I have to admit that when the Wolff book came out, I thought for a while that maybe establishment media would stop pretending Trump was a savvy, gut-level decision-maker who was ready to pivot or become president all over again. I was sadly mistaken:
Maggie Haberman is the worst offender of course. The resident Trump-fluffer at Axios is no better.
Hahahhahaha. (No, no it isn’t.) https://t.co/pTT7Pp04WM
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) January 7, 2018
EXCLUSIVE: Author @MichaelWolffNYC says the 25th Amendment is discussed in the White House every day. #MTP https://t.co/SYcgqBr7v1
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 7, 2018
And Bobo’s all in on Trumpism (no link, h/t reader JK)
I certainly have talked to many people over the last several months who said, yes, I went into a meeting, he was surprisingly well-informed, surprisingly ran a good meeting.
I have certainly had that experience. And he’s running a White House that, whether you approve of the policies or not, has done this Pakistan deal, or the change in Pakistan policy, which is defensible — they did pass a tax bill. They are doing this regulatory stuff, this judicial stuff.
Bobo generally supports Trump, and probably voted for him, but with the others, it’s a strange DC kabuki, which we saw before under W, where it’s considered uncouth to say anything bad about a Republican president who is clearly way over his head.
Probably most of it is that Maggie needs continued access so she can write her book about Trump (just as Elisabeth Bumiller did with W). And the Axios guy needs continued access too.
But I think there’s something more to it as well, just some strange code whereby to be a cool kid in good standing you need to tell your readers fairy tales about Republicans.
Baud
Fixed.
Baud
How is baby?
sigaba
Emperor, clothes, whatnot.
aimai
Jesus, at this point the Times should fire anyone who is contracted to write a book on a major political figure. They can rehire them after the book comes out but they should not allow them anywhere near reporting on their subject.
Doug!
@Baud:
Great
Bobby Thomson
Dude, this isn’t complicated. She’s a conservative who used to write for the NY Post. And the Times is s shitty paper and has been for years.
Nicole
I think we forget how many of these media pundits are children of rich kids themselves. As I said in an earlier thread, because I can’t stand to watch televised news anymore, I keep documentaries about American history on in the background now while I work, and listening/watching the one about FDR is a good learning experience on how much the elites hated Roosevelt for being “a traitor to his class” as was said about him. These media types aren’t going to be traitors to their class.
I think so much of the Clinton hate was that this trailer trash hick and his barely middle-class wife rose about their stations in life. Not just from these dumb rich kids who owe their teevee jobs to their rich parents, but also by average white Americans who are upset to be reminded that every so often, a fellow crab makes it out of the bucket.
Trump’s nouveau riche, but he didn’t make his money himself, so he’s still one of the “appropriate” people. Dumb graduate of an Ivy League, thanks to his dad’s $$. Just like a lot of the people talking about him.
dmsilev
Also an issue for the NYT people is that their Editor and at least their previous Publisher are both pretty pro-GOP, even if they probably think Trump himself is a bit déclassé.
Baud
@Nicole:
I was thinking about Clinton hate recently. It’s so intensely irrational that I think it’s because they are America’s most prominent race traitors. Sure, the elites might also hate them because they are hicks, but that doesn’t explain why ordinary white people hate them (while loving FDR).
Yarrow
I really wish Michael Wolff would do a book on some of the media “stars.” He can start with Bobo. Or maybe a book with a chapter on each of them. I’d read that.
Baud
@Doug!: Excellent.
Starfish
A lot of the reviewers of this book just sound jealous. Here is The New Yorker review. It looks like maybe they skimmed the book. The review is really shallow and mostly based on the first quotes that were given to the press.
Nicole
@Baud:
FDR didn’t have to contend with FOX News. It was also still a deeply segregated society back then, so most of the New Deal benefits went to Whites.
ETA: Also, the US is a deeply classed society, and depends on the lower classes buying into the notion that being rich = inherently more worthy. FDR was hereditary wealthy. He didn’t serve as an indication to middle-class and working-class whites of how they clearly weren’t living up to their own potential. I think that’s why Bill Clinton gets under people’s skins. He really is the living embodiment of the American Dream- trailer trash kid who grows up to be President. But we don’t actually really believe the Dream, so he just makes Whites feel insecure (don’t even get them started on Barack).
And Hillary, of course, has a vagina.
Ruckus
They so desperately want to be the koool kids. They will do anything to be them. They will sell their souls to be koool. They want someone to like them. Preferably someone whose station is above them. The higher the better. But anyone really. In HS they were the kids who smoked or made out behind the gym. Or smoked and made out behind the gym. (Why yes I am old, why do you ask?)
Vheidi
@Baud: we watched tapper, who had to bring up the inappropriateness of a relationship with an intern in the white house.
There’s a reason I don’t watch this horsesh*t
Mnemosyne
Like I keep saying, the NYT (and the rest of the MSM) is pissed because a lowly freelancer from a mere Hollywood trade paper scooped them all and made them look like fools. That’s why they’re so desperate to run down Wolff and his book — he’s not one of the Kool Kids, he doesn’t buy into the Cult of the Savvy, and he’s willing to make his subjects look like assholes if he thinks they’re assholes.
He is, quite literally, the kid in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” and Beltway journalists are trying to shut him up before he blows up the whole game.
tobie
I think after the Alabama elections the Republicans in Congress and in the media made a pact to do everything in their power to normalize Trump to ensure a permanent Republican majority. We’ll find out in 2018 who is, and is not, taken off the voter rolls.
Lapassionara
@Baud: It was irrational. I recall, in the days before the internet, someone circulating an 8 and 1/2 by 11 Shetland of paper, with two columns of allegedly nefarious Clinton deeds, including murdering Vince Foster and Ron Brown.
I could not explain it.
ETA I meant sheet of paper. Thanks, autocorrect
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
I don’t know if Times editor Dean Baquet is pro-GOP. He was a good reporter and even won a Pulitzer going after corrupt politicians, but he was an ineffectual disaster as editor of the Los Angeles Times and it is wild to see how he has failed upwards to the NYT.
All of New York media loved Trump. I think that Maureen Dowd said that she was first assigned to write about him for the social pages. He was brash, a playboy and sometimes married man who loved to talk about himself. It was more fun to cover him than decrepit rich people who had to be propped up to look lively at charitable events.
But this also meant that too few in the New York media ever looked closely at Trump or took him seriously.
pat
I’m actually reading the book, on my Nook because the hardcopy is back-ordered, and there are a lot of things where you just have to wonder, How did he know that?? And frankly places where it might seem to be made up. Maybe some day we will find out what’s on those many hours of tapes.
Mnemosyne
@Starfish:
They are deeply, deeply jealous. Wolff is not one of them, and he scooped them all. Remember the Stephen Colbert routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner that pissed them off? It pissed them off because they knew he was right — they are too lazy to do the work Wolff did to write this book, and they’re pissed because Wolff showed them up in front of the whole world.
Wolff doesn’t care. He’s crying all the way to the bank. And that’s the other thing that makes him different from them: he cares more about the story than he does about maintaining his sources. He would rather tell a great story while burning every bridge than maintain his access to power.
Baud
@Vheidi: Before Bill, the go-to story was JFK’s dalliances.
Mandalay
@Starfish:
It’s actually far worse than that. From your link…
Other Villagers dismiss the book because it is sloppy and inaccurate. Gessen cranks it up a notch and claims the book “shouldn’t exist”. WTF?
Baud
@Lapassionara: I had forgotten the small paper ponies.
ETA: Remember Bill’s love child? Thank god for DNA testing.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Your analysis is spot on.
Sherparick
I think it is the advantage of having Fox News and the rest of the right-wing infotainment complex available. Starting with Newt and his congress, Republicans can always promise to cutoff access the MSM reporters and shows if they offend them by reporting negative stories (also known as the truth) and use their right wing media to get their messages out and reinforced. Democrats can be pissed on by MSM, but they pretty much have to continue to deal with them and give access since they don’t have an alternative media universe to turn to. As to why there is a right wing media complex and not a left wing one, corporate America finds the right wing message useful and the left wing voices a threat.
James E. Powell
This reminds me of the reaction of the sports establishment and sports media when Jose Canseco’s Juiced came out.
Mnemosyne
@pat:
It’s entirely possible that Wolff took down stories that people told him but didn’t have a way to independently verify. That’s actually acceptable for this kind of book as long as you document in your notes who told you the story and on what date.
Or, given that he was apparently just hanging around all day with no supervision, most likely he would make notes of what he overheard and who the speakers were. If they didn’t want to be overheard, they should have kept better tabs on him.
Baud
@Sherparick:
In the early days of blogging, I had hoped that blogs would turn into a viable alternative. Alas, they mostly went in a different direction.
Mnemosyne
@Lapassionara:
As a knitter, I was impressed that someone could make a Shetland sweater out of paper. ??
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
Wow. Actually, the late night comedians score very well with respect to veracity. Some of them are doing better jobs that mainstream reporters. They also don’t have to kiss ass to make sure they can get access to sources for future stories.
Starfish
@Brachiator: I am glad it was not just me who thought that this review was terrible.
Yarrow
@Mandalay: Wow. That is a terrible piece by Gessen. I thought she was better than that. Sample:
In this paragraph she claims that Wolff got it wrong by saying that Bannon called the meeting treasonous.
And here’s Bannon today apologizing for calling the meeting treasonous.
So Bannon’s apologizing for something he said that Gessen says he didn’t say. Okay, then.
Baud
@Mandalay:
@Brachiator:
Comics respect neither clouds nor shadows.
MJS
@Mandalay: Why is “restraint” something reporters should engage in? Is something true or not should be the only test. By indicating reporters are censoring the news, he’s also indicating they’re not to be trusted.
Marcia
@Mnemosyne:
In other words — being a reporter. Whoda thunk it?!
Baud
@MJS:
You have to balance out the lack of restraint they show during Democratic administrations.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
The only thing that could make this even more hilarious would be if Wolff manages to win a Pulitzer. He won’t, because establishment journalism hates his guts, but man would I love to see that happen.
JaneSays
Who is “bobo”?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Kind of reminds me of the reaction to Kitty Kelly, who would get slammed for writing trashy celebrity biographies, but never given credit for getting access to people or for getting the facts right (and yeah, she got some facts wrong, also).
Conventional reporters and editors keep trying to treat Trump like a standard politician, and keep blowing an opportunity to do good, Interesting reporting.
Wolff, on the other hand, saw his opportunity, and rightfully took advantage.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne:
I know nothing about this horrible administration should shock me anymore, but there are so many people who work there and apparently they’re ALL so incompetent that they just let Wolff hang out on a sofa outside the oval office every day, went to dinners he hosted, and let them interview him ALL without any caveats of on or off the record or anything else. It’s so incompetent it still shocks me.
raven
@JaneSays: Brooks.
Mandalay
@Nicole:
I don’t know whether Haberman’s family is rich, but having Daddy on the NYT Editorial Board certainly isn’t hurting her career.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Fifth one in is somewhat in the ballpark, but as a ballgown (PT Wearable Art) Someone knit using video tape too one year.
MattF
There’s the possibility that the various media types really believe that Trump’s not all that bad. Or no better than the hoi polloi deserve. Admitting this would reflect on their own fitness to cover politics, so it’s a no-no.
Baud
@Yarrow: Remember all the brouhaha over that couple that crashed one of Obama’s state dinners, and how it meant that Obama was careless about national security?
Yarrow
@JaneSays: David Brooks. He wrote “Bobos in Paradise” and earned himself a nickname. In his book “bobos” are bourgeois bohemians.
Mnemosyne
@Marcia:
Janice Min, the co-publisher of the Hollywood Reporter who was helping Wolff the whole time has some EPIC tweets about Wolff and the book. The private dinner party he talks about was one that Wolff himself hosted, and they all spilled their guts right at the dinner table.
The most illustrative tweet of hers IMO:
Baud
@Yarrow: I wondered where that came from.
Yarrow
@Mandalay: They’re plenty well off. Her mom was also a higher up at the PR firm that represented the Kushner business.
m.j.
From Trump’s latest appearance before the press…
Baud
@m.j.: Foolish is an aspirational goal as long as he’s there.
oldster
Hey, DougJ–
If I wanted to talk with you offline about political issues here in Western NY, is there a way that we could get in touch?
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
They’re not used to a free press. They’re used to having reporters from the New York Times defer to them and only report things that make them look good because it’s good for both of their careers.
Wolff is a shock to their system. It’s no wonder that the Guardian has been championing him and was the first major newspaper to support him — the British tradition is still of tearing politicians down, not propping them up.
Mary G
@Nicole: This right here:
I continue to be shocked at how much that still matters. Gillibrand could come up with no-cost single payer healthcare, a pony and actual unicorn for each voter, and compel world peace and a not insubstantial portion of the punditry would still tsk-tsk her and invent reasons why people shouldn’t vote for her.
chris
Wikileaks has posted a .pdf of the Wolff book for anyone that wants it. LOL
Baud
@chris: That’s probably to hurt his sales, given their loyalties.
Wizened_Guy
Maggie H’s real problem with Wolff’s book is that she just saw her dreams of a big paycheck for her own Trump book go up in smoke. She knows there is no way she could bring the dish like he did, because NYT reporters can’t work that way, but no publisher is going to buy anything less at this point.
Mnemosyne
@chris:
Too late to cut into Wolff’s massive sales, but maybe some of the “lefties” who still love Assange will educate themselves.
MattF
@Baud: But it could backfire.
Yarrow
@chris: Can’t imagine the malware they’ve embedded in that.
Baud
@MattF: I hope Wikileaks is sued by the publisher into liquidation.
Scotian
@Baud:
Game, set, and match!
Emerald
@Mnemosyne: Unpossible. They are uneducable.
germy
@Starfish:
I’m at the point where I’ll admit the only thing I like about the New Yorker is Jane Mayer.
She’s the only Tina Brown hire I like.
Mnemosyne
@MattF:
IANA copyright lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that the publisher’s lawyer could get a cease and desist order. A book is not public material like even classified information is, and American copyright law allows for lots of infringement lawsuits that carry large financial penalties. ?
Chip Daniels
I don’t suppose I am the only person who feels gaslighted by the media regarding Trump.
Its like they are conjuring up an imaginary Donald Trump, who is solemn, wise, grave and thoughtful, even if intemperate and blunt spoken, sort of a Harry S. Truman for our age.
Oh, that guy you actually see on television and Twittter? Pay no attention to him. Here, let us tell you what he really meant to say.
ETA: Its a good thing I don’t work as a Disney Imagineer; I would have made the animatronic one true to life, and had him jerk and spasm in an imitation of that disabled reporter, while laughing about grabbing pussies and describing his daughter as a piece of ass.
Give those good Christian tourists a close up view of what MAGA means.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Isn’t Wikileaks hosted in Russia these days? How much luck will they have with a copyright lawsuit there?
Gelfling 545
@Vheidi: If all we had to worry about was “inappropriate “ behavior It would be not quite so terrible. It’s the outright dangerous stuff that’s the main issue now.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mary G: Yeah, you wander around through your daily life thinking you’re being judged one way, and then something makes it clear that a large number of the people you’re interacting with probably think less of you, even unconsciously, because you too have a vagina.
Ruckus
Our political press is a mobius trap. It always ends up being about the press, not the story. They get the attention and the story gets run over. The press is bad, the press is good. The press should be invisible if they are doing their jobs. But they never are. Here is a guy being about as invisible as can be in plain sight and he get and writes about the story and the rest of the press is yelling and screaming, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT meeeee…………..As they always do. And we discuss it at length, how bad they are. They are attention whores. Just like drumpf is. That’s why they like him, he’s a racist attention whore and they can get a bit of that attention if they try ever so little. Democrats are usually boring, they talk about actual policy, not bullshit. Think about the shitty democratic politicians, Edwards, Wiener, who else? Think about the other democratic politicians, the Clintons, Obama, Conyers, Rangel, Brown, Waxman, Brown, Gillibrand (Yes I know), Harris…. None of them are the people they are portrayed to be. They are far better. None of the republicans are who they are portrayed to be. They are far worse.
Yarrow
Good Lord. Penetration at all levels, like Adam likes to say.
There were no other hair and makeup artists available? They had to get the one that worked for the Russian propaganda network? Also, she doesn’t seem that good at her job.
Lapassionara
@Mnemosyne: I think they are keeping to some kind of journalistic “norm” re covering politics, meaning they clean up the bad language, don’t point out shallow and inconsistent thinking, and “for god’s sake, don’t tell the children (meaning citizens) the truth about what goes on. Then Wolff comes in and breaks those norms, which has driven them nuts!
When we have a President like Trump, who himself disrupts norms, the norms are not going to help get out the truth. We need the press to DO its JOB.
They have helped put us in this mess. They need to help expose the rot. Not cover it up.
matt
Or it could be these press people aren’t smart enough to tell the difference between a prepared policy discussion and a bunch of boilerplate right wing bullshit.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Chip Daniels: Mr DAW and I were just talking about that in regard to the Rs on the Sunday shows. It was like they expected us to believe a portrait of Trump that was countered by his tweets, actions, and appearances. Talk about gaslighting.
aimai
@Baud: Good Recall! Absolutely–we practically never heard the end of that one.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
Wikleaks hasn’t admitted to being hosted in Russia AFAIK. Discovery in a lawsuit could be very interesting.
The laws surrounding copyright and the laws surrounding classified information are quite different, as I hope Wikileaks finds out very soon. I know a smidgen of copyright law thanks to a “copyright law for artists” class I took in grad school and it’s very much tilted towards the copyright holder, who in this case is Michael Wolff.
Gelfling 545
@pat: Virtually everything that happens in the Trump regime seems like it should be made up, yet we see it with our own eyes. It would be difficult to make up something so outlandish that it couldn’t happen in that crowd.
James E. Powell
The establishment press/media put Trump in the White House and they are determined to keep him there.
Trump is the OJ Trial of presidencies. They love him and they love what he does to their incomes, fame, and sense of purpose.
matt
@Nicole: Conservatives were batshit crazy about FDR, we just don’t have any institutions around that keep these memories alive so they vanish conveniently as needed.
trollhattan
@Lapassionara:
You should have demanded they pony up the evidence.
Lapassionara
@Mnemosyne: Lol. And a 8 and 1/2 by 11 one at that.
donnah
I’m reading the book on Kindle and I agree that some of it seems shaky, but to be honest, I can hardly believe the shit that the Trump people have done and will actually admit to! So I’m taking this book with a grain of salt, but willing to believe a lot of it. It’s a quick read and I think it raises a lot of questions, as I’m sure Wolff intended it to.
If it ticks Trump off, better still!
Raven Onthill
In which the New York Times reveals itself as not merely conservative but actual fascist sympathizers.
Bah!
Lapassionara
@trollhattan: Written anonymously, of course. Seriously demented, but unable to be challenged.
JPL
Trump’s award show has been postponed until January 17th, due to the interest level. Maybe he’ll be in hiding by then.
I don’t think Trump has his physical, because he can’t have the results leaked.
Sherparick
@Mnemosyne: Mike the Mad Biologist put together Heid Moore’s twits on the “NY Times Problem” which I think are excellent and which I paste below:
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2018/01/04/a-hypothesis-about-the-ny-times-political-reporters/
https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/946778725491859456
And remember, donate what you can to this blog and others like it (Driftglass, Atrios, Digby, etc.) the Guardian, Pro Publica, and Washington Monthly, etc. so there will be alternative to NYT reporters tending their “beat” for future access.
“…There are journalists imprisoned or dying or dead in Mexico, Myanmar, Egypt, Iran, Turkey for asking questions. And these journos at NYT see “asking questions” as some task separate from their role in society. It is not. Democracy is losing as their ambition sells us all out.
The game for these journalists is to get a book deal, preferably about Trump, so he is in fact their meal ticket. Journalism isn’t. Even the prestige of the NYT brand isn’t enough to convince them that this job is about democracy and not about getting off on power. This is how we got Judy Miller. Judy Miller is how we got the Iraq War…
And they’re okay with that! They see it as entertainment. They’ve got theirs, after all.
They are the classic Trump voter profile…
The fact that journalists think they’re working for their sources, or their subjects, and NOT their readers is a sign of corruption. It’s a kind of decadence. And it really lets down journalism, and lets down democracy. Ask the president questions. It’s literally the job. Consider what a privilege it is that the worst Trump can do to a journalist is leave, or have them escorted out of the room. Like, journalists in Mexico must be like, “that’s what you’re worried about? That he’ll leave and tweet his thoughts instead?” …And here you have careerist [journalists] resist asking questions, it’s all over. worried that Trump will just…ramble to someone else. That’s the disincentive to ask for evidence?
Trump can do literally nothing to you except ask you to leave the room. That leaving the room is the worst these journalists can imagine shows how much they define themselves by their courtly proximity to power, and not as an independent check on power… These journalists, of course, don’t see themselves as corrupt. They think they’re in the room, so they’re where they should be. But journalism is not having the job. It’s *doing* the job. It’s asking the questions. When [journalists] resist asking questions, it’s all over.
…It’s journalism to find the things he will not tweet: why he loves Russia so much, to start. What evidence exists for anything he says… Remember that this job is not about your book deal or your Twitter followers or showing off for your flack friends in government.
One of the press corps’ knocks against Hillary Clinton is that she was always on the make, always trying to get more power, more money. Yet most of them can’t even recognize these impulses in themselves, or else they foolishly believe they aren’t corrupted by such things. Maybe there isn’t an ideological bias at all, but simply a mundane, careerist explanation–with some potentially lucrative side effects (after all, selling books and joining the high-end speaking circuit can be very lucrative!).
Sebastian
It’s worse than that. Maggie’s parents are Trump’s PR firm. Not sure why this conflict of interest is never disclosed (here too)
Nicole
@Mary G:
All the while insisting that it’s not that she’s a woman; really, there are lots of other women they’d be THRILLED to vote for. Really! There are so!
trollhattan
@Sebastian:
Seriously?
trollhattan
BTW, excellent “Maggie Mae” lyric.
DougJ
@trollhattan:
Thanks
germy
@Sebastian:
I had no idea.
She really should recuse herself. Write about Paul Ryan or someone instead.
Mandalay
Perhaps it’s not just Haberman’s upcoming hagiography on Trump that’s causing her to be a mean queen about Wolff’s book….
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Baud:
Fixed.
Ruckus
@germy:
She doesn’t need to, she’s better than that.
Just ask her.
germy
Megyn Kelly refuses to have Wolff on her show.
germy
@Ruckus:
She’s been called The Trump Whisperer.
Steeplejack (phone)
@oldster:
Try sending him an e-mail via the Menu | Quick Links | Contact a Front Pager gizmo at the top of the page.
Mandalay
@germy: Sweet.
If you have any bridges to be burned with no fucks being given then contact Michael Wolff. Nobody does it better than him.
p.a.
@JaneSays:
…ahhh to be young again…
marcopolo
Hope everyone is having a great day.
Just got home from GOTV postcard writing for a State House special election in February with my local Indivisible group. We had over 50 people show up to the coffee house! I am slow and only wrote 12 postcards (the guy across the table did 20), but multiply that by the number of folks there and we did between 600-1000 postcards. These are individual voter touches for a special election where the total number of voters will probably be less than 10K. A comparable special election last August had 7200 voters. Well run campaigns try to get 6-8 touches with voters prior to an election so we do make a difference. If you’d like to pitch in, please go sign up at Postcards to Voters, they are doing upcoming elections all over the country.
They have very simple guidelines to follow, provide information on the candidates, and an address list. Then you are good to go for the cost of cards/postage. And if you are in or near St. Louis or know someone who fits that description, come join us at Indivisible St. Louis or join a group doing similar work in your backyard.
gene108
@Ruckus:
The were the kids, who wished they smoked and made out behind the gym, but weren’t cool enough to pull it off.
They were the hangers-ons of all the kids in the “in crowd”, hoping to be invited to the cool kids party.
Ruckus
@germy:
So that’s what they are calling it these days.
Ruckus
@gene108:
I think maybe you got closer to it than I did.
Yarrow
@Sebastian: Maggie Haberman’s dad is Clyde Haberman, a former NYT journalist. I haven’t heard that he’s gone into PR work. Her mom is the PR person. She a top exec for Rubenstein. Link. They have done some PR work for Trump re: his Miss Universe pageants, but he has several PR firms he uses.
According to this article Howard Rubenstein is “the [Kushner] family’s publicist.”
Suzanne
Is the Axios guy a villager? He has always struck me as on the side of the sane, but I don’t read Axios daily. I hate the design of that site.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
At least they call it “wearable art” and not haute couture! ?
I’ve never had any success knitting with novel materials, so I would just get frustrated knitting with videotape.
randy khan
@Mandalay:
There’s an obvious other middle ground: No restraint, but accuracy.
This looks like one of those examples of the author’s reputation (and Wolff definitely does have a reputation) being treated as fact.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Ruckus
@Yarrow:
I must be so far outside the circle that I couldn’t see it with the Hubble.
I don’t understand why a family would need a PR firm, other than if you were sticking your dickskinners in places they really, really didn’t belong and you had to put the best spin on how big an asshole you really are.
OK maybe I do understand it.
Assholes with money can afford someone to clean up behind them, so to speak.
Sebastian
@trollhattan: yup. Either her dad or mom. Let me see if I can find something about it
Sebastian
@Yarrow: Thanks. It’s been a while but I faintly remember the relationship is a bit closer.
Yarrow
@Ruckus: Well, you know, Daddy went to jail so they probably needed that cleaned up Among other things.
Doug!
@marcopolo:
Thanks for this!
oldster
@Steeplejack (phone):
Thanks, Steeplejack–I had not known about that feature.
Message sent.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@germy: good for him. her ratings are atrocious. he probably would have more viewers doing a live reading at a subway stop.
Ruckus
@scav:
I once went to an art “presentation’/fund raiser for KPFK, and they had some macaroni art displayed. By adults. I’ve seen elementary school macaroni art that was dramatically better. And all of that was better than your link. There are way too many who have way too much, including time, which they waste remarkably badly.
MobiusKlein
@Mandalay: So it’s inappropriate to quote the POTUS? Why even bother having a press if that’s the case.
Lapassionara
@marcopolo: Thank you for these links. I would have been there today, if I had known about it. I am leaving town for work, so cannot come for next few Sundays, but I will keep looking at this site for other opportunities.
Do you know who is organizing something to help defeat the odious Ann Wagner, or at least put a scare into her?
Timurid
I’m not sure what’s more terrifying… Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior or the redoubled commitment to him by elites, both elected and un-elected.
All of the scolding and brow furrowing of the past summer are now as much ancient history as Cicero’s speeches to the Senate…
Another Scott
@Sebastian: Interesting. Made me look…
Elle (yes, that Elle) (from May):
Emphasis added. Kinda funny how the fashion press seems to be covering this stuff better than the MSM. :-/
The world is small, but I wouldn’t conclude that Maggie’s slanting her coverage because of her parents. She seems to have come by her slant all on her own. But it is something to keep in mind, if one reads her stuff…
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
@Ruckus: Then again, it’s easy to mock. Everybody’s pleasures can look odd to other people. The amount of time, money and emotion some choose to invest in pets when there are so many people in needs strikes some as monumentally selfish and wasteful.
raven
@p.a.: I still don’t know who the fuck Wilmer is even though it’s been explained to me.
efgoldman
@Sherparick:
Occam’s broadcast says follow the money. If Fox dodn’t make money, Rupert and his minions would drop it.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Programming note: Golden Globes are on tonight. Hopefully Meryl Streep has another stem winder.
Yarrow
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I heard that Megyn’s ratings improved after she glommed on to the MeToo movement. I don’t know if that’s held.
schrodingers_cat
Haberman and her ilk are Nazi enablers, calling them whores is an insult to whores.
raven
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: And he’s going to fuck up the football.
kindness
I think most Columnists and DC reporters are Republicans and they go out of their way to cover their team’s villainous scummy asses. I didn’t like that when they simply excused villainous scum but now they are covering up treason and at that point you are complicit in the end results.
Kathleen
@Baud: @Nicole: From what I’ve read Eleanor Roosevelt was pilloried by the press and I think one of the main reasons was due to her outreach to African Americans (she resigned from the DAR because they would not allow Marion Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall.
https://fdrlibrary.org/anderson
Regarding Hillary Hate, while most of the discussion has centered on misogyny, I feel she suffered backlash because she embraced and included the mothers of the African American men slain by police. So the haters got a three-fer. “Not One of Ours” Clinton running for President. She-Bot Shillary running for President. Race Traitor Shillary actively engaging African Americans in her campaign.
ETA Hillary admired Eleanor tremendously.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
This topic also reminds me of Josh Marshall’s seminal article on the media’s right wing bias, written 3 weeks after Obama’s inauguration, when the press wasn’t coddling Obama and Harry Reid’s Democratic super majority Senate for access, but rather attacking them on behalf of a party thoroughly rejected and disgraced at the ballot box, in midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
Mnemosyne
@Kathleen:
That’s why they used the “superpredators” attack against her: it angered some people in the Black community and discouraged them from voting, it gave white “leftists” a handy nail to hang their existing Hillary hate on, and her apology for it reminded white voters that Hillary was vocally on the side of Those People. Win/win, as far as the Republican propagandists were concerned.
marcopolo
@Lapassionara: Hey! I have linked this before, but there is this group:
MISSOURI 2ND DISTRICT FOR CHANGE
They hosted a candidate’s forum a couple months ago with 4 candidates attending. One dropped out the night of the forum but 2 others are serious. Here is a link to the entire forum. I am staying out of the primary but come August after that election I will be doing GOTV & other work for whomever wins.
As for writing GOTV postcards–you CAN do that from your home :). But I also think that Indivisible StL will be doing weekly gatherings for this as long as the enthusiasm level remains high. Definitely every Sunday in Jan.
Citizen Alan
@Nicole:
This. If Fox News had existed in 1938, 45 minutes out of every hour would have been spent attacking FDR and his administration for being a bunch of America-hating communists, and the last 15 would have been spent praising Hitler and Mussolini as great men with a lot of good ideas we should be using in America.
Parfigliano
@Bobby Thomson: perhaps they all be lick spittle twats?
Kathleen
@James E. Powell: They also support his racism, misogyny, and fascist ideas.
Lapassionara
@marcopolo: Thanks. I am relatively new to the area, and I am looking for ways to get plugged in. This is helpful.
chris
@Mnemosyne: And everyone else. The book is up on Google Drive and appears to be clean. I do not know if google can be forced to take it down.
As to Wolff losing sales, there are a number of writers who put their work out for free under Creative Commons and think it actually increases sales. Cory Doctorow comes to mind.
Also this is a .pdf which is a pain if you don’t know how to convert it to something more reader friendly. So we’ll see.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
That is so unfair to Eve Harrington.
schrodingers_cat
@Sherparick: Guardian was right up there with NYT bashing HRC during 2016 elections, albeit from the purity pony left of the aisle.
Quinerly
Just caught up on reading some articles in the British Guardian. It’s fascinating that so many of the commenters at the end believe that Trump has an untreated veneral disease. Hardly any speculation that it’s Alzheimer’s.
marcopolo
@Lapassionara: No problem and welcome to the area. I had my first conversation with a McCaskill campaign volunteer this past Friday. I shared my availability to volunteer with them but they apparently are not yet ready to accommodate random Missourians who want to help. I am hoping that changes before the end of January–will definitely announce those opportunities once I know about them. Have a good business trip, perhaps we’ll run into each other at some future grass roots/campaign event.
Lapassionara
@Quinerly: Oh, so his old Vietnam injury . . ..
Chitown Kev
@Brachiator: Truman Capote with the unfinished Answered Prayers as well…esp. Capote’s thinly veiled reporting on CBS boss William Paley.
Mnemosyne
@chris:
Google will take down copyrighted material — it will probably be down by Monday. The techbros can whine all they like, but they do not own the book. Michael Wolff does.
As an aspiring author myself, I would be pissed to find out that someone stole my work and put it on the internet. The fact that other authors make different choices doesn’t change the fact that taking a book that you did not write and posting it for download is THEFT.
Kathleen
@Mnemosyne: So called “Leftist” propagandists are worst than the right wingers.
marcopolo
@Lapassionara: @Quinerly: Speaking of timely articles, this just dropped in the Post-Dispatch:
With hopes of ‘wave election,’ Democrats lining up to take on Rep. Ann Wagner
And with that I am off to think about starting dinner.
Gozer
This may have been said already in a previous reply, but fuck it. I’m checking in whilst on vacay in Baja: They’re all white supremacists at this point. Fuck the lot of ‘em.
Haberman, Bobo, all of ‘em. If the white nationalism doesn’t give ‘rm pause or cause them to recalibrate then they’re worse than useless. They’re collaborators. Motherfuckers.
Gozer +Fuckit I’m on vacation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Bernie.
Quinerly
@Lapassionara: I thought of that too. My first thought, though, was about all the diseased British monarchs. Is Trump our Henry VIII?
Quinerly
Another bad Trump hire lying on his resume: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-health-care-nominee-reportedly-padded-his-resume-then-blamed-it-on-a-tornado-b6d6c972bc91/
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: Or mad king Charles who was executed?
Quinerly
@marcopolo: Thanks for posting this. I’ll be more active here in St. Louis once back from New Mexico. Glad the Stone Spiral was a success.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: George III.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I was also thinking in terms of the gluttony and all the wives.?
And the later speculation about Henry’s syphilis.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: Point taken.
Frankensteinbeck
@Citizen Alan:
No, FDR had to deal with conservative owned national newspapers, who had one Hell of a more widespread demographic audience. Yellow journalism is not a modern invention.
chris
@Mnemosyne: Agreed but it’s way too late, it’s all over the net now.
Librarian
@schrodingers_cat: Charles I was not mad.
Mnemosyne
@Frankensteinbeck:
Also radio stars like Father Coughlin, who was an out-and-out fascist.
schrodingers_cat
@Librarian: But he was executed, right? Sorry got my Charleses mixed.
Bob Bancroft
@JaneSays: bobo is David Brooks {PBS, NYT), who has been a fascist/Republican enabler forever. Trump could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, and Brooks would swear “Hillary’s emails” were as bad, or worse.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Citizen Alan: But there was Hearst, Father Coughlin, and a right wing media that wan’t that much different from Fox. The Mighty Wurlitzer has been blowing in this country for years, and predates Murdoch,
Brachiator
@Librarian:
Yeah, but he was angry a lot of the time.
Brachiator
@Quinerly:
No. Henry was learned and relatively restrained as a young king. He understood statecraft.
Trump has always been an ignorant blowhard.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Neither Charles was mad.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Charles (Carlos) II of Spain died insane — too much Hapsburg inbreeding. Charles I was a stubborn Stuart and got his head chopped off trying to defend his divine right to be king. I think Adam did one of his thesis projects on the English Civil War, but I can’t remember. It may have been on the Glorious Revolution, which was when they booted out Charles I’s son James after Charles II died and invited James’s Protestant daughter Mary (as in William and Mary) to take over the throne.
cain
@Baud:
Or anything Clinton.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Well, until his complaints about Parliament were cut short. ?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: IIRC, being Catholic was their crime.
@Brachiator: Yup, highlighted pretty well in Fire and Fury.
cain
@Yarrow:
да
cain
Apparently writing russian characters puts me in moderation. I think this is the first time the entire time I’ve been on htis site that I’ve had a post go into moderation.
Quinerly
Daily Mail’s interview with Wolff. Some interesting tidbits: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5242385/Brexit-deal-doubt-Harry-Meghan-wedding.html
TriassicSands
@Yarrow:
I think you may have missed her point. She isn’t saying that Bannon never said that. She’s saying that it isn’t “treason” if we aren’t at war with the country in question. It’s a technical distinction, but she is probably right.
Gessen:
burnspbesq
@Baud:
Totally with you on that, but I wonder where Holt could get jurisdiction, and how they would collect if they won damages.
George
Brooks, Haberman, and all the other Trumpfluffers in the media are just as much traitors to American democracy as Trump and his minions.
At what point do they suffer the consequences of abetting Trump? If Obama or Clinton or any other Democrat who served as President or who was a candidate for the job had tweeted one-tenth the garbage that Trump tweets, that Democrat would be roasted by the same people who now look the other way for Trump.
I wonder about the psychology of those people. What makes them so unwilling or unable to see the truth of what Trump has done and is doing? Yeah, I understand that being a wealthy elite does figure into it, but there are enough conservatives in the media who don’t shy away from criticizing Trump that the True Believers like Bobo must be getting something extra out of the deal, if not monetary, then getting some perverse psychological needs met.
Mandalay
@George:
For example, see NYT’s Michael Schmidt justify his lapdog interview with Trump last month which was just a Trump tweet without the 280 character limit:
Of course one can argue that Schmidt is just bullshitting to defend the indefensible, but given the sense of self-importance that Villagers bestow on themselves, the poor sap probably truly believes his own nonsense.
mozzerb
@Brachiator:
IIRC, Henry VIII had a jousting accident and hit his head and was quite badly injured. It’s speculated that this resulted in a personality change?
J R in WV
@JaneSays:
“Who is bobo?”
I’m pretty sure someone has answered this but I’m always happy to add one more comment to a dead thread. Bobo is Davie Brooks, idiot commenter and Op Ed writer for the FTFNYTimes.
Raven Onthill
@Citizen Alan: In fact, the Nazis were fairly popular in the USA during the 1930s. The elites were much more concerned with Germany paying back its debts (I don’t believe Germany ever did) than with Nazi anti-semitism.
Here’s a bit of history.
http://www.thehistoryreader.com/modern-history/6-things-may-known-nazis-america/
I don’t have a good reference on this ready to hand, however.
Ksmiami
@Mnemosyne: and now they e been revealed as the hapless and pathetic courtiers we knew they were all along. basically they traded journalism for access and those are very different entities
Ksmiami
@Lapassionara: or we need to wipe them out and start over