Hi everyone, remember me, your friendly neighborhood debunker? I’ve been hiding out all week in the D Bunker (ha, ha ha, just a little disinfo funny) toiling away in the disinformation mines to bring you yet another installment of Things What Pissed Me Off This Week. It’s cheaper than therapy!
So there was a Republican National Convention this week. You may have heard about it? If not, it was in Milwaukee, Donald Trump was the headliner, and it was a very strange and surreal thing. That’s what I was told anyway because I decided I would rather eat a lightbulb and a handful of rusty screws than watch that shitshow.
But much as I tried to avoid it, there were clips. So I watched them! I got to see America’s Racist Grandpa ramble on about … I’m not sure what the hell he was talking about actually, but he also kissed the helmet of a guy who was murdered at his rally when some kid was taking potshots at him, which was somehow as of this writing less than a week ago, and a whole bunch of very strange looking people with terrible aesthetics waved “Mass Deportation Now” signs while wearing maxi-pads or something on their ears in solidarity with Trump’s Alpha Maxi-Pad on his own ear.
Also a whole lot of people said a whole lot of things that made them sound like Nazis for some reason!
Oh, and BREAKING NEWS: I just found out that Donald Trump Jr. called his seventeen year old daughter “sexy” on video. What. the fuck. is wrong with these people.
And then there was whatever the fuck this is??
The RNC approvingly used a video showing a campus protest in May where a Black student stood up to a bunch of white-boy assholes and one of them responded by making monkey noises at her. But! They cut it off just before he started up with the monkey noises and gestures, because they’re not racists, oh no, they’re just showing the dangers of a woke campus culture or something, as though we haven’t seen that bullshit before.
No, but seriously. Watch this video.
Now watch this video.
Trump also used that video in campaign materials, featuring those same dipshits that the bootlickers at NewsMax described as “patriotic counterprotesters.” You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Luckily, our national press is ON IT. They boldly stepped up and called out the entire RNC for making common ground with racists, and misogynists, and bigots, and fascists, and authoritarians, but I repeat myself. They made sure to go hardest of all after Trump.
Just kidding! They decided to go to an alternate universe RNC instead, and cover that. Check out these headlines!
“In a Departure, Trump Calls for Unity, Healing in America” (The Boston Globe)
“Trump Emphasizes Unity” (Dallas Morning News)
“Trump Takes a Unity Tone” (Pioneer Press)
Media Matters has a decent roundup of all the journalism equivalent of wet farts produced by whoever wrote these headlines.
Was it worse at the New York Times? Here’s all their coverage leading up to Trump’s speech, after 200 or so headlines about Joe Biden Old Gonna Die Who Shall Rid Us Of This Meddlesome Joe Biden. Via Jamison Foser:
Headlines:
A Party Now Molded In Trump’s Image Prepares For A Coronation
Usha Vance and the Iconography of the Trump Women
Donald Trump will accept the Republican nomination for president tonight
A Republican Hard Sell Pushes a Softer Image of Trump
JD Vance Becomes Trump’s New Apprentice
After time away from the spotlight, Tucker Carlson roared into the GOP convention as a top Trump ally
Trump 2.0: He’s Never Sounded Like This Before
Did they watch a completely different convention? Did they watch the convention at all? I don’t think they did! I’m not sure what color the sky is in this world, but I am pretty sure it’s not ours. I saw absolutely none of this and have no idea where these ideas of “healing” and “unity” are coming from.
I mean, in theory I know it’s because they all wrote their stories off the press releases that got sent out in advance, but do you mean to tell me no one thought that something might happen to make Donald Trump go off script? Hello??
If your brain feels nauseous, don’t worry. You aren’t the only one! I’m not sure what the solution for this is, short of firing everyone responsible for making the sorts of decisions that have us on a greased slide straight to fascism and hiring people who are maybe less actively pro-fash or so cynical that there’s no material difference, which would be a really nice start.
From what little coverage I took in, I got the impression that the GOP is in their Lord of the Flies phase, the adults have all gone from the island and left the feral children to worship a pig's head on a stick...oh look, the pig's head on a stick has picked a pile entrails as a running mate...ugh
The NYT is doing that thing where "normalization" looks a lot like adopting the tone of an Upper East Side society matron at a library fundraiser that is serving booze.
If the Russians dropped a thermonuclear bomb near NYC and totally wiped out Nassau County, the headline would be:
Possible nuclear device affects areas east of Manhattan, disrupting commuter service