Trump’s Fascist Dictator Loser War On The AP Continues
Your thought-purity to Dear Leader must be this high to ride the plane.
Welp, Dear Leader has stepped up his battle against those pinko commies from the Associated Press, first kicking a reporter out of his news conference and then barring the lot of them from the Oval Office and his plane, indefinitely and going on almost a week now, all because they refuse to accede to his authoritarian demand that they rewrite their stylebook to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And the AP is not backing down, because global credibility is more important to them than being in the sunshine of Dear Leader’s love, weird!
The AP is a global news agency, dispatching stories to different countries. The Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water. Saying it’s called something it isn’t is what one might call “virtue signaling,” or “we have always been at war with Eurasia-ing,” or “JESUS H CHRIST THIS IS STUPID-ing,” and any press outlet that does it should have its news judgment side-eyed with deep suspicion. Also press agencies pay to be on the plane, it’s not some kind of favor to them.
Is this an attack on free speech? White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich is like, “jeepers, you betcha it is!” He balls-out said to Axios:
This isn't just about the Gulf of America. This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world.
Oh, weaponizing language? Like when the Park Service took the T out of Stonewall? Or when the NSA set a bunch of interns to the task of deleting all internal and external webpages that contain any of the 27 now-forbidden words? (Anti-Racism, Racism, Allyship, Bias, DEI, Diversity, Diverse, Confirmation Bias, Equity, Equitableness, Feminism, Gender, Gender Identity, Inclusion, Inclusive, All-Inclusive, Inclusivity, Injustice, Intersectionality, Prejudice, Privilege, Racial Identity, Sexuality, Stereotypes, Pronouns, Transgender and Equality.)
(By the way, that’s happening at OSHA right now, and oh boy, surprise, it’s going comically poorly for the Trump administration.)
And “traditional”? What is traditional about changing the name of a body of water that has had the same name since 1550-something, way before America was a country? Fun fact, the name Mexico is a Náhuatl term derived from the words metztli (moon), xictli (navel or center) and co (place); it doesn’t get much more traditional than that. Or more “traditional” than using the original Koyukon name for Mt. McKinley, instead of the name some gold prospector slapped on it in honor of a then-presidential candidate who never once set foot in Alaska in his entire life. (Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski just filed a bill to restore the correct name. “It’s Denali,” she explained.)
Also old and traditional, the Associated Press, which turns 179 this year and got its start covering the Mexican-American war.
And ooh, WEAPONIZING! Taylor Budowich and Big Daddy are so delicate! Not using the NEWSPEAK hurts Trump right in his feelings! Those mean reporters, why do they want to hurt Daddy so much? Daddy is the strongest man in the world, but also soft and delicate as a newborn rabbit when people won’t use the made-up words to keep from upsetting him! Wild how the people who have been slobbering for years about how much they want to sling around the R-, N- and F-slurs fall right over if you whisper “Mexico.”
Deeply held beliefs are only things Christian nationalists and Nazis are allowed to have. When the beliefs belong to anyone else, that’s called a “fuck your feelings.”
Unlike the AP stylebook, the Trump stylebook is so confusing. Double standards, it’s a hallmark of authoritarianism. And also abusive relationships. Ow, why did you make me hurt my hand hitting you?
Anyway, not everybody is knuckling under to this latest purity test decree. The president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Eugene Daniels, tweeted a forceful statement:
The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions. The move by the administration to bar a reporter from The Associated Press from an official event open to news coverage today is unacceptable. The WHCA stands with the Associated Press and calls on the administration to immediately change course.
Also Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Press Club, Pen America, and the Society of Professional Journalists let it be known they weren’t going to suffer this foolishness.
And sounds like the New York Times is going to be going all “Gulf of Mexico” all in your face, too, even as they give Trump’s WTF THIS IS BATSHIT CRAZY a sanewashing with mild dish soap and chamois cloth elsewhere. (Luke Broadwater: he’s got “a campaign of revenge and retribution that has little analogue in American history,” and a style that is “characteristically blunt.”) That is the New York Times’ style, just as it is Wonkette’s style to constantly point out that Dear Leader is a failed gameshow host and 34-times convicted felon with a bad weave who was found liable for sexual assault and defamation, with the judge later clarifying that yes, he was found liable for rape.
But hey, we don’t have to worry about our bread and butter depending on our access to the guy, and thank God for that.
Also not playing for now, the Wall Street Journal. “We (like the AP) will generally stick with the internationally familiar name Gulf of Mexico for now, while acknowledging, as pertinent, the name Gulf of America. The U.S. doesn’t get to tell other countries, like Mexico, what to name a body of water. That said, we’ll see if the new name catches on and becomes the norm, and this naming advice can change.”
In other words, “Also whenceforth we declare UGG boots the warmest, most comfortable and best pair of boots, at least until which time MacKenzie teases us for wearing them, and then this statement shall be declared void and we shall deny we ever made it.”
But the AP style guide is what matters. It’s what journalists are taught to use in J-school, and editors refer to for editing, in newsrooms all over. If they don’t knuckle under, then no one else but like OANN and Breitbart will. And Trump knows that, hence this dumb tantrum.
Poor dad is sad. May the AP stay strong, and everybody else on the plane steal all its toilet paper in solidarity.
[Washington Post archive link / Public Notice / Axios archive link]
Just cause some dumbass slaps a name (his daddy's) on something doesn't mean that is what it will be called in real life. As an example the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge which no one calls it that because it is the fucking Tappan Zee Bridge.
But it was assigned Gulf of Mexico at birth.