openpolitics.com

15:33

viewers and listeners you know one

lesson I learned when I was the editor

of The Jerusalem Post is that the most

stereotyped people in the world and I by

stereotype people I don’t mean Jews or

Palestinians I mean this kind of Jew or

that kind of Palestinian they’re always

going to font they’re always going to

surprise you if you actually practice

journalism you will

go and meet settlers who are also like

hippie stoners and you know you think oh

the settlers they’re all these

right-wing fanatics but there’s always a

flip side you will meet Palestinians

including Palestinians affiliated with

radical organizations that also have

their surprises and journalism at its

best always has to make large allowances

for the capacity to be surprised by the

people that you are otherwise most eager

to stereotype I think where we go wrong

in big ways is when we fall prey to

those stereotypes I mean why was for

instance the the story about UVA the

rape hoax at UVA why was that so readily

believed because so many prejudices that

we had or at least segments of the media

had about white entitled frat kids at

UVA behaving in certain ways all of them

seem to be confirmed by that by that

narrative so people jumped on and said

well this has got to be right because

this is the classic the classic UVA frat

boy and this is how you might expect

they would behave and of course this

turned out to be one of the big egg on

your faces story that not only nevermind

damaged the journalists in question or

Rolling Stone magazine I think damaged

the profession as a whole and it also by

the way damaged victims of rape because

they would always have to live under the

burden well you never know because there

was that there was that UVA story and I

think this is this is true not simply as

journalists but as human beings you

always have to look at someone and say

I’m expecting this I have to I have to

there has to be some large allowance in

my mind that they will not be the people

who will conform to the stereotype that

I had about them and I might add going

to the times destroyed a great many

stereotypes I had harbored when I was at

The Wall Street Journal good about the

kind of people are at the times good you

know and to add to what Brett’s saying I

mean some of the most stereotyped some

of the most stereotyped people in

America by journalists are Trump voters

and

some of the stereotypes hold true but

some Donen I mean I remember him it’s

one of the reasons why it’s important to

get out there I remember going to an

early Trump rally in South Carolina just

before its primary and spending a couple

of hours there interviewing the voters

who’d come and each of those people

their take on reality wasn’t the same as

mine it wouldn’t have been the same as

Brett Caesar but each of them had a

specific and thought out reason why they

found Donald Trump attractive and none

of those reasons fit neatly into the

stereotype of Trump voters and I think I

mean I’ve always been under the under

the position if we want to under if we

want to get beyond Donald Trump we have

to understand in a real way and not a

superficial stereotypical way what made

him so appealing to so many voters

because we’re not going to reach those

voters with someone else unless we

understand that well sorry Brett you may

remember that when you were on Bill

Maher a year ago you responded to this

point exactly that there is a kind of

liberal blue state prejudice about a

Trump voter and that in fact there’s

other ways to see them and understand

him and there’s the very point that

Frank is making I’m gonna get back to

that Innes and later hopefully I want to

talk about what you think that the cause

of Trump how he became our president

we’ll get to that in a moment but I want

to first go back since we talked about

two of your columns I want to get to one

of yours that just came out today wasn’t

actually a column it was a much more

extended essay and and wanted I think he

very frequently read and because this is

the Y M H a people in this room might

care about this essay in particular and

this is really about progressive

liberalism and the politics that is not

unfamiliar to Frank and its obsession

with Israel the deemed Immunization

deluded the legitimacy of Israel and how

that oftentimes this kind of woke nests

progressiveness also slides into

anti-semitism and why is it that those

people who are who feel most strongly