Political Theatre category archive
The Four Ds of Trumpery 0
At the Bangor Daily News, Amy Fried counts the Ds:
Along with defensiveness, Trump demonstrates denial, distraction and deceit.
Follow the link for her explanation.
Misdirection Play, “Politicization” Dept. 0
Monica Messe reveals the “don’t politicize this” scam. A snippet:
What “Don’t politicize this” often means is, Don’t politicize this if the shooter belongs to me.
Follow the link for her reasoning.
Highlights Reel 0
Thom looks at several under-covered stories from the news.
Note: Tom Price was fired (or resigned under pressure, which is fundamentally the same thing) after this segment was recorded, but that does not negate Thom’s larger points about priorities, budgets, and news coverage, as the next guy is likely to be just as bad.
A Cavalcade of Misdirection Plays 0
Timothy Egan tries to pierce the fog of bloviation.
The Court Is in Sessions 0
My first boss was an excellent boss. He was considerate, clear, consistent, and understanding; and he knew how to turn an employee’s error into a teaching experience.
One day after I had worked for him long enough to ask such a question, I asked him where he learned how to be such a good boss.
He paused for a moment, then said, “I always think about what my first boss would have done. Then I do exactly the opposite.”
Joe Patrice thinks of what Jeff Sessions said about free speech on campus and suggests that Sessions is just such an exemplar as my first boss’s first boss.
Twits on Twitter, Ryan’s Derp Dept. 0
Farron skewers Paul Ryan’s efforts to promote trickle-on economics.
Intertwined 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Azadeh Aalai takes on the myth that sports and politics exist separate and apart from each other. A snippet:
Follow the link to read why she said that.
It’s All about the Benjamins 0
Bob Molinaro, sportswriter extraordinaire, checks a fact:
Facebook Frolics, Mining the Depths Dept. 0
Will Bunch critiques the minecraft:
Follow the link for thoughtful and considered discussion of what happens when forces of deception and disruption prey on ersatz patriotism.
“Nonsense Debt” 0
Josh Marshall looks at the developing war within the Republican Party between the absurd and the absolutely crazy, witness the recent Alabama primary victory of Judge Roy Moore.
Marshall suggests that Republicans have done it to themselves. (Unfortunately, they are poised to do it to the rest of us, also.)
Here’s a crucial bit; follow the link for the rest (emphasis added).
This is the crux of the issue. Last spring I said the Trump phenomenon was a product of what I termed ‘nonsense debt‘. Republicans had spent years pumping their voters up on increasingly extreme and nonsensical claims and promises. This worked very well for winning elections. But it had also built up a debt that eventually had to be repaid. Concretely, they were making claims and promises that were either factually ridiculous, politically unviable or unacceptable to a broad swath of the voting public. Eventually, you get elected and need to produce. By definition that’s never really possible: both because the claims and promises are nonsensical and unviable but also because a politics based on reclamation, revenge, and impulse is almost impossible to satisfy through normal legislative politics.
Image via Job’s Anger.
Twits on Twitter, Do the Math Dept. 0
An Oxford University study reports that the use of Twitter to spread lies was immense. A snippet:
Nationwide, an average of 25 percent of election-related tweets contained material from established news organizations, the researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute wrote. However, they said, “a worryingly large proportion” of tweets about the election – as much as 57 percent in West Virginia – came from junk news sources, as well as Russia’s state-owned television network and the transparency group WikiLeaks, which published unverified stories.
In the election’s three decisive states, the researchers found that fake and junk news constituted 40 percent of the sampled election-related tweets that went to Pennsylvanians, 34 percent to Michigan voters and 30 percent to those in Wisconsin. In other swing states, the figure reached 42 percent in Missouri, 41 percent in Florida, 40 percent in North Carolina, 38 percent in Colorado and 35 percent in Ohio.
The Professional Is the Political 0
Responding to a Wall Street Journal article whose author wistfully yearns for the good old days of “apolitical” big time sports, Justin Levin points out that such times exist only in Never Never Land. He explains why the national anthem is played before every pro baseball and football games (hint: it was a politicized decision). An excerpt:
Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the NFL, and Spike Eckert and Bowie Kuhn, the commissioners of baseball, worked to put their sports on record in support of the Vietnam War, while laboring to silence those in the game who disagreed. While many believe that before the protests of the last year, the national anthem and other patriotic elements of sporting events symbolized unity, they are actually remnants of this campaign to interject sports into a bitterly divisive political debate.
