Category Archives: The Contrarian

How The New York Times Ate Its Young

Köpenick amy-klobuchar-elizabeth-warren-rt-gt-img

Villeta  

Let’s get one thing straight, right out of the gate: I consider The New York Times the God of Journalism. Their numerous Pulitzers notwithstanding, their reporting of our world, writ large and small, is the standard by which all news outlets should aspire. Plus Trump hate them. So there’s that.

But the NYT did journalism a disservice this week with its co-endorsement of Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for Democratic presidential nominee.

The Times editorial board acknowledged in its editorial, which appears in Monday’s paper, that there is a fight going on for the soul of the Democratic Party—a struggle they suggest pits a “radical” vision for taking on President Trump and the challenges facing the nation against a “realist” one. On that metric, the NYT opined, Warren would be its more leftist vote, Klobuchar its centrist.

Excuse me? Are we ordering a fucking pizza? With that as a template, you could cook-to-order any candidate. Socialist leanings with conservative fiscal policy? Try Bernie Sanders! In the mood for Obama -.5? Heeeeeeere’s Joey B!Image result for democratic candidates

Already, the paper has been taken to the woodshed; many of the critics charge that the Times’ placing Klobuchar in the “Moderate” camp was inaccurate — thus plunging the paper’s very process into the kind of liberal branding that already freights the party’s hopes in 2020. Why board that overweight liner anyway? A gutsy, straightforward   endorsement would have avoided the dickering. And yeah, an editorial can be ballsy, and someone with balls can endorse a woman. Stop being such bitches.

The NYT call is troubling on two fronts. One, the other half of the job — the one the NYT forgot — in endorsing a candidate is to explain why the country needs said candidate. Do we need a centrist right now? Is a leftist the corrective steering? The Times is steeped in institutional political memory. To name a double ticket (Should voters check both boxes if they’re uncertain where they fall on the spectrum?) is to flush that collective knowledge down the crapper.

More troubling, this is how the Left eats its young in ravenous Wokeness. We are so afraid of being exclusive of any offendable reader/voter demographic we’ve forgotten how to take a stand. Be guided by an apolitical compass here, and stand behind your choice. But do we really doubt that this editorial didn’t suffer from the very same in-fighting that clearly compromised the process?

Leave the waffling to IHOP. In just a year, we’ll be offered a more binary choice. Hopefully, my esteemed colleagues, you will have chosen a path a more clear path, worthy of the fight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtn4Kt05_Y

Ernest Goes to Impreachment

I awoke today to the above headline from U.S. News & World Report, which asserted that Donald Trump had assembled a legal impeachment team that resembled “Made-For-TV” entertainment, including Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, the feckless prosecutor who considered a blowjob high crimes and misdemeanors two decades ago.

At first, the team surprised me. Didn’t Trump spend, literally, months eviscerating Starr publicly for being as incompetent as, well, Trump (just without using the name)?Image result for ken starr clown

Then I punched myself in the nose for being surprised. I should be lobotomized for expecting a modicum of consistency from Trump. Perhaps I have been. Maybe that’s why Trump sniffles so much; he’s trying to breathe in the fumes from the evaporated brains of those who hear him speak.

As is often the case with a slackwit like the president, I often find myself questioning whether there is intent hidden within the idiocy. And while Trump himself likely doesn’t know how a hat works, his GOP overlords may have subtly shifted political tactics on the American populace — particularly the under-educated and over-churched.

After all, does it not seem reasonable that the vanguards of the Republican Party (McConnell, Graham, Murdoch, the Koch Bros., etc.) would take a political pathway that’s been effective for decades, the “Southern Strategy,” and morph it into an easily digested Flintstones chewable for an American sub-strata that still holds to those principles — namely, Trumptards and Evangelicals?Image result for koch brothers mcconnell

Of course, it isn’t politically expedient to brazenly play on race-baiting. So this isn’t The Southern Strategy. Say hello to the GOP’s Simpleton Strategy. It’s like the Southern Strategy, only with way more better.

Consider, for a moment, GOP presidential tickets going back four decades. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won consecutive terms decisively, despite popular ridicule of our president co-starring with a chimp in Bedtime for Bonzo. The notion of that as a deal-breaker now seems quaint.Image result for reagan bonzo

Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, took the Simpleton Strategy a step further, with dimwit Dannie Quayle as vice-president. Remember when Quayle tried to spell potato on a chalkboard? Again, in the context of today, with a president who spells “smoke” “smock,” the error seems cute. Back then, though, we must have demanded some level of intelligence, because Bush-Quayle lasted one term.Image result for dan quayle potato

It was in 1996 that the GOP made its last attempt to scaffold a respectably intelligent ticket: Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. Dole was a Senator, Kemp the former Secretary of Housing. Easily the highest combined IQ on the GOP ticket in decades. They were trounced by Clinton-Gore, winning just 159 Electoral votes, the lowest since Goldwater in 1964.Image result for dole kemp

And with that went the last double-sanity ticket.

Since then, the GOP has seamlessly blended the Southern Strategy of the 50’s and 60’s into the Simpleton Strategy we see today. After the Dole-Kemp fiasco, we got Mensa shoo-in George W. Bush — twice. (“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”)Image result for bush fool me once

That was followed by John McCain and Sarah Palin, a VP pick McCain later admitted regretting in an HBO documentary shortly before his death. You remember Sarah. The everywoman,  a workaday mom who just liked to hunt wolves from helicopters after soccer practice.Image result for sarah palin helicopter hunting

Then there was old Mitt Romney. Here’s what the GOP offered: A president who, among other things, believes that God lives near a planet called “Kolob,” that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, that we should baptize dead people, that drinking caffeine is a sin, and that it is sacrilege to wear underwear created by anyone other than Mormons. And Republicans were stunned he and Paul Ryan lost to a black man.Image result for mitt romney religion

So they have returned with their Simpletonest Strategy yet: Prop up a game show host and Evangelical afraid of women to the nation’s highest pulpit, and have them sing “Witch Hunt” in acapella.

And it may work in 2020. Simple is easier than smart. Keep in mind, as the 24/7s lament unenlightened districts, as the House asks voters to look up facts, as Democratic contenders bathe in a miasma of name-calling and Wokeness, this simple math question: Which is more likely to turn out voters — Playing to the lowest-common denominator, or praying for the highest?

Careful you don’t pass out holding your breath in solemn reflection.

Time to Kiss the Toad

Image result for the outer limits trump

There is nothing wrong with your computer screen. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper….You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer D.C. Limits.

Anyone familiar with these waters knows that sharks infest them. And their favorite chum is stupidity, so religion and Trump are high on the menu. They’re entrees, not appetizers.

But in keeping with Evidentialism’s core tenet that we celebrate the fact we get more todays than yesterdays (or tomorrows even!), we must acknowledge — today, right now —  that the president (and the federal government writ large) did exactly what the Founding Fathers envisioned: They acted for the good of the people they serve.

This shouldn’t be news. Governments are supposed to act for the betterment of their charges. But, particularly now, the notion seems quaint and antiquated, and has been trampled underfoot by political peacocking. (BTW: Can the GOP please hire a high schooler who can work Microsoft Paint? Those signs make Vegas look understated.)  Image result for gop signs at hearing carton

Still, we have to give credit to the president and both sides of the aisle for actually working on a Friday. Trump signed into law a $1.4 trillion set of spending measures Friday that not only averted another government shutdown, but raised the smoking age to 21 and secured funding for studies on gun violence.

It would be hard to argue against the logic of either measure. Does anyone contend the age should go down? Or that we need to be spending less to examine our gun crisis? (Under the new legislation, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will receive $25 million to conduct research on gun violence. That came after a more than two-decade block on such research at a federal level.)

We get it. It’s hard to compliment an intellectually incontinent narcissist, particularly one whose sole talent is doing touchdown dances. But even the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world had to give the president — and deeply divided Congress — credit for a flurry of bipartisan bills that averted another Grinchian Christmas gift to “non-essential” federal employees, right? Nope.

Let’s thank Donnie while we’re at it, no matter the gag reflex. The president could have easily upended the system he publicly abhors (but privately milks). He could have insisted the $1.4 billion was just a fraction of the $5 billion he demanded for a wall (which is true) and refused to sign it. He could have told his yokel base: “See what happens when Dems impeach? Your government breaks.”

But he did neither. And Congress passed an enormously consequential bill. Yet, when I flipped to the outlets that are the president’s greatest critics, CNN and MSNBC, this is what I found:

And here’s how MSNBC summed up the day:

This is why we have the reputation we do. Have we gotten so entrenched in our echo chambers that anything outside it resembles a home invasion? Why is good news so difficult for us to hear, let alone repeat?

The position of the 24/7s is particularly disappointing given the tiny amount of work you’d need to exert to have today’s news fit your narrative. Consider this simple story angle: We have now raised to 21 the drinking and smoking ages. Why not gun ownership?! You could still appease your base with a ‘this is a good start’ criticism. But to not acknowledge your opponents getting something right is to diminish when they get it wrong.

Better yet, consider how we would have covered the passage of the bill had it been signed by Hillary Clinton. Dollars to donuts that Anderson Cooper would yodel the praises of a president brave enough to stare down big tobacco and sign into law a study the NRA does not want published, let alone  funded.Image result for anderson cooper

Again, none of this acknowledgment need bother the woke angels of the Left’s nature. Trump is not Lord Voldemort. We won’t be hectored and haunted should we speak President Napalm’s name. If you can call out his errors, call his base hits, too. Image result for trump voldemort

We can do better than what the 24/7s are offering us. Is the bill too bloated? Absolutely. Do we need to eventually pay off the card? No doubt. Do journalists ask themselves question in order to make a story look more substantial? Perhaps.

But there’s a reason “Fake News” has taken off with the masses. Let’s be honest with ourselves, fellow reporters and the curious-minded: You don’t have to offer fabricated details for a story to be fake news. It just need lack context.