Has had to up their protection of a presidential candidate of a major party because death threats from the presidential candidate of the other major party?
Asking for a friend.
By tomorrow, America's millions of Crazy Uncle Liberties will be full of "So whats?' and "Yeah buts..." followed by some bullshit about Benghaaazi. Or whatever.
Team Very Serious and Both Sides will huddle and spend a day or two finding this all so very deplorable, wondering what every became of the sober and sensible Republican Party that lied us into the wrong was and such. Maybe it has run off with the maid, because that would explain a lot. Anyhoo. after the mnadatory minimum period of carefully calibrated outrage, they'll return to the important business of navigating us back to horse-race territory using their well-thumbing copies of "Hillary is so unpopular because Emails!!"
Hugh Hewitt -- a cyborg sent from the future to destroy American democracy -- will sigh peevishly, cluck his cyborg tongue and go back to what he has been programmed to do. Sean Hannity will weep bitter tears for how unfair the media has been to his reach-around buddy Donald. Corey Lewandowski and Kayleigh McEnany will stare their dead-eyed stares into a CNN camera and utter incomprehensible banalities while listening to the distant sound of Jeff Zucker and Donald Trump's blood-money fill up their bank accounts.
And then, once the sound and fury signifying ratings has died down, things will go back to how they were,
Brother Charlie Pierce asks the most important question of all:
How about the elite political press? Is this enough to push you over the line to admitting every day in your coverage that this is not a normal election because the Republican Party has nominated a public sociopath for President of the United States?
I'm betting the answer is "No". And it will remain "No" until continuing to go along with this kind of insanity starts to carry genuinely catastrophic professional and social consequences.
UPDATE: Did I say "by tomorrow"? Well that was optimistic.
@pattonoswalt @Barbiewithatude @elizabethforma Patton I am big fan of yours, but do you think name calling by either side helps?— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) August 10, 2016
When a surrogate descends to Trump's level https://t.co/JprhdMfsbZ— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) August 9, 2016
It is becoming impossible for me to think of our elite media professionals as "people" at all any more.
Their sheer, absurd mindlessness puts them into the same phylum as algorithms, and simple ones at that.
Simulacra.
And when things get genuinely dangerous -- when the lies and slanders and verbal mercury fulminate being flung around by the Republican candidate for president flies so far outside of their dumb, hardwired Both Siderist parameters -- they go HAL 9000-mad and default to their original Beltway factory settings.
9 comments:
Not enough for Mark Halperin, who weighs all decisions on whether any action taken might mean one single member of the Freedom Caucus decides not to return his phone call that one time. Or he misses a Donald Trump helicopter ride.
Why, I remember way back when the crazy presidential candidate was named Ross Perot. And the nuttiest thing he ever said was that the Bush family plotted disrupt to his daughter's wedding.
Simpler days, my friend.
What I'm hearing now - despite all the shrieking, rending of garments, tearing of hair of the NeverTrump purist faction - that the rank & file are being told to STFU and get in line under Herr Trump or ELSE!! As was demonstrated by Trump's "economic plan" ranting tirade in Detroit, he is basically: Meet the new GOP boss, same as the old GOP boss.
So the PTB are now saying: eh? Let the Donald be all shouty and bullying and crazy Unca Liberty. Who cares? Circuses for the rubes. We got the Donald in hand. He makes an ass of himself, so what? He'll turn over the actual running of the gubmint to our back room boyz, don't you worry. And we'll get all the "deals" that we want... and we'll continue to screw over the GOP rubes good 'n proper because they're too damn stupid to realize it. har har har har...
So sure, Trump can threaten to have his goon squad take down Clinton, and no one's gonna bat an eye. And as we see, Team Trump comes back with some twaddle about how it's all in good fun, boys will be boys, and Trump just meant the fine upstanding White Supremacist 2d Amend folk will just screw over Hillary WITH VOTES for Trump. Got it, pal??
The only thing that might take Trump down is if Trump, himself, does actually, you know, do something with a weapon. Otherwise? No worries, mate, she'll be right.
The lazy Beltway political media is still interested in the horse race because profits and ratings. Meanwhile the polling is looking increasingly unusual: red states and swing states with Clinton leads at this stage of the race. Maybe ISIS has a big October Surprise in mind to swing the election to Trump (in their mind) so that repression will ensue and recruitment will skyrocket. I guess the point is that the TV media and the useless pundits remain utterly uninterested in actual policy issues and programs; it's just Benghazi/emails on one side and why is he so crazy on the other. Such a degeneration of democracy.
Serious question: Do you think there's anything that a Republican candidate could do that would make the Both Siderists reconsider that whole equally-and-diametrically-flawed bit? Or do you think that anything that shitty would just reset things back to the willful ignorance and civility over decency rationalizing of the Dubya years?
Put another way, at one point do these guys finally give up on being propaganda filters and actually address everyone as human beings with some stake in the future of this country?
"By tomorrow..."
Too late: Team Both Sides, in the person of Matthew Dowd, was just this afternoon tut-tutting various people on Twitter, for their RT'g of Senator Professor Warren's wonderfully direct tweet calling The Donald a coward: "Now now, there's no room for name calling on [wait for it..] - BOTH SIDES!"
Fk you, Dowd, and all the Both Siderist BS you could ever peddle in a hundred lifetimes. And you can shove your Moral Scold routine... someplace dark.
-Mike from CA
What a surprise, moral coward (who has me blocked because I give him sadz) Matty Dowd swoops in to wag his stubby little finger at us mean ol' name-callers in defense of poor, poor little Donny Drumpf.
I need the number of whomever he works for. NOW.
As a veteran
I have to say, America must create an equivalent to the Veterans Administration for Journalists. The J.A.. That they can receive the rehabilitating care and treatment they require for enduring and suffering such harmful attempts of media reporting as offered up by FOX's hannity.
If I might add,
We can raise the "Death Tax" On the Trump and Hannity income brackets to fund it. Although the entire American public would need the same assistance after watching such.
So see, here we are at universal health care....
-------------------------------------------------Thanks for making the case, Donald.
This is why Trump likes Roger Ailes so much...cruel and amoral brains think alike. Ailes bragging about having a NY TIMES reporter beaten to a pulp; Trump fantasizing about taking Hillary out. Same mindset. The world watches in horror and neither of them can figure out what the problem is. They're just being real men.
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