Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Let there be snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Another Bannon Comeback Failure

Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Another Bannon Comeback Failure

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Up with the rocket and down with the stick, as my Irish granny used to say… but the cycles are getting shorter. This particular publicity attempt was over before most people even knew to complain about it…


(The comparison — much as I hate to admit it — is unfair to Gingrich, who at least had hustle. The Giant Albino Axolotl actually managed the Repub fantasy of pulling himself up by his own bootstraps, however loathsome his methods. Bannon is just another Straight Outa Scarsdale wanna-be who flames out of every ‘influencer circle’ he attempts to conquer within five years.)

Reader Interactions

21Comments

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    I think Suzanne Nossel nails it in the tweet above — there’s a difference between reporting on dangerous shit-stains like Bannon and giving them the imprimatur of respectability. The New Yorker isn’t the only media outlet that has failed to grasp that distinction. “The Nazi Next Door” human interest stories are another example.

    Nearly two years into the Trump nightmare, major media outlets keep demonstrating that they aren’t up to the task of effective, factual — let alone courageous! — reporting in a time of ascendant fascism and authoritarianism.

  4. 4.

    Aleta

    In Jan and Feb there were protests at the U Chicago after a professor invited Bannon to speak and he accepted. I looked for what happened:

    “Booth professor Austan Goolsbee, who was expected to debate Steve Bannon at UChicago earlier this year, suggested on Monday that the former White House strategist is a “snowflake” for not debating him. 

    Goolsbee made the comment in response to a tweet from conservative writer John Podhoretz (A.B. ’82), who was criticizing New Yorker Editor David Remnick for disinviting Bannon from an interview at a festival hosted by the publication. 

    Bannon accepted to speak here at U Chicago on economic nationalism but when he found out I was going to debate him, he bailed out. Nobody needs a lecture from him about who the snowflakes are in the marketplace of ideas. https://t.co/ijnt22Jca1
    — Austan Goolsbee (@Austan_Goolsbee) September 4, 2018

    The Maroon reported in January that Goolsbee had been asked to debate Bannon at UChicago. But months passed and no information about the event was released. By the end of March our reporting indicated that Bannon was unlikely to come.”

    -The Maroon, yesterday

    Bannon is still going to the ‘open future festival’ held by the Economist Sept. 15.

  5. 5.

    J R in WV

    Someone in the tweeting called Steve Shithead Bannon an auto-didact, “french” for self-educated.

    I thought Bannon graduated from a US military service academy, like Annapolis? How is that an auto-didact? Or are they using auto-didact to refer to the strange nazi crap he absorbed from other nazis after he was discharged from the service?

    If I had a ticket to an event, and after purchasing the ticket a shitstain like Steve Shithead Bannon was announced as a member of the audience, let alone the presenters/performers, I would demand a refund of the ticket costs, plus any other costs incurred, like air fare, food, hotel, etc.

    I once respected The Economist as a source of news, but now see that it’s a propaganda rag outlet for nazis, and will never click on a link or open a magazine lying on a table anywhere. Lest I infect myself with nazi bullshit in my mind. Obviously it can happen to otherwise normal people…

    ALSO, Good Morning, rickyrah, everyone. Blech, OZHillbilly!

  6. 6.

    Chetan Murthy

    @J R in WV:

    I once respected The Economist as a source of news

    Ehh. As a friend once said to me: “The Economist never met a large public bureaucracy it liked, nor a large private bureaucracy it didn’t like.” They’re tolerable, but the biases are so damn baked-in.

  10. 10.

    gene108

    Had a pleasant dream of somehow whisking the current crop of Republicans to jail and installing President Al Gore, who on my advice withdrew Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.

    So much better than reality.

  12. 12.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @PIGL: the Economist was always the quintessential Very Serious publication where the editors were sure the Iraq war was a great idea and that social security was going to bankrupt the US. Maybe they had scholarly cred during the Cold War or something, but they’ve been garbage during the entire 21st century as far as I can tell.

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    @CliosFanboy: Indeed. I am a subscriber and have been for many, many years. The writing is first-rate, and they cover a lot of places and people whom you wouldn’t otherwise hear about. Their editorial position is known, but their news articles do not often show their biases. And their obituaries are often works of art. Chacun à son goût.

  15. 15.

    PIGL

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: Yes, indeedy. Used to read it to pretty regularly especially when I was travelling I felt to give me a certain area of international sophistication to be seen with it on the airplane. Even at my then tender age, I could discern the difference between the Editorial policy and the news reporting, Which was unusually a cosmopolitan especially for the time. It’s the Editorial policy to which I referred by “libertarian”. I got tired of that much smug, though, and stopped reading years ago

  16. 16.

    JGabriel

    A statement from David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, explaining his decision to no longer include Steve Bannon in the 2018 New Yorker Festival. pic.twitter.com/opayiw5GQ2

    — The New Yorker (@NewYorker) September 3, 2018

    Or … the New Yorker decided to cancel Bannon’s interview because no one was buying tickets for it. I know my first reaction upon hearing that Remnick was interviewing Bannon was not outrage, but, “Pffft. Who the fuck wants to see that guy?”

  17. 17.

    germy

    @JGabriel: Remnick canceled Bannon because one by one the other celebrity attendees were dropping out.

    In the end it would have been Remnick and Bannon, with no other guests.

    Here’s my theory, for what it’s worth:

    Remnick didn’t want his festival to be only liberals agreeing with each other. He wanted “another viewpoint” that in his arrogance he thought he could win a debate with. Now, since the New Yawker is a prestige publication, he wasn’t going to have any old conservative voice. He wanted the biggest celebrity. So he chose Bannon. He honestly didn’t foresee the controversy. He thought the other celebrity attendees would be fine with it, because they’d all think “It’s the New Yorker!” Prestige.

    So now he cancels, giving Bannon and his fans something to whine about (with smiles on their faces) but Remnick still doesn’t think he did anything wrong.

    New Yorker magazine editors have a history of arrogance and tunnel vision, going back through Tina Brown, Shawn, all the way to Harold Ross. So I wasn’t surprised at any of this.

  18. 18.

    Procopius

    Funny. I haven’t read The Economist for at least fifteen years, but IIRC, it was one of my best sources for learning how the U.S. media were lying to us about Iraqi WMDs. They didn’t argue against the invasion, as I recall, but they didn’t argue in favor of it, as the NYT and WaPo did. They were certainly early in pointing out the housing bubble. Of course, my memory could be completely farkled.

  19. 19.

    Lee Hartmann

    @germy: I mostly agree with this, but with a slightly different angle. I think there is an East Coast Elite, somewhat above the fray view that seeps into the thinking of otherwise smart people like Remnick. This makes it hard for the elite to grasp what many of us are feeling; that this is a very dangerous time for our republic, for the hope of a wiser, more humane society; that we truly have enemies of freedom, not merely among the population but actually holding nearly all the levers of power; and that they need to be fought with every tool at our disposal. Having a tough chat with Bannon isn’t one of those tools.

  20. 20.

    germy

    @Lee Hartmann: Remnick and his associates are certainly above the fray.

    He can write all he wants about dangerous times, but the only affect on his own life is an increase in circulation (at least before this festival controversy) and a reduction in his taxes.

    And now, just as I expected:

    Huh. Call me old-fashioned. But I would have thought that the point of a festival of ideas was to expose the audience to ideas. If you only invite your friends over, it’s called a dinner party. https://t.co/VwkL4zOrbX— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) September 4, 2018

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