(1/X) I wanted to do another quick thing about the NYT's sane-washing of Trump and how it relates to similar things I have seen at work. I want to restrict to the Times here because while other outlets sane-wash too...
(2/X) The Times is the worst offender and some other outlets have obvious motivations to do it (e.g. the big boss at CNN is pal of Elon Musks's who openly speaks of moving CNN to the right and has said he cares most about the next president allowing more M&A)....
(3/X) I don't think there's a good reason for the Times slant its coverage to favor Trump. Sure, sucking up to Trump might help Maggie sell books and subscriptions were up under Trump, but...
(4/X) the risks of. a Trump are tremendous for journalists and newspapers and the Times' readers are mostly anti-Trump and would like more fair coverage of the campaign....
(5/X) there's a natural tendency to look for a silver bullet that explains why it makes economic or strategic sense for the Times to sane-wash Trump, but I don't you'll fin such a silver bullet....
(6/X) I think what is going on is their system isn't built to deal with a narcissistic sociopath, they don't want to change their system, so they're just hunkering down and sneering at what they see as their resistance lib wine mom critics....
(7/X) When my university administrators started taking the side of the narcissistic sociopath in my department, I assumed they had a good reason for doing so that we would eventually uncover...
(8/X) The more I saw, though, the less good reason I could see. Then I spoke with someone involved with a similar situation (that cost the university well into the eight-figures in the end) and he told me had thought the same thing....
(9/X) that he would eventually understand why the university was taking the side of a toxic abuser, that it made some kind of strategic sense once you knew more. But he also never found a good explanation for the university's behavior beyond...
(10/X) the system wasn't built to deal with toxic abusers, they don't want to change the system, so they hunker down and take the side of the toxic abuser. It really was that simple, as I had thought with my own situation..
(11/X) There is one other related thing here in both the Times' situation and my university's situation. At a certain point, after some extremely inexplicable behavior by deans, a friend said "Occam's razor says these people just aren't good at their jobs".....
(12/X) And indeed many of them were fired or "resigned" partway through their terms (for things unrelated to our situation).
Which brings me to the Times. Who runs it? A nepo baby. And not even a nepo baby who is the child of someone who accomplished something.
(13/X) A. G. Sulzberger is the nepo baby of a nepo baby (A. O. Sulzberger Jr.). You have to go back two generations to find anyone who accomplished anything.
Occam's razor says he's bad at his job. And has likely hired editors who are bad at theirs.
(14/X) Not to say there aren't lots and lots of great journalists and editors at the Times. It pays well and it's tough to get good jobs in journalism, so they can certainly hire lots of great people..
(15/X) But I suspect that on the really big decisions, ones where Sulzberger himself or people near him weigh in, the fact neither Sulzberger or the people near him are very smart or competent plays a big role.
(16/X) So I don't think there's some exciting explanation for all the pro-Trump coverage that's going to be revealed. It's just dumb, incompetent people sticking to a system that doesn't work because they're too lazy or dumb to change the system.
(The big boss at CNN is David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD has bigger fish to fry than CNN. The NYT is mostly just the NYT. There isn't some larger conglomerate that benefits from a Trump victory. Tho it should also be noted that Zaslav seems incompetent.)
@Petrarca_Fr I think a lot of their cultural coverage is poor as well. Too much trend-chasing, not enough critics who will speak their mind.
I really do wish the Times well. If you want to be a true friend, you have to be honest, and unmerciful. (My favorite Lester Bangs quote that he didn't say in real life.)
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(1/X) I have a general vague question for people....as you've noticed Trump and very many of the people he's nominated or who are advising him (Elmo, Hegseth, Gaetz, etc.) are sex offenders/harassers. My sociopathic co-worker is also a sex offender/harasser...
(2/X) (lots of documented harassment, one story that is more like sexual assault). What is the connection? Is it that far right people are likely to be sex offenders/harassers? Or that narcissists are likely to be sex offenders/harassers? Or both? ....
(3/X) It's also notable that many of the journalists and social media people (Taibbi, Dersh, Russell Brand) who have turned far right have faced accusations of sexual misconduct. What's the connection?
(1/X) I wanted to do another quick thing about Trump and narcissistic sociopaths, hitting a couple things I've observed from my co-worker. The first is that you simply cannot predict what they will do....
(2/X) They are completely without morals and what motivates them is entirely different than what motivates you or me. So there's no way to do any kind of "rational analysis" of what they might choose to do...
(3/X) Even when you dig into their personality, there are a lot of conflicting things. They are lazy and struggle with follow through, on the one hand, but also incredibly vindictive and good at making other ppl do things..
(1/X) One final thing about narcissistic sociopaths before the election. If you simply write down the things they have done and the lack of consequences there have been for them, it sounds completely insane and not at all believable.....
(2/X) I was thinking this with my narcissistic coworker (who was just given more important responsibilities by the university)...I started to write an email to someone describing it, and it sounded to insane that I couldn't finish it.
(3/X) Think of this with Trump: sexually assaulted dozens of women, indicted four separate times, led an insurrection after he lost the election, says crazy things at nearly every rally, and yet there is a good chance he will be elected president....
(1/X) Good piece in Slate on Trump's sociopathy. One thing I've been struck by over and over again in dealing with my department's malignant narcissist is how quickly...
(2/X) professionals can diagnose his personality disorder. Within two or three minutes of hearing about him, they "narcissistic sociopath." Now I understand people's hesitancy to go down the road of psychological analysis of political figures..
(3/X) I am a hard science person who often regards things like psychology with some suspicion. But this is clearly a case where the professional tools of psychology work absolutely perfectly at both analyzing and predicting the behavior of a certain class of people....
(1/X) I wanted to do a quick thing about obeying in advance, as the LAT and WaPo have done with Trump by spiking their endorsements of Harris. Fear is a *very* big part of what makes narcissistic sociopaths successful as is a feeling of helplessness...
(2/X) Fear and helplessness completely dominate the way that the media chooses to cover Trump. Bezos and the LAT owner bent the knee to Trump in advance out of fear. But here's another example....the media is already dropping the "island of garbage" story because...
(3/X) They feel they can't make Trump apologize or disavow the comments. They hounded Obama for months to condemn his Reverend Wright for saying "goddamn America" or whatever years ago....
(1/X) Another thing about narcissistic sociopaths. First, let me say that the coverage of the campaign the last few months from most mainstream sources has been unconscionably bad. The general tone and focus of it suggests this is a regular election....
(2/X) Between two regular candidates offering different but acceptable visions for the country. The reality is one of the candidates is likely to undo democracy in ways that will take a generation to fix. And he's quite upfront about it....
(3/X) Eight years into Trump, this is completely unacceptable. I understand that people are typically shocked and paralyzed psychologically when they first encounter a malignant narcissist. Their way of looking at the world is totally alien to most of us....