and there are things to report, but not the factual stuff.…
Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.
But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.
Ta dah innuendo…
Let's not let this happen again… Read and inform our own allies… This is how innuendo us squashed, not by brushing it away