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Barr’s memo is – blatantly and predictably – a bad faith “summary” of the Mueller Report. But a lot of the press is taking it at face value. It’s ridiculous. And I think it’s important to understand why that keeps happening. So here’s a stab at it.
My short answer is that the mainstream press has a comfort zone, and they were desperate to return to it.
The fact that a candidate sought out and received illegal help from a rival government, and now occupies the White House, is completely outside their comfort zone.
The fact that a candidate sought out and received illegal help from a rival government, and now occupies the White House, is completely outside their comfort zone.
(Brief pause for some #NotAllJournalists nuance. Plenty of reporters and pundits have shown a dedication to the truth. We wouldn’t know a lot of what we know if it weren’t for them. This thread is for the Chuck Todds, David Brooks and NYT headline writers of the world.)
I’m reminded of the 2016 primary and general election. Trump spent a year running on open xenophobia. We got a year of “some critics say his language is racially charged, but will it hurt him in the polls?” His mob ties went conspicuously underexamined.
Then Melania stole Michelle Obama’s speech, and we got a bulldog press again. They were *dying* to cover a normal scandal, one where they didn’t have to call out a rich white man for being a white supremacist and white collar criminal.
The mainstream press doesn’t want to call out white supremacy. So Trump got a pass before the election. By and large he still does, relative to his words and actions and their consequences. They *want* to evade that truth.
The mainstream press doesn’t want to call out the fact rich white men have rigged our democracy from the country’s founding to the present day. That our elections are tainted by GOP voter suppression. So Trump gets a pass. They *want* to forget that truth.
The press doesn’t want to call out criminal and sociopathic behavior by rich white men, so he gets a pass.
They don’t want to call out the harm male supremacy does to women, so he gets a pass.
Everything horrible about him is something the press is designed to look away from.
They don’t want to call out the harm male supremacy does to women, so he gets a pass.
Everything horrible about him is something the press is designed to look away from.
This is the big picture I keep coming back to.
It’s not like Chuck Todd wakes up each morning saying “time to defend rich white male minority rule again”. It’s systemic. The system produces a press controlled by rich white men, who disproportionately promote people who think a certain way.
And because the GOP is the party devoted to rich white male minority rule, the press inevitably favors the GOP. Even as the GOP slides headfirst into fascism.
We're watching that in action when the press pretends to believe Trump and his lackeys.
We're watching that in action when the press pretends to believe Trump and his lackeys.
I've argued that being a minority rule country is what made us so vulnerable to Trump's authoritarianism. Minority rule and authoritarianism go hand in hand. They're two ways of describing America's anti-democracy side, that both give insight into the press's behavior.
Looking at America as a minority rule country gives a long-term, basically static explanation of the media's behavior. On a shorter timeframe, the idea that we're being pushed into full-blown authoritarianism gives another (mutually compatible) explanation. The press folds.
.@AndreaChalupa: "What we're seeing is many in the mainstream media submitting... Submitting to the regime is a way to self-medicate, is a way to finally just go to sleep and give up and just carry on with your business and hope they don't bother you."
Put it all together and you have a disproportionate number of the media already inclined to roll over for rich white male supremacy, rolling over for a would-be tyrant.
