Category Archives: Random Blogging

Words and Meanings

Can we Americans talk to each other? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no, and the intentional misuse of language is one reason we can’t.

I think it was GOP strategist Frank Luntz who first advised his party to obscure its goals by using phrases that softened/concealed meaning; he even wrote a book back in 2007 titled “Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear.” As Deborah Tannen pointed out in 2003 (link unavailable),

Take the repeal of the estate tax. An “estate” sounds like a large amount of money. Indeed, before President Bush persuaded Congress to legislate a phase out of the estate tax, only the largest 2 percent of estates were subject to this tax. But change the name to “death tax” and many more Americans become sympathetic to repeal. After all, everyone dies. Death is bad enough without being taxed.

How many would get all worked up about an exceedingly rare abortion procedure (that the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimated represents less than one-fifth of 1 percent of all abortions performed in the United States in 2000)? But attach the name “partial-birth abortion” and a second-trimester fetus becomes a half-born baby. 

Who among us wants to call ourselves anti-life? Win the name game and you’re more than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you’re on your way to winning the war.

Since the demise of Roe v. Wade, we’ve all become familiar with arguments about what it means to be “pro life.” Nice human beings all want to be supportive of life, but Red state legislators are rather clearly unconcerned with the lives of rape victims or women with dangerous pregnancies; they are also unconcerned with the health and wellbeing of those babies they’ve “saved” once they’re born. (And how “pro life” is the GOP’s all-in support for gun “rights”? Is defense of permitless carry really consistent with calling oneself “pro life”?)

The use of language to mask what’s really going on is hardly limited to the abortion debate. Take the indiscriminate use of the word choice. Choice is a great term; it can be positive–as in citizens’ ability to choose a religion, a marriage partner, or whether to procreate (choices the GOP’s Christian Nationalists oppose), or it can be a word that masks less positive “choices”–destroying the public school system via “school choice,” or “choosing” not to open your place of business to Blacks or gays. 

That latter “choice” brings me to another highly contested term: religious liberty. Who isn’t for religious liberty–the right to believe or live as one’s conscience dictates?

What today’s MAGA GOP means by religious liberty, however, is their right to remake the law of land in order to privilege fundamentalist Christianity–to return women, gays, non-Whites and non-Christians to the subordinate status in American society that their religion dictates. Requiring obedience to civil rights laws violates that dominance. (Serving that slice of pizza to a gay person clearly imposes upon their religious liberty…) 

The publication of Project 2025 provides evidence that intentional misuse of language continues to shape far-Right discourse; for example, the effort to destroy the civil service is presented as a path toward “efficiency.” (In this case, that may even be a proper use of language–dictatorships are usually more efficient than messy democracies.)

Project 2025 is also strong on “family values”–another term favored by a political party that certainly doesn’t value “those” families. What Project 2025 calls “family values” are policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ citizens and women, and emphasize the importance of traditional nuclear families.

There are other words that obscure rather than illuminate. A recent favorite is “weaponization”–an accusation hurled at government officials applying existing laws to Republicans. Another is actually a new word: “woke.” Woke-ism is basically a commitment to fundamental fairness for all American citizens, which raises the question why it produces so hysterical a negative response.

These newer terms join old favorites like “socialism”–the Rightwing’s preferred label for any social program. Social Security and Medicare were originally opposed (and still are) as “socialist.” (Again, as with “efficiency” the label isn’t incorrect–just pejorative. The U.S., like all modern societies, has a mixed economy, with a robust private sector protected by socialized efforts like police, fire protection, garbage collection and other collective services.)

I’m sure readers can come up with other examples. Disinformation would be impossible without the ability to disguise truth  by misusing and distorting language. I believe it was French diplomat Charles Maurice De Talleyrand who famously said that “God gave humans language so they could conceal their thoughts from one another.”

No wonder Americans are having difficulty communicating…. 

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A Bonus Post Because I Can’t Help Myself

When I was a member of a very different Republican Party, it was easy to laugh at the way Democrats tended to self-destruct. Now, with American democracy and the rule of law teetering on the brink, it’s far less amusing.

It is hard for me to believe number of people who should know better who are undermining the party’s chances of winning in November by clutching their pearls and indulging in pious, handwringing pleas for Joe Biden to withdraw. Talk about “virtue signaling” while giving talking points to the Trumpers.

It’s one thing for people like those who comment here–most of whom are unfamiliar with political calendars and the arcane legal constraints on campaigns. It’s another to see presumably knowledgable pundits display their total ignorance of what is even possible.

Permit me to take you on a visit the real world: any effort to “swap out” candidates would have to take place at the upcoming Democratic convention on August 19th. While all states don’t have early voting, many do–in Indiana, early voting starts October 8th.

Even if the delegates could quickly agree on a replacement candidate–highly unlikely–there would be no time for that candidate to mount anything approaching a campaign, which requires money and messaging and field offices staffed with workers devoted to and knowledgable about the candidate. But of course, there is no single alternative acceptable to the entire party. The obvious choice would be Kamala, as Vice-President, but thanks to racism and misogyny–not to mention Republican and intra-party efforts to paint her as a floundering “diversity choice”–she couldn’t win either the delegates or the election. Of course, passing over a Black Vice-President would immediately jeopardize the essential Black vote (not to mention a significant part of the female vote.)

A two-month campaign with a divisive candidate is only part of it. The substantial funds Biden has raised couldn’t easily or rapidly be transferred to the new candidate (if at all). And much as I believe polling is badly broken, most polls do show that the only person who can defeat Donald Trump–and yes, save democracy–is Joe Biden.

Biden has been an excellent, even transformational, President. His cabinet is composed of talented, knowledgable, traditional public servants, and his Vice President is far more accomplished and adept than the nay-sayers paint her. If Biden had the oratorical skills of an Obama, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, but as a FaceBook friend noted–under a photo of Hitler addressing a rapt crowd–deciding who to support on the basis of oratory isn’t necessarily a great idea.

But even if Biden were as senile as his detractors claim, he would be monumentally preferable to the alternative.

The job of patriotic Americans in the four months between this post and the election is to defeat Donald Trump and the MAGA fascist movement.  Nothing else matters. A Biden victory will allow us to deal with a corrupt Supreme Court and protect reproductive choice; a defeat–made more likely by the know-nothing naysayers–will facilitate remaking the nation in the form the authors of Project 2025 have mapped out.

There is no choice. This is our civil war, and we have to win it.

If Biden is truly impaired, he can step down after the election. Yes, that would give us a Black female President, and that would once again motivate the haters who crawled out from under their rocks after Obama was elected.

Right now, our marching orders are simple: defeat MAGA up and down the ballot, or lose America.

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What Fundraising Tells Us

Money, money, money…in politics, it matters greatly–but not necessarily in the way most Americans think about it.

One of my most politically-savvy friends points out that candidates need to raise enough money to get their message out, but need not out-raise or even match the fundraising of their opponents. Candidates definitely need sufficient funds to disseminate a persuasive message, but they need not blanket the airwaves. (For that matter, the airwaves are of declining utility, given the move to podcasts and streaming.)

That said, what can a candidate’s fundraising tell us?

I was initially excited to see the rise of the online fundraising that focused on generating many small-dollar donations, because I (naively) assumed that a candidate’s dependence on lots of folks giving less than $200 would reduce the influence of “big money” on candidates. However, I have come to realize that these appeals for small-dollar sums have had some very negative results.

The first is just annoying: those of us who are politically active–or simply unlucky enough to get on a list of partisan contributors–find our email inboxes inundated with appeals. (I have to believe that most people have come to respond as I do–by ignoring them all.)

Far more serious, however, is the way in which these appeals to small-dollar donors have incentivized extremism. The Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the political world have figured out that over-the-top accusations and ridiculous fabrications–what I’ve come to call “performative politics”–raise more money than serious communications of sound policy positions. Hysterical requests for  money to combat the “evil other” is more compelling and raises more money than requests to support thoughtful policymakers.

We need to remember, however, that while the fact that extremist A has raised more money online than sane candidate B tells us something about the passions and prejudices of candidate A’s supporters, it tells us very little about the number of voters committed to voting for candidate A.

If we are interested in assessing public opinion, it seems likely that the most relevant information communicated by these small-dollar donations isn’t the amounts raised, but the number of individual donors who are actually able to cast a ballot for the donee candidate. Given the fact that online solicitations aren’t simply going to people who live in that state and thus able to vote for a particular candidate, that information is tough to come by.

There is, however, one contest where the number and source of contributions rather than the amount raised can shed light on the strength of a candidacy: the Presidency. And that makes a recent report from Vox extremely interesting.

It’s very easy to overstate the degree to which Donald Trump is supported by America’s business establishment.

Why it matters: Just because corporate America has serious issues with Joe Biden doesn’t mean they are in Trump’s camp.

By the numbers: Data compiled by Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld show that zero Fortune 100 CEOs have donated to Trump this election cycle.

  • That’s the same amount of support he had when he opposed Hillary Clinton in 2016.
  • In 2020, when he was running as the incumbent, Trump managed to pick up the support of two Fortune 100 CEOs. The previous time a Republican incumbent was running for president, in 2004, George W. Bush picked up the support of 42 such CEOs.

Between the lines: Roughly two-thirds of CEOs are registered Republicans, but they’re not MAGA.

  • “The top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden,” writes Sonnenfeld in a NYT op-ed. “They largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other.”

The other side: Big-name investors seem more likely to support Trump than big-name CEOs.

  • Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone is probably Trump’s most prominent investment world supporter. Susquehanna’s Jeff Yass was described recently by Bloomberg as “a former Never Trumper who’s recently softened to become an OK-Fine-Might-As-Well-Be Trumper.”

The bottom line: “Mr. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party,” writes Sonnenfeld.

Trump’s fundraising totals have been swelled by a couple of huge donations from “big-name investors.” Those donors each have one vote–just as we peons do.

We all need to cast them.

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Where “Both Sides-ism” Comes From

One of the most maddening aspects of our current information environment is the media’s constant reach for a bogus equivalency between actions and opinions that most of us see as decidedly unequivalent. Perhaps I’m indulging in false nostalgia, but I remember a time when accuracy and–to the extent possible–objectivity were the markers of good journalism. (I tend to think that all changed when Fox “News” entered the picture and equated fairness with “balance,” but the essay linked below suggests the picture is more complicated than that…)

I still agree with whoever said the journalist’s job is not to report that person A says it’s raining and person B says it’s not–it’s to look out the window and tell us who’s right.

A recent article by Rick Perlstein in the American Prospect considered this aspect of contemporary media. He contrasted what I’m calling “both-sides-ism” with the approach taken by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, a site I depend upon for clear-eyed reporting. (I’m not the only one who finds TPM a valuable resource; I note that several of the other sources upon which regularly rely, including Robert Hubbell and Heather Cox Richardson, also regularly cite to TPM.)

Perlstein is writing a book

about how the last 25 years of American politics brought our democratic republic to the brink of collapse. It apportions one-third of the blame to the failings of elite political journalism. One way I make the case is by pointing to two movements that arose in the opening months of Barack Obama’s presidency, and describing how both were reported in The New York Times.

The first was covered at a volume that betokens obsession. It was called the Tea Party. The Times told its story largely in the way its leaders wished: as a spontaneous outpouring of nonpartisan anger from ordinary Middle Americans at the alleged fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama administration.

The second movement was formed from the dregs of the 1990s militia movement. It sought to recruit active-duty military and police to thwart the Obama administration’s alleged plan, as founder Stewart Rhodes described it in his original manifesto, to “go house-to-house to disarm the American people … with orders to shoot all resisters.” These were the Oath Keepers, whom the Times only ever mentioned in a single news story, in passing, busy as they were sanding down the Tea Party to fit it into the both-sides “polarization” narrative that defines mainstream American political journalism.

It was a pretty striking example of how a supposed Newspaper of Record actively renders it impossible for ordinary news consumers to form an accurate picture of what was going on in front of their noses.

Perstein contrasts that faux equivalency approach with TalkingPointsMemo.com which he says is the “actual publication of record, compiling a bountiful archive of the ways “extremism” and “mainstream” merged in the history of the Republican Party from the dawn of President George W. Bush to the present.”

The essay is lengthy, and includes both a history of TPM and theories about how we got to this point. One part of that discussion really resonated with me; Perlstein writes that the Internet created a new D.C.-based national political journalism space—the Politicos, the Axioses, The Hill, etc., all of which are funded by a subset of the national corporate lobbying budget.

You advertise in Politico, you sponsor Politico’s events, because you need to talk to the people who run the state from Washington D.C., who don’t give a fuck if you are a political obsessive in Kentucky. ‘I need to be talking to the staffers who write the legislation on Capitol Hill.’… And so your publication can’t be left, or even right, in the sense that they see it. You’ve got to be nonpartisan and centrist. Whether or not the cocky 35-year-old political reporter who’s a dick on Twitter understands where his both-sides thing comes from—that’s where it comes from.”

As Marshall is quoted in their discussion, “What we think of as the ‘both sides’ thing is an artifact of the economic structure.”

Follow the money…

Here’s the problem: functioning democracies depend upon the existence of an informed electorate. When the most reliable sources of political news try to find a “balance” between disinformation and accuracy, they aren’t just distorting reality. They are undermining democracy.

In all fairness, no reporting is, or can be, perfect. Even the best reporters can only see through their own eyes, interpret what they see through their own worldviews.

But accurate, objective journalism can tell us whether it’s raining.

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And Don’t Forget Sinclair…

Most sentient Americans who follow political news know that Fox “News” is a propaganda arm of the GOP. Fewer people are aware of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which–as Talking Poiints Memo recently reminded us–also pipes disinformation and right-wing partisan talking points through its network of “185 television stations in 86 markets affiliated with all the major broadcast networks.”


This month, Sinclair Broadcast Group has flooded a vast network of local news websites with misleading articles suggesting that President Biden is mentally unfit for office. The articles are based on specious social media posts by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which are then repackaged to resemble news reports. The thinly disguised political attacks are then syndicated to dozens of local news websites owned by Sinclair, where they are given the imprimatur of mainstream media brands, including NBC, ABC, and CBS.

Sounds bad, right? It’s quite a bit worse than that. As Judd points out, the kinds of material Sinclair has been pumping through it local stations are the most rancid of the attacks on Biden’s age and mental fitness. I’m talking about things like Biden “pooping” on stage during the D-Day commemoration, supposedly “freezing” during other public appearances (according to deceptively edited videos), and his slurring or stuttering of words.

This flood of disinformation is nonstop, it’s still often under the radar, and it’s saturating millions of American homes.

While Fox is widely recognized as a source of disinformation, Sinclair has thus far avoided becoming a household name and  identifiably untrustworthy source of information. That’s because the company lacks branding; it owns stations that are affiliated with all three major broadcast networks. When someone tunes in to Sean Hannity, they do so knowing what they’ll get; the disinformation purveyed by Sinclair is far more insidious.

A couple of years ago, the company required its commentators–news anchors on a wide variety of platforms–to read a statement bashing so-called “fake news.” That particular ploy got a fair amount of notice due to the identical language on multiple stations, but much of Sinclair’s propaganda is less obvious.

As the Washington Post reported earlier this year,

Every year, local television news stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting conduct short surveys among viewers to help guide the year’s coverage.

A key question in each poll, according to David Smith, the company’s executive chairman: “What are you most afraid of?”

The answers are evident in Sinclair’s programming. Crime, homelessness, illegal drug use, failing schools and other societal ills have long been core elements of local TV news coverage. But on Sinclair’s growing nationwide roster of stations, the editorial focus reflects Smith’s conservative views and plays on its audience’s fears that America’s cities are falling apart, according to media observers, Smith associates, and current and former staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters.

As the article points out, Sinclair offers its audience “a perspective that aligns with Trump’s oft-stated opinion that America’s cities, especially those run by Democratic politicians, are dangerous and dysfunctional.”
 
“Sinclair stations deliver messages that appeal to older, White, suburban audiences, and they play up crime stories in a way that is disproportionate to their statistical presence,” said Anne Nelson, a journalist and author of “Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.” “All of it is fearmongering and feeds into a racialized view of cities.”

I have often wondered where friends from suburbia get these incredibly distorted pictures of urban life. At root, it is clearly influenced by the fact that cities–especially their downtowns–are where “those people” live. Apparently, propaganda purveyors like Fox and Sinclair (and their rapidly growing number of clones) understand the power of prejudice and intentionally encourage the racism that motivates a disproportionate percentage of Trump voters.

A Think article written not long after the scandal of the identical “opinion” pieces suggested that Sinclair is a “truer” heir to Roger Ailes than even Fox News.

This April, a reporter for a Sinclair-owned TV station revealed that she was fired for refusing to add conservative talking-points to a climate change story. This followed weeks of controversy, including revelations that the media giant had forced local news anchors to read identical scripts denouncing, in Trump-like fashion, “fake” news.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the largest owner of local television stations in America, is still not a household name like, for example, Fox News. Yet it may be the truest heir to former Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’s original vision of conservative news programming. Long before cable news, Ailes — who died in 2017 — had been dreaming up ways to inject local news programs with a conservative spin.

Here’s a list of the stations Sinclair owns.

And we wonder why Americans don’t know who or what to trust….

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