After the 2016 presidential elections, I saw in more than a few places people advocating subscribing to The Washington Post and The New York Times as a response to Trump’s presidency. With increased fears of authoritarianism, the idea was people should support these institutions of elite journalism as a check on power because “democracy dies in darkness.” My reaction to all of it was the same as when years earlier some were contemplating a government bailout of failing newspapers: fuck them.
Because they will do it to us again.
When tomorrow comes, they will have learned nothing from the damage of the current idiocy. They will give the next megalomaniac fool which comes along the same free air time and column space to broadcast stupidity far and wide, if they can get ratings and clicks out of it. Sure, they’ll report the controversy, write editorials decrying the mess, and valiantly make big statements in a nightly pundit circle jerk. But, in the end, the media is part of the problem, since they place more importance on ideological balance and profit than they do truth. They value some bullshit principle no one on either side believes is true. The attention of ratings and views will always hold more sway than reporting reality and seriously calling a lie a lie.
For the last half-century, the news media has planted the seeds for their own destruction by giving sensationalism priority over substance, and, through the excuse of balance, publicity to ignorant assholes. Any criticism of this dynamic invariably engenders a response wherein talking heads wrap themselves in the flag and use the First Amendment as a shield. But if we’re being honest, it’s an industry which exploits tragedy, death, and scandal like a vulture picking at a carcass. When pundits and members of the press became indignant recently because Bill Clinton wouldn’t offer up an apology to Monica Lewinsky, I thought to myself the news media probably exploited and “screwed” her more than President Clinton ever did. Now, the news media is one of the least trusted public institutions, a significant portion of society labels anything they say “fake,” those same ignorant assholes they gave power to have labeled them an “enemy” of the American people, and they still want “civility” towards jerks out of this same need to be seen as balanced.
After a week of the administration getting called on their shit for locking kids in cages, advocating the end of due process rights for impacted individuals, and the economy showing signs of strain from Idiot-In-Chief’s tariff policy, a significant portion of Sunday morning television was devoted to the fact the president’s press secretary was refused a plate of chicken wings, or whatever the hell she was gonna eat, and the absolute horror of Washington pundits to the knowledge there are people out there who don’t like jerks and might want to let them know it in some way.
So this has led me to wonder as to what the virtue of civility with assholes is supposed to be? Michelle Obama famously said: “When they go low, we go high.” And while there may be nobility in having an evolved outlook, some might argue there’s some serious flaws when this strategy becomes the “lay there and take it” method. Beyond this, there’s a larger issue of why so many rich white assholes on TV get so up in arms when other rich white assholes, which they tend to go to dinner parties with and chuckle with socially, get told off and treated in a way that's as awful as they are?
From Daniel Lippman and Ben Schrekinger at Politico:
One beleaguered 31-year-old female administration official described at length her “very, very frequent” scraps with her matches on dating apps. “You do the small talk thing, and you have a very good conversation, and then they might say, ‘You didn’t vote for Trump, right?’” she says. “As soon as I say, ‘Of course I did,’ it just devolves into all-caps ‘HOW COULD YOU BE SUCH A RACIST AND A BIGOT?’ And ‘You’re going to take away your own birth control.’” In one recent star-crossed exchange, the official told a match she worked for the federal government. When he pushed, she revealed she was in the administration. He asked her, “Do you rip babies from their mothers and then send them to Mexico?”
Evasive answers will get you only so far, though, since many dating apps provide enough information for inquisitive users to sleuth out their matches’ identities. “I literally got the other day, ‘Thanks but no thanks. Just Googled you and it said you were a mouthpiece for the Trump administration. Go fuck yourself,’” says the official. It’s all enough to drive her and some of her colleagues away from at least some of the apps. “I’m no longer on Bumble,” she says.
Young staffers have had to develop a keen sense of just when to have “The Talk” with romantic partners. “I’ve still been able to hook up with women,” says a male former White House staffer. “But I know that I need to be careful about broaching the Trump stuff. I just know that going in, I need to be able to get it out at the right time and not get it out too early to the point where it’s like, ‘Hey, I worked for Trump, you should stop talking to me,’ but late enough in that eventually they know that there is this information floating out there that I worked for this guy and hopefully you have now seen that I’m not a horrible person and we can go further with this.”
I’m sure there’s someone somewhere, probably a pundit ready to write a 4,000-word column on the subject, who thinks not wanting to fuck a Trump staffer is the end of civility and the republic.
When balance is elevated as the most important aspect of journalism, it sets up a situation where any sort of criticism has to have “another side.” Or one side acts like race baiting pricks who literally wear “fuck your feelings” on the front of their clothes, and over time it’s treated as normal and how those peoples are. So when someone is politely asked to leave a restaurant in response to either being a daily liar and defender of stupidity as the spokeswoman of a liar, the people who sit on TV are sitting, waiting to show how “fair” they are.
It doesn’t matter the disparity in behaviors.
It doesn’t matter the long history of behavior from one side in being dicks.
It doesn’t matter that we’re not talking about anything anyone with two brain cells to rub together can call discrimination, which these same sons of bitches crying about a meal at a restaurant are a-okay when it’s religious fanatics refusing wedding cakes or birth control.
But, most of all, it doesn’t matter that nowhere in the constitution or case law does it say assholes have a civil right to service, a date, or anyone else’s respect.
From Aidan McLaughlin at Mediaite:
CNN’s New Day was unanimous in its condemnation of Rep. Maxine Waters Monday, who said at a rally over the weekend that Trump officials who continue to defend the president are going to face harassment in public. The California Democrat said at a rally that these officials are “not going to be able to go to a restaurant, stop at a gas station, shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president: ‘No … this is wrong, this is unconscionable; we can’t keep doing this to children.’”
“This is beyond overreach,” [RealClearPolitics editor A.B.] Stoddard said. “It is so outrageous that she is trying to motivate voters on her side to be as divisive as President Trump. I just find it really unbelievable that this is the kind of thing they’re trying to stoke this mob mentality on the left. It’s the exact thing that will drive turnout on the other side.”
“People end up behaving like the president and they shoot themselves in the foot,” she added. CNN’s John Avlon pointed out that ahead of the midterm elections, “this is exactly the kind of thing that will get [Trump supporters] motivated, because it creates a veneer of moral equivalency. If we get to a place as a country where it is open season on anyone if they serve in an administration in public, when mob rule starts being advocated by elected officials, that is bad for everybody. And it is the opposite, as you pointed out, of Michelle Obama’s ‘when they go low, we go high.'”
Isn’t it great when a member of Congress is held to a higher standard than the sitting president by the media?
Where people seem to be getting hung up on is the use of the word “harassment” by Waters. And even then the line between harassment and legitimate criticism seems to be blurred in some peoples eyes if that criticism might be considered “mean" or make someone uncomfortable. God forbid if the people who give no shits about dividing families might have their feelings hurt.
The entire situation allows anyone who wants to show their sanctimony and how above the political fray they are by calling for civility from “both sides.” Invariably the media will cry and whine about how everyone is so “divisive,” and politicians wanting to show how they will do “the right thing” and obey the Marquess of Queensberry Rules will come forward and condemn shit that in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really matter.
When people like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer come forward to speak out and condemn out of some media driven hysteria over a restaurant dispute, or a member of their caucus saying Trump people are going to hear from Americans how they feel about what’s going on in this country, they’re not gonna get credit for being the adult in the room. And they’re not gonna change the minds of people phoning in death threats. All they do is look as weak and as out of touch as the media, which seems to believe the problem of civility only started recently.
That is one of the biggest lies of modern politics.
From Zack Beauchamp at Vox:
The Washington Post’s editorial board lamented the lack of basic civility in the era of President Donald Trump, seeing dark times ahead. “Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment,” the Post’s editors wrote. “How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?”
The nightmare the Post is warning of — the uncivil politics of abortion — is already reality. Anti-abortion protesters regularly stand outside Planned Parenthood facilities around the country and harass women who are entering clinics. Some anti-abortion activists have even resorted to more dire means, with 12 documented cases of murder or attempted murder targeting abortion providers in North America since 1993.
But this isn’t simply a matter of a poorly chosen example. It points to the basic problem with the entire “civility” argument. American politics are uncivil — and have been long before Sanders sat down for dinner this weekend. And at the moment, this incivility is mainly coming from the White House. The Trump administration has flouted the norms of political discourse far more often than any of its opponents.
Sanders is uniquely complicit in this. Her job requires providing cover for the president’s most egregious lies, undermining a vital part of public discourse — the very idea of fair and open public discourse about the truth. If refusing service to Sanders puts the spotlight on this feature, it might not harm America’s political civility; in fact, it might even improve it.
And then the entire thing feeds on itself ... until something new comes along.
Ever wonder why some of these same idiots are put on the air over and over again? Having Kellyanne Conway on television adds nothing to anything. We all know what she’s gonna say. And they know what she’s gonna say. But the show isn’t about information or “news.” It’s about creating a cycle of controversy to fill space on cable television and get clicks online.
Michelle Wolf: That’s how these beautifully-crafted news dramas come together: You invite someone on your show because you know they’ll say something crazy, and then they say something crazy and you get to act outraged and we all watch it and talk about it. It’s like one long brothel orgy from Game of Thrones where you’re all getting paid and we’re all getting fucked. Imagine if these shows just reported the news. They wouldn’t need any of these guests at all, all they’d have to say is “Immigrant children have been ripped from their parents due to Trump’s policies. End of news.” But that’s so boring! Sure, you guys aren’t nearly as bad as the racist catheter-peddlers over at Fox News, but you’re still an accomplice if you’re giving a megaphone to a liar. Hey, but as long as you keep doing it, we’ll keep watching it. That’s entertainment!