;)
The Commentariat -- September 18, 2017
Fuctupmind. POTUS* Promotes Violence against Women. Again. Christina Caron of the New York Times: "Serious work beckons, but so does Twitter, and on Sunday morning the temptation to share a fan's GIF that showed Mr. Trump golfing and the ball striking Hillary Clinton proved too much to resist.... The tweet stoked outrage online, generating more than 11,000 replies, many of which condemned the president's promotion of violent imagery toward Mrs. Clinton, who, as a former first lady, has lifetime Secret Service protection.... But it was also celebrated by Trump supporters, who admonished 'crooked Hillary' and accused Mr. Trump's critics of lacking a sense of humor.... The GIF, which was created by splicing two videos, shows Mr. Trump swinging a golf club and the ball striking Mrs. Clinton in the back as she boards a plane, knocking her forward. The imagery of Mrs. Clinton tripping in the aircraft's doorway was from 2011, shot when she boarded a flight in Yemen.... It's not the first time one of the president's tweets has made light of violence." Includes GIF. ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Nearly everything Trump does can be pegged to an age group. Sometimes it's "senile," but usually it's somewhere between two years old and 14. This tweet was definitely in the 12-14-year-old range: a boy that age is confused about & afraid of girls & his prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed, so he may lash out at the objects of his fear or suggest violence against these scary girls. ...
... Alicia Melville-Smith of BuzzFeed: "President Trump on Sunday morning retweeted a doctored video showing him hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball -- from an account that makes racial, anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBT comments." ...
... Luke Barnes of ThinkProgress: "The post, by Twitter user Fuctupmind was part of a slew of early morning retweets of pro-Trump memes by the Pre[si]dent. Fuctupmind has previously pedaled in a number of far-right conspiracy theories, including the belief that Obama is a Muslim, and that Hillary Clinton was involved in the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.... The account has also consistently made racist comments as well as posted memes and GIFs of Hillary Clinton showing her as weak and demented. Fuctupmind also uses Gab, a social media platform which is popular with white nationalists.... Trump has a long history of retweeting accounts which push hateful, white nationalist agendas.... There's speculation among researchers as to how much of pro-Trump Twitter is part of a grassroots movement, and how much of it is driven by automated bots. According to the New Democrat Network think tank, 'Several forms of anaylsis, including TwitterAudit, count nearly half of all Trump's followers as fake users.'" ...
... Caroline Orr of Shareblue: "Humiliated by the small number of supporters that turned out for Saturday's supposed 'Mother of All Rallies' in Washington D.C., Donald Trump started his Sunday by obsessively tweeting about the woman who beat him by 3 million votes in November. This is nothing new for Trump, who cannot seem to let go of his fixation even ten months after the election. Within a span of 30 minutes early Sunday morning, Trump retweeted 6 tweets from fan accounts, including one tweet about the 'haters' who are 'jealous of his success,' and another showing a fictional 2020 electoral map." All that besides the post promoting violence against Clinton. ...
... David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "At a time when Trump's public approval ratings have tumbled and he is taking fire from conservatives for flirting with bipartisanship on immigration, the president's promotion of ... outlandish content -- created and distributed by his most ardent supporters -- aims to rally his far-right political base.... Critics said Trump has not only coarsened and debased the nation's dialogue, but also that he has promoted xenophobia and anti-Semitism." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I don't think Trump is aiming at the far right; it's possible to be ultra-conservative & not be anti-Semitic, xenophobic & misogynistic. Trump is aiming at the deplorable losers who share his sick "values." He's just bullying people & specific groups of people, and he thinks it's fun. ...
... Caroline Orr: "In an interview on CNN's 'State of the Union' Sunday morning, United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley defended Donald Trump's reckless tweeting about the subway bombing in London, saying it was a result of the president's emotions. Just after the bombing on Friday, Trump tweeted that the suspected terrorists 'were in the sights of Scotland Yard,' which many observers interpreted as criticism of London's law enforcement agency for letting the suspects slip through the cracks. Others pointed out that Trump was either leaking confidential information -- or simply making it up.... When CNN's Dana Bash asked Haley about the tweet on Sunday, the U.N. ambassador claimed that Trump didn't mean any harm by the tweet, but that sometimes 'he gets emotional.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Emotional? Trump used Twitter to bash a key ally & to promote his Muslim ban. This is just the usual careless, bullying, xenophobic, opportunistic rants of the incompetent, small-minded jerk we have come to know & despise.
Overheard at BLT Steak. Peter Baker & Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "President Trump's legal team is wrestling with how much to cooperate with the special counsel looking into Russian election interference, an internal debate that led to an angry confrontation last week between two White House lawyer.... The debate in Mr. Trump's West Wing has pitted Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, against Ty Cobb, a lawyer brought in to manage the response to the investigation. Mr. Cobb has argued for turning over as many of the emails and documents requested by the special counsel as possible in hopes of quickly ending the investigation -- or at least its focus on Mr. Trump. Mr. McGahn supports cooperation, but has expressed worry about setting a precedent that would weaken the White House.... The friction escalated in recent days.... [A New York Times reporter overheard] Mr. Cobb ... talking about a White House lawyer he deemed 'a McGahn spy' and saying Mr. McGahn had 'a couple documents locked in a safe' that he seemed to suggest he wanted access to. After The Times contacted the White House about the situation, Mr. McGahn privately erupted at Mr. Cobb, according to people informed about the confrontation.... John F. Kelly ... sharply reprimanded Mr. Cobb for his indiscretion, the people said." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Waiting for Trump to accuse BLT Steak & the NYT of wiretapping the tables. He can at least set up a commission to investigate the acoustics at the liberal steakhouse. ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York: "This is of particular concern to McGahn because he may also be a witness in the Russia probe. McGahn signed on to the Trump team during the campaign, and [special counsel Robert] Mueller wants to interview him about matters like Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian officials and Comey's dismissal. As West Wing viewers know, the president doesn't have the same attorney-client privilege with government lawyers as he does with private attorneys, so McGahn's disclosures could put him in legal jeopardy."
Richard Gowan in Politico Magazine: Donald Trump despises the U.N., possibly because its management nixed Trump's development plans -- including his proposal to rehab the U.N. building -- in the late 1990s & early 2000s. But now he needs the international organization to him "win" against North Korea & other antagonists, so he's occasionally playing nice.
David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump's divisive political career is reshaping a key -- and previously apolitical -- part of his business empire. Trump-owned hotels and clubs have long made money by holding galas and other special events. Now, their clientele is changing. Trump's properties are attracting new customers who want something from him or his government. But they're losing the kind of customers the business was originally built on: nonpolitical groups who just wanted to rent a room. This summer, 19 charities canceled upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago -- a major blow to that club's business -- after the president said there were 'fine people' among white supremacists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right protesting ... in Charlottesville. Dozens of other clients have left since Trump entered the 2016 presidential race.... For the Trump Organization, a potentially troubling trend is emerging ... as Trump's presidency has grown more polarizing. The Post's review could not determine if the Trump Organization's special-event business is growing or shrinking overall. But it did show, clearly, that one part of that business is thriving. The business of political events.... At least 27 federal political committees -- including Trump's reelection campaign -- have flocked to his properties.... At Trump's D.C. hotel, there have also been a slew of events involving groups that have come to Washington to influence policy decisions."
David Siders of Politico: "Ripping into Donald Trump in the final hours of this year's legislative session, California lawmakers passed measures urging Congress to censure the president, bucking his immigration policies and seeking to force him to release his tax returns. They also formally called on Trump 'to publicly apologize to all Americans for his racist and bigoted behavior.' If there was any question about the location of the nerve center of the anti-Trump resistance, it was settled with a defiant fusillade of legislation Friday and Saturday memorializing California's antipathy toward the president." Siders doesn't speculate on whether or note Gov. Jerry Brown will sign all of the bills, tho he writes that the 'sanctuary state' bill was weakened before passage to gain ... Brown's support.
Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: "Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that President Trump modify 10 national monuments created by his immediate predecessors, including shrinking the boundaries of at least four western sites, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post. The memorandum, which the White House has refused to release since Zinke submitted it late last month, does not specify exact reductions for the four protected areas Zinke would have Trump narrow -- Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, Nevada's Gold Butte, and Oregon's Cascade-Siskiyou -- or the two marine national monuments -- the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll -- for which he raised the same prospect. The two Utah sites encompass a total of more than 3.2 million acres, part of the reason they have aroused such intense emotions since their designation."
Burgess Everett & Josh Dawsey of Politico: "Obamacare repeal is on the brink of coming back from the dead. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his leadership team are seriously considering voting on a bill that would scale back the federal government's role in the health care system and instead provide block grants to states, congressional and Trump administration sources said. It would be a last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare before the GOP's power to pass health care legislation through a party-line vote in the Senate expires on Sept. 30." ...
... The Graham-Cassidy Uninsurance Bill. Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "According to an analysis shared by Andy Slavitt, who ran the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Obama, an estimated 32 million people could lose health coverage by the end of the decade if Graham-Cassidy becomes law.... In essence, an insurer could take someone's money for years while that individual is healthy. Then, on the day that that person is diagnosed with cancer, jack up their premiums so high that they are no longer affordable.... Health 'insurance' under Graham-Cassidy, in other words, would no longer provide any real insurance whatsoever." ...
... Stealth Repeal. Paul Krugman: "The sponsors of the Graham-Cassidy [repeal & replace health insurance] bill now working its way toward a Senate vote claim to be offering a moderate approach that preserves the good things about Obamacare. In other words, they are maintaining the G.O.P. norm of lying both about the content of Obamacare and about what would replace it. In reality, Graham-Cassidy is the opposite of moderate. It contains, in exaggerated and almost caricature form, all the elements that made previous Republican proposals so cruel and destructive. It would eliminate the individual mandate, undermine if not effectively eliminate protection for people with pre-existing conditions, and slash funding for subsidies and Medicaid. There are a few additional twists, but they're all bad -- notably, a funding formula that would penalize states that are actually successful in reducing the number of uninsured.... Yet there is a real chance that Graham-Cassidy, which is similar to but even worse than previous Republican proposals, will nonetheless become law, because not enough people are taking it seriously.... So if you care about preserving the huge gains the A.C.A. has brought, make your voice heard." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Only three GOP senators voted against the most recent repeal bill: McCain, Murkowski & Collins. & if even one of them votes in favor of Graham-Cassidy, ObamaCare isgone. McCain is best buddies with Graham, the main architect of the bill. I do see a clear & present danger.
Beyond the Beltway
Aaron Rupar of ThinkProgress: "During an interview with a Corpus Christi radio station on Friday, Rep.Blake Farenthold (R-TX) vowed to personally boycott the University of Texas at Austin until the school reinstalls the Confederate statues it took down last month...In an earlier part of the interview, Farenthold took aim at so-called 'Antifa' protesters who have taken to the streets in opposition to white nationalists.... Referring to the fact that some Antifa protesters wear masks, Farenthold said that 'if you' re not willing to show your face for your cause, that's probably a good indication that there's something wrong with your cause.'" --safari: He's obviously too dim to catch the irony of his KKK brethren.
News Ledes
Weather Channel: Hurricane "Jose, a Category 1 hurricane in the western Atlantic, will continue to produce dangerous high surf and rip currents as it moves parallel to the Eastern Seaboard in the week ahead. Rain and tropical-storm-force winds are also expected to brush portions of the East Coast. A tropical storm watch has been issued for the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts. This includes from Fenwick Island, Delaware, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, including the Delaware Bay South, and from East Rockaway Inlet, New York, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, including the Long Island Sound, Block Island, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket."
CNN: "Hurricane Maria is forecast to rapidly strengthen over the next two days as it takes aim at Caribbean islands devastated by Hurricane Irma just days ago. The storm is expected to be a major hurricane when it hits the Leeward Islands over the next few days, intensifying to a Category 4 hurricane in 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center's latest update."
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Reader Comments (19)
A bit of humour from New York Magazine
http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/sean-spicer-2017-emmy-awards-monologue.html
Pat
Just the fact that the president* of the United States retweets a GIF of him hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball hard enough to knock her down--from someone named fuctupmind--and does this directly before his appearance, for the first time, at the UN, tells you all you need to know about the sad, sad maturity level and intelligence of this weak, wretched excuse for a leader. I'm sure all his woman hater followers are cheering through their drool.
Fucked up mind indeed.
It's encouraging to think that nearly half of trump's supporters
could be bots. Bots don't vote. Do they? Did they? But the really
scary thing is all of the idiots who will be influenced by bots.
Mind games belong in movies or books, not in politics.
So last night at the Emmy's we got plenty political with a sock-it-to him- agenda only these artsy folks can deliver. AT the same time over on PBS the first part of Ken Burn's Vietnam was on––repeated twice so that one could get a taste of winners and losers and still get to see the embryo of a war that had no winners––only losers.
"Ignorance was not a factor in the American endeavor in Vietnam pursued through five successive presidencies, although it became an excuse….The folly consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles but in persistence in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world.
The question raised is why did the policy-makers close their minds to the evidence and its implications? This is the classic symptom of folly: refusal to draw conclusions from the evidence, addiction to the counter-productive. The “why” of this refusal and this addiction may disclose itself in the course of retracing the tale of American policy making in Vietnam." Barbara Tuchman
A couple complaints. Well, just one, really.
Reading the link offered above about an overheard conversation at a D.C. steakhouse (I'm guessing the dish wasn't too rare) about a couple OF White House lawyers who are currently trying to figure out how to keep as much TrumpBacon out of the frying pan as possible, I was confronted, once again, with a growing gripe.
Lawyer Cobb stated that he had heard another White House flunky state that Lawyer McGahn had "a couple documents" hidden away in some safe.
Aside from the legion of internecine bickering brought, happily, to our national table by the AttackGolfer in Chief, I am seeing more and more frequently the use of "couple" as an adjective rather than a noun, a bit of lexical prestidigitation handily achieved by omitting the preposition "of".
So, a couple of things to say about that.
First, I realize that grammatical rigor, especially of the curmudgeonly sort, is out of favor, especially in the Age of Trump, a woefully ignorant, syntactic simpleton. Second, I also recognize that "couple" deployed on its own sans its ancient companion preposition, has become "okay". Meriam-Webster says so.
I say "Fuck that". How's that for linguistic artlessness? There's no problem with saying "I need a couple more decades to recover from the 2016 election" or "Trump could use a couple more of the 'best words'". But somehow, to me, a "couple documents" sounds like a drunken slurring of words, which it might have been. Still, I see this sort of thing too often for my taste. And I get that the language changes, and I suppose in casual conversation it may not be terrible, awful, horrible, but it just sounds....sketchy, inadequate. Lazy. I mean, it's just a tiny little word, "of", how hard is that to accommodate? Pretty soon, more proper usage goes out the window and you're likely to say something along the lines of:
"Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!"
No. It's not true. Not in any possible universe.
I don't think we can ascribe the "couple" problem to Trump. But we certainly can cite him for acts of violence against the King's English which in turn promote sloppy usage all the way down the line. It's true!
Well, I suppose I'll take a couple of usage manuals before bed and call my copy editor in the morning.
Howzbout youse guys? Couple or couple of? Take a couple minutes to think about it.
PD,
The indispensable Tuchman is always a good choice for examining the march of folly. Vietnam turns out to have been nothing more than a colossal misreading of events coupled with a preconceived idea of what was going on ("Commies. Commies everywhere...").
As one commentator stated in this first installment of the latest Ken Burns documentary, the upheavals in Vietnam were the result of the end of colonialism in that country. Reading these events as the first of many Communist dominoes was our undoing.
Another excellent historian, Margaret MacMillan (great-granddaughter of former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George), makes note of this more correct reading, in an offhanded way, in her book "Paris 1919". After the Great War, as the allies were carving up the world (and setting the stage for WWII and numerous other conflicts we're still dealing with 100 years later), they were petitioned by many on all sides to hear their case for redress and assistance. A young man working as a busboy at the Ritz in Paris sent a letter to the Big Three, Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, asking that his country be set free from the colonial occupation of France. The country was Vietnam. The busboy was Ho Chi Minh.
Folly marches on. We willfully misread the situation in Iraq. And now we have a president who doesn't read at all.
What new wonders await us that people, if there are any still around then, will be fretting over one hundred years hence?
@Ak: Excellent complaint! "...that Lawyer McGahn had "a couple documents" hidden away..." When Cobb said this to the other lawyer at the table what did he mean exactly? That McGahn has (just) two document hidden away. Or does McGahn have several documents hidden away?
Love how this exposure came about via an overheard conversation. Whoah! That was a two desserts day for the NYTimes reporter!
Funny thing about lawyers and discretion, I've observed from various encounters that they tend to be the biggest gossips and over-sharers around. Lawyer/client confidentiality? They love to share their insider knowledge about cases.
Psst! R you sure about Meriam?
@Akhilleus & MAG: As bad as Cobb's losing the "of" altogether is the way I pronounce "of." I'm okay if the noun following "of" begins with a vowel, as in, "I have a couple uv options here." But if the following noun begins with a consonant, I almost always say, "I have a couple-uh documents...." If I were giving a speech or a lecture, I would probably pronounce "uh" as "uv," but in everyday conversation, I almost always elide the "f"/v-sound. This is similar to woulda coulda shoulda & is probably the reason some people, when trying to sound highfalutin, say "would of." Much more formal.
MAG and Mrs. McC,
About Meriam-Webster okaying the use of couple without the "of", they do: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/couple
Scroll down to the entry in which "couple" is addressed as an adjective.
And once again, I'm perfectly fine with things like "a couple more tomatoes in the salad" but here the M-W people try a little editorial Jiu-Jitsu by quoting E.B. White making with the adjectival use of the word, the idea being, if E.B. White does it, who is a schmoe like Akhilleus to complain about it? And normally, they'd be right.
BUT...it's from a letter. No fair, says I.
I think it's probably okay in a more casual context (as I suggested) like a personal letter. And I have no problems with pronunciations that slightly elide the preposition: "a couple-a things" or "a couple-uv ideas come to mind". I do that myself. I'm mostly ticked at its use in more formal, written communication. And a newspaper or magazine article (unless it's some barely literate winger rag) should come under that heading.
And Marie! Don't get me going on "would of"! I have enough to worry about! Sheesh.
I see where the Little King has had a few cancellations where his Big Deal Prezudentshul Type Properties are concerned. Poor Donnie.
Well, that lost business will be (and probably has been) made up by hacks, sleazeballs, grifters, gropers, grafters, and grizzlie mommas. Just like his apartments which so often house hacks, sleazeballs, grifters, gropers, grafters, money launderers, Russian ex-pats, guys with mob connections, and other assorted low-lifes.
No one wants to do business with a sleazy, unpredictable, unreliable, lying bigot like Trump unless there's something in it for them. And no one would stay at one of his overpriced gaudy gewgaw crash pads unless they didn't want anyone asking any questions.
The company you keep...
As long as we are indulging in a little armchair copy-editing, there's this one from a pained reader of the WaPo article on the steakhouse bean-spill:
"Please fix this sentence: 'Vogel is former reporter for Politico, which is based in Virginia, who arrived at the Times just in time for the Russia investigation...'
Virginia probably isn't happy that an entire news organization was working inside her before she arrived at the Times. EDITOR, PLEASE HELP. Thanks!"
@Akhilleus & MAG: I'm with you, Akhilleus, on the E. B. White citation, which is "... the first couple chapters are pretty good." It seems obvious his intention here was to use the colloquial, as "pretty good" suggests. If he were writing a book review for the New Yorker, he would have written something like, "The first couple of chapters engage the reader..." or "The first two chapters are quite readable...."
@Monoloco: Hilarious.
Monoloco,
Geeez....Holy Vague Antecedent, Batman!
And here's what I'm talking about when I refer to sloppiness. Leaving out an article, of either variety (definite or indefinite), makes the writer sound like a not very good ESL student: "Vogel is former reporter". Sounds like Boris and Natasha: "Moose and squirrel, they are escaping!"
Copy editors all gone. Grammar not used good. Bad, bad, bad.
And in the Washington Post. Double geeez.
By the way, regarding that "steakhouse bean-spill" (a great phrase which seems like it should have the makings of a good joke: "Bean spill at steakhouse!" but I'm too lazy to make it work), according to the estimable Digby, all of Trump's lawyers are "weirdos". Who am I to disagree? Like everything else he does, Trumpy's approach to legal staffing has everyone at each other's throats. Now, even the lawyers have lawyers.
Hopefully, this time, moose and squirrel will not escape.
You will all be pleased to note that Strunk&White is on the current NYT best seller list.
Causality or correlation? Neither?
Also, note how many titles there are old, old, old, ... the new stuff is not good enough? Shouldabeen.
Google, today, celebrates the 308th anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson. In addition to a warm commemoration of what the good doctor meant to language in general and the English language specifically, I am put in mind of a letter he penned, in the final days before publication of his dictionary, to one Lord Chesterfield, who, after allowing Johnson to languish for years, showed up, pretty much on his doorstep at the last minute to try to take some credit for Johnson's work.
Ol' Sam drilled Lord C a brand new anus crevice.
Seems we have our very own Lord Chesterfield, that odd man with the tiny hands now living, for some reason known only to the president of Russia, in the White House.
Lord Trumperfield has been taking credit for work done by others since he first flipped his orange comb over in the Oval Office, Ford's Michigan investment, their factory in Kentucky, Exxon Mobil's Gulf Coast investment, Charter Communications' hiring plans, an Intel factory announcement, and more, all begun under President Obama and having exactly jack to do with the Little King.
What we need now is our very own Doctor Johnson to pen a letter to Lord Trumperfield to tell him, with delicious epistolary outrage, written in the most splendidly crafted prose, to please fuck off. Thank you, kindly.
Ak wrote: "...I'm mostly ticked at its use in more formal, written communication. And a newspaper or magazine article (unless it's some barely literate winger rag) should come under that heading."
Sad to say, but there's probably less attention and emphasis paid to grammar and phrasing in news writing, particularly online. I suspect, that in the hurry to launch 'breaking news' much is overlooked. Web sites often offer up the strangest headlines that seem to have little to do with the actual story that follows. Many times I've felt misled by the promised content from a startling headline to find watered-down conjecture with lots of maybes, supposes, and other vagaries.
Copy editors are a vanishing breed. I miss the late Bill Walsh at the WaPo. Happily, Phil Corbett at the NYTimes challenges me again and again through his quizzes.
However, I suspect the day may come when online stories are comprised of goofy emoji strings!
Lastly, a quick stab at a beanie headline:
Spilled Beans Explode Split Peace at WH
MAG,
In the breakneck pace of trying to get there firstest with the somethingest, especially online, journalism suffers greatly. There is little ability to check and double check sources. Many outlets (Fox, Breitbart) just make stuff up. Among media sources that practice actual journalism (not right-wing fantasy), there are routine issues, and not just with grammar and spelling (although instances of those are both all too common and extremely disheartening; if you haven't had time to corral additional sources to corroborate your story about Hillary Clinton planning to assassinate people she doesn't like, at the very least, you could craft a good, if not very accurate sentence or two). Content is king.
Some years ago, journalist Steven Brill produced a wonderful magazine/website, "Brill's Content", which served as a watchdog for big time media. His first big story involved the sneaky backdoor leaking done by Ken Starr as he chased Bill Clinton around the block. Reporters ate up the salacious, and often misleading, self-serving propaganda fed them by Starr and his sex obsessed cronies. Unfortunately, this enterprise closed after only three years.
There are other watchdog groups, the Columbia Journalism Review, the American Journalism Review, for two, but interestingly, because of the speed of news cycles, by the time they perform due journalistic diligence and check and double check sources and quotes, whatever stories they're working on are almost forgotten.
One of my favorite non-fiction writers, John McPhee, longtime New Yorker journalist, is famous, among writers, for the amount of time he takes to create his pieces. I'm now in the middle of his immense (and immensely informative) "Annals of the Former World", a compendium of his reporting, over a twenty year stretch, on the geological foundations of the US, and the geologists who traipse about the countryside, acid phials, sample jars, rock hammers, and topo maps in tow. His prose is meticulous, gorgeous, almost sensuous in its beautifully shaped and crafted sentences that wind through paragraphs which build up, like geologic layers, to form the whole which you only see when he draws you back from explorations of four billion year rock crystals at the atomic level.
A piece in the New Republic instructs all young writers to just forget about that kind of writing. Don't even think about it. "In his New Yorker contributor biography, McPhee is credited with bylines on 'over 100 pieces.' I laughed out loud when I read it; it’s not uncommon today for even established writers to publish that many pieces a year."
Journalists from the last century had the luxury of not having to beat some jamoke with a cellphone and a laptop with a clickbait lede enticing readers to see "How Ivanka Trump's fashion genius is affecting foreign policy". Certainly they had deadlines (well, unless your name is John McPhee), but they had at least a little time to get it right. If you've read "All the President's Men" or seen the movie, you'll recall Ben Bradlee's insistence that Woodward and Bernstein did get it right, and not deep six all their work by publishing stuff that could call into question the rest of their reporting.
That may happen today, but I doubt it. Which makes reading about journalism back in the day, a true visit to annals of the former world.
Today's thread reminds me that I am a true dinosaur, unaware that "of" is ever dropped after "couple," or is ever meant by 've after should, would. could or might. Probably just fill in the blank with virtual memory. With the rapture and ACA repeal imminent, this has been a welcome diversion.
Saw a comment in NYTimes that repeal might be an unintended blessing, creating a catastrophe sufficient to usher in single payer.
Being a proofreader, or possibly soon an ex-proofreader, I enjoyed the discussion about language today. Coinky-dink: I was called on the carpet for ads I proofread far too thoroughly last week. I corrected line breaks, misspellings, hyphens not there, apostrophes both there when not needed and not there when needed, etc etc. Well, my corporate overlords don't have time for that stuff. More turnover, they say, not endless rewrites or sending the ads back for corrections. We don't need no lousy commas! I joke, but it goes along with a Huffpost article I just read about the inevitable dumbing down begun 40 years ago. If the readers of our publication don't care about any of that stuff, why should the publication pay us to call it to their attention? Am semi-retired already-- maybe it is time to hang up the rest of the work days.