On the media...
Surely the media doesn't want Fascism to prevail, does it? Perhaps you should rethink that premise, as the American media moguls were more than happy to help sanitize the worst of the Nazis.
Today’s outstanding post by the incomparable Jeff Tiedrich has helped clarify a post that has been knocking around in my mind for quite some time now. The “pillars” of the main stream media, aka The New York Times, and The Washington Post, have been rather poor stewards of either the “news” or the “truth”. They (along with the bastions of the cable TV news, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and others) are businesses, and they are owned by some of the same oligarchs that are rooting for tax breaks and preferential treatment.
Their latest screeds are all about their inability to corner Kamala Harris and/or Tim Walz for a “long form” chin-wag, aka interview. They rail about the “lightness” of the policy positions of the Harris campaign, about how they don’t know what she stands for, and that it isn’t fair. From this morning’s post by Jeff Tiedrich1, he drops this truth:
with all this going on, the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media have an important message they want to share with the Dems: what are you doing, being happy? don’t you realize how fucked you are?
I mean these headlines just reek of desperation (or lack of access):
Get the baby AG Sulzberger a binky.
But, this is more than a one-off, it is a theme. It is part of the reason they were part of the melee to eject Biden from the race, as he wasn’t playing by their rules where it is their birthright to have all presidential candidates sit down to be grilled by their “experts” on trivia as well as “meaty” policy topics.
They claim that the Trump campaign obliges. Well, of fucking course they do, as the orange sphincter basks and revels in the klieg lights of the press that he so denigrates on the trail.
As much as that fucker bitches about the Times, he is 100% appreciative when they mention him, and cover him. He is of the belief that all exposure is good, and the Times, the Post, and even CNN are all in on feeding that maw of an ego the juice that makes him jizz in his jeans2.
It is almost as if the Media tycoons are A-OK with the fascists that are maneuvering to seize control in early 2025. They have been weak at tying Trump to the Project 2025 albatross, using their fact checking departments to tut-tut those who attempt to make the connection, regardless of how many threads and shared staff/personnel between the Trump administration and the Heritage Foundation, the fathers of the Project 2025 blueprint.
No, there is tons of bias and attempts to both-sides every factoid. More from Tiedrich:
CNN’s all knicker-twisted because Kamala’s been giving interviews to social media influencers, while ignoring the mainstream media.
Vice President Kamala Harris taped three interviews this week at the Democratic National Convention, but none were with any of the 15,000 credentialed journalists here in Chicago. Instead, they were with social media influencers, including Vidya Gopalan, a North Carolina mom known to her 3.4 million TikTok followers as @queencitytrends.
free clue for CNN: Kamala doesn’t need you wasting her time on bullshit like Donald Trump says you’re a flabbedybloop. what do you say to that? what would be the point of dignifying that with a response? Kamala’s talking to the influencers because she can rely on them not to fixate on stupid shit.
Just perfectly laid out. Please, give Kamala Harris credit for realizing that the people who need to be convinced, to be reached, are not readers of the NY Times. No, they live on social media, they follow key influencers, and they have their circles of trust.
And you know who they no longer trust? The fucking NY Times. The Fucking Wall Street Journal, and the fucking Washington Post. No, legacy media no longer is in the driver’s seat.
But this distrust is new, right? I mean I am sure that the NY Times was uber critical in their reporting of other rises of Fascism in living memory right?
Ok, time for some truth-bombs. The US media in the 1920’s and 1930’s was abysmal about the rise of the Nazi’s. They universally felt that the antisemitism was about the “lower class” eastern European Jews, not the cosmopolitan, society, and wealthy Jews like the NY Times publisher during the run up to WWII, Adolph Ochs. After he passed in 1935, the paper passed down to his heirs, the Sulzberger’s who still own the paper today (also Jewish).
Alas, they not only didn’t criticize the rise of Nazi’s and the escalating ladder of atrocities against the Jews in Europe, they sort of thought they were helping clean up the riff raff.
One of the podcasts that I religiously listen to is “Behind the Bastards3”. Each week, they do two episodes, and this last week, the two-part episode was titled: “How The Liberal Media Helped Fascism Win”, and it is fascinating.
Episode 1 is here (warning, the language is about as foul as what I write):
And the second installment:
I do encourage you to listen to this two hours, it is time well spent, and it will be hugely illuminating of how the press behaves today. Prepare to be very pissed off.
So, when the media does a fact check of the Harris campaign, they say stupid shit like this:
Vice President Kamala Harris:
“We know what a second Trump term will look like. It’s all laid out in Project 2025, written by his closest advisors.”
Fact check:
However, former President Donald Trump has not adopted the blueprint as his campaign platform and has attempted to distance himself from it. In July, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they're saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Really? That’s your take away? You’re going to take Trump’s disavowal as truth, even though not a single rational person will agree with your milquetoast, pithy excuse of a slur.
Occasionally, one of the major outlets will be in point:
Be more like the LA Times.
No, the media is clearly pulling for the horse race, and it is imperative to their bottom lines to keep it close, and to keep Trump relevant, because he’s ratings (and click-bait) gold.
For now, I am glad that Harris is taking the at arm’s length approach with the media, and making them grovel.
Yeah, that feels like the right way to approach the shitbirds.
And I didn’t even have to dive into the hot mess that is MAGA Haberman, the queen of Trump fluffing. That will need to be for a different post.
Do you thin Trump has ever owned any jeans? The weird shit I think of when I free-form these posts…
I can’t recommend this podcast enough. I subscribe to their parent company, Coolzone Media, to avoid the ads, but I listen via the Apple Podcasts app. They are also on I Heart Radio.
Excited to watch the videos, thanks for sharing!
Funny. There was a piece about Donald in the NYT this morning and it had like 250 comments and every one of them was like “nobody cares about this trash anymore!” and “Why do you insist on covering this liar like he could ever be normal?” And so on. I have a feeling the glory days of clicks for stuff about “Little Donny fuckface” are coming to a close. I am seriously getting the vibe that America is ready to move on.
One other thing. If y’all are still on the socials, give Scott Dworkin a follow. He runs campaigns - daily - to force the media to change their headlines. He’s quite effective.