The Wall Street Journal is ruled by an effete asshole and that’s a shite state of affairs to be in:
Gerard Baker, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal, has faced unease and frustration in his newsroom over his stewardship of the newspaper’s coverage of President Trump, which some journalists there say has lacked toughness and verve.
Some staff members expressed similar concerns on Wednesday after Mr. Baker, in a series of blunt late-night emails, criticized his staff over their coverage of Mr. Trump’s Tuesday rally in Phoenix, describing their reporting as overly opinionated.
“Sorry. This is commentary dressed up as news reporting,” Mr. Baker wrote at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday morning to a group of Journal reporters and editors, in response to a draft of the rally article that was intended for the newspaper’s final edition.
And heh:
When Ivanka Trump, the president’s older daughter, walked into the Oval Office, Mr. Baker told her, according to the transcript, “It was nice to see you out in Southampton a couple weeks ago,” apparently referring to a party that the two had attended.
Sometimes I think first up against the wall is too good a fate for these guys.
Rupert Murdoch has done more damage to western civilization than anyone since Hitler. May he and his minions rot in hell.
cain
All of these assholes are dishonoring journalism.
lollipopguild
You can make a solid argument that trump would never been elected without faux noise laying the groundwork and clearing the path for him.
MoeLarryAndJesus
Which is why the face-up guillotine is such an appealing option.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t think it was all Murdoch. I don’t think he could have done it himself. He needed a lot of help, starting with Nixon and Buchanan, followed by such lights as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, New Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell and too many others to count. We’ve been a long time getting to this. Without all those other shitstains working toward the same ends, Murdoch never could have brought on Trump.
Manyakitty
As I keep saying, “FIRING SQUADS.”
Major Major Major Major
@lollipopguild:
Not to mention the ‘real’ media doing their best to make everybody hate and fear Hillary.
Baud
The WSJ used to have solid reporting. I think the quality has gone down.
Jeffro
@lollipopguild: Murdoch and Faux certainly created a pretty hard ‘floor’ beneath the GOP and its candidates. They make it relatively easy for the Republicans to add to that 40% or so of voters and win (even if by just a hair, or EVs). They (and gerrymandering, and attacks on voting rights) also keep the GOP from being completely wiped out when a wipeout is most certainly what’s deserved.
I don’t know how to work to counter the Faux Effect, but we’d better get our butts in gear about gerrymandering and attacks on voting rights, that’s for sure.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: This. Lots of non-wingers hopped onto the hate wagon.
PigDog
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Newt above all. Others had odious policies, but he weaponized them using Rush and others as megaphones. Without him I think we’d be a much more polite country.
efgoldman
After a very long, slow, excruciatingly painful death.
TenguPhule
@Baud:
What was the first clue?
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but a New York friend of mine (IRL and subsequently FB) notes that there is a great jazz concert going on tonight at Grant’s Tomb.
That makes me unbelievably happy. Seems so perfect.
Mary G
@Baud: Yeah, there used to be a really big wall between the insanity of the opinion page and the reporting, which though very pro-business, was usually factual. Since Murdoch bought it, though, it’s been sliding down, down, down the slippery slope.
efgoldman
@SiubhanDuinne:
The Army of the Potomac had a great beat and you could dance to it.
JPL
Sinclair news will continue the fine tradition of rewriting history.
efgoldman
@JPL:
Yeah, they bought the Providence market leader for decades (the NBC affiliate) and now, somehow, all the local news shows include a segment of Sinclair RWNJ propaganda disguised (not so cleverly) as a “special report”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne:
Will Grant be there?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Don’t forget Ailes.
@MoeLarryAndJesus: Too fast – I favor them being fed feet-first into a woodchipper.
You’ve got mail.
Thor Heyerdahl
I read the Financial Times rather than the WSJ. They do a good job of keeping editorial and reporting separate.
Kay
oatler.
Southhampton is the starting point for this year’s annual National Review cruise. Destination New York…
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Gregg Abbott: “The courts have made their decision, now let them try to enforce it! Wolverines!!!”
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I believe he is a regular attendee. Also too, Mrs. Grant.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: Jesus fucking Christ, you just refuse to accept good news.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Do you clap on 1 & 3, or 2 & 4?
Peale
@JPL: Yep. I hope the existence of the Smiths and Mercers and Koch’s will give people pause when they attack the oligarchy simply about income inequality. They aren’t using their influence simply to gut a few regulations here or lower the estate tax there and using a xenophobic racist demagogue as a front. They are indeed right wing white supremacists themselves. They appear to be eager to buy up racism wherever they can because they like to collect racist things.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
It doesn’t fit with his apocalyptic world view.
craigie
I have believed this for a long time.
TenguPhule
Not a Hell vile enough for George W Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice, Bremer and Powell.
Never forget, never forgive.
Peale
@Omnes Omnibus: To be fair, we have experience in North Carolina less than a year ago of a state simply refusing to make changes by a court in time for the elections. This is good news, but I’m not certain what we can count on happening.
Hal
Once more, with feeling
Kay
@TenguPhule:
“Purpose” is worse than “effect”:
Texas went a little too crazily racist and really got their attention.
Just think about that for a minute- Texas lawmakers intentionally discriminated to stop AA and Latinos from voting. They spent months working on it and they have spent years defending it. This is how these assholes spend their workdays- making sure groups they dislike can’t vote.
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know, he seems to have an affinity for pie.
efgoldman
@Peale:
A real DOJ, doing its job, would go into court for a consent decree, and after that, send marshals to enforce the order.
Jay S
@Baud: There used to be a standing joke that the WSJ editorial board never read the news section of the Journal. The owners have worked hard to erode that joke by degrading the reporting.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
And as we’ve seen across the South, they’ll keep doing it even in the face of legal injunctions to stop doing it.
Remember who’s now running the Federal DOJ. Enforcement of the law is a very real concern.
Kay
Question: if there’s nothing to the Russia/Trump investigation why does Trump call up GOP lawmakers and scream at them about it?
He doesn’t act like there’s nothing to it. He acts like he’s obsessed with it and frightened by it.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
If this were a movie the critics would complain that the guilty tells are too obvious.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Only pumpkin.
Kay
@TenguPhule:
I wonder if that was part of throwing it out. They don’t want the “tweaks” Texas put in. They don’t want wiggle room or conflicting directions to polling places or weaseling around an order- “none” is unequivocal.
Peale
@Kay: Its true. Maybe its that thing where he simply wants to reflexively wants to undo anything Obama did and do the opposite because all of Obama’s ideas were dumb. Since Obama didn’t use Russian money and personnel to win, it had to be a dumb idea that Obama had not to do so. So he’s just pissed that not everyone sees how much better he is for doing so.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
And I’d be much more confident that it would be obeyed if Holder or Lynch were still running things.
I agree that the language is clear cut. But that was true when Jackson gave the court the bird too way back when.
GregB
Russia stole the election for Trump.
That is why he is losing his mind.
That fact is the Telltale Heart beating beneath the floor boards of the White House.
Getting louder….louder…louder…
Kay
@TenguPhule:
My husband thinks Trump made that big public fuss about pardoning Sheriff Joe because he’s signaling to the other criminals in his circle that they won’t do any time.
That actually sounds plausible.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Good to know that I am not the only who to find this constant bath of negativity tiring.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Great news.
efgoldman
@Kay:
No, it really doesn’t. That would mean “planning” and “actions and consequences.” Neither is ever part of what passes for a mindset.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
And a recipe for disaster for rule of law.
Peale
@TenguPhule: Yep. It’s the worst Agatha Christie adaptation ever. On page 15, the son-in-law confesses everything and the next 185 pages are Miss Marpole trying to catch the bus someplace where she’s actually needed.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@SiubhanDuinne:
Load on the down beat, fire on the up beat.
TenguPhule
@efgoldman:
Trump doesn’t need to plan to do this shit, he just wants to do it.
Cleek’s law. Updated daily.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Same thing happened with Republicans in North Carolina with same legal challenge and court decision.
Major Major Major Major
I still can’t believe he’s going to pardon somebody for contempt of court.
I mean, I guess I can.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, there are threads that make me think that this blog has gone all doom all the time.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I don’t think you really get away with anything because in the end you have to live with yourself. Have you seen how unhappy and tired the man looks.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Then why does he seem so freaked out over Mueller’s investigation?
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: they seem to start up right around quitting time in Hawaii ?
TenguPhule
@Omnes Omnibus:
Reality is cruel.
Chet Murthy
@Mary G: Oh inDEED. As a UK intellectual remarked, for the truth, you have to read the Financial Times these days. Nobody else prints the truth. I’m sure somebody’s in the process of buying them and … etc etc etc.
As you say, at least, it used to be the case that the news pages were accurate, b/c people bet *money* based on that reporting. And of course, as we well know from the last decade, almost all economics/business reporting predicted rampant inflation, and so if you’d harkened, you’d have lost money.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: To me, there’s also a connection between pardoning Sheriff Joe and the voting rights topic in this thread too. Pardoning Arpaio signals that this administration doesn’t take court orders seriously. That’s in the same neighborhood as ignoring orders to discontinue voter ID activities.
efgoldman
@Patricia Kayden:
Because his lawyers and accountants told him years ago that borrowing money from the Russian mafia was a problem, and he did it anyway, and Mueller will eventually find the smoking spreadsheet.
SiubhanDuinne
The Arts Council letter spelled out RESIST.
The science guy’s letter spelled out IMPEACH.
Here’s my one-size-fits-all template for any other government employees who wish to resign with a flourish:
A Ghost to Most
@GregB:
This. Mueller is in his head, along with Obama and HRC. It’s getting crowded in there.
Tick tock
Kay
@Patricia Kayden:
It is. The decisions out of North Carolina and Texas are a real repudiation of Justice Roberts. His fellow federal judges are stacking up quite a bit of case law that goes against his wacky theories of the hurt feelings of..states being the priority.
What a fucked up world view. That the big concern is some kind of insane notion of state pride. It’s about VOTERS. The whole point of the State of Texas is to serve the citizens of Texas. There is no other reason for it to exist.
chopper
@Major Major Major Major
ironically he works at a bakery making pies.
Major Major Major Major
@chopper: wait, seriously?
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Did you see the news about how 5 Muslim women and a grassroots organization help overturn one of India’s most misogynistic laws, instant divorce, that can only be initiated by the man.
They took on religious orthodoxy, contempt of the majority and an entrenched patriarchy and an indifferent polity and won
NoraLenderbee
@SiubhanDuinne: I love you man. Uh, woman. Uh, you know what I mean.
Can we fit “You own it, asshole” in there too?
Chet Murthy
@Peale: [I recognize you’re commenting tongue-in-cheek ….] [Not an original observation, *to be sure*] except that, there are only two topics on which Putinfluffer is consistent — love of Putin/Russia, and racism/white supremacy. *everything* else, he flip-flops, looking at his record over the last … 2yr or so. But those two things … he’s consistent on.
Bago
B
E
N
Gonna
H
A
Z
Impeach
mainmata
Wall Street economic reporting has long been pretty good but I stopped reading the paper after the Murdoch buy and so many good reporters left. I understand they still have credibility in that department but politics? hahahaha. And the WSJ Editorial page has always been utter garbage, of course. Barely a step up from Breitbart.
NoraLenderbee
@schrodingers_cat: I am very happy and admiring of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: I saw that. And, yes, it can be done. If people try.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: It was a long fight, people have been trying to unsuccessfully trying to challenge that law for over 50 years.
Chet Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: Whoa. Uh … link? So I/we can savor? That’s …. lovely news. Though, honestly, I’d have never thought India had laws like that on the books — I figured the law was indifferent to religion. But hey, I left when I was 4, so what do I know?
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Look at the AA struggle for civil rights in this country.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: see: marriage, gay.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: And women’s rights.
Nothing is achieved by shrieking WASF and curling up in a ball in the corner.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Chet Murthy: Financial Times were bought by Nikkei in November 2015.
Per Wiki: “The Nihon Keizai Shinbun (日本経済新聞, Japan Economics Newspaper), is Nikkei Inc.’s flagship publication and the world’s largest financial newspaper, with a daily circulation exceeding three million…
…Nikkei 225, a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, has been calculated by the newspaper since 1950.”
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Definitely not a good way to ask a woman out, that’s for sure.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@lollipopguild:
Wasn’t just Fox. NYC media stuck a megaphone into that asshole’s face for him to grunt his opinions for 30 years. I’d like to know the names of the decisionmakers who initiated that,and Is love to hear why.
Also noticed that somebody has been working with him on doing fundy preacher cadence lately. That is very new, would like to know who is working him on that.
Chet Murthy
Uh … any SF residents know what the -timing- is for this white supremacist rally at Crissy Field in SF? And when/where to show up for the counter-protest? I’m a 52-year-old, not like I’m gonna show up with anything other than my handshake for the cops on this detail (and of course, my voice). But I’d like to show up, b/c …. I feel like, a counter-protest across town just doesn’t have that same effect ….
But maybe I’m wrong, and I sure wouldn’t mind being convinced.
Failing that, if anybody has any pointers for where I could find out where/when to show up, that’d be useful. I’m on the Indivisible SF mailing-list, but they’re not specific as to timing/location on Saturday at/near Crissy Field.
P.S. Obv. I hope our dog-walkers do their job superlatively. [for those who don’t know, the suggestion is for all dog-walkers to have their dogs poop on Crissy Field and (obv) not pick up after ’em]
SiubhanDuinne
@NoraLenderbee:
LOL, NL (adore your nym, BTW). I’ll work on it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: It’s all he seems to talk about, so I assumed so as well.
efgoldman
@Chet Murthy:
I read somewhere that after Boston last week the cowardly nazi assholes canceled dozens of planned rallies. Are you sure they’re still showing up in San Francisco?
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hasn’t Franklin Graham joined the team?
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: fun fact about why I had the mobile pie filter installed…
Chet Murthy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Uh … I can’t claim to be an expert. I lived in NYC 1995-2000. And in grad school (of course) was an avid Spy Mag reader. *avid*. He’s a moron. But he *does* understand one thing: how to generate publicity. And he understood better/sooner than anybody else (sooner than Diaper Dave Vitter) that there’s no such thing at bad publicity. He was “Bat Boy”, “Bearded Lady”, etc. Only, with money. And he wasn’t shy about *specifically* cultivating that persona, *just* so he’d get column-inches.
There’s the famous story of how his _Art of the Deal_ co-author (yeah, I’m being generous to Smallgloves) got the job — Schwartz had written a really mean piece about Putinfluffer, and so when Putinfluffer called him up, Schwartz expected a lambasting. But PF loved the piece — because hey, it was about *him*.
All I’m tryin’ to say is, he succeeded in the NYC media market, for the same reason that Jeff (fuck you) Zucker gave him so much free airtime.
Symbiosis, so to speak. At least, short-term.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: @Chet Murthy: from today: https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/08/23/permitted-national-park-service-to-allow-right-wing-rally-on-federal-land-in-s-f/
ETA: it’s my understanding that half of the city has organized a very raucous counter protest in the Nevada desert.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t see it on the mobile site on my iPad.
ETA: it’s on my android
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow, if something ever needed to go viral (that’s what the kids say these days, right?) this is it! Nice work!
Chet Murthy
@efgoldman:
I received an email from my gym (YMCA) saying that they were closing their branch in that area, and citing the rally. From that, and from various emails I got from progressive orgs (all suggesting, for good and strong reasons, that we go to the “official” counter-demos) I’m somewhat convinced that the haters are gonna show.
Again: I’m not in this for anything other than showing up, raising my voice, and shaking the hands of a few cops. I just feel like, proximity of the counter-demo matters, is all. So I’d like to know when/where to arrive.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: it has a couple known bugs that nobody’s bothered to fix yet. But if it’s not showing up at all that probably just means it wouldn’t work on that browser.
eemom
This reminds me of a little anecdote I like to tell in honor of my Dad, who passed away in 2004.
BEFORE Murdoch bought the NY Post in the mid 1970s, it was a very respectable newspaper. It had a certain matter of fact reporting style and some really good columnists of the time, including Art Buchwald. Less highbrow than the NYT, less tabloid than the Daily News, it was a real Everyman’s/woman’s newspaper. Dad brought it home every night.
Then Murdoch bought it, and instantly turned it into the piece of shit it is today. End of straightforward, universally accessible, non-elitist, non-sensationalist source of intelligent news and commentary for the citizens of NYC.
And that was when Murdoch was still an obscure little Australian scumbag whose name nobody knew. But my Dad did; he explained to me who Murdoch was and how he was responsible for the NY Post turning to shit. He had that vermin’s number long before it laid waste to the entire functioning of mass media in the United States. Kind of proud of my Dad for that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
I told you to get an android tablet.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro:
Oh, thanks! Too kind.
schrodingers_cat
@Chet Murthy: You would be wrong, only the Hindu marriage act was modernized. After Nehru’s death and Ambedkar’s death, the personal law reform became comatose. In India there is personal law that governs marriages, inheritance and there is a uniform penal code (criminal law). Muslims are not the only community to have such misogynist laws on the books. All the religious laws are typically skewed against women.
Here is some historical background and here is the story of the women who challenged the law..
Mnemosyne
@Baud:
I’m using the mobile site on my iPad with Safari and it works great. The link to switch is a little hard to spot and its AAAALLLLLLLLL the way at the very very bottom of the screen.
Jay S
I tried the current pie filter for the first time today. I had used the old script for a while but maintaining it and moving between devices was a pain. After that I didn’t find it particularly appealing, but if the troll invasion returns, I may use it a lot.
Suzanne
Fucker. The media coverage of the whole rally and protest, national and local, has been shameful. My local birdcage liner is especially bad.
Dude gave a bad speech, and people were bored inside the arena. Protests were large and peaceful. Cops wanted to be in bed by 10PM and gassed the crowd at the slightest provocation. The end.
SgrAstar
@GregB: …and The Black Cat of treachery is scratching, scratching, scratching from inside the WH walls. Poe ftw.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chet Murthy: The FB page for Resist SF says 11-2.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1160628720704672/
FYI, here’s a round-up of all the counter-demonstrations on Saturday in SF:
http://sfist.com/2017/08/23/here_are_all_the_counter-demonstrat.php
Applejinx
@Chet Murthy:
Would you shake the hand of the Phoenix cops who teargassed the peaceful crowd of protesters? Maybe would you shake their hand before they did that, and after they gassed you, you would not be willing to shake their hand anymore?