Pwnallthethings: Has NYT written anything--literally anything--about TX's insane assertion that it is being invaded as a basis to ignore the constitution, or the dozens of other R governors that have backed him, or R talkingheads like Carlson who are talking up the idea of a federal-on-TX shooting fight?

Deleted.

Has NYT written anything--literally anything--about TX's insane assertion that it is being invaded as a basis to ignore the constitution, or the dozens of other R governors that have backed him, or R talkingheads like Carlson who are talking up the idea of a federal-on-TX shooting fight?

(for anyone wondering, this is a rhetorical Q; they haven't)

It’s not nearly as important as parsing the phraseology of Claudine Gay’s Ph.D thesis

There were three stories yesterday about the death penalty / nitrogen case. Which, to be clear, is definitely news and deserves to be properly covered. But whatever you think about the TX stuff, or how much of it is bullshit etc, it is self-evidently *news*.

I think Biden's lack of public mention, as far as I can tell, is also likely creating issues. "This constitutionally bonkers thing happened. The head constitutional officer had no response." is really weird.

I mean, bluntly it is objectively really weird. Which is itself news.

It feels as if he’s trying not to inflame anything while the lawyers prepare a response…

The media shouldn’t be relying on whether a politician say something about an issue to determine whether it’s newsworthy. Biden has valid reasons for not bringing attention to (another) brewing insurrection; the media doesn’t.

I took this as a response of sorts, though not exactly what I had in mind

(Per WaPo)

Yes. And the reason they don’t is basically a “political economy of media” issue. NYT execs have decided the best way to pull in subs and maximize audience is for NYT Politics to push a narrative where R’s are not principally at fault. They promote editors and writers who take that line.

Just being Mr. Obvious here: The New Republic is doing a much better job explaining what is going on. (This is an audience thing too: TNR is, rightly, not trying to assuage the entire NYT audience.) bsky.app/profile/greg...

A strange thing about media coverage of Trump and the border: It largely erases his term as president. He didn't fix anything. He too released enormous numbers of migrants. He couldn't get his own plan passed *with unified GOP control.* My new piece gets into this: newrepublic.com/article/1784...

Trump Forces Terrified Republicans to Bend the Knee Yet Againnewrepublic.com Mitch McConnell’s capitulation to the former president exposes the real MAGA.

I guess the way I'd frame it is they're essentially saying "our political environment is normal; at most minor differences of degree. The Ds and Rs are basically still their 1990s selves, and that is the 'natural' and ever-constant way of things". From there, the rest flows.

If you have that viewpoint, then, yes, 14AS3 for Trump is nuts! And R governors outright rejecting SCOTUS and the federal government is probably just idle talk, not news. Trans rights are an esoteric issue for intellectual debate--surely there can't be more than 5 nationally, right?--etc etc etc etc

But it's all self-deception. Trump isn't Bush or Dole, but moreso. Trump's party is not Reagan's party, or even John McCain or Romney's party. It is an entirely new construction; it's not one whose policies are centre-right to oppose a centre-left, but one that is anticonstitutional. NYT can't adapt

If there's a comparison, it's to George Wallace's 1968 bid. bsky.app/profile/juda...

It's important also to recognize that there was nothing novel about Trump's "content." He is basically George Wallace with a bottled tan and greater TV star power. The novelty, in terms of the transgression but also the transgression's appeal, required the 50 years of progress since Wallace. 5/n

I’m beginning to wonder if the NYT is a threat to democracy.

It wasn't the final straw that broke the camel's back for me (that came a bit later), but the NYT's false equivalences of Clinton and Trump in 2016, when its leaders knew *exactly* who and what Trump was, and its eight-years-and-counting refusal to acknowledge this are why I no longer subscribe.

Meanwhile, others at NYT are picking up on the shift: bsky.app/profile/schr...

Ezra Klein is basically right here. Gen Z is reacting to the only Israel they’ve ever known, and it’s a Bibi-led Israel that makes no bones about its anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian commitments. That, more than anything, is driving the shift in generational attitudes.

Opinion | Gen Z Is Listening to What Netanyahu Is Saying. Is Biden?www.nytimes.com Israel is losing the support of a generation, not just a few student groups. And it is losing it because of what it does, not what it is.

Yes. I have a lot of comfortable centrist colleagues and friends who argue against use of 14AS3. And once I realized those arguments come from a place of desperately wanting to find some way to justify keeping the world the same, I can’t unsee it. That’s my only response to them now.

These issues at heart are about the political economy of journalism. The US has left news nearly completely to unregulated markets and that’s the core problem. NYT became the only profitable general-audience nat’l paper in the country exactly by doing what they are doing now.

Right. And this is the thing: The political era of the 90s-2000s are dead. Gone. Their political environments were no more 'natural' or 'forever' than the political environments of the 1930s or 1920s, or 1800s. Grieve for those times if you must, or have nostalgia for them, but there is no way back

Sure. And it’s their audience that keeps them in the 1990s. It’s not that NYT loves the 1990s specifically. It’s that wealthy news consumers—NYT core audience—don’t want to think about how the world has changed. We need more news outlets that don’t just serve the “Rich, White, and Blue” audience.

That and they never had a great grasp of the 90s political era, in that it was the dominance of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the religious right takeover of the Republican Party happening in that time.

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight

I had a similar thought last night as my teenage daughter listened to some music with “obscene language” in it. Remember Tipper Gore’s campaign to get labels on music? That was the late 90s. Now Taylor Swift, America’s sweetheart, drops f bombs in songs all the time. In less than 30 years.

What is galling, is people who, like you describe, think 14AS3 isn't right to use or blah blah democracy something. Ridiculous. The law is right there in the document that governs the country, with all the other laws people deeply enjoy, like 1A, 2A, 13A, 15A, 19A, and the rest of 14A.

I don’t feel like it’s to keep the world the same, as much as it is to keep it (or themselves) sane. I agree he should be disqualified, but part of me is *terrified* of what that might lead to (e.g. live fire civil conflict) and wants to say “let’s just beat him in November).

The word is legitimately a horror show, and most of us can’t take it all (or even some) in and not break mentally/emotionally. Think Gaza is bad? Let me tell you about Sudan, Rwanda… Think George Floyd was awful, let me tell you about the prison-industrial complex…

Best argument I've heard about that is that if you think they're going to start shit if he's disqualified, what makes you think they wouldn't do the same damn thing if he just loses? We saw what they tried to pull in 2020... This time there will be more planning.

Like buddy I'm not happier about any of this than you are! But ignoring it and pretending everything's normal and okay doesn't actually make it so??

Even some supporting the efforts to disqualify Trump, first through impeachment and now by 14A, have a bit of that view. Many Dem leaders have been *desperate* to try and pin the blame all on Trump, either b/c they really believe it themselves, or b/c they think it will give the GOP an off-ramp.

The problem, of course, is that the bulk of the GOP don't want the off-ramp. They want to keep doing it.

"And R governors outright rejecting SCOTUS and the federal government is probably just idle talk" Just locker room talk, as their leader once put it.

Yes! And NYT Politics takes this line—“our political environment is normal”—for audience reasons. A lot of NYT subscriber base is wealthy people who are comfortable now and want to believe all is normal and their lives won’t change. W/out our current journalism crisis maybe NYT wld be more brave.

I think it’s also that “1990s” politics centers NYT as an authoritative judge of both sides. Accurately contextualizing the GOP is a big loss of face before younger staff and liberal intellectuals that moved left post Iraq & Great Recession.

Same for NPR

The NYT mistakes paralysis for balance. It imagines itself immovable and calls it integrity. It utterly fails to see how this immovability is being used

It's actually more weird that they're not saying anything, rather than saying something but treating it as mere bluster.

Yes. Their audience would get upset if they said “there’s a constitutional crisis and it could break the country in half.” Who wants to read that? It’s scary. People retreat into news avoidance if outlets say that too much. As long as we treat news only as consumer product we will have this issue

Amazing how untrue that supposition is post Trump.

Thank you.

Am I incorrect in assuming, that at least until this gets to current YOLO SCOTUS, the word “invasion” as described in the constitution has very specific legal definitions for which this obviously doesn’t apply?

Correct. It requires an armed invasion, and immigrants (crossing illegally or otherwise) are definitionally civilians

I actually had gone and checked. Nope, not a word, not happening bsky.app/profile/ygal...

Couldn't believe it but @nytimes.com really hasn't written a word yet about Texas playing secession game www.nytimes.com/search?dropm...

The New York Times - Searchwww.nytimes.com

Hot Wheels has committed a felony. Arrest him.

The dissonance is dissociative. The surreal uncanny of emotionally responding & also having that intersection b/t emotional “WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK PEOPLE” & an analytical, “valid/scientific/academic data” potential (tho not of equal probability) explanation can be…dread inducing. For me.

I also do have a raging anxiety disorder so.

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