EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Across the board most Americans, even smart ones, regularly misestimate the sums involved in politics. For example, many are under the impression that even everyday candidates are getting giant payouts from massive corporations left and right, who lean on them hard to buy their votes. This is very frequently not the case. I challenge you to look up your local US House rep on opensecrets. Don't just look at top donors, click it and look at all donors. I don't particularly care about doxxing myself, so here is mine, a safe republican seat, which IMO is a classic angle for officially laundered bribery (little accountability if races aren't close). A bunch of PACs giving 10k apiece, but not even that many. Only 7. The rest is a lot of individuals. Far cry from the millions that people seem to get the impression about. No, a lot of these races are more small-dollar than you'd expect.
I've disagreed with people about this before, but in my eyes this suggests bribery isn't actually nearly as common as the median American believes it to be. If corporations have outsized influence, it's through lobbyists. And lobbyists are effective partly because they are effective persuaders and salespeople, quite loud and persistent and charming, and armed with industry facts and inside knowledge and expertise that cows the inexperienced. In short, they present themselves as subject matter experts, and congresspeople find themselves in little mini-bubbles of partisan opinion. Yes, congresspeople read the same news you and I do, and they probably get fired up about partisan issues more than you or I do, at least most of them. The median American thinks of them as pure egotists, ambitious people without morals. I think this is fiction. Most congresspeople are incredibly ambitious, but they also - many of them - at least to some degree initially entered politics because they were fired up about something, and had a big social network of wealthy peers (or their own money) who they could ask for money to make the first leap, not because they felt it was a good career to obtain bribes.
Politicians are people too, and vulnerable to similar psychology.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
There's media spin, and then there are direct quotes from the President. That's my whole point. Trump's out there lying about trivial stuff, not just the big stuff, and directly rather than let a media machine handle the lifting. It may seem like a distinction without a difference to you, but it is important. (And as I noted, it's quite possible that Trump is or has lied about some big scandal that isn't yet known, we as always must wait for history to take its course before the judgements can start to come out with certainty on that front)
Candidates promise stuff they want to do. I take it in the spirit they are said. If Trump says he wants to end the Ukraine war, and has a plan to do so... does he make an effort to do so? I do happen to think he made an effort, even if it was a stupid and doomed one. So, not a lie! I do think he was exaggerating about doing so on Day 1 - that's obviously almost literally impossible for a president to do, so maybe it falls under the deception umbrella but I wouldn't call it a lie as such. More generally I don't consider the 100-day traditional promises to be binding, only that an attempt is made. That's the whole point of being a candidate, to outline where you want the country to go, and what you hope to deliver. Everyone in the process knows that it's better to overpromise and underdeliver than underpromising and overdelivering, right? Voters even expect it. In that sense, though I absolutely hate to be in the shoes defending PolitiFact, a 2008-era assessment of truth is more about whether a claim accurately reflects or summarizes the policy as portrayed by the source (so "true" is broadly correct), not about whether it is practical or not - though this limitation, as we both know, was flagrantly ignored by various fact-checking sites increasingly often as time has gone on. Of which I've always disapproved.
Once you're president, things change. In Obama's case, much of the first year of his presidency he spent talking about how he really wanted the health care bill to be bipartisan, to get some Republican support, and so on which he was very loud about. He ended up being wrong about that, but it frames his entire effort! Self-evidently a health care effort that is hoped to be bipartisan will involve compromises short of the partisan ideal. I think it's reasonable to expect that main pillars would stay the same and not be subject to compromise, but even that doesn't always tend to be the case when it comes to the nuts and bolts of legislation-making. Also, Obama didn't exactly hide that he approved, in terms of general strategy, of taking the 'best' ideas and combining them regardless of provenance (that's a classically technocratic view), though for PR reasons this is usually not smart to emphasize.
When Trump lies in a debate about immigrants eating the pets of their neighbors, yeah it's bad, but it doesn't do structural damage because he's communicating a vibe and not actually responsible for policy and enforcement. When Trump as president says the BLS commissioner is rigging data, we assume he has some kind of internal line of proof to suggest such; when it turns out he doesn't even have a scrap, it does structural damage. Again, the presidential asymmetry of information access - and control! - obligates the president to a higher degree of truthfulness. Usually, for example, more banal attempts at lower-grade deception would take the form of carefully worded non-answers by the press secretary. The press secretary is, in most cases, being narrowly truthful, but selective with such. Yet Trump's press secretaries and himself both seem to tell bald-faced lies with very little compunction. What I'm trying to get you to see is that my point is about the direct wording, it matters. What happens in the spin between a press conference and the news reporting on it can be worrisome, but it's of a different scale and degree than the press conference stuff itself.
Not to harp on the BLS example too much, but it's just such a clear-cut case, you can watch the conference I'm talking about here. Miller is saying how the last decade has seen massive overall aggregate errors, and as he's about to clarify that he doesn't mean to insinuate anything... At 1:35 Trump jumps in and states directly: "if it was an error that would be one thing, but I don't think it was an error, I think they did it purposefully". Miller, who has a more traditional respect for the truth when in positions of power, immediately does damage control and hedges "whether that - you may well be right - but even if it wasn't purposefully, it's incompetent". MILLER is doing things structurally safe - oh look, she was in charge during so many errors, she should have been better, that's why we're firing her. TRUMP is doing the structural damage. He tweeted that she rigged stuff, and he's digging in. He's in constant campaign mode with the ethics to match. He's not being an adult and not being responsible, and it's bad for everyone, even future Republican presidents.
In terms of Obama specifics, I'd be interested in details, yeah. I googled a little bit, one top result was this clip where an Obama speechwriter almost exactly says what I just said - that in retrospect the claim wasn't examined closely enough... but it was never, he emphasizes, viewed as being untrue by the team. This is at odds with your claim. Are you confusing it with his 2009 speech to the AMA, when he was already president? Maybe my google-fu is just failing me, but I can't find corroboration of your claim, despite its specificity.
If you want to accuse Obama of a campaign lie, the better one might be his initial rejection of an individual mandate, only for it to eventually make it into the bill. Although, if my memory is correct, Obama was pretty reluctant to do so. For example here is one reference to this process - partly forced by CBO policy, and partly by being confronted by the raw economics. How much credit do we allow for mind-changing? Reasonable people may disagree there. But if Obama portrayed himself as a mind-changing president who is open to ideas from across the aisle and from many sources, it seems in character. I'm on record here as opining that we should, as voters, more heavily weight the character and judgement of candidates, and put less on particular pet policies. Policies can reflect character, but the reality is we vote for a person, not a party, at the end of the day, who we trust implicitly to handle diverse situations as they may arise.
(With all that said, I was late in high school when Obama was elected, and only paid medium attention to the Obama-Romney campaign, so while I believe I'm correct in this portrayal I may be wrong in some particulars)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
All I will say is that if you're biking exclusively on roads, then you should look exclusively at road bikes. They are, I will concede, slightly less comfortable than road-ish or hybrid bikes, but much more fun to ride, and you can both go faster and do so at greater efficiency.
One thing you can also do is to stop by a bike shop, don't buy anything necessarily, but ask them to walk you through how to evaluate bike size and where to adjust the seat. A lot of people end up for example putting the seat at the wrong height and it does make a difference.
If it's not road biking, I have no idea.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Then we disagree on that. Notice, you appended a previous accusation of a crime ("if you accuse someone of a crime [first], and [then] I say '...'") in order to obtain that interpretation. Lots of people out in the world accuse lots of other people of things all the time. You're heavily relying on a contextual basis: that people know that a blame game is going on, that it's happening on both sides, and who the recipients are exactly.
I think to call something an accusation, it needs to be both affirmative in language, as well as prominently featured.
Example: "You weren't at the show last night" isn't an accusation! It's a statement of fact. Contextually, if you know that your friend promised to be there beforehand to support you, it's still not an accusation (at least to me). Does it imply that your friend maybe bailed on you? Does it imply that you may be thinking it was intentional, or that your feelings were hurt even? Of course it does, that's a logical conclusion, but the whole point of comments like that is precisely that they aren't direct, and thus not actually accusations. Similarly, Kimmel implies that he's a MAGA, but since it has very little to do with his actual point (the upcoming joke), he doesn't make it affirmative and direct. (Also, to be an accusation, you don't bury it in some sidebar, you give it more prominence as its own statement - though that criteria I think is more a matter of opinion)
That's how language works, it's not torture.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I don't buy that your upbringing forever defines your politics, that's obviously bunk anyways, but it bears noting that the guy is 22 and had attended all of half a semester of college. Of course transitions in political worldview can sometimes happen quickly, but most of the time it really, really doesn't happen very quickly. How long has he lived away from home? Not more than 4 years, but probably much less, and even when he moved away he didn't even move that far! So I think in such a case it's absolutely plausible that even if we assume he's drifting left fast, there could still be plenty of MAGA in him (famously many of these people tend to be hardcore fiscal conservatives even after "conversion", this is doubly true if social issues caused the leftward drift)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
His show was suspended indefinitely by ABC. Not canceled, actually, though in practice probably. As such he could argue for "constructive dismissal" or similar, but I do think it's worth mentioning this nit because theoretically there's nothing stopping ABC from bringing the show back to a smaller subset of distributors. But yeah, since the NY post is basically stalking Kimmel, we do know that he's been meeting with his lawyer recently.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I'm pretty sure there is zero evidence of this, and it frankly doesn't make any sense. Especially this far into the war, most of "Hamas" is probably not grizzled veterans, they're young men who have been radicalized by suffering around them - in other words, regular Palestinians who have an affinity for the local people (because they are the local people). They aren't going to be destroying food to spite Israel by some kind of convoluted logic.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
US troops also were in full control of Japan, a nation expected to violently resist such, but they didn't, in part due to a careful occupation and how we actually imported quite large quantities of food to keep them from starvation there too. What do you know, now we're allies. Weird.
We should also just get this out of the way - if there's a sufficient amount of food going in to Gaza, food riots don't happen. Because, you know, people have enough food. Israel dropped the ball on food imports from the very early days! If I remember right, they declared a blockade a few days after the attack, and it was almost two weeks or something like that until food began flowing again - and even then, slowly and not enough. I feel like people aren't really aware of, or thinking through, the absolute numbers involved. A bit down this page there's a nice little chart. Before the attacks, it took 500 trucks a day to "break even" food-wise. That's about 15,000 truckloads per month, yes? Please look at that chart. November 2023 only 2,548 trucks entered over the entire month. Now, people have disputed these numbers, and I'm not 100% sure of the correct ones. But some have tried, here's one attempt which landed on a ca. 200/day figure, or 6,000 per month. That was never hit even once even at maximum aid flow. The chart shows that aid showed up more in the 3,000 per month range. So there's quite obviously a major gap here. And by gap I mean malnutrition, and even death, because food distribution systems have variability in coverage, even the really good ones.
It built up to critical mass over the last nearly two years. And now some people are stating with a straight face, oh look at all the riots, it's the fault of the Gazans, as if the situation just happened out of nowhere. That's a good example of victim blaming missing the point.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
In case people are wondering, here is the actual text. Draw your own conclusions as you will.
For me the actual "resolution" part seems pretty tame, as does most of the description of Kirk, so I assume opposition is mostly either a vibes thing, or worry about upsetting the base. Interestingly enough, it does go on at much greater length than the comparatively sparse and bland Senate's resolution, which is rare for something penned by the usually insufferable Mike Lee.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
You guys are just not serious people.
Who is "you guys"? This is the second time in as many comments that you've arbitrarily lumped me in with abstract or unnamed groups that you dislike. Knock it off, please.
I feel as though you are not reading my comments, much less engaging with them, but rather immediately composing a reply in your head as you skim. I wrote a whole ass bit about how you're (now deliberately, I assume) conflating red tribe distrust in the traditional news media ecosystem with the actual and official communications from the President and his team, and then you just go ahead and blithely do it again in the very first sentence you write.
And demonstrate the exact same thing yet again in short order. How can Obama lie in 2007 about something that doesn't even exist yet?? That everyone agreed didn't exist yet? Almost literally no candidate ever has fully formed legislation ready to go while on the campaign trail. You're right about Obama lying -- in 2013-ish, and probably he lied (or misrepresented, it's a fine line for some things) about the health care plan during the 2012 election, but that's not what you said (you were very specific about the time frame), and all I did was point that out. No big deal, it happens. We all are wrong sometimes on small stuff. You're allowed to admit it.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
It's not structurally part of the joke, though? The joke, such as it is, makes perfect sense without the intro - thus it's clearly a throwaway lead-in. It's there as a transition. If you cut off everything before (2:15) "In between the finger pointing there was grieving... uh, on Friday the White House... (quote continues)" it still makes sense. Heck, you can even cut off everything before "on Friday" and a random viewer would perfectly understand. (Kirk is even introduced as the topic within the video clip; again, the intro is completely disposable).
Why is that relevant? No one is paying attention to his insinuation that Kirk's killer was MAGA, or at least most viewers aren't. It's not the same thing as a newscast where the main news headline is false, which is what the FCC might get mad at. Obviously the prominence of a claim should directly bear on the seriousness of a deception, and that's doubly true when the purpose is not to convey news. The purpose is, more or less, to have fun doing "boo outgroup", and that's allowed to happen on TV by a comedian.
Who was deceived, and how badly? Anyone who read the news certainly isn't going to throw out whatever facts they read because Kimmel insinuated something in passing. Anyone who doesn't read the news might get the wrong impression, but again, even a trivial attempt at fact-finding would quickly reveal the truth. And in fact, the very next day we DID get the truth, and in far more detail.
Is it really the betrayal of the "public interest" of an entire channel that a comedian subconsciously gave people the wrong impression about something? Because to be clear that's basically the full extent of it.
If it's not about the whole public interest thing, then it's not a conversation about factual accuracy, it's a conversation about what constitutes poor enough taste to take a comedian off the air. The FCC's Carr engaged in a deliberate bait and switch by conflating the two. And many of you here fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
It’s a mean joke, I didn’t find it funny, but it absolutely is a joke. I’m not gonna go down that route and analyze it in depth unless I have to, but it follows enough of the rules of comedy that it counts, with the cadence I described. Much of comedy tiptoes a line of meanness, that’s not really new. To me a joke can be insulting, the two are not mutually exclusive at all.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Nope. Unless I'm missing a press release, Sinclair's own release specifically cited Carr and his same-day remarks, so the direction of cause and effect seems pretty clear and Carr does seem to be one of the earliest causes (don't know how Carr became aware of it, if it was on his own or in reaction to something) as I pointed out in a comment above here
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Part of the disconnect is that for some people, Kirk's killing is just another in the mental bucket of "mass shooters", and not an actual assassination. Remember that Kirk, for all his influence, was an influencer/activist/organizer, not an official (and never was, and claimed not to want to be).
Kimmel's larger bit is actually about Trump not being sad enough about Kirk. Yes, that's a low blow, but the implication of that is... well, actually that Kirk's death was a big deal and Trump should care more. I mean, his crowd isn't that sympathetic to Kirk of course but it's not like Kimmel said anything bad about Kirk in that quote. He's guilty of using Kirk's death as a weapon, like what he accuses MAGA of doing, is that cancellable?
The line between letting a tragedy be a tragedy, and using a tragedy in a bigger political debate has already been thinning quite a bit. Especially about gun violence related things.
On the whole though I do appreciate your point. I don't consider Kimmel a network TV host, though, despite the facts of his position, because the whole point of late-night was originally that the typical audience wouldn't be watching! It's the adults doing adult-interest things.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Yes, you did stop too soon, actually. That's the quote that's been cited everywhere, but the bit is significantly longer with several cross-cuts. That's only the intro! This is probably the best text description of the segment if you don't want to watch it. I'm a text>video supremacist, but video does capture some nuance if you care: namely, the pacing and tone of his voice in that entire quote is literally just a lead-up.
The main bit is that Trump doesn't actually care about Kirk, and merely finds his death occasionally politically convenient. The specific laugh-line is about Trump grieving like a 4-year old grieves for a goldfish. And then another few clips the thrust of which is Trump when asked tends to change the subject away from Kirk quickly. Which, you can think of it how you like, you may even consider it cruel, but the whole thing is not being viewed contextually.
To put it again very clearly: the takeaway from this segment of a longer monologue is that Trump sucks as a person. The reference to Kirk's killer's motive is done in passing. It's wrong, obviously, and most people would agree it's wrong, but it's a comedy lead-in to a joke not a newscast and it was a day before the gold-standard evidence came out that put it all to bed. Remember, the FBI was super stingy with their evidence release cadence and most newscasters were going mostly off of scraps, often without even primary source attribution (e.g. Governor Cox claimed that the FBI found out that someone close to the shooter said _) so it was hard to tell in many cases which piece of info came from where. (And while Kimmel holds responsibility I wouldn't be surprised if the actual paragraph quote's copy was written by some overworked staff writer instead)
Eh, the Pete numbers grab headlines but that's in a polling format with a very specific list of options. In terms of general favorability? Don't have time to dig deeper, but one year ago among Black voters the numbers were 26% very favorable, 13% somewhat favorable, 10% somewhat unfavorable, 7% very unfavorable, 45% don't know. So it's not actually as bad as it appears. In other words, he's almost literally never Black voters' first pick... but that doesn't mean that if you become the nominee, that you won't get at least decent support. Personally I think he would do fine. The Black vote was only 11% of the actual turnout in 2024. I think his gains elsewhere would compensate decently well.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
On a practical level biker gangs, like many gangs, actually exist less from the financial angle (though that helps) but from (often violent but not always) kids from broken families getting caught up in a group that fills most of the needs a family would normally fill. Brotherhood, purpose, importance, outlets for anger, structure, exhilaration at breaking the rules, all that. It's a fake family in the ways that count, of course, but much like pets filling child-sized holes, it works pretty well overall - that's why it exists.
I agree the GHF seems to exist also to fill a need. The need here is someone else to take blame and occasionally do gruntwork. Yes, useful stooges, though Israel isn't the only one who likes a GHF-like entity so I would be cautious in assuming Israel is the only one propping them up. I wouldn't be surprised even if some enemies of Israel also support them for some reason or another.
I'm pretty sure the GHF has been hollowed out as the more legit people have left. I remember hearing I think this story a month and a half ago where you can start to see not only some pretty outright deception by some level of GHF leadership but also the more good guys get disillusioned and leave, with more callous people left. I should pause here and note that the job given to them is actually terrible. Holding mobs at bay while distributing food is genuinely dangerous. But unlike the military, it appears that there are effectively very few actual rules of engagement. Personally, again, I feel like this is the point, GHF again is there to take the blame and do the dirty work when it's convenient for them to do so. I think the violence exists, probably not massacre level, but people are definitely being killed when seeking aid for bad reasons. The scale is unclear. Personally I think it's bigger than you think, but it's not a great news environment to say the least.
Back to the point you make, I think it's something like a bunch of people go over and those with a conscience often go back soon, or fall into the morally compromised soldier position that happens in basically every war. So it works as a distillery for the cruel or callous. It's absolutely a shit job that few want to do. There are only so many places you can find semi-lawless violence-prone people in need of a job in America. The cartels certainly aren't going to let their people go and do it. So biker gangs is actually a great and logical fit and that surprises me precisely not at all. The other group would be financially distressed former soldiers of course, but motivation to go to yet another war-torn middle eastern country with a hostile local population has got to be... well... yeah, relatively low, though I imagine nonetheless they still fill out a good portion of the manpower.
Now again as I will say every time when it comes to Israel: Israel should be the one taking on all of this themselves. They directly created this cratered, destroyed, lawless zone with arbitrary and changing rules for civilians and a crippling need to import virtually all of its food, and need to take responsibility for it - direct responsibility for it. They don't probably because they have a borderline genocidal apathy towards gazans. I'm sympathetic, really I am, but apathy isn't a full moral cover.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Skeletor used this phrase: "knowingly and falsely accused followers of the president of murder". Kimmel did not make any accusation at all. That is supplied by your brain as it tries to fill in the blanks. He made two claims which are my main bullet points, and that's it. Neither is an accusation.
Why was Kimmel fired, precisely, do you think?
OK well technically he was just suspended. The ABC decision was essentially forced and not Disney by itself. It was because two broadcasting groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, suspended the show themselves from their channels. Nexstar statement (note: federal approval of merger deal pending) just said that the remarks were "offensive and insensitive". Sinclair statement (note: conservative bias for this one) said it was "inappropriate and deeply insensitive" and name-checked FCC chair Carr's remarks. Note here that offensive/inappropriate/insensitive is NOT a good standard in and of itself for whether a comedian should be fired, especially when politics is involved, so let's dispense with that. So if that's the actual reasoning and only that, Kimmel's firing is very bad. There must be something else, right?
Carr's original remarks? On a podcast, took me a minute to dig it up, of Benny Johnson, YouTube title: "Jimmy Kimmel LIES About Charlie Kirk Killer, Blames Charlie For His Murder!? Disney Must Fire Kimmel". Johnson plays the clip prefacing with the claim: "ABC News must tell the truth. They must operate in the public interest. This is in their broadcast charter given to them by the federal government. I'm going to play you a clip of Jimmy Kimmel victim blaming Charlie Kirk for his own assassination. This is precisely what happened. It cannot be categorized any other way." Which, of course, as I've demonstrated, is not accurate. Victim blaming? I don't see where. Again, maybe by third-degree implication only, so "cannot be categorized any other way" is false. Anyways, that's Johnson speaking, not Carr.
He does then make the claim above that it's a knowing deception. Relevant quote: "This is a clear-cut violation of the FCC's policy against news distortion and is punishable by the revocation of the offending broadcast license under 47 US Code 312 or at least a hearing of punitive action under 309 section as organizations granted broadcasting licenses will serve in the public interest's convenience and necessity as deliberate news distortion is seen here contrary to the public interest".
FCC website: "The FCC's authority to take action on complaints about the accuracy or bias of news networks, stations, reporters or commentators in how they cover – or sometimes opt to not cover – events is narrow... News distortion "must involve a significant event and not merely a minor or incidental aspect of the news report." In weighing the constitutionality of the policy, courts have recognized that the policy "makes a crucial distinction between deliberate distortion and mere inaccuracy or difference of opinion." As a result, broadcasters are only subject to enforcement if it can be proven that they have deliberately distorted a factual news report. Expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable."
It was clear to thinking brains that the shooter was leftist at the time of the clip airing. It was not established however until the next day. It is however true that MAGA was trying to blame other groups (even if the motive is misrepresented). So I think Kimmel is fine here as a matter of law.
Anyways that's all Johnson but it's a good, spelled-out proxy for the positions of the people wanting Kimmel fired, I think, more than press-release vague language. Carr is introduced with this: "thankfully, he's able to join our program today to elucidate for us what the FCC can do now when it comes to ABC News." Carr, a little later: "I at the very least would like to have an on-air apology from Jimmy Kimmel uh to the Kirk family to all of those who he slandered because he did say that Charlie Kirk he is effectively saying that our movement did this. our movement killed Charlie, that Charlie was deserving of this effectively." He tiptoes around a few things but basically says that they are going to start using the public interest statute to go after consistently biased stations and programs. He says that the FCC can do some stuff, but gee whiz, wink wink, wouldn't it be nice if some member stations themselves took care if it themselves by objecting to it? Subtext: so the FCC wouldn't formally be involved, you know, because that would be more legally constrained by law.
I don't like any part of this. It's really a pincer attack, or even a motte and bailey of their own! There's the legal, public-interest claim that deception is against the law and can result in formal action (though a process must be followed, and consequences are not necessarily being taken off air), and that Kimmel did that level of deception, which is weak (also, even Carr himself acknowledges that historically the statue has usually been used for outright broadcast hoaxes, and even then rarely). And then there's the end-run around the law, which is forcing the issue, and the rationale there is a lot more murky. Carr really tries to have it both ways.
So again, I ask you: why was Kimmel suspended?
It's about MAGA feeling offended, not Kimmel spreading disinformation on purpose. It would be one thing if Kimmel spent more time and energy on the point about the shooter's motives, but he doesn't. He only implies them indirectly, even if on the receiving end the message is clear. It isn't Kimmel's point at all. His main point is that Trump is heartless and that offends MAGA, and they try to motte and bailey and finesse him into being suspended without ever having to actually make good on potential government threats. It's of course bad Kimmel misleads his audience, it's bad that this is the outlet the outrage takes, it's bad that the FCC commissioner is trying to finagle the situation with innuendo and implied threats, it's bad that Kimmel is only actually suspended on vague accusations with almost zero detail, it's bad that we don't know the precise, actual reason why Kimmel is suspended. He just is.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
The loss of trust in media is in good part self-inflicted yes. I think the conflation of facts with fact-checks, and the laundering of political opinion as fact was not good. For example, NPR lit its own listener trust on fire over the years, even if it was more a slow burn.
Still, a government official - the ultimate government official - should never be mistaken for a friendly uncle. He's currying ingroup loyalty at the explicit cost of more general trust destruction. That's exactly my point, and it's a bad trade. A lot of these utterances are magnified by broader traditional media yes, but they are actually said. While in years past someone suspicious of media spin could go back and just watch the original remarks directly to get the original truth, in recent years often listening to Trump directly leaves you less informed and more confused, with more effort to untangle the web. In short, although the perception of Trump's lies is worse than the reality, the reality of Trump's lies are also worse than prior past. Both are bad. I hate this idea that we need to choose one and only one person or organization or group to blame. And at the end of the day, no one elected the news but the President has special power and his wording matters more, so with greater power comes greater responsibility.
(IIRC that's a bit of an oversimplification of the Obamacare strategy. The original Politifact lie of the year article probably summed it up best: "Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best." Yep, seems about right. So to be more specific, everyone really knew that the legislative effort would require a lot of changes to pass Congress, so I don't really think it's fair to ding 2007 Obama for the that. 2011 Obama and 2014 Obama, things are different.)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
I agree, and confessed to being unsure and not fully exploring it. However, two wrongs don't make a right, and that discussion doesn't detract from the main point I made, I don't think.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Kimmel said, in essence, if we parse the quote finely (I don't really want to do this but you objected to my characterization and upgraded it to the level of knowing falsehood):
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MAGA really wanted to wanted the shooter to be non-MAGA
- this implies that the shooter is, in fact, MAGA, but only implies it! It is unsaid, and potentially, facially, true (bailey-claim). Was there desire for this fact to be true, a non-MAGA shooter? Objectively yes. So Kimmel is using a bit of a motte-claim, which annoys me, but are we really cancelling a whole show because an implied motte-claim is untrue and offensive?
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MAGA are trying to score political points
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said political points scored from "it"; grammatically this is unclear and grammar teachers advise against it for this exact ambiguity, but the next sentence suggests that he meant the finger pointing and not the murder as "it".
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also not even implied, but requiring assumptions from the listener on their own: who is the finger pointing directed AT? Presumably, the left, but this is not claimed.
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He then goes on to his main point, which is that Trump is not truly grieving. I agree with a poster below that this is a potentially cruel point because people grieve differently, but isn't there a grain of truth here? The response to tragedy is often commodified. Isn't calling that out fair game?
The claim that all MAGA are inherently murderers is an even more extended third-degree implication rising from the first bullet and its sub-bullet (logic goes like: not only is the shooter a MAGA but the 'denial' stems from MAGA insecurity at being themselves prone to such acts of violence). That's too far removed to count, in my eyes.
In short, "denial" is the implied emotion; denial usually implies guilt; and guilt applies to all Republicans. That's three degrees, depends partly on emotional reasoning, and I find it weak.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
It's not super common, but it's not all that weird for Mormons in my lived experience. My mother was a fifth child adopted from a local hospital, I have two cousins adopted from Kazakhstan, a cousin from a different side adopted from Ukraine (one of the very literally very last actually), and I've heard of a few other cases besides.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
4d ago
I get the feeling that maybe you haven't spoken with many Trump-hating leftists recently? I do on a pretty regular basis, and put simply, most of the complaints boil down to one of the following: "he's stupid and I want a smarter president", "I dislike his thin skin and meanness", "his policies often make no sense", "I still haven't forgiven him for J6/the 2020 election lie", "he's been tanking the economy even more", and yes, "he's trying to take away important rights" does make an appearance. There's some resentment of perceived anti-LGB, anti-T, and anti-immigrant background too. But framing the first 5 reasons as not very specific I don't think is very fair.
Not OP but I think it's an open question as to whether the number of Trump's lies, in absolute terms, is greater or less than other politicians, but I don't really think it's too important to close it with an answer, I don't care about it per se.
However, it seems completely obvious that the lies he tells are particularly... maybe "brazen" is the right word? Like in real life people tell white lies, and usually don't get caught. Trump tells white lies, and regularly does get caught, when prior presidents and many other public figures are often careful enough that they, on the whole, seem to lay off the white lies (silence works pretty well for most administrations, in fact almost equally as well in situations where a white lie would otherwise attempt to hide an awkward truth, they both hide it in effect).
The usual defense amounts to one of three things: 1) Trump's words were hyperbole or maybe technically incorrect, but the broader truth is correct so the precise verbiage doesn't matter, 2) Trump was just relaying his understanding based on other reports/TV/hearsay, and any incorrectness is a simple lack of due diligence, which is fine because again his broader points are correct and people can be wrong sometimes, 3) Well if you look at what he said earlier or later or some other day, that clarifies things, that's what he really meant, obviously he was just riffing off that, and we should kind of average all his statements. No particular word, phrase, or claim ever has absolute meaning.
You know, honestly I was lowkey fine with this during election season, and in a number of cases I defended Trump (!) by saying that in an election it really does matter more what people hear than what you say. We all even expect it, fact-checker mania or no. However, I (and most liberals and even most centrists even despite any biases) think that when governing the words you say have special meaning. We can't and shouldn't be guessing. It's not like the Bible where reasonable people can disagree if X scripture is literal or metaphorical or symbolic or something in between! A word has meaning. Sometimes flexible, but all meanings can be stretched so far as to break. As an example, Trump said the fired BLS chief "rigged" the numbers. That means something, and it's not a Biblical interpretation situation. Factually, by any definition, Trump was wrong. She did not rig the numbers. End of story. The End. There is no wiggle room there. So which is it, 1, 2, or 3? They have some partial explanatory power. I admit that. But they do not actually change the lie.
It's the President and he has a responsibility. Sure, Presidents lie. Some have told some really, really big whoppers. But by and large, as I said above, that's usually about the big stuff. Trump's statements are frequently wrong about the small stuff.
How bad is one versus the other? Hypothetically is it better to have a habitual fibber who is honest about the big stuff, or a charming fact-wielding guy hiding a devastating betrayal? I have no firm opinion, and to be fair it's a little bit of new territory, and with a yet-unwritten and unrevealed history to match. Will we discover a Trump Iran-Contra under our noses and thus have the worst of both worlds? Does anything so far count? No one can say yet for sure.
However, I think the small lies have spread such an atmosphere of distrust that it's creating a low-trust dynamic between the public and the President that is almost unprecedented outside of wartime (when frankly the President is semi-allowed to tell white lies IMO). I think it's justified to be dismayed about that and worried about it. Because there's a significantly wide, if not deep, "interaction surface" on the utterings of Presidents to the public. They are literally the most newsworthy person in the world, so a lot gets transmitted. Trump's white lies, even if that's really all they are (not a given but let's roll with it), do immense damage to this trust. Suddenly, rather than more limited debates about whether the government is telling the truth about specific and big things, we suddenly are expected to guess whether the government is telling the truth about small things, tiny things, mundane things. We are expected to produce custom weighted-average factual conclusions based on contradictory government information releases. That's exhausting.
Conservatives aren't really bothered by this because they mostly have delegated their decision-making to Trump and his administration, since they trust that he will not betray them overall, so the small stuff is almost irrelevant. They even tend to enjoy Trump cynically playing with those assumptions to make the traditional media dance to his pleasure. But if you put yourself in anyone else's shoes, it's a pretty terrible state of affairs.
A lot of right-wingers around here like to spread this whole idea of high and low trust societies. Okay, fine. Here is a mini-society, and Trump is almost singlehandedly making it a low-trust relation full of perpetual suspicion and mistrust. Maybe he's "owning the libs", but at what cost?
And yet I'm here arguing with people who seem to think that the administration hasn't started any major wars yet, so its relationship with the truth is actually better than previous presidents, don't you get it?
Sort of like when driving, it's often more important to be predictable than anything else, big democratic economies like ours work best when there's some general stability and transparency. Bad communication leads to inefficiency and I believe it's partly why the economy is doing so poorly.
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