January 10, 2018--Factotum

Late in the day on Sunday I heard from a number of progressive friends who called all excited about what they saw to be a takedown by Jake Tapper of CNN of Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor.

"I missed that," I said.

"It was on Jake's Sunday show, State of the Nation. Watch it on YouTube. You'll love it.

I did watch it and did sort of love it. At least until I gave it more thought.

In case you, like I, missed it, it was an interview largely about Michael Wolff's Trump tell-all, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Miller was clearly offered around to the Sunday talkshows as a counterweight to the Wolff tome. He was the perfect choice to send out on a retaliatory mission since he had been Steve Bannon's protégé; and Bannon, the main source of the most damaging reporting about Trump--how he is like a nine-year-old child and that Donald Jr. committed "treason" when he agreed to talk with the Russians about the "dirt" they claimed to have about Hillary Clinton--needed to be put down.

As my friend surmised, I did love it. To me Trump and everyone he touches are compromised. Very much including Miller. But what I didn't love was how Tapper, in his pose as a journalist, treated Miller who was his guest.  

Here are some selections from what turned out to be a brief interview--

Miller: "The president is a political genius . . . who took down the Bush dynasty, who took down the Clinton dynasty, who took down the entire media complex."

He went on to reup Trump's claim that he is "like, really smart," a veritable "very stable genius." He called Wolff the "garbage author of a garbage book" but Miller's real transgression, was accusing Tapper of being "condescending," and claiming that CNN promulgates "very fake news."

Tapper: Miller's calling him "condescending" clearly got under Tapper's skin--"I get it. There's one viewer that you care about right now, and you're being obsequious [servile, ingratiating], and you're being a factotum [lackey] in order to please him."

With that, he cut Miller off, saying he had nothing worthwhile to say and while Miller continued to rant, Tapper looked into the camera and introduced the next guest. It appears that Miller (off camera now) refused to leave and had to be physically removed by CNN security.

Miller's audience of one tweeted--

Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!

Tapper feigned surprise. But what was he expecting? Rational discourse about the strengths and weaknesses of the Wolff book? He knew in advance what Miller was sent out to do and rather than booking him, saying I don't allow shills and factotums on my show, he signed him up as he knew it would turn out to be a dogfight and go viral in less than a couple of hours. All turned out to be true.

This is not journalism to me but rather talkshow mud wrestling designed to increase ratings, which the struggling Tapper and State of the Union could use.

Monday morning, again on CNN's New Day, cohosts Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo had New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman as a guest. Camerotta pressed her about an interesting subject--

Unlike Michael Wolff who does not have to maintain good relations with the Trump administration--his book is out and he is already making millions in royalties--because she has "to go back to the White House" every day after writing articles that frequently are critical of Trump and his people, does this place her in a compromised position as she needs to remain in the White House's good graces to do her job? Does she have to pull her punches, so to speak, in order to retain access?

Not at all, she in effect said, I report it as I see it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Do you believe that? I'm skeptical.

And then there are my Morning Joe friends, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski who a year and a half ago were cozied up to candidate Donald Trump. When he appeared on their show--it seemed almost daily--their ratings went off the charts. They were even eager to have a close social relationship to their friend "Donald." Wolff reports about their visits, as a closeted couple, to Mar-a-Lago. Apparently during one visit last January, a week after Trump was inaugurated, Jared Kushner and The Donald playfully spatted about who would marry them once they fessed up publicly to their on-going romance.

But things have gone south in their off-camera relationship. Cut off from access, they have been merciless in their attacks on Trump and his inner circle. So much so that Monday morning when Michael Wolff was on their show hustling Fire and Fury, they brought up some of the inaccuracies in his reporting, including those about them! 

But then, rather, than pressing to hold Wolff responsible for his inaccuracies and carelessness, they made excuses for him, saying, the book is less about the accuracy of incidents but about the overall impression that it offers of Trump and his presidency.

In these three examples it is clear why so many Americans are fed up with the media. They see the leading opinion writers and reporters to lack integrity and objectivity. Those who have personal agendas (Joe and Mika) or ideological interests (Tapper and Cuomo) or who are just trying to promote a book (Wolff) or publicize their reporting (Haberman) are most prone to professional self-righteousness and loss of objectivity.  

We progressives, especially, need to clean up our acts since we should not want to give media-bashers additional reasons and evidence with which to attack our credibility. 

February 13, 2017--Jack On "Sane Republicans"

"I read what you wrote the other day about how ridicule has the power to bring Trump down."

Once again, Jack was calling. "That could be true," he said, "It can be powerful when it gets under the skin of someone as thin-skinned as Trump."

"That's what I'm thinking," I said.

"On the other hand," Jack said, "a lot of Democrats are thinking it has to be 'sane Republicans' like John McCain and Lindsay Graham who need to step up and begin to openly take Trump on. Everyone knows they hate him, but so far they have been muted in their criticism. This makes sense to me. You can see them seething and at some point Trump'll do something so outrageous, there will be some sort of smoking gun, maybe from the Russians' secret files, and that will signal the beginning of the end."

"You're beginning to sound like one of us," I said.

"Not one of your kind, but maybe I'm one of those sane Republicans." I knew if we were seated across from each other at the Bristol Diner he'd be winking at me.

He added, "I watched Saturday Night Live on Saturday, knowing they'd be going after Trump again, to check out how potent their humor is."

"So what did you think?"

"I thought the Melissa McCarthy takedown of Sean Spicer was the best of the three political sketches. He's a very angry man and she got to the heart of that. And was savagely funny. One more week and Trump will ready to pull the plug on him. Not just to end the mocking but because he's jealous of Spicer stealing the spotlight. I read some place that his daily press briefings, which the cable news people are carrying live, are getting higher ratings than General Hospital and the other soaps. Not too mention Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. All are seeing their ratings at all time highs"

"People can't seem to get enough of Trump," I sighed. "In any form."

"But then the skit about Kellyanne Conway, where she goes after CNN's Jake Tapper the same predatory way Sharon Stone did to Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct, was so vicious that it went beyond humor and came out on the dark side. It wasn't really as funny as Steve Bannon the week before when he played the Grim Reaper. That was very dark but funny. I guess with comedy there are no limits. But if I'm thinking about political effectiveness--and I do think the SNL people are out to bring Trump down--for me that bit didn't work."

"I felt the same way," I said, "It crossed too many lines to have much impact, though I did think it was bold."

"You're getting to my main point and the reason I called."

"I was wondering about that."

"Take the last sketch where Baldwin played Trump appealing his travel ban to the courts. Not the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court but, of course, The People's Court. A reality show court. This should have been funny but I felt it was predictable and more manufactured than inspired. To be consistently funny you need to avoid slipping into into routines and cliches. Things have to be fresh and the Alec Baldwin version of Trump is getting to be overexposed. My sense is that after another week or two people will begin to tune out. Ditto for McCarthy's Sean Spicer. This week the innovation was to motorize the podium. Pretty thin stuff."

"I also was thinking been-there-done-that and started to nod off."

"So, from an effectiveness perspective, SNL, as fresh as it seemed three weeks ago, is feeling stale and a little boring. Boring is the opposite of funny."

"Here's one more thing," Jack said, "I'm thinking that the Trump act is also wearing thin. He too is in danger of slipping into predictability. His act is wearing thin. This could be a good thing--to rein Trump in--or a bad thing--we'll stop paying attention to what he's up to. He might be more dangerous out of the spotlight than basking in it."