Morning Fog

Truth Social - A Russian Tradition

Washington Post Political Columnist Dana Milbank recently explored the new Trumpie social media platform "Truth Social" to see what kinds of posts are appearing there. (See "I tried Trump's Truth Social So You Don't Have To" in today's Post.)  And he found, surprise, surprise! - not much truth, just a lot of rehashing of Trump's shopworn lies.

This reminds me of a decades-old joke that Russians used to tell. The USSR's two main newspapers at the time were Izvestia (meaning "news)," and Pravda (meaning "Truth"); the former was the organ of the Soviet government, while the latter was published by the Communist Party. For anyone who's too young to have heard it, the joke was that "There's no news in Izvestia and no truth in Pravda." Or vice-versa, I've heard both. 

It's a feeble joke, but one wonders whether feeble minds who adore Putin were trying to show their admiration for that "genius" by mirroring Soviet and Russian media right here in the U.S.  Shall we take the wacky ramblings on Truth Social as the voice of the Trumpist Party, formerly known as the Republican Party?

Note: Both "newspapers" still exist in somewhat different forms, for example Izvestia reportedly became a private news sheet in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union; Pravda apparently continues being published by the Communist Party.. There arre online versions too.  

Political Debates on Television

The first televised debate between Trump and Biden arose suddenly on my horizon. Once I realized it was coming, the first thing that popped into my head was that I needed to watch it. The second thing was, "I hope they've set up sensible procedures to keep Trump from using the scorched earth tactics he employed during his run in 2016."

Sadly as we all now know, "they" had utterly failed to do so. How, I thought, could the organizers have failed to recognize what the sedate standard format would lead to?  If I thought it was problematic, why didn't they? I had assumed that to ensure smooth process, the rules would be like the debate here in Virginia that I had watched the previous week. In that one, the three participants (two Senatorial candidates and the moderator, Chuck Todd of Meet the Press) were online, weren't in the same room, not even the same city. The camera moved from one to the other on schedule, and no one ran over their allotted time by more than a few seconds.

So who sets these things up?  I thought I remembered the parties bargaining over details but since about 1988 the process has been the exclusive domain of "The Commission on Presidential Debates." This organization was set up in a supposedly bipartisan way (for details, check their website http://www.debates.org.)  What I notice is that the three directors' politically active periods were as long ago as the 1980s, which may mean that their understanding of what constitutes normal political practice is a little outdated, and they failed to recognize changed conditions. I prefer to think that than to believe that the Republicans in the leadership duped the Democrats.

Clearly changes are needed, and as of today, the Commission has proposed some, mainly that the upcoming debates be "virtual" events. But the original error made the changes themselves chaotic and controversial. Trump can benefit by claiming that the Democrats requested the changes because Biden couldn't take the heat, and also handily extract himself from playing a losing hand (he has already said he won't participate on a "virtual" basis). 

I don't believe the public loses much if the remaining two debates are canceled. The greater interest will be whether the debates continue in future elections; whether the CPD can make changes that will make the process more relevant; and whether it will even be the CPD that is responsible for setting them up in future. 

The Hostages, Plural

As I suggested yesterday Donald Trump is hostage to the worst elements in his "own" party. But he isn't the only hostage on our political stage these days.

The media! Ahh, the media.  All of them -- liberal, conservative, mainstream, streaming, whatever -- are sadly, hostage to Donald himself. Collectively, they rush to pounce on his every tweet rant, attempting to analyze it, wondering whether it represents his real thinking.  In short, taking the President's nocturnal outbursts far too seriously.  

The downside is that cooperate in Trump's smoke-and-mirrors show by giving it continuing publicity (exactly as he hopes they will do). Further, particularly when they fall all over themselves trying to make something from nonsense like "covfefe," they only reinforce the negative impression, prevalent among so many, that they are biased.  Further, it leads to shallow reporting that feeds stereotypical thinking.

Can our media cure themselves?  I would like to think so.  On the topic of media in a Trump world, for several months now, I've been very impressed by the writing of Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post.  See for example her latest piece, regarding the difference between media "balance" (which Trump and his administration neither deserve nor should expect), and media "fairness" (which Trump should be granted and the public should deserve and expect).   

 

 

Respect

Sean Spicer, who by most accounts is soon to be the public voice of Trumpism, complains recently that the media still aren't giving Trump "the respect he deserves."

But let's look at what Trump "deserves."  It's easy to say that any human being unqualifiedly deserves respect (kudos, Aretha Franklin). OK, we can give Trump that one - he is clearly human. We know this because of his many human qualities, such as constant changes of opinion, a tendency to lie but to be unhappy when someone calls him on it; vanity, and selfishness. 

And we respect people for things they have achieved, even if we may think that what they achieved is undesirable, or even reprehensible. Tycoons may amass fortunes by dealing ruthlessly with competitors or labor unions, so we might respect their accomplishment without applauding their means of achieving it.  Again, Trump merits respect in this sense too - he's rich, and a lot of people respect that.  He's famous, and many respect that. When Zsa Zsa Gabor died a month or so ago, someone commented that she was one of the first people who became famous without being famous FOR anything.  Such celebrity, and the respect it brings, are common these days - Trump is a Zsa Zsa for the 21st century.

Respect for power? Absolutely. If you crave power yourself, others who have attained it may automatically garner your respect.  So Trump respects Putin. And you have to respect someone who has control over you or who can make or break you. Mr. Spicer presumably respects Trump. As potential victims/beneficaries of Trump's decisions, American citizens need to respect him for his power to do them good or ill. In war and diplomacy, respect comes to powerful nations and their leaders in similar ways - for fear of what they can do. Putin respects Trump. For obvious reasons, this kind of power-based respect is often either weak, counterfeit, or temporary. When power is lost, so is respect. Put a question mark after "Putin respects Trump?" 

Yet I think Spicer is really claiming something more for Trump. He wants acknowledgment of political legitimacy for someone who is a political bastard. Is it enough that Trump won the election? Leaving the popular vote aside (our system is not founded on that, so let's forget it), there are many questions about how the campaign was won. First are the ethics of his tactics, ranging from simple political "white lies," to serious misrepresentations, on through casting doubt on the fundamentals of the electoral system, and formulating his message to appeal to all the most anti-democratic elements of our political spectrum.  Not to mention the issue of Russian meddling. Trump is trying desperately to swat down the Russian connection, but his efforts to blame it on the Democrats make him less legitimate, and his bald dismissal that it "didn't affect the outcome" is unprovable at best, and irrelevant to the real issue.

Even if Republican operatives and voters have no difficulty seeing Trump as legit, the political opposition will very naturally have difficulty in doing so. Meanwhile those whose job it is to remain neutral and objective (i.e., the media, including those many elements that favor Trump) must continue to withhold "respect."  Mr. Spicer's job, beginning January 20, will be to create the grounds on which that respect could be built, to convincingly explain away all the doubts. If he is wise, the task must seem both Herculean and Sisyphean; if he expects "respect" in this case just to pop out full-blown, he's unwise. 

 

 

Excellent News On Privacy

Amid all the political brouhaha (emphasis on the HA-HA) these days, good news may get buried.

So let's not miss this: The FCC has approved new rules that would require internet service providers to get your permission to sell and share your personal data to others. As Chairman Tom Wheeler said in releasing this news, "It is the consumers' information. How it is used should be the consumers' choice."

This development is an immensely positive step toward data protection and privacy in general. 

Or would be, if we could count on it. Unfortunately it is not yet clear how and when it would be implemented and, as with any ruling that places an obstacle to corporate exploitation of the consumer, it may never be implemented. The referenced news article above points out that the big ISPs "may" challenge the ruling in court (gee, do you think?). Further, the decision came as a 3-2 vote along party lines; but the five commissioners are appointed by the President, with the current chairman's term expiring in 2018, so a reversal is very possible if the White House changes hands.   

Bidding One No-Trump

Donald Trump said this morning that he has definitely decided not to participate in the Republican debate later this evening.  The stated reason is his war with Fox News personality Megyn Kelly (which by the way has an astonishing similarity to a love-hate romance).  But Trump wants to pick his own questioners, and even for Fox News, to allow that would be a new low in journalistic integrity.  

It's hard to see who would regret the "loss" of Trump on the podium.  Not he himself; he tells us so, and professes he doesn't need to be there, and as far as his standing in the polls is concerned, he's probably right.  Not, surely, the other candidates, who may welcome a chance to be heard without the constant bullying.  And even more definitely not voters who are not his fans.  In truth, all these groups already know what Trump has to say and if they've been listening they know they shouldn't expect anything else.

Could Fox News be financially hurt, as Trump suggests, if his failure to appear cuts the advertising audience?  I doubt even that.  I have no clue whether Fox has a contract with Trump for his appearance; perhaps it's more of an "invitation."  But I have trouble believing they haven't thought to have contracts with their advertisers and I would guess delivering Trump (or any other candidate) is not a part of the deal.  Maybe Fox is concerned, though, because they seem still to be hoping he will appear, and even sicced Bill Reilly on Trump to try to persuade him to come. 

Personally, I accept Trump's refusal as firm.  To change his mind and turn up tonight might be the most damaging thing he could do to his fan base, who would perceive him as having caved.  

If as I expect, Trump doesn't appear, we can learn something too.  A severe drop-off in viewer numbers for the event would, in my view, demonstrate what many of us suspect anyway: That many of his fans love him not so much as a serious contender to deal with the country's problems, but more for his entertainment value. tuning in only to hear his latest outrage.  In that case, the petulant Trump may succeed only in revealing that the would-be emperor lacks political clothing.

There remains one other possibility, too horrid to contemplate:  That Fox caves and pulls Kelly from the panel.  I don't really expect this but the lesson then would be how low we have all sunk.

How Do We Get The Media We Want? Does Anybody Want That?

We all know the media - print media anyway - is * in trouble. 

* For further comment on this word "is," please see "Is the Media, Or Are They Not?" on The Tin Lizard.

We hear it every day.  The Washington Post sold out to Jeff Bezos; the New Orleans Times-Picayune is experimenting with publishing a newspaper only three times a week; the National Geographic will become a part of the Rupert Murdoch empire, with unknown results.  Many speculate that National Geo may become a National Enquirer clone, focusing on "human interest" stories. 

Certainly that's a pool the Washington Post has dabbled its toes in, with pap like today's "Parents Love Their Kids. Why Is Talking About It So Uncool?" wherein New Mother Jennie Yabroff protests that all her cohort joke amongst themselves about "throwing the baby out the window," whereas gee, she l-o-v-e-s her kid.  (World to Jennie: It's uncool because although new mothers can't help but discuss their new charges, I suspect, assuming "new mothers" as a class have brains, it's b-o-r-I-n-g to jabber constantly about the obvious.)  

But not just print media.  Our network television "national" news broadcasts become ever more littered with non-news of the sort that used to be the exclusive province of local media.  They open with stories about the weather, continue with stuff about sinkholes or consumer-oriented items on saving you money on your groceries, and even here in Washington D.C., the nation's capital, seldom provide anything beyond headlines on major legislation or our overseas wars.  It's not clear this strategy has worked, or whether it just pushes more of us to abandon them.

But I still value the daily newspaper because from time to time, an original thought (original to me, anyway) creeps in. 

Thus, by way of this long introduction, I come to praise Hayley Tsukayama's blog post about Apple ad-blocker apps, which I wouldn't have seen had it not been reprinted in the Washington Post.  These apps, evidently, are becoming wildly popular.  Before describing a few of them, however, the article reminds us that websites are depending on the ads for revenue that they hope will beget a prophet (er ... make that "profit").  So, there is something of a dilemma here for the user.  As the writer puts it, "...you have to ask yourself: Are the negative aspects of ads enough to drive you to cut off the revenue for the site you're viewing?"

This is an interesting point. I suppose a lot depends on how intrusive or obnoxious the ad is.  Among the add blockers, there doesn't appear to be one that makes that decision for you.  I personally despise pop-ups, which get in the way of what you're actually trying to read/view and don't always even disappear when you tell them to, but otherwise I find I pretty much just tolerate ads on websites I use, because I do realize that they're a necessary evil. 

Certainly even in the days when newspapers were much more replete with advertisements than they are now, all of us simply learned to ignore them -- pages and pages of them.  And I can watch television without even really noticing the ads - although I do wonder whether the rise of ad-skipping on television, in various forms, might not have contributed to the slow dwindling of the television audience.  Surely we can learn to ignore commercial messages online, too - because that's the price to be paid, if we want what we claim to want.

 

 

 

Net Neutrality - A Level Playing Field In A Tilted World?

It's been a depressing sort of day today.  The weather doesn't help - light snow turning to freezing rain and sleet which is expected to continue well into the night and tomorrow morning; gray skies; and the daytime high once again below freezing, in an area where 48 or 50 degrees would be normal this time of year.

But then, practically wherever I looked, I found yet another case in which consumers are being taken for a ride, or citizens being denied basic protections of law, by the unscrupulous and greedy.-- banks, airlines, hotels, rent-a-cops, and others.

I'll explore several of the specifics in future posts, but want to begin today on the seemingly positive side, with the issue of "net neutrality."

I'm heartened by the recent FCC decision. It seems glaringly obvious to me that the internet has indeed become a utility, albeit not a traditional but a new one.  As such, it should quite naturally be subject to a degree of government oversight and regulation. 

It's actually true that Al Gore did not invent the internet.  But neither did the big service providers who are now fighting for the right (in effect) to uncontrolled pricing.      

Those who would argue that point, pleading instead for self-regulation, or scoffing at the need for any regulation, are of course those who stand to profit big from sticking their hands in your pocket.   And though I'm heartened by the FCC's stand, I'm very disheartened by the realistic expectation that the profiteers will largely succeed in rolling back the FCC's ruling, even if they have to lie to do it.  (Current ads in favor of what we might call "net discrimination" claim the future, under neutrality, hold "billions" in new taxes.  In fact, no new taxes are proposed.) 

It's disheartening, too, to realize the extent to which we the people continue to accept getting the short end of the stick, buying into such nonsensical concepts as trickle-down economics, or the disingenuous notion that consumer businesses are motivated by providing the consumer what he/she wants. 

(Hey, aren't you loving the pachyderm insurance folks who tell us they started their business just so they could give us more service for less money?  What Samaritans they!) 

Oh, and a final blow to our self-esteem as consumers should be that "neutrality" is just a buzzword.  It sounds good, but it disguises what's at stake. The "neutrality" battle didn't originate from either side's desire to offer consumers low prices.  The cynic's view:  It's a fight between two mammoths - the companies that create "content" and those who deliver it - over who will have the right to plunder our bank accounts first.

That said, I still think the FCC is on the right track.

 

 

 

   

Brian Williams, I Hardly Knew Ye

Well, Brian Williams now has his comeuppance for having either accidentally conflated (his term), or purposely inflated, the details of his experience covering the Iraq war.  

We may never know for sure which is true.  I can in some ways credit the idea that his statement was an accident.  At least from my perspective, there are lots of details from my experience of war some 40+ years ago that I feel certain are blurred or entirely forgotten.  On the other hand, it really has not been all that many years since the incident Williams says he "conflated." 

I also know that many, if not all, veterans suffer from a somewhat natural tendency to imagine - and report - their war years as more replete with derring-do than they were.  But Williams is not himself a veteran.  And finally, there's the fog of war - when things are happening fast, fear and just plain tension can mix up your later recall. 

So, the "accident" defense may be credible. 

On the other hand, my perspective is also colored by the very visible tendency these days for a prominent journalist to make him/herself a part of the story. When I heard the first part of this tale a week ago, the first thing to pop into my head was a case I recall from the war in Bosnia when I was in the area, in which I could tell a CNN reporter standing in a war-torn village [where I had stood myself just a few hours earlier] had clearly manufactured a story.  So it's not at all difficult for me to think that Williams may have been seeking to enhance his credibility by edging into fiction territory. 

It may not really matter, though.  In the era of the instant news story, Williams became one himself.  His sin as a journalist is twofold:  his personal experience ought not have been brought into play; and when he did choose to do so, he ought to have been more careful than most to check the facts. 

Some are saying that a six-month suspension is not penalty enough.  I'm frankly a bit nonplussed by the outcry about his being such a "trusted" figure.  Anchors deliver sound bites, and they all make their share of errors.  So who really "trusts" them?  The networks, perhaps, like to imagine that their chosen figureheads are revered by the hoi polloi.

And that's the reason, I suspect, that six months' suspension is enough, or perhaps in fact too severe, for it seems dubious that Williams will be allowed to return in the same role.  That's OK by me - I seldom see Williams, but more often tune in NBC on weekends ... Lester Holt seems a good, solid anchor who may get his big break here.    

Records Sealed on SEALS

Craig Whitlock, a journalist focusing on defense and the military, informs us today that in a judicial proceeding that's looking into some funny stuff surrounding the acquisition of certain military equipment, nobody is allowed to refer to "Navy SEALS" even though it's pretty clear the equipment was requisitioned by those very same sailors with the aquatic-mammal aliases.

It seems pretty silly.  First, of course, to try to muzzle references to things we want to "protect" can often work out to just attract attention instead.  Ergo, the Whitlock article.

Second, I doubt the secrecy has anything to do with real defense secrets or things that need to be kept from "the enemy."  Unless the enemy is the public.  There's a good chance in this case, that such is the case.  The Navy has always been the most publicity-hungry of our armed services.  (Well, unless you count the Marines, a branch of the Navy, where the joke always was that a Marine squad has eleven men, versus the Army's ten. Why? The eleventh is the photographer.) 

Anyway:   Back to the Navy. That's why the SEALS have become such a big deal despite their supposed existence under deep cover, and it's why there hardly ever seems to be a television season without at least one Navy-based show.   The SEALS don't mind a bit of good publicity (leaving aside details of tactics and capabilities), but would prefer that "nary a man [would] say a word agin 'em."