COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, May 01, 2017

Press Scrutiny

Where the Trump-media war is headed

Pat Buchanan sees current fall of adversary press as Nixon's revenge

THE FOURTH ESTATE

Saturday’s White House Correspondents Association dinner exposed anew how far from Middle America our elite media reside.

At the dinner, the electricity was gone, the glamor and glitz were gone. Neither the president nor his White House staff came. Even Press Secretary Sean Spicer begged off.

The idea of a convivial evening together of our media and political establishments is probably dead for the duration of the Trump presidency. 

Until Jan. 20, 2021, it appears, we are an us-vs.-them country.

As for the Washington Hilton’s version of Hollywood’s red carpet, C-SPAN elected to cover instead Trump’s rollicking rally in a distant and different capital, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Before thousands of those Middle Pennsylvanians Barack Obama dismissed as clinging to their Bibles, bigotries and guns, Donald Trump, to cheers, hoots and happy howls, mocked the media he had stiffed:
“A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom. … I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp … with a much, much larger crowd and much better people.”

Back at the Hilton, all pretense at press neutrality was gone. Said WHCA President Jeff Mason in scripted remarks: “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. We are not the enemy of the American people.”
A standing ovation followed. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press was repeatedly invoked and defiantly applauded, as though the president were a clear and present danger to it.

For behaving like a Bernie Sanders’ rally, the national press confirmed Steve Bannon’s insight – they are the real “opposition party.”

And so the war between an adversary press and a president it despises and is determined to take down is re-engaged.

As related in my book, “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever,” out May 9, that war first broke out in November of 1969.

With the media establishment of that day cheering on the anti-war protests designed to break his presidency, President Nixon sought to rally the nation behind him with his “Silent Majority” speech.


His prime-time address was a smashing success – 70 percent of the country backed Nixon. But the post-speech TV analysis trashed him. 

Nixon was livid. Two-thirds of the nation depended on the three networks as their primary source of national and world news. ABC, CBS and NBC not only controlled Nixon’s access to the American people but were the filter, the lens, through which the country would see him and his presidency for four years. And all three were full of Nixon-haters.

Nixon approved a counterattack on the networks by Vice President Spiro Agnew. And as he finished his edits of the Agnew speech, Nixon muttered, “This’ll tear the scab off those b–––s!”

It certainly did. 

Amazingly, the networks had rushed to carry the speech live, giving Agnew an audience of scores of millions for his blistering indictment of the networks’ anti-Nixon bias and abuse of their power over U.S. public opinion. 

By December 1969, Nixon, the president most reviled by the press before Trump, was at 68 percent approval, and Agnew was the third-most admired man in America, after Nixon and Billy Graham.

Nixon went on to roll up a 49-state landslide three years later. 

Before Watergate brought him down, he had shown that the vaunted “adversary press” was not only isolated from Middle America, it could be routed by a resolute White House in the battle for public opinion.

So where is this Trump-media war headed?

As of today, it looks as though it could end like the European wars of the last century, where victorious Brits and French were bled as badly and brought as low as defeated Germans.

Whatever happens to Trump, the respect and regard the mainstream media once enjoyed are gone. Public opinion of the national press puts them down beside the politicians they cover – and for good reason. 

The people have concluded that the media really belong to the political class and merely masquerade as objective and conscientious observers. Like everyone else, they, too, have ideologies and agendas.

Moreover, unlike in the Nixon era, the adversary press today has its own adversary press: Fox News, talk radio and media-monitoring websites to challenge their character, veracity, competence and honor, even as they challenge the truthfulness of politicians.

Trump is being hammered as no other president before him, except perhaps Nixon during Watergate. It is hard to reach any other conclusion than that the mainstream media loathe him and intend to oust him, as they relished in helping to oust Nixon.

If this war ends well for Trump, it ends badly for his enemies in the press. If Trump goes down, the media will feel for a long time the hostility and hatred of those tens of millions who put their faith and placed their hopes in Trump.
For the mainstream media, seeking to recover the lost confidence of its countrymen, this war looks like a lose-lose.





20 comments:

  1. Oooooh poor ole Trump. Deuce's man Trump gets bad press. It just isn't fair.







    http://deadline.com/2017/05/donald-trump-cuts-off-interview-john-dickerson-1202080474/


    Poor ole Trump!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey, Smug, you showed up just in time, same smirking little comments ! -

      see below -

      Delete
  2. If ABCCBSNBCCNN and The New York Times and The Compost go down, where will Ash get his political views ? Where will Quirk go for his memes ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. America's - North America's ! - SMUG SMIRK PROBLEM

      America’s ‘Smug-Liberal Problem’

      Comedienne Samantha Bee (Reuters photo: Joshua Roberts)

      by DAVID FRENCH

      May 1, 2017

      It’s hard to win converts with mockery.

      The only people who can’t recognize that our nation has a “smug liberal” problem are smug liberals.

      Case in point, smug liberal (and television comedienne) Samantha Bee. On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Bee to react to a pre-election Ross Douthat column that called out Bee and other late-night comics in part for creating a comedy world of “hectoring monologues,” full of comedians who are “less comics than propagandists — liberal ‘explanatory journalists’ with laugh lines.” We’re all familiar with the style. It features the generous use of selective clips from Fox News, copious amounts of mockery, and a quick Wikipedia- and Google-search level of factual understanding. The basic theme is always the same: Look at how corrupt, evil, and stupid our opponents are, look how obviously correct we are, and laugh at my marvelous and clever explanatory talent. It’s like sitting through an especially ignorant and heavy-handed Ivy League lecture, complete with the sycophantic crowd lapping up every word....

      Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447238/samantha-bee-bret-stephens-smug-liberal-problem-climate-change-debate

      Delete
    2. The basic theme is always the same: Look at how corrupt, evil, and stupid our opponents are, look how obviously correct we are, and laugh at my marvelous and clever explanatory talent.

      If that doesn't nail our lovable Smirking Smug, I don't what does.

      Delete
  3. Speaking to The Washington Examiner reporter Salena Zito last week, President Trump made some puzzling claims about President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the outbreak of the Civil War. An audio excerpt from the interview was played Monday on Zito's show on Sirius XM radio, prompting some criticism by historians. The full exchange:

    TRUMP: They said my campaign is most like, my campaign and win was most like Andrew Jackson with his campaign. And I said, "When was Andrew Jackson?" It was 1828. That's a long time ago. That's Andrew Jackson. And he had a very, very mean and nasty campaign. Because they said this was the meanest and the nastiest. And unfortunately it continues.

    ZITO: His wife died.

    TRUMP: His wife died. They destroyed his wife and she died. And, you know, he was a swashbuckler. But when his wife died, you know, he visited her grave every day. I visited her grave actually, because I was in Tennessee.

    ZITO: Oh, that's right, you were in Tennessee.

    TRUMP: And it was amazing. The people of Tennessee are amazing people. Well, they love Andrew Jackson. They love Andrew Jackson in Tennessee.

    ZITO: Yeah, he's a fascinating —


    Civil War

    ReplyDelete
  4. Celebrating May Day

    Police declare riot as protesters set fires in downtown Portland

    http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/05/may_day_organizers_show_march.html

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Celebrating May Day in France -

      Video: ‘Peaceful’ May Day rallies turn violent in Paris
      POSTED AT 9:21 PM ON MAY 1, 2017 BY JOHN SEXTON

      With the final vote in France’s presidential election less than a week away, unionists turned out on May Day to protest right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen. Le Pen has been gaining in the polls though her rival, Emmanuelle Macron, is still leading by about 20 points. NBC News tweeted the”peaceful” march had (unexpectedly) turned violent:


      Follow
      NBC News World News ✔ @NBCNewsWorld
      Peaceful #MayDay2017 march in Paris turns violent as protesters lob Molotov cocktails at police who fire back with tear gas
      12:54 PM - 1 May 2017

      Masked, left-wing protesters threw rocks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails at police, injuring six officers. From the Guardian:

      Six riot police officers were injured, one with third-degree burns to his hand and face, in Paris when a group of about 150 people armed with molotov cocktails, stones and sticks hijacked the traditional May Day march organised by French unions…

      Shortly after the Paris march set off from the central Place de la République, a group with scarves covering their faces forced their way to the front and began throwing missiles at police, who responded with teargas. Some pulled masonry from the walls of buildings to throw at the police and several shopping bags and backpacks filled with stones and bottles were found.

      Even before the violence, the march had got off on the wrong foot. Unable to agree on how best to confront the prospect of Le Pen becoming the country’s next president – by voting blank, abstaining or choosing Emmanuel Macron – the unions went their separate ways, with two organising a breakaway gathering in north Paris on Monday morning.

      Video shows police engulfed in flames. Toward the end of this clip you can also see some vandalism taking place:

      VIDEO

      Here’s another clip shot by the group We Are Change which shows two policemen set on fire by a Molotov cocktail. They quickly retreat and other officers pat out the flames on their boots:

      VIDEO

      Finally, this AFP clip gives an overview and shows police responding to the masked protesters with tear gas:

      VIDEO

      If protesters were looking for a way to help Le Pen further improve her standing in the polls, setting police on fire is certain to do that.

      http://hotair.com/archives/2017/05/01/video-far-left-clashes-police-may-day-rallies/

      Delete
    2. 1) Bring gas mask
      2) Don't wear flammable clothing
      3) Carry personal fire extinquisher

      What a bunch of arse holes.

      Delete
  5. SHOCK REPORT: MIGRANTS BECOME LESS INTEGRATED THE LONGER THEY STAY IN EUROPE
    By Virginia Hale, Breitbart, May 1, 2017 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

    NORWEGIAN STUDY HAS FOUND THE GAP IN LABOUR PARTICIPATION RATES BETWEEN CITIZENS BORN IN NORWAY AND THIRD WORLD MIGRANTS WIDENS THE LONGER NEWCOMERS HAVE BEEN IN THE COUNTRY.
    Researchers at the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research uncovered “encouraging signs of labour market integration during an initial period upon migrants’ admission”.


    But after a period of just five to 10 years, according to the report, “the integration process goes into reverse with widening immigrant-native employment differentials and rising rates of immigrant social insurance dependency”.

    “Basically we were very surprised by these results, because really the differences between immigrants and Norwegian-born citizens should be getting lesser and lesser the longer migrants have lived in Norway. We found that the opposite happens,” said Knut Røed, a senior researcher at the Frisch Centre.

    Norway’s acting minister for immigration and integration Per Sandberg said the government is aware of problems highlighted by the report, but suggested that not everything can be solved politically.

    “Even if the government went further still in delivering migrants jobs and opportunities, we mustn’t forget that politicians can’t force people to become integrated,” said the minister.

    He added: “There must also be a significant commitment from individuals themselves, if they are wanting to succeed in Norway.”

    Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang described the findings of the study as “very bad news” for the nation’s welfare state.


    “The conclusion is clear: if we do not succeed in getting newcomers into work, our entire welfare model will be in jeopardy,” the paper’s editorial read.

    Norway’s welfare state is not the only aspect of life in the Nordic nation that mass migration threatens to disrupt, it has been warned.

    Last year, the head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) stated that Muslim immigrants are resistant to integration and can cause “problems” for the host nation.

    “A strong increase in immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, can cause other long-term challenges. When a large number of asylum seekers come to a local community, it can have unfortunate consequences,” said PST head Marie Benedicte Bjørnland.

    Last year, the head of the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) stated that Muslim immigrants are resistant to integration and can cause “problems” for the host nation.

    “A strong increase in immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, can cause other long-term challenges. When a large number of asylum seekers come to a local community, it can have unfortunate consequences,” said PST head Marie Benedicte Bjørnland.

    http://pamelageller.com/2017/05/study-muslim-migrants-become-less-integrated-longer-stay.html/

    ReplyDelete
  6. ISTANBUL

    Workers and activists marked May Day around the world Monday with defiant rallies and marches for better pay and working conditions.

    Police detained 70 people in Istanbul as they tried to march.

    ...

    UNITED STATES

    Thousands of people chanted, picketed and marched on cities across America as May Day demonstrations raged against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

    Police in Oakland, California, arrested at least four activists who chained themselves together to block a county building.

    ...

    FRANCE

    A May Day march in Paris turned violent less than a week before the runoff French presidential election as police clashed with a small group of protesters who threw Molotov cocktails at officers.

    A few hundred protesters started throwing gasoline bombs and other objects at police at the front end of what started as a peaceful union march in the French capital on Monday.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Goya: Paintings

    The Second of May

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Goya+-+Mayo+pictures&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS698US698&tbm=isch&imgil=FvnIk0oUgm0XEM%253A%253B1aIAkjVAtNhVqM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FThe_Second_of_May_1808&source=iu&pf=m&fir=FvnIk0oUgm0XEM%253A%252C1aIAkjVAtNhVqM%252C_&usg=__qUXIll_qWwp_POQawxFV1aJf3zQ%3D&biw=546&bih=255&dpr=2.5&ved=0ahUKEwjts5C129DTAhVBzmMKHcXmCFwQyjcIQA&ei=7TgIWa2JF8GcjwPFzaPgBQ#imgrc=FvnIk0oUgm0XEM:


    The Third of May

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Goya+-+Mayo+pictures&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS698US698&tbm=isch&imgil=CY4RN82DzrIaiM%253A%253BEggW15gbXHzBuM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FThe_Third_of_May_1808&source=iu&pf=m&fir=CY4RN82DzrIaiM%253A%252CEggW15gbXHzBuM%252C_&usg=__FWuCteG3I_ZEhXd-gRV9G42WZAI%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjts5C129DTAhVBzmMKHcXmCFwQyjcIQA&ei=7TgIWa2JF8GcjwPFzaPgBQ&biw=546&bih=255&dpr=2.5#imgrc=CY4RN82DzrIaiM:

    ReplyDelete
  8. Is Pope Francis a commie ?

    May 1, 2017, 5:30 pm

    An excerpt from George Neumayr’s “The Political Pope,” to be released Tuesday.

    After Pope Francis early in his papacy decried capitalism as “trickle-down economics” — a polemical phrase coined by the left during the Reagan years that Francis frequently borrows — radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh commented, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.” Talk show host Michael Savage called him “Lenin’s pope.” Pope Francis took such comments as a compliment. “I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended,” he told the Italian press.

    Pope Francis grew up in socialist Argentina, an experience that left a deep impression on his thinking. He told the Latin American journalists Javier Camara and Sebastian Pfaffen that as a young man he “read books of the Communist Party that my boss in the laboratory gave me” and that “there was a period where I would wait anxiously for the newspaper La Vanguardia, which was not allowed to be sold with the other newspapers and was brought to us by the socialist militants.”

    The “boss” to whom Pope Francis referred is Esther Ballestrino de Careaga. He has described her as a “Paraguayan woman” and a “fervent communist.” He considers her one of his most important mentors. “I owe a huge amount to that great woman,” he has said, saying that she “taught me so much about politics.” (He worked for her as an assistant at Hickethier-Bachmann Laboratory in Buenos Aires.)

    “She often read Communist Party texts to me and gave them to me to read. So I also got to know that very materialistic conception. I remember that she also gave me the statement from the American Communists in defense of the Rosenbergs, who had been sentenced to death,” he has said. Learning about communism, he said, “through a courageous and honest person was helpful. I realized a few things, an aspect of the social, which I then found in the social doctrine of the Church.” As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he took pride in helping her hide the family’s Marxist literature from the authorities who were investigating her. According to the author James Carroll, Bergoglio smuggled her communist books, including Marx’s Das Kapital, into a “Jesuit library.”....

    https://spectator.org/pope-franciss-communist-mentor/

    Catholic or commie ?

    Half & Half

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s proudly Marxist president, offered the pontiff that sacrilegious image of Jesus Christ. Morales described the gift as a copy of a crucifix designed by a late priest, Fr. Luis Espinal, who belonged to the Jesuit order (as does Pope Francis) and had committed his life to melding Marxism with religion. Pope Francis had honored Espinal’s memory upon his arrival in Bolivia.

      Had John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI seen such a grotesque cross, they might have broken it over their knees. Not Pope Francis. He accepted the hammer-and-sickle cross warmly, telling the press on the plane ride back to Rome that “I understand this work” and that “for me it wasn’t an offense.” After the visit, Morales gushed, “I feel like now I have a Pope. I didn’t feel that before.”

      Delete
  9. Israel Independence Day

    Best Wishes

    May 2, 2017
    The former dry bones of Jews are alive and thriving
    By Ethel C. Fenig

    Today is Israel's Independence Day.

    Daniel Greenfield so eloquently explains, starting with Yechezkel (Ezekiel)'s comparison of the Jewish people to a scattered skeleton of dry bones in a barren valley:

    And He said unto me: 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered: 'O Lord GOD, Thou knowest.


    Then He said unto me: 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.

    Therefore prophesy, and say unto them: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.

    And so it happened. Seventy-two years after Europe, under the leadership of Germany, thought it had finally solved its "Jewish problem" by slaughtering over six million Jews along with untold millions of others, 50 years after the Muslim countries sought to do the same to the Jews in Israel, Israel is celebrating its 69th anniversary as a free and independent Jewish country in this modern era. It wasn't easy then, and maintaining it now, in the face of enemies still fanatically devoted to destroying it, has met setbacks. But the country continues to joyously thrive with an ever increasing population:

    8.68 million, which is more than 10 times what it was when the state was founded in 1948....

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/the_former_dry_bones_of_jews_are_alive_and_thriving.html

    ReplyDelete
  10. Many of us have been demanding, since Quirk has stated The Donald "doesn't know shit", that The Quirk himself provide us with a solution to the 'Korea Problem'.

    So far, not a word from The Quirk.

    For his benefit, here is a possible solution for him to consider:

    May 2, 2017
    How to Defuse the Crisis with North Korea
    By Herbert E. Meyer

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/05/how_to_defuse_the_crisis_with_north_korea.html

    ReplyDelete
  11. .

    Back at the Hilton, all pretense at press neutrality was gone. Said WHCA President Jeff Mason in scripted remarks: “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. We are not the enemy of the American people.”

    A standing ovation followed. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press was repeatedly invoked and defiantly applauded, as though the president were a clear and present danger to it.



    And...?

    .

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    Replies
    1. .

      With the media establishment of that day cheering on the anti-war protests designed to break his presidency, President Nixon sought to rally the nation behind him with his “Silent Majority” speech.

      The anti-war demonstrations were about taking were primarily about taking down Nixon rather than taking down the war. Right.

      Looks likes Pat's on the sauce again?

      .

      .

      Delete