Even The Wolf likely can't clean up Harvey Weinstein's pending troubles

I'm just perpetually stunned that Trump is the one that has people snowed about this, really. I thought we all knew around 1991 that he was a blowhard moron playing a rich person on TV. But people believed it. I have friends who believe it. The New Yorker had a piece recently about how "The Apprentice" really helped restore his reputation.

 

Always assumed it would be a Zuckerberg type to hoodwink America, but I underestimated the power of television on Baby Boomers.

Getting snookered by a tech sociopath will have to wait a few more years, I suppose.

 

Is there a single political reporter who didn’t read Dreams from my Father, and/or The Audacity of Hope, which helped shape their understanding of Obama’s appeal?

Conversely, how many political reporters watched the Apprentice or read even the Art of the Deal?

They didn’t even try to understand what it was that Trump believed, or what people found appealing about him.

And, so, they were shocked when he won.

 

Rich actors, athletes and musicians who think they have deep, penetrating insight into politics?

As for me...I wouldn't dispute that it's a generally mark of intelligence.

I would dispute that this kind of humility is something Steve Jobs - who was interviewed by the author of the piece, and whose name is showed by the author as "see, I talked to these people" - showed consistently in his life. He didn't.

I would also say the piece was written as a way of saying Donald Trump is especially not smart, but the fact the remains: He won the presidential election that no one wanted him to win. Not the republican elite. Not the Democrats. Not the establishment media. None, or very few, of America's smartest people. He won the big prize. Millions of kids grow up dreaming they can be president, Trump arguably did not, and he won with his own money, surrounded by campaign associates roundly derided by the media.

Trump isn't an idiot. He's an impatient, big-mouthed, racist asshole who preys on the weak. Not an idiot. Neither is Steve Bannon. Neither is Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump. Bad people who work on our worst instincts are not necessarily dumb. Often, they're pretty smart. I mean, hell, let's say Trump and his people did collude with Russia to win the election. This is not an act of a simpleton, is it?

Trump has a kind of emotional intelligence, a frustrating mastery of culture so he reveals the very worst of it. This is not an accident. By becoming its central figure, he's revealed Twitter for the cesspool it is and always has been - a force that was never going to be used for good the way its founders naively presumed. He's simultaneously leveraged the whole "fake news" moniker to his advantage. This is wickedness on high, but it's not stupidity.

At least, it isn't to me.

Trump is unfailingly bad, but I won't call him stupid. Bad presumes he's lacking morality. And he is. Stupid means he's inferior, unworthy, less than you or me. It's a slight. An insult. The same slight and insult used, repeatedly, on America's president 1981-1988 and 2001-2009. It was unwise then, and unwise now. (And I couldn't stand Reagan.)

 

I think they were largely shocked that he won because the polling indicated a Clinton victory most of the way. She was leading by 10 at various points. The Comey letter pushed him over the top before the polls had time to react.

 

This is you reaching at your most reaching-est. There's no possible way to back up or substantiate any of this. It is just more assumptions you are making about "the media" because it fits the narrative you hear on Fox & Friends.

Also, Aziz definitely committed sexual assault.

 

1. Of course there are political reporters who love/loved Trump. Beitbart alone employed many of them. They cover politics even when they happen to agree with you.

2. As for the ones who didn't love Trump, they didn't understand in part because they didn't like him. It's hard to be objective in that way, and it's very hard for political reporters who are, by their nature, relational creatures. It's one of the enduring weaknesses of the news industry: In order to be a good writer/reporter, you have to lend your sympathy, your confidence, yourself in ways that endears the subject to you. Is Sally Jenkins a great journalist. Yes. Was she waaaaay too slow to the punch on Lance Armstrong? Yes. Editors exist in part to call bullshit on sentimentality and chumminess and, honestly, they're getting (1.) fired and (2.) devalued the further we go along. We've reached the point where top writers are becoming bosses because they have "talent," which is really dumb and, long-term, dangerous to the objectivity of news-gathering. So many people "missed it" because they're working out their emotions. An emotional editor is a bad one.

3. Trump didn't really need them. He didn't need any major news organization to like him. They had no choice but to cover him. Most candidates need to be understood on some level, and, in that process of being understood, show a side Trump never had to.

 

Sure. There’s that.

But, they still never invested the time, nor effort, to understand his appeal.

A lot of people watched the Apprentice. He was a regular guest — by phone — on shows like FOX & Friends.

That’s not because people didn’t like him.

Tourists have been flocking to Trump Tower for 25 years, and their are many better things to see in NYC, and right in that neighborhood.

But, all of these people were viewed as lowbrow and ignorant by the national media, so they didn’t have any idea of the extant or reasons for his popularity.

 

If it makes you feel better, the number of fawning think pieces on what Trump voters are like has more than balanced out any imagined pre-election deficit.

 

Obama’s books were constantly referenced during the 2008 campaign.

He’ll, they were the reason why the press didn’t have to explore his past — he’d already done it for them.

Besides @Dick Whitman, who did you here referencing that they had read Trump’s book(s)?

His co-author/ghost writer, who is not a fan, got a lot of media attention. Maybe that absolved the press from having to book(s) themselves.

 

The one thing that tipped me off was that media kept insisting that he did not have a plan for Mexico to pay for the wall, but he laid out that plan - albeit in broad strokes - in "Crippled America."

(I think I did find a couple of reporters who noted this and had, indeed, read the book.)

 

Mostly true. It’s specifically because these folks — like some sort of space aliens — are fascinating to look he media. They can’t believe they truly exist. And, now, they have to try to understand them.