"If da mainstream media go after the Donald, dey is me enemy!"
Samuel Dubke is reportedly, from his WSJ op-ed bio, "a freshman this fall at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service". This brief description appearing at the end of his piece entitled 'Why The Young Tune Politics Out' (p. A15, August 4). This title supposedly bolstered by his 800 word essay and the "young" (mainly college age) demographic being turned off - according to Dubke - by the "mainstream media". At the end of the op-ed I wondered whether Georgetown would withdraw its acceptance based on one of the most pathetic, ill thought out works to appear in public in a long time. But then again, maybe we can't hold a college freshman's naïveté against him. It comes with the age, so to speak.
Young Dubke claims to be fairly saturated by news from MSNBC which is "turned to full volume" at the new organization for which he labors as an intern "5 days week, eight hours a day". Most kids his age would consider themselves lucky to have such a summer gig - especially in terms of experience - but the crass and callow Dubke is hard pressed to be grateful. For him, he "would rather press the mute button and never have to listen to any of it".
One may inquire then as to what exactly is his problem? Evidently we can sum it up from his own whining words as follows:
- He's "dumbfounded by how obfuscating the media has been toward any news that contradicts their neatly packed punditry". Oh and "how they have ignored much of the public's desire for unbiased an unsensational content".
First, let's recognize how off point his vocabulary is. By "obfuscating" we mean - from any standard lexicon - the obscuring of the intended meaning of communication by making the message difficult to understand. So Frosh Dubke seems to be complaining the mainstream media, in his experience, is obscuring all the communications concerning "contradictory news". But what is the contradictory news? In fact, as I have shown, it is almost entirely balderdash, i.e. fake news. See e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/07/skewering-another-right-wing-conspiracy.html
In fact, what young Dubke regards as "contradicting news" basically falls into the categories of half-baked conspiracy ideations - such as pizzagate and the Fusion GPS -DNC conspiracy rubbish, or out and out dissembling by their hero. Into the latter we find the bunkum that he really won the popular vote, that he really won New Hampshire (which he also called a "den of drug abuse"), that Obama wiretapped him, and he had the biggest Inaugural crowds ever.
In each case had this news intern done the most minimal research he'd have learned how the mainstream media fact-checked each and every one of those, showing how all were Trumpian BS, horse pockey, nonsense, out right lies. So why in hell would any self-respecting news organization publish such bollocks? Why would a respectable cable news venue broadcast it? Just to appease dunderheads too lazy to check facts themselves? Dubke doesn't ask himself such questions. He's more miffed that the mainstream press has ignored proven dreck.
Which suggests to us one of two things:
Dubke can't recognize dreck when he sees it, hears it, or -
Dubke believes dreck ought to get a hearing, maybe for the weaker- minded, to enhance their gullibility.
As for "ignoring the public's desire for unbiased (and unsensational) content", WHICH public? Are we talking about the serious, level-headed public that watches Rachel Maddow's excellent analyses of the Trump-Russia money laundering links on MSNBC? OR, are we talking about the low information, borderline uneducated who go to Breitbart New and FOX - as they feast on Pizzagate, Alex Jones' Mars' child sex slave conspiracy crappola and other refuse? It appears to me that our illustrious WSJ author Dubke is appealing for the mainstream media to descend to the same level of the fake news sites. From this it appears he could sit right alongside other WSJ traders in pro-Trump bunkum such as Holman Jenkins, Kimberly Strassel and Dan Henninger.
Also, what he's really jaundiced about is that the news organization for which he interns isn't tuned to FOX as opposed to MSNBC.
But this next chestnut really takes the cake - and makes one truly question this kid's basic competence and how he even managed to get an internship at a news organization:
"Every day we hear reports on another bombshell allegation about the Trump administration. Every day more Americans turn their televisions off."
Note the sequence of the two sentences, then their similar starting words "every day". This tells us the frosh is enlisting the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. That is, trying to entice his readers to assume a causal relationship from a merely sequential one: Bombshell allegations about Trump.....Young Americans turning their TVs off.
The sequence is quite evident from the order in which he sets up the two sentences. After all, it works against his modality to put the second sentence first. He obviously wants the careless reader to say "Oh yeah! Those bombshell allegations cause the young to turn off their televisions!"
But this also elicits the question of whether the intern and soon -to- be Georgetown frosh can even distinguish between an allegation and a fact. He doesn't cite any examples so we are clearly left to ferret them out for him. That is, those of us who see his WSJ essay as merely a brief for accepting fake news. (Oh, and btw, if you are granted the privilege of writing in the esteemed Wall Street Journal we presume you have on your "big boy pants" so can sustain a proper criticism of what you put to paper. No kid gloves!)
Let's look at a few of the "bombshells" the mainstream media highlighted this past week.
1) The contradictions of two claims made by Trump, concerning calls received from the head of the Boy Scouts, and the President of Mexico. In the first case, Trump claimed:
"I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech ever made to them."
The Boy Scouts responded: "We are unaware of any such call."
Ouch! A bold faced LIE. Press Secretary Sara "Huckleberry" Sanders later admitted no such call was made by the Scouts to lying Trump. And, btw, if Dubke believes this lying by Trump is small potatoes and a chief executive's truthfulness is of minor import, then he has no business in any news capacity, period. I'd also say he has no business in any foreign service capacity. But it doesn't stop there. We then beheld:
2)Trump's claim at a cabinet meeting:
"Even the president of Mexico called me. They said for their southern border very few people are coming because they know they're not going to get through out border. Which is the ultimate compliment."
But, the Mexican Foreign Ministry responded that President Enrique Pena Nieto "has not recently spoken to Donald Trump over the telephone".
So, another lie. Once more these lies disclose Trump a compulsive, pathological liar. This is of utmost importance, because if a president can't be trusted to speak the truth in everyday affairs how the hell can we trust him when a crisis erupts? I for one wouldn't trust a damned word he says if he asserted the North Koreans were planning an attack. Given his background I'd chalk it up to another lie. Why believe a compulsive, pathological liar?
Again, let us note these phone call claims made by Trump were not "allegations" but stone cold fact, although lies. He did make the claims, the media didn't invent that, it's just that the claims of the calls' content were untrue. The same goes for the transcripts released concerning earlier conversations Trump had in January with President Pena Nieto and Australia's Malcom Turnbull. Those were actual classified transcripts which some fearsome patriot leaked to show Trump's innate instability and not "allegations".
They each showed a chief executive with impaired speech as well as intellectual disability - a person who has no business being anywhere near nuclear codes. Dubke may not like this exposure, in fact he may hate it, but ....tough shit. It's the truth.
The intern frosh from Georgetown also claims he "voted for Trump reluctantly" but this is hard to believe given how hard he's sucking up to him now, in his essay. Indeed he admits:
"Like much of my family since the election I have been drawn toward nontraditional news sources from Fox News to Breitbart."
In other words, the kid gobbles up fake news.. His justification is even more incredible and outright hair raising:
"They may peddle biased and occasionally incorrect information but at least conservative news outlets welcome me with open arms."
And why do you think that is, sonny? Because of your peerless news savvy and skills? Or is it that they recognize a fellow gullible low information moron and dummy?
More revealing still is this next bit of whining:
"I feel marginalized when I watch NBC or CNN or when I read the New York Times and Washington Post."
Why does the kid feel marginalized? If we set aside the possibility that he feels challenged by greater reading demands this leaves only one logical explanation: young Dubke is afraid of the truth. (And the kid has admitted the news sources he favors "peddle fake news and incorrect information")
Dubke attempts to gain a sense of objectivity for himself by admitting "Donald Trump was a flawed candidate and is a flawed President" but then seeks to deflect the issue by writing that he'd "like to repeat to journalists what I've been told in school: Show, don't tell".
Wowser! How original! So Donald Jr's emails - which he himself exposed for all the world to see aren't showing? Trump's claims of phone calls received (which were outright lies) don't make the cut for showing? The transcripts leaked that show Trump's pathetic responses to Nieto and Trunbull aren't showing?
Trump, for god's sake, couldn't keep loyalty with his own AG Jeff Sessions. He humiliated ol' Jeff for most of the week before last, calling him a "loser" and musing about firing him. And doing so in tweets no less!
I would say the "showing" standard to meet the kid's demands was met and then some.
Reading the end of his essay is even more disheartening than the preceding segments. We are asked to believe or accept this new generation of young conservatives is simply too weak, unprepared or lacking in knowledge to take on liberals in hearty, no holds barred debate. They'd rather retire to a corner and whine and pout. He claims most of his peers "don't pay attention to politics" because they "don't want to get into an argument". As for himself:
"The reasons for staying informed are gradually being outweighed by the desire to be accepted...or at least left alone with our world view".
Which is perhaps the most pathetic statement ever made by an incoming college freshman, and one which one hopes Dubke can dispense with by the time he reaches senior year. What "Mr. Right Snowflake" intern needs to ask himself is why so many millions of youth on the left - like my niece Shayl and sister Rori - are highly engaged and energized with the resistance. Say like being involved in the Indivisible Movement, see e.g.
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/karin-kamp/71133/how-the-indivisible-movement-is-fueling-resistance-to-trump
Why the difference between the left's youth and the right's? Why are the former willing to argue, be politically active and ignore fake news? What is that "magic" ingredient that makes the difference?
Maybe they recognize what the devoted Trumpsters like Dubke do not. That Trump has done absolutely nothing for the average working man or woman. He has instead championed his own Trump corporate kingdom and the wealthy. In other words, his presidency to date is grounded in ignorance, immorality, irrationality and ineptitude.
Maybe, to use Shayl's parlance, it's past time those like Dubke finally "wake up and start facing reality instead of running away from it."
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/74393/the-light-at-the-end-of-trumps-dark-tunnel
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