This has been my point regarding all the medial handwringing over the rise of Trump. They-along with the GOP dog whistle tactics-have created the space for a Donald Trump to rise and thrive.
I don't mean the media is wrong to cover Trump-that's absurd. It's a campaign for President and the man is leading his primary by a lot. The idea that the media should refuse to do so in the hope that this will bring down his poll numbers is absurd and wrong. They have no right to pick a winner in the GOP primary.
But I've argued that what has really upset the media about Trump is not so much because he's told a lot of lies or that he's said a lot of really racist and bigoted things, but that he has broken their rules.
The media is upset to the extent that he has showed their irrelevance. They have many times decreed he's done and that hasn't been the case at all-the opposite has proven true. The media may not care that much about the truth or bigotry but they do care about their own ability to make or break someone in the public eye. When they say someone has to eat poop he or she is supposed to eat poop.
But the media hasn't been doing it's job. What they have been doing for years is a lazy game of false equivalence. What this means primarily is being evenhanded between the two parties. Krugman has described this perfectly-the media just assumes that there are reasonable people in both parties and then just a couple of nuts or wildmen outliers. If you point out something wrong, bigoted, or just plain loco a Republican says, you have to right away take away from the criticism by going after a Democrat.
The media is very uncomfortable going after the Republican party as a whole-in their mind criticizing the party as such is bias-even if the criticism happens to be true. You can't say anything about the GOP that isn't balanced out with a criticism of the Dems. This would be fine and correct if the two parties were really equal in terms of truth telling and sanity. But of course that they aren't is not an open secret.
Yet the media continues to deny this open secret.
This whole attitude I've argued goes back to Rush Limbaugh-both him and his imitators in the 90s. I believe that for years prior to Rush and friends, the media basically had been pretty decent in terms of reporting the news and distinguishing fact from fiction. It was not perfect objectivity by any stretch-as if such a thing is possible-but it was pretty good.
Dan Rather in Truth and Consequences tells Mary Mapes that 'It wasn't always like this. It used to be about the truth. I promise you that.'
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/01/dan-rather-says-the-truth-movie-is-true.cnn
There is a lot truth in this. I think that when Rush started accusing the media as being biased in favor of the Democrats it absolutely terrorized the media and they've more or less since been in Krugman's Very Serious People mode of both sides do it to avoid any criticism by Rush. Yes, I think in large part the story is this basic.
In the 90s, the media with absolutely relentless savagery pursued Whitewater. Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky, and every other scandal the GOP could come up with. It pursued these stories as legitimate news not wild eyed conspiracy theories.
In 2000 they let W skate on the lies and misrepresentations of his budget, but focused like a laser beam on whether or not Gore invented the Internet, was really the subject of Love Story, and why he was at a Buddhist temple. What they never explained is why the answers to these burning issues mattered either way.
A lot of what has got the media so upset with Trump this year is that he has messed with their rules-their both sides do it game. They want to be 'evenhanded' but he makes this so hard. They want to pretend he's a pure outlier and that his antics in no way stain the larger Republican party-even though 60 or 70 percent of voters support Trump, Cruz, or Ben Carson.
But now to just prove may point in the starkest terms possible, we have the media sort of playing it down the middle now that Trump attacks Hillary. When he attacked Republicans like John McCain, or Carly Fiorina, the media made a big fuss but now that he's attacking Hillary, they are sort of going back to both sides do it mode.
Like when she called him out for his wild comments on Muslims as helping ISIS, the media went into hyper fact checking mode-there's no proof of this! Meanwhile, the media and the GOP Establishment had been saying the same thing for weeks about his comments. But now that Hillary said it, they were calling it a lie.
But then in a way, the Clintons have always gotten under the media's skin in a way like Trump does in that the media has tried their level best to destroy the Clintons again and again and at the end of it, they're always about the same as when it started-even this year they had tried again with the obsession over her emails which get nowhere.
Now that Trump has attacked Hillary in vile terms just for going to the bathroom and is claiming that Hillary can't 'play the gender card' because of her husband, some members of the Very Serious Beltway are-yes, agreeing with him. The very serious Rush Marcus thinks he has a point. Hillary is a hypocrite for using her husband in her campaign.
"Trump is right: Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual history is fair game."
"But Hillary Clinton has made two moves that lead me, gulp, to agree with Trump on the “fair game” front. She is (smartly) using her husband as a campaign surrogate, and simultaneously (correctly) calling Trump sexist."
I don't mean the media is wrong to cover Trump-that's absurd. It's a campaign for President and the man is leading his primary by a lot. The idea that the media should refuse to do so in the hope that this will bring down his poll numbers is absurd and wrong. They have no right to pick a winner in the GOP primary.
But I've argued that what has really upset the media about Trump is not so much because he's told a lot of lies or that he's said a lot of really racist and bigoted things, but that he has broken their rules.
The media is upset to the extent that he has showed their irrelevance. They have many times decreed he's done and that hasn't been the case at all-the opposite has proven true. The media may not care that much about the truth or bigotry but they do care about their own ability to make or break someone in the public eye. When they say someone has to eat poop he or she is supposed to eat poop.
But the media hasn't been doing it's job. What they have been doing for years is a lazy game of false equivalence. What this means primarily is being evenhanded between the two parties. Krugman has described this perfectly-the media just assumes that there are reasonable people in both parties and then just a couple of nuts or wildmen outliers. If you point out something wrong, bigoted, or just plain loco a Republican says, you have to right away take away from the criticism by going after a Democrat.
The media is very uncomfortable going after the Republican party as a whole-in their mind criticizing the party as such is bias-even if the criticism happens to be true. You can't say anything about the GOP that isn't balanced out with a criticism of the Dems. This would be fine and correct if the two parties were really equal in terms of truth telling and sanity. But of course that they aren't is not an open secret.
Yet the media continues to deny this open secret.
This whole attitude I've argued goes back to Rush Limbaugh-both him and his imitators in the 90s. I believe that for years prior to Rush and friends, the media basically had been pretty decent in terms of reporting the news and distinguishing fact from fiction. It was not perfect objectivity by any stretch-as if such a thing is possible-but it was pretty good.
Dan Rather in Truth and Consequences tells Mary Mapes that 'It wasn't always like this. It used to be about the truth. I promise you that.'
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/01/dan-rather-says-the-truth-movie-is-true.cnn
There is a lot truth in this. I think that when Rush started accusing the media as being biased in favor of the Democrats it absolutely terrorized the media and they've more or less since been in Krugman's Very Serious People mode of both sides do it to avoid any criticism by Rush. Yes, I think in large part the story is this basic.
In the 90s, the media with absolutely relentless savagery pursued Whitewater. Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky, and every other scandal the GOP could come up with. It pursued these stories as legitimate news not wild eyed conspiracy theories.
In 2000 they let W skate on the lies and misrepresentations of his budget, but focused like a laser beam on whether or not Gore invented the Internet, was really the subject of Love Story, and why he was at a Buddhist temple. What they never explained is why the answers to these burning issues mattered either way.
A lot of what has got the media so upset with Trump this year is that he has messed with their rules-their both sides do it game. They want to be 'evenhanded' but he makes this so hard. They want to pretend he's a pure outlier and that his antics in no way stain the larger Republican party-even though 60 or 70 percent of voters support Trump, Cruz, or Ben Carson.
But now to just prove may point in the starkest terms possible, we have the media sort of playing it down the middle now that Trump attacks Hillary. When he attacked Republicans like John McCain, or Carly Fiorina, the media made a big fuss but now that he's attacking Hillary, they are sort of going back to both sides do it mode.
Like when she called him out for his wild comments on Muslims as helping ISIS, the media went into hyper fact checking mode-there's no proof of this! Meanwhile, the media and the GOP Establishment had been saying the same thing for weeks about his comments. But now that Hillary said it, they were calling it a lie.
But then in a way, the Clintons have always gotten under the media's skin in a way like Trump does in that the media has tried their level best to destroy the Clintons again and again and at the end of it, they're always about the same as when it started-even this year they had tried again with the obsession over her emails which get nowhere.
Now that Trump has attacked Hillary in vile terms just for going to the bathroom and is claiming that Hillary can't 'play the gender card' because of her husband, some members of the Very Serious Beltway are-yes, agreeing with him. The very serious Rush Marcus thinks he has a point. Hillary is a hypocrite for using her husband in her campaign.
"Trump is right: Bill Clinton’s sordid sexual history is fair game."
"But Hillary Clinton has made two moves that lead me, gulp, to agree with Trump on the “fair game” front. She is (smartly) using her husband as a campaign surrogate, and simultaneously (correctly) calling Trump sexist."
"These moves open a dangerous door. It should surprise no one that Trump has barged right through it."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-right-bill-clintons-sordid-sexual-history-is-fair-game/2015/12/28/70a26bdc-ad92-11e5-b711-1998289ffcea_story.html
I would point out that it also opens the door to a conversation Trump certainly will not welcome. His
own history of philandering and the fact that his own ex wife, Ivana Trump, has accused him of rape.
Marcus seems to think that if Trump uses this against Hillary it will be devastating to her. She must have slept through the 90s. After all, if this didn't sink Bill Clinton then why will it sink Hillary Clinton now? Is there anybody n America now that doesn't know about Monica Lewinsky?
As for sexism, I don't think that Trump knows the meaning of the word. He himself has engaged in some legendary sexist slurs. And the GOP is for sexist policies. Women are supposedly going to support these policies-Rubio for instance doesn't' believe in exceptions for rape or incest-because Trump 'reminds' them that Bill Clinton at one time had some sexual affairs? Surely they'll punish HRC for Bill but not Trump for his own sordid sexual history.
This is the strange calculus of Very Serious People like Ruth Marcus.
I would point out that it also opens the door to a conversation Trump certainly will not welcome. His
own history of philandering and the fact that his own ex wife, Ivana Trump, has accused him of rape.
Marcus seems to think that if Trump uses this against Hillary it will be devastating to her. She must have slept through the 90s. After all, if this didn't sink Bill Clinton then why will it sink Hillary Clinton now? Is there anybody n America now that doesn't know about Monica Lewinsky?
As for sexism, I don't think that Trump knows the meaning of the word. He himself has engaged in some legendary sexist slurs. And the GOP is for sexist policies. Women are supposedly going to support these policies-Rubio for instance doesn't' believe in exceptions for rape or incest-because Trump 'reminds' them that Bill Clinton at one time had some sexual affairs? Surely they'll punish HRC for Bill but not Trump for his own sordid sexual history.
This is the strange calculus of Very Serious People like Ruth Marcus.
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