1. Jill Lepore is always worth reading. This piece on the vexed historical relationship between communications technology and politics is no exception. nyti.ms/2NcaHRv
2. It's important to remember that Trump's efforts to delegitimize all media voices other than his own (and to artificially amplify his own) are not at all original. The technology and political context is different, but the ploy is an old one. 
3. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 is a key turning point in the history of American partisanship...a moment when the role of divisive, mean-spirited media was amplified in our political culture. It was the @gop who did that.
4. And it wasn't the moderate @gop voices who were pushing for it...the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine was a longstanding demand of the far right edges of the GOP since the 1950s. Part of this history is told in Messengers of the Right by @pastpunditry.
5. But Lepore also shows that Democrats and non-conservatives are not blameless in this story of media and cynical partisanship.
6. While conservatives argued that the media was biased and needed to be counteracted by alternatives like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, non-conservative techno-optimists assumed that technology would just unproblematically set us free and bring us together. Internet kumbaya!
7. Here's a thread from a while ago where I talk about one such piece that I read back in 1995 when it came out--a piece linking Tom Paine's democratic political voice to the emerging world of internet democracy.
8. And right on cue, I get this e-mail from Team Trump inviting me to be a VIP at their next "big league rally." The only rules at such rallies are 1) Tune out the Fake News and 2) Be Proud of America.
