To follow up on Betty’s post below…
I’ve been thinking about Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment lawsuit against that omphalos of evil, Roger Ailes, since it dropped. You all know the essence:
In a suit filed Wednesday in superior court in Bergen County, N.J., Carlson alleges that Ailes “unlawfully retaliated” against her and “sabotaged her career after she refused his sexual advances and complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment.”
“I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better,” the complaint says Ailes told Carlson last September when she complained to him. He allegedly added, “Sometimes problems are easier to solve that way.”
Even in that first story, there was plenty of evidence that Ailes is a serial harasser, a man for whom the women in his employ are objects to be manipulated (in the root sense of that word) at his pleasure:
While an executive at NBC, Ailes was accused of making sexually suggestive comments to various female underlings, according to a 2014 biography of Ailes, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” A young woman named Randi Harrison said Ailes offered to her increase her salary by $100 a week if she would have sex with him, according to the book. A producer named Shelly Ross said Ailes posed “romantically suggestive questions and made flirtatious comments about her appearance.” Ross said she told him, “This is making me uncomfortable.”
Over the next several days, many more women have come forward to add their accounts:
In recent days, more than a dozen women have contacted Carlson’s New Jersey–based attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, and made detailed allegations of sexual harassment by Ailes over a 25-year period, dating back to the 1960s, when he was a producer on The Mike Douglas Show. “These are women who have never told these stories until now,” Smith told me. “Some are in a lot of pain.” Taken together, these stories portray Ailes as a boss who spoke openly of expecting women to perform sexual favors in exchange for job opportunities…
Read the whole piece at that link for some heart breaking memories.
If Ailes is really gone, the nail in the coffin may have been hammered by the Fox News megastar, Megyn Kelly:
According to two sources briefed on parent company 21st Century Fox’s outside probe of the Fox News executive, led by New York–based law firm Paul, Weiss, Kelly has told investigators that Ailes made unwanted sexual advances toward her about ten years ago when she was a young correspondent at Fox. Kelly, according to the sources, has described her harassment by Ailes in detail.
New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has been doing seriously good work on this story, which makes this nugget from his Kelly post so interesting:
According to two sources, Monday afternoon lawyers for 21st Century Fox gave Ailes a deadline of August 1 to resign or face being fired for cause.
So, good. It looks like a truly monstrous figure is on his way out.
I’m as thrilled as anyone at that likely outcome, for all that Ailes’ well-padded crash ($40,000,000 buys a lot of whisky to cry into) is coming decades late. But there’s a larger story that isn’t getting enough attention.
That is: Roger Ailes isn’t just a network boss who has managed to deliver ratings to his owner. He has been perhaps the single most important figure in the forging of today’s Republican party. His Fox News has set the agenda, constructed the alternate reality, shattered the norms, and altered much for the worse what it means to be a Republican leader or voter.
He’s the architect and engineer of the hate-based, race-focused, anti-science, know-nothing tendency in American politics. His triumph, his conquest of so much of American government at every level, has reached its apotheosis in the home-video version of Triumph of the Will we’re all seeing in Cleveland this week. And he is a person who has, throughout his entire working life it seems, defined women as toys to be played with or broken at his whim.
I do not suggest that the Republican party, even in its current desperately debased state, is filled with people who would do as Ailes is alleged to have done. But Ailes’ signal success has been in shaping how the party thinks, how its members and leaders think the world works. And that influence is shot through with a sense of whose views count and whose don’t. In Ailes life, half the world doesn’t rise to the level of agent, of people whose existence demands respect.
The fish rots at the head.
Image: Simon Vouet, The Rape of Lucretia, 17th century. (Not my favorite of this subject. Rubens’ is great, and I’m a sucker for Tintoretto’s pearls. But I wanted to keep the post SFW, so Vouet will do.)
SiubhanDuinne
Did you just change the thread title from “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy,” or am I hallucinating again?
Tom Levenson
@SiubhanDuinne: I did. Might change it back.
Miss Bianca
@Tom Levenson: Nah, you just couldn’t resist a good pun!
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t understand what kind of fuckface harasses women that way. I’ve never harassed any women. True story! So it can’t be that hard not to do it. But beyond the just run-of-the-mill not understanding why guys harass women, what I truly fail to fathom is why Roger Ailes would harass women. I mean, what, does he get up in the morning, take a long look in the morning, and say to himself, “Damn, look at that hottie. I know some women are going to want to run their hands all over this!”? How can anybody as ugly as he is–and I’m not even really talking about physical ugliness here, even–think that women are going to go for that? And then to heap creepiness and threats on top of the ugliness. How do these guys’ minds work? This is beyond me.
Schlemazel Khan
This could be a chance for Fox ‘News’ to dial back the very worst of its excesses. Any rational human would look at the damage Fox has done to the GOP and realize they cannot continue down this road. Dumping the old fat bastard might be the excuse they need to turn the crazy down to a 5 or a 6 and try to make the public face of the GOP look a little more reasonable to Americans. While I would welcome the reduction of the hate, anger and evil my fear is that in so doing they may actually help the GOP win a few more elections by not scaring off the more rational segments of the voting public.
Peale
The company has $40m in shareholder cash to pay him out, and he was offering a $65 per week in take home pay to a woman for sex. He’s both vile and stingy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Levenson:
No, don’t; this is better. I brought up this thread at the exact moment I got a drop-down message from someone on FB commenting “Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch”* and I wasn’t sure whether I was conflating the words (both of which went past my eyeballs in a split-second).
*(with reference to possible norovirus outbreak at the RNC)
gene108
Nixon spawned vile nasty henchmen to ratfuck American politics for over 40 years.
Just because you cut off the head, does not mean there are not dozens of littler rats, trained by the big rat, who are willing to carry on the evil work.
Ailes out just means another rat will take his place, with the same burning desire to do evil.
Schlemazel Khan
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
My guess is he wakes up in the morning and knows the only way he is ever going to get laid is through coercion, bribery or threat. That and he really loves having power over people.
Trollhattan
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Mr. Creosote was supposedly a fictional creation. Turns out he had a living doppelganger in Ailes, only when he says “I’ll ‘ave the lot” he isn’t just ordering food. .
hellslittlestangel
Forty million for Ailes. How much for his victims? I don’t see how their “binding arbitration” clause survives this bullshit.
debbie
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Back in the day, as they used to say, it was fairly commonplace.
Corner Stone
Lewandowski gives the NH delegate count vociferously for his “friend” and next president, Donald J. Trump!
Does CNN not get this? WTF CNN?
raven
Didn’t Trump jump ugly on the New Mexico gov?
OzarkHillbilly
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I’ve never harassed a woman either, but I am an inveterate flirt. Hmmmmm……
(in my defense, when ever I got the slightest clue it was unwelcome, it stopped)
coin operated
@hellslittlestangel: Someone in another thread pointed out that criminal violations can’t be arbitrated. Murdoch is doing what he can to save Fox from a real bloodletting…
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: Actually Nixon didn’t spawn Ailes. Ailes saw Nixon when he was working on the Michael Douglas show, saw what TV was becoming, and he pitched himself and his approach to Nixon as “I can help you resolve your image problem and sell you to the American people”. Without Ailes doing the packaging and marketing, Nixon is just another former Congressman and also ran VP on a bunch of corporate boards nursing his grievances. Remember, as screwed up as the Democratic campaign and party was in 1968, Nixon still barely won.
LAO
@Schlemazel Khan:
You have set the bar too high. Also, Republicans have amassed significant power on the State level, I don’t see a real motivation to change.
chopper
@Schlemazel Khan:
that’s been locked in for a while now. it isn’t going to happen. the viewers won’t allow it.
Schlemazel Khan
@hellslittlestangel:
I mentioned in the earlier thread how I would love to be the womens lawyer. $40MM is the floor, if they pay that for the scum master we are going to start well north of that for each victim
rikyrah
You know that VSB had to weigh in:
THE RNC: WHERE STEVE KING DEFENDS WHITE SUPREMACY AND MELANIA TRUMP DISPROVES IT
Damon Young, 7/19/16
Admittedly, after being indoctrinated by decades of politician double-speak, colloquialism, and dog-whistling — plus the screen reiterations of these types of verbal machinations on shows like House of Cards and even Game of Thrones — it’s quite refreshing to hear a politician do what Congressman Steve King did yesterday. Even if what he actually said — that no one besides White people have done shit to contribute to civilization — was abhorrent and absurd, I appreciate him saying it. You just don’t get many opportunities to watch someone with an actual job and a title and a staff go full racist on national TV.
Seriously, if you haven’t yet, please watch Rep. King articulate his feelings about “sub-groups.” Witness how he effectively mutates into a transubstantiated version of a Twitter troll with an egg profile. Pay attention to how the rest of the panel stares in abject horror and sheer befuddlement, like they’re watching a rhesus monkey attempting to fuck a head of lettuce. Listen to April Ryan say “Woo” at the 44 second mark, which can totally be translated to “if someone doesn’t take this silly White man back to his shift at the Cracker Barrel right now, blood will rise and fists will rain.” It’ll be the second best thing you’ll see all day.
……………………………
I won’t say too much more about poor Melania, because every joke worth making has already been made. Instead, I’ll just say that the only person feeling worse than her about her speech this morning is Steve King. All that fuss about the master race. And then, a couple hours later, the Grand Wizard’s wife refutes that entire argument by stealing the words from a regular Black girl from the South Side.
ThresherK
The entire NBC report was chyroned with “Fox News Legend”. Hey, assholes, you’re supposed to be competing with this jackwad and delight in their self-inflicted wound.
scav
Might this be one instance where companies can perhaps read and react to changing demographics and a shrinking market/base faster than political parties?
Adam L Silverman
@raven: He did at his rally in NM about a month and a half ago. He even intimated to the crowd that he might have to come back to NM at some point and personally remove her from office because she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing (knuckling under to Trump).
Trollhattan
Fox News may love money, but they turned down this paid ad opportunity.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Reporting is that the speechwriter delivered Melania’s speech to her without the plagiarism. So, she’s an idiot and a lying fraud, too. HOOCOODANODE
Schlemazel Khan
@LAO: @chopper:
I’m not convinced it would happen but there is a possibility that they know they can’t turn the crazy up higher and not drive more people away. Not sure they will, not sure they can and not sure it would work but I do know that the US has gone insane for stretches in its past but always adjusted back to more normal at some point. It could happen again
Corner Stone
So. many. blonde. women.
LAO
@Schlemazel Khan: I expect Clinton Derangement Syndrome will prevent any normalization. But I would be thrilled if I’m wrong. I would like to see sanity restored. I’m just not optimistic it will occur in my lifetime.
dmsilev
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Apparently, we’re supposed to blame some combination of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, My Little Pony, and probably the Bavarian Illuminati for the contents of the speech.
The speeches tonight, in a move that _nobody_ will expect, will be brought to us courtesy of the Spanish Inquisition.
mike in dc
Jesus loves me this I know, ’cause my newsfeed tells me so…
bemused
@Adam L Silverman:
Ailes has a lot to answer for.
Quinerly
@Corner Stone:
Very, very blonde women. Where’s Melania?
gene108
@Schlemazel Khan:
For the GOP and their media cohorts to dial it back, they would implicitly, at least, admit they were wrong.
sukabi
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: or, as I surmised on a previous thread, this was her “Fuck it, I want my life back!” moment…
Roger Moore
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
An entitled asshole with antediluvian attitudes toward women and sex. I assume that like rapists- and there’s a pretty thin line between quid pro quo sexual harassment and rape by coercion- it’s at least as much about the power as it is about the sex. He wants to force women to do as he wants, and the sex is just the way he proves his power over them.
Baud
Twitter tells me that Trump is no longer the presumptive fascist. Officially nominated.
Quinerly
“It’s a Movement!” Donnie, Jr., plagiarizing Bernie Sanders.
Corner Stone
I hate the media for just focusing on the Melania speech theft aspect, but the Trump campaign could have stunted this approach in a number of ways. And they did not. They are fail. It’s eating the convention.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: This goes to a comment I put in an earlier thread about now that the GOP nominating convention has worked itself into a froth before the end of the first night with calling, over and over, for Clinton’s imprisonment, where does it go from here? Do we wind up, by Trump’s speech on Thursday night, in response to his repeated musings on crooked, lying, incompetent, and murderous Hillary, with chants of “kill the bitch! kill the bitch!” or “hang the bitch! hang the bitch!” – as in for treason – while Trump smiles, points out the chanters, and does golf claps. What we saw last night is very, very far outside of anything seen since the Democratic nomination convention in SC in the 1860 election when Yancey and the other firebreathers went after any Democrat and every Republican that was in any way, shape, or form soft on the question of slavery – as in wanting to abolish it.
It is not unusual in democracies to have ideologically coherent parties. What is unusual is that these are almost all in parliamentary systems, which are designed to deal with these dynamics. Our separated powers systems, both between branches of government and across levels of government (with the states almost all mirroring the Federal structure), is not. We have now moved, after last night, into the GOP presenting itself as a full on revanchist, nationalist party that is flirting with crossing over into supremacism. FOX News, under Ailes direction, has been one of the major drivers of this, but not the only one. Talk radio is another – though with his hiring decisions he’s cross fertilized into that platform. Another was the concerted effort to take over and remake a number of political, social, religious, and economic organizations during the Carter Administration. It should come as no surprise that the purges, properly understood as a long building response to the Civil Rights movement victories of the 1960s, that pushed both the NRA and the Southern Baptist Convention well to the right of center for 1977-1978 have also contributed to where we are.
None of the above is intended to let the Democrats off the hook for self imposed damage – such as losing focus on turning out voters in non-presidential election cycles, not realizing and developing a proper strategy to respond to what I’ve detailed above, and of organs like the DCCC and DSCC to actually make the Republicans compete, and therefore expend resources and have to defend their positions, in every district and state in every election regardless of the actual potential for victory are definitely own goals. But the real story here is the above. We now have of one of the only two actual/viable parties we allow ourselves a full on revanchist, nationalist party. We have reached the portion of the map marked “here there be dragons!”
rikyrah
LESLIE JONES’ MONDAY PERFECTLY SHITS ON THE RNC
Joel Philip, 7/19/16
Ok wait. I know the title is really weird, but I promise you, this makes sense.
Yesterday, for reasons unknown (actually, that’s not true, we know why) racist trolls came out of the woodwork to completely disrespect Leslie Jones on a level that’s usually only heard of on a site like 4Chan. Except this was Twitter. It got to a point that Leslie, who usually blocks these trolls, decided to leave all of the comments open for all to read so they could see the levels of disgusting acts these pissants were throwing her way. It was literally non-stop post after post of nigger this, nigger that, pictures of apes, calling her ugly; the worst and yet the most uninspired vitriol at the same time.
It got to the point where the hashtag #LoveforLeslieJ was made so supporters of Leslie could counteract these attacks and show love. Now for one, this is directly related to Leslie starring in the Ghostbusters remake that came out this past Friday. Secondly, Leslie has been dealing with beauty & race issues her whole life, so the names and hurtful comments made yesterday were nothing she’s not seen before. But I can imagine the onslaught of them in one day was highly unexpected (special shotout to Twitter’s mods for not doing jack shit about it either).
……………………………..
However the reason I bring up Leslie & the RNC is because of one Sheriff David Clarke from Wisconsin, who presented a rousing speech, if you will, on Donald Trumps’ behalf last night, which got me to thinking after the entire convention gave him a standing ovation: this America always wanted a Black person to look a certain way, speak a certain way, complete a certain task, and embrace a certain ideology in order to be their friend.
Leto
@gene108: Hail Hydra!
Baud
@Corner Stone: The speech is the only negative thing from last night the media would have ever considered focusing on.
hovercraft
@dmsilev:
Well you know that donald is personally responsible for all that is good, and the evil doers responsible foe all that is bad. Plagiarism is bad, so someone else is responsible. Ladies and gents the party of personal responsibility.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Its not just that, he created a new dynamic. He understood he could get male eyeballs on his broadcasts (and he believed that men would be the channel tuning decision makers), by casting a very specific look. The tight dresses and four inch heels are part of it, but the real look he’s going for is big eyes, high cheek bones, slight underbite. The intention is for men to see women presenters on FOX with those characteristics and have them respond because big eyes, high cheek bones, and underbites is what men see when they look towards their feet when receiving oral sex. That’s what Ailes is selling with most of the female talent he casts. Its why they all get made over, why they’re all done up in the same variations on a theme.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Corner Stone:
I thought the norovirus was doing that.
hovercraft
@Quinerly:
They graced us with their presence last night, tonight they’re back in NY.
LAO
@Adam L Silverman: well put. Frightening, but, seemingly accurate.
Quinerly
@Corner Stone:
Suggest reading…Frum’s piece in The Atlantic…yes, it’s about Melania but the big picture, too… and what it tells us about the campaign, the chaos, his style. Probably no great revelations but a concise 10 point package. And, no, I’m not a Frum fan but he is at least sane.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The comments before the plagiarism came to light was how good Melinia’s speech was. The other stuff was already being ignored.
Quinerly
@hovercraft:
More about maybe how she would have been out of place in all that true “blondeness.”?
Roger Moore
@Adam L Silverman:
I expect we’ll get “Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!”
hovercraft
@Adam L Silverman:
Gee thanks for the visual of a whole bunch of pasty old white guys with their pants around their ankles and a blond head in their lap. Bleeggghhh.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: No, the pig castrater was on last night.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
Clancy was such a scamp.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: Alan..errrr Adam… said what I was trying to imply: we have a political party that has the characteristics of the anti-democratic parties of the 20s that took over weak democracies and opened the gates to hell.
What this means is that the task is not simply defeating Trump, though that’s an essential element. There is a whole ideological and propaganda apparatus that needs to be countered, defeated, and dismantled, root and branch — from school council seats on up.
It’s a decades long task and we’ve got to get going yesterday.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hovercraft: I had the same reaction and I’m a pasty old white guy.
Schlemazel Khan
@gene108:
No, I think they can just dial back the hyperbola and hate. They never have to admit they were wrong about anything. The morans that listen to then seem to have no memory at all.
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: @Roger Moore: I also have no idea what the news media would do, and I’m not talking Josh Marshall or Charlie Pierce and the crew at Esquire, I’m talking the broadcast and cable networks, the NY Times, WAPO, etc, would cover it. When you’ve got Avik Roy, a conservative policy tweeting that his take away of the first night’s theme was “brown people are scary” its kind of hard to ignore. But the media found something that gave them an excuse to.
The other question is what would the Secret Service do? How do you have an official response in regard to someone who even if she wasn’t a candidate would be under a protective detail for the rest of her life? And how do you respond in the middle of a campaign in a way that doesn’t make things worse?
I don’t think the GOP, whatever is left of it as an establishment, and I’m sure the Trump Campaign hasn’t, thought out what its rhetoric is bringing to the surface and its implications. And I don’t know how the people responsible for actually maintaining security develop contingency plans based on what we’re observing without being accused of interfering in the election, which would just reinforce the revanchism.
hovercraft
No Chris Collins, America does not really want to hear from Trumps children, we really don’t. Uday and Qusay just come off as dumb, and Ivanka seems a fake, and I have yet to hear from Tiffany and don’t want to. If they want to send out Barron he might be interesting, his programming is not done yet, he might still be normal.
Corner Stone
Can we get someone to please fix the fucking back button.
dmsilev
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Who knew that the GOP would be nostalgic for the days when a hurricane would blow through and disrupt a day or so of the Convention?
Schlemazel Khan
@Adam L Silverman:
That one line, “. . . is what men see when they look towards their feet when receiving oral sex.” may explain Fox success more than any hours of analysis ever could.
Adam L Silverman
@hovercraft: Happy to help.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Actually that’s a typo I need to go back and fix. I meant Yancey. Sorry!
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: ***shakes head in anger***
For American news channels, I am reduced to only watching a few shows on MSNBC. I guess CNN has “corrected” itself so that it’s now Fox News-lite. Sigh.
Baud
RIP GOP deep bench.
joes527
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: But who put the rickroll in the speech?
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh Yancy. Don’t even get me started on that rascal.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@dmsilev:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: I highly recommend this post:
http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/why-the-movement-is-more-dangerous-today-than-1993/
and the other’s under the topic keyword of “the movement” by the blogger who goes by Dr. Leo Strauss. He has a very, very good understanding of the movement and ideology that is driving this stuff. He’s also excellent on what Putin is doing too!
Corner Stone
Donald Trump is the Republican Nominee.
Man. I can’t wait til I get to the FL Keys next week. Sad it will not last longer.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
I’d also bet he originated the front panel-less news desk to show their lovely legs.
Schlemazel Khan
@joes527:
That is the real question I wish the media would focus on! Whoever wrote that speech was trying to send a signal that the speaker is buffoon or wants a good laugh at Hair Drump’s expense. Maybe it wasn’t Krusty we should have worried about being held captive, he is free in NJ again while poor ol Melania is still a captive
Corner Stone
@Baud:
You could pick boogers out of your nose that were a deeper bench than those clowns.
Patricia Kayden
@Baud: An inexperienced, uncouth, big mouthed, know nothing, egomaniac bigot is now officially the nominee of a major political party. Oh joy.
Go Secretary Clinton!
Corner Stone
Speaker Ryan: We nominate Hillary Clinton! Hail Hydra!
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tom Levenson:
I’m up to the Weimar period in your Einstein book. It’s fascinating and terrifying. The anti-semites, nationalists and haters of foreigners weren’t a lot different from distressed white middle and lower class GOP voters of today. Or so it seems. The extreme reaction toward nationalism that followed didn’t come out of nowhere.
Corner Stone
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GOING ON BULLSHIT NOW?!
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel Khan: I can’t claim credit for it. I’ve adapted it from the crime thriller author who writes under the nym of John Sandford (he writes the Prey novels). In one of the first of the Prey novels his lead character is involved with a local TV reporter and makes the observation about what TV execs are looking for in regard to female talent. It has become such a standard/ideal, driven by what Ailes was doing with his female talent, that if you look at local news broadcasts there is a push for this type of facial structure for the women news readers. Its not as pervasive as on FOX Cable News, but its there. Its why all of his female talent get made over. For instance, he has former MTV VJ Kennedy on. She wasn’t unattractive on MTV, but if you look at pictures before and after she got the FOX Cable News treatment you can see the difference. They even tried it with Van Susteren when she came aboard from CNN, but given the nerve damage issue she has there was only so much they could do. And I’m not trying to make fun of Van Susteren’s looks, but there’s the image FOX is selling and there’s how these women look, many of whom would be stunning regardless, before and after they get the FOX makeover treatment.
Corner Stone
Oh no. Musical interlude: INVOKED!
Baud
Alaska is seeking a recount!
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: We’re switching you to decaf.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Here’s Yancey’s speech:
http://www.bartleby.com/268/9/19.html
redshirt
@Schlemazel Khan: You might be surprised to learn that the true wingnuts already view Fox News as part of the liberal media. Hard to accept, I know, but it’s a long standing belief at wingnut sites like Free Republic. Fox News = Liberal Media.
That might give you another idea of what they think of MSNBC and any other source of news. Utterly communist.
Corner Stone
@dmsilev: I don’t drink coffee.
GIVE ME THE EDIBLES!
Helen
@Corner Stone: They’re trying to fuck Alaska? Or they can’t count. One or the other.
redshirt
@Patricia Kayden: If you must watch TV news, watch the BBC. All American TV news is propaganda.
GregB
For a man who held women to such a rigorous beauty standard it seems he set his personal looks bar significantly lower.
Pogonip
@Adam L Silverman: That’s a suspiciously complicated explanation. William of Ockham and I maintain Ailes has a Bimbotron 4000 cloning machine in his basement.
joel hanes
@Adam L Silverman:
what men see
What men wish they saw when, in their fantasies, they look toward their feet while receiving a humjob.
The idea that Fox News viewers have wives with faces like Megan Kelly’s is risible.
So is the idea that even a substantial fraction of Fox News viewers receive a connubial blowjob. Ever.
Remember that they’re very old, not very educated, white, and conservative.
So are their wives, if they have wives.
Corner Stone
@Helen: I tried to fuck Alaska once. Once.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
Most of the racists in this country have no problem with blacks they can label as just slightly inferior sidekicks. It was when a black man became the country’s boss that these people flipped their shit. Clint Eastwood was the perfect example.
redshirt
@Tom Levenson:
I agree with everything you say, but then this past weekend I’m at a family birthday party and a large percentage of the party is regaling in the horrors of Hillary and how Trump is going to crush her. These are actually nice people. Really. Many of them regular and seemingly sincere church goers. There’s a mixed race couple. They have a nephew who’s gay married. And yet there they were, in joy, lambasting Hillary’s chances (not really praising Trump). How do you change these people? How do you get through to them? They’re not evil, they’re not angry, and yet they buy in 100% to the narrative fed to them by Fox News, which of course they watch – as a “legitimate” news organization.
I have no answers.
Schlemazel Khan
@Adam L Silverman:
Still its a great line for understanding TV news
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: Important safety tip: _not_ baked Alaska.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
What happened? They were already in the musical break by the time I got the tv switched.
Pogonip
I read elsewhere on the Internet, so it must be true, that Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly have clauses in their contracts allowing them to decamp if Ailes leaves.
I guess Fox can fill some of that time with Keith Olbermann.
Lizzy L
Help! My comment has been marked as spam.Not sure why.
Baud
@Lizzy L:
Can’t believe something offensive was said at this event.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: I also recommend, if you can get through it because it is densely packed with information, Clanton’s Centennial History of the Civil War. The 1860 convention is covered in the first few chapters of the first volume:
https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Fury-Centennial-History-Civil-ebook/dp/B00DACZ9K6?ie=UTF8&qid=1468972767&ref_=la_B000AP8M9Q_1_9&s=books&sr=1-9#navbar
Emma
@joel hanes: Who said anything about wives?
hovercraft
@Baud:
The deep bench lives, the hunger games will feature:
Ted Cruz
Joni Ernst
Tom Cotton
Paul Ryan – too establishment no chance
Matt Bevin
Corey Gardner
The contest will be to see who is the true most pure most St Ronnie enough to take America back from the wimins, gays and coloreds who have stolen it. The aim of the games is to determine who can get the 89 % of the white vote needed to take America back.
Corner Stone
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: It’s another lost 24 hours by this scampaign and RNC convention. Trump will ultimately prevail, but this is another news cycle that’s going to focus on anything but Trump’s success.
Chaos!
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: He did. He made a big deal about having Judge Cryer not wear pant suits because he paid for a glass topped table so that every guy watching could see her legs.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: I appreciate it. I’ve been trying to read more history.
cynthia ackerman
@Adam L Silverman: In real life I am someone deeply involved with a major news story from 6/3/2016 involving risk management and public safety.
Adam, this is one of the most useful and hopeful analyses in recent memory.
Can you please let me know how to reach you for one on one contact?
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Can you please be more specific?
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Alaska wants their votes counted correctly.
Edit The actual count was 12 cruz, 11 trump, 5 rubio
they recorded it as 28 trump
Baud
@hovercraft:
But they’re not even contiguous!
Adam L Silverman
@GregB: He’s a congenital hemophiliac and based on both the authorized and unauthorized biographies he’s got a very, very severe case and almost died several times growing up just from the normal jostling of every day life as a kid. He can’t undertake physical activities the way the rest of us can. He’s in his 70s, he can’t safely exercise, so…
Adam L Silverman
@Pogonip: Can I get one of those on Prime? Asking for a friend… Severa friends.
Emma
And go, Hillary, go!
Adam L Silverman
@joel hanes: Tracking. There’s the fantasy and the reality.
goblue72
We should thank our lucky stars that Fox News has so helped turned the GOP base into a cesspool of lunacy, conspiracy mongers and outright white supremacists that a candidate like John Kasich couldn’t get anywhere close to securing the GOP nomination. Let’s not forget that the GOP have a once in a generation sized majority in the House – which they are highly unlikely to lose this cycle. They control the Senate – which could turn, but just as well could not. Dial back the crazy from 11 to a 5 or 6, make sure all their Senate candidates are sane, center-right candidates, and put someone like a Kasich at the top as nominee – and all of the sudden this election looks a lot different – and a LOT more scary for Democrats.
We should be careful what we wish for. In 2008, Democrats were looking like the future, and the GOP also-rans. A mere two years later, Nancy Smash was back in the minority and Harry Reid was baling water.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: We’re still waiting for an objection from Alaska delegates to be resolved.
This could get really fucking nasty moving forward, if the states’ delegates desire it so.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: I’m a fan of “Dr. Leo Strauss” — but I’ve gotten out of the habit of checking out the stuff over there. I’ll read this eve.
rikyrah
ChickaDee
@TheObamaphile
On the left: Democratic Party Capitol Hill Interns
On the right: Republican Party Interns.
redshirt
@Corner Stone: You think Trump is going to win? Figures.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel Khan: Yep, just wanted to ensure I’m not eventually accused of plagiarism (see what I did there?).
Adam L Silverman
@dmsilev: Flaming on the outside, frozen on the inside. Never a good combo!
The Other Chuck
Paul Ryan trying to pound with the skinny end of the gavel. Priceless.
Helen
@Corner Stone: Quitter!
Corner Stone
Wow. Priebus just pissed all over Alaska delegates and any other states who choose to object.
Baud
Prime time kicks off with an explanation of the rules. Awesome.
Tom Levenson
@Ultraviolet Thunder: I’m going to be doing a lot more writing on the late Weimar and what it can teach us about the current state of US politics in the near future. I got a talking-to today from a mentor with deep and serious Democratic political chops and he told me to get more words out. So I will.
The parallels/resonances are f**king terrifying.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Its very dense. Shelby Foote is easy to read and essentially useless if you want to learn anything. Catton is hard to read, but when done you will know everything possible about the Civil War. It is worth fighting through.
Adam L Silverman
@cynthia ackerman: There’s a contact me link on the right, just send a test message through that.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Okay, I’m going to walk the dogs, I’ll check back for updates!
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
Man, but does that not describe so many women I can’t get away from…
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: Its a post from 2009, but it really does a good job summarizing what you’re concerned with.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Best of luck with the Pokemon!
joel hanes
@Emma:
Good point.
I forgot about the oldest profession.
However, call girls that look like Megyn Kelly are also outside the financial reach of all but a small percentage of Fox viewers.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
Not that surprising. Somebody must be reading Infowars and WND, and the only reason for doing so is because you think Fox is too liberal.
Helen
LOL. Trump’s gonna address the convention at 9pm says MSNBC. He really is gonna speak every night.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@Tom Levenson: I’m learning more about Germany from this book than I imagined I could. I work for a large German company and visit there several weeks a year.
From immersion in your description of WW1 and the aftermath the parallels to today are impossible to miss.
Last night reading about the bier hall putsch I was very glad that Trump is a terrible speaker.
If that’s Godwining then so be it. To me it seems justified.
Emma
@joel hanes: True. But, as you pointed out, not their fantasies.
Baud
@Helen: Hahahahaha.
cynthia ackerman
@Adam L Silverman: Ca
n’t see that link as I’m in poor data land, will contact when available.
Roger Moore
@redshirt:
I think the point is that we need to dismantle the propaganda machine that’s feeding them malevolent lies. If they’re genuinely good people, they should start acting that way politically when we stop poisoning their minds with Fox-type filth.
hovercraft
@Pogonip:
Where would they go?
JGabriel
NYMag via Tom Levenson @ Top:
Jeepers. This guy’s sexual harassment assholery is so widespread, I’m thinking Ailes’s victims should band together to bring a class-action suit against him.
redshirt
@Roger Moore: Indeed, it’s clear: We must destroy Fox News and any similar organization.
But how?
ThresherK
@rikyrah: Who’s the D Congresscritter whose interns are in the L.H. foto?
(Also, is anyone else surprised at how many interns thre are for each Congresscritter?)
dmsilev
I see tonight’s 4-hour-hate is getting off to a good start.
dmsilev
President of Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Please, please, please someone hit him with a folding chair.
Patricia Kayden
Ultimate Fighting Championship President? Really RNC?
Schlemazel Khan
@Adam L Silverman:
I thought Foote’s 3 volume ACW book had everything. The first book was a great read and really covered the social and economic causes for the war. I found the other 2 books a bit of a slog because he covered the war day by day and not action by action so there was a lot of jumping around and I can’t keep my generals straight so I got confused.
I would be very interested in more info about the 1860 DNC though so I may take you up on that earlier recommendation.
dmsilev
@Schlemazel Khan: McPherson’s _Battle Cry of Freedom_ is a good single-volume history of both the war and the political run-up to same.
Schlemazel Khan
@Tom Levenson:
I see a lot of parallels with 1850s America and I joke about 1930s Germany but I am not as familiar enough with that period and place so it would be good to read more about it.
dmsilev
@Patricia Kayden: At least it was over quickly. Donald Trump as the loyal friend that you can count on? Seriously?
Apparently Asa Hutchinson is voiced by HAL 9000.
Pogonip
@joel hanes: I’d say they’re outside the financial reach of most American men, regardless of their TV viewing habits.
raven
@Schlemazel Khan: This is good
The Day Dixie Died: The Battle of Atlanta
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: Leslie Jones’ experience is exactly why I will never sign up on Twitter. She is just one of the POCs and women who are harassed and abused on Twitter unabated. I see that the CEO for Twitter waited until after Jones indicated that she was quitting Twitter to reach out to her. Screw him!
hovercraft
God I truly hate Tweety, why must he ascribe positions to Hillary that are mot hers?
You know who was gung ho about trade in the 90’s, just about everyone except Bernie and Dennis Kusnich, if she says she’s against TPP now then give her the benefit of the doubt, when she was advocating for it it was her bosses trade deal. Is she more hawkish than many liberals would like yes. But to sit there and say that drump is less hawkish or less into trade, is bullshit, he changes his position every five minutes, and lies constantly so how can anyone say where he stands on anything. Implying that she lies about her positions based on “what you believe”, and basically accepting what he says are his positions now because you like him even though they change constantly is bullshit. STFU Tweety.
Quinerly
@dmsilev:
“That” chair was actually too embarrassed to attend this year
raven
Not great, but good rainbow over our house.
dmsilev
Wait, I thought Benghazipalooza was last night?
hovercraft
Why is this man yelling at me from my tv. He knows there’s a mic up there right?
Frank Wilhoit
$40M doesn’t buy a lot of lawyers. For once, this may be a good thing.
Schlemazel Khan
@dmsilev:
I debated mentioning that, if you only read one book on the ACW that is the one to read. I read it many years ago & learned so much but the real education was when TNC did it as a book club on his site. There were so many great insights and additional knowledge shared. The best time since I was on an ACW listserv in the primordial Internet days.
Schlemazel Khan
@raven:
I’m not sure, it might have been your recommendation but I read that a little while ago. If it was you, THANKS!
dmsilev
Is it possible that yesterday was actually the high point of this? These speakers can’t even get a good hate going.
Corner Stone
The RNC does know that the Clintons’ have not been in power in Arkansas for damn near 30 years, right?
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
John Keegan’s history is worth reading for the military side, though he doesn’t get into much detail about the history behind the war. It’s especially interesting reading something from a non-American viewpoint. Keegan doesn’t have a dog in the Lost Cause hunt, which gives him a more objective view about the war than most Americans would.
The Other Chuck
@dmsilev:
No, that was the opening. It’s scheduled to run through January 20, 2024.
Shawn in Showme
@Roger Moore:
If you’ve lived cheerfully in a white supremacist bubble your whole life, I don’t think there’s a reliable way to break that kind of conditioning. Fox reinforced the bubble but it didn’t create it. You can only save people who want to be saved.
dmsilev
In other news, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is still dead.
lamh36
@TheObamaphile
On the left: Democratic Party Capitol Hill Interns
On the right: Republican Party Interns.
Hmmm…see if you can tell the difference?
Patricia Kayden
@dmsilev: His first and second wives could talk to us about his loyalty.
hovercraft
@dmsilev:
All day every day.
redshirt
@The Other Chuck: Never have 4 lives meant more….
Corner Stone
As expected, a series of “Me Me Me” speeches at the this convention.
dmsilev
@Corner Stone: Chris Christie is on later this evening. That should be a ME ME ME ME ME ME speech.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: “Shrink, I want to kill. I want to kill! I want to see
Blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth! Eat dead, burnt bodies! I
Mean: Kill. Kill!” But with no sense of irony.
Corner Stone
Michael Mukasey. Loving this guy!
redshirt
@dmsilev: And Garland reaches a record for SC nominee with no action. A record that will be smashed with nary a word from our “liberal media”.
amk
fuck lincoln.
yeah.
Patricia Kayden
@lamh36: This says everything about why Black and Brown people need to vote for Democrats. Republicans cannot even hire us for unpaid internships. Anti-POC as hell.
ThresherK
@Schlemazel Khan: I’m not Godwinning, but you could do worse than this book studying 1924 for the groundwork of 1930s Germany.
redshirt
@dmsilev: They’re letting Christie speak?
I hope he whines and cries.
hovercraft
@Corner Stone:
Gotta relive the good ole days when there was a new whitehouse ‘scandal’ everyday. Obama is too squeaky clean. The media eats up Clinton scandals.
JPL
@dmsilev: So not the mini me speech huh?
Patricia Kayden
So what does Mukasey have to say about the 22 million emails which his administration erased? Rethug hypocrisy is awe inspiring.
dmsilev
According to the RNC, tonight is supposed to be all about the economy. So, um, I guess Hillary Clinton has created a few IT mail-server configuration jobs?
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
One of my favorite books, historical or fiction.
Schlemazel Khan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well they sure all belong on the Group W bench with the mother-stabbers and father-rapers
Patricia Kayden
@Corner Stone: I thought this was Make America Work night. Not really seeing that theme.
dmsilev
Let me guess: Trump has stiffed this guy at least once on a job.
TS
They got Benghazi and emails – seems to be the only policies presented for the past 2 days – unless you include plagiarizing Michelle Obama as a policy. Will wait to see where the Trump sons found their speeches.
dmsilev
@Patricia Kayden: Hey, the current speaker just said tonight’s slogan. I think that’s the first time tonight.
hovercraft
@dmsilev:
Sadly this time his speech will not be seen as an audition for his run to be the nominee, so maybe he will pucker up real good and secure his future as the AG in the imaginary Trump administration.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Speaking of “here there be dragons”…
I’ve been watching the Drumpf phenomenon and the Turkish coup-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight and my brain is starting to do weird things under the influence of too little sleep and a hell of a lot of beautiful New Mexico forest…
so now I’m asking…
do you see a scenario where there could be a military coup in the US? If. for example, a Drumpf-like character were to insist that the military carry out illegal or lethally suicidal orders?
dmsilev
Back to Benghazi.
This is like a sick and twisted version of _Groundhog Day_.
Chris
Ailes on his way out is the best news I’ve heard all month.
I need to find that James Bond flick where he brings down an evil all powerful media mogul and watch it in celebration.
Credenzal Jocularity
@rikyrah:
Thank you for making me aware of the VSB.
hovercraft
Rudy says if he did what Hillary did, he would be in jail. She is directly responsible for the deaths in Benghazi because of her negligence. His smarmy answer to the question of should she be in jail.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: uh…do you have a citation for this assertion, is this a “common guyhood knowledge” kind of thing?
Feeling a little queasy even asking, frankly…
Burnspbesq
@Schlemazel Khan:
Maybe yes, maybe no. If the jury determines that the victims were denied promotions, more favorable time slots, etc., then damages would be based on income that the plaintiffs didn’t get as a result of saying no. It’ll be dueling compensation consultant expert witnesses, and the amount of Ailes’ deferred comp won’t be terribly relevant.
mike in dc
@TS: I expect something really inspiring about St. Crispin’s Day.
Burnspbesq
@Frank Wilhoit:
Ailes won’t have to pay for the coverage litigation, and if Fox is a Delaware corporation (and depending on his employment contract), he may be entitled to indemnification. A perusal of News Corp’s SEC filings would be well worth the time.
NotMax
@Tom Levenson
Just so you’re aware that changing the title does not change the original wording in the URL.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Not going to happen. Not with my dogs. Not where we live and therefore walk. I have gators and coyotes and bobcat and snakes etc to worry about.
Adam L Silverman
@cynthia ackerman: It’ll be on the right side column. It’s got all the contact the contributors. If you scroll down you’ll see one for me.
Kathleen
@hovercraft: Per tweet from Dana Houle, Tweety compared Kasich to Thomas More.
Uncle Cosmo
@dmsilev: I was just about to reply to Schlemazl Khan at #148 that McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is a pretty fair & very readable 1-volume history of the War of Southron Secession, but for some reason I hit PgDn first, & … Jeebus cripes, that’s scary. Grayed minds, ah spoze.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel Khan: Foote’s books are meh. He’s a Confederate apologist and his sourcing is, at best, metzo metzo. Catton has dozens of citations per page. Its the difference between someone who wrote a book about something they’re interested in and a professional writing a history book in accord with all the professional requirements for doing so.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: what could it be…what could it be…h’mm…sorry, I’m not seein’ it.
Aleta
Thank you for the post and tags.
It’s good he’s gone, but hard to think about how many careers and lives harmed. Such a drag to think it’s been at least 50 years since a few women began to write publicly (in shoestring publications) about sexual harassment, and 26 years since Tomlin, Parton and Fonda made the movie 9 to 5.
Schlemazel Khan
@Burnspbesq:
Spoken like a true lawyer! I’m guessing that the pattern of abuse was know, or knowable & that makes Rupurt Morloch and company culpable in ways that make them want to pay out & shut up.
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I doubt there’d be a coup. I also know the military leadership isn’t going to follow, or expect anyone else to follow, patently illegal and unconstitutional orders.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: yeah, but NOTHING is stopping him from backing away from the buffet and taking a walk.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Oh, there you go, ruining a perfectly good “what if” scenario…//
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: As I wrote in comment 80:
Schlemazel Khan
@Adam L Silverman:
I may be the most anti-Confederate you’ll find and I didn’t find Foote that bad. Yeah, he has sympathy for the people of the South & he does cut them some slack but he does not forgive them for slavery or the war. I agree that he is not copiously footnoted but he does have a lot of detail. I think particularly his pre-war parts
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: You have to remember that the general officer/flag officer cohort has been selected over the past 7 years under Obama’s DOD guidelines. While the general officers/flag officers do help set the standards for the promotion boards, and serve on them so they have a lot of input, so does the SecDef and the Service Secretaries. The President appoints them and he also, technically, appoints the general officers/flag officers. And while any appointment above 2 stars requires Senatorial approval, with only a few exceptions (including a former boss of mine who, in my professional and personal view got the short end of the stick on this from a couple of senators), the Senate normal approves the 3 and 4 star appointments. But each administration has a chance to put its stamp on the Force. And there was near universal recognition that, for instance, even if enhanced interrogation (aka torture) was given legal cover by the Bush 43 Administration the military didn’t want anything to do with it. That’s why they pushed back against President Bush 43, revised the interrogation field manual, and reinforced that unless it was in that manual, it wasn’t authorized.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: Well, I guess I must have missed comment 80. Ewww…do you mean, “made over” as in “makeover” or as in “had work done”? Because the former is bad enough, but the latter I would find almost unbearably fucked up.
@Schlemazel Khan: meh. I’m not a Foote fan.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel Khan: He was a fiction novelist and Confederate sympathizer who decided, without any actual training or education as a historian to support the endeavor, to write a popular history of the Civil War. I rely on military and war histories for my work at times. I enjoyed reading The Killer Angels, but I’m not going to cite it or use it. If you want to read an actual historian writing an actual history you want someone like Catton for actual historian written coverage of the entire war and what led up to it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/the-convenient-suspension-of-disbelief/240318/
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2011/06/shelby-foote-of-the-devils-party-and-knowing-it.html
https://otoolefan.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/dunce-for-the-confederacy-the-lost-cause-of-shelby-foote/
There are also persistent rumors that he deserted from the US military.
The Lodger
@Kathleen: Does this mean we have to drag Kasich to a cathedral?
(And the Mrs adds, “Yes. Behind a car. Over barbed wire.”)
Adam L Silverman
@Miss Bianca: I can’t prove the latter, but I think its clear that Van Susteren’s been botoxed within an inch of her ability to blink. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the other female talent has also had work done in addition to the styling and apparel makeovers.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: I read that history as a tyke (HS). Loved it! Won’t say it made me an unlicensed historian — my dad’s work did that — but it helped.
Ruckus
@The Lodger:
LOL
Tell your wife I like her style. She didn’t say how long the drive was though. I’m thinking at least 20 miles.
Tom Levenson
@NotMax: I know. I don’t care.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Lodger: Becket is cathedral, More is Tower.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: It took me multiple attempts. It was originally my Dad’s. I finally got all the way through it when I got back from Iraq. I spent almost 13 months on temporary duty bouncing from meeting to meeting, site to site, organizational planning team to organizational planning team to conference and back again. So I had a lot of time at airports, on airplanes, and at hotels to kill.
redshirt
@Tom Levenson: Yeah your new title is much more punchy.
Remember your audience when writing. Tailor it for them.
Who are we, BJ?
Bunch of Jackals, apparently…..
Raven Onthill
The left has been talking about Weimar (and comparable situations in European history of that period) for at least a decade. Yes, media reform is very much in order. This is something Ben Bagdikian, among others, have been discussing since the 1980s. Part of the problem here is that, now as in Weimar, the conservatives thought they could control the demons they raised up. So they wrecked the anti-fascist provisions of media law in the USA (it helped that media concentration made lots of money) and they made fascism possible again.
There is some kind of intellectual flaw that renders most non-political and non-left intellectuals unable to hear the arguments of the left until disaster is about to strike. This was so in the 1930s and it seems to be so now. Wish you guys would listen to us a bit sooner.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven Onthill:
To whom are you speaking?
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: Real Progressives, obviously.
Raven Onthill
Kraw. Maybe Bernard Sanders has done us a greater favor than we knew in this: we can talk about socialism again without panic or instant rejection. It’s hard to reason about such things without bringing in socialist thinking, and if you can’t say the word “socialist,” that’s hard to do.
burnspbesq
@Schlemazel Khan:
That’s a good bet–especially if the insurance company can’t get off the hook. Making it go away quickly using somebody else’s money if the best outcome Fox can hope for at this point. They’re going to have throw a railroad car of cash at Kelly to get her to stay.
Raven Onthill
@Omnes Omnibus: Moderates. Centrists. There’s — Paul Krugman wrote about it back in 2003, quoting Kissinger — “Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework.” People could not believe the whole economic and social complex, which after all had existed for most of their lives, could be tipped over into authoritarianism, until it is nearly an accomplished thing.
I suppose it helps to grow up reading science fiction. “The trade secret of science fiction is history” and history teaches that all changes, that social permanence is an illusion.
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman:
The ones protecting Trump have already had a tricky time dealing with protesters who become violent at Trump’s rallies, and try to rush the stage and such. Their job is to protect the candidate, but the candidate seems bent on goading people into violence, and unfortunately some of the violence is inevitably coming from anti-Trump people who are directing it at him, and you get the sense he actually kind of likes that. And where do you draw the line between making sure the candidate is safe, and participating in his mob calls to throw the bums out of the arena?
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven Onthill: I just found it interesting, given your history here, that you wrote “you guys” as though addressing this blog’s people. I doubt that there are many actual moderates or centrist here. There are people who advocate different approaches to quite similar goals. If my antennae were over-sensitive, I apologize. If it was a swipe at the commentariat here, please see the earlier parts of my comment.
Raven Onthill
@Omnes Omnibus: I was thinking more of the general run of non-left intellectuals like the original poster here. And, well, from my radical viewpoint, so radical that I may live to see the party I want to join formed but am not counting on it, most of the regulars here are moderates. Which, ordinarily, is a good thing. A world made up of radical birds like me would be a crazy place. But in these radical times, I wish you would listen to us.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven Onthill: Given that response, I have to confine you to the non-serious political participant category. Most of us work in the world of the possible – some the unlikely. Have a nice evening.
Raven Onthill
@Omnes Omnibus: the possible is wider than you imagine. I ask you to consider Donald Trump. I ask you to understand Trump and what he stands for. I ask you to act effectively against Trump and what he stands for.
If you have decided I am a third-party advocate and therefore irrelevant, I have written before in comments here that I am not. I intend to be working for the Clinton campaign this fall, despite regarding — despite knowing it — to be dangerously unrealistic.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven Onthill:
Yeah, I sort of noticed that a long time ago. I think you are confused at best. W’vevs.
Big Jim Slade
So, they’re letting him stay on through both conventions? Mighty convenient. They’ve always liked his work…