Monday, May 1, 2017

The less relevant they become, the more self-congratulatory they become

Byron York at the Washington Examiner on the White House Correspondents Dinner:

A prominent writer who walked up had a different take. "This is going to be the most pious ever," he said. Among the WHCA officials who ran the event, he explained, there would be piety for freedom of the press, for the First Amendment, and for the commitment and dedication they themselves display every day. Among the the entertainment — Minhaj — there would pious lesson-teaching about the evils of seeing Muslims and immigrants as "others." Piety all around.
As it turned out, the writer-filmmaker team won the night's prediction game. Just as the writer predicted, the media self-regard on display at the Hinckley Hilton Saturday was of a degree seldom, if ever, equaled at traditional Washington events — and that is saying something. And Minhaj did indeed take his opportunity to teach those assembled about the dangers of discrimination. On the other hand, the filmmaker correctly foresaw the sheer, unfiltered, nastiness — directed not just at Trump but also at top members of his administration — that Minhaj delivered along with his lessons.
Bottom line: The White House Correspondents' dinner, the premier event of the Washington press corps, was two hours of mawkish self-celebration followed by 30 minutes of Trump-bashing.

He goes into the details, if you can stand it.


11 comments:

  1. So Donny had to go off and run his own show again to his peeps who are relevant? Big deal. The show went on without him and I for one, again did not listen to nor believe a word this big bully had to say. Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

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  2. He walked out of a press conference today when confronted with a pitifully misguided question about his unprecedented tweet accusing Obama of tapping his phones. Big bad mean old press, I mean, come on, let's move on, right?

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  3. Donald Trump has serious character issues, but that is not there subject of this post.

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  4. Oh, my bad, again, can't seem to placate the bloggie. I kinda thought the subject of this post was Whatshisname's boycott of the WH Correspondent's Dinner. At any rate, I and many others disagree with yours and Trump's contention the press is more irrelevant than ever. Wishful thinking for your ilk.

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  5. Substantiate it. Per Gallup last September, post-Americans thought pretty little of mass media:

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx

    And this one is rather interesting. As of February, the Squirrel-Hair administration was more trusted than the news media by the post-American public:

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/02/09/shocking-poll-shows-trump-adminstration-is-more-trusted-than-the/21710627/

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  6. Sad, but I presume you like it. I still read and listen widely, rarely watching. Guess I'm just out of touch. Trusting SH is not likely to happen for me. As for the press, I don't have to trust them. They have no power over me. I might be a grown-up in that category at least, but when it comes to WW III, I'm what you call a wus.

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  7. Off the subject, you will say, but somehow powa always gets in the way. Ask why to powa! And I know of no better forum than the 4th estate.

    “World War III’’ became the most frequent Google search term last month. Trump had ordered a missile attack on a Syrian airbase to retaliate for Syria’s use of chemical weapons on civilians. Tensions with North Korea had ratcheted up over that nation’s rocket tests; the U.S. said it would dispatch an aircraft carrier, and North Korea said it could sink such a ship. According to a Public Policy Polling survey taken last month, 39% of all voters (and two thirds of Clinton voters) think Trump will get the U.S. into World War III during his presidency."

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/as-tensions-mount-over-syria-and-north-korea-world-war-iii-again-a-us-fear/ar-BBAEzc0?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=SL5JDHP

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  8. Then there's us, come blog bloggie, come blog away with me (cause nobody much else does here):

    "The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists, and non-mainstream media outlets. The "Fifth" Estate extends the sequence of the three classical Estates of the Realm and the preceding Fourth Estate, essentially the mainstream press."

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  9. Then there's the Networked 4th Estate. We don't need a loud, flamboyant, arrogant tweetster to tell us which ways the winds blow. I didn't believe it when Nixon sent Spiro, his henchman at the time to piss and moan about the press and I don't believe it now. But if you want to, be my guest, rail on, rail on....

    "Yochai Benkler, author of the 2006 book The Wealth of Networks, described the "Networked Fourth Estate" in a May 2011 paper published in the Harvard Civil Liberties Review.[13] He explains the growth of non-traditional journalistic media on the Internet and how it affects the traditional press using Wikileaks as an example. When Benkler was asked to testify in the United States vs. PFC Bradley E. Manning trial, in his statement to the morning 10 July 2013 session of the trial he described the Networked Fourth Estate as the set of practices, organizing models, and technologies that are associated with the free press and provide a public check on the branches of government.[14][15][16]:28–29 It differs from the traditional press and the traditional fourth estate in that it has a diverse set of actors instead of a small number of major presses. These actors include small for-profit media organizations, non-profit media organizations, academic centers, and distributed networks of individuals participating in the media process with the larger traditional organizations."

    Read more at wiki

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  10. Trump doesn't like the press that hates his guts. But I do, because I feel the same. It's still a free country, go read, listen and watch what you want. There's plenty of variety out there, and you know you're right, right? Stick with what you know, right? If you want to live in the 18th Century, you can. That's what Hillsdale College does for you, in whole or in part. Live a little, laugh often, and love much. Do it your way. But let everyone else do it their way too. Heck, live in the 1st Century for all I care.

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  11. Plenty of verbiage here, but I still don't see the subject of this post - the arrogance of the mainstream media - addressed in any of it.

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