@baba The media got trump elected by giving trump free constant coverage. He was on the news so much more than Clinton. What got me, he never said anything. 'We are going to.... Never any plans, but because the news showed him, saying 'I'm mad as H----, and I'm not going to take it anymore,' a certain group got behind him.
I remember well in 2017 how the media grappled with using the term "lie" versus "misstatement" and "falsehood." It depended on which audience the media sold to.
During the 2016 election campaign the Huffington Post automatically included in every story about Trump:
"Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S."
They ended the practice when he became president, claiming they wanted to make a clean slate but reserved the right to put it back on if he began lying again. They never did.
The NY Times, Boston Globe, LA Times, Chicago Tribune and other large mainstream corporate media, all selling to widespread audiences, made a conscious decision not to use the word "lie" because, as the New York Times expressed it in 2017. they felt it would make them appear partisan.
But the end result is that it normalized the lying, and emboldened the liars. It helped move the whole country towards fascism. As described well in the satire, George Orwell's, Animal Farm, fascists begin with slight lies then morph into big lies.
What could be the reason they 'helped'? I mean, most mainstream media do not even like Trump so why create this beast?
As has been mentioned before, we do not have public media in the US. All our media is privately owned except PBS, which is a shadow of its former self. Each media outlet is beholden to whichever oligarchs own it. Period. I can't even watch MSNBC anymore, let alone CNN, and newspapers in this country have never been known for independent journalism. WWI would probably not have occurred were it not for US media playing into the hands of European oligarchs at the time.
I have enjoyed reading @ericboehlert. His crisp rewriting of headlines and pointing out lazy journalism give me hope.
I agree. If the press had honestly covered Trump for what was already in the public record and not been so outraged a woman was running for president and covered her fairly we may not be in this mess.
I had the feeling though the lessons were going to be deep and the hatred of Hillary would have continued through her term. I remember reading in 2016 whoever won would have a tough time for a second term. We had too much pent up density.
They believed the foundation was crooked, that she was. They believe Bill was a rapist. They believed every word of Clinton Cash. I don’t think they ever understood the emails. The right is very effective making a bunch of smoke that makes their opponents dirty.
@moonbeam The mainstream media helped Trump because drama sells. Much of the time their coverage was unfavorable to him. But they helped him by reporting on his every outrageous tweet.
When he was lying, which was (and still is) most of the time, they should have ignored him. But they saw their clicks and their subscriptions go up. Reading Trump for many was like reading the comic book style sensationalist papers.
@dolphinspirit and @Polarberry, I want to second your points. Whenever I hear a democrat say that Hillary was crooked, I think, well, the Right and the Kremlin succeeded in smearing her image completely. I wasn't a big fan because I wanted someone more to the left. She is a moderate democrat, that's all, like Biden.
But it should count for something that she spent her First Lady years in the White House trying to pass National Health Insurance so that all Americans would have equal access to health care. She was genuinely committed to progressive causes.
And she always did her homework. She read voraciously, understood the science and social issues and knew what she was talking about. Not like Trump who doesn't read, or most of his enablers.
She came from humble parents and when she was graduating from Wellesley College, she racked up so many awards for her activism that her parents were embarrassed. She was the most successful student in her class by far. Not like Trump who was a dunce, and Kavanaugh who was a rapist, or Bush who was a C student.
Bill Clinton was also an incredible brain who did his homework. When a friend and former colleague of mine, economist David Ellwood, was hired for undersecretary under Clinton because he had written an important book on welfare reform, Ellwood remembered that Clinton had read his book, from cover to cover, dog-eared pages with attached sticky notes. Clinton was brilliant, like Obama, the top people in their law school classes. Not like the Republican leaders we have today who can barely read.
Jeanne, I think what you wrote is one of the main issues. There were and are a lot of men, whether they are willing to admit it or not, whether they are openly misogynistic or not, who are scared and/or resentful of her because she is so driven, so smart, so successful.
Unfortunately, along with the deep-seated racism in our society, there is still plenty of deep-seated misogyny. The very qualities that cause men to be viewed as admirable are viewed, by many, as negative traits in women. Saying that there was something about her they didn't like was acceptable, where saying they wouldn't vote for a woman for President was not.
It's pathetic, and I've often thought about your visions about women rising to the top of the power chain in the coming years. It's about time.
I remember how she was shredded her for her health plan. The right screams about socialism and they don't even understand what they're screaming about.