*record scratch*
*freeze frame*
Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up petting a white nationalist pic.twitter.com/5uthAnquyQ— laura olin (@lauraolin) September 16, 2016
Hat tip to Antipodean commentor The Mighty Trowel for the mot juste. To be fair, Jimmy Fallon is a professional entertainer, and should not be held to the same standards as the so-called journalists and pundits defending Trump’s indefensible positions. He should still be ashamed of himself, though, because “birtherism” — aka ‘racism rebranded for cowards’ — really isn’t a topic to joke about.
Or to defend, per “ambulatory cream cheese sculpture” (h/t BettyC) and primary debate moderator Hugh Hewitt, who thinks “the press” is being meeeeaaaan…
So I argued w/ @realDonaldTrump and @mike_pence to allow everyone in, and advocated for pool. Now pool censoring news. Just wow. MSM melting
— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) September 16, 2016
“Mad Bitcher” Chris Cilliza, at the Washington Post, just admires the balls on that guy:
Donald Trump is, at heart, a showman. He rose to national fame thanks to star turns on reality TV in which he played the tough-talking boss to a group of aspirants hoping to become as successful as he has been in business. His great gift is the ability to draw attention — and then use that attention for his own, usually commercial, purposes.
Trump may have outdone himself on Friday morning….
The networks eventually cut away from the generals, but then Trump was back at the mic — roughly 90 minutes after his event was originally slated to start. Meaning that he drew an hour and a half of live coverage for:
1. An empty podium.
2. A series of military endorsements/testimonials.
3. Three sentences from Trump himself — one that is totally false and two others that represent a total reversal from a position he held as recently as, well, Thursday night.
It was a low moment for politics and political coverage. A nothing-burger filled with falsehoods covered as though it was the Super Bowl. But for Trump, it might have been his crowning achievement: All eyes on him with the chance to direct the play in whatever way he saw fit. The ringmaster — calling the shots in all three rings of the circus. It was peak Trump.
Lifetime Wingnut Wurlitzer beneficiary Byron York thinks the whole topic has gotten too much attention:
After Trump non-ambiguously says Obama born in USA, press essentially vows to chase Trump to Gates of Hell over birther issue.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 16, 2016
Gee, why would people be so upset that someone built his political career on a racist lie? https://t.co/QsAuqQxMHt
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) September 16, 2016
Not about to forgive & forget, sorry not sorry.
These two facts should not be airbrushed out of the story of Trump's birther back-down:https://t.co/GUbfc5poLP pic.twitter.com/I10ui2y5r0
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) September 16, 2016
This video (ht @joshtpm) is amazing. https://t.co/EPfMv6jgdD
— Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) September 16, 2016
The last 12 hours should be studied by future historians to understand the state of media and politics in 2016
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) September 16, 2016
SiubhanDuinne
He doesn’t get to decide whether Obama is or isn’t an American.
He doesn’t get to choose when to decide whether Obama is or isn’t an American citizen.
And he for damn fuckin sure doesn’t get to decide that the conversation is over, the issue is done, and we just won’t discuss it ever again.
Villago Delenda Est
Let us recall that “Dancin’ Dave” was SUPPOSED to be a journamalist, but he did his dancin’ thing.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, not until January, 2017, that is.
Amir Khalid
On Friday, Trump’s dishonesty, manipulation, bigotry, and incompetence were exposed like never before in this cycle. The Trump candidacy ought to be collapsing like that backdrop.
Mnemosyne
I can’t help but wonder what The Roots thought of Jimmy’s boyish enthusiasm. That’s the kind of thing that makes someone look at you with new eyes, and not friendly ones.
Mai.naem.mobile
Today was the day that I really wanted to run away from this election. I never wish anybody bad because I just think it’s wrong but,man,today I just wanted to wish bad stuff for the whole Trump family especially a-hole Donald. This is the absolute worst person in the world. I cannot believe anybody but a freaking Nazi would want to vote for this pig.
scav
@SiubhanDuinne: And we’re supposed to thank the big orange bwana for putting his personal gilt seal of actually American (period) upon the sitting president after however many years. Reality! now with the Donald J Trump imprimatur so licit to used in real life.
Suzan
“not so he could be President but so he would be a US citizen”????? He knows nothing about US law. This issue came up with Cruz and McCain. And to think Palin was “disqualified” for her answer to “what do you read”. He’s read nothing if he doesn’t know since his mother was a citizen he is a citizen. And he might be president.
SFAW
In my drug-induced haze/hallucination, I hear some enterprising reporter asking The Turtle, ZEGS, and the rest of them, one-by-one: “Is your lust for power, and your irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton and Democrats in general, so important to you that helping a corrupt, not-very-bright, racist liar with fascistic tendencies win the Presidency is ‘No Big Deal’?”
I don’t expect any of them would actually respond, other than by deflecting/lying. But if the question was asked often enough, it might break through the anti-truth wall that the MSM has built.
And I might beat a healthy Mahe Drysdale in a 2K
SFAW
@Mai.naem.mobile:
I can help you overcome that problem, if you’d like.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Wow. Light just dawned on my marble head.
Thanks.
BlueDWarrior
@SFAW: This election should really lay bare about how this “fight for America’s Soul” should really be rechristened “the ongoing struggle between Urban and Rural White People”
Due to Trump’s, and the larger GOPs, shenanigan’s, it’s almost at the point to where every ethnic minority in America votes at least 3:2 Democratic, and in the case of African Americans, it’s over 19:1 when it comes to presidential elections.
sigaba
@SFAW: They probably thought: House Band for a Late Night TV Talk show is basically the terminal and most awesome billet a professional musician can attain.
Omnes Omnibus
@BlueDWarrior: Not a bad take.
Mary G
@Mnemosyne: Have you read this NY Mag article about Lin-Manuel going to see Spamilton?
It’s a nice break from Trump.
Mnemosyne
@sigaba:
Yeah, I’m sure winning a Grammy this year didn’t mean a thing to them.
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
Oh come on. Russell wasn’t that bad in Les Miz.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
If you can’t say something nice, come over here and sit by me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: When did The Roots win a Grammy?
Death Panel Truck
@Mai.naem.mobile: I am fortunate in that I have no such problem. If hating the most deserving people is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Mnemosyne
@Mary G:
I like the description of his reaction to the Sondheim parts, like, Oooh, Dad’s gonna be upset when he finds out you did this!
Sarah, Proud and Tall
@Mnemosyne:
They got at least one elbow in the ribs in…
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
They’ve won three as a group, and then Questlove and Black Thought won separately this year as the producers of That Cast Album.
Death Panel Truck
@Mnemosyne: Questlove is a big Ringo fan. Cool.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne:I’ll leave it. Questlove and Black Thought are not The Roots. But, I will leave it.
Anne Laurie
@Mai.naem.mobile:
Yeah, I’m respectful of karma too, so I go with the Dick Gregory exemption: I fervently pray that everything Trump has ever wished will happen to their enemies will happen to Trump.
(Don’t look at me like that, Trickster God! You were totally thinking the same thing!)
Montanareddog
Chris Cilliza – the Washington Post’s mansplainer-in-chief
Mnemosyne
@Death Panel Truck:
I’ve seen that before, and I love that they have modern great drummers dispelling the myth that Ringo was somehow a “weak” drummer or whatever the current urban legend is. The Beatles were four great musicians. All of them.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m just pushing back on sigaba’s notion that no one in that band has anything else going on with their careers right now, so being on Jimmy Fallon’s show is the best they can hope for. That’s self-evidently not true.
Major Major Major Major
@Montanareddog: I’ve just started calling him chinchilla because it’s easier to spell.
amk
donnie dick painted the press into a corner. will he do the same to the americans? we shall see.
CZanne
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s the most obviously narcissistic thing I’ve yet heard come out of his gob. The boasting and self-aggrandizement I can brush off as somewhat typical real estate/developer sales dialect. It’s irritating but not specifically narcissist.
The thing that separates bullshit artist/boor from narcissist is that flat declaration that a conversation is over, not to be discussed, permanently dropped and forcibly forgiven and forgotten, or at least, not mentioned. When a narc is cornered, or when an aspect of their constructed reality is challenged or no longer beneficial, that position gets dropped hard, and they never want to address it again — they have always been at war with Eastasia. Which means that’s the time to hammer it — Narcissists are at their worst when they can’t control the conversation, when their pronouncements are ignored, or the foolish mere mortals dare question the commands of the Great and Powerful Oz.
piratedan
part of me “sympathizes” with Mr. York regarding why did the Trump campaign choose to set itself on fire on THIS particular hill and how the Media chose to notice that something was suddenly aflame..
The thing is, we’ve been sitting in the middle of an epic forest fire of issues during this campaign and the amount of smoke and flame and heat have caused the current members of the MSM to debate whether or not global warming is scientific fact or not with nary an idea that the forest is on fire much less what the motherfucker with the flamethrower and propane tanks is actually doing…
I have to admit, the MSM, and in particular the NY Times, has this less than wonderful ability to stare at their collective navels, curious about how the lint there got wet while being pissed upon.
Ruckus
@piratedan:
Nice. I always thought that the reason they couldn’t see the daylight in front of them was that their heads were inserted someplace that I’m betting is a bit dark.
J R in WV
I have commented before how I grew up in a small town newspaper – my family owned the company, along with some of the senior employees, and published the two local papers. My dad was editor of the morning paper, and so worked 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon, came home for dinner, and then worked from 8 or 9 until 2 or 3 am.
I spent afternoons after school there, frequently went back with dad after dinner. Mom was also editor of the weekly weekend extra, with stories about what to do this weekend. I first was on the payroll the summer I turned 14. Many people worked there and went on to bigger papers, both editorial staff, writers, photogs, as well as plant people, pressmen, photo-engravers, many folks had brothers or kids who worked at the Washington Post, sort of the height of success at the time.
I met my wife working at the family newspaper the summer after my freshman year away at college, she was an intern (fully employed) and we both filled in so regular reporting/photo staff could take their weeks of vacation in the summertime, with their kids out of school.
I left that business not long after my hitch in the Navy, and wound up building software systems for a career, but wife spent her career as a news correspondent with The Associated Press, covering Federal trials, industrial explosions, floods, prison riots, and the state house – including trials of politicians found to be crooked.
It was nearly 50 years ago I watched the news of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre printed out in the teletype room at 60 baud/characters per minute, when he started out by firing his Attorney General, then his Deputy Attorney General, until he finally reached his appointed Solicitor General, Robert Bork, who was willing to fire the first Special Prosecutor investigating President Nixon’s multiple felonies before and after the election he didn’t even need to steal.
And now the New York Times is a whore for a Nazi Racist bigot so stupid he doesn’t know what the Nuclear Triad is, something I worked in back in 1971-73 as a teenaged Swabbie on a 1942 Submarine Tender. I knew what the Triad was from living through the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was 11 and the Nazi Racist Bigot was probably 16, and oblivious to what was happening around him. It is unbelievable to me that a 70-year old man doesn’t know more about Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD strategy) since he grew up living under it as the primary method for preventing war between the East-Block (Soviet back before they fell) and the West-Bloc. NYC was a prime target, and he never knew it.
I watched training films about nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare, Battleships and Aircraft Carriers being destroyed by H-Bombs in the Pacific, as we used up the fleet that won WW II as target practice to discover how close the H-Bombs had to be to a fleet to obliterate it. Not very close is the answer they learned.
Trump thinks they are tricks he can use to impress Putin with, or something like that.
I saw the same Shiva that Oppenheimer, who directed the Manhatten Project to build our first nuclear devices, saw at the Trinity Test in New Mexico. Some of those physicists worried that the first shot might destroy the universe, and as far as humanity is concerned, they may still be correct if Trump get elected.
I bet if he wants to use a special device on ISIL, and a General refuses that order, he has Generals arrested as traitors until he finds one as craven as Powell who will be willing to do whatever the C-in-C tells him to do, no matter Trump’s “reason” for setting the world on fire.
There are lots of special devices out there today, British, French, Israeli, Indian, Chinese, Russian, Pakistani, and FSM help us, North Korean. That we know about. There could be more, South Africa built some once, there are American devices in Turkey, etc. There’s a great graphic that shows a map of the world from 1945 to today, with little flashes and spots where nuclear devices ignite, thousands of them, all over. Up to 50 million tons of TNT equivalent in one detonation.
So, yeah, let’s elect a man president who doesn’t know the first thing about warfare, knows less than a 19-y-o seaman knew 45 years ago. Great idea, Republicans. Thanks so much.
Adam, if I’ve got anything wrong here, please add or correct anything I’ve gone wrong on. You’re a pro, I’m just an interested amateur… well, that’s not the right word, I don’t love it, just horribly fascinated with it. Shiva the destroyer, embodied before our very eyes.
raven
@J R in WV: Damn, did you write that just now? I’m getting my shit together for the drive to the Atlanta Airport. I found out more about how my buddy died, He was at the VA in Huntington, WVA getting his cancer treatment and hit a deer on his motorcycle driving back to Lousia, KY. It’s not clear if the treatment caused his heart to be too weak to take the surgery but that’s what he died from.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: Amen*.
*Guess I spent too much time at the mission today.
rikyrah
@J R in WV:
Tell that truth.
Felonius Monk
@J R in WV: I’ll add an Amen, also. Righteous, JR.
different-church-lady
Well, at least Byron seems to understand that Trump is going to wind up in hell, so there’s that much.
Betty Cracker
@J R in WV: Well written account of a fascinating perspective — thank you.
I am still confident that HRC will win this election — mostly on the strength of my belief that the American people aren’t quite idiotic enough to elect Trump. But even if he loses by a significant margin, the campaign has revealed some terrifying gaps in the institutional protections that are supposed to keep our democracy out of the hands of madmen.
Kay has talked about that a lot this election season, how the institutional safeguards have fallen one by one. She’s right, and it’s scary.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
The question is whether the MSM have learned their lesson, finally, this time. Will they show up for the next Trump hotel informercial disguised as a major announcement + press conference, only to be left high and dry again? Or…just maybe, they’ll ignore the whole thing and cover something else. You want to get back at Trump for dicking you over? The best way is to starve him of media oxygen.
OGLiberal
@Amir Khalid: It won’t and this guy still has a better chance than McCain or Mitt at winning the WH. Frightening. A changing map helps Hillary with VA and CO making OH and FL less crucial but still too scary for my tastes. Changing demographics aside, we still have too many racist, scared white folks out there who can eff things up for a long time. Buy, heck, as long as the browns and hippies have it worse than they do, it’s all good.
I’m a white American but, man, do I hate white Americans.
Kay
Which will be harder for them, because they didn’t inherit a lot of real estate and money. In fact, it was impossible for them and most lost all the money they invested in Donald Trump.
I know Donald Trump has not one redeeming quality other than his money, but let’s stop lying about the money. Even the “business success” is bullshit.
Kay
Chris Cilliza was not always this horrible. He was never particularly talented but he occasionally wrote columns with facts in them prior to Donald Trump.
Trump makes everyone he touches worse. If you brush up against him, his shit sticks. He’s dragging them all down with him.
I feel like Michelle Obama’s go-high approach is like a warning- “don’t go down there with him! you won’t survive exposure to this toxic environment!”
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Faith can be a wonderful thing, but too much faith, or misplaced faith, can be, shall we say, “problematic.”
You seem to assume a rational, and non-racist/non-xenophobic electorate. Interesting.
Kay
I’m glad Michelle Obama is out campaigning . I have never been to a rally where she spoke. She held a small event at the Toledo main library in the ’08 primary before she was a big-deal surrogate and some women from here went but I was thinking “the candidate’s spouse doesn’t interest me that much”- I wish I had gone.
mapaghimagisk
I’m struck by the idea this is about ROI. Cable news can’t get viewers to stick around for an empty podium.
jimmiraybob
At least York makes the correct call on where the Trumpenfuhrer would seek solace and protection.
Go Press 2016!
Betty Cracker
@SFAW: Knee-jerk cynicism is even more problematic, IMO. In fact, I suspect it’s one of the main reasons for the sorry state in which we find ourselves.
Since I’m not a moron, I don’t assume the electorate as a whole is rational, and non-racist/non-xenophobic. But we did elect PBO twice, and I still like HRC’s chances against a dangerous demagogue like Trump.
SFAW
@J R in WV:
Thanks. Great commentary.
Unfortunately, Trump’s campaign headquarters at the intersection of Mencken Boulevard and Barnum Avenue, and far too many people are flocking there.
[Note: yes, I am aware that quotes historically associated with those two may not, in fact, have ever been uttered by them.]
Kay
@SFAW:
This ignores that Obama won twice. Romney backed birtherism and used every dog whistle in the book. He still lost.
It can be done.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Hardly. But if I run into any of those types, I’ll be sure to steer clear.
Electing Obama President was certainly reassuring (vis-a-vis the electorate). But with the MSM thumbing the scale, and Hillary being unjustifiably trashed by them and the Rethugs for 20-plus years, plus the latter-day Naderites seeking purity (morons in their own right), it means that her ground game has a higher barrier to overcome than it should have to.
It doesn’t take an electorate composed entirely of racists/xenophobes to elect Trump, just some significant portion plus “good Germans.” I think she’s had a fair amount of self-inflicted damage the last two weeks, but I also think the polls will turn around, especially after the debates — if the MSM doesn’t continue to thumb the scale. (Which is not necessarily a good assumption, but maybe yesterday’s clusterfuck will help that change.)
And, yes, Betty, I know you’re not a moron, nor anything approaching one. I read and like your stuff almost all the time. Except for your posts on manatees.
sunny raines
which is why fallon is so terribly WRONG to have trump on his show! trump’s vile, violent, racism and bigotry is is deadly dangerous IT IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT!. trump is a pariah. he should be treated as such – period.SHAME ON FALLON for normalizing the most disgusting of failed human characteristics.
SFAW
@Kay:
Birtherism was never a significant issue during the Obama campaigns, except for the hard-core racists/Republicans. Oh, yeah, it got lots of air play. And it’s (obviously) not an issue in this campaign, other than it provided Trump a jumping-off point for his own campaign, and it may possibly bite him in the ass (if the MSM wakes up after yesterday).
I’m reasonably well aware of the various dogwhistles Romney used. The electorate during that period was — in my opinion, which of course may be useless — much less inclined to play into that shit.
Procopius
Ugh! That picture is nauseating.
Procopius
@J R in WV: I’m glad to see somebody setting it out so clearly. Thing is, Hillary seems to be in bed with the neocon Kagan cabal. Who promoted Victoria Nuland? Anyway, they’ve been provoking Russia for about fifteen years now, seemingly hoping for a nice little shooting war and not seeming to fear that it might turn nuclear. I hope they have some good reason for thinking that, because I find Trump terrifying, and Hillary does not comfort me. At all.
Elizabelle
@sunny raines: Isn’t Fallon on NBC? Like that nice Matt Lauer?
And Luke Russert has found his courage to speak out on twitter, after leaving NBC’s employ?
NBC is fucking toxic. I can’t speak to its entertainment offerings, but its news division has been rightwing enabling for some time. Who employs Andrea “emails!” Mitchell Greenspan and Chuck Todd, for many years now?
MSNBC is just NBC with a libtard nice face on usual NBC offerings, with coverage of some Hillary and Obama speeches that CNN won’t cover in real time (although they bend that rule constantly for anything Trump).
NBC and whoever has poisoned the New York Times’ political desk are siblings under the skin.
NBC has enabled Trump, like nothing I have ever seen.
I write this with sadness, because I used to esteem both media outlets. The Times still does wonderful coverage on global warming (fig leaf to keep me subscribed, although I consider cancelling.)
Procopius
@SFAW: I haven’t gone back to research it, but my memory is birtherism was never a thing until well after the Tea Party got up and running, which really didn’t happen until around half way through 2009.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Gladly. You’re my kind of girl.
SFAW
@Procopius:
You might be right, but I seem to recall some birther stuff during the ’08 campaign. But, being An Old, my memory is not quite as .. as … wait, what were we talking about?
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Jimmy Fallon’s first episode of The Tonight Show had him giving the celebrity red-carpet treatment to convicted rapist Mike Tyson, treating him as just another entertainer. So it’s no surprise to see him caressing Trump’s hair.
Cacti
@Procopius:
Dios mio.
BIP is back.
Bobbo
To be fair, Hitler probably wouldn’t have let Jimmy Fallon pet him.
The Lodger
@J R in WV: Awesome post. And at 4:47 am, too.
JGabriel
@sigaba:
I doubt that. The Roots were a widely acclaimed and successful band *years* before they went on Fallon’s show. I think their foremost thought was probably something like: “Damn, now we can play music and stay home for a few years? Thank god! I am so fucking sick of that tour bus.”
Carolina Dave
@Elizabelle: amen. My #1 reason for ditchING cable was how unwatchable MSNBC had become. From whatever Tweety was concerned about that had no relevance to anything significant, to trying to ease Brian Williams back into respectability. I believe it was on the Daily Show with John Stewart that Williams admitted how much he liked Rush Limbaugh. I was dumbstruck, how a supposed professional journalist could have any respect for what Limbaugh is and does in his show. It hit me then that NBC was about infotainment rather than real news. No way could I imagine David Brinkley or John Chancellor ever having anything but loathing for what Limbaugh does. I’m not sure what the NYT has going on against Clinton but it’s disturbing as well.
maya
@Elizabelle:
Before and after 9/11 I could only get NBC on my TV -75 miles from nearest station- and only got a computer in 2005, so, NBC was it for news. Their selling of the Bush/Cheney Iraq invasion was absolutely atrocious from Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today Show with KKKatie Curuic, Matt Lauer and the gang, and Timmeh Russert, Cheney’s go-to MTP guy for selling the phony ‘yellow cake from Niger’ caper to America strategy.
The culmination of all NBC did for Bush/Cheney was the grand prize, exclusive interview given to Brokaw of Bush aboard the USS Mission Accomplished. Hard to tell which one of the two had the bigger shit-eating grin on their face. Their individual ratings were going through the roof then and both knew it. Especially prophetic given the “now that we own Iraq” questioning quote from Brokaw the answer to which I really can’t recall.
Fast forward to after the whole thing blew up in their faces the best that Brokaw could come up with as an excuse for his and NBC’s lack of journalistic integrity was; “We did the best we could with the information the Bush administration was giving us.” I.e., Rove’s daily talking points. The idea that NBC is the face of ‘liberal news’ is the biggest fraud perpetrated of all of them. (The NYT has always been a Republican rag, why does anybody not know this?)
Bottom line: NBC’s corporate affiliation went all the way up the control ladder to GE, the recipient of several billion $$$ in no-bid Iraq War contracts. That Brokaw and company were never aware of that potential is not even a possibility. Having worked in a NY corporate firm myself the business potential for the upper floor echelon is always the leading talk around the office water cooler. And GE is reknown for taking good care of it’s “loyal” employees. Reagan, for example, got a free, all electric house built for him on Pacific Palisades because of all the light bulbs sold by him when he was the host of GE Theater on NBC. That and his potential for being just what the Corporate GOP was looking for for the future.
karen marie
@Sarah, Proud and Tall: Nice song if they took all the electronic boinging out, but I guess that’s what makes it “jazz.”
Sam Dobermann
@J R in WV: Impressive comment. I have much the same historical knowledge as you and a bit more as I’m older. Not military though I tried to joined the Navy but they discriminated and wouldn’t take me.
Where did you grow up? Sounds like a great childhood.