If you hadn't been doing so already. . .

. . . you can, going forward, assume any political coverage in the New York Times is crap.

A very old song

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 
But still I'd look to find a reason to believe

-- "Reason to Believe," Tim Hardin, 1966

A very old song, indeed:

The national outrage that simmered after actor Jussie Smollett said he was attacked by people shouting racial and anti-gay slurs was fueled in part by celebrities who spoke out loud and strong on social media.

But the outrage has now been replaced by surprise, doubt and bafflement as the singers, actors and politicians who came out in support of the “Empire” star struggle to digest the strange twists the case has taken. Some conservative pundits, meanwhile, have gleefully seized on the moment.

The narrative that just a week ago seemed cut-and-dry has become messy and divisive — and it’s all playing out again on social media.

Seizing, or pouncing? I can never be sure. But c'mon, it was so believable:

Smollett, who is black and gay, said he was physically attacked last month by two masked men shouting racial and anti-gay slurs and “This is MAGA country!”— a reference to the Make America Great Again slogan used in President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Smollett said the attackers looped a rope around his neck before running away as he was out getting food at a Subway restaurant.

I lived in Chicago for five years. I remember things like this happening all the time. Well, at least the racial slurs, but the noose is a little edgy. But there's a pattern to the reportage:

But still I'd look to find a reason to believe:

In a statement on Saturday, the Indigenous Peoples Movement identified the man in the videos as Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder, a veteran and the former director of the Native Youth Alliance, a group that works to ensure that traditional culture and spiritual ways are upheld for future generations. Mr. Phillips also holds an annual ceremony honoring Native American veterans in Arlington National Cemetery, the group said.

Mr. Phillips could not be reached for comment on Saturday. He told The Washington Post that he noticed the teenagers taunting participants at the Indigenous Peoples March.

“It was getting ugly, and I was thinking: ‘I’ve got to find myself an exit out of this situation and finish my song at the Lincoln Memorial,’” Mr. Phillips told The Post. “I started going that way, and that guy in the hat stood in my way and we were at an impasse. He just blocked my way and wouldn’t allow me to retreat.”

If I listen long enough to you
I'd find a way to believe that it's all true:

The Texas restaurant company which banned a customer after an employee’s story of a receipt scrawled with a racial epithet went viral said that it had parted ways with the employee and learned that the story was made up.

“We have learned that our employee fabricated the entire story,” Terry Turney, the chief operating officer of Saltgrass steakhouses, said in a statement. “Racism of any form is intolerable, and we will always act swiftly should it occur in any of our establishments. Falsely accusing someone of racism is equally disturbing.”

The incident unfolded earlier this month when Khalil Cavil, a 20-year-old waiter at a Saltgrass outpost in Odessa, Texas, posted an image to Facebook that showed a $108 bill with zero on the tip line, and “We don’t tip terrorist,” written in ink at the top.

But still I look to find a reason to believe:

The morning of December 9, 2017, launched one of the most humiliating spectacles in the history of the U.S. media. With a tone so grave and bombastic that it is impossible to overstate, CNN went on the air and announced a major exclusive: Donald Trump, Jr. was offered by email advanced access to the trove of DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks – meaning before those emails were made public. Within an hour, MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian, using a tone somehow even more unhinged, purported to have “independently confirmed” this mammoth, blockbuster scoop, which, they said, would have been the smoking gun showing collusion between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over the hacked emails (while the YouTube clips have been removed, you can still watch one of the amazing MSNBC videos here).

There was, alas, just one small problem with this massive, blockbuster story: it was totally and completely false. The email which Trump, Jr. received that directed him to the WikiLeaks archive was sent after WikiLeaks published it online for the whole world to see, not before. Rather than some super secretive operative giving Trump, Jr. advanced access, as both CNN and MSNBC told the public for hours they had confirmed, it was instead just some totally pedestrian message from a random member of the public suggesting Trump, Jr. review documents the whole world was already talking about. All of the anonymous sources CNN and MSNBC cited somehow all got the date of the email wrong.

Knowing, that you lied, straight-faced
While I cried 

[Lara] Logan said that many journalists have abandoned consistent standards in reporting when it comes to the Trump administration.

“Standards are out the window, I mean you read one story after another or hear it and it’s all based on one anonymous administration official, former administration official,” she said. “That’s not journalism, that’s horses**t.”

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” she argued. “We bear some responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.” 

The MSM is a faith-based initiative. Christians look for evidence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit for the MSM is confirmation bias.

Before it goes down the ol' memory hole

When we look back at the Covington Catholic kids and their excellent adventure on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, let's not forget this archived piece, which National Review pulled down after the argument became, well, non-operative.  Your author is Nicholas Frankovich, who seems to have forgotten what the 8th Commandment says:

It appears that most of the teenagers in this video are from a Catholic high school near Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. “Bullying” is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here.

For some of us, the gospel stories of Jesus’s passion and death are so familiar we no longer hear them. The evangelists are terse in their descriptions of the humiliations heaped on Jesus in the final hours before his crucifixion, the consummate humiliation. Read the accounts again or, if you’d rather not, watch the video. The human capacity for sadism is too great.

Evil. Sadism. Those are strong charges, even if they've been pulled down. But Frankovich had one more observation to make:

In any case, keeping in mind the parable of the proper priests and the Good Samaritan, whose religious practice Jesus’s listeners thought was wrong, listen to Phillips reflect on his experience on the Mall. Decide for yourself who is more pleasing to Christ, Phillips or his mockers. As for the putatively Catholic students from Covington, they might as well have just spit on the cross and got it over with.

National Review has a piece up on their site now excoriating people for jumping to conclusions. Kyle Smith describes what happened properly:

If you insult someone, and that person insults you back, you don’t get to cry, “Oh my gosh, for no reason whatsoever I’ve just been insulted!” The Christian thing to do is of course turn the other cheek, but if we’re being honest, people do tend to take the bait when they’re being baited, and teens are less likely than others to turn away from outright provocation. Nathan Phillips went out seeking to create an incident, and he fooled the New York Times and the Washington Post into accepting his false version of it.

All right and proper. But as of this writing, we've not heard a word from NR, or Frankovich, about the calumnies they heaped upon the Covington kids in believing the false version of events. If apologies are in order, it would seem that the apologies from that particular glass house are well overdue as well.

Update (Monday evening): Nicholas Frankovich of NR has issued an apology, but only to his readers:

Early Sunday morning, I posted a “strongly worded” (Rich Lowry’s description) condemnation of the conduct, seen far and wide on video, of a group of high-school students at the conclusion of the March for Life on Friday afternoon. I was preachy and rhetorically excessive, and I regret it. The overheated post I wrote has been taken down. Let this apology stand in its stead, both here on the Corner and in the memory of readers who justifiably objected to my high-handedness.

Does Frankovich still object to the "conduct" of the students? It's tough to say, but his avoidance of the topic suggests he still hasn't come to grips with the real meaning of what he said. I would argue his words were a little more than high-handed. I hope he gives it more thought.

Still, there is a larger apology that needs to happen. That would be from the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School, which still had a denunciation of the students on its website. Here is a screenshot:

Under the bus

As of this evening, the site is currently in maintenance mode, which suggests the Diocese is taking down the comment and replacing it with something else, perhaps something that's a little less, uh, high-handed. As an aside, I don't know how you condemn first and investigate second, unless the Inquisition is back in town. I sent a note to the Diocese asking them to consider retracting this statement. I'll let you know if they respond.

Sixty days of madness ahead

Feigned insanity can be a strategy. After three years of cranked-to-11 freakouts and constant stunts, it gets to the point where writing about the latest antics in politics becomes too much to take.

Everyone knows the Democrats and their ancillaries in the news media are acting like their hair is on fire. How do we know? Because it seems obvious. But what is obvious isn't necessarily true. Bob Woodward seems to be recycling the same stories, from the same unnamed sources, that Michael Wolff was peddling last year. But this time, we're supposed to believe the stories, because they come from Bob Woodward. We're being gaslighted 24/7. And maybe I'm gaslighting you.

If you can disorient someone sufficiently, they can't make sense of their world. That's the game for the next 60 days. Keep your wits about you.

Have fun

The Herd of Independent Editorialists

Harold Rosenberg, from 1948, and every word is still true 70 years on:

The mass-culture maker, who takes his start from the experience of others, is essentially a reflector of myths, and is without experience to communicate. To him man is an object seen from the outside. Indeed it could be demonstrated that the modern mass-culture élite, even when it trots around the globe in search of historical hotspots where every six months the destiny of man is decided, actually has less experience than the rest of humanity, less even than the consumers of its products. To the professional of mass culture, knowledge is the knowledge of what is going on in other people; he alone trades his experience for the experience of experience. Everyone has met those culture-conscious “responsibles” who think a book or movie or magazine wonderful not because it illuminates or pleases them but because it tells “the people” what they “ought to know.”

We're still all about telling the people what they "ought to know":

More than 100 publications across the US will publish editorials rejecting Donald Trump's repeated attacks on the press.

The move is part of a coordinated effort by the Boston Globe's editorial board to denounce the president's claim that the media "is the enemy of the American people". Each newspaper involved in the campaign will publish their own unique editorial refuting such criticisms, to arrive on newsstands Thursday, 16 August.

In a statement calling on other newspapers to join the effort, the Boston Globe wrote, "We propose to publish an editorial on August 16 on the dangers of the administration's assault on the press and ask others to commit to publishing their own editorials on the same date".

Put another way, in a stellar example of how Twitter can illuminate:

Blinded by the light

Of course, Trump didn't say the media in its entirety is the enemy of the people. Trump's own tweet calls out some organizations, but certainly not all:

He left out the Star Tribune, much to its disappointment

Never mind that.

"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." I'm certain Sunday's newspapers will be nothing short of legendary.

Are you not entertained?

Le Grand Orange goes back to his favorite medium, yet again. To get the message you have to read the tweets in sequence from the bottom up:

God Save the Queens

The Leader of the Free World is not going to get an apology, but I'm pretty sure he's enjoying this development:

Three CNN journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted.

Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN.

"In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story's publication," a spokesman said Monday evening.

An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said. 

The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a "Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials," cited a single anonymous source.

I mentioned last week that I saw a fair amount of CNN coverage while I was traveling. That particular network has gone all in on Russia scandal-mongering and once you go single-source, you're essentially reporting whatever crap someone told you. It's not journalism, for sure. At best, it's gossip. And, as has happened before, I find that the Outer Borough Marmalade Man has weighed in yet again on that very topic, even as I am writing this post:

Shootin' fish in a barrel

I'm not even sure how to blog a guy like Trump. He's an internet troll with the nuclear launch codes. Amazing.

Baseline

So we're clear -- apparently the claims of a current and former official, both anonymous, regarding what happened with Trump and the Russians last week, are more valuable than an on-the-record denial from H. R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser, who was in the room when the conversation took place.

This is the world we live in.

Fake news

When is a non-story a story? When you put enough helium in it to participate in the Macy's Parade. And we had that this morning in the Star Tribune:

Andrew Luger, who as U.S. attorney prosecuted the nation's largest terrorism recruitment case and helped solve the 27-year-old mystery of Jacob Wetterling's disappearance, was one of 46 remaining U.S. attorneys appointed by President Barack Obama asked to resign Friday.

Standard operating procedure. When Barack Obama came into office, he ashcanned the sitting U.S. attorney, Frank Magill. Everyone expected it and barely a word was said about it. Then-President Obama named Todd Jones to the position. Luger then replaced Jones in 2014. All standard operating procedure. In every instance, the changes were President Obama's call and he made it.

Apparently the same prerogatives no long apply:

The request shocked many in the Minnesota legal community. A law enforcement official said state and federal authorities had lobbied for Luger to keep his position. Luger spent Thursday evening at a community meeting on countering extremism and was to provide an update next week at the St. Paul Jewish Community Center on hate crime investigations.

Shocked in this sense, I imagine:

Let's call this what it is -- fake news. I don't have any brief against Luger, who actually kept his grandstanding to a low roar, which is unusual for a U.S. attorney. While he's a lefty, he's not as partisan as his patrons:

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she will campaign for Luger to be renominated and has already spoken to Sessions and his deputy attorney general about Luger's work. "His professionalism is so much bigger than any partisan decision," she said.

Klobuchar always covers her sharp elbows in marshmallow fluff. I have no reason to believe Andy Luger is any more a repository of professionalism than Frank Magill was, but Klobuchar had nothing to say about Magill losing his job. And, of course, we heard from the man who loves Jeff Sessions most of all:

U.S. Sen. Al Franken called Luger "a dedicated public servant who has served the people of Minnesota with distinction" and also vowed to "strongly urge the new administration to renominate him to this post."

High minded, no? And complete nonsense. This isn't about Luger at all. It's about the right of a president to staff his team with his own people. Elections have consequences.