A Murderer's Row Of Legacy Media Garbage

I know what you're wondering.

You're wondering, "What it the plural form of 'status quo?"

I understand because this is the sort of question that keeps me up at night.  Fortunately I have access to The Google, and now the answer be told:

status quos or (rare) statuses quo or (rare, hypercorrect) stati quo

And given what you know about me, you know which option speaks to me. 

Ahem.

Within the legacy media there it not just one terrible status quo doctrine which must be defended at all costs.   There are multiple, terrible stati quo doctrines which must be defended.  Here are three of them, each from a legacy media thought leader.

1.  Liberals just don't understand.

It is an article of faith within the legacy political media that, whatever some Never Trump has just now figured out, it is the first time anyone anywhere has figured whatever-it-is out and it it now their solemn duty to use their huge media platform to explain it to the po' dump Liberal who have no clue.  

And so...

What Liberals Miss About the MAGA Movement

David French explores what keeps Trump’s followers hooked.

Sept. 19, 2024

I first started writing about the MAGA movement in late 2015. Like a lot of people, I didn’t initially take Trump seriously, but very quickly, I realized this was very serious and he was absolutely resonating. And so, I began talking to friends, to relatives. Why? What is it about Donald Trump that appeals to you so much? And that conversation has never really stopped for nine years.

I knew that MAGA was going to take this torch and carry it as far as it possibly could. And they did it in that particular way that MAGA interacts with the larger world, with this sense of gleeful transgression. They have fun being outrageous. They have fun being provocative. They like to “trigger the libs.” What MAGA is very good at doing is turning around back to its own people and saying, “See, we struck a nerve.” They’ll use words like, “If you’re taking flack, it means you’re over the target.” And so they use the backlash almost as proof that they’ve hit a nerve and all of this just creates an endless process of doubling down.

And one thing that I think that liberals tend to miss about the MAGA movement is they miss its underlying sense of community and its joy. So there is a strong sense of belonging within MAGA and they have a great time being MAGA...

This is the Tribe That Rubs This In Their Hair, about which I have been writing about since even before I made character actor and unhinged wingnut lunatic Nick Searcy cry like a little bitch and run away:

These are genuine charter members of the Tribe That Rubs Shit In Their Hair -- my shorthand for the Conservative mutual masturbation society whose lunacy grows exponentially more unhinged when excitedly puppy-piling their batshit nonsense among themselves -- who happily rub shit in their hair because everyone else in the club is doing it...

The key takeaway from David French is not that we silly, addlepated Liberals don't really understand what's going on inside the Republican party.  The key takeaway is that David French spent his entire adult life writing right-wing garbage for outfits like the National Review while turning a blind eye to what was going on inside his Republican party until it was far, far too late.  

I first started writing about the MAGA movement in late 2015. Like a lot of people, I didn’t initially take Trump seriously, but very quickly, I realized this was very serious 

But of course it's far too psychologically painful and professionally inconvenient for him to admit that the Left has actually be right about the Right all along.  So he just erases us and replaces us with imaginary Liberals who need to have all this complicated, grownup political stuff explained to them in little words.  

2.  Trump Hijacked The Modern Republican Party.

It is vitally important to virtually every legacy media Conserative influencer of the first water to continue to maintain the the Republican party was just fine until Trump showed up one day and, overnight, somehow mesmerized tens of millions of them into voting for him over and over again.  

Millions of pixels have been spilt by Liberal writers over the past decade (including your 'umbel scrivner) definitely proving over and over again that this is sheer bunkum.  That the rot at the heart of the GOP began long before Trump arrives.  That all of those now-shocked!shocked legacy media pundits were either blissfully oblivious to what was actually happening inside the GOP for decades , or were perfectly sanguine about it because building a party base of Fox-News addicted bigots and imbeciles was winning them elections.  Either way, those now-shocked!shocked legacy media pundits spent a whole lot of time and energy dismissing anyone who was speaking the truth about the GOP as crackpot alarmists...

...until that party base finally manifested its perfect avatar. Someone who spoke their hateful language, fully endorsed their grievances and paranoia, and shared their debased "values".  Donald Trump.  At which point those now-shocked!shocked legacy media pundits had to scramble for an explanation for the existence and persistence that not show them to have been wrong all along.  And they're still scrambling.

Take it away David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour (referring to Mark "I'm a Black Nazi" Robinson)

Brooks:  ...It's nastiness, and mind-boggling nastiness.

Well, what it says is the Republican Party used to be a normal party, which had the normal vetting procedures. Like, you were a College Republican, and then you got vetted by your local state assembly, and then — so you had a normal — like any industry, basically, that there's a whole series of structures that people who are just complete opportunists and degenerates, if I can use that word, don't pass through the system.

But that whole system was wiped away. And so, ever since the Trump era came in...

No, David.  That system was a fraud, and you and your various "respectable" employers were a deeply complicit it perpetrating that fraud on the American public for decades.

It's not a hijacking or a theft or a hostile takeover when the base of the party hands a madman the keys and begs him to take them wherever he wants.  

And finally...inevitably.  The big one.  

3.  Both Sides Do It (And Democrats Are Solely Responsible For Fixing Everything.)

Because Chuck Todd had been given the hook off the the Meet the Press set and replaced by the equally awful Kristin Welker, you may have been under the misapprehension that NBC had actually fired Chuck Todd fired for incompetence, or he had been sent update to play with other disgraced former network political anchors, or had suddenly been summoned back to his home planet for some reason.

 But no.  Chuck Todd is still NBC News' Chief Political Analyst, still cranks out a newsletter on a regular basis, and his wretched Both Siderist stank is still very much in evidence everywhere.  

For example, here, on NBC's very own website.  With emphasis added to aid you the reader.

Chuck Todd: What if we can't unite?

...Let’s be honest: The current level of political discourse is unsustainable for this democracy. Maybe it doesn’t break us this year, maybe not next. But unless we choose to rise above it, either by electing de-escalators rather than purveyors of zero-sum political pugilism or by demanding that the big tech companies stop creating algorithms...

De-escalators?  You mean like Barack Obama?  Hey Chuck, remind me again how the Right reacted to the election of Barack Obama.

Chuckles the Clown continues:

The problem with political discourse in America right now is that we are all stuck in a social media funhouse mirror booth. What we see isn’t what is, and how we’re seen isn’t who we are. And yet, here we are....

 "We"?  Who the fuck is this "We" you're talking about.

Chuckles continues:

And that brings me back to what happened over the weekend. Be honest with yourself — while the news was surprising Sunday, it sadly wasn’t very shocking. Spend 10 minutes doom-scrolling on your social media app of choice and you will be served up examples of outrage and demonization that can do one of two things: make you shake your head about the state of the country and leave the platform in disgust or anger you and get you to engage even more, usually by contributing wittingly or unwittingly to demonizing “the other side.”

And, yes, I’m being intentionally vague with these descriptions because this type of behavior isn’t limited to one set of partisans...

No, you're being intentionally vague because if you were clear and specific everyone could see how completely full of shit you are. 

Chuckles continues:

It’s why it’s hard to take seriously the outrage from some in Trump’s orbit that it’s the Democrats and their media allies who have created the more violent conditions in our political landscape. For every complaint the right surfaces about discourse it says could have been triggering, there is a slew of pugilistic personal attacks that Trump has made himself and directed at Americans by name, putting them in harm’s way.

But just because Trump started it doesn’t mean his opponents have the high moral ground when they single out him and some of his supporters for personal derision. I still want to live in a society where “two wrongs don’t make a right.”...

There is it. Chuckles' irredeemable corrupt statement of corporate media morality.  Of course, it's bad when terrible people do terrible things, but it is equally bad (maybe worse!) to say true things about those terrible people and the terrible things they are doing.  

Chuckles continues with a sermonette on Both Siderism worthy of David Fucking Brooks at his worst:

Sadly, so much of our political discourse features people rationalizing their bad behavior by claiming the other side is worse.

Who are these "people"?  Where do they live?  What, specifically, are they saying?  Are the numbers of these imaginary "people" actually equivalent on both sides?  Can Chuckles cite any actual examples of any of this at all?

Of course not.  Because would smack of "journalism" which, I am sure, doesn't appear anywhere in the job description of an NBC News' Chief Political Analyst.

Chuckles continues:

My friends on the left love to scream about both sides-isms and love to complain when some of us hold them to a higher standard than Trump.

First, Chuckles has no friends on the Left.  

Second, way to go team!  I know as a matter of fact that it has been readers of this blog and others, and listeners to the Professional Left Podcast, that have been the most tireless missionaries on social media spreading the Good News that Both Sides Don't.  

And you know what?  It worked!  The message of the Both Sides Don't movement has penetrated so deeply into enemy territory the NBC News' Chief Political Analyst now has to acknowledge that it exists and where it's coming from...before dismissing it with one of the weakest, most pusillanimous excuses I have ever heard.

But the party that promises a higher standard is asking to be judged by a higher standard. This doesn’t mean anyone is condoning the bad behavior of the other side, but it means that if you ask the voters to expect better, you should always behave better, period... 

This is goalpost-moving on a rocket sled.  Sure, Donald Trump is a degenerate, racist, rapist monster, and that's all really bad.  But if actually saying true things about Donald Trump and the Republican party is objectively worse because...reasons.

 I would never expect Chuckles to sit down on a panel with actual Liberals armed to the teeth with receipts.  He much too gutless for that.  But it would be hilarious to sit him down at a panel with, say, David French and David Brooks that is moderated by, say, me and watch these three legacy media stati quo crash with each other.  

After all, because Brooks pretends that Trump broke the Republican party, he feels free to refer to candidate vetting process as one that produces "opportunists and degenerates".  Candidates which don't just have skeletons in their closet, but whole "morgues in their closet."

David French says MAGA is  

...trashing our body politic. They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P., but they are having a good time and hey, the people they’re making mad, they don’t like them anyway.

And you might think for a minute that, well, wait, this can’t go on forever. Surely, surely the majority of Republicans, when they know they’ve been had, when they know these are lies, will stop paying attention to these memes. They’ll reject this method.

And the really sad answer is that the Republican response to Jan. 6 and the Big Lie showed us the tolerance that Republicans have for dishonesty and for lying if it is directed against their hated Democratic enemies. 

A lot of people are looking at these transparent lies, obvious falsehoods, baseless accusations, and saying, “How is this happening again? Why are we here again?” And one of the answers, quite frankly, is that MAGA has a lot of fun doing this. 

 (And not for nuthin', but my-oh-my you should hear what kind of salty language many prominent legacy media Never Trumpers use to accurately describe what is going on with the Republican party.  They almost sound like [checks notes] Liberal bloggers circa 2004!)

There is no way to describe the atrocities on the Right without describing them as atrocities, and there is no way to correctly characterize the villainy and depravity of those enacting and applauding those atrocities without describing them as depraved villains.  So how does Chuckles propose to square this circle? 

Well...he doesn't, because he doesn't give a shit about any of this.  His years laboring in the legacy media vineyards have taught him only one skill:  how to concoct what he believes to be excellent "gotcha" questions with which to trip up Democrats.

But to these tired eyes, it appears that, very slowly, at least some prominent Progressives/Liberals/Democrats are starting to figure out how not to get tripped up by Todd's absurd goalpost-moving, or Brooks' ridiculous revisionist history, or French's laughable idea that the actions and motives of Republicans need to be explained to the very same Liberals who were warning about the actions and motives of Republicans during all the years when David French was lying about it.

And it's so easy!

#1:  Fuck David French.

#2:  Fuck David Brooks.

And #3:  Fuck Chuck todd.

I Am The Liberal Media