I’m stewing in my own juices here — crippled, homebound, going stir crazy — and one of the things driving me nuts is the state of American media, since I’m stuck watching so much of it. I have noticed that one of the drivers of bad media is these wankers that promote the worst of the underbelly of the country with panel shows, debates, interviews, and far more attention than they deserve, and I could criticize, for example, Piers Morgan, or Joe Rogan, who are constantly dredging up horrible people and propping them up on camera entirely because they have opinions that align with their own ghastly take on the world. I don’t want to waste time on all these horrible people raking in big money by finding equally horrible people to confirm their views.
What I find most appalling are these “experts” who are nothing of the kind, who get paraded about on television for being “authentic,” when they are clearly people prominent for being ignoramuses. I want to take a look at the slimy underbelly, the jumped-up pundits who get prominent airtime for being voices of True America, the dumbasses who are encouraged to express their worthless opinions, and are rewarded with excessive attention in the press.
First up, that extremely punchable face to the right belongs to Clay Travis, a goober I would never have gotten to know if he weren’t being repeatedly consulted as a smart guy on politics. He’s not. He’s a Trump fanatic, through and through.
He’s been frequently quoted for his grading of Trump’s performance.
What is my verdict on the first 100 days of Trump? This is what I voted for. I think if you were arguing, if you voted Trump, and I imagine a lot of you did, some of you did not, that’s fine, if you voted Trump, I can’t imagine you giving him anything other than an A or B. Right? I don’t see C, I don’t see D, I don’t see F.
He never gives specifics — he just gives him an A overall. As someone who professionally grades students on their performance, I am offended. You have to have rubrics and criteria that allow you to judge work, and to give productive guidance on improving it. Travis is a child who thinks a grade is just an arbitrary trophy you hand on someone because you like them.
His “grade” is also indefensible: how can you think a felon who repeatedly tramples on the constitution, who is shredding the social safety net, who is demolishing vital scientific institutions, who wants to destroy public and higher education, is doing good work? A wanna-be autocrat who is arresting and deporting people without due process does not deserve a good grade.
His reasons for supporting Trump are transparently stupid.
“Since we’re talking honestly about politics here, I have a question for you,” McLaughlin said. “My question is, and I want you to be really honest with me here, did you regret voting for Trump after his presidency ended in the January 6th riot?”
“No. I wish I could have voted for Trump ten times in 2020,” Travis replied.
“Really?” McLaughlin reacted.
“I think Joe Biden’s a disaster. And, I think one of the things that’s fascinating, you know, Ronald Reagan said he didn’t leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left him,” Travis said.
Travis went on to explain that the crux of his current political ideology focuses on him being “anti-cancel culture.”
He’s a free speech warrior who supports a man who sues people who criticize him, who uses the power of his office to force conformity, and he doesn’t recognize that he’s a hypocrite. He’s obsessed with Colin Kaepernick, who dared to kneel during the playing of the national anthem at the start of football games, yet now Travis has the gall to claim that he is “anti-cancel culture.”
And now, as a reward, he gets invited to babble on Piers Morgan. He is invited to do an in-person interview with Donald Trump on Airforce One. You might wonder, what are his qualifications to opine on politics or economics or civil rights?
He’s a podcaster.
Nothing wrong with podcasting, but it is not sufficient to make you an authority on pretty much anything. Anyone can get a microphone and start pontificating on the internet.
He’s also sports podcaster, possibly the most useless kind of them all. He has a site called Outkick where he basically makes predictions for sports bettors, leavened with his reactionary takes on politics. Maybe he’s really good at calling the outcomes of football games, I don’t know, but nothing about his profession makes him qualified to talk about much of anything outside sports.
But now, his stupid punchable face and unsupported opinions pop up all the time on the internet.
He’s the kind of negligible, uninteresting slime who happily acts as a useful idiot for conservatives to bounce their bad ideas off of — he’ll just affirm any foolishness, because that’s how he gets paid in money and reputation. The A he gives to Trump is worthless, but audiences will lap it up and ask for more.
That’s our current problem. It’s not just that media will promote bullshit, but that there’s no shortage of people they can find to parrot it, and that the general public lacks the capacity to question anything.
I’m afraid I’ll never run out of these know-nothings to highlight.
There are several sites who use Caitlin Clark’s popularity to further their “white grievance” narrative. Outkick is among them. In other words, I expect that Clay Travis is probably racist AF.
Technically, he does leave open the “E” grade for the current presidency, albeit probably somewhat unintentionally…
” In other words, I expect that Clay Travis is probably racist AF.”
Oh, ABSOLUTELY. He briefly worked for the sports blog Deadspin and after he left, his coworkers called him out for saying a whole lot of racist stuff. For example, his display name on the blog was “Cl’ay,” which was a typo he insisted they keep because “it looks like one of those black names.” He’s scum.
Fixed it for you?
Given how much time Trump is golfing his grade should probably be “Failed, did not attend enough”. Unfortunately his sort of thoughtless distant CEO style doesn’t require him to be in the office much. He just issues commands at whim and underlying scurry to implement them.
@ ^ JM : Or disqualified for cheating? Coz Trump always cheats there as has become well known..
Does golf not do that? If not, why not?
It just aint cricket -or even motorsport..
I had recently watched multiple Youtube videos on the ESPN-NFL deal to see how it impacts sports streaming and one of the videos Youtube fed me was by Clay Travis. His channel has since polluted my feed. I used PZ’s OP as incentive to tell the Youtube algorithm not to suggest Outkick anymore. Kicked out of my feed!
I learned long ago that “expert” now means “asshole with opinions”.
@Reginald Selkirk
Given that the crux of his political ideology focuses on being “anti-cancel culture” that’s basically certain.
People like that want to be racist without being yelled at about it. The only real question is how misogynistic and queerphobic is he too, on a scale of somewhat to massively
PZ,
Might I suggest watching British TV shows instead? We’ve found an awesome Canadian show called “The Murdoch Mysteries”, which is set in Toronto in the very early part of the 20th century. We’ve also watched “Frankie Drake, Detective”, which is set in the 1920’s and features a female detective with a young black woman as a sidekick.
Both of these shows explore many of the issues that we see today, and would probably be considered “too woke” by many.
Lately, it seems that everything that we enjoy watching is on Britbox.
@6 StevoR: Trump never plays in events where he would be disqualified. When he plays in tournaments they are tournaments he setup on his golf courses and not associated with any league. His golf courses do host big league events but he is only at those at the course owner for some publicity.
@ ^ JM : Ah, thanks. So basically Trump is allowed to get away with cheating because he’s rich and owns the courses and tournaments. An echoe of him boasting about being allowed to sexually assault women because he’s rch and famous. (Vomits)