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| Press room of the Chicago Criminal Courts Building as depicted in the original Broadway staging (by George S. Kaufman) of Ben Hecht's and Charles MacArthur's The Front Page, 1928, via Wikipedia. |
Studies show that about 35% of people really do prefer, even long for, authoritarian style rule. How do we grapple with that?
— Rebecca Fachner (@rebecca_fachner) September 26, 2022
"pastors", maybe, or "vicars", something like that. And they wouldn't cost the community anything, members of the "congregation" could pay for it out of their own pockets. As long as they left the other 65% alone, this couldn't do any harm.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
Meanwhile, the stupid argument about Ms. Haberman (now being roasted for failing to report in The Times that Trump had told her he had some presidential documents at Mar-a-Lago and saving it for her book instead) finally ended up going someplace interesting:
Also a legal obligation to report crimes.
— SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN 🦬 🗽🤘🏽 (@sivavaid) September 27, 2022
... the reporters (Haberman being a spectacular example) didn't seem to have any idea that it might be about criminal activity, from nepotism to destruction of presidential records, from receiving foreign emoluments to defrauding donors.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
I'd concede that the failure is systematic. Not hers. She does what she imagines she's there to do. In the grand scheme of things, her work misses the forest for the trees on really important things about Trump, his bad acts, and the admin he led.
— Keen Observer (@Hammbear) September 27, 2022
That's what she's paid to do. Times hired her and Thrush from NY Post, they knew what they were doing. Times and her publisher believe it's good for profits. It's not about her, and it's not really about them either; it's about the business.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
She's paid to report for the paper. That they let her have a multi-hundred thousand dollar (and more) sideline selling books is something I think we have every right to have a conversation about and objection to.
— Keen Observer (@Hammbear) September 27, 2022
Ask if we could go back to having partisan papers, as they did in North America from 1750s until 1950s. That worked pretty well for exposing evil.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
Ask if there's a nonprofit model for papers that could develop Times-size resources (BBC and NPR offer possible structures).
SHE DOES THE JOB SHE WAS HIRED TO DO
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
She didn't invent it. She's not cheating her employer, she's giving them total satisfaction.
It's fun to denounce the immorality of annoying individuals like Maggie Haberman or Peter Baker but it's more important to examine the systemic factors that allow or indeed cause this to happen.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
OK, good start. The rest of Twitter seems to blame the poor woman for all the problems of humanity.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
But management. likewise, is doing what it's paid to do.
So your problem is with capitalism. Again, good. But sadly Bezos and the Sulzburgers don't care (maybe Bezos does a bit, because WaPo is his trophy company, not his cash cow).
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
And you can't do the analysis well if you're too busy getting mad. You end up cursing the tigers for not being vegetarians.
— Überwoke Sweepstakes (@Yastreblyansky) September 27, 2022
Identifying who's good and who's bad doesn't make any difference. The point, as the guy said, is to change it.
And you know who the guy is, right? Looks like (with help from Thornton, but he'd be enraged by the Marx reference) I've invented Critical Press Theory!
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