I have a fairly unconventional view of the New York Times for a progressive, and it might be at least partly because I stopped being a fan of the Clintons somewhere around 1995 and became ideologically and by disposition inclined to oppose their presence in the Democratic Party. I did make my peace with Hillary Clinton’s inevitable nomination in 2016 and I didn’t spend one second wasting my time bitching about it because I saw it as a misuse of energy. I try not to complain or worry too much about things I cannot change. Still, I didn’t like the situation. I hated it, actually. And so I just didn’t have my antenna up for how the Times covered her because I wouldn’t cover her very generously myself.
If I’d ever been some find of Clinton family fanboy, I’d probably have scars to show it from the way the New York Times has mistreated and abused them over the years.
In general, I thought the Times had excellent election coverage. The best I can remember. I can’t understand people who say that they weren’t rough enough on Trump. I’ve never seen any candidate get exposed and eviscerated the way Trump was by the press, both the reporting end and the editorial end, and the Times was a leader in that.
What’s changed in my perceptions is the Washington Post. By the end of the Bush presidency, I wouldn’t have wiped my ass with that paper and its editorial staff was so bad someone had to be deliberately trying to make it awful.
While it did some great work during the Bush presidency (Dana Priest, Dan Balz), I think it vastly improved over the late Obama presidency, including the presidential campaign. In short, the Post is much better of late, while the Times is only modestly above what they’ve been historically. When I compare either paper today to what they were before the progressive blogosphere arose to challenge them, it’s clear that they are light years better today than in the run-up to the Iraq War.
While we can always look at the worst of access journalism (Judith Miller with Scooter Libby, Maggie Haberman with Donald Trump), the papers need people to have that kind of access. It’s what they do with it that matters. We’re never going to get hard-hitting stuff from reporters on that kind of beat because that’s the nature of the thing, but they don’t have to assure us that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons based on a source they know well enough to understand is a giant fucking liar. That’s what Judith Miller and Michael Gordon did and that’s why they belong in the journalistic Hall of Shame.
All I know is that when I began blogging it would have been impossible to get me to say positive things about either of these papers, and the Post got worse and worse and worse as the years went on. Their recent reversion to a decent, even admirable, newspaper is welcome. Just don’t ask them to take our side on antitrust issues. Their owner didn’t buy the paper for it to question platform monopolies.
Maybe a lot of liberals are exasperated with the New York Times these days, but I don’t really see how they’re not far better than they were in first years of the century, and the stuff they still do that’s annoying is stuff they’ve been doing forever. David Brooks is an insufferable fool with the intellectual integrity of a rabid jackal. But would you prefer some other conservative columnist like, I don’t know, I remember the Times hiring William Kristol for a bit until they realized they’d have to issue corrections after every column?
Media criticism is fun and it’s always needed. But you shouldn’t start cancelling your subscriptions over dumb shit that Douthat and Brooks write.
In any case, everything you know about Trump was probably reported by these two big newspapers at some point. The idea that they’ve gone lightly on him in ludicrous, especially when you compare how Bush/Cheney were treated.
But, yeah, if you’re big into the Clintons, you’re never going to really forgive the Times, nor should you.
But Booman…!!!
You write:
Yes. That is true. They have been heavy on the Anti-Trump side.
But they have also been very light on the anti-Clinton, anti-Obama, anti-Dem side.
I personally believe that both publications continue to follow orders from the Deep State. It is neither about “politics” nor truth. It is simply the ongoing Deep State. Ally yourself with its objectives …as most certainly did Bush I, Bush II, Cheney and the rest of the neocons… and without taking the chance of totally alienating the leftiness readers the control of whom is their job, they spew whatever Deep State bullshit they are told to spew. (“Skew” might be a better word…) Oppose it? The skew goes the other way. Anti-Trump.
So it goes in our Post-Truth world.
The “Information Revolution?”
Right you are.
Information without truth.
Worthless on the face of it.
AG
If in some sense the editors at the big newspapers advance the interests of the “Deep State,” they do so much less from “following orders” than they do be sharing certain assumptions. In other words, it’s voluntary. This was never more true than when the nation was attacked and the Cheney regime decided to go to war. But also remember that the New York Times editorial page opposed the war while the Post’s supported it.
Yet, the worst reporting on the prewar intelligence came from the Times, not the Post.
This doesn’t show much more than differences of opinion and trust in various departments within and between newspapers. It’s not good evidence of anyone “taking orders.”
The orders are as much implicit as explicit, Booman. The owners of these media outlets do not have to say much to their hirelings one way or another. How long do you think that you would last at WAMO if you decided that the whole Russiagate thing was indeed nothing more than a Deep State plot to continue control of the government and then started to talk and write publicly about it? And the stakes there are infinitesimal compared to WAPO and the NY Times.
As far as WAPO and Amazon’s own Jeff Bezos is concerned?
Get real.
He bought the WAPO with a lower bid than at least one of his competitors and…mirabile dictu!!!…only a short while later Amazon got a massive contract from the CIA for “information management” and the like. Plus… that’s probably only the top seventh of the iceberg that can be seen from the surface.
And he’s lambasting Trump and defending The Dems at every turn.
C’mon, Booman…you know better.
The tracks are plain. It doesn’t takes a woodsman to see them.
Please…
AG
Whatever.
Make sure to read this. You’ll enjoy it.
Thank you. I’ve read it and iI have worked with Q. One tough, smart, strong motherfucker.
AG
That’s a very entertaining interview- the lively raconteur in winter. Quincy’s story about Cindy Lauper is hilarious. The dismissive way he talks about Ivanka is the treatment she’s earned. And the way he brings his discussion of Brando to an end is golden.
Love the way he disdains money at one moment and then talks about the delight of easy money later. And look at how anxious he is to name drop. He believes we are as impressed by his friends as he is.
You did hear that Richard Pryor’s widow confirmed the story about Pryor and Brando, right?
Yes, she did so in a very amusing style.
His dismissive commentary about contemporary music was about what I expected. Apparently nothing good has been recorded in decades. He and I would make decidedly different judgment calls.
That’s why BooMan knew AG would love the interview.
Haha. So true.
You should quit your day job and go into conspiracy peddling full time. You won’t go broke in America.
They are corporate media, info-tainment. They care about only the bottom line (and female co-worker’s bottoms). They laugh up their sleeves at people like you and me.
I’m surprised at this post. There have been several detailed examinations of 2016 election coverage by organizations not remotely “big into the Clintons,” and not one of them considered the MSM in general or the TIMEs in particular to have done an “excellent” job. We have, for example, this detailed research reported in the CJR about election coverage, with specific focus on the TIMES:
https:/www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php
In this report, the authors include points such as the following:
“To reiterate, in just six days [October 29 – November 3], The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election (and that does not include the three additional articles on October 18, and November 6 and 7, or the two articles on the emails taken from John Pedestal). This intense focus on the email scandal cannot be written off as inconsequential: The Comey incident and its subsequent impact on Clinton’s approval rating among undecided voters could very well have tipped the election.”
The authors also note the “surprisingly sparse” and largely negative coverage of the ACA in the TIMES and the one-sided emphasis on “‘dramatic'” issues to the exclusion of policy concerns (which are, of course, the real matters at stake in any election). While the authors do not see the TIMES as greatly worse than the MSM in general on such things, they call its performance “typical of a broader failure of mainstream journalism to inform audiences of the very real and consequential issues at stake.”
This analysis parallels findings by the Shorenstein Center about MSM coverage of the election in general:
https:
shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election
And these conclusions have been endorsed by experienced media analysts, such as Jay Rosen and Margaret Sullivan.
In reading the TNR article, I was most struck by the failure of all involved even to mention, let alone engage, these kinds of concerns. Anyone who is going to give the TIMES or the MSM an “excellent” rating for 2016 election coverage needs to do so.
My apologies for the undue italicization, which I trust will not interfere with the basic point. I’ve been following analyses of 2016 reporting with some interest, and this is the very first time I’ve seen any comment rating MSM coverage in general or the work of the TIMES in particular as “excellent.” Indeed, most of the commentary has reflected dismay, both at the nature of the coverage in general and at the specific and apparently adamant refusal of TIMES editors to engage in any retrospective analysis at all, which has harmed their reputation for truthfulness. The failure of the TNR article to make this point more clearly was distressing.
If we’ve learned nothing else, newspapers did not decide the last election. Almost every newspaper editorial board in the country endorsed Clinton. I’m talking 99.9% of them.
What’s more, Trump was savaged by every major news outlet and the network news and the cable news (excluding Fox and RT) because he deserved to be savaged.
Clinton could complain that she couldn’t get heard above the din of almost uniformly negative Trump coverage, but there isn’t a single horrible thing in Trump’s history that wasn’t unearthed and reported by the newspapers.
Yes, they covered her emails. Trump mentioned them incessantly. The FBI sandbagged her, which was news.
If we’re going to say there wasn’t enough substance on policy and that this hurt Clinton, I can go along with that. But media bias against her? Never less the case in history.
You write:
You are right, Booman…in a wrong kind of way. Newspapers did indeed decide the last election. They decided about 20% of the population not to for either candidate (the other 20% just doesn’t vote. Ever.), plus they decided an inordinate number of people to vote for Trump because of the tidal wave of anti-Trumpism oozing out of the pores of the mass media, 24/7. Public distrust of the mass news media has become so profound that many people are tempted to do the exactly the opposite of what they are told to do.
Nice…
AG
I don’t agree. People no longer see the media as neutral players dedicated to truth. They know which are the Democratic media and which are the Republican.
No one, except my nose, persuaded me to vote for neither. It is Daniel Biss’ record of screwing retirees and his own statements in the IL gov debates that persuade me to actually vote for Rauner (R) if he is the candidate. No “analyst” persuaded me. I don’t like Kennedy and won’t vote for him in primary, but I will in November. That’s true for all except Biss and Baiber. I’m on the fence about crazy Marshall, but I think I’d vote for him if he wins by some fluke.
But I won’t vote for my enemies just because they have (D) after their name.
You are part of a shockingly small percentage of Americans, Voice. Good on ya. Most of us either turn on their TV/radio to their news/discussion channels of habitual choice or do the same with news collators online. Most of us also passively suck in so-called centrist news as it blares out of the TVs in public places…banks and other waiting rooms, fast food joints, etc. (CNN…the center’s secret, subconscious weapon of choice. Soak in the centrist line with your crap Dunkin’ Donuts.)
And then they think that they have “made up their minds.”
‘Tain’t so.
Their minds have been made up for them, mostly by their position in the class system and especially by the position in said class system that they occupied in their formative years.
So it goes.
I recently had a conversation with a well-meaning leftiness in his 60s. I tried to tread lightly…I have learned a great deal from my troublesome interactions with the kneejerk clomp-clomp-clompers on this site…but I did tell him that I thought that both sides of the Russiagate anti-Trump movement were equally full of shit. He was shocked!!! Shocked, I say!!! And what shocked him most was when I mentioned that my morning news ritual is to peruse Google News (left-center), the Drudge Report (Right-center) and Counterpunch (fairly good left-wing reporting) in order to get a balanced view of the various hustles going on at the moment.
He said “The Drudge report!!!???” as if I had confessed to sexual congress with the devil.
Know thine enemies, no matter on which sides of the various tracks they may reside.
Bet on it.
AG
In see centerfielddj and marduk are continuing their campaign to silence you.
How about you keep my name out of your filthy mouth, scumbag?
marduk marduk marduk marduk is a lying sack of shit.
You know, when a person gets caught out in a campaign of slanderous lies they really have two options.
If they were brought up with even the tiniest bit of integrity and decency they apologize for their indefensible behavior.
If they’re human garbage like yourself, they respond by doubling down with death threats and childish temper tantrums.
I’m sure your daddy would be proud.
How was she? Hot?
Limp, actually.
AG
When did that exist? Other than brief moments – the only one that I can recall is Watergate and then only from the period beginning with the Saturday Night Massacre and ending with Nixon’s resignation which was sixteen months after the break-in, nine months after the burglars were convicted, and many months after the Senate hearings that were telecast live – reversion to promulgating the status quo that supports VIPs, elites, corporations, and the US MIC is quick. LBJ lost Cronkite in March ’68 and that horrendous debacle continued for six more years.
Republicans read the Republican newspapers and Democrats read the Democratic newspapers. And there were a lot of newspapers. (The NYTimes (elite/country club Republican) and WAPO were local and had limited clout.) With the rise of industrial unions that affiliated with the DP, the Democratic newspapers at that time were probably better on facts relevant to working class people (the vast majority) than the Republican ones. However, they did cheer on wars and other propaganda.
You wrote, “In general, I thought the Times had excellent election coverage.” I suggested that several respected independent analyses made that view hard to sustain; those analyses, like my remarks, were directed to new coverage, not to editorial positions. I did not suggest outright bias against Clinton, nor did the analyses I cited. But it seems extraordinarily clear, for example, that a TIMES focus on E-mails so extreme as that documented in the CJR both reflected appallingly bad (not “excellent”) editorial judgment and objectively worked against Clinton’s candidacy.
More broadly, the CJR review found the following for 2016 election coverage in major print media, including the TIMES:
— A 4:1 ratio of scandal to policy in Clinton coverage and a 1.5:1 ratio in Trump coverage (that is, Clinton news coverage was far more heavily weighted toward scandal than was Trump’s).
— More space devoted to Clinton’s E-mails than to all of Trump’s scandals combined.
Nate Silver and others have identified Jim Comey’s behavior with regard to Clinton’s E-mails as a potential election turning point; but the effect of that behavior is difficult to disentangle from the effects of the grossly disproportionate press attention to the issue itself.
It seems to me that thoughtful analyses of the 2016 election have established two things pretty clearly:
— The MSM in general and the TIMES in particular did not do their jobs very well, and they have been highly resistant to recognizing that fact.
— Their deficiencies objectively helped Trump and disadvantaged Clinton, while also disserving the national interest generally.
I don’t see any strong disagreement with those points in your response. But if you do disagree, your argument is with these analysts, not with me.
I can’t really recall any coverage about Trump that wasn’t scandal-based. Even on policy, it was primarily about how his wall was racist, his immigration proposals were bigoted. There weren’t a lot of deep discussions of his trade proposals, but they were dismissed across the board by the media on both the right and left. To get sympathy for his trade policies you needed to go to overtly leftist or rightist news outlets. The main thing was that he didn’t know what he was talking about and he just made shit up.
His supporters were vile. No one respectable would be quoted saying anything favorable about him.
His own convention was a travesty surrounded by a revolt.
And the polls told one story the whole time: he had no chance.
So, forgive me if I can’t see where all the substantive discussion of Trump’s policies were, because it barely existed.
Clinton’s policy speeches were dutifully covered and treated seriously. It’s just that no one gave a shit. I honestly don’t think any candidate has ever had a bigger media advantage than Hillary Clinton enjoyed.
What we were missing is that people weren’t getting their news from newspapers or cable television anymore. They were getting it on Facebook and other social media, and they were being targeted with a barrage of disinformation.
Well, the studies explained the methodology by which they sorted news accounts into categories, including those that were policy-based and those that were scandal-based. If you wonder how they managed that division, the best I can do is to refer you to the studies themselves. If you prefer to rely on your own impressions of the coverage and its influence (which the studies did not attempt to measure), that’s certainly an option — although not one on which I would personally rely, given the effort put into the research, the professional journalistic standing of those doing it, and the support for this research by respected analysts such as Rosen and Sullivan.
The essential point seems to me that no dispassionate assessment of 2016 election news coverage by major print media or the TIMES could reasonably conclude that it was “excellent” (the original assertion) or that the coverage was not objectively framed in a way that disadvantaged Clinton. That so much space, especially toward the end of the campaign, was spent on Clinton “scandals” that were either essentially trivial (the E-mails) or nonexistent (the “clouds” and “shadows” over the Clinton Foundation), and less space given to Trump scandals (which were real, harmed many innocent people, and gave a good indication of the fraudulent way Trump would govern) is especially striking.
Every serious professional media analyst I’ve read believes that major media have an account to render for their deficient behavior in 2016 and that they are derelict in refusing to do so. You and others are free to make of that conclusion what you wish.
I can’t give this a substantive reply right now, which is a shame because it’s a good topic.
So, rather than give a full response, I’ll give you a short one.
At the opening of this piece, I copped to blinders on the NYT’s coverage of Clinton, and I gave the reasons why. In other words, I said that I’m not the most objective or attentive observer of that.
So, that stands.
On the other hand, their coverage of Trump I can talk about with authority, and it was excellent, thorough, relentless, cut no corners, and tore the man down to the studs.
Only for people who care about substance over image and pay close attention which was clearly not enough people. Trump thrived on publicity of all kinds, lots of people loved his boorish tough guy shtick.
I didn’t see much coverage of his many scandals like welshing on charities stiffing contractors etc – you had to be paying close attention to notice them.
Not everyone who pays no attention to NYT and CNN is getting news from Facebook. I have an elderly RWNJ relative who tries hard to avoid knowing what is reported by MSM but has no social media accounts or usage, he is really wired into Fox, Rush etc.
Of course, that type of voter is not in play, I suppose the voters who don’t pay much attention to politics are influenced a lot by Twitter, Facebook, Russian bots etc., and these are the voters who are up for grabs.
Still I think the MSM reporting was really shitty, especially the Maggie Haberman NYT.
Heh. No. You don’t have to be a Clinton fanboy to see that the Clintons are a chicken that The Times will never stop fucking.
I guess off topic, but I’m wondering about reaction to this “Democrats are doomed once again” article in the Atlantic:
https:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/democrats-resistance-to-trump-is-eroding-and-so
-are-their-poll-numbers/552845?utm_source=twb
What’s amusing is that gets posted 2-3 days AFTER the generic ballot begins to tick back towards the Dems (as seen on 538).
Between giving us Judith Miller and the Iraq War, and Trump, via that infamous 11th hour headline, I’ve always thought the “liberal NYT” belonged right up there with War is Peace and Freedom is Slavery in Orwell’s book.
I will never forgive the NYT for Judy Miller and the Iraq War.
Subscriptions?
Local papers have disappeared and with them the payments to major publishers of syndicaeted columns.
They used to exist before Richard Mellon Scaife could hire hit jobs.
Yes, which would you prefer? Richard Brooks or William Safire? Judith Miller of Joseph Alsop?
Now jobs change so rapidly that one cannot keep up with people younger than Maureen Dowd.
It was the Times’s fawning over multi-million-dollar opposition research from the Arkasas project that lost me completely before Judith Miller lied us into a war for which we refuse to pay for reconstruction.
The NYT is barely suitable for wrapping my dog’s manure in.
If we were visited by aliens, we would have to hide the NYT, lest the aliens decide we should be exterminated as a useless species.
Sorry, man, but I don’t know what you were smoking when you wrote this.
The Times has mostly been a fanboy of neocons and pro-Israel policy. Agree with GG on this one …
○ The NY Times’s Newest Op-Ed Hire, Bari Weiss, Embodies its Worst Failings — and its Lack of Viewpoint Diversity
My criticism of Bret Stephens isn’t scant – Rescuing Human Rights. A December article in the NY Times – Jerusalem Denial Complex.
To “fill the gap” left by William Safire …
○ With Bret Stephens Hire, New York Times Fills Long-Empty Pro-Israel Void on Columnist Roster | the Algemeiner |
That’s where Judith Miller fitted in well, plus the choice of Times editor in Jerusalem indicates the “truth” that will be forever propagated.
Have to disagree about the NYT election coverage in 2016. Especially as the NEW YORK Times, they had a special opportunity to pry open the world of the Trumps. They did not do that. The fact that his ill-gotten wealth was either an illusion or came with strings attached to the Russian mob remained completely out of their coverage. The fact that the NY field office of the FBI was rotten with rabid anti-Clinton sentiment was completely not a story, even as they SUCCESSFULLY influenced the election WITH THE HELP of the NYT.
So no, their election coverage was shite.
However, I do agree that this is not new (or news) in and of itself. The Times has been garbage for a long time, but they deserve every bit of criticism they get for it.
The fact that his ill-gotten wealth was either an illusion or came with strings attached to the Russian mob remained completely out of their coverage.
Do you know how many rich people’s wealth is ill-gotten? Pretty much all of them. Whether it be Trump, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or the rest.
only 1 of them ran for President though at least in 2016
“I think (The Washington Post) vastly improved over the late Obama presidency, including the presidential campaign.”
“Martin “Marty” Baron (born October 24, 1954) is an American journalist who has been editor of The Washington Post since December 31, 2012.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Baron
These two statements are related.
Very True. Marty Baron is the real deal. Just ask the Boston archdiocese.
The NYT was atrocious. Mostly because it seems like they had a direct line into the NY office of the FBI, also called Trumplandia. As a result they over-ran coverage on the email investigation opening up and also as a result they didn’t bother to dig very deep into the contention that Trump’s connections to Russia weren’t being investigated.
Frankly it seems like the NYT reporters just called up Giuliani (who has close ties to the NY office of the FBI), took dictation from him, and prettied up the words a little bit.
They have been better since the election (except for their relentless focus on Trump voters) but that doesn’t change that October 2016 was not a month the NYT should be proud of.
I don’t have any particular animus towards the New York Times; they are a big paper and will therefore host a wide assortment of viewpoints. Their political coverage is right-leaning but, at a minimum, so is the coverage in just about every newspaper in the country. My main beef with their political coverage is the same with everyone else’s. They emphasize the theater of politics as opposed to the effects and/or human cost of political decisions.
In any event, I would agree that the paper has improved since the Bush/Cheney days. But that’s not saying a whole lot, since those days were the nadir of the US media industry. Bush never had to call his political opponents traitors, since that case was being made loudly by a number of folks both inside his orbit and out.
You write:
That is the “main fault” with almost all political coverage in the U.S., and has been so for at least 50+ years. If the (mostly) well-meaning people of this country were to be continually informed of the massive human suffering caused the the Permanent War and the Permanent Poverty machines rather than the reality TV soap operas that they are always given, they would vote these motherfuckers…of both parties…right straight out of office.
But of course…that would be vey bad for business.
So…they are not informed. Not by the mass media they are not, and it is mass media that controls elections.
Bet on it.
AG
Arthur, if your stated desire to break up the United States and create a New Confederacy came to be, what would “…the effects and/or human cost of political decisions…” be on women, non-white people, LGTBQ Americans and white people with low incomes and wealth in regressive areas of our Nation?
You ask:
I dunno, centristfield.
What are the effects now.? The real effects, not the mealymouthed pols and their captive media’s self-aggrandizing lies. Neighborhoods I see? Rural white and urban black particularly? Also working class rural/suburban white? I’ve lived in those neighborhoods for many decades. I cut my musical chops in black urban neighborhoods, and they were well-functioning, working class communities wth a strong church-led morality and a thriving culture. Ever hear of the Harlem Renaissance? Sugar Hill?
Then came the CIA-led drug scourge.
I came up in a Long Island neighborhood full of working class Jews, Italians and Irish who had left Brooklyn on the GI plan after WWII. There was no drug problem…no opiods, no nuthin’.
Now?
Fuggedaboudit!!!
Where are your laws there?
I spent early childhood summers with relatives in a small farming town outside of Rochester, NY. Rural as could be. Cornfields by the mile and a functioning train line to bring the goods to market. Three blocks of stores, all busy. Everything was working pretty well there. Everyone was working, the kids were getting an education, and again…no drugs to speak of. I visited that town during the week-lomg car tour I took early in 2016 that convinced me Trump was going to win. Vanquished. Decimated. Storefront after storefront vacant, as were the eyes of the kids hanging on the street. I know the look. Stoned to the gills.
You mistake “laws” for effective action. There are laws on the books for all of the troubles that are collapsing this country. Hell, there are laws on the books regarding how to drive a car!!! Stop at stop signs, do not go over the speed limit, signal every turn, don’t tailgate, etc. All almost totally ineffective. There are laws against usury…Wall Street and the credit companies raison d’etre.!!! Name a common crime. There are law against it. Only they don’t work. They are contradictory and unenforceable. No one on earth understands the laws of this country. Too many laws; too much money to be made from writing them and then finding a way around them…often by the same people.
I don’t believe that I have the answers to all of this, but I damned sure know that this country is in steep decline despite a book of laws that would fill the NYC Public Library from basement to rooftop and overflow to 5th Avenue where our lovely current president once claimed hat he could walk out, shoot some people get away with it.
What would happen if there was some sort of breakup into smaller sovereign states? I thinK that the eastern seaboard right on up to Canada would thrive. Include New England in that mix. California too, including the other western seaboard states. Texas would be alright, too. Houston is ow he most mixed-race-and-culture big city in the world!!! The northern midwest? They’d do ok too. The southern states with large urban centers that are largely black and well-defined black rural areas? You might be surprised to see who came out on top. The Rust Belt States along the Great Lakes? Again…huge black, latino and millennial populations just waiting for a chance to climb out of corporate Washington DC’s low rent grasp and compete freely. That leaves…which states to fulfill your worst fears?
Loser staes now. They’d be loser states then, too.
It would be a rough transition, but…call me a starry-eyed optimist…I think the true fate of this nation is to prove that mixture of races and cultures on every possible level is the best solution for further evolution of the human species and culture. I have lived that life as a musician, and I’m not making this stuff up out of thin air. If it took a breakup of the U.S. to achieve somethng like that, it would be worth all of the tsuris that would occur during that kind of progress.
Like I said…call me a starry-eyed optimist. I’ll certainly be happy to call you a closed-eyed pessimist, ‘cuz that’s what you are.
I believe in people over “laws.”
You?
AG
You’re simply unwilling to be accountable to the outcomes of your own morality. Returning broad swaths of the United States to Jim Crow policies is unacceptable. Your attempt to bring back the New Confederacy is a bizarre delusion. It’s not going to happen.
In this post, you can smell the awful stink of your desire to go back to what you view as a better era. It was better FOR YOU. It was not better for tens of millions of other people who weren’t in your comfortable position.
Poverty in the United States was much, much higher before the Great Society programs began. The New Deal was an important breakthrough, but it didn’t deliver as many Americans out of destitution as the Federal policies which were created during the Civil Rights movement which bore fruit in the ’60’s.
I’m not even angry with you at the moment. This post makes me feel sad for you.
Don’t waste your sadness, centristfield. Save it for yourself. Go read the Washingtoon Post.
I have been quite clear that I do not want to return to the “Jim Crow” policies of the past. I simply want to move on from the “James Crow, Esq.” policies of the present. The murderous Permanent War policies of every government that the U.S. has had since WWII have been almost exclusively aimed at countries consisting of non-Western European majorities. You think that’s a coincidence!!!??? I don’t. It’s “white supremacy” at its cruelest, all the while trumpeting about “How much better off them darkies are than they were before the Civil Rights Act.” I don’t see it, and I’ve been there in the midst of the real fight…the fight to survive on the streets in full knowledge that the Imperial Government of the United States does not really recognize the “equality” of all races…except of course for their more than “equal” opportunity to be given bad educations, low wages, substandard housing and (for those unfortunates who are living in countries that are considered “enemies” by the U.S.) the opportunity to suffer and die in wars of economic oppression.
Malcolm X summed up the whole thing here:
That is as true today as it was when he said it. It’s multiple knives now, really…in multiple countries. But every goddamned knife has “Made in U.S.A” stamped somewhere on it.
You apparently do not get this. The Civil Rights Act was a band-aid applied to a gushing wound.
This country doesn’t need band-aids, it needs radical surgery. The contradictions of all of the previous U.S. governments have finally been laid open, because the greed that fueled them…as always…grew beyond its effective limits. Those “deplorables” to whom Mistress Clinton was referring when she spoke to the gathered plantation owners during the convention? That’s when the scales began to drop from the eyes of the white working classes. In order to make a civil rights dumbshow…”It’s in the news, on TV and in the movies, it must be true!!!”…to pacify the restless blacks and hispanics and still make their habituated greed money, the controllers had to cut profits for the white workers. Drastically. And after Ross Perots’s requisite number of years plus a couple, that “giant sucking sound” he mentioned…made by trillions of dollars of U.S. capital flowing out of the country to cheap labor…was finally heard (and its results recognized) by the white working class population, who then proceeded to vote for a man who promised to end all of the nation’s problems. He just didn’t tell them how he was going to do this.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” is a truism, even in our lovely, post-truth world.
So it goes.
Ending the problems of the U.S. by ending the U.S. government in its current form and replacing it with an oligarchy with himself at its head seems to have been his initial plan, and it also seems that he assiduously continues working on that idea every day. Meanwhile, the poor continue to get poorer and the rich continue to get richer.
So that goes as well.
Our “civil rights” overall? All of us, of all races and cultures except the super-rich?
“Grin a bear it” as far as the government of the U.S. and most members of both of its controlling parties seem to think.
Like dat.
Over and out.
AG
Blind and belligerent arrogance. Rampant sexism and racism. We read between the lines of this post and see the Trump fan in you. It’s right here for all to see.
You’re on an island on this one. Even with the unfortunate and unforgettable upgrades from two community members, no one here has joined you in advocating for a return of the Confederacy. None are asking for a return to Jim Crow. You won’t even read that on the pages of your beloved Counterpunch. To find acolytes for your view here, you’ll have better success on Stormfront.
It’s extremely darkly humorous to read an old white man’s claims that things were much better for African-Americans before Jim Crow was torn down. Malcolm X certainly didn’t agree that things were hunky dory. He didn’t agree before his trip to Mecca, and he didn’t agree afterwards. You prefer the separatist Malcolm X, but that’s not where he ended his journey. You consistently evade the real Malcolm X in order to shoehorn him into your old white man fantasies of the benefits of segregation. It’s a sickness of yours.
What you don’t know about history, including Malcolm X’s, fills the world’s libraries. Perhaps you should visit a few of those libraries and question your assumptions.
You are right about one thing, centristfield. I am indeed “on an island.” Not only about politics and morality, and not just on this site. You, on the other hand, are surrounded on all sides by people who “agree” with you, people who have been fed so much neocentrist malarkey by the media …the leftiness division thereof, in your case…that they can’t see past the hype that surrounds them. And for your (necessary) opposition, there is a separate but fairly equal group of people to oppose you…the rightiness folks, who have been fed a similar diet of malarkey by media owned by the same kinds of people who control your media.
Meanwhile, as the opposing groups tilt with one another in endless jousting tournaments, the real work goes on right under your mailed and helmeted noses. Neither side can see this even when someone in street clothes walks up in the middle of a hottest-thing-ever knight’s tournament and points it out to you.
When I first began to get a real glimpse of this…say 40 years ago…I was angered by it. I thought that it was “wrong.” I am no longer angered by it. It is just the human condition; it’s part of the engine that drives evolution on this planet. Human evolution. May the best knight win and all the rest of that boilerplate bullshit.
But…those of us who have reached islands of relative peace have an obligation to try to WTFU the occasional soul. You…bless your soul…are a perfect alarm clock.
Thank you.
You are doing your job, too.
AG
i wrote:
In point of fact, many people have historically had as their first reaction to this information “KILL THE MESSENGER!!!” Many people here as well, in a figurative sense. Which…in different situations…they quite often do.
So it goes.
We do keep trying.
Everybody’s got some job to do.
AG
P.S.
Yup.
Nothing new here, folks.
Move along. Just move along…
Quoting yourself.
Boy, you are in loooooove with yourself and your right wing ideology. You appear totally closed to new perspectives and other people in general. Your rhetoric is annihilative.
We shall see, centrist.
We shall see.
AG
Self-citation: It’s not just for academicians, apparently.
I want to take special notice of your predictions of which States would do well and which States would be “loser” States.
First, Americans live in your unnamed “loser” States. You literally don’t care about the fate of the most vulnerable Americans in those States at all. It’s hard to imagine a stronger moral indictment of you and the community members who made the unforgettable and unfortunate decision to upgrade your comment.
Second, your prediction of which States would allow all their citizens to thrive are hilariously off. Texas, for example. If the United States broke up, the Texas Legislature would quickly take away the effective right to vote from African-Americans and Hispanic/Latino-Americans as quickly as possible, and would further drive their oppressed into as close to slave labor status as they could get away with. With no Federal laws to restrain them, only interstate commerce would restrain white people from plundering these Americans’ bodies and wealth in Texas and many other areas of the (former) nation.
Abortion rights, domestic violence, no fault divorce and equal pay laws would also be done away with in Texas and elsewhere. Your posts here reveal that you don’t give a tinker’s damn about women, so it’s unsurprising that this certain outcome of your New Confederacy entirely escapes your attention.
Your knowledge of California is also poor. Without our Federal pact to hold us together, the efforts by Californians in Silicon Valley, the northern Sierras, Orange County and the Central Valley to break up the State would have a much greater chance of success. Feel free to read about the State of Jefferson movement and the history of relations in Southern California to read about the rampant racism which would be installed in broad swaths of the region. And what do you think Labor laws would be like in the State of Silicon Valley?
Please read well-done reports on periods of American history like Operation Wetback, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and the Jane and Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion networks. These are the type of conditions you, old white man as you are, would drive tens of millions of Americans into. I ask this: don’t get these histories from old Ron Paul newsletters and other publications. You won’t get straight stories there.
You think conditions were broadly better for all Americans in the 20th Century when the Federal government was weaker. You are simply wrong on the facts.
I can imagine that there are plenty of folks – and not just progressive bloggers who make up the peanut gallery here – who would resent their states being described as “loser” states, and especially coming from someone on the east coast. Plenty of us from what I guess is merely flyover country for some who try to make our communities a bit better, who try to do what can be done to field viable candidates, and who know damned well that any progress that we can have is going to be practically impossible absent a stable federal government. As it is we’ve got dysfunctional, which is problematic enough. I don’t want to imagine a split-up that would dwarf the chaos caused in the Balkans. How that helps people of color, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, etc. is something apparently living only in the imagination of a commenter on BT. Oh well, we’re just all supposed to be collateral damage. Nice.
The attacks on Hillary were threefold on the right and on Russia-seeded social media: Clinton Foundation, Uranium for Russia, and emails.
On the left-leaning media, the first two were briefly investigated, recognized as nonsense, briefly refuted, then ignored. So it was emails, emails, emails, hammered in relentless repetition; while no one story on Trump lasted long enough to make it into the brains of casual followers of the news. All media did the same, but none were more tireless than the Times.
Repetition settles into peoples’ heads, as a parade of different stories cannot. Hillary was left with a settled brand. Then to the Times’ obvious and eager delight, along came the juicy Comey story, nailing down the emails as deadly serious for anyone still on the fence about them. And the hammering got even more insistent.
Trump campaigned as he has presidented, in dizzying ADD jumps from one outrage to another. He was a perpetually moving target, with no easily discerned brand. Most of the negative Trump coverage was about his racism – horrifying to liberals, but to most white voters either a shrug, or an irritating noise of political correctness.
The Times sets the tone for the rest of mainstream media. On balance – really on gross imbalance – their coverage was a great boost to Trump.
The Gish Gallop campaign.
eff the clintons & the times.
slow learning curves on display.
Yes. And slow learning curves among he leftinesses as well.
Excruciatingly slow.
AG
It seems like every week Tim Russert was interviewing Dick Cheney about the latest revelation in the New York Times that had been leaked by a “senior administration source (who was undoubtedly named Dick Cheney).
Then to see Judith Miller praised journalistic hero, willing to go to jail to protect a source, rather than ridiculing her for acting as an agent of the vice president’s propaganda campaign.
doubtful for #3 – she’s pretty popular in the party, just not on liberal blogs
Chomsky used to say that he got the information behind his so-called radical arguments from the last few paragraphs of NYT stories.
Personal cautionary tale: Years ago, I distributed a very strongly anti-war flyer, which was meant to convince those on the fence and supply those on my side with facts. Therefore, I sourced most of my statements to NYT, WaPo, SF Chron and other mainstream outlets. One leftist took a leaflet, I think because he liked the title, and flung it back at me saying, “He believes the mainstream media!”
Like many others, I can’t see how the question of whether the NYT is good or bad has much to do with the question of whether of not the Clintons are good or bad. The NYT has been hard on Trump because he’s someone with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The NYT is trying hard to sell people on its “feud” with Trump but really they have a nice symbiotic relationship — they sell papers and he gets attention.
My main problem with the NYT is not that they cover the Clintons badly — though they do — but that they cover economic and political issues really badly. See this take on a recent propaganda piece (one of many) about cutting entitlements, for example:
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/nyt-misleads-readers-ballooning-deficits-do-not-add-urgency-to-
republican-efforts-to-cut-medicaid-and-other-programs