I was horrified years ago when Fox News emerged as the shambling, dishonest, sleazy voice of conservative thought — I mean, I thought the National Review was a racist organ, but at least they put on bow ties and talked in elevated accents and pretended to be decent human beings, and William F. Buckley Jr. was clearly an intelligent man with odious views. Fox News decided that intelligence was irrelevant and that the odious views were what sold. And the Republican Party embraced it all and decided to jettison intelligence along with decency (although one could argue that they led the way with Reagan).
Brace yourself. It gets worse. Fox News is now passé. It is insufficiently contemptible for the next crop of conservative politicians.
They are all jumping to…Breitbart.
Trump is going to cash in on his electoral defeat by forming an alliance with Breitbart, creating an abomination called Trump TV so far. That may change, since the Trump name is so tainted that it isn’t being used on any of his new hotels.
And if you thought Trump was bad, wait until you get a load of the next generation of far right conservatives. Curt Schilling is considering a political career, and hitching his star to Breitbart. After all, if the primary qualifications for running for office as a Republican are a loud mouth, racism, and ignorance, he’s a perfect match.
Another guy who is trying to rehabilitate his political career by diving into the raging dumpster fire is Dinesh D’Souza. So presidential.
Obama's dad dumped him at birth & his mom got rid of him at age 10–did they know something we didn't when we signed up for this guy? pic.twitter.com/owhOt6IAwB
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) October 21, 2016
Obama’s dad dumped him at birth & his mom got rid of him at age 10–did they know something we didn’t when we signed up for this guy?
Just wait. After the 2020 elections, when Breitbart is branded as a loser and gets discarded like Fox News, the Republicans will go looking for an even more repulsive vehicle for their views, and we’ll see the rise of Aryan Nation TV. Then, in 2024, when that one goes bust as a medium for getting Republicans elected, they’ll have to go even lower. I don’t know what form that horror will take, though. Maybe they’ll join forces with the Catholic Church.
Christofascists. When I learned about politics I was told conservatives generally want to maintain the status quo or otherwise implement small scale change. They were supposed to be a distinct group from reactionaries, who actively wanted to reverse progress. The Christofascists supporting Trump don’t want to maintain the status quo, they want to turn America into 1930s Germany.
re @1:
good points. Beware Godwin, though, you’re edging close. Still present conservatives are more Regressives while those who call themselves Progressives are more “status quodians”™. Resulting from the conserves continually pushing the Overton window. So progressives, like Alice, have to run very fast to stay on the same square.
Siobhan:
Yes, they do. We’re now living in When facism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
This ^ is what we are seeing now, every day. What fun, eh?
What’s the point in trying to yell “antichrist” now? Antichrist or not, Pres. Obama’s term is effectively over.
And yet he went to have a successful career in law, ran for the senate, and became the president of the United States. If that doesn’t typify the ‘pull yourself by the boot straps’ American dream, then I don’t know what does.
Odious views or not, if Schilling ran for a congressional seat of the district Fenway park is in, he would probably win because if the Bloody Sock game.
That’s horrifying.
I think the “Christofascists” are no longer at the wheel, and it’s just plain fascists now.
Breitbart is ascending because they have some big bucks behind them.
Robert Mercer, a Kochlike hedge fund manager has been supporting them.
I’m having trouble imagining Trump TV.
It would be hate, lies, racism, misogyny, anti-immigrant hysteria etc.. all the time.
With frequent appearances by Trump calling for one Democrat or another to be assassinated or thrown in jail, the Great Mexican Wall, and anti-immigrant hysteria.
Could it make money? Got me, we are through the looking glass and into Crazyland. How should I know what will succeed in Crazyland.
Might have a hard time getting advertisers. The big corporations aren’t going to put their ad budgets in such a channel.
At least one of the lunatic fringe sites isn’t doing well. Glenn Beck and his Mormon prophet who is always wrong act, just got too old and boring.
And Focus on Hating Everybody crashed and burned.
Mike Smith,
I’m as big a Sox fan as there is (at least on this board), and I’ll be forever grateful to the baseball player Curt Schilling for his role in the ’04 season, but even then it was pretty obvious that his political and social views were odious. He caught a lot of flak in MA that year for campaigning for Bush. Believe it or not, most Sox fans are able to separate rooting interests from politics (and the area around Fenway would be one of the least receptive to his political message).
That is not to say that a gopper can’t win in MA–obviously they can, especially when running for governor. But generally the ones who succeed are in the William Weld mold–fiscally “responsible” but socially liberal.
Schilling would get as many free drinks as he wants anywhere in the state, and then get trounced in the election.
@slithey tove 2
What is the danger of Godwin’s law here? I only ask because while it is a measure of the intensity of an argument, sometimes people act as if Hitler or Nazi Germany analogies are illigitimate “cause Godwin”. It’s a particularly annoying thing to have pop up in these Trumpian times.
re 9:
EG Romney.
Remember Obamacare is essentially modeled after Romneycare. As Governor of MA he implemented the system that required health insurance proof to be filed with ones state income tax form, or pay extra (to pay for ER treatments of standard healthcare, which the uninsured resorted to).
Seems we, massholes, try to balance our strong Democratic reps and senators (Kennedy, Warren, etc) with a republican governor. tsk tsk
Caine@3:
Trump fails on that one, with his retweeting actual nazi rantings.
the thing that leaves me speechless is one of the partners for trump tv is said to be Roger Ailes
another fine example of conservative idealism
uncle frogy
Nah, after the demise of Drumph Dumb-V 8chan, or whatever platform succeeds 8chan, will take up the slack.
But then, small diff, since Milogate revealed Breaitbart recruits heavily from the troll shitlord manosphere.
unclefrogy @ # 13: … one of the partners for trump tv is said to be Roger Ailes…
The rumors might say that, but the WaPo says
– so his role in any prospective TrumpTV would have to be low-key and off-the-books.
@slithey tove #2:
As Brony said at #12, Godwin’s law is inapplicable here. When someone’s platform is essentially that of a 1930’s German dictator, no law can tell you not to make the comparison. Invoking Godwin’s law means we cannot make the comparison when it actually happens, which can become extremely dangerous. If enough Democrats and independents sit out this election because they hate Hillary almost as much as Trump, Trump will win and we will hopefully be able to avert the disaster Germany went through that led to WW2.
Trump is as incompetent as he is racist or sexist so Trump TV will be mismanaged to hell in no time. However, I worry about the next racist and sexist asshole who is not as incompetent as Trump.
But the guy has several successful businesses. He is at least a multi-millionaire.
And there seem to be a lot of potential customers.
I’m inclined to the view that this wouldn’t be so much a down-market Faux Noise radical right project as it is an up-market Infowars style all-conspiracies-welcome operation.
Jones rakes in dollars galore from his fans. All the Breitbart-Trump crowd have to do is to ensure no spittle flies onto the camera lenses and that they talk a bit like ordinary people do most of the time and they’ll be able to suck in a much larger group than Jones’s market segment. All they have to do is to come up with a plan for monetising it.
Of course, all-conspiracies-welcome has to include those damned Protocols so the Breitbart far right people can stick with their standard range of racism targets.
@18
Not really. He’d have made more money if he put his money in an interest-bearing account and didn’t touch it for years.
Good businessmen don’t squander a familial fortune and go bankrupt on several high-profile businesses.
Didn’t Breitbart himself recently refer to Drumpf as a “dangerous sociopath?” My, my, the Ourorobos does bite hard…
@20
Which part are you saying not really to? The fact that he has several successful businesses, or the fact that he is at least a multi-millionaire. I thought both of those were accepted facts. Or are you expressing yourself poorly?
@22
Trump’s “successful businesses” have lost him money compared to just putting it in a box and staring at it for a couple decades. Calling his history of bankruptcies and worse-than-nothing financial expertise “successful businesses” feeds into this false narrative that trump is some kind of business genius that is at least a stopped clock about economic matters.
The internet shitlords really are the new generation of conservatives. Now they’ll get their own TV station.