Sunday, December 23, 2018

Just The Facts, Ma'am


We've become so accustomed to seeing news reports on deranged demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump tiptoe around what is plain for the eye to see (that he's, well, a deranged demagogue), that when we see a reporter speak the unvarnished truth, it comes as a small shock.  We're not referring to cable news reporters or to articles marked "analysis," but to a news story on the front page of our hometown paper, the Washington Post.

Here's how their White House Bureau Chief, Phillip Rucker, opens his news report in today's paper:
For two years, they tried to tutor and confine him. They taught him history, explained nuances and gamed out reverberations. They urged careful deliberation, counseled restraint and prepared talking points to try to sell mainstream actions to a restive conservative base hungry for disruption. But in the end, they failed. 
For President Trump, the era of containment is over. 
One by one, the seasoned advisers seen as bulwarks against Trump’s most reckless impulses have been cast aside or, as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis did Thursday, resigned in an extraordinary act of protest. What Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) once dubbed an “adult day care center” has gone out of business. 
Trump will enter his third year as president unbound — at war with his perceived enemies, determined to follow through on the hard-line promises of his insurgent campaign and fearful of any cleavage in his political coalition. 
So far, the result has been disarray. The federal government is shut down. Stock markets are in free fall. Foreign allies are voicing alarm. Hostile powers such as Russia are cheering. And Republican lawmakers once afraid of crossing this president are now openly critical.
At the same time refreshing and trite, what Rucker expresses is what's been in plain view for any but the most determined Trump cultists to see since Dolt 45 descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower.  It's not labeled "analysis" or couched in "some say" or "on the other hand" or other journalistic fig leafs, but in the facts of Trump's puerility, his impulsive recklessness, and the disarray of his shambolic regime.  Rucker later goes on to quote the pithy remark made by Gen. Barry McCaffrey, "This is a rogue presidency," something that was evident from Day 1 with Dolt 45's "American carnage" inaugural and crowd mirage.

Why has it taken so long to get to the point where journalists (or at least this one) finally report facts that have been obvious for ever?  Was it the unprecedented confluence of events of the last week, especially the Mattis resignation, that convinced some that it was time to report the truth in no uncertain terms?  Maybe, but at the same time, as the great Jay Rosen points out, others =cough= New York Times =cough= are still in the maintain access/ both sides/ don't rock the boat mode, even after the Mattis debacle:

So, we won't pop the champagne corks just yet. One giant leap for a man, one small step for journalism.

2 comments:

donnah said...

I think it will take one major news outlet to take the gloves off and use actual descriptors to describe what Trump is, and show examples of his ridiculous acts in real time. Show him sitting at his desk pretending to sign blank paper. Show him speaking to a reporter, sounding like a petulant five-year-old. They keep the padding all around him, and by using words like “unprecedented” and “against the norm”, they give value to him. He doesn't have value, or values, for that matter. He isn't a rogue or a creative, outside the box thinker. He's not a thinker at all.

When he was elected, Scott Pelley on CBS news did not pull punches. I started watching CBS then, because it was refreshing and encouraging to see and hear comments Pelley made, incredulous that Trump was doing this or that. I even wrote to CBS saying how much I enjoyed a voice of reason and honesty in national news. But he was canned.

Until major national news outlets can state flatly what is going on and use words that actually describe what Trump says and does, like “lying, cheating, hiding his financial history, lying, lying, lying” people who are not political hounds like us are going to hear the less critical words about Trump and think, well, he's just a different kind of president, he isn't one of those DC types, etc. What they need to see and hear is that he's dangerous and crazy and he will drag us into global and national situations that do irreparable damage.

Someone has to say it.

W. Hackwhacker said...

donnah -- too often it's about the corporate bottom line, the fear of driving away viewers. If that's the motivation, as Masha Gessen says, "institutions will not save you" from the autocrat. Fortunately it will be hard to ignore the growing majority of Americans who want Trump out (to be closely followed by his family and minions). So perhaps that same corporate media will derive some backbone from the signs that that growing majority of Americans is done with Trump and attempts to cosset him.