Donald Trump and his surrogates have shown an uncanny ability to lie in the face of objective facts. They will now have the power of the federal government to help them.
.. Judith Miller, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter whose front-page storyabout the aluminum tubes bolstered the case for war in Iraq explained: “My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Timeswhat the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.”
.. The first reason is that political journalism is highly dependent on official sources, which are chased with abandon. Miller’s defense of stenography seems absurd in hindsight, but there is a grain of truth in it. Government sources are granted a high degree of credibility, and official lies can be difficult to dispute. Contrary leaks from highly placed sources can offer an important check on the official story, but the breadth of the surveillance state built by Bush and Obama, a surveillance state now in Trump’s hands, will make such leaks difficult.
.. The total Republican control of government means that Democrats will struggle to get their objections to carry much weight, much as they did prior to the Iraq War.
.. During George W. Bush’s absurd war pageantry in May 2003, Matthews remarked that Bush looked like a “high-flying jet star,” and that Bush “won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” The Iraq War is arguably still ongoing.
The Matthews episode illustrates that in addition to reporting itself being manipulated, members of the media themselves engaged in careful brand-management exercises in order to portray themselves as in touch with “Real America,” granting themselves permission to dismiss criticisms of the Bush administration as the ravings of pampered liberal elites.
.. Adversarial coverage of the Bush administration notably increased once his approval ratings dipped so low that media figures felt as though they were reflecting public opinion when they criticized him.
.. With Trump, the United States has elected a president who has shown a complete disregard for free speech, arguing that his detractors do not have a “right” to criticize him. He believes the First Amendment’s protections for the press are too strong. He has a thirst for vengeance against those whom he perceives as having wronged him, and now he has the power of the federal government to pursue his vendettas.
.. The temptation to accept the Trump administration’s unreality—particularly given increased distrust of the media and his ability to insulate his base from the truth—will be tremendous. His ability to use the powers of the federal government to bolster his dishonesty will magnify his powers of deception a thousandfold.
What Kate Did
To make the case for this world order, Millett selected four writers to study as “cultural agents,” writers who “reflected and actually shaped attitudes.” D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer were eviscerated for their misogyny and sexual mysticism, while Jean Genet was lauded for exploring the psychology of sexual oppression. Lawrence, she argued, defined love as “dominating another person.” Miller was the voice of “contempt and disgust,” a writer whose works are marked by “neurotic hostility” and “virulent sexism.” Mailer, still a literary celebrity at the time of Millett’s writing, she saw as “a prisoner of the virility cult,” who presents “masculinity as a precarious spiritual capital in need of endless replenishment and threatened on every side.” Millett closely analyzed the scene of anal rape from Mailer’s 1965 novel An American Dream, and described it as a “rallying cry for a sexual politics in which diplomacy has failed and war is the last political resort of a ruling caste that feels its position in deadly peril.”
.. To make the case for this world order, Millett selected four writers to study as “cultural agents,” writers who “reflected and actually shaped attitudes.” D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer were eviscerated for their misogyny and sexual mysticism, while Jean Genet was lauded for exploring the psychology of sexual oppression. Lawrence, she argued, defined love as “dominating another person.” Miller was the voice of “contempt and disgust,” a writer whose works are marked by “neurotic hostility” and “virulent sexism.” Mailer, still a literary celebrity at the time of Millett’s writing, she saw as “a prisoner of the virility cult,” who presents “masculinity as a precarious spiritual capital in need of endless replenishment and threatened on every side.” Millett closely analyzed the scene of anal rape from Mailer’s 1965 novel An American Dream, and described it as a “rallying cry for a sexual politics in which diplomacy has failed and war is the last political resort of a ruling caste that feels its position in deadly peril.”
.. These women were Millett’s collaborators and friends. Like Millett, they advocated for the abolishment of monogamy, marriage, and the nuclear family. Firestone described a “sexual class system” in terms that much resembled Millett’s. She called pregnancy “barbaric,” lauded artificial reproduction, and imagined a utopia in which, children, like Eros, would move freely through the world.
.. What seems remarkable now is how seriously the cultural mainstream engaged with these revolutionary ideas—which isn’t to say approved of them. These women were reviewed widely, and often well.
.. Time ran five articles on the goals and organizing practices of the radical feminists.
.. Her application of Marxist theory to relations between the sexes particularly rankled for Howe, who saw his chance to remind Millett and her compatriots that true inequality took the form of class-based oppression. “Are the ladies of the Upper East Side of Manhattan simply ‘chattel’ in the way the wives of California grape pickers are,” he asked, “and if so, are they ‘chattels’ held by the same kinds of masters?”
.. “In some ways,” she writes, “it seems that we got the cultural change that feminism promised, without the concomitant political transformation.”
.. Still, it’s hard to imagine any work of literary scholarship—let alone a Ph.D. dissertation—landing its author on the cover of Time today.
Trump says he’ll ‘open up’ libel laws if he’s elected
Trump, a candidate for the Republican nomination who is leading in the polls, threatened to “open up our libel laws’’ under his administration and make the media pay a hefty price for writing “hit’’ pieces.
This is only going to make it tougher for me, and I’ve never said this before,’’ Trump told the crowd. “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles we can sue them and win lots of money.’’
Under libel laws, public officials who sue must show there was malicious intent when the media outlet published false information. Freedom of the press is protected under the First Amendment.
.. Trump said that under his administration, if the New York Times “writes a hit piece, which is total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.’
“You see, with me, they’re not protected,’’ he said.
Donald Trump Conducts Rare News Conference, and It Turns Testy
But the tensest moments came in an exchange with the NBC reporter Peter Alexander, who repeatedly tried to read Mr. Trump’s quotations from an old interview with Tim Russert in which he described himself as “pro-choice.” That footage is being used in ads by a “super PAC” supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, with whom Mr. Trump is closely competing, and by the Cruz campaign. Mr. Cruz, he said, is a “wreck.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly cut off Mr. Alexander as he tried to read the quotation from the 1999 interview. “Excuse me, excuse me,” Mr. Trump said, talking over Mr. Alexander.
Later, when Mr. Alexander tried to ask again, Mr. Trump demanded to know if the reporter would apologize. Mr. Alexander said that he was sorry the candidate felt he didn’t represent the statement correctly, but that he was trying to read it.
“Forget you,” Mr. Trump said, cutting him off.
It was reminiscent of the news conferences that another pugnacious New Yorker, Rudolph W. Giuliani, held when he was the city’s mayor.
.. Later, when another reporter asked why it was a cheap shot for Mr. Sasse to ask about his infidelity when Mr. Trump had raised Bill Clinton’s transgressions as fair game, the candidate replied that in fact it wasn’t a cheap shot.
“I’m a religious person,” Mr. Trump then said.