We slag The New York Times a lot on this blog, and rightly so. Their 2016 election coverage was catastrophically bad, and their refusal to engage in any meaningful post-election introspection remains unforgivable.
But The Times did two things today that deserve praise. They published a column by Lindy West that vaporizes the myth of Ivanka Trump’s moderating influence on her heinous father’s administration. A choice morsel:
Ivanka Trump is never going to come through. Coming through isn’t her function. She is more a logo than a person, a scarecrow stuffed with branding, an heiress-turned-model-turned-multimillionaire’s-wife playacting as an authority on the challenges facing working women so that she can sell more pastel sheath dresses.
You’ll enjoy the whole thing if you’re as fed up as I am with the puke-inducing worship and unearned trust placed in that vapid dilettante.
The Times also announced the hire of Michelle Goldberg, formerly of Slate, as a columnist. Slate has its issues too (though it has improved lately, IMO), but Goldberg has long been a bright spot. Here’s an excerpt from a column she wrote this summer that perfectly sums up how my sister marchers and I feel about the Trump administration:
I’m not sure that even well-intentioned men understand how relentlessly degrading this presidency is for many women. Having a man who does not recognize the humanity of more than half the population in a position of such power is a daily insult; it never really goes away.
I think I’ve shared that excerpt here before, but it bears repeating — QFT. Also, it’s high time The Times gave poor Gail Collins some backup on its male-dominated columnist roster. (MoDo doesn’t count.) I’m not renewing my subscription, but credit where credit is due.
Open thread!
schrodingers_cat
Meanwhile, their political news coverage is all slobbery over T, lead by lap dog Haberman.
Jeffro
Someone please slip that one past Chief of Staff Kelly and into Trumpov’s tiny little hands…maybe Orangemandias will stroke out while tweet-raging at the NYT…
Barbara
The Lindy West piece cuts like a razor blade. It underscores my belief that the whole family, Ivanka included, suffers from familial Stockholm Syndrome. They are all captives of their father, though obviously, at this point they are willing captives. Melania is probably the most self-aware, but still goes along with the insanity when she needs to.
Quinerly
adore Michelle Goldberg!
jl
I think Trump has trouble understanding the humanity of the population, period. He just has about a third of it conned into thinking they are part of his club. They are not. Trump is in Trump’s club. Period.
Amanda in the South Bay
Goldberg is transphobic af.
Amanda in the South Bay
Here’s a link
http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/12/michelle-goldbergs-disingenuous-attack.html?m=1
Dave
Krugman and Collins are the only reason I ever even look at the NYTimes front page. I subscribed to every paywall model they ever had from the beginning. Cancelled a couple of years ago. Never again.
Amaranthine RBG
I don’t get the NYT hate. They’re not perfect, of course, but they’re among the best news sources out there
Seriously, what’s better than the NYT, WAPO, CSM and WSJ?
I read a blogs, but they’re almost exclusively commentary, even TPM still is mostly an aggregator.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
Stockholm Syndrome is probably the kindest possible explanation. Trump’s spawn all seem eager participants, particularly Uday and Qusay, perhaps not Tiffany.
chris
@Quinerly: Hey, was wondering where you were. Thought maybe you’d gone looking for cornerstone ;-)
Yay for Goldberg. But you know these guys and their obsessive need for balance, my fear is they’ll hire Jonah Goldberg away from the LAT. Balance, right?
different-church-lady
@chris:
NYT: “Wait, we DIDN’T hire Jonah Goldberg just now?”
different-church-lady
@Amaranthine RBG:
Nice try.
Major Major Major Major
@Amanda in the South Bay: oh, thanks, was just about to ask.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jeffro:
We can only hope. In the meantime, that’s some choice writing from Ms. West.
chris
@different-church-lady: LOL! Thanks
hilts
@jl:
What John Perry Barlow once observed about Dick Cheney, “he has an autistic indifference to the feelings of other individuals”, can just as easily be said about Donald Trumpenstein”
@Dave:
What about Charles Blow?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
Related: I think butthurt and nihilism are punditry’s most serious cardinal sins.
sherparick
@Amaranthine RBG: I actually prefer the Guardian and McClatchey for straight news. The only reason I subscribe is Krugman and I have told them that repeatedly. The Eric Prince column was probably the last straw and their burying environmental and climate change coverage five years ago, pretty much barring it from the political page, makes the paper not of record. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/public-editor/after-changes-how-green-is-the-times.html
If you can’t afford both a NY Times or Guardian subscription, go with the Guardian .https://membership.theguardian.com/us/supporter?INTCMP=DOTCOM_HEADER_BECOMEMEMBER_US
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: WSJ used to have decent news coverage.
randy khan
Local news radio is reporting there’s a deal on a three-month continuing resolution and debt-limit increase, plus Harvey funding. Apparently the Dems are getting what they wanted and Congressional Republicans are not because Trump sided with the Dems. (Go figure.) Now we’ll see if the House Republican caucus will go along.
Amaranthine RBG
@different-church-lady:
Their general ews and business coverage is excellent
Their editorial page is another matter but it actually seems a bit less nutty and strident now than it was in the pre-Murdoch era.
Quinerly
@chris:
been busy working on a construction project for an Air BnB and wrapping up stuff for a road trip with Poco to NC coast in October. No CS sightings.
TenguPhule
I come not to praise the Gray Lady, but to bury her.
Barbara
@trollhattan: I agree that at no point have they shown insight into how compromised they are by enabling their father and piggybacking off of his name. It’s just that once upon a time they were children, and not at fault for their father’s narcissism. Then they became adults.
TenguPhule
@randy khan:
Not a deal set in stone. Paul Ryan would have to break the molester’s rule about bringing only Republican approved measures up for a vote.
randy khan
@Amanda in the South Bay:
If the article linked from your link is the worst example, I have a hard time figuring out why she’s supposed to be transphobic.
Amaranthine RBG
@sherparick</
I check in on the Guardian along with other foreign sources, but usually just to get perspective- not a daily thing
Any recommendations for US dailies?
J R in WV
I think that someone in a position to issue orders to NYT staff is devoted to destroying AMerican Democracy. Perhaps owner of the largest block of stock, Carlos Slim. Perhaps the COMINTERN, whatever it’s current acronym is in the Kleptrocracy of Russia today.
But when they adjust coverage, edit headlines, pla ce stories within the paper/web site, assign reportage, they have a purpose, and it isn’t to inform the American public of facts, it is to manipulate the American public into believing falsehoods, voting against our own interests, dumbing down the bulk of the voter population.
Probably not Pinch personally, maybe not a person actually publically associated with the news operation at all. But someone, or some group, is playing the NYT like a fiddle, using it for un-American purposes. In parallel with Fox News, NBC and it’s subsidiaries, many web news sites, all to destroy the polity of America, and seriously weaken our ability to maintain the standard of living that makes us the envy of most of the world. All of it outside the EU, really.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just seeking wealth aggregation by those already rich beyond the dreams of Midas. Maybe I’m just stressed by Trump’s reign?
mai naem mobile
So you’re saying Ivanka got her self esteem punctured bigly today by the NYTimes? Not so Sad!
Amaranthine RBG
@randy khan:
That article was just kind of weird. The author published their personal experiences in a book but asked that quotes be removed because they didn’t want to see it in a nationally distributed magazine.
Wha?
trollhattan
@Barbara:
Am genuinely curious as to whether he had any meaningful role in their upbringing, or if the mother presented his baby and the response was, “Nice, now go raise the thing I have to play golf and cut some deals.”
Except Ivanka, who he seems to have become very involved with around ten or so.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
Yeah. Like I said, we have to see if the House Republican caucus will go along, and part of that is whether Ryan can either get 218 Republican votes or be willing to vitiate the Boehner Amendment to the Hastert Rule.
Amaranthine RBG
@J R in WV:
So what do you recommend in dailies or news sites?
(I already read the mostly horrible Charleston Gazette/Daily Mail!)
randy khan
@Amaranthine RBG:
I was talking about the Goldberg article linked from the blog post, the one on M to F transitioned people who say they’re not women.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@randy khan: I noticed that the link’s links all discuss a (terrible) New Yorker piece that was overly sympathetic to TERF arguments. Doing that sort of thing once might be forgivable, but the piece directly discussed is from December 2015 — even if she’s improved considerably on this front, undermining trans acceptance by elevating said (TERF-friendly) sentiments is fair game.
(am a straight cis-guy, btw)
Amaranthine RBG
Oh sorry I was talking about the little linked article in the Advocate that supposedly summarized Goldberg’s sins.
TenguPhule
@randy khan: We know he’s not getting 218 Republican votes.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: I think this is pretty far-fetched. There are many far simpler explanations for bad coverage of domestic politics.
TenguPhule
@J R in WV:
In practical terms, how could we tell the difference?
Major Major Major Major
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): it looked to me like she did it sort of cluelessly, IMO that wouldn’t elevate it to “transphobic AF”
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
“But her emails” was beyond bad coverage. I’m still trying to come up with something to explain it that doesn’t involve insanity.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: but every single outlet did it. The simplest explanation is a successful 30-year republican propaganda campaign.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Major Major Major Major: Has she improved on trans rights since then, however? I have a feeling that the reception still would’ve been (entirely justifiably) negative, but not as negative had she not done the New Yorker piece discussed in said post.
randy khan
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
I guess I would disagree that the Slate article “undermin[es] trans acceptance by elevating said (TERF-friendly) sentiments.” Among many other things, it specifically points to the problems created by those views, and it quotes people who disagree quite sympathetically, not to mention that there’s what reads like a little dig at the people who are the subject of the article noting that there do not appear to be any F to M trans people arguing that they are not men. And, really, the entire article is pretty clearly sympathetic to the trans community as a whole. As I said, if this is supposed to be evidence of transphobia, it’s just hard for me to buy the argument.
Major Major Major Major
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): the CJR criticism of her New Yorker article leans heavily on the fact that it was misguided as a New Yorker article, and that the publication had an obligation to write a more informative, less Haberman-esque “just some facts that I found” article. Now, I can’t really tell you if she fixed some of the issues they noted for her Slate article the next year or not, but I can tell you that Slate is not the New Yorker.
ETA also a piece or two that might not contextualize a fairly obscure topic correctly for the layperson != bigotry
A Ghost To Most
I guess I won’t be reading Michelle Goldberg anymore. FTFNYT.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
There’s a really classic dynamic with children of narcissists where one child is held up as the Golden Child and another child is dumped on as the Scapegoat.
From everything I’ve seen, Ivanka is the Golden Child and Eric is the Scapegoat. Don Jr probably bounces between the two based on which role Trump needs his to play — he’s the Scapegoat when pitted against Ivanka and the Golden Child when pitted against Eric.
There’s a reason Marla Maples moved herself and her daughter to the opposite coast as soon as her divorce came through. Poor Tiffany is probably also a Scapegoat, desperate for her father’s attention but always pitted against the Golden Child Ivanka.
geg6
Michelle Goldberg is a great hire. Sorry it’s at the NYT, though, since I am boycotting it. When they get rid of Brooks, Friendman, MoDo and that climate science-denying twit they recently hired (Stephens?), I’ll think about ending my boycott. No wait…gotta fire Haberman and Thrush. Then I’ll end it.
That said, the Goldberg column you reference was pure gold. Every word of it. She’s good on MSNBC, too.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, but that means it got them to accept insanity as the truth. It means 1984 is already here.
geg6
@Amaranthine RBG:
With the exception of the WaPo, the shit that comes out my dogs’ asses is better than the shit they put out. Seriously? You think the NYT, CSM and WSJ are good journalism? LOL! You don’t know anything about journalism. Thank FSM for Marty Barron, is all I can say.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
The Hastert Rule is more what you’d call a “guideline” than an actual rule.
Gravenstone
@randy khan: Don’t need the whole caucus, just enough Republicans to round out the Democrats and give a majority. If it happens, it’ll be great to give the Freedom Caucus morons a public wedgie.
randy khan
@Roger Moore:
It’s a guideline in the sense that it’s not an actual rule of the House, but it might as well be a rule. Boehner lost his job as Speaker because he broke it to get a continuing resolution passed.
randy khan
BTW, the latest NHC track for Irma has it going up the Florida coast. Eyeballing the map, it looks like the eye would pass about 10 miles west of Mar a Lago. It’s better news for the west coast of Florida than the last track, but not so hot for the states north of Florida.
Amaranthine RBG
@geg6:
Okay , so what other daily papers do you recommend?
TenguPhule
Speaking of a Failed Media…..
Fucking moron doesn’t begin to describe this guy. Missile Defense DOES NOT FUCKING WORK at our current technological level. Right now those feel good tests of hitting the missile with another missile require precise tracking and HOMING BEACONS. We have never held an actual test using anything approaching real world conditions.
Bex
“…more a logo” is a great way to refer to the whole clan and the overpriced Florida club.
trollhattan
@TenguPhule:
Might as well be bylined: Fmr. Vice President Dick Cheney as dictated to M. Thiessen via smoke piped up his ass.
Mnemosyne
@Bex:
I don’t remember who came up with “Mar A Loco,” but that’s what I tend to use. ?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@randy khan: By “going up the coast,” do you mean it’s hugging the coastline all the way through, or that it’s just going in the northeast direction?
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
And still aren’t close to reliable enough to depend on.
O. Felix Culpa
@Amaranthine RBG: I read The Guardian and WaPo, plus our local paper. I haven’t found any other major American papers worth following on a regular basis. Honestly, I find BJ a good source for pertinent (and impertinent) news and commentary.
Barbara
@TenguPhule: As much as we like to disparage the NYT, there are op-ed contributors and columnists at WaPo who are hair on fire horrible. Thiessen and Ed Rogers are two of them. They are Republican apologists in the most transparent and extreme way. I don’t even read them anymore. If you can believe it, Rogers is even worse than Thiessen — demented and delusional.
geg6
@Amaranthine RBG:
WaPo, Guardian. My own hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is pretty good (though not perfect). Once I’ve skimmed the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup on Dkos, that’s pretty much it for my dead tree newspaper reading.
TenguPhule
Rush Limbaugh’s dangerous suggestion that Hurricane Irma is fake news
This should be considered murder.
People are going to die because they listened to that waste of space.
On the bright side, they were stupid and more likely then not evil people.
geg6
@Barbara:
Yeah, but the WaPo has no equivalent to Haberthrush, who are really just glorified society/gossip columnists. Marty Barron takes journalism seriously. Unlike that twit Dean Baquet.
geg6
@TenguPhule:
Just can’t get very exercised about the idea that a bunch of brain dead Dittoheads listen to this idiot and die in a hurricane because of it. It might be the one good thing he’s ever done in his life, to rid of us these toxic people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wow, the NYT found not just a liberal columnist but a liberal columnist who can write! This is good news. For those boycotting the NYT, I’m pretty sure her stuff will get reproduced and passed around.
She really doesn’t. You used to see/hear her quoted on TV and the ‘tubes. I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone quote her, even Tweety (I got sucked into his show off and on during the long campaign, haven’t seen him in months), with the exception of her column about trying an edible in Colorado, and that was all country club gossip: “Oh, darling, did you hear the crazy thing our Maureen did now? She’s a caution!” Nobody mentioned that the column was an embarrassingly grundyish bit of fluff besides almost certainly a lie from beginning to end. Nobody cared because Maureen and marijuana are both things we’re supposed to just giggle about. Even Bill Maher didn’t call out his “friend”.
TenguPhule
@geg6: Yes, but then you have to remember all the good people who will be put in danger trying to rescue those idiots.
efgoldman
@TenguPhule:
Isn’t he ensconced somewhere more or less directly in the predicted path? A nasty surprise could (and should) be right on his horizon.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne:
Yes. In my family, it was a moveable feast (or moving target), so we kids rotated in and out of the roles of Golden Child and Scapegoat at whim. Kept us on our toes, I suppose.
Kay
Funny because it’s true. I was shocked by the tone. It seemed incredibly old fashioned to me, to relegate something like “wages” to “a women’s issue”.
It’s just CRAZY. Men pay for child care! Of course they do! Men are part of families! Half of children are boys! Fully half of those child births Republicans don’t want to pay for? Little tiny men!
I pay for men’s pregnancy costs every day. I pay for them when they are born. The health care system subsidized their mothers. That’s all they need to know.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
EvenTheLiberalRichard Cohen, pompous lying gasbag GWill…
Yutsano
@geg6: Michael Hitzlik at the LA Times is still doing some great stuff. And even with the new owners still seems to be doing some solid reporting.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
He has a residence in Palm Springs.
Of course he’s not going to be there when it hits.
Citizen Alan
@Dave:
I will never forgive Collins for that time she went on Don Imus in 2000 and laughed – literally laughed! – about the fact that everyone in the media knew Bush had as many gaffes and misstatements as Gore, but it was just more “fun” to go after Gore for them.
randy khan
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
+/-15 miles from the coast, starting at the southern tip, through about Melbourne, on a fairly steady track just a shade west of due north. That’s through 8 a.m. Monday. If it stayed on that track, it would make landfall again around the Georiga/South Carolina border.
ETA: That’s just the middle, of course, so there would be lots of people in harm’s way to the west.
I don’t know what the longer-term models say, but it looks like the couple of possible Gulf of Mexico tracks are now off the table.
Kay
Looking at Ivanka dabbling around with childcare just makes me sad, because Clinton would have been genuinely good at it.
I cannot even believe I was supposed to accept Ivanka as some kind of “consolation prize”. Please. I don’t want anything to do with any of these people. They’re all horrible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
funny, that’s exactly my read, with Barron more or less forgotten until a camera is brought in
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Remember when she announced “their plan” and said something like, no one has ever given so much thought to this issue. Like father, like daughter.
gene108
@Amaranthine RBG:
They are very much a part of the “both-sides-do-it” MSM, which has eroded the reality of how out-of-whack Republicans are. Their political reporting leaves a lot to be desired.
Donald Trump is their hometown boy. They have a 40 year view of what Trump’s done for NYC and what he hasn’t done.
They had easier access to the numerous lawsuits, possible mob ties, etc. Trump’s been involved with over the years and ignored all of it, in order to focus on Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server. They ran a story, late in the 2016 campaign, about how the FBI said there was nothing to the Trump-Russia allegations, for example, even though Harry Reid wrote a statement strongly hinting at Trump-Russia ties.
They have not gotten any better.
They do, on occasion, put a good in-depth article on a non-political topic, but by and large their political reporting is awful and has helped hurt America.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Trump brought her in to sell “her” childcare plan:
Oh, well. Maybe Republican leaders should not have enthusiastically endorsed this gross nepotism hire. That’s the thing with nepotism hires- they’re impossible for people, because you can’t diss someone’s kid so you have to play this stupid game where they have to pretend to be interested in her plan. She wants it to be a “centerpiece” of the tax cut bill, probably to distract from the giant tax cuts for multi-millionaires.
It’s an imposition. It demands special treatment and forces people to deal with some family dynamic they don’t want to deal with.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
Let’s just hope he takes his own advice.
TenguPhule
Hurricane Irma just slammed into Trump’s Caribbean estate — and is headed toward his Florida properties
C’mon Insurance Companies, deny all of Trump’s claims under “Acts of God!”
Do it! For once in your miserable existance use your weaseling to dispense some justice!
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: I’ve settled on “Disgraceland.”
Mnemosyne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Frankly, the families where that happens seem to end up with kids who are less damaged. Being the Golden Child is extremely damaging because you’re acquiescing in the abuse of your siblings but with the ever-present threat that it could happen to you if you cross the narcissistic parent. If you’re constantly changing places, you already get to see what it’s like in your sibs’ place.
I suspect that Trump himself was the Golden Child for his parents. His brother was the Scapegoat, and his sister was ignored because she was a mere female.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne: Makes sense. Our youngest sibling is probably the most damaged among us, because she had a permanent role as the cute and funny one – which she still plays today. She hasn’t quite figured out that six-year-old scatological humor is a whole lot less funny in a 56-year-old. But in the main, we’re all ok and our kids are fine too.
Your analysis of the Trump family dynamics also makes sense, although wasn’t Donald shipped off to military school because of unmanageable behavior problems?
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne: Huh. The first time I’ve ever had one of my brilliant posts eated. And it was probably my most brilliant one. //
Anyway, I said something to the effect that your comment about changing roles makes sense. The most damaged among our siblings is the youngest, who had the permanent role of cute and funny four-year-old which she still plays today, well into middle age. Thankfully, we’re all reasonably ok and so are our kids.
With respect to the Trump family dynamics, your analysis also makes sense although I was wondering about Donald being shipped off to military school because of behavior problems. How does that fit in? Father Trump sounds like a horrible person and I can’t imagine any of the children were well treated.
Gelfling 545
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “with Barron more or less forgotten ”
It may be the saving of him.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
From what I’ve read, Fred, Sr. wanted his oldest, Fred, Jr. to be the Golden Child, but Fred, Jr. just wasn’t interested in the family business. So Fred, Jr. got a lot of shit for not being the good son. Donald, the next oldest son, decided to please his dad and threw himself into the family business, so became the good son, Fred, Jr. never became.
Fred, Sr. has, as far as anyone can tell, raised to two really fucked up sons (not sure about Donald’s younger brother, he seems to have avoided publicity). Fred, Jr. drank himself to an early death, and Donald’s shortcomings are on display for the world to see.
Basically, we and the world, are paying the price for Fred, Sr.’s shitting parenting.
Edit: One reason Donald probably wanted to please his dad is because he saw all the shit Fred, Jr. was taking for trying to be independent. There’s a fairly good age difference between the two, so 10 year old Donnie was seeing college aged Fred, Jr. getting shit-kicked by dad.
gene108
@TenguPhule:
I wonder, if insurance reimbursements, if the insurance company is foreign, can count against the Emoluments Clause?
I hope so.
Ken J.
On the NYTimes:
I stick with the words of a front-pager here at BJ, in the wake of the election or the inauguration. “We need it (the Times) more alive than dead.”
Mnemosyne
@O. Felix Culpa:
As far as military school goes, that’s where ADHD boys got sent in those pre-medication days — I suspect that’s how my dad ended up at one. My dad also had a narcissistic dad, but fortunately was able to break away despite being the only son. He had a lot of issues, my dad, but he did consciously try to be better than his dad even if he didn’t always succeed.
I have strongly suspected for a while now that Trump has ADHD (note: not a psychologist, just an adult with ADHD). Much of his history and his behaviors fit the pattern of someone with untreated ADHD. Pair that with the narcissism and you have the disaster we’re looking at today.
eemom
@Citizen Alan:
Never been impressed with Collins. Fiercely despise the obvious ultra-drek of the NYT and WaPo, and find the others meh at best, except Krugman, whom I adore. IMO Krugman is the ONLY columnist at any major newspaper worth bothering to read.
TenguPhule
@gene108:
Prepare to be fucking depressed.
Shit is fucked up and bullshit.
Trentrunner
@Quinerly: I am a smart guy (but it’s OK because I’m also ugly and have a small dick), and Michelle Goldberg is one of the very few people about whom, after her seeing her speak once on TV, I said to the spouse:
japa21
@TenguPhule: Gosh that sounds like the pay to play of the Clinton Foundation except there was nothing there and there is something here.
Mnemosyne
@japa21:
Amazing how projection shows up in every single instance of Republicans complaining about something, innit?
Makes me think that there may be something there with the convicted pedo that Trump was buddies with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
don’t want to pollute the nice tree thread with this but… My god
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
I’m not seeing the problem here (yes/ heavy irony filter applied).
Clearly, draining the swamp just meant eliminating the middle men, the little lobbyists who previously greased the wheels of graft, and getting directly to where the magic happens.
Trump is just keeping to his promise of running the government like a business. He’s running things and giving the chumps who elected him the business.
Also, Trump level graft is making his buddy Putin jealous.
ETA: lots of good coverage of the New Gilded Age recently. The Guardian, for example, has been doing good reporting on high level financial corruption, from Operation Car Wash in Brazil, to recent revelations about payoffs to Council of Europe members by Azerbajan.
Tom Q
@Citizen Alan: You sure you don’t have her confused with Margaret Carlson? I know Carlson made pretty much that remark (even expanding with saying, gosh, I guess there are people to whom these issues matter, but it’s so much fun to hassle Gore for nitpicky stuff).
Collins is too flippant/it’s-all-a-joke for my taste, but I wouldn’t want her held responsible for something someone else said.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He told like 15 rapid-fire lies about taxes, too. The Trumps are on a lying tour.
Kathleen
@J R in WV: Way too late but I have to tell you I agree with you 100%. The 2016 campaign felt to me like a psy ops with the objective being what you described. The constant hammering of the same non-news stories about Hillary was orchestrated for that purpose and it continues. I also feel strongly the election was coup and vote totals were tampered with. And while the Russians were certainly culpable, I believe the GOP and allies outsourced the shit they’ve been pulling for decades. Like Hillary said, the Russians had to have had help from the inside.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s gross but again-Ivanka had a choice. Being offered a nepotism job doesn’t mean you have to take it. She wanted this, and she wanted it badly.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Who the fuck still calls her father “Daddy” after the age of 30? That’s creepy as hell.
I think I stopped calling my father “daddy” sometime around 8th grade, if not earlier. We actually ended up calling him “Pop” for at least the last decade because it was something our stepbrothers felt comfortable using as well.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mnemosyne:
I also think he has frontal lobe deterioration or dementia. At the core though, he’s just a really bad person, always was, and is getting worse.
It’s curious that there’s so little mention of Mother Trump, apart from her being from Scotland. I imagine she was dominated and perhaps nearly blotted out by Fred, Sr.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: @Mnemosyne: just saw a clip: “You treated us very well in November, and we’re happy to share the love”
Who the fuck is “we”, Princess Tackycrap?
O. Felix Culpa
@Kay:
Another day ending in “y.” It’s the family business. Lying and grifting. As you say, they’re horrible people through and through.
And creepy, what with the 35-year-old referring to “Daddy” and all. Shudders.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@O. Felix Culpa: given the gross reality show/tabloid celebrity nature of this presidency, it is kind of surprising we don’t hear more from Ivana, especially since she is not, as I recall, the shy and retiring type….
I’m sure it has been made clear to Marla that it will cost her ($$$) if she doesn’t stay quiet, I suspect the same is true for the first Mrs trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: @O. Felix Culpa:
MoxieM
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne: O yes, isn’t there just — the classic book is The Drama of the Gifted Child (gifted in this sense, meaning the one child singled out for the “gift” of carrying the Narc parent’s needs and attentions.) I always wondered if it was a bad transliteration, given that Alice Miller (auth) is Swiss??? It’s not a “gifted” child in the American sense of one with special talents. We’ve talked about the *fun* of a narcissist-infested family before, I tink. My mother was one. My siblings each have degrees of whatever. Me? I’m a supplier. (Oh, Hi! can I help you with that/lie down across that puddle/debase myself in some way for your kind attentions?) It’s a curse.
Another Scott
@Citizen Alan: I find the quasi-inappropriate laughing by reporters/press people to be annoying as well. But then I remember my Mom and she would often laugh when she was nervous. Lots of the press discussions I hear on the radio (e.g. 1A on Friday mornings on NPR) often have at least one bit of inappropriate laughter.
It seems to be an all-too-human coping mechanism in many cases.
“(Can you believe we’re talking about this. We have to laugh or we’ll scream in anguish!)”
Maybe.
But they should try harder to be serious. I sometimes want to (metaphorically) grab them and shake them and yell – “These monsters are destroying the country and the planet that our parents and grandparents gave their blood and strength to build. It’s not funny!!1” But, I resist…
Dunno if that is what was going on in Gail’s case.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
I wouldn’t assume she actually said that. I mean, she may have, but you never can assume that Daddy is telling the truth.
japa21
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, if she is grossed out by it, she can get out of it. No sympathy from this corner.
Another Scott
@randy khan: How could the giant who invented the term priming the pump tell a falsehood?
Unpossible!!1
He also said:
The man is straight-up hugely best at the mouth noises in Make America Great Again language!!1
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
to whom and why?
Ken J.
@Brachiator:
I’ve decided that “draining the swamp” meant getting rid of liberals and the educated. Which is a proposition which has a strong appeal to Trump’s base.
patroclus
I haven’t been reading the NYT much lately. What’s the latest on Hillary’s e-mails? I’m sure they’re still all over it…
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s weird. I mean, Ivanka admits to being grossed out by her relationship with her father? And yet, at 35, maintains that relationship? And could those two unnamed sources be Javanka their very own selves? The psychodynamics of this family are just plain icky.
ETA: The Obama family was so wholesome and normal (actually, above normal) and good. I want them back.
J R in WV
@Amaranthine RBG:
Pie don’t have any feelings!
The name of the media outlet you tried to mention is the Charleston Gazette Mail… The Daily Mail was closed and folded into the Gazette, where it lingers as an individual editorial page with typical RWNJ editorials. I actually have a lot of respect for the Gaz – as a regional paper, they deserved the Pulitzer they just won. They do great environmental coverage too. But they don’t do their own coverage of national politics, so no help there.
I have no specific advice for you… I read lots of news sites, including the WaPo and the NYT – but you need to be able to detect the BS in any article from any media outlet.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Yes.
And I forsee a huge demand in tumbrels.
Aimai
@Amanda in the South Bay: so dumb. I read the original article. Its straight up reporting on a complicated philosophical deabate among multiple actors within and outside of the trans community.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: It’s a Southern thing. Southerners often call their parents “mama” and “daddy” for the duration. But since the Trumps aren’t Southern, it’s merely creepy.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
Merely?
O. Felix Culpa
@TenguPhule:
Severely.
SgrAstar
@Yutsano: Michael Hiltzik and Steve Lopez rock the LA Times.
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
Part of that 30-year campaign was 100% NY Times beating the drum as loudly as they could, day after day. For a “liberal” newspaper, the Times spent more money on ink attacking President Clinton until he left office with the highest level of public support in modern times, and then they switched instantly to Senator then Secretary Clinton and spent years beating on her reputation.
Every error the Times makes pushes liberals down and lifts fascists up. At some point it isn’t mistakes any more, it’s a not-so-small part of a long-term and dramatically successful corruption campaign. Who has been working on that for the past 90 years? Russia!
J R in WV
@geg6:
Will Rushbaugh Limberger wait at his Florida estate for Irma to come for him??
If not, he publicly confesses to pushing fiction to make money, while encouraging his audience to stay put and FUQING DIE in the super-storm while Rush flies in his private jet away, away from the storm, with a suitcase full of money and opiates.
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And everyone leaves out the worst one of all: Charles Krauthammer, Jewish fascist and primary hater of liberals.
He once shouted down his Rabbi at holy day services at his Temple over politics in Israel. I would have had the police take him away and returned any payments he had made to the Temple, ever. But I’m not Jewish, nor a Rabbi.
J R in WV
@Kathleen:
Not too late at all, unless too late with regard to the election.
Thanks!
Tehanu
@Betty Cracker:
Well, I called my parents “Mama” and “Daddy” all my life until they passed away a few years back, except for a brief period during my rebellious adolescence when I called Mama (sarcasm) “Motherrrrr…” (sarcasm). My husband and his siblings called their parents the same. There’s Southern in both our families, but my siblings all called my parents “Mom” and “Dad,” so I don’t think it follows. I just never broke the habit from childhood, and I have to say, nobody’s ever told me I was creepy to use those names. And I wish I had my Mama and Daddy back, because I miss them every day.
ALso: Betty, I hope you and your family are safe. The news about Irma is very scary.
No One You Know
@Barbara: Mm. For some values of adult, maybe. They apparently can cheat their way through deals, but adulthood required some reflective capacity, I think. And I don’t see it.
Ramalama
@Barbara: Yeah — I’m a YOOGE fan of Lindy West and am shocked (nicely) that NYT published her. Publishes her? Is this going to be a regular gig? I hope so. I slow-walked reading her book “Shrill” and even put off finishing the last chapter because it was so good, and I didn’t want it to end.
Also, Roger Ebert tweeted out a line from her review of Sex and the City 2.
She said she fainted for a year after that (story used to be on her website but now that she’s famoose, it’s been revamped and the article no longer there).