This has been the fundamental problem the political press has had with Trump.
They’ve been conditioned to believe it’s only a scandal if it’s a secret that’s been exposed, so all the crimes that Trump does brazenly out in the open — bragging about them on camera even — somehow don’t count.
"everyone knows trump is a crook and a fascist and an incompetent wannabe dictator, so none of this is news. But if Biden doesn't wear a necktie? Hooboy, convene the editorial staff"
There’s a strand of political reporter who wants, above all else, to impress you with how Savvy they are.
They treat Trump scandals like hipsters treat music — if the normies have heard of it, pffft, who cares, that’s old news
Totally agree--I think it's part of a self-perpetuating syndrome in which political reporters are overrewarded by their bosses for never sounding alarmed or surprised. Constant knowingness and immunity to acting as if anything is meaningful on a good-to-evil scale is prized. It's so damaging.
I don't think there was a time period in which the savvy reporters ever saw Trump scandals with the energy and visceral distaste they showed for literal generations over everything the Clintons did. It's like they arrived to the topic pre-bored.
But it's simple. Everyone at the dinner party already knows that Trump is a fascist and a crook and, most unforgivably, /uncooth/, so to discuss it would be to commit the most cardinal of sins: to be a bore.
But Clinton? Biden? They are part of polite company, so a scandal? That's ripe for gossip
The projected consequences of another Trump presidency aren’t inherently boring, but those same dinner party goers are assuming they won’t be touched by them
I agree that all sorts of elites, from the very highest levels down to all sorts of company and journalism professionals, assume a complete authoritarian Trumpist regime takeover won't personally trouble or damage them. I think they're wrong about that.
I get a kick out of all the folks assuming they’ll be invited to sit at the table for the dinner party. Many of them will find themselves bussing the table, and they’ll be the lucky ones, as opposed to those placed on enemy lists, despite their undying support for the new king
Exactly. And there is an undercurrent of fear in that as well. Complicity = coolness is a very easy contortion, so effective that the actual terror beneath it is unprocessed.
Trump is a villain. When villains do villain shit it's expected. It's when good guys do bad that we get upset.
I feel exactly this way when watching movies. Villain shoots someone and I don't blink, I mean of course they did. But my guy tortures someone to save hundreds of people and I get upset.
Off-topic aside: The depiction of torture as something that works to get the truth, rather than something that works to get the tortured person to say whatever you want them to say, is some bullshit.
I think it's about expectations. There is an expectation that Republicans will be corrupt, so when they are it's not very newsworthy. Dem corruption is more newsworthy. And there is an expectation that Dems are more louche - but that doesn't seem to grant more leeway. (A good thing)
A scandal is embarrassing; a crime is illegal. Part of the problem is the absorption of "crime" into "scandal." Most of Trump’s scandals aren't scandals, they're just crimes. Also true of other Republican "scandals," which always involve treason or murder.
it's useful to recall the way that the entire news industry united in being obsessed with the absolutely minor and not criminal issue of Hillary Clinton's email server; while they reported on various Trump crimes, they never found that criminality in itself to be an interesting & major topic
And how much of that is just the media trying to force an election into a “horse race” narrative, insisting both sides have equivalent problems and flaws.
The problem has always been that the establishment found trump useful enough that the crimes could be ignored for a price trump would have been in jail decades ago if his crimes weren't so lucrative for the right people.
I hate so much how accurate this is.
The lesson of Watergate for the press was not the value of covering the corruption, it was in uncovering a "secret."
you forget a step beyond just allocating this to trump — inspiring a congressional hearing that either creates a wildly damaging for society clown show, a massive bore or flips the script into an Orwellian nightmare / forever war — good luck investigative journalists !
the minute we blended politics & government with entertainment & celebrity, this was inevitable.
We're just breeding more domains for little Yogi Berras ("nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's too crowded")
I admit as an REM fan from pre-Murmur days, I was a little weirded out when "The One I Love" became a hit, but still remained a fan
Not sure I ever recovered from The Clash and "Rock the Casbah" because MTV played it INCESSANTLY (and it's not a good song)
“I only like old school trump stuff. Throwing rocks at a baby in a playpen. Trying to push a cadet out a window. Pulling the facade off Bonwit Teller. Overpaying for Eastern Airlines.”
If we're going to get necktie fluff, can I please see a serious story on the rumors that Trump smells like a full diaper most of the time?
I would like to know if this is true or just a thing that people want to be true.
The mountain is "most of the media", though. It would help if every Trump scandal didn't have to compete with five "Joe Biden pronounced 'Medina, Ohio' as 'MedEEn, Ohio' and why this is bad for Democrats" stories.
well trump was good for the media in the sense that they got alllll the clicks as people tried to keep up with the chaos and dipshittery. they want that back. and they make like dems are the only ones with agency. so of course they're gonna do everything they can to try and create trouble for dems.
See also the baseball stat head who loves to tell you which obscure journeyman is actually an All-Star talent while everyone can see for themselves that Aaron Judge hits the ball really far.
And, sometimes these baseball stat heads inexplicably become prominent political pundits.
We’re gonna vibe our way into a dictatorship, aren’t we? Maybe we deserve it?
“There’s a vibe change coming, and not all of us will survive it” was actually talking about how our democracy won’t survive…
Hmmm… if normies have heard of it, it literally is old news, that is objectively true. Long-form news will pad some paragraphs with refreshers but for people who take their news by tweet, yeah, if it’s not new it’s not news. Keeping up with it offers an illusory feeling of control.
Increasingly I’m getting frustrated that we talk about the failures of the New York Times and other papers in this regard as only institutional failures. I wish more people would specifically call out individual reporters
I disagree, I think this really is a top-down problem. Broadly speaking. Most reporters know what is and isn't news imo—but they don't choose what gets printed.
I'd love to see some of the stories that got binned over the past seven, eight years or so.
