First let's get the in-your-face variety out of the way. Donald Trump led another Nuremberg-style rally Thursday and vowed to bring the troops back home so that they might be deployed "somewhere else" - meaning, presumably, closer to home if not Homeland itself. And even though city cops were barred by their chief from attending the Minneapolis rally, Trump had his own detail of Redshirts on hand to escort protesters from the premises the moment he barked out the order.
Now let's get to the Democratic resistance to this offal-ness. Frontrunner Joe Biden (Fascist-lite) looks more corrupt by the minute, with reports (so far, by only right-leaning media outlets) that not only did he work closely with the CIA "whistleblower" in the White House, this same informant may also have accompanied the former vice president to Ukraine during and after the US-backed coup. Another report, via Rudy Giuliani, claims that Biden received a $900,000 contribution from a Ukraine lobbyist. Biden's campaign is furiously attacking the corporate media for covering all this sleaze, essentially demanding that they cease and desist from practicing journalism in the public interest (not that journalism in the public interest is that much of a thing any more.) Whether these allegations are true, mainly true, somewhat true, or false, mainly false or somewhat false seems moot at this point. Biden is being tainted by them. It's such a shame that this taint is covering up his proven 40-year record of anti-social neoliberal rhetoric and policy. But whoever said life was fair?
Elizabeth Warren, although inching up in the polls and threatening Biden's standing, is nevertheless being hammered from both right and left for "PregnancyGate." The scandal is that although Warren has been saying on the campaign trail that she was fired from a teaching job nearly half a century ago because of pregnancy, earlier video then surfaced of her explaining she'd quit the profession because she lacked the necessary teaching credentials.
Both narratives are likely true. Even if she weren't actually physically fired by her now-deceased principal, she had been due to give birth just as the new school year was starting in September. She knew she wouldn't be allowed to show up for classes either in labor or immediately postpartum, so she preemptively quit before they ever had a chance to fire her. Sure, she fudged the facts, but the essential truth remains that her pregnancy, and all the sexist bigotry then in play, got in the way of her career. She was, for all intents and purposes, barred from employment. So I'd give her a "mostly-to-somewhat true" rating. Her slanted version of events doesn't rise to the gross level of, say, Hillary Clinton's totally false claim that she once dodged sniper fire in Bosnia. Warren was trying to show empathy for women. Clinton was trying to show she was a war hawk to her bones.
But still, I'm torn. Even little bitty lies in the greater service to the truth are fraught, because they tend to turn into greater big fat lies in the service of whatever definition of "truth" is convenient at the time. What do you think?
Also of concern is Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's implied threat that he will meddle with Warren's campaign by suppressing her ads and other campaign information as payback for her direct threat to break up his monopolistic social media giant. The pasty-faced little putz was caught on audio vowing to "go to the mat" to insure his continuing status as Master of the Universe. He might even do more damage than Russian troll farms in swinging the election away from Warren and toward, probably, Trump. Or just as bad, toward Hillary Clinton in the brokered convention lots of people are predicting.
Finally, there was Bernie Sanders's heart attack, and to make the blow even worse, the nearly simultaneous death of his daughter-in-law. The corporate press can barely contain its glee, producing an avalanche of "questions are now being raised about his candidacy" and "shadows are being cast on his candidacy" - which is nothing but code that ever so subtly bellows out "Quit, Bernie, Quit!"
My take is that if he wants to stop holding raucous rallies in order to rest and recuperate, then let him, and don't hold it against him. He can easily address the voters by video. Campaign seasons are way too brutally long anyway. If the other candidates in the field had any decency, they'd cut back on their own schedules out of solidarity, and as a way of protesting the made-for-TV spectacle that our politics has become. For those who market "party unity" above all else, then let them put their money where their mouths are for a change.
Speaking of protests, Tulsi Gabbard is threatening to boycott next week's debate over the continued rigging of the process by the Democratic National Committee, along with its rank commercialization into spectacle. If I were her, I'd use the few minutes allotted to her out of the dozen competing voices on the stage to vocally and loudly expose everything she knows about corrupt party machinations and profiteering media bias. Otherwise, the viewers at home might think she's acting out of sour grapes, or that she simply wimped out.
Somebody on that stage should, at the very least, express concern that a new poll reveals that fully 77 percent of Democrats "trust" the same CIA that, among its many other fascistic activities and atrocities, once rescued and then recruited Nazi war criminals to come work for the United States in the Cold War battles against "the Russians."
So my question is what they'll be chanting at next summer's Democratic Convention. Will "USA! USA! USA! be replaced by "CIA! CIA! CIA!"?
This affinity for the "intelligence community" and "less-bad" fascism no doubt stems from Trump-hatred and not from any true admiration of this unaccountable and often rogue de facto branch of the government. Public opinion can turn on a dime, depending on whatever propaganda is being spooned out to the public at any given time. It was only a few short years ago that the public was on the definite outs with the spooks because of Bush-era torture and the break-in by the CIA of the computers of the senate committees that were investigating the torture.
But wait. Since comic Ellen DeGeneres recently shared a private box with George and Laura Bush at a Dallas Cowboys football game, the message the ruling class wants to impart is that since the ruling class mission of Bush rehab has been accomplished, all the fans and maimed Iraq war veterans at home should just relax and enjoy it. If you're a contrarian who took issue with a celebrity schmoozing with a folksy war criminal, then it just proves how petty you are, announced a whole slew of co-celebrities and Democratic donors, strategists and pundits.
Ellen, remember, is a treasured member of the same incestuous NBC family which employs Bush's daughter Jenna as a co-host on its infotainment "Today Show." Just like Meghan McCain, Hunter Biden, Chelsea Clinton, Ivanka Trump and virtually all children of politicians and plutocrats, she achieved her position based purely upon her own talents and merits and expertise.
NBC is the same network that for years ignored former Today host Matt Lauer's sexual abuse of its less-elite female employees, including sweeping an alleged rape under the rug. It's currently reeling from a new Ronan Farrow book alleging that it also suppressed reports of Harvey Weinstein's long history of predation.
But I guess it could always be worse. NBC could be hosting - and tainting - next week's Democratic debate, which will be jointly controlled by the private media companies CNN and the New York Times. NBC won't get its own turn until November, when the Gong Show field could be winnowed down to a shocking final ten contestants.
It's a real nail-biter. The lucky viewers at home will have a chance to cast their votes as soon as next winter. If you're in an early primary or caucus state which doesn't require corporate party membership as a prerequisite to participation, your vote might even actually count a little bit.
Isn't capitalist Democracy grand? Isn't Fascism grand when it's a fully-owned subsidiary of capitalist Democracy?
Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House is the scare headline in Monday's New York Times.
The lead paragraph follows up with the desired alarmist tone. Cue Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia - or if you're not all that adventuresome, just settle for Joe McCarthy's America:
A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.
OK, so at least Trump hasn't as far as we know yet ordered a hit on a reporter, as Richard Nixon did on muckraker Jack Anderson. Or seized the phone records of reporters and subpoenaed journalists to testify against whistleblowers, as Barack Obama did.
So are the Trumpies going through reporters' garbage to glean their private financial information? Interviewing old girlfriends or boyfriends or spouses to dig up some sleazy dirt on them? Tapping their phones? Hacking their email accounts? Breaking into doctors' offices to steal their medical or psychiatric records?
Well, not quite:
It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.
This is truly shocking stuff. The Trumpies have had the unmitigated gall to read embarrassing information posted by the journalists themselves on social media. And not just regular journalists, like the ones targeted by the Washington Post and the shadowy Prop Or Not organization in 2016,which accused both right-wing and leftist writers of being witting or unwitting Putin operatives who helped steal the election from Hillary Clinton. The public social media posts that are being collected by the Trump operatives were written by employees of some of the most prominent and important news organizations in all of Corporate America. And the operatives are not only reading their social media posts, they are nefariously secreting them in Putinesque dossiers for sordid political purposes!
The Times breathlessly continues:
Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.
How can one make something public that is already in the public domain, for all to see? Could the "research" extending to journalists' families possibly include the widely-known fact that the spouse of NBC anchor Chuck Todd is a paid Democratic Party official, or that CNN personality Chris Cuomo is the brother of the New York governor, or that CNN legal analyst Laura Jarrett is the daughter of chief Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, or that nepotism is pretty much a standard hiring and promotion principle within the consolidated, oligarch-controlled media? The Trump operatives aren't saying, and neither is the New York Times. But when the operatives do leak out their treasure trove of widely available speech transcripts and public tweets and Facebook posts, I'm sure that the Times and the Post and all the rest of the Prominents will be right on it.
Of course, if the right-wing operatives are also targeting lesser-known (and unprotected) critics and writers, that would be a completely different story, ranking right down there with Prop Or Not. But it's telling that the Times seems to be restricting its First Amendment concerns to its own employees and to those employees of other "major" outlets.
No prominent major outlet has ever, for example, written critically about the Prop Or Not smear campaign against some 200 relatively powerless writers and websites. We still don't know the identities of those who compiled the blacklist and tried to ruin the careers and reputations of those decidedly non-prominent journalists.
While it keeps its readers in suspense, the Times claims that at this moment it is virtually impossible for them to speculate on future possibly career-destroying leaks. This is especially true since the already-leaked media posts were all true, and even future, already-public information from the past is also true, mainly because the targets themselves had already openly and honestly leaked and exposed and even bragged their own dirt and hypocrisy back when, as the Times insists, they were mainly callow, brash young adults who didn't know enough to keep their vile qualities to themselves.
Nonetheless, the Times pleads ignorance, because admitting that it doesn't examine either its potential hires' or its current employees' social media histories would be tantamount to admitting that they really don't care if their staffers don't practice or believe in what they now preach. They are loath to admit that their screening practices are also a bit on the shoddy side. The newspaper was caught with its pants spectacularly down only last year, when new editorial hire Sarah Jeong was fired after only six hours on the job when her own fairly well-known public association with Neo-Nazis was publicly "leaked" all over social media.
But that was then, and the Times has conveniently shoved that ancient truth down its memory hole. And this is Now:
It is not possible to independently assess the claims about the quantity or potential significance of the material the pro-Trump network has assembled. Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.
But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.
It is not until we delve deep into the Times coverage that we get to the true nitty-gritty of the piece. Here is the carefully buried lead: it seems that a pair of editorials decrying Donald Trump's recent anti-Semitic remarks and the shady employment past of his new press secretary had been edited by a staffer on the political desk who a decade ago had written a bunch of his own nasty racist and anti-Semitic tweets. And when the Trumpies called the newly "race-woke" paper out on its hypocrisy, the Gray Lady was not amused:
One person involved in the effort said the pro-Trump forces, aware ahead of time about the coverage... were prepared to respond. Early Thursday morning, soon after the profile appeared online, Breitbart News published an article that documented anti-Semitic and racist tweets written a decade ago by Tom Wright-Piersanti, who was in college at the time and has since become an editor on the Times’ politics desk. The Times said it was reviewing the matter and considered the posts “a clear violation of our standards.”
My published comment:
The right-wingers are using "reverse virtue-signaling" and cashing in on the obnoxious Call-Out Culture to do damage to writers whom they perceive to be their political opponents.
When, for example, they exposed a reporter's old anti-Semitic tweets, it wasn't for the purpose of fighting xenophobia, but to gleefully point out that liberals ("elites") can at times be as hypocritical as reactionary neo-fascists. This is not to excuse the anti-Semitic tweets by the reporter, because a 20-something should know better. His excuse that he was only trying to rile up his peers falls flat.
Journalists and aspiring journalists, and for that matter, anybody who cares about their careers and life prospects should probably just stay the heck off Twitter. As the article points out, once you press "submit" or "send" there is no going back. Your whole life can be ruined because of a few ill-advised words that will float forever in cyberspace to be plucked, sliced, diced and taken out of context.
What's more disturbing, to me, is that the Trumpies are also targeting the relatives of reporters in an obvious effort to get them to self-censor. It has the whiff of organized criminal extortionists who threaten the children of their targets to get them to pay up and shut up.
Journalists and all writers should fearlessly keep writing articles and commentary and forgo Twitter wars and trolling. It's a waste of their talents, it's mentally exhausting, and it can come back to bite them.
Like a bedbug in the New York Times "Wellness Room" for embattled and Twitter-exhausted journalists.
New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel certainly feels the precarity and angst of the average working gal. It's getting to be a real juggle of a struggle in the neoliberal jungle, people!
Last week she had to juggle rewriting and padding the "blockbuster" Microsoft press release about more Russian hacking, with caring for her infant daughter, with tweeting up a storm on behalf of the corporate security state, with booking TV appearances to plug the Microsoft story in the interest of the corporate sponsors. She arrived at one early morning gig at MSNBC (formerly Microsoft-NBC) after breaking numerous traffic laws, only to find out they didn't have the right makeup on hand. So it was a battle against both time and finding the requisite under-eye fatigue concealer.
Just reading her "Times Insider" story about how hectic life can be for a dedicated yet frenzied #Russiagate journalist left me feeling exhausted. Her juggling routine left me juggling only two reactionary balls in my own head, compared to her hundred: whether to write her a note and advise her to prioritize her rat-race priorities for the sake of her mental and physical health, or to just ignore her. Tweeting her is not an option, since I have always had a deliberately moribund account.
So pragmatic juggler that I am, I just decided to split the difference, drop the balls, and let off some steam on a blog she doesn't read. Who has time? Certainly not Sheera Frenkel, already so busy it's a wonder she still has time to breathe.
Her description of a #Russiagate-intensive day in the life of a Times working mom-reporter:
I’ve learned a lot about “the juggle” in the year since my daughter was
born. I joined The Times as a cybersecurity correspondent last year when
I was eight months pregnant, fully aware I was taking a high-pressure
job just as everything in my life was about to change. But I have a
supportive husband, family and friends. My editors and colleagues are
understanding, and my husband and I were lucky enough to be able to
afford a nanny. I looked around and saw so many moms doing it under
circumstances so much tougher than the ones I was facing.
Her story itself is a juggling act within a juggling act. How does a working mom Times reporter accomplish kvetch-bragging about her privileged struggle without sounding so privileged and whiney about it? By juxtaposing her struggles with those of "ordinary" working moms who are not quite so well-paid, well-supported, well-understood, married, nannied, credentialed and befriended, of course!
There is a reason parents describe it as a juggle. Even with all the
help, there is constantly a ball in the air you are in danger of
dropping. Most days, the only way to get through is to remove one of
those balls. Stories need to be written, baby needs to get bathed; we
can go one more day without filling the car up with gas, buying
groceries, doing laundry. The first thing to go is always the personal
errands we used to prioritize: dinner with friends, a visit to the gym
or a haircut. Those are now icing on the cake, if and when we get to
them.
And what about all those extras, those little things we all do to
advance our careers that fall outside of the 9-to-5 requirements laid
out in our job descriptions? There are the after-work drinks, the
last-minute dinners with a visiting boss. The out-of-town conferences
and meetings that aren’t mandatory, technically.
Oh, and those annoying appearances on MSNBC and CNN, which are practically mandatory in Consolidated Corporate Media World. Tellingly, Sheera Frenkel does not write about how "supportive" her employer is in providing any kind of onsite nursery care, or subsidized long-term maternity leave. It's a competitive, dog-eat-dog out there, and "just saying no" to overwork, no matter how well-compensated, seems never to occur to her. She couldn't even say no when her bosses asked her write a sidebar story about juggling and tweeting for the weekend edition. They want you to know that there are dedicated professionals behind the #Russiagate propaganda, and that they are human beings just like you and me.
The subtext of her piece is that there's always some other talented journalist out there, waiting in the wings, salivating to steal your job right out from under you. So she and others in the professional "knowledge class" are resigned to the fact that they are essentially on call to their corporate propaganda masters 24 hours a day and seven days a week. She writes unquestioningly:
In journalism, which is never a 9-to-5 job, it’s even harder. News
breaks at all hours of the day, and any phone call might be an important
source with blockbuster news. Journalists are increasingly pushed to
have a presence on social media. They are called to speak on television
news shows to promote their stories. To be the face behind the byline
means being in a studio early in the morning or late in the evening —
exactly the hours of the day most parents carve out to be with their
kids.
Sheera Frenkel sounds like most professional people, a "willing slave of capital." She doesn't need her "caring" editors to order her to work like a slave. She has totally internalized the ethos, her only solution being how to creatively carve out some spare time for the baby.
As cultural critic Franco Berardi tells it in "Futurability," we are now in an era where
The power of knowledge has been uncoupled from social welfare.We have entered an age of techno-barbarianism: innovation has provoked
precarity, richness has created mass misery, solidarity has become
competition, the connected brain has uncoupled from the social.
The
conjunction among bodies has become fragile, while the connection among
disembodied brains has grown permanent, all-encompassing, and
obsessional, to the point of replacing life with the spectral projection
of life on the ubiquitous screen.
So after her harried onscreen MSNBC appearance to plug the latest New York Times hysteria, all she could do to express her frustration was to take to the ubiquitous Twitter screen and vent into the void. And lo and behold, other working parents came out of the cyber-depths to vent right back. For one bright shining moment, Sheera Frenkel was no longer alone, no longer just a cog in the capitalist machine, no longer an ant in the mindless ant farm, no longer an atomized dehumanized automaton. The cyber-security expert was herself fleetingly cyber-secure.
Of course, those are not her words, but mine. Here are her words:
Lots of moms, and some dads, wrote me to say that they could relate to
the impossibility of trying to give your all both at work and at home.
Some people wrote to tell me that I was a terrible mother, and that I
should have stayed home with my child. Others wrote to tell me I was a
terrible journalist, skirting my responsibility to inform the public in
order to be with my child.
That's another thing. Besides print reporters plugging #Russiagate to TV reporters, and print reporters then plugging and quoting TV reporters in the newspaper in order to cement the "narrative," it is also the duty of journalists working the #Russiagate franchise to tweet incessantly and thereby portray themselves as central actors - sympathetic, put-upon victims of both the reading public and Trump - in whatever story they are writing. It does not occur to them to quit Twitter, let alone their jobs, or after-hours drinks and TV appearances. At most, as the uber-productive Times reporter Maggie Haberman recently did, they will "pull back" from social media until such time as they can recover from the 24/7 chore of feeding the trolls and then having to write more Times articles about the chore of feeding the trolls and pulling back from Twitter.
But to hear Sheera Frenkel cheerfully tell it, it's all been worth it. Or so she says. To admit otherwise might put a damper on her career.
That's sad. Back when I was a working-mom journalist, my most memorably frantic career moment came when I had to abandon an article and leave work early when the school nurse called me to pick up my daughter, on whose head lice had been discovered. I drove the 20 miles to pick her up, envisioning juggling my nitpicking editor with the physical picking of nits. Luckily, the "lice" turned out to be just remnants of shampoo, which as a juggling working mom I had failed to completely rinse out the previous night. The school nurse's name was, aptly enough, Mrs. Dudman. I doubt that she reads this blog or even tweets, let alone breathes. She'd be at least 97.
Back then, (in the temporarily booming deregulated Clintonoid 90s) I was even allowed to work from home on days that my kids were sick. This being before the Internet, the paper would actually send a courier over to pick up my copy.
Reporters covering local news aren't the only ones out of a job these days. What's a courier, anyway?
Foreign democracy-meddler Rupert Murdoch eventually bought the local paper, which was drastically downsized and assimilated into the consolidated corporate media borg. I didn't even have the outlet of Twitter to unleash my angst and my wrath. I think that was probably a blessing and still is, because unleashing your angst on Twitter and expecting to hold on to your brilliant career when, ten years from now your angst is deemed un-PC, is not conducive to a continued brilliant career in any field.
I wouldn't trade places with Sheera Frenkel for a million bucks or a thousand cable TV spots.
