I missed it being ol' Walter Cronkite's 100th birthday yesterday. So I'll talk about TV "news". The medium he pioneered, which used to be staffed by real journalists and which had to follow standards. They don't much do either, anymore and they have played a big role in the destruction of democracy.
When Donald Trump's primary robo-blonde shield, Kellyanne Conway, went on Anderson Cooper's show, he asked about Melania Trump's cluelessly ironic speech about how, as First Lady she intended to use her powers to cleanse the internet of meanness and incourtesy and personal statements about personal appearance. Considering it's her husband who has raised all of those to new levels in public discourse, especially with vulgar, cruel, crude comments about the appearance of women, disabled people, etc. she should have broken the irony meter with that speech.
Well, when Anderson raised the contents of some of Donald Trumps tweets to his campaign manager, her response was to accuse him of "cherry picking" things Trump said, as if Anderson couldn't have brought up hours and hours of video and audio clips, scores and hundreds of Trump tweets, to illustrate the point that Ms. Trump and the Trump campaign was massively and obviously hypocritical in complaining about a practice that their own guy, Donald Trump, has promoted by example and by encouragement in his own fanatical followers. Anderson Cooper wasn't "cherry picking" he was forced by his format to to be negligent in choosing only what he did, there should have been a long segment illustrating how Donald Trump has driven down political language to Nazi brown-shirt, Hitler Youth levels of cruel, vulgar and taunting invective.
If Melania Trump broke the irony meter with her speech, Kellyanne Conway should have broken the phrase, already misused to the point of uselessness, "cherry picking". It's time it was retired, along with people like Conway.
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I have begun to wonder if any of the lying surrogates for Donald Trump will pay a price for their role in his campaign. In our media, I doubt it. They'll be hired just as CNN hired Corey Lewandowski, pretending he was a credible commentator on the very campaign he was a part of and that of Hillary Clinton's which he has used his position at CNN to attack. Well, it is clear that they have bent their own rules because several times, most recently the other day, it's clear that CNN has maintained him despite it being obvious he's still working as part of the Donald Trump campaign. He and Kellyanne Conway would be considered fatally damaged goods in any journalism that valued truth instead of spin and the cabloid media seldom has demonstrated they do in the past.
Ted Turner was a businessman who thought he had a good idea in creating the 24 hour news format in CNN, it turns out that the 24-7 news format is mostly going to be filled with empty headed people with good skin and good screen tests prattling about stuff they don't know about, saying what they figure their bosses will want people to believe.
No, it turns out the longer they've got to talk, the worse it gets. I always used to give the example of CBC radios great half-hour news program, The World at Six, which managed to give more straight news in 30 minutes than CNN did in a whole day of babble. I strongly suspect the United States would be a smarter country if the cabloid news operations went out of business altogether. For one thing they would stop operating as a bad example to the rest of the media which has followed its example in unscripted, loose talk, frequently false and mostly misleading. It doesn't help that a lot of the people they hire are pretty unintelligent and superficial media models.
MSNBC has a few hours at night where people like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, try to do better and generally succeed, but they don't make up for the mostly crap schedule of even that station. I have generally avoided watching Mika and Joe but, watching some of their show in clips the other day, I couldn't stand how both stupid and dishonest they are.
[Wait, before going on. I had to edit that last sentence. At first first I wrote, "I couldn't believe how..." but it was wrong, having seen a lot of TV "news" of course I believed it, it is entirely in line with what TV news is. ]
The world would be a lot better off if anyone who wanted to broadcast on American airwaves or to take up the attention of the American electorate had to fund a totally non-commercial, totally independent news operation- the for-profit guys dumping any pretenses about really caring about more than making money by peddling stuff between crap entertainment. But I wouldn't include something with the continual babbling of the cabloid "news" stations. That format can't do anything other than act as a means of stupid people to say stupid stuff off the top of their heads. There's a reason Rachel Maddow comes off as intelligent, most of what she says on TV is intentional, much of it written CAREFULLY beforehand. What impromptu discussion there is is generally kept in check by the questions asked and by not having on people in the Kellyanne Conway - Corey Lewandowski class of liars without carefully having on people who can refute them or knowing the refutation of their lies. But that's hardly ever the case on cabloid "news".
Cable "news" has made the country believe lots of lies, that is the same thing as making America stupider. And when Americans are made stupider, the politics that depends on them knowing the truth so the truth can make them free, is stupider. This year that results in Donald Trump being in reach of the presidency, perhaps bringing the Rodrigo Duterte style of governance he's been promising his TV addled cult members. That should not be allowed. There is no rational reason to allow it in a democracy, the friggin' First Amendment either serves democratic self-government instead of being permission to destroy democracy or it is just a meaningless stream of words.
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