Why shouldn’t the Fourth Estate intensify its scrutiny of this administration, bearing down on its abuses and scandals?
Washington Post
Posted inPolitical Animal
Full-Blown Insanity: Trump’s Paranoia Gets Worse
Trump will never lay down his weapons in his war against civility, legality and democracy.
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Royal Scam: A Press Corps at Its Lowest Point
Seriously, who gives a damn? The attention that American mainstream-media entities are giving to the worthlessness in Windsor Castle today is nothing short of repulsive, an indictment of the Fourth Estate’s fetish for frivolity over seriousness and substance, a worsening of the anti-intellectual trends in American culture. Why are we paying so much attention to […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Exiled by Main Street: Will Republican Voter Self-Suppression Manifest Itself in 2020?
Unlike his affair with Stormy Daniels, he may not get lucky again. A year ago, Bernard L. Fraga, Brian Schaffner, Jesse Rhodes and Sean McElwee observed in the Washington Post that “[W]hat’s clear is that the jump in white turnout in key swing states and drop in black turnout [in the 2016 presidential election] may […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
We’ll Never Know How Many Will Suffer Thanks to Scott Pruitt–And Those Who Continue to Support Him
Five years ago today–and damn, does that seem like a lifetime ago–New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait declared that President Obama wasn’t getting enough credit from climate activists for his leadership on reducing emissions. Back then, Chait observed: The assumption that Obama’s climate-Âchange record is essentially one of failure is mainly an artifact of environmentalists’ […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
PBS Plans to Give Us a Progressive Talk Show, Too, Right?
We all know the sad saga of public television bending over backwards to appease right-wing interests and dull the Republican desire to put Big Bird in a skillet, but this is beyond ridiculous: As the Donald Trump administration mulls whacking its funding for PBS, the pubcaster said today that it is launching a conservative talk […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Media is the Message
I didn’t think the Fox News Channel could give us anything funnier than Laura Ingraham’s desperate attempts to garner ratings by insulting LeBron James, but the news that Fox has given another unlistenable wingnut radio host, Mark Levin, his own show—which begins tonight—is more hilarious than Redd Foxx in his prime: As previously announced, the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Only the Best People
Maybe he’s going to say he got railroaded: A top official charged with overseeing the safety of U.S. railroads has resigned “effective immediately,” the Department of Transportation said Saturday after POLITICO raised questions about whether he had been simultaneously working as a public relations consultant for a sheriff’s department in Mississippi. Heath Hall became the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Sad Way to Go
No one ever wants to speak ill of the dead, but what happens when the dead have spoken ill of themselves? John Coleman, the “Good Morning America” forecasting icon who co-founded The Weather Channel, died [last] Saturday. The 83-year-old Coleman, in his later years, may have become best known for championing skepticism about the human […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Keith Olbermann’s Famous Last Words
As soon as I heard the news, I thought back to the fall of 1993, when Billy Joel began hinting in the wake of the release of the River of Dreams album that he wouldn’t be releasing any new material, and Michael Jordan announced his retirement from professional basketball. Yes, the Piano Man did return […]
