Peter Baker reminds morally deaf voters of Donald Trump perfidy

 Here’s Peter Baker pushing THE NEW YORK TIMES reporter analysis envelope: 

Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”

SLATE’s Matthew Dessem enters Hope Hicks’s mind.

Excerpt from Dessem’s satirical column written from the POV of Hope Hicks being approached by a reporter from THE NEW YORK TIMES:

“But Ms. Hicks,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “We are on your side. We just have no way of explicitly expressing our sympathies, because we’re still dining out on an antiquated conception of press neutrality, so the public has infer the conscious and unconscious biases informing our coverage based on how far we bend over backwards to treat your decision whether or not to ignore a congressional subpoena like you’re Hamlet in the fucking chapel or something. We shall also arrange a glossy photoshoot.”

NYT's David Brooks on Donald Trump.

Here's an excerpt from resident NEW YORK TIMES conservative David Brooks' column on Donald Trump:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.
Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.
This week, the Politico reporters Daniel Lippman, Darren Samuelsohn and Isaac Arnsdorf fact-checked 4.6 hours of Trump speeches and press conferences. They found more than five dozen untrue statements, or one every five minutes.

Link to the entire column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/opinion/no-not-trump-not-ever.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Maureen Dowd on the state of the President.

Column by Maureen Dowd of THE NEW YORK TIMES about Barack Obama, titled "Alone Again, Naturally": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/opinion/maureen-dowd-alone-again-naturally.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

A key passage from the column:

The extraordinary candidate turns out to be the most ordinary of men, frittering away precious time on the links. Unlike L.B.J., who devoured problems as though he were being chased by demons, Obama’s main galvanizing impulse was to get himself elected.

Almost everything else — from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson — just seems like too much trouble.

The 2004 speech that vaulted Obama into the White House soon after he breezed into town turned out to be wrong. He misdescribed the country he wanted to lead. There is a liberal America and a conservative America. And the red-blue divide has only gotten worse in the last six years.

 

The man whose singular qualification was as a uniter turns out to be singularly unequipped to operate in a polarized environment.

 

His boosters argue that we spurned his gift of healing, so healing is the one thing that must not be expected of him. We ingrates won’t let him be the redeemer he could have been.

 

 

NEW YORK TIMES op-ed contributor (an author) applauds banning negative book reviews.

Here's a radio host from NYC named Bob Garfield who has a debut genre novel titled BEDFELLOWS, applauding the pop culture site BuzzFeed's decision to eliminate negative reviews of books altogether:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opinion/banning-the-negative-book-review.html?hpw&rref=opinion

Yes, Mr. Garfield is rather flip and shallow with the use of space the NEW YORK TIMES allowed for his op-ed. 

But I don't advocate the entire elimination of negative book reviewing.  Instead, the reviewer (even if told to be "entertaining" by his print/online editors--and consigned to writing in no more than bite-sized form) should minimize-to-avoid-altogether personal feelings about the author and concentrate on how successful the book is on its own terms.  And, also, the reviewer should try to avoid fitting all the books he/she reviews into a Procrustean-bed template of what must pass his/her tests of Lasting Literary Quality.

Even negative reviews may interest potential buyers in a book, regardless of the reviewer's opinion.

And limiting printed reviews to just-raves is another chilling chapter in a huge, ongoing cultural-commando volume titled WE DETERMINE WHAT IS TO SURVIVE: GET OUT OF THE LIFEBOAT!

In defense of unruly online comments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/opinion/sunday/this-story-stinks.html?hp: Link to a NEW YORK TIMES opinion column which pulls out metaphorical smelling salts over "rude" reader opinions following news stories/columns.
A key passage from the column by Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele:

In a study published online last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, we and three colleagues report on an experiment designed to measure what one might call “the nasty effect.”

We asked 1,183 participants to carefully read a news post on a fictitious blog, explaining the potential risks and benefits of a new technology product called nanosilver. These infinitesimal silver particles, tinier than 100-billionths of a meter in any dimension, have several potential benefits (like antibacterial properties) and risks (like water contamination), the online article reported.

Then we had participants read comments on the post, supposedly from other readers, and respond to questions regarding the content of the article itself.

Half of our sample was exposed to civil reader comments and the other half to rude ones — though the actual content, length and intensity of the comments, which varied from being supportive of the new technology to being wary of the risks, were consistent across both groups. The only difference was that the rude ones contained epithets or curse words, as in: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you’re an idiot” and “You’re stupid if you’re not thinking of the risks for the fish and other plants and animals in water tainted with silver.”

The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.

 

Offering a calm, noncensorious alternative to the article is commenter "Danny P":

It'd be a mistake to walk away from this piece thinking its best to avoid "nasty" comments. Throwing in ad hominems and rude attacks is not all that different from curse words; using them doesn't actually mean the user has nothing valuable to say.

Walt Whitman: "many of the slang words among fighting men, gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, are powerful words... Many of these bad words are fine." Neitzsche was not above hurling a few good insults... some... a lot of insults at the people he disagreed with.

Hidden in a paragraph beginning "You idiot," might be some very worthwhile contributions. Avoiding such comments means missing out. It's probably a better strategy as a reader to become someone that doesn't get reactionary and dismissive just because strangers are speaking with hostility or salty language. Dismiss them for the right reason; that their contribution lacked insight or meaningful addition to the subject.

David Carr abandons journalistic objectivity in latest Keith Olbermann article.

David Carr of THE NEW YORK TIMES, is a good writer/reporter--and a good Company Man too.

Here's his latest piece on the Keith Olbermann firing, which comes down squarely on the side of the Al Gore-fronted Current TV channel:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/31/keith-olbermann-machine-gun-for-hire/

Key passage from the article:
"No, the mistake that the executives at Current made was to think that by giving Mr. Olbermann a stake in the enterprise and a title of chief news officer, he would forgo the drama that has characterized his stints at CNN, Fox, ESPN and MSNBC. After all, you can’t rail against the Man when you are the Man.


But Mr. Olbermann is talent, and a big baby to boot — any reporter who has covered him could tell you all about that — so the idea that he would default to the good of the many over the needs of the one is just not in his nature. The title was used as leverage, nothing more, when Mr. Olbermann became dissatisfied and starting communicating with his employers through lawyer letters months ago. Mr. Olbermann is a ferocious fan of team sports, but that’s not how he plays the game."

Having said the above, Carr does own up to the problems of the Current channel (i.e. attempting to compete with left-to-center MSNBC with supercheap programming--now including amateur-video-level commercials for national-brand products).

But to me, it seems like the major problem is that--like Olbermann or not--Current hired him and promised him autonomy in terms of how the channel's news/political programming would evolve.  Then, Al Gore, Joel Hyatt and David Bohrman (currently having himself spun as a genius in the media for selling Current on simulcasting radio shows of Bill Press and Stephanie Miller--plus arranging the MSNBC TV simulcast of Don Imus, who, for reasons not to be mentioned here, was terminated from the network) apparently said, "No Keith, we have the autonomy, you don't."

In short, the Olbermann/Current situation is probably a bit more complex--with pluses and minuses on both sides--than you'll read in most media coverage.

And perhaps Olbermann now feels like a participant in THE HUNGER GAMES, where he's expected to play a game by agreed-upon rules, only to find management changes the rules to suit them and not their $10 million-a-year star player..

David Carr of THE NEW YORK TIMES on Keith Olbermann.

Two Keith Olbermann profiles by David Carr--the first post-MSNBC, the second during Olbermann's Current tenure:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/olbermanns-rage-is-all-the-rage.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/business/media/at-current-tv-keith-olbermann-is-trapped-inside-his-show.html?pagewanted=all

Anis Shivani on NEW YORK TIMES poetry critic David Orr's new book.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/beautiful-and-pointless-poetry_b_847197.html

A particularly interesting passage from Shivani's review:

The major problem with regard to politics and poetry, it seems to me, is that contemporary American poets have generally decided to be apolitical. Sometimes they go out of their way to inject politics into their poetics--as on the occasions of Bush's wars or Obama's election or the Hurricane Katrina disaster--but they quickly retreat, are uncomfortable with the posture, and as a lot believe that poetry should have no business engaging with politics. A political worldview tends to saturate poetry from other regions of the world, even when the poetry is not explicitly political. There are explicit institutional reasons why poetry with a political attitude is verboten.

At the same time, poetry with a political charge has never ceased being written in America, despite the onslaught of confessionalism. I'm just reading Tony Trigilio's Historic Diary and the young poet Harmony Holiday's Negro League Baseball, and have been rereading Amiri Baraka's early poetry, as politically resonant as anything one can read today. It remains true, however, that American poetry--like American literature in general--is shy of class and economics, and this is the biggest question to be addressed with respect to politics and poetry.

Here's one more (and likely controversial) section of the review, relating to the now-and-forever practice of poetry incest:

Some years ago the website Foetry.com exposed the obvious corruption in small and university press poetry book publication (almost all first books are published through contests), where well-known poets like Jorie Graham judged in favor of their friends or students. This, actually, is only the tip of the iceberg, not the most remarkable form of corruption. Foetry wasn't a momentary jolt to the impartial standards of academic poetry, but its very essence. However, this is how Orr justifies the corruption:

In such arrangements, the idea of fair play doesn't typically extend to people outside the group. Nor is that attitude necessarily to be criticized: If you and your friends are struggling to get attention, it hardly makes sense to spend each brief moment in the spotlight talking about the gang down the street.

In other words, it's okay to exclude outsiders when you're supposed to be impartial judges! In fact, Orr takes the example of Foetry admonishing corrupt poetry judging as an example of the system working--somebody bothered to take the trouble to expose the corruption, which goes to show that university poets are expected to uphold standards. Only a lawyer would engage in this sort of reasoning.

SALON's Laura Miller interviews NYT poetry critic David Orr.

http://www.salon.com/books/poetry/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/04/05/david_orr

Here's a fascinating passage from the interview:

You have a fascinating chapter, titled "In the Fishbowl," about the social and economic situation that professional poets work in. I have to say, the poetry world in itself can be daunting to the nonspecialist. You might tentatively mention a poet you like to an expert or a member of the poetry world, and they'll look at you as if you just gushed over a greeting card. You don't even want to admit to having any kind of taste because you're afraid it'll be the wrong taste.

I've been that kind of person before, and I'm ashamed of it.

I often write about the sociology of the poetry world, and some readers like it and some don't. I think that it's important to do because people don't know where poems come from. I find that when people do get a sense that poetry is written by human beings and that these human beings are under various pressures through the world that they inhabit, just like everyone else, usually people are much more sympathetic to poetry.

Really? Because my impression is that there is a lot of knee-jerk complaining about the poetry establishment, and that the people who make those complaints are not very sympathetic to the communal pressures of the poetry world. You hear a lot of gripes about how everybody knows everybody else and that there's a lot of log rolling.

Well, one of the things I want to show in that chapter is that the kind of behavior that those people complain about has been going on for a long, long time. A lot of really good poetry has arisen either in spite of or maybe because of that kind of behavior.

Poets (including great poets) have always been cliquish and have always fought with other poets.

Yes. I think it's useful for general readers to see that so that they see poetry as a human art, not as something that just arrives on a lightning bolt from the clouds.

There are people who don't like this, and who really cling to the idea that poetry should never talk about the dirty underside. But I find that a little familiarity with the dirty underside actually makes everyone more comfortable because otherwise you just sit around denying the reality.

Here's a review of Orr's book:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/beautiful-and-pointless-poetry_b_847197.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=607664,b=facebook

Time for the Tribune monolith to let the LOS ANGELES TIMES go.

More cut-cut-cutting going on today at THE LOS ANGELES TIMES--starting with Tina Daunt, who wrote a periodic column for Calendar about celeb activism: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/10/layoffs_begin_at_lat.php

The same will be happening on the Other Coast to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Perhaps someone should explain to me why stockholders and corporate executives these days still believe they must demand such a high profit/return as their product deteriorates in quality and the demand for it decreases.

NYTIMES on the Obama Administration's buy-bad-assets plan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/economy/23toxic.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Notice carefully the part of the article where the Captains of Business bare their fangs and growl at the ideas of pay curbs and transparency.

Re the anger at greedy corporate execs--it won't do much good.

I liked this column by Maureen Dowd that appears in today's NEW YORK TIMES: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/opinion/01dowd.html?_r=2

And it is rather pitiful that the corporate/Wall Street CEOs/majordomos are hunkering down, determined to hang on to what they feel are hard-won perks (lavish expense accounts, fit-for-a-monarch living and working quarters, superplush personal jets--not to forget multimegamillions of parting gifts in cash/stock options) while the public gets poor products, abysmal customer service and, in certain cases, going-out-of-business sales to digest.

[UPDATE 2/3/09: Wells Fargo, after taking over Wachovia and receiving bailout money, plans a lavish employee party in Las Vegas: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/wells-fargo-another-bailed-out-firm/327746]

[UPDATE 2/4/09: Wells Fargo, after an outcry of protest, canceled the party: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/wells-fargo-another-bailed-out-firm/327746?icid=200100397x1218250358x1201186513]

Recently, I read a laudatory profile of Barney Frank in THE NEW YORKER. Frank optimistically predicted an economic recovery by 2010 (presumably before the midterm elections).

If such a recovery takes place on Frank's schedule, I'm assuming that America will return to doing business in the same old ways it did prior to the Wall Street meltdown of this past September.

And, once again, cretins like Jack "GE" Welch will feel comfortable enough to spout tough-guy downsizing palaver in books and over the airwaves.

Obama: will "change" happen re Bush antiterror policies?

From THE NEW YORK TIMES:
President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

But Mr. Obama also said prosecutions would proceed if the Justice Department found evidence that laws had been broken.

From Glenn Greenwald in SALON:
As TALK LEFT's Jeralyn Merritt documents, Obama today [yesterday's interview on ABC's THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS] rather clearly stated that he will not close Guantanamo in the first 100 days of his presidency. He recited the standard Jack Goldsmith/Brookings Institution condescending excuse that closing Guantanamo is "more difficult than people realize." Specifically, Obama argued, we cannot release detainees whom we're unable to convict in a court of law because the evidence against them is "tainted" as a result of our having tortured them, and therefore need some new system -- most likely a so-called new "national security court" -- that "relaxes" due process safeguards so that we can continue to imprison people indefinitely even though we're unable to obtain an actual conviction in an actual court of law. [This was later amended: Obama will now "close" Gitmo, but it will take up to a year.]
Here's an update from Greenwald since Obama's change-of-mind on Gitmo: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/13/obama/

From Harry Shearer, as interviewed by Paul Krassner in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES on December 24th:
"I think there's going to be something sadly funny about the collision/intersection between the sky-high hopes and expectations of his supporters with the sky-high mountain of crap left on his desk by his predecessors."

Maureen Dowd on Pasadena newspaper's reporters--from India.

It had to happen sometime: a newspaper called PASADENA NOW has outsourced its reporting staff to India--where the scribes are paid much much lower than their American cousins.

Maureen Dowd tells the story in a recent NEW YORK TIMES column: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30dowd.html?em