By the Pricking of My Thumbs

Something Clicked This Way Comes

Just a few quick thoughts and speculations on the latest thrilling episode of Hillary's Life of Scandal.

--While a hypothetical President-elect Clinton would not have the immediate power to fire FBI Director James Comey for trying to spoil her coronation, she theoretically could grant herself the additional power to abolish the entire agency once she took office. Since dissension within the ranks of the Bureau was reportedly the impetus for Comey's letter to Congress about some newly-discovered emails, Hillary would remain highly vulnerable, with or without the current director's resignation.

 -- Look at the whole murky history of the FBI. Teddy Roosevelt did a sneaky summer end-run around an adjourned Congress in 1908 by unilaterally creating his own executive police force. Congress had refused to go along with the formal creation of such a federal agency, rightly fearing that it would operate in too much secrecy. Ominously, the plutocratic Attorney General directly tasked by Teddy with manning the Bureau just happened to be the grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. What one aristocratic Trust-buster and an Emperor's spawn giveth, a once and future mistrusted Empress can (hypothetically of course) easily taketh away.

--When Congress refused to give AG Charles Bonaparte any money for his spy agency, he ignored them, and simply appropriated personnel from the Secret Service. The FBI has been an illegal agency from the outset. But as has been its wont, Congress is loath to overturn an executive order or a secret legal opinion or stealth bombings and invasions once they are "done deals."

--Since the first official task of Roosevelt's quasi-public cop shop was to enforce the Mann Act, and crack down on female sex workers by infiltrating houses of prostitution, wouldn't it be a hoot if one of its very last recorded acts was the attempted destruction of a political campaign by way of cracking down on a male sex addict?

--Of course, the main impetus for the creation of the FBI was the growing popularity of socialism, which spawned widespread paranoia within the ruling class. Roosevelt, remember, only became president when his predecessor was assassinated by an "anarchist." The scary Other back then were not Muslims and Mexicans, but Germans and Italians and other European immigrants. Domestic espionage upon all manner of civil and labor rights activists and pacifists and other critics of the military-industrial complex has long been at the core of the agency's mission. See, for example, COINTELPRO and most recently, the outrageous FBI scanning of Yahoo email under the direction of the talented Mr. Comey. 

 In sum, Hillary, intelligence aficianado that she is, could and likely would simply replace the current FBI with a carefully purged new agency all her own, called the New Improved FBI. 

-- According to its own auto-hagiography, the current Bureau has prided itself from its very inception for selectively rooting out political corruption. In the First Gilded Age, as in our ongoing Second era of inequality, "corruption was rampant nationwide... with crooked political machines like Tammany Hall in full power." So, who knows, Comey might actually think he's a rare and bold adherent of the noble historic spirit of his spy agency.

-- For those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, James Comey is simply doing his unpleasant job, creating an unavoidable smallish mess out of the pre-existing humongous mess created by Clinton herself. As noted above, he is probably bowing to pressure from the rank and file, said to be disgruntled by the government's prior kid-glove treatment of Hillary. As a group, law enforcement unions are almost uniformly supporting Law and Order candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. This doesn't make a lot of sense, given Hillary's own established hawkishness and pro-police history. Then again, Hell tends to be murky.

-- Democrats who are strutting and fretting at Comey (see, for example, Paul Krugman's Twitter meltdown) for politicizing Clinton's mess should direct some of their wrath at President Obama, who in a fit of pathological bipartisanship nominated the shadow banking/surveillance-friendly Republican FBI Director in the first place. Comey's reputation for honesty was a huge selling point at the time. Fair is foul and foul is fair.

--Just when we thought the duopoly, rampant as it has been with promises of war, and threats and actual outbreaks of violence, and revelations of sexism and fraud in the highest echelons, couldn't go any lower, it just got lower. The direct intervention of an unconstitutional police state into the electoral process is something out of a Banana Republic. The attempted hijacking of the "Neoliberal Death Match" between a publicly loathed multimillionaire and a publicly loathed billionaire is just one end-product of the deeply ingrained corruption which has been integral to the American ruling establishment for a very long time. 

--But the extinction of American representative democracy is nothing compared to the ongoing extinction of two-thirds of the earth's animal species. Since that scenario of dusty death is too frightening to contemplate, you are all hereby urged to turn on CNN in order to get fully briefed on DikiLeaks, as well as to get fully hoodwinked by those insipidly incessant and multicultural "I'm An Energy Voter!" commercials sponsored by the planet-destroying petroleum industry.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Nought's had, all's spent/ Where our desire is got without content;/ 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy/ Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. -- Lady Macbeth.

The Trump World We Live In

The New York Times came in for some much-deserved criticism this week over its coverage of the latest episode in the tawdry life of Anthony Weiner. But far from being chastened, the paper is staunchly defending its own tawdry descent into National Enquirer territory.

 I am certainly no fan of Hillary Clinton, but here's the part of the controversial article that made me cringe:

Now, Mr. Weiner’s tawdry activities may have claimed his marriage — Ms. Abedin told him that she wanted to separate — and have cast another shadow on the adviser and confidante who has been by Mrs. Clinton’s side for the past two decades. Ms. Abedin was already a major figure this summer in controversies over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of classified information as secretary of state and over ties between the Clinton family foundation and Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

Mr. Weiner’s extramarital behavior also threatens to remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons’ own marriage over the decades, including Mrs. Clinton’s much-debated decision to remain with then-President Bill Clinton after revelations of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Ms. Abedin’s choice to separate from her husband evokes the debates that erupted over Mrs. Clinton’s handling of the Lewinsky affair, a scandal her campaign wants left in the past.

 When contacted for comment by the Times public editor, one of the writers (Amy Chozick) of the piece said:“I completely understand why people have a reaction to a story like this, and question what it has to do with Clinton or politics, or don’t understand why it should. But that’s not the world we live in.”

Readers had reacted so negatively to her article because not only did the story insinuate that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin are themselves partially culpable for the actions of this troubled, creepy little man, it received pride of place on the top of the front page. It was sexist guilt-by-association with a vengeance.

 Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy then had to add gasoline to the fire by seeking out Donald Trump for his own expert comments. Needless to say, Trump added his own high octane to the gasoline by stating that Clinton's very association with Weiner is a matter of grave national security.

As is its wont, the Times is now doubling down and staunchly defending itself against criticism of its tabloid-style innuendo-rich coverage. Public Editor Liz Spayd herself added gasoline to the fire on Thursday by characterizing the paper's treatment of Weiner's compulsive sexting habit - which now even extends into the realm of child endangerment - as a "hot story."

She writes:

It seems to me this story falls into a realm of news coverage that invariably has the media tripping over itself. There’s a sex scandal, politics and questions about how much one has to do with the other. And contrary to public suspicion, mainstream newsrooms of the type I’ve worked in don’t particularly enjoy these kinds of stories. It’s easy to get ensnared in them and hard to get them right.

I don’t think The Times in this case was wildly off the mark. But it was not precise enough in what it was and wasn’t trying to say. Unfortunately, too many unforced errors can sometimes cost you the game.

Spayd as much as admits that journalism is a sport, with newsroom winners and losers and unforced errors and scorecards. Pretty flippant.

And since I just couldn't get over Amy Chozicks's own flippant retort - that disgusted readers should simply get used to it - I submitted my own two cents:

“I completely understand why people have a reaction to a story like this, and question what it has to do with Clinton or politics, or don’t understand why it should,” she (Amy Chozick) said. “But that’s not the world we live in.”

Ms. Chozick has just obliquely admitted that the mainstream media lives in a world all its own. It's a cocooned, careerist world dominated by horse race politics, clickbait, getting on the Most Popular and Trending lists, and beating the competition on the latest sleaze. It has little to nothing to do with journalism in the public interest.

Forgive me if I don't care to dwell in the world "we" live in, Ms. Chozick.

Hopefully the Times will get back to real reporting on the issues, once this hell of an election season is over. But I'm not counting on it. Coverage of scandals and palace intrigues and petty backbiting and ego-stroking among the elites of the incestuous political-media complex seems to be what passes for journalism these days.

 Coverage of existential issues affecting everyday people apparently just doesn't sell papers or attract enough ad revenue.

Much to my surprise, Amy Chozick responded to me - with a little more gasoline. It's not the media world, folks. It's the "political landscape". (And she seems to assume that since I was critical of her reportage, it naturally follows that I am a biased Clinton supporter) --

 Hi Karen, My comment wasn't about the world "we" (the media) live in, but about the political landscape that we cover. While Clinton supporters would like this to not be an issue, Donald Trump immediately made it one, and thus we have to cover it as such.

I'd also direct you to the numerous stories I've written about Clinton's policy plans, from taxes to criminal justice reform. Those far outweigh anything we've written about Anthony Weiner.

Thanks for writing.
Best,

 Amy

My response:

 Hi Amy,

Thanks for responding and clarifying your statement.

Yes, I have read and admired your many informative pieces on policy. Unfortunately, these are rarely placed above the fold where they belong (that valuable real estate seems to be Donald Trump's exclusive squatting domain lately.)

I look forward to reading your or another reporter's analysis of the very detailed mental health plan which Hillary Clinton unveiled just the other day. If there's already been coverage of it in the Times, and I missed it in trying to navigate the Trump landscape, I do apologize.

Cheers,

Karen

I loved "Tinmanic's" response to Amy:

"While Clinton supporters would like this to not be an issue, Donald Trump immediately made it one, and thus we have to cover it as such."

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Ms. Chozick. I'm flabbergasted at this statement.

Trump said it was an issue, and therefore it's an issue?

Problem number one: if the issue was because of Trump, why is Trump hardly mentioned in the article?

Problem number two: since when did New York Times reporters become mere stenographers for the Trump campaign?

You are letting yourselves be manipulated.

Having worked as a newspaper reporter myself in a previous life, I can only imagine the pressure that Amy Chozick must be under, what with Hillary Clinton being her sole defined beat for the last several years. Boredom must be her constant companion. And Hillary is certainly not known for being "accessible" and for treating the press graciously.

Amy Chozick's rationalizations remind me of the time I was assigned by my male editor to confront the wife of a U.S. Congressman about revelations that he had fathered a child with one of his staffers. (My boss opined that it's always more gently effective for a woman reporter to rub a scorned woman's nose in it.) I telephoned, and immediately informed the wife that I was making the call under duress. When she said she didn't want to air her family's dirty laundry in public, I totally agreed with her, murmured apologies, and quickly ended the call. My editor, who'd been hovering nearby, was furious with me at having wasted such a golden journalistic opportunity and for not being sufficiently cutthroat.

 That was the business I had chosen to be in, but I always exercised my option not to obey all the rules of the game. (I refused, for example, to rush to the scenes of bridge-jumpers and landscapes of human beings mangled up in highway accidents). Such sporadic recalcitrance didn't make me many friends in all-male management. But, as has happened so often in the news biz over the past several decades, the paper was sold and folded before I actually got the chance to be fired.

It's the capitalistic, cutthroat world of creative destruction that we live in.