...they get paid for doing this.
The New York Times paid Peter Baker to write this:
Bound to No Party, Trump Upends 150 Years of Two-Party RuleWhen Donald J. Trump set his sights on the presidency in the 2000 election, he pursued the nomination of the Reform Party, a home for disenchanted independents. “The Republican Party has just moved too far to the extreme right,” he explained. “The Democrats are too far to the left.”...
Now in the White House, President Trump demonstrated this past week that he still imagines himself a solitary cowboy as he abandoned Republican congressional leaders to forge a short-term fiscal deal with Democrats. Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.
“The truth is that he is a political independent, and he obviously won the nomination and the presidency by disrupting a lot of norms that Republicans had assumed about their own party and their own voters,” said Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, a conservative website....
I'm pretty politically aware, but I must have missed the "Solitary Cowboy Independent Lone Ranger Party" nominations, primaries and convention.
When were they, exactly?
Also the truth is, Ben Domenech wouldn't know "the truth" if it crawled up his leg and bit him in the yam sack, but Ben is a teevee-friendly wingnut with all the right hype men in all the right places --
I got your back, Bilbro Baggins!
-- so there he is in The New York Times, helping to inflate the "He's Not Really a Republican" lifeboat on which the Beltway establishment plans to escape the righteous judgement of history this time.
And speaking of Beltway establishment hacks picking up a paycheck for writing drivel, The Washington Post paid America's Most Famous Cyborg Sent From The Future To Destroy America to write this:
Journalist, heal thyselfBy Hugh Hewitt
For the record, "Hugh Hewitt" is to "journalist" as "Juggs" magazine is to "The Physicians' Desk Reference."
But please, do go on!
...The medical condition most akin to what is happening to journalism generally and to Manhattan-Beltway-elite journalism in particular is glaucoma, a disease that takes vision gradually, with no early warning signs or painful symptoms. Journalists are losing the full scope of our collective vision, coming to see every story through the lens of Trump, often through a lens colored by hostility toward him. Detachment about the president and his actions — genuine objectivity — is rare and getting rarer. Tell me the “Trump subject” and the pundit or reporter speaking to it — and there is an increasingly small difference between those roles — and I am pretty good at predicting not just the response but also the decibel level and the precise adjectives.
This is new for the media. That Manhattan-Beltway media elites skew left on the American political spectrum is not a bulletin. What is new is the transparency of that bias and, with regard to the president, a celebration of “resistance” to him — indeed, contempt for him. “Journalists” want very much for their audiences to know where they stand on the president and all the president’s men (and women).This is “virtue signaling,” an exercise in thinking oneself on the “right side of history”...
No, Hugh. The "medical condition most akin to what is happening to journalism generally and to Manhattan-Beltway-elite journalism in particular" is a mental disorder called "Asymmetriphobia": a horror of asymmetrical things. A disorder so profound in the case of "Manhattan-Beltway-elite journalism" that they are powerless to write any column other than this one -- observe some act of by-now quotidian Republican madness/sadism/treason, manufacture a contrary Liberal position out of whole cloth, and then damn Both Sides and advise a nonexistent middle course is wisest -- over and over and over again.
It is, in fact, the only reason you have a job anywhere of the fetid wingnut fever swamp from which you came.Trump the independent: The deal President Trump cut with Democrats seems to show a different kind of president. https://t.co/7S849G6aPh— The Associated Press (@AP) September 9, 2017
I have written about this phenomenon literally thousands of times over the past 12 years. Which I suspect is one big reason why you will never see me "virtue signaling" in a column in The New York Times or The Washington Post.
Behold, a Tip Jar!
11 comments:
Luckily for me, nobody I actually know ever says "virtue signalling" because I am starting to feel like the next time I hear it I might do something unfortunate to whoever said it.
"Journalists are losing the full scope of our collective vision..."
Our? OUR!!!???
You wouldn't make a mite on a pimple on a journalist's ass, Hewy. As Riff Raff so memorably said in The Rocky Horror Picture Show "And also presumptuous of you."
-Doug in Oakland
"Detachment about the president and his actions — genuine objectivity — is rare and getting rarer."
-- a cyborg sent from the future to destroy America
"It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."
-- an honest-to-somebody Doctor of Journalism
So virtuous to signal Riff Raff here as that's what the NYT/WashPo journalists have come to be seen as insistently declaring themselves to be.
It's just another example of the endless MSM spin journalism. To paraphase Berkeley, 'They kick up a dust and then complain they cannot see'.
Why do I feel in Trump making a deal with Democrats to punish "his" congressional Republican "employees" and keep the economy from tanking, isn't the Beltway Journalist life raft inflating, but it is already filled with three years of supplies (option for 4 more to be airlift in labeled "Democrats Still Can't Reach the Economic Anxious Working Class"), the gang is already loaded in, and disappearing over the horizon ready to hunker down and write transmit Both Sides every hour until the ghost of Reagan is elected President?
Paulie, Mithcy and Donnie knew if they could not keep Government running while in control of all of it. It would be something opposite of favorable for the mid term elections. They knew in advance they needed Nancy and Chuck to run Government while they tear it down.
They have too many Destros, a lot of "proving their crazy" Conservative crowds. Those in districts that know better and will have to vote with Dems to pass this.They just could not get the KKK caucus, the NAZI caucus, the FreeDumb caucus, The Koch's caucus, Viagra Cockus, Corporate elites and The religious right to unite against those wascally Liberals. Different when they have majority controls, isn't it?
Rest assured, those R-Cons that get selected to vote for it have assurances to promote how crazy they really are come the Mid term.
Now if it was Obama???????? Your mystical moderates would cloak themselves in fiscal Armageddon.
By the way, Like Cris hayes. Who is your favorite republican?
You know these folks are crazy ...right??
These are the people who were so embarrassed by the Bush/Cheny/GOP/Republican governance that they became "Independent" or Libertarian. Then when a white man AND white woman lost to The BLACK guy ...they became Tea Baggers!
The one thing in common ....they always vote the GOP/Republican thingy!
Whatever it is ....a con artist, known adulterer, white supremacist, racist, birther, serial bankruptcies, fraud scammer thief, pussy grabber, incompetent, lying, grifter etc These are all ....ok. Now if they could only get others to NAOT believe their lying eyes!
Just for fun drift, have you ever tried to post your blog comment, in this case on the wapo comment section for Hewit's article? Would they take it?
It occurs to me that of a piece with Both Siderism is this constant "journalistic" need to analyze the latest madness/sadism/treason of the Cheez-Whiz Ceausescu in order to ascertain his "policy".
His "policy" is that he is a sociopath with no regard for anyone or anything else except what he thinks works for him RIGHT NOW.
One additional clarification:
My own little rule of thumb for dealing with life is that there are a LOT more functioning sociopaths out there than anyone realizes or admits.
They are inordinately drawn to any power position (providing opportunities to lord it over people) and amply staff law enforcement, the judiciary, politics, high finance, and the corporate aristocracy.
Their indifference to truth and the welfare of others, coupled with a stone cold preference for lying as a form of communication, often make them very "successful".
They have the emotional range of a dead fish save one regard - frustration at not getting their own way which leads to cataclysms of anger and rage.
Sound like any Presidents you know?
And talk about projection! I have seen HH on the TV numerous time and without fail he let out the most cringe-inducing ridiculous disgusting apologist drivel and lies to defend Don "The Con". Everybody is blind but HH? Such a loathsome creature.
This article made me LOL three times.
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