Three Easy Pieces

I always say I’m going to make these short because I’m in a hurry but I really am this morning so I apologize in advance if there is even less editing than normal.

Here are three easy pieces that were brought to my attention by some of our commenters. (note to self: add attribution later) These are relevant because they exemplify the danger that accompanies our clueless, homogenous, upper middle class, ivy league educated class of journalism. If Trump wins in the fall, they are to blame, for various reasons.

1. ) Matt Taibbi wrote his “Why I’m voting for <insert name of anyone not named Hillary Clinton>” piece recently. It was predictably awful in the typical white male grad student way that we have all come to know and loathe. How old are you, Matt? 46? Ahhh, it all makes sense now. Matt is pushing up against the age where he could easily be mistaken for one of those old, uncool Clintonistas who don’t know how to use snapchat and has no energy. The horror! Who will ask him to share a latte, cater to his every tantrum demand or fluff his ego to make him feel like he’s 23 again? Someone might think he’s not creative class anymore. Well, we can’t have that, can we Matt?

OMG, do his readers know he’s FORTY SIX??

The rebuttal to Matt’s piece by Trevor LaFauci, titled

Honest and Unmerciful: An Open Letter to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine

is dead on. Actually, LaFauci is nicer to Matt than he deserves. But Matt is in that class of people who think that people like us are “silly”. You know, concerned with parties playing games with rules and caring about who actually runs the country and with how much experience. Stuff like that.

{{rolling eyes}}

2.) Jill Abramson gave an interview to Glenn Thrush at Politico. Audio warning: Abramson has a voice that is very hard to listen to. That’s not a sexist comment. It’s just the truth. She admits that Hillary gets more scrutiny than other candidates. She feels that the left demands more purity from Hillary than the other candidates. We went over that yesterday. Also, see Matt Taibbi’s piece of work. On second thought, don’t read Matt’s piece of work. It’s silly.

At the end of this interview, Glenn says he has found that his colleagues actively avoid writing positive pieces about Clinton and anyone who writes a positive piece is mocked by his or her peers. THIS I completely believe. It’s middle school all over again in most newsrooms. It’s the most honest admission I have heard from a journalist in 20 years. The problem is, who’s going to be the first one to stop doing it? And what makes these journalists believe that voters will eventually come around to Clinton when she’s been made to look like a pathological liar and phony compared to Donald Trump?

3.) Gene Lyons blasts the Bernie Bros for recirculating old Republican memes about the Clintons. But it’s this part that really burned my oatmeal:

Following upon a posting by the invaluable Kevin Drum that shows job openings and salaries rising, consumer optimism improving and gasoline prices way down, Bernstein adds that as “the Obama years haven’t resulted in recession, soaring inflation or a foreign misadventure with major American casualties — in other words, anything that produces serious political reaction.

This is where journalists are missing the mark. It has not been a great recovery out here. It’s been bloody miserable. The jobs that are replacing our careers are part time, contractor, hourly, poorly paid and with fewer benefits. If you have never had to buy an Obamacare policy off the exchanges, you have no idea how loathed they are and how much resentment they are creating. And I am a liberal Democrat. You will never catch me at a Trump Rally.

There’s more to come on the economic front when the new overtime rules go into effect, dumping an estimated 3.2 million people out of the professional class of workers to become hourly drones while their employers tie themselves into knots trying to avoid paying overtime. Just wait until those stories start flowing out during an election year. Or will the Kevin Drums of the world just not cover that in the belief that everything is hunky dory?

Out of touch does not begin to describe the media. No wonder people are angry. You guys are twits.