SlyJohnny wrote:Oh, whatever. The New York Times pretty much openly called him a rapist and reacted to him suing them with "lol just fkin do it, nerd". Everyone called him out all the time on not having any evidence for any of his bizarre proclamations. Even Fox News was hesitant to say anything positive, and they'd endorse a steaming turd as long it was a shit taken by a Republican politician. He had traditionally conservative papers making a big show of endorsing Clinton. The media was overwhelmingly critical of Trump, that's part of why everyone was surprised by the result. You're bitching because you feel that everything you read should have been either a wrathful opinion piece condemning him, or a sober explanation of why Hillary's policies were Good For America.
The media isn't to blame. They excoriated him and called him out on all his bullshit claims- that's why he's been castigating them in public and in private meetings.
This was the DNC's fight to lose, and they conspired to have a one-sided primary to pick a neoliberal, corporate shill who shamelessly made campaign promises that were obviously fantastical, impossible lies to anyone paying attention, who alternately wavered between "wealth inequality is fine how it is, let's not rock the boat" and "no, young millenials, I totally do have a plan to reign in corporate America. And by 'plan' I basically mean 'make them pay slightly more insurance', and by 'reign in' I mean 'let banks pay me vast sums of money to give speeches assuring them that they're doing a bang up job and should be left alone'. There is no conflict of interest; I assure you that this serves my interests perfectly.
Holy shit stop talking you ignorant fucks. Just stop.
Here is the first result when you google "donald trump tape new york times". This was their big story on the tape. It is titled "Lewd Donald Trump Tape Is a Breaking Point for Many in the G.O.P." This is the opening paragraph: "WASHINGTON -- Republican leaders began to abandon Donald J. Trump by the dozens on Saturday after the release of a video showing him speaking of women in vulgar sexual terms, delivering a punishing blow to his campaign and plunging the party into crisis a month before the election." The word "rape" occurs zero times in that article. The phrase "sexual assault" occurs exactly once in that article, in a one-sentence quote by John McCain. It is exactly 100% the both sides normalization I was talking about. Donald Trump is caught bragging about sexually assaulting women and it earns him mild condemnation as "lewd" and "vulgar" and a dry discussion of how it might hurt him politically. The Washington Post article (the ones who broke the story) looks exactly the same. Exactly the fucking same, right down to the "man, that tape sure is lewd, am I right," except they take longer to quote someone saying "sexual assault" and it's someone even less important than John McCain.
That was the
actual news coverage of Donald Trump's tape outside of whatever feel-good fringe liberal circlejerk you got your news from. For fuck's sake, the first article you get when you google "donald trump sexual assault new york times" is titled "Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately." Because if you weren't offended enough by the idea of Donald Trump exploiting his power and influence to casually assault female business acquiantances, now you can also be offended watching the media condescendingly spin that into childish "bad touch!" bullshit instead of calling it what it actually fucking is. The New York Times actually bent over backwards to avoid calling sexual assault sexual assault in their front page coverage of the tape, because that is what centrist assholes do in an attempt to look impartial; grade on a curve. The more terrible your scandals are, the softer the coverage. The less terrible your scandals are, the harder the coverage. That's how you know you're being fair!
Yes, that is seriously how the media works. Yes, it's stupid. But we've known it's been happening for fucking years. Consider the media coverage of Paul Ryan back in his day; his budget plans literally didn't fucking add up, they failed as a matter of basic arithmetic, and mainstream media outlets like CNN fucking loved him, presenting him as the right-wing version of a serious, level-headed numbers guy. The media, in their effort to seem impartial and find some kind of parity, grades on a curve. And instead of breaking as Republicans go further and further into insanity and corruption, they just keep upping the curve.
