Maddow ginormously bungled the shutdown. But that’s how it’s done on our side:MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2011
The New York Times’ profile in cowardice: When Gail Collins gets something pretty much right, we give credit here at the HOWLER. And good lord! If we’re willing to grade on a curve, the high lady earned a fairly high grade for last Saturday’s column.
After a bit of silly-bill foofaw, Collins debunked three of Donald Trump’s ongoing claims about Obama’s deeply troubling birth. Example:
Trump has paraded all about, telling millions of voters that Obama’s paternal grandmother once said she was present at his birth—at his birth, which took place in Kenya. This claim is perfect garbage, but Trump just keeps pimping on.
Collins shot it down. She also addressed Trump’s claim (though weakly) that Obama won’t present his birth certificate. And she shot down Trump’s repellently stupid claim that no one remembers Obama, or has any photographs, from his early years. Regarding this point, she quoted Trump as he lied in Suzanne Malveaux’s face:
COLLINS (4/9/11): This week on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux played Trump clips of Hawaiians reminiscing about the schoolchild Obama for a documentary the network had done on the president.
“Look, I didn’t say that ... If he was 3 years old or 2 years old or 1 year old and people remember him, that’s irrelevant,” Trump responded. “You have to be born in this country.”
But Trump did say that, on various occasions, speaking to millions of people.
According to Collins, he has even said that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s autobiography. Truly, there is no limit to the places this slimy man will go.
(Remember when this press corps pretended to be troubled by Al Gore’s alleged lying? By the “lies” they themselves had dreamed up?)
On CNN, Malveaux did an excellent job, confronting Trump with reams of information, challenging him again and again. But the silence of the New York Times editorial board constitutes a major profile in cowardice—and a very public lesson in the way our “journalism” works.
Donald Trump is doing vast harm to our political culture. He is disinforming millions of gullible voters, thus heightening our destructive tribal divides. He’s baldly lying, through his teeth; he continues this repellent conduct in the face of all contradiction. But his hometown newspaper is too polite to offer back-talk to such a great man, much as it has rarely dared contradict its billionaire mayor.
Elsewhere, big pundits say how much they like Donald Trump as they tamely, deferentially challenge him about his disgraceful misconduct.
Barbara Walters won’t give the facts to her viewers, who got disinformed by this vile, slimy man. And inside the Times’ High Gotham aerie, Andrew Rosenthal’s timorous gang trembles and quakes, like the bunch of vassals they are. But then, they have behaved this way for a long time.
By the way, why doesn’t Charlie Rose challenge Mayor Bloomberg a bit more robustly? Remember the way he rolled over for Wendy Kopp? For our five-part report on perhaps “the worst interview ever,” see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/16/08.
More on those questions to follow. But life can be good on the TV machine if you have a billion bucks. Especially in High Upper Gotham, the vassals tend to defer.
