Matt Taibbi has a relatively new podcast called, The Tarfu Report, which I
discovered yesterday. I listened to Episode 7 today which is about Trump's
personality. There were several clips from the Arizona speech which I hadn't
heard. I don't listen to Trump unless there's a clip that's part of a
newscast or discussion so I manage to forget how truly crazy he is. But what
I heard today was horrifying, not because the content was especially racist
or war like, but because Trump's personality disorder is so clearly evident.
It is incomprehensible to me that no one who knows how truly disturbed he
is, couldn't have done something to prevent his getting into office.
Miriam
Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images)
Blame the Media for Creating a World Dumb Enough for Trump
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
26 August 17
Yet another TV executive says Trump is "good for business." Is sudden good
fortune of news media by accident or design?
The craziest part of Donald Trump's 77-minute loon-a-thon in Phoenix earlier
this week came when he rehashed his shtick about the networks turning off
live coverage of his speech. Trump seemed to really believe they were
shutting the cameras off because "the very dishonest media" was so terrified
of his powerful words.
"They're turning those lights off so fast!" he said. "CNN doesn't want its
failing viewership to see this!"
Trump is wrong about a lot of things, but it's hard to be more wrong about
any one thing than he was about this particular point.
No news director would turn off the feed in the middle of a Trump-meltdown.
This presidency has become the ultimate ratings bonanza. Trump couldn't do
better numbers if he jumped off Mount Kilimanjaro carrying a Kardashian.
This was confirmed this week by yet another shruggingly honest TV executive
- in this case Tony Maddox, head of CNN International. Maddox said CNN is
doing business at "record levels." He hinted also that the monster ratings
they're getting have taken the sting out of being accused of promoting fake
news.
"[Trump] is good for business," Maddox said. "It's a glib thing to say. But
our performance has been enhanced during this news period." Maddox, speaking
at the Edinburgh TV festival, added that most of the outlets that have been
singled out by Trump are doing a swimming business. "If you look at the
groups that Trump has primarily targeted: CNN, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Colbert," he said, "every
single one of those has seen a quite remarkable growth in their viewing
figures, in their sales figures."
Everyone hisses whenever they hear quotes like these. They recall the
infamous line from last year by CBS chief Les Moonves, about how Trump "may
not be good for America, but he's damn good for CBS." Moonves was even
cheekier than Maddox. He laughed and added, "The money's rolling in, and
this is fun. They're not even talking about issues, they're throwing bombs
at each other, and I think the advertising reflects that."
For more than two years now, it's been obvious that Donald Trump is a
disaster on almost every level except one - he's great for the media
business. Most of us who do this work have already gone through the process
of working out just how guilty we should or should not feel about this.
Many execs and editors - and Maddox seems to fall into this category - have
convinced themselves that the ratings and the money are a kind of cosmic
reward for covering Trump responsibly. But deep down, most of us know that's
a lie. Donald Trump gets awesome ratings for the same reason Fear Factor
made money feeding people rat-hair tortilla chips: nothing sells like a
freak show. If a meteor crashes into jello night at the Playboy mansion, it
doesn't matter if you send Edward R. Murrow to do the standup. Some things
sell themselves.
The Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock
eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed. It's Battle of the
Network Stars meets Wrestlemania meets Survivor meets the Kursk disaster.
It's got the immediacy of a breaking news crash, with themes of impending
doom, conflict, celebrity meltdown, anger, racism, gender war, everything.
Trump even sells on the level of those Outbrain click-addicting photos of
plastic surgery failures. With his mystery comb-over and his great rolls of
restrained blubber and the infamous tales of violent fights with his ex over
a failed scalp-reduction procedure, Trump on top of being Hitler and Hulk
Hogan from a ratings perspective is also a physical monster, the world's
very own bearded-lady tent.
Trump's monstrousness is ironic, since the image of Trump as the media's
very own Frankenstein's monster has been used and re-used in the last years.
Many in the business are of the opinion that, having created Trump and let
him loose in the village, we in the press now have a responsibility to hunt
him down with aggressive investigative reporting, to make the world safe
again.
That might indeed be a good idea. But that take also implies that slaying
the monster will fix the problem. Are we sure that's true?
Reporters seem to think so, and keep trying to find the magic formula. Just
this week, staffers at the Wall Street Journal rebelled against
editor-in-chief Gerard Baker. Baker, who has long been accused of being too
soft on Trump, blasted his people for going too negative on the president in
their coverage of the Arizona speech. He sent around a letter asking staff
to "stick to reporting what [Trump] said," rather than "packaging it in
exegesis and selective criticism."
Reporters fought back by (apparently) leaking the memo to the rival New York
Times. This followed an incident in which a transcript of Baker's recent
interview with Trump was leaked to Politico earlier this month. In it, Baker
mentions being glad to have seen Ivanka Trump in Southampton, and
small-talks with Trump about travel and golf. The implication here is that
it's improper or unseemly for a newspaper editor to have a chummy
relationship with this kind of a president.
And it is, sometimes. Reporters who should be challenging presidents and
candidates are pretty much always cheating the public when they turn
interviews into mutual back rub sessions.
But these intramural ethical wars within our business may just be
deflections that keep us from facing bigger problems - like, for instance,
the fact that we have been systematically making the entire country more
stupid for decades.
We learned long ago in this business that dumber and more alarmist always
beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary
criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated
attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences
powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race
and gender resentment.
There isn't a news executive alive low enough to deny that we use xenophobia
and racism to sell ads. Black people on TV for decades were almost always
shirtless and chased by cops, and the "rock-throwing Arab" photo was a
staple of international news sections even before 9/11. And when all else
fails in the media world, just show more cleavage somewhere, and ratings go
up, every time.
Donald Trump didn't just take advantage of these conditions. He was created
in part by them. What's left of Trump's mind is like a parody of the average
American media consumer: credulous, self-centered, manic, sex-obsessed,
unfocused, and glued to stories that appeal to his sense of outrage and
victimhood.
We've created a generation of people like this: anger addicts who can't read
past the first page of a book. This is why the howls of outrage from within
the ranks of the news media about Trump's election ring a little bit false.
What the hell did we expect would happen? Who did we think would rise to
prominence in our rage-filled, hyper-stimulated media environment? Sensitive
geniuses?
We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common
denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to
pretend this is an innocent coincidence?
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