What redeems Donald Trump, in my view, is the way he has played the media like a fiddle in the past 12 months. They have been consistently so eager to believe their own narrative, they’ve failed to sanity-check themselves, and now they seem to be left with a Russia-collusion investigation that’s going to fizzle to nothing, a raving Hillary Clinton who’s alienating more and more of her party with her insistence that nothing was her fault, and today’s Raftergate where a reporter was so keen to believe that Donald Trump’s audience in Pensacola was tiny that they didn’t do a basic check to confirm.
If Roy Moore gets elected in Alabama’s Senatorial special election on Tuesday, it’s mostly going to be down to the fact that the central-USA population has decided that they don’t believe a word that the media says. Moore seems to be a fairly distasteful candidate, but if you were a voter of average information level in Alabama then a natural tendency would be to assume that all the anti-Moore broadcasts were blatant lies, and if the media really doesn’t want him to be elected then he’s clearly the right man for the job.
Some of Moore’s attackers, lionised Ted Kennedy on his death. I don’t believe Moore left a nineteen year old, not his wife, to drown after drunkenly driving off a bridge.
The problem for the priest class in the media is that this shit used to work. Meta media… publications highlighting the flaws of the media… didn’t exist.
What BoM4 said. They’ve lost their bully pulpit, and haven’t realised it yet.
I use the media to find out what they are interested in. Then research the issue myself.
Some stuff I know from experience the media hasn’t a clue – they scream a headline that will be the same headline in a hundred years time as the problem is complex with no solution. But the media will still blame everyone they can think of for the problem and tell the public that xxx is the solution. A very bad solution that adds to the problem – that bit gets glossed over.
Martin,
I think we all knew this. I remember people getting the millennium bug badly wrong in the media. What we didn’t realise in the past was how much else they got wrong. Blogs tweets etc have shared this knowledge.
I particularly like his point on Mike Pence within the post. He got all manner of attacks from absolute looney tunes like Jesica Valenti for saying he ‘refuses to eat with a woman alone without his wife present’ – looks like Nostradamus based on the events of the last two or three months….
@ljh
“Chappaquiddick taught me a very valuable lesson. And that lesson is: don’t drive over a narrow bridge while off your face on booze and drugs.”
When Teddy K was campaigning against nuclear power, there was a very good bumper sticker that went: “More people died at Chappaquiddick than Three Mile Island”
Ted Kennedy: “A great and good man” said Tony Blair.
Gordon Brown was proud that he had been given an honorary knighthood.
Remember how the system was supposed to work?
Partisan media campaigns for the lefty party 365 days a year, but you’d better not criticise them or you’re a paranoid right-wing loon.
Lefty scandals generally get trivialised or buried (Ljh mentioned Kennedy, I’d also point out the “scandal free” presidency of Barack Jesus Obama, the guy who sold guns to Mexican drug cartels, destroyed Libya, and turned the domestic tax authorities into an unholy Inquisition to harass his critics), Righty scandals get wall-to-wall coverage whether important or true or not.
When accused of sexual adventures, however unpleasant, tobaccoey, or possibly criminal, the Lefty has a great chance of his career surviving thanks to the above. Righties are supposed to instantly fall on their swords and any attempt to defend themselves is treated as evidence that they hate women.
The Right in Anglosphere countries has been fatuously playing Queensbury Rules while the Left smashes its kneecaps with a spiked baseball bat.
Trump was the first major political figure to say “fuck this for a game of soldiers”, and lay into his enemies with the same contempt they treat him. This is how it works now, and any right-winger still holding to the model of being a dignified loser is basically the political equivalent of a Brachiosaurus chewing cud while an asteroid burns through the sky.
“any right-winger still holding to the model of being a dignified loser”
You should really add links to the Spectator and Samizdata here…
Solid Steve / MC – you’re spot on.
Why do Republicans and Tories come off as RINO’s / BluLabour? Because of the howling mob that screams whenever they don’t toe the socialist line.
I know people bemoan the loss of civility in politics, but we can be polite and lose, or fight and win. More Power to Trump.
And as others have commented on, now that the Russian investigation looks like total cobblers, the Sex “scandal” is the next trick.
Trump must really threaten these wankers for them to be so relentless and desperate.
+ 100, SS2
One UK politician learned from Trump’s victory, and that was Corbyn. Anyone remember his Trump-style rebrand? He was still a joke figure then and it just added to the fun. You can see he took note though:
– Grenfell: public housing disaster. Blame capitalism!
– Sex scandals: having promoted a man he later had to suspend, amongst quite a lot else, a lesser man than Jez might have paused for thought. But, no, again straight on the front foot and driving down the ground, while Mrs May just bit her lip in the outfield.
Great follow up here:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/12/11/woke-conservatives-and-the-awesome-power-of-not-caring-n2420738
What Steve said, in spades and with knobs on.
Also, worth reading Flubber’s linked piece. Schlicter is always, if nothing else, an entertaining writer.
Indeed. The flubber link is the truth.
The left hate wealth creators. They hate success. They’ve convinced themselves that somehow it isn’t fair.
No matter what the limp shower in government do at the moment they will be shreiked at by the left as being the most right wing government ever and killing homeless babies for fun.
Mrs T won because she didn’t give a fuck what the left thought of her and adopted policies that normal people knew were right.
“… left a nineteen year old, not his wife, to drown after drunkenly driving off a bridge.” If the Kennedys admitted to that then what happened must have been worse.
Flubber,
“Why do Republicans and Tories come off as RINO’s / BluLabour? Because of the howling mob that screams whenever they don’t toe the socialist line.”
I don’t know about the Republicans, but in my experience, the Tories aren’t putting up an image. They’re very much in favour of large state, interference in people’s lives. The only reason they aren’t pissing lots of money away is because of the deficit, not because they ideologically object to any spending.
Even the young Conservatives are now Blairites.
Do not waste your time joining them. The Hannan and Redwood types are extremely rare. I met one in the local party. If you want a reformist party, start one.
A friend of mine has determined that she will read Killary’s new book in the hope that she can use it learn how to be a success and “speak up” as she called it.
I’ve had to bite my tongue on this one. How is it possible for an adult (40+) to be so naïve ? How can someone learn anything from this creature: harridan, incompetent. Crook and loser ? It just goes to show how blind liberals are. I despair I really do.
I pretty much just ignore and pass over anything written by the “lose with dignity” crowd. They have nothing to say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before and it will have the same lack of impact it did a thousand times before. Those people exist to get paid and go to cocktail parties, they are comfortable and secure in life and that’s all that matters. They have no interest in results.
But, no, again straight on the front foot and driving down the ground, while Mrs May just bit her lip in the outfield.
More like picking the ball up, throwing it to the boundary and then daring the umpire not to signal four runs, knowing the Momentum mob in the stands will invade the pitch and beat the umpire up. May at square leg applauding the crowd.
Do not waste your time joining them. The Hannan and Redwood types are extremely rare. I met one in the local party. If you want a reformist party, start one.
Years ago, back around 2001, I joined the Conservative Party and was invited to an evening out with some Young Conservatives. I subsequently found myself in a group of dorks who were unbelievably thick, just simply not very bright, whose parents had wasted thousands on a private education for them. One of them got so drunk he fell over and spent half the evening yelling out sexual obscenities (he was gay). I never went anywhere near them again and let my membership expire. When I brought it up with someone later they said “Oh yes, that’s normal. Only the Labour lot are worse, and the Lib Dems even worse than that.”
A friend of mine has determined that she will read Killary’s new book in the hope that she can use it learn how to be a success and “speak up” as she called it.
I’ve had to bite my tongue on this one.
I learned a while ago not to take this sort of person seriously and start taking the piss. You should have asked your friend who her husband is, because that had far more bearing on Hillary’s career than anything she said or did herself.