Free Speech! Brought to Us by America's Oligarchs

According to the latest news, Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is going forward. I wish it were not. I have no particular animosity toward Musk – my animosity toward him is generalized. I resent, in general, fantastically wealthy individuals who believe their billions are a well-deserved reward for their personal awesomeness. I want them to be more realistic about how they got rich. I want them to admit that they are not exactly awesome, but instead are cunningly adept at gaming the economic system.

To say that Musk “deserves” his estimated 275-billion-dollar fortune is to say that his actions have, on average, benefited each American family to the tune of about 2,100 dollars. Given this, I believe every American should calculate how much they have benefited monetarily from Elon Musk and, if their household total is under $2,100, they should contact him and request a payment covering the difference!

  

Okay, I’m kidding. I do not advocate harassing billionaires. I only advocate remembering that their wealth is not “deserved” in that it is not a natural result of the generous benefits they have bestowed on the rest of us.

  

And now, my next point: our news sources should not be controlled by billionaires. Or anyone else who happens to have the money to purchase them. 

 

Control of information is a tricky issue. A. J. Liebling, in a 1960 New Yorker essay wrote that “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” In other words, you can express yourself freely and unreservedly via the press only if you happen to own the press. The First Amendment does not force press owners to permit anyone to say anything through them. It only prevents the government from coercing the press. In today’s news environment, “the press,” includes by implication print media, network and cable news, and Internet sources generally. America’s constitutional restriction on government control of these sources is important. In places like Russia and the People’s Republic of China, government control of the press keeps people grossly ignorant on key issues. It’s different in America where Fox News keeps people grossly ignorant on key issues. More on this later.

 

But back to the dangers of government control. Just imagine if Donald Trump were president and we had no First Amendment press protections. Trump would most likely put someone like Rudy Giuliani in charge of shutting down unflattering news sources. Before long, our news would all read like press releases from Trump’s former doctor, the late Harold Bornstein. He was the one who wrote in 2016 that, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Just imagine the media under Trump’s control with no First Amendment protections: “The New York Times confidently reports that Donald Trump is unequivocally the greatest president America – nay, the World – has ever known!”

 

 

             Doctor Bornstein, Peace Be upon Him

Of course we do have government-controlled news sources in the U.S. – PBS and NPR, for example – and I have no problem with them. In fact, I would give them a grade of “A” in terms of their level of accuracy and their sense of responsibility to honestly inform the public. I would give the majority of prominent commercially owned news sources (Washington Post, CNN, etc.) grades ranging from B to A- and in a few cases even a solid A.

 

Except for Fox. Fox gets an F. Because, by its own admission, it is a bullshit factory*.

 

In a September 2020 case, Fox’s attorneys argued that Karen McDougal’s suit against Fox’s Tucker Carlson for his slandering her should be dismissed because people ought to know that Carlson routinely peddles bullshit. In the words of the Trump-appointed judge in the case, “Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.” Furthermore, “Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as ‘exaggeration,’ ‘non-literal commentary,’ or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable.”

 

Translation: Only an idiot would believe Tucker Carlson.

 

The gross irresponsibility and dishonesty of Fox News and the damage it has done to our country concern me. Rupert Murdock, an unfettered, press-owning billionaire, has apparently decided that lying and stoking fear and bigotry are fine as long as he can make money doing it.

Which brings us back to Elon Musk and Twitter. Twitter has become, according to some, the de facto public square. To me it seems very dangerous to have the public square in the hands of a single individual whose accumulation of wealth and inflated self-regard do not suggest NPR levels of honesty and responsibility. Twitter under Elon Musk’s control might not be as bullshitty and bigoted as Fox, but who knows? It very well might.

  

The prospect of our news sources falling more and more into the hands of self-serving billionaires is frightening. I very much believe in the First Amendment, but I also believe in the public’s right to protection against oligarchs who profit by posturing as unbiased news sources while admitting in court that they blatantly and routinely peddle bullshit. So I continue to hope that the Musk-Twitter deal does not give birth to another Fox.

 

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*Bullshit factory phrase is stolen from CNN’s Jim Acosta.

So, Just Another "Low Information Voter," Are We?

You call yourself a responsible, well-informed citizen, do you? Well, well, well. I just wonder.

 Have you really done all you can to stay informed? Have you, may I ask, read all the recent books that have come out describing the incompetence and malfeasance of the Trump administration? Have you, for example, read Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough, John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig’s A Very Stable Genius, Norman Eisen’s A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump, Brian Stelter’s Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,  Jeffrey Toobin’s True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigations of Donald Trump, Jim Sciutto’s The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, Michael Cohen’s Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, Michael Schmidt's Donald Trump vs. the United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, Peter Strzok's Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump? And finally, have you pre-ordered Bob Woodward’s Rage which is scheduled for release next Tuesday?

 

You haven’t? Then shame on you.

 

OK, I’m kidding. Go ahead and breathe a sigh of relief. Because, let’s be realistic, there are just too many of these tomes for any of us to read. This is surely the first time in American publishing history that the number of books flying off the publishing house presses with tales of White House criminality and stupidity is so daunting that no normal reader could possibly get through them all. There are literally more accounts of sleazy administration schemes and indecent enterprises than there are masks at a Trump political rally. Even the best-informed citizen does not have the time to absorb them all. And note that I only listed the books published this summer.

 

Frankly, I don’t take the time to read all these accounts partly because life is too short and partly because they all tell the same basic story, a story that those of us who are paying attention and who are not mesmerized by Fox News’s bubble of unreality know all too well: Donald Trump is a pathological liar, a bigot, a misogynist, and a malignant narcissist who cares only about himself and considers the people who support him a bunch of pathetic dupes.

 

It’s also worth remembering that in addition to being a grossly unethical individual, he is also an incompetent ignoramus. During a tour of the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, where the remains of over 1.000 sailors lie entombed, Trump turned to his chief of staff and asked, “Hey John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?”*

 

Yes, that is our man in the Oval Office: one of the few American adults who doesn’t understand the significance of Pearl Harbor. But why should he know about Pearl Harbor, given his reported characterization of fallen servicemen and women as “losers” and “suckers?” If you fight and die for your country, or for democracy itself, you’re just another pathetic dupe in Trump’s world.

 

Now, just after The Atlantic magazine reported on Trump heaping contempt on fallen servicemen and women, along comes another shocking indictment: Bob Woodward’s description of Trump concealing the seriousness of the coronavirus from the public as far back as last February. Trump claims that he concealed what he knew about the virus because he didn’t want to “create panic.” Obviously he is lying yet again, since creating panic – about the Mexican border, about minorities moving into the suburbs, about Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and so forth – is one of his favorite things.

 

In fact, he really hid the seriousness of the virus because he wanted to nurse the economy along in the hope that an ongoing strong economy would help him get re-elected. For further confirmation of this, see all the accounts (or at least some of them) in the books listed above: story after story of Trump’s pathological lying, malignant narcissism, and utter selfishness.

 

But his narcissism may be his Achilles Heel. It was his craving to be in the glow of the spotlight that induced him to let Bob Woodward record hours and hours of his ramblings. He clearly thought he was such an impressive guy that only good would come from such an exercise. He was mistaken.

 

Let me wrap up by mentioning the one book from my list that I actually did take the time to read: Brian Stelter’s Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.

 

I was particularly interested in Stelter’s work because media analysis is his thing and it’s one of my things too. In fact, I make it a point to watch his Sunday show on CNN, Reliable Sources.

 

As the book’s subtitle suggests, Hoax highlights the enduring (and un-American) mutual support that Fox and Trump have provided for each other. I say un-American because the way Fox serves Trump is similar to the way The People’s Daily and other government media in China serve the Communist Party leaders. Like Trump, many Fox shows (not all of them) are shamelessly dishonest in their Trump-promoting fanaticism. Two of the worst offenders are Fox and Friends in the morning and Hannity at night. Stelter not only describes the shameful dishonesty of Hannity and Trump’s other Fox friends, but he lays out in detail the way this relationship evolved, starting some 20 years ago. It’s a fascinating tale and a very troubling one.

 

I believe, that when we think of the damage that Trump has done to this country as a whole, and specifically to the families whose lives were shattered by the coronavirus, we should not forget that he couldn’t have done it alone. He needed, of course, a gaggle of corrupt and cowardly Republican senators, but even more than them, he needed Hannity and company.

 

                                              30

 

P.S. BTW, I talked about Fox’s pernicious influence in an earlier post, Stupidity Loves Company.

 

*As reported in Rucker and Leonnig’s A Very Stable Genius.

 

 

 

 

 

No Collusion! Well, Maybe a Little Collusion, But Hardly Any

“No collusion! No collusion!” 

Like a deranged parrot, Trump kept repeating these words from his Mar-a-Lago lair last Wednesday – even when nobody was accusing him of collusion with the Russians.
 

Trump’s claim of “No collusion” is bullshit, of course, because we know there was some collusion - Jared and Don Jr. met with the Russians in Trump Tower, for one thing. Then Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos have all been accused of dirty dealings involving Russians, and most of these folks have pleaded guilty to one crime or another.

It may be that the Trump team’s collusion does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. So, if Mr. Trump wants to stick to the facts (bwaahahahaha!), what he should be incessantly repeating is “Not very much collusion!” That at least might possibly be true.

I have a theory about why Trump sucks up to Putin so much and keeps going soft on the Russians even though they have clearly messed with our election. I think he is financially in over his head with Putin and other Russian oligarchs. He probably owes them wagon-loads of money and he doesn’t want us to know about this. But we will know, because Special Counsel Robert Mueller is plowing relentlessly ahead, and eventually he will, I believe, reveal all the Trump organization’s ties to the Russian thugs before he is done.

When that happens, I expect Trump will loudly crow, “See? These are just some innocent cash transactions between friends. No collusion!”

If this is what we end up with, Trump will probably get a reprimand, but no impeachment. And, of course, some of his associates, and maybe even a family member or two, will get jail sentences. These may never be served since Trump will undoubtedly pardon everyone he possibly can (i.e., those charged strictly with federal rather than state-level crimes).

I believe this outcome will damage Trump’s standing with the voting public and may well mean that the Blue Wave that is predicted for the upcoming elections, will turn into a Blue Tsunami.

Even if Trump is shown to have sucked up to America’s Russian enemies, he won’t be impeached and removed from office because there are 30 or 40 Republicans in the Senate who care more about holding onto power than defending America. With a few notable exceptions, like Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, Congressional Republicans have sold their souls to Trump and his deluded base.

Honestly, the way people like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell coyly cuddle up to Trump is similar to the way Trump cuddles up to Putin. And let’s not forget Mike Pence, who spends most of his time smirking contentedly in the background, dreaming of his turn in the White House - as Trump systematically undermines the FBI and the Justice Department.

What has made the Trump disaster possible is Fox News. As Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post wrote recently, Nixon was forced out of office for his illegal acts, but Trump may not suffer this fate simply because he has Fox News backing him up.

According to Sullivan, Fox News, and in particular, Sean Hannity, have been “softening the ground” for Trump, by portraying the FBI and the Justice Department as the bad guys. And, she writes, the message is sinking in: “In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, three of four Republicans said they believed the Justice Department and the FBI are actively working to undermine Trump.”

Chew on that for a minute. A large majority of Republicans believe that the FBI, which, of course, is led by Trump-appointed Republicans, is trying to undermine American democracy.

Thanks, Fox News.

Fox is so outrageously irresponsible, that even when it was revealed that Sean Hannity shared an attorney with Donald Trump, he received no reprimand. Contrast this with the firing of Dan Rather by CBS, and the demotion of Brian Williams by NBC for much lesser errors of judgment.

Watching various Fox programs these past few weeks has given me a little insight into their line of propaganda. For one thing, their so-called “reporters” routinely refer to Democrats, the Left, the media, the establishment, the swamp, and what they imagine to be “the Deep State” interchangeably, as though all these entities were one and the same thing. And, in the paranoid nightmarish landscape they strive to conjure up, all are out to get the competent and morally worthy Donald Trump.

I’ve never been a fan of Fox News, but my sense of revulsion over what they represent has reached new depths this year. What they are doing is to make the ideal of a free press seem ridiculous. This is also what authoritarians want us to believe. If a gaggle of shameless hucksters can convince millions of gullible television viewers that Robert Mueller and the FBI are evil, while Donald Trump is good, how can a free press be embraced as a democratic ideal?

Of course, I still very much believe in a free press. I just wish the viewing public were better at distinguishing honest, responsible reporting from partisan propaganda and preposterous lies.

In the meantime, Mr. Mueller, please carry on. Most Americans who are not Republicans believe in what you are doing and look forward to your findings. As far as I’m concerned (I can’t speak for most Americans on this point), I expect that what you find will make Mr. Trump and his people look pretty rancid. And chances are this will hurt the GOP both in the long run and in the upcoming midterm elections, even if it turns out that there was “hardly any collusion.”