Letters We Wish We'd Written Dept. -- Safaris To Trumplandia Edition

In this morning's Washington Post (serial curator of Trump voters' exquisite sensibilities and Real Americanism):

Thank you for the incisive front-page, above-the-fold coverage of Alabama evangelical Christians on the same day as the Washington Post Magazine feature about the next generation of Trumpian Republicans. Clearly this is the coverage we benighted elitist Post readers need to remind us that the only relevant Americans are people who are not benighted elitists. 

Would The Post be so kind as to point me to similar coverage of Democratic voters not couched in terms of “Hillary vs. Bernie,” “mainstream vs. insurgent,” or “can the Democrats win with their scabrous attacks on the only relevant Americans”? 

Jeff Porten, Philadelphia

Whether it's the Post or The New York Times, we've all seen enough of these safaris to deep, dark white Trumplandia to last us a lifetime. Media outlets need push- back when they, consciously or not, portray Trump voters as the only ones worthy of consideration and coverage.  We already know what those voters are.

BONUS:  This --

I’m not supposed to say that someone like this is ignorant. I’m supposed to engage with them as if what they said made any sense. I’m not supposed to be condescending to them, and I’m supposed to believe that they’re open to dialogue.
Yeah, no. https://t.co/UVpcXIgb57

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 26, 2018

(h/t M. Bouffant/ Web of Evil & Ennui)

Monday Reading

Here are a few of the good reads this morning (as always, please take the links to the full article).

Tired of those mainstream media safaris to observe the rustics in "Trump country?" So is the Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch:

There are no sooty coal mines underneath the steep, foliage-shrouded streets of Mount Airy, no Formica-wrapped diner where men in flannel shirts and steel-toed boots load up on painfully bitter coffee and heaping platters of cholesterol while dissecting last night’s Hannity, no driveways where an unemployed factory worker parks his Chevy truck next to a “Make America Great Again” yard sign. [snip]

...Behind ancient stone walls, on the narrow, sloping yards, stand the signs of resistance at home after home: “Impeach Trump,” or “Black Lives Matter/Philly Children’s March,” with more than a smattering of “Hillary” yard signs that owners refuse to take down, and one that declares: “In This House, We Believe: Black Lives Matter/Women’s Rights Are Human Rights/No Human Is Illegal/Science Is Real/Love Is Love/No Matter Your Faith Or Ability/Kindness Is Everything.” 

Welcome to the throbbing heart of Anti-Trump Country, a land where — if you believe in polls — the majority of Americans reside, and yet a place that the mainstream media seem determined to ignore.  (our emphasis)

Of course, the mainstream media's fascination with the Trump malignancy also includes its almost pathological desire to convince itself that "It'll all be all right/ just take a deep breath and act like everything's normal."  A couple of Republican never- Trumpers have some words of caution, like David Frum on CNN who previews tomorrow's State of the Union address:

“Look, if President Trump gets through the hour without putting a fork in somebody’s eye he will be praised as the most presidential president since the most presidential president,” he said. [snip] 

Substitute co-host Poppy Harlow clarified that if Trump merely sticks to the teleprompter he’d gain critical acclaim. 

“Just for not doing something hideous,” Frum agreed. “There is a special Trump scale where he is graded differently from any other president. If he just behaves like a functioning human being for an hour, we think he’s done a great job.” [snip] 

“I don’t have any questions left about Donald Trump,” Frum said about the possibility of Trump’s polling increasing. “He has answered every question I have. And I think we all know who he is. We all know what he is, we all know why he’s president, and what got him into that job. So, I think the question for all of us is how do we protect the country during the remainder of the presidency. There are no serious questions left about what kind of person he is.”  (our emphasis)

And John Weaver on Twitter:

Caution: Trump will read from a teleprompter at the SOTU. It will be passable, though extreme. Yet, members of the mainstream media will once again say he's turned the corner, he's met the minimum threshold, etc & normalize his behavior. Don't fall for it. Not for 1 second.

— John Weaver (@JWGOP) January 28, 2018

Here's an example of what Frum and Weaver are talking about. Repeat offender Fareed "Not Woke" Zakaria (who imagined Rump "became President" when he lobbed some cruise missiles into Syria last year) is impressed by Rump's performance among the plutocrats and oligarchs at Davos last week (his op/ ed is entitled "The Trump We Saw in Davos Should Leave Us Encouraged").Why?

On Friday at the World Economic Forum, Trump gave a good speech that was forthright, intelligent and conciliatory, embracing the world rather than condemning it. The address was extremely well received here at the World Economic Forum by both American business leaders and even non-American attendees, who are overwhelmingly skeptical of Trump overall. [snip] 

But whatever you think of the policies, the larger point is that Trump the conventional Republican is working within the American system rather than trying to destroy it.

So, we're supposed to overlook the destructive, "America First" policies and take heart ... that he reads words others have written for him, and he's acting like a "conventional Republican"?!  You mean "conventional Republicans" like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan?  Or Devin Nunes? Or Steve Mnuchin?  Or [plutocratic party- before- country name here]?  Is he angling for an interview with someone at the White (Supremacist) House? Count on Zakaria being one of those who will "fall for it" tomorrow night.

Last but not least, check out the link round- up that Infidel has put together, once again capturing the Zeitgeist for the week.

Less Of This In 2018

We could all welcome a respite from certain things in 2018, among them those ubiquitous media jaunts into "the Heartland" to discover what those people who voted for neo- fascist numbnut Donald "Rump" Trump are (oxymoron alert) thinkin'.

Ashley Feinberg has an extensive list of those "Cletus safaris:"

These stories were a sort of pornography. They existed less as a way of explaining the country to their audience than as a way for media outlets to gratify themselves, or perhaps to atone for the perceived sin of overlooking Trump supporters the year before. Some profiles offered insight; many more did not. But together, in their sheer bulk, they illuminated a larger story: the longstanding media habit of indexing the American political narrative to the sanctified yearnings of a narrow slice of white voter. Reagan Democrats, independent voters, the “undecided,” soft Republicans — no matter how small their number, no matter how wide the electoral margin, these groups always become the axis on which the story of every election turns. 

Feinberg demonstrates how various media have pursued and promoted this trope, and what the sum learning from all those diner interviews and focus groups has been (spoiler alert: Stormtrumpers still support Trump).

Media: We know all we want to know about these people whose economic anxiety prejudice, phony grievance, and stupidity gave us Rump;  you can please stop now.

BONUS:  A suggestion likely to be ignored (via Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, who says the media can do this and still talk exclusively to white people) --

Reporters should fan out to shopping malls in upscale suburbs of purple states and try to figure out why Trump's approval rating is only 35% there despite booming local economies.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) January 1, 2018

Tweets Of The Day - Democracy Dies In Whiteness*

... and overkill.

FINALLY, an article on white Trump voters in the Midwest. Finally! It had been at least 8 minutes. https://t.co/Y6BMbgCMOU

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) October 23, 2017

Flint still has no good water. PR has almost none and no power.
Thank god we have the NYT to check on what Real America is up to. Jeebus. https://t.co/KX1AgIY1es

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) October 23, 2017

"We're just trying to understand. Why, why don't they like us?" Part 254,986.

* With apologies to another serial offender, the Washington Post, and its slogan "Democracy Dies In Darkness."

BONUS:  Charles Pierce has another, more egregious example of the New York Times' political analysts failing us. Librul media my ass.

BONUS II:  We know who these people are even if the Times doesn't; Steve M. provides more evidence.

The Media's Ridiculous Obsession With Trump Voters

(click on image to enlarge)


(Jen Sorensen, via Daily Kos)

We're Hackwhackers and we approve this message:

Holy mother of god, I'm tired of reading quotes from people who live in places where the local economy went to hell or Mexico in 1979, and who have spent the intervening years swallowing whatever Jesus Juice was offered up by theocratic bunco artists of the Christocentric Right, and gulping down great flagons of barely disguised hatemongering against the targets of the day, all the while voting against their own best interests, now claiming that empowering Donald Trump as the man who will "shake things up" on their behalf was the only choice they had left. You had plenty of choices left.

There's a media cottage industry that's been pumping out Trump voter stories from the hinterland since well into the primaries (and up to and including this week in one of the worst offenders, the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle). Early on, it was all about those voters' "economic anxiety," and now it's largely about doubts creeping into the dim recesses of some of those Trump voters' minds.

As Charlie Pierce and others have said, we empathize, but we don't sympathize with folks who've not bothered to inform themselves and/ or escape the right- wing media bubble and who voted for the manifestly unfit shitgibbon. They own what's going to happen to them under this emerging plutocratic kleptocracy. As the old saying goes, they've made their bed, now let them lie in it.