Category Archives: Grey Lady

Goddamn it, Grey Lady!

Can you spot the New York Timesisms here? 

The New York Times continues:

“The Biden campaign has built its strategy around telling voters that the November election is a choice between the president, whatever doubts the public has about his age, and an opponent in Mr. Trump, 77, whom they paint as a threat to democracy and personal freedoms.“

Fair is fair, it is the centerpiece of Biden campaign strategy to paint Trump as a threat to democracy and personal freedoms. It is a two billion dollar  campaign strategy to portray Trump, an ordinary political candidate for president with an unremarkable history, mounting a typical reelection campaign, as some kind of existential threat. Calling him a threat as part of an attack ad campaign, like they all do.

Fair is fair, the Trump appointee who Merrick Garland appointed special counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, made comments well beyond the scope of his brief — which was to determine if Biden had or had not committed a crime related to taking government documents. Hur (no relation to Ben) determined that Biden could not be prosecuted and then opined, gratuitously as this blahg you are reading now, that Biden is perhaps in too feeble a mental state to have even been able to form any kind of plan to commit the crimes. No jury would convict such a feeble, doddering, sad, amiable but pitiable old man who barely knew what was going on, added Hur in his final report.  You know how the DOJ always like to include a little gossipy stuff in their official reports, spill a  little tea, like cattily opining about people’s fitness for their elected position and the political reasons to doubt their abilities. 

NY Times, taking the ball and running with it, along with the rest of corporate media.

Or as Biden ad libbed the other day at that news conference where he was angry at special counsel Trump appointee Hur being out of line and working in the interests of a political opponent:

FOX reporter: Are you having problems with your memory?

Biden: I must be, I’m taking a question from you.

Isn’t that right, Grey Lady?

Grey Lady — nuanced, super-polite and complicit in maintaining the status quo

This passes for sober analysis by the New York Times, in our current Age of Narcissism:

Donald J. Trump’s decisive victory in Iowa revealed a new depth to the reservoir of devotion inside his party. For eight years, he has nurtured a relationship with his supporters with little precedent in politics. He validates them, he entertains them, he speaks for them and he uses them for his political and legal advantage.

This connection — a hard-earned bond for some, a cult of personality to others — has unleashed one of the most durable forces in American politics.

source [1]

You won’t read in the New York Times that millions of Americans have been mercilessly screwed for decades by a system, designed to protect the interests of the super-wealthy, that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them. It’s not a hard-earned bond between Trump and the people who support him. He constantly validates their rage, which comes from his own rage at being the world’s greatest winner, yet still not having everything. Trump’s enraged inner child snarls resonantly at the enflamed inner children of his supporters. They love the thought of being him, able to grab women by the pussy (and brag about it), orchestrate a scheme to overturn an election, steal secret documents, lie about having returned them, incite a violent riot to keep himself in power, etc.

Super-wealthy and poor alike get the transgressive thrill of loving a powerful cartoon character who has never been wrong about anything, ever, gets a pass for fraud (his shuttered university, the shut down of his “charity”) and is applauded for doing what they’d all love to be able to do: constantly launch vicious attacks against those you hate and lie in your fucking face you goddamned fucking fuck.

As for a deep bond with little precedent in politics — what the devil are you talking about, Grey Lady? There’s plenty of precedent, all of it ended very badly for those who didn’t like being annihilated by an insane demagogue/cornered rat with a deeply devoted following willing to kill and die for their leader.

[1] The Grey Lady’s headline and lede:

The Most Durable Force in American Politics: Trump’s Ties to His Voters

If Donald Trump’s rivals want to stop his rise, they’ll need to break his bond with his supporters. They didn’t come close in Iowa.

Neat paragraph on Elon Musk bio

from Jennifer Szalai, in a recent NYT book review

By “we,” Musk presumably meant Tesla in that instance. But Musk likes to speak of his business interests in superhero terms, so it’s sometimes hard to be sure. Isaacson, whose previous biographical subjects include Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient — a hazard for any biographer who is given extraordinary access. At one point, Isaacson asks why Musk is so offended by anything he deems politically correct, and Musk, as usual, has to dial it up to 11. “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped,” he declares, “civilization will never become multiplanetary.” There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence, but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean?

Elon Musk Wants to Save Humanity. The Only Problem: People. https://nyti.ms/3sTPLUX

Grey Lady leads with this

For President Biden, a Political Liability That May Not Go Away Soon

The collapse of a plea deal and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden mean the president could face political fallout for months to come.

What the fuck? The New York Times leads with four variations on this theme — the appointment of a special counsel, the same Chrump-appointed US attorney who negotiated the plea deal with Hunter Biden that was attacked over and over by Republicans who sent “friend of the court” briefs to the Crump-appointed federal judge who took the extraordinary step of voiding the agreement of the parties, rejecting Hunter Biden’s guilty plea to rarely charged misdemeanors.

Elected Republicans screamed bloody murder that Hunter Biden had received special treatment, a “sweetheart deal” somehow after his laptop and his dick pics, and his drug taking and his late payment of taxes and his job, making a lot of money capitalizing on his famous father’s name. In exchange for peace he pled guilty to a misdemeanor most people are not even charged with, late payment of income tax.

Then a Chrump appointed federal judge, egged on by Chrumpie’s myrmidons, threw out the agreement. The Chrump-appointed US attorney who was appointed special counsel has already written two letters to MAGA extremists in the House informing them that there was no fucking evidence of there there and that Garland had not interfered in any way in an investigation that lasted years longer than Mueller’s, even John Durham’s equally damning investigation.

So, of course, on a day that defendant Chrump got warned in federal court about posting things like “IF YOU COME AFTER ME, I’LL HAVE YOU ASPIRATIONALLY FUCKING KILLED” the New York Times leads with four articles about a political liability for Joe Biden that might not go away soon.

What the fuck? Seriously, Grey Lady, what the fucking fuck?

The Grey Lady Asks Again

It turns out the Times is talking about that solid 37% of Republican voters who find Chrumpie’s feces indescribably delicious and the seeming inevitability, given his standing with this solid, faithful block, of him being impossible for another extreme right wing candidate to beat in the Republican primary.

0% of this 37% of Republicans, according to a recent NYTimes/Sienna College poll about the 2024 election, believe he has committed any crime, just 2% concede he might have done something wrong.

Why is he so hard to beat? Better title: Why are 37% of Republican voters so fucking stupid and immune to evidence? It’s not like 37% of one of only two major American political parties are actually Klan members or Nazis… I don’t believe that, even in the most Exceptional totally non-racist nation a white, angry, intolerant, violence-endorsing Jesus ever blessed.

NY Times cites John Yoo’s defense of Black Klansman Clarence Thomas

In light of recent revelations that Clarence and Ginni Thomas took many undisclosed lavish paid vacations (including a half million dollar luxury cruise in Indonesia) with, and recieved obscenely expensive gifts from, a right-wing billionaire and funder of the Federalist Society and other right wing causes, a far right real estate mogul named Crow who inherited great wealth from his father, the New York Times closes their short piece about the scandal with a quote from a former government official who also clerked for Clarence Thomas.

Coincidentally the former official was an author of the fucking torture memo, that secret legal fig leaf that made it “legal” for US contractors to violate international law and treaties that the US had signed, in order to go to the dark side fighting the “War on Terror.” Here’s fucking John Yoo with the last word on the latest unfair attack on Thomas in the “liberal” NYT’s short account:

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who clerked for Justice Thomas and served in President George W. Bush’s administration, said he did not believe that vacations or gifts would play any role in the decisions he issued. The criticism of the justice’s ties to Mr. Crow, he added, reflected a broader campaign.

“This is part of this attack on him that goes back to ever since he joined the court,” Mr. Yoo said. “That somehow he couldn’t hold these views from his own free thoughts.”

source

According to Bill Barr, and MAGA, there is no systemic racism against black people in this country

The lede of a recent troubling New York Times article, under this headline:

Childbirth Is Deadlier for Black Families Even When They’re Rich, Expansive Study Finds

In the United States, the richest mothers and their newborns are the most likely to survive the year after childbirth — except when the family is Black, according to a groundbreaking new study of two million California births. The richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die as the richest white mothers and their babies.

The graphics at the beginning of the online version of the article (link above) show the number of children who die in the first year of life per 100,000 childbirths for wealthy white, poor white, wealthy black, and poor black mothers.

All I can say right now is fuck Bill Barr and his bad breathed, bagpiping, culture warrior, killer asshole ilk.

NYT opinion writer Charles M. Blow cited this hard truth from a fifty-five year old report by a Presdidential Commission:

As the 1968 Kerner Commission report put it: “What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

source

It’s a tragic law of human nature, if a deadly thing doesn’t affect you, or anybody you know, it’s hard to work up much feeling about it. Most of the time you are not only unaware of it, but, if it threatens your worldview in any way you will indignantly deny it if somebody brings it up.

Homo sapiens, the wise ape.

Take it from the Grey Hag

The Gray Lady hastens to remind readers that our elections are won by the party with the best slogan, a winning market-driven vision that encapsulates a compelling narrative in a single phrase, MAGA, for example, or, even better, Q.

It follows that a political party does not win an election by highlightting a wide range of policies they’ve enacted, against determined, lockstep opposition, to help millions of Americans, they do it by using effective single-issue branding and messaging.

So, according to the Grey Lady’s top headline a day or two back, top Democrats are hissing at each other because, once again, they’re going to lose because they’ve concentrated on the wrong metrics to win, instead of picking one (like “Make America Great Again”) in a majoritarian democracy where money is speech, time is money, and the citizens’ attention spans are two and a half seconds long.

If it is not a single idea that fits on a baseball cap, and it doesn’t inspire blind single-minded purpose, the battle is lost, in the considered opinion of the Grey Lady’s headline writers.

They also had a top headline that Joe Biden made two verbal gaffes at a recent campaign stop. Imagine that! MAGA GAGA, NYT. I don’t know why you do it, but nobody does it better.

Top Democrats Question Their Party’s Strategy as Midterm Worries Grow https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/us/politics/midterm-elections-worrying-democrats-strategy.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhlSVUbAibIRp8_qRmHmfnE2_s5h3PiITKQDDtGwu8JAo-G4ALSYrB5dto10HGXSdpGO6UmWOc31fNFNlBgRBjuooeBnN5NBRQJnr-JfzF82YPRD_d_-CX2b2K9JaByzefj40_cOn28CKPZzXEhIAx6qMZgJUWh3iAMzvvFRrEh39FuzLx2UMABMDQKYSeAu_HtCgwve4nVK0GBtXRlHr1RSjrRntWD67ofcQ00CljOSHJ34WlU-8oLcZpMf_65d0h8DZK41bYBCWVoL5OqB4kyQ-XUlbZtuL3Or3-c2aVHIphJmuuQVoWn6X1P6OU