Friday, February 26, 2016

'Plump Trump, chump!'



     Let's play newspaper editor. Here is your green celluloid eye shade, your shirt garters and the stump of a cheap cigar to jam between your lips.
     Close your eyes. Imagine: It's mid-June 2015. A variety of news stories are vying for your attention. A crisis in Yemen. The resignation of Rachel Dolezal, president of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington, who, despite her vigorous posing, is not really black. The House delays a vote on aid to workers displaced by global trade agreements. Pope Francis calls for action on climate change.
     And Donald J. Trump descends the escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to announce that he is running for president and will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created and, oh yes, Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
     Squeak back in your chair, Mr. or Ms. Editor, gaze at the yellowed newsroom ceiling and decide.
     Lead with the NAACP, right?
     That's what many news organizations did.


     To continue reading, click here. 

   

19 comments:

  1. Unbelievable. Any thing's possible in America

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  2. Unbelievable. Any thing's possible in America

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  3. Unfortunanthing anythings possible

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  4. Unfortunanthing anythings possible

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  5. Mainstream media does sway political preferences, that's why I look forward to the unbiased perspective you deliver. Most of the time soot on.

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  6. Mainstream media does sway political preferences, that's why I look forward to the unbiased perspective you deliver. Most of the time soot on.

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  8. Good column, NS.

    Well at least Rubio did a job on Trump last night, not that I'm a big Rubio fan. He's certainly better than Cruz and Trump.

    Charen's column in the paper today is spot on Trump, though delusional as usual about Obama. And there isn't even an email at the end of her column where she can be told a thing or two. Someone mentioned her the other day.

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    1. Wrong, Rubio isn't better than Cruz or Trump. Rubio is a child who just repeats what he's been programmed to say, such as the night Christie shredded him.

      As Lindsey Graham said last night "My party has gone batshit crazy."

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  9. What can you say about the Trump apocalypse that hasn't been said already? Shame on his ignorant supporters and double shame on the media for making it so easy for him. Nice photo though! That newstand on the corner of Chicago and Main in Evanston has pretty much been open for business since the first half of the twentieth century.

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  10. I was hoping for a reference to Quintus Slide of the People's Banner, but I guess it might have undermined your point a bit.

    john

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    1. Yes. And Tom Towers of "The Jupiter." Trollope would have had a field day with the likes of Fox News.

      TE

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    2. That's right. I completely forgot about him and his crusade against clerical sinecures. "Godlike" I think Trollope characterized him. Might have been a little exaggeration on his part, as I think his description of Tower's powers goes on for pages and pages.

      john

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  11. "Newsworthy. Interesting or important enough to report as news." Merriam=Webster.

    An unresolvable problem is that attempts to give all sides fair hearings can create an impression that all are equally valid, a tendency exploited, for instance, by such as the tobacco industry and the tribe of climate change deniers. Also, one gets the impression that the press might instinctively puff the chances of potential political also ran's simply because a horserace is more newsworthy than a canter in the park. It was the credo of Lord Cooper, the press baron in Evelyn Waugh's great evisceration of the press, "Scoop:" "The 'Daily Beast' stands for strong, mutually antagonistic governments everywhere."

    Tom Evans

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  12. Trump plays the media, not the other way around. He's more than adept at using the Cable 24/7, reality TV format many viewers have watched and perceived as "real" the past decade or so. What amuses me is how the Republican Party has been seduced into doing the same. It works, except when it doesn't. Your column is spot on. Trump isn't a new force; he's the product of years of the Republican pandering machine.

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  13. The end of the Oscars was certainly a fiasco on Sunday.

    And while Giancreco is a goofus, he has a point about Trump, but still should have known better.

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