Stewart’s often-arch, despairing tone was perfect for the Bush era, when his time at The Daily Show sniping at the administration from the sidelines and mocking the ineffectual left turned him into a generation’s political conscience. But in the even more polarized times of 2016, where viral clips are the norm and viewers are more and more likely to tune in online rather than at 11 p.m., audiences are demanding passion from their late-night hosts. Full Frontal’s Samantha Bee, Late Night’s Seth Meyers, and Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver have jumped to the fore with a reliance on long-form segments that verge on the polemical, intensely “eviscerating” a certain issue or politician to cheers from an audience.
Ms. Grace had consistently characterized herself as a champion of victim’s rights. But she has been criticized frequently as promoting a one-sided view of the stories she covers, castigating those she perceives to be guilty without waiting for rulings from jury or judge.
In 2011, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told The Times’s media critic, David Carr, that Ms. Grace had done a disservice to journalism and the law.
“I think she has managed to demean both professions with her hype, rabid persona and sensational analysis,” he said. “Some part of the public takes her seriously, and her show erodes the respect for basic rights.”
Joe Arpaio, America’s most controversial sheriff, talks to ‘Off Message’ about what he taught Donald Trump about politics.
.. They share a boot-on-throat rhetorical style, a focus on kicking out illegal immigrants and kicking the ass of America’s enemies, and both love bashing the whiny “political correctness” of minority groups. Arpaio hit on the formula first — adding a Korean War veteran’s fondness for accumulating .50-caliber machine guns and other military ordnance — but he is too media-smart to walk into the trap I set by suggesting Trump is stealing his shtick.
.. In Arpaio’s view, controversy is a useful tool, a way of elevating the causes he cares about (guns, law and order, immigration, the epidemic of wimp-ism), but it’s also not just a means but an end, the only way to grab the attention of a national media and political establishment that would otherwise ignore him. “I’m controversial,” he added with a shrug. “You wouldn’t be here talking to me if I was a nothing, I don’t think.”
.. In 2013, the county board of supervisors paid $3.75 million to a pair of New Times editors who said they were falsely imprisoned after writing about the sheriff’s real estate transactions.
.. the mob had its own ethics too. … They will never kill a child or a cop, OK?
.. Arpaio pushed the idea — thus far alien to law enforcement officials probing the muddled motives of the shooter — that Omar Mateen may have gunned down 49 people in an anti-Latino frenzy.
..Joe Arpaio is literally a poor man’s Donald Trump — same approach, different bank account
.. Arpaio, even his enemies concede, is an engaging guy with an intuitive sense of seizing the moment — and he thinks Trump, responding to a stagnant economy and a widespread sense that the immigration problem is out of control — has the same knack. “Timing is perfect right now for a guy like him,” he told me. “Timing is everything, and he hit on the right timing.”
.. But local analysts noted a telling shift — support had slipped among educated whites who had previously backed him but were now turned off by his stridency and age.
.. “When they can’t get you for anything else, it’s a famous word, ‘racist,’” he said. “Do you think it bothers me? It doesn’t really bother me. I know in my heart what I am, so they can call me anything they want. … [I’m] probably one guy that really doesn’t [discriminate], you know, and I’m not going to say my best friend is black. … No, no, no. And even in my family, I have a black and I have Mexican. I got all these family — but I’m not going to say that. I guess you could still have that and say you’re a racist, you know, but no. I know what I am. Come on.”
Infowars and its proprietor, Alex Jones, who is a conspiracy theorist and radio talk-show host in Austin, Texas.
.. Jones’s amazing reputation arises mainly from his high-volume insistence that national tragedies such as the September 11th terror attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting, and the Boston Marathon bombing were all inside jobs, “false flag” ops secretly perpetrated by the government to increase its tyrannical power (and, in some cases, seize guns).
.. Jones believes that no one was actually hurt at Sandy Hook—those were actors—and that the Apollo 11 moon-landing footage was faked.
.. Does Donald Trump actually believe any of this? Or is he laughing up his sleeve as apoplectic fact-checkers throw themselves into the thankless work of disproving his absurdities? To cover himself, he prefaces his more outlandish remarks with disclaimers like “I hear” or “A lot of people think.” (To back up his contention that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims publicly celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey, he tweeted a link to Infowars.
.. Trump is playing a different game.
.. He is playing to Americans who do not trust the media or traditional information sources, such as the government. He offers alternative narratives, fantasies that shock and satisfy. He entertains. On “Meet the Press,” after Chuck Todd asked him for evidence supporting his claim that a protester at one of his rallies had ties to the Islamic State, Trump said, “All I know is what’s on the Internet.” He said that.
.. In a GQprofile of Hope Hicks, his spokeswoman, by Olivia Nuzzi, Trump’s daily news briefing is described as printouts of “30 to 50 Google News results for ‘Donald J. Trump.’ ” Trump goes at the items with a marker and, according to a GQ source, “He reads something he doesn’t like by a reporter, and it’s like, ‘This motherfucker! All right, fine. Hope?’ He circles it. ‘This guy’s banned! He’s banned for a while.’
.. He has gut instincts for pleasing members of a fact-averse crowd—for speaking what’s on their minds. He seems to be a narcissist of bottomless insecurity and need
.. “I know more about isis than the generals do,” he said at one of his rallies. “Believe me. I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war.”