Stuart Varney is, along with Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Donald Trump’s most devoted hosts on Fox News and in a recent show he was visibly upset when Paul Romer, a former chief economist of the World Bank, called the people who speak about economics for the Trump administration, such as White House economics advisor Larry Kudlow, ‘liars for hire’ and that they should not be believed. When Varney remonstrated with him, Romer did not back down.
It used to be that American political party conventions involved some genuine uncertainty about who would become the party nominee and spirited debates about what the party platform should contain since that was supposed to (at lest in theory) set the party’s agenda for the next four years. But those days are gone. Nowadays the nominee is known well in advance and the party platform is also decided on and approved in advance. The last bit of suspense, the nominee’s pick for the vice-presidential slot, is now also announced in advance. Conventions have become infomercials consisting of fulsome praise for the nominees and criticisms of the rival party and candidates.
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As predicted, the Trump campaign has wheeled out the birther charge against Kamala Harris. The playbook for such things is very familiar. Someone publishes an article pushing a lie or a dubious theory and then Trump points to the article as ‘raising concerns’ while not explicitly endorsing the idea. This enables his spokespersons to deny that he is promoting birtherism while promoting birtherism. The strategy is utterly transparent.
The birtherism case against Barack Obama was based on the preposterous idea that he was not born in the US. In Harris’s case, her birth in California is not being challenged. This latest incarnation of birtherism as published in a Newsweek op-ed by John Eastman, a professor of law at Chapman University, suggests that Harris may not meet the constitutional requirement for eligibility since her parents may have been in the US on student visas at the time she was born. This argument has been dismissed out of hand by other law experts and staff at Newsweek were so outraged that this was published that they publicly protested and after three days the magazine kinda, sorta apologized but did not withdraw the article.
Wow. A reporter (I'm not sure who he is) asks Trump, "after three and a half years, do you regret all the lying you've done to the American people?" Trump quickly moves on to the next question. pic.twitter.com/DHn3UvXHnN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 13, 2020
The person who asked the question says that he had been waiting a long time to be called upon so that he could ask it.
I have also been wondering when a reporter might reprise Joseph Welch’s famous words to senator Joe McCarthy that are now seen as signaling the beginning of the end of that demagogue’s career: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” This shocking public rebuke to a US Senator, delivered by Welch in his sad and gentle voice, was a pivotal event that exposed McCarthy to the whole nation as an overbearing, reckless, and lying bully and started his rapid decline.
A good time to pose that question would be now in response to Trump’s attempts to stir up birtherism against Kamala Harris.
Over the weekend Trump stormed off from a press conference when a female reporter kept pressing him about why he keeps claiming credit for an action that Barack Obama did when he was president back in 2014. Jack Shafer writes that there is a pattern here.
It starts with a reporter, usually a female reporter, asking President Donald Trump hard, tenacious questions at a news conference. Trump’s jaw seizes up, rattled and dumbfounded by the questions that he can’t or won’t answer, he abruptly ends the presser by saying, “Thank you, very much” and stalking out of the room.
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These two writers and columnists have both left their positions, decrying what they claim is an atmosphere of intolerance for their views in their respective workplaces. Sullivan has quit New York magazine while Weiss has left the New York Times. Weiss was also one of the signatories to the ‘cancel culture’ letter. It should be noted that they both resigned and were not fired, but in leaving both wrote the kind of self-pitying ‘people are being mean to me’ screeds that prominent people say when they are criticized.
This article describes what led to their respective departures.
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He explains why they are attractive to some people who fall prey to them and what methods might work to wean the people you know away from them. Since I do not use social media, especially Facebook where most of them get propagated, some of the theories he spoke about were new to me.
When I first read that a group of 153 well-known writers, politicians, artists, and intellectuals had signed a letter protesting ‘cancel culture’, my skepticism quickly got activated. It is fine when famous people write letters protesting injustices perpetrated against the powerless but when they protest actions taken against members of their own group, it warrants careful examination. My apprehension was increased when I found that Thomas Chatterton Williams was one of the organizers of this letter and that people like Malcolm Gladwell, David Frum, and J. K. Rowling were among the signatories. Williams is a columnist for Harper’ Magazine which published the letter, and I have found his opinions to be somewhat right-wing and establishment-friendly.
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Tucker Carlson hosts a show on Fox News that some have dubbed the ‘White Nationalist Hour’ because of the relentless race-baiting that he spouts. It says something about the Fox News audience that Carlson’s show has become the highest rated cable news show. But a couple of days ago, Blake Neff, the show’s top writer, was exposed as having posted racist, homophobic, and misogynistic messages on various social media sites under a pseudonym.
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I recently watched this documentary that takes the first part of its title from the credo of legendary investigative journalist I. F. (“Izzy”) Stone (1907-1989) that every journalist should take to heart. Stone said that all governments lie all the time. He said that while governments sometimes told the truth, the burden was on them to prove that to you. The documentary discusses how following that belief made Stone one of the most influential journalists of his time and the inspiration for some of the best journalists who came after him. Although he started out working for newspapers and magazines, he is best remembered for the period from 1953 to 1971 during which he published his own newsletter I. F. Stone’s Weekly out of his home, with his wife as his business manager. The newsletter was considered a must-read by fellow journalists and by anyone interested in serious news. Marilyn Monroe (who in real life was not at all like the ditzy blonde of her film image) reportedly bought subscriptions for every member of Congress.
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