Open Mic for the week of 12/11/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Jaybird if this is for the new week – you misdated it.Report
Fixed!
(Sorry about that.)Report
Moving on … if you think the doctors in Texas were wrong not provide an abortion to Kate Cox, read what the Texas Supreme Court wrote when they denied the order granting her the right to have an abortion in Texas:
Why is this important? Because her doctors though t they had met the standard of defining her life in danger, and still refused to give her the abortion because they feared prosecution. Meaning contra the Texas Supreme Court, the law is working as intended, by forcing women to leave Texas to seek abortion care.
Oh, and I really hope someone can tell me why Ken Paxton thinks providing Kate Cox an abortion was a threat to the state of Texas.
I’ll wait.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/us/kate-cox-abortion-law-texas-case/index.htmlReport
E3 is dead.
Personally, I think that the beginning of the end was when they moved it from “journalists only” to “hey, these blogs are journalists too!”
The middle of the end was the ideological shift among journalists from the whole “who, what, when, where, why, how” thing to “does this game have good morals?” thing.
The whole “let’s let everybody who wants to shell out!” ploy attempted to mitigate the shift, but covid blocked that.
Then Geoff made his own E3 and here we are.
E3 is dead.
Long Live Summer Game Fest!Report
95% of game reviews continued to be about how pretty the graphics were, but the fact that any kind of even low-level criticism that films get regularly actually may have proved Roger Ebert right in some ways – maybe some people making games want them to be art, but most gamers just want their shiny toys, and for everybody in gaming to never say anything bad about games, unless it’s something they think are bad about games as well.
Which makes it funny so many supposed gamers claim reviewes are supposed shills, when in reality, they want them to be shills, for the games they like, as we see by the insane pushback any reviewer who doesn’t line up with the zeitgeist gets, and this goes back to Jeff Gerstmann giving Twilight Princess an 8.8 (ironically, Gerstmann is the only person where there’s any proof he was actually pushed to change a score becuase of outside pressure, and most people who think all reviewers are shills or think reviews should be “objective” hate him because he hasn’t become a reactionary).Report
Eh, my go-to example is Kotaku’s review of the PS5:
Sure, they talk about the specs, but why is that part in there? Lemme tell ya, it hasn’t aged well.
There was also a review of Cyberpunk where the reviewer complained that some of the sidequests involved helping police.
“What if I don’t *WANT* to help the police?”, she asked.
Well, without getting into the definition of “sidequest”, I’d ask whether editorial chose the best person to review the game.
I mean, as bad as the PS5 review was, at least it told me about the PS5!
My goal, when I read a review, is to be able to figure out whether I’d like the game. I want to know enough about the reviewer to know if our tastes overlap, but their distaste for police is interesting as a sidenote, I guess, right before they explain the nature of the police sidequests to me.
Something like “Like most good people who share my good opinions, I have a lot of misgivings when it comes to police brutality so when Cyberpunk gives me an opportunity to help police in the game, I ask ‘Why is there not an option for me to join the cyberpsychos and start killing oppressors?’ but the limitations of the game being what they are, I found myself going up against 3-5 generic baddies who were tough to deal with somewhere around levels 5-15 but they became gnats to swat from level 25 on.”
See? That tells you about the sidequests and makes sure that you know that I am a good person and, if you don’t agree with me about George Floyd, you are a bad one.
In the middle of a game review.
About Cyberpunkn.Report
To be fair, “there’s no option to be a renegade cop-exterminator, either you help them or they’re neutral” is a valid criticism of something touted as an open-world open-concept RPG.Report
Eh, one of my buddies a million years ago said that he picked up Grand Theft Auto III and, after the opening mission, picked up a taxi cab and he turned the game into a taxi simulator. He just drove around, picking up fares and dropping them off and avoiding the main storyline.
The game let him do this.
My buddy complained about not being able to find a regular church service, though.Report
So, that’s one review, Jaybird. Why do all writing about a game have to appeal to you?
There are people who want to read that kind of review for those games, you’re just upset you’ve been somehow forced to read it as well. I’m sure there were people upset the first time a movie review went deeper than, “was the camera working well, and did the lighting look OK?” as well, and actually talked about themes.Report
It doesn’t have to appeal to me! It can be an essay about buying the game on steam and eating a cookie and the cookie tasted like one of the weed cookies the guy had at college and how he loved getting lightly baked on an edible and playing Madden ’12 in his dorm room and he and the entire floor had an amazing season that culminated in a superbowl party that was bigger than the party for the actual superbowl.
“That’s a good story”, I might think. “But I still don’t know diddly squat about Soma.”
Hell, I might like discussion of Cyberpunk’s theme!!! “I didn’t want to do some of the sidequests”, doesn’t help me, though. It not only doesn’t tell me about the game, it tells me about the reviewer and the editor and how neither of them were up to the task of reviewing the game.
You know who’s a decent game critic? Yahtzee. Sure, he’s one of the dinosaur “negative” reviewers who makes jokes about how crappy the game is but you really get a good idea of his taste and not only whether a game meets his taste but whether it would meet someone else’s. He likes the Souls games a *LOT* more than I do. That’s okay. I like board games more than he does. That’s okay.
He doesn’t have to write for me. The good news is that he writes about his experience with the game. When he’s done, I know whether I’m likely to enjoy it.
“What if I don’t want to help the cops?”
What the heck.Report
See, right now, Epic Game Store has kicked off its Christmas, erm, “Holiday” event and the free game today is Destiny 2.
I don’t remember anything about Destiny 2. Is it a game that I would like? I mean, it’s free… so the only cost will be disk space and time.
Is this game for me?
Okay. It ain’t. But I can see that there are people for whom it is (“I loved the last 3 Bungie games!”) and this review tells them that it has the stuff that they go to Bungie for (great visuals, faffing about, shooting dudes, skinner box).Report
Yes, for you, that review works for you.
For other people, the reviews you don’t like are useful to them, even if they aren’t useful to you, because they’re not treating a review as a consumer product.
But again, 95% of reviews are still of the the consumer product variety. Go look at an IGN review of the latest Avatar game, it’s basically the same as a review of a game in 2010.
As far as negative reviews go, there are still plenty of negative reviews. But, people hate those as well, if people like the game. It turns out gamers only want reviewers to write reviews they agree with. Which isn’t new, but the difference is, even people who disagree with movie reviewes don’t claim they’re paid off.Report
I don’t want reviews that I agree with.
I want reviews that I *CAN* agree or disagree with.
“The story is interesting insofar as it gives you three different people that you interact with and they don’t agree on what’s going on. Are they crazy? Are two of them lying and one is telling the truth (and which one)? I said that I knew where the story was going twice and, each time, I was wrong. And, get this, the ending was satisfying despite swerving me a couple of times. The gameplay is responsive and I recommend playing with a gamepad rather than a keyboard for this particular experience. The game rewards dodging well a lot more than it rewards pinpoint hit accuracy. And don’t worry if you don’t have the latest 5080i. It runs fine on my warhorse 1060.”
See? That’s a game review that tells me that I might like the game.
And, get this, I can say “dude, the story telegraphed *EVERYTHING*. If you didn’t know that the sleazy corpo was lying from the get-go, I’d wonder if you had spent the last 40 years hiding under a rock. And the combat sucked. It’s effectively a button masher rather than something else. And I have a 3070 and I still had to turn the graphics down to make it playable.”
It’s possible to disagree with that take on the game!
“I find games that don’t wrestle with police violence to be, pardon the pun, copping out. Sure, we’re running around fighting ‘criminals’ but what percentage of these ‘criminals’ wouldn’t be criminals in a more equitable country? My polycule had a discussion about the importance of discussions of Justice, *REAL* Justice, when it comes to games like this one and the game just kept saying ‘this guy is a murderer’ or ‘this lady kills people’ without any explanation of why we think that or the circumstances. There might be many good reasons to kill someone but this game didn’t let us find out whether the ‘murderers’ we were going after had good reasons. If you kill a murderer, the number of murderers remains the same.”
What does this tell you about the game?
*ANYTHING*?
I don’t mind someone having different opinions than I do. It’s fun!
You know the thing where people complain about recipes talking about the person’s childhood and the time they went to go see a dead body before giving you the dang recipe for blueberry pie that you looked up?
This is that.
Just for video games.Report
So, should movie reviwws only be about how good the CGI is, and if the lighting is good, and so on?
Because it sounds like that’s what you want for game reviews – nothing more, because that sounds….poltiical. Scary.
I’d also point out the most of the supposed terrible reviews that get pilloried by people, actually do talk about the graphics, controls, and so, it’s just not the entire review, and considered less important.Report
So, should movie reviwws only be about how good the CGI is, and if the lighting is good, and so on?
And if there’s a story that is essential to gameplay and, if so, whether the story is engaging and if there are certain skills required for the game (twitch skills, tactical skills, the ability to do math in one’s head) which skills those are and how fun the game is if you aren’t that good at one or more of them.
Because it sounds like that’s what you want for game reviews – nothing more, because that sounds….poltiical. Scary.
I got into this above. Don’t just tell me about your political opinions! ALSO TELL ME ABOUT THE GAME.
Here’s the example I gave above:
THAT TELLS ME ABOUT THE SIDEQUESTS.
Don’t just tell me about yourself. I will use insta when I want to know more about you personally.Report
Let’s go Brandon:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12/economy/cpi-consumer-price-index-inflation-november/index.htmlReport
Reminder that “Let’s Go Brandon” is a euphemism for “Fish Joe Biden.”
That aside, what are you giving Biden credit for? Reappointing Powell, a Trump appointee, as Chair of the Federal Reserve? The decline in inflation is due to the Fed raising interest rates, and Biden’s reckless overspending is a major part of the reason why rates had to be raised as high as they have been. Can’t buy a house? Thank Joe Biden!Report
Dark Joe Brandon is troubled by your lack of faith:
https://shop.joebiden.com/dark-roast-mug/Report
Have you not ever heard of mocking sarcasm?Report
I suppose that’s the next best thing to actually understanding the issues.Report
“Reminder that ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ is a euphemism for ‘Fish Joe Biden.'”
It’s worse than that. It hearkens back to an era when crowds would spontaneously burst into chants of abuse against the president, and the media diligently covered for him.Report
I saw this morning that gas at my preferred station had dippled below $3 a gallon. Even ‘stripping out’ food and energy, I thought it bodes well if it continues in that direction.Report
It is rather surprising that there’s a literal war in the Middle East and gas still hasn’t gone back to $5 a gallon.Report
It’s not a war that takes in an oil producing country, and ahs yet to threaten any part of the supply chain.Report
San Francisco has successfully eradicated moving violations:
See the evidence for yourself here (you may have to click the “total number of traffic citations” button).Report
Odd that it defaults to a view that makes it look like traffic citations have risen. You’d think they’d want to shout from the rooftops about their anti-racist achievement.Report
Maybe the Bud Light boycott is over?
Kid Rock has said that he’s not boycotting anymore. Dana White defended his multi-million dollar deal between the UFC and Bud Light.
Both did this in an interview with Tucker Carlson, I guess.
Here’s the argument: Bud Light deserved pushback after the Heinerscheid fiasco and, looky there, they got pushback. Now they’re obviously reaching out to people like Kid Rock and corporations like the UFC and they are back to pandering to their old target audience instead of pandering to folks that they hope will become their new target audience.
If you want corporations to cater to you, you can’t just use the stick. You have to also use the carrot.
Other arguments include “they didn’t apologize or anything… they didn’t so much as admit that it was dumb to do what Heinerscheid said. They just stopped doing it and then gave money to Kid Rock and Dana White.”
Anyway, it looks like the boycott is officially over. Those of you who never really drank it can go back to continuing to not really drinking it but not feeling like not drinking it contains a political message that you don’t want to send.Report
“Other arguments include “they didn’t apologize or anything… they didn’t so much as admit that it was dumb to do what Heinerscheid said. They just stopped doing it and then gave money to Kid Rock and Dana White.””
Honestly, that’s what I think we’re going to see. Not a Major Course Change Announcement, not some big show in the media, just…”Mulvanewho? Never heard of ’em. Oh, those ads? Yeah, that was someone else’s thing, we aren’t doing that anymore, check our our new thing and here have a free hat, thanksforaskinggoodbye!”Report
Well, maybe the Kid Rock/Dana White thing will communicate enough.
I will say that, without a Major Course Change Announcement, those who quietly switched from Bud Light to Coors Light might not find a reason to quietly switch back.
I’m assuming that they’re not online junkies, of course. Maybe that’s a bad assumption.Report
Following in her hero’s footsteps, Moms For Liberty Founder and Sarasota School Board member refuses to step down After the rest of the board votes to ask her to go in a public meeting. This after it was revealed last month that her husband is being charged with sexual assault of a women they were both in a consensual relationship with. Because nothing says Modern GOP like working hard to remove LGBTQ+ books from school libraries while you and your husband sleep with the same woman.
https://www.wusf.org/education/2023-12-12/sarasota-school-board-bridget-ziegler-should-resignReport
Author David Drake has passed away at age 78.
He was known for military sci-fi, particularly the “Hammer’s Slammers” series, although his works also included fantasy and horror (and often a commingling of the three genres.) He stated that his writing was at first a form of therapy for him, to talk about his experiences as a draftee in Vietnam; the fact that it became commercially successful to the point of being a career was something that always seemed to amaze him.
I feel that his writing reminds me of Stephen King, in that he has a uniquely capable prose style that can depict a scene or character eloquently with only spare wording. (Also like King he broke big in a genre different from the one he was most comfortable with, although King was “horror instead of sci-fi” and Drake was “sci-fi instead of horror”.)
His writing informed a lot of my personal philosophy and helped me through some difficult situations. While his books will always be available (and several are on my shelf of “books to hand someone who asks for a good book”) he personally will be missed in this world.
https://www.donaldsonfunerals.com/obituary/David-DrakeReport
“According to [Futurism], Sports Illustrated listed a writer named ‘Drew Ortiz’ — a white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes who grew up in a farmhouse and enjoyed the greater outdoors. But the profile photo paired with Ortiz’s biography is a headshot listed for sale on a website that sells AI-generated photos.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/sports-illustrated-publisher-fires-ceo-after-outlet-allegedly-published-ai-generated-stories-with-fake-authorsReport
Okay. I am not a Sports Guy. I just asked Bing Chat the top three reasons that the 1980 Boston Celtics are better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls.
Here’s what Bing Chat wrote me:
Sports guys out there… would you find this to be a fun article?Report
No, it reads like wikipedia.Report
I feel about this the way I feel about any other AI-generated essays; I’d give it a B-minus and say “needs more specific examples and data”. Like, they do have some stats for Celtics players but not for Bulls players, so we can’t really compare them; and the comments about teams’ competition have no statistics at all.
As a reader? If I got this for free I’d say I’d got my money’s worth. If I paid for it I wouldn’t be happy. In sports terms, this is replacement-level work.
As a commentor on the philosophy of technology and how AI is changing things? This is the Librarian from Snow Crash, this is Case asking his Hosaka for a five-minute precis. I think there are people who would greatly prefer this kind of auto-generated summary of a web search, either as a guide to further research or to give them all the depth they actually need for whatever empty conversation they’re having.
Also it kind of reminds me of Ask Jeeves, that website where “you can type in your question like a human being” was an actual selling point of the service. I guess AI is turning into what Ask Jeeves was always intended to be.Report
Okay guys. I asked again but, this time, I added “But, please, instead of making the list of reasons dry and like reading wikipedia, could you make the list of reasons fun for a sports fan to read?”
It gave me a list of reasons and then I asked it to make it even more fun, like I was arguing in a sports bar with friends.
And here’s what it gave me:
Report
Okay, now *that* is an A right there. You keep that up and you’ll have Joe Buck talking about how you’re the only Left Tackle in the NFL with a Master’s degree.Report
No. In the days when I reviewed journal submissions, my note on this that went back to the editor would have said something like “Rejected, but there’s the potential for extending it into something interesting.” Now ask Bing Chat something more subtle/interesting. Say, why couldn’t a team like the 1980 Boston Celtics have been assembled in 1996?Report
I asked this question and it went immediately to Salary Cap Theory. I was kinda surprised because I actually enjoyed reading this.
Report
Now let’s challenge it. Ask it why it didn’t include league expansion as one of the reasons the 1980 Celtics couldn’t be recreated in 1996.Report
Here we go. I asked: Why didn’t you include league expansion as one of the reasons the 1980 Celtics couldn’t be recreated in 1996?
Instead of telling me why, it told me this:
Report
I’m not really a sports guy. This isn’t fun, nor is it an article, but it does present a point of view. Part of reading an article is to understand the perspective of the writer. To find truth today, it’s more important to develop the skill of curation than of research, as a layman at least. I’d have a problem if an “author” proved not to have a consistent perspective. I think I’ve said this about movie reviews: don’t tell me you like it, tell me why you like it.
Also, about five minutes of research and I saw that the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players list was created in 1996, which makes me question whether they had perspective on the 1996 Bulls.
ETA: Ah, I see that the second version addresses some of this.Report
I shouldn’t do a sports question.
I should ask a video game question.
OH! A STAR WARS VERSUS STAR TREK QUESTION!Report
Just as long as you put a chick in it and make her gay and lame.Report
Make her lame? Wow, nice ableism there.Report
Okay. I asked it about Babylon 5 versus Star Trek: The Next Generation. I realized that I agreed with everything it said.
So I realized that I needed an argument that I disagreed with so I could more easily see the obvious flaws.
Here’s what I wrote back:
Thank you very much.
Quite honestly, I like Babylon 5 better than Star Trek: Enterprise.
If I were going to argue that Star Trek: Enterprise was better than Babylon 5, I would probably say something like “Scott Bakula is a more charismatic actor than anybody on Babylon 5 and Jolene Blalock? Hubba hubba! Her romance storyline with Trip was miles better than anything on Babylon 5.”Report
“Bing Chat, please write an essay analyzing the use of decontamination gel in science fiction.”Report
“In conclusion, Minbar is a land of contrasts.”Report
Nothing compares to Farscape dudeReport
They lost me a bit in the last season but that was overall a really good show.Report
The peacekeeper wars tv movie wrapped all that up.Report
It was less that I was confused and more that I thought they were dumbing it down and shifting the tone in a sillier, less mature direction. IIRC there were rumors of studio interference.Report
I mean, we do all realize that parts of that are objectively nonsense. Like these two sentences:
Star Trek: Enterprise also introduced new alien races and threats, such as the Xindi, the Suliban, and the Sphere Builders, and their impact on the future of the galaxy12. Babylon 5, on the other hand, focused mostly on the politics and conflicts of the existing races, such as the Minbari, the Centauri, and the Narn, and their alliances and wars
Ah, yes, the Minbari, the Centauri, and the Narn, races we were all very familiar with before Babylon 5.
And…um…why were the Xindi and Suliban important again? Oh, that’s right, the Xindi were _at war_ with Earth and in an _alliance_ with the Suliban, who were in a temporal cold _war_ that the Sphere Builders were also in. (I am amazed I remember all that.)
Imagine thinking that Star Trek: Enterprise is not about war and then listing ‘the Xindi, the Suliban, and the Sphere Builders’. Maybe vaporizing part of Florida was a ‘threat’, not a ‘war’.
Literally none of this actually means anything at all.Report
My biggest issue with this was in 1980 Bill Walton was a member of the San Diego Clippers. In addition, Robert Parish was a Golden State Warrior while Kevin McHale was in college as a Minnesota Golden Gopher.
Also, the 1980 Boston Celtics did not even make it to the NBA finals, losing to the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference finals. Did you mean to ask about the 1986 Celtics? It looks like Bing Chat automatically corrected your error.Report
Okay. This is one of those things that I never would have known in a million years.
I was willing to take everything it said as gospel.
I think I googled “best Celtics seasons” and 1979-1980 popped up and I went with that versus what google told me the best Bulls season was.
Since I am not a sports guy, I just read that and saw that the answer was more-or-less well-formed. It had the right syntax.
I just assumed that the facts it was appealing to were accurate.
Anyway, if I were looking for a good reason to cancel my subscription to Sports Illustrated, here we go.
They used AI to write articles.
And AI hallucinates.Report
God probably shouldn’t do these things too often, but you’ve got to let Him have a few:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkish-mp-dies-after-suffering-heart-attack-parliament-2023-12-14/Report
Yeah, that clip is going around the twitters right now. Dude says “Even if you escape the torment of history, you can’t escape the wrath of Allah”, quickly closes his speech, then falls over.
Materialists will not have a field day with this one but you just know that the people who believe in some sort of deity are going to be screaming at each other about it.Report
Well, the Hebrew G-d is represented as being in the heavens, and He is said to have created light, so I’m going to chalk this up in the broadest sense to Jewish space lasers.
(Note that these comments are not intended as a full theological examination, and I’m not rejoicing in a person’s death, although my mind is unusually at ease with the conditions under which it happened.)Report
Okay, you know how the White House Interns did one of those anonymous open letters for the whole Israel/Palestine thing?
Well, there’s been an update!
It seems that the interns were urged into action by an anonymous person joining the group chat and this anonymous person subsequently left.
Bartlett asks “Was this foreign or maligned influence that infiltrated WH group?” but I think a more interesting question is “Did one of the right-wingers out there do this?”
Because, let’s face it, this is something that they would think was pretty g-darn funny.Report
Lee Fang had a report on the Israeli government’s efforts to mold public opinion in the US, censor critics, and otherwise embarrass Palestinian activism, including via sympathetic people in the US. Not that Palestinian activists need help embarrassing themselves, but that’s a different story.
https://www.leefang.com/p/inside-the-pro-israel-information
None of this is particularly conspiratorial (and the intern thing could certainly also just be a self motivated American conservative that somehow got access).
Still it really is important to remember in all this that Israelis by and large hold Americans in contempt. None of that means you have to love Palestinians or particularly sympathize with them but Israel is at best a pretty bad ally.Report
None of that means you have to love Palestinians or particularly sympathize with them but Israel is at best a pretty bad ally.
This is going to sound like a snarky gotcha, but is not intended as one: they’re way better than Saudi Arabia.
It’s not a snarky gotcha because they’re situated so that being a way better ally than Saudi Arabia is a key criterion for judging the value of their relationship with the US.Report
Oh yea, the response of the Saudis to our domestic energy revolution combined with their picking OPEC+ (aka Russia) over the West on Ukraine IMO should have resulted in a complete re-evaluation of the relationship. And that’s without getting into how embarrassing it is to be diplomatically consorting with an Islamic monarchy.
Strategically I’m of the opinion that our ME strategy should be moving on from trying to forge an Sunni-Israeli axis and instead focus on raproachment with Iran. Demographically and culturally they’re the future of the region, not the backwards monarchies and sclerotic hold over Cold War allies. Which doesn’t mean I have particularly high expectations for the Iranians either but our entire approach to the region seems to be reflexive muscle memory without a lot of real thought. The result is relationships with questionable actors and even more questionable return on investment.Report
I’ll write stuff on social media for organizations. 100 dollars per post.Report
Holy crap. This sort of thing reminds me of what my grandfather told me about Democrats.
Good for him. He should run for something in a few years.Report
Dude’s definitely got a point about Menendez, who I rarely discuss around here because he tends to inspire me to use language that gets my comments stuck in the moderation filter.Report
A lot of the rest of the interview reads like, “Hey, John Fetterman is junior Senator from the distinctly purplish state of Pennsylvania, and holds positions that match.”Report
A Senator whose views match his constituents?
That reminds me of the stuff that my grandfather told me about Democrats.Report
The weird bit about Menendez is not the extent to which Dems are giving him a pass, but the extent to which the GOP is. Like, here’s a Senator from the other party being caught with stolen gold bars! Why are you tyalking about anuthing else!Report
Probably because Menendez has a dead man’s switch that will kill a lot of people in the room.Report
From the “Crime is OUTTACONTROL” files:
When the investigators came, operators of a Southern California poultry processor allegedly hid child workers in bathrooms and closets and hurried them out the back door, according to a U.S. Department of Labor lawsuit.
In two poultry plants in La Puente and City of Industry owned by Tony Bran, federal authorities alleged, kids as young as 14 were illegally working dangerous jobs, deboning chicken and operating heavy machinery. Eventually, the chicken ended up at major supermarkets and distributors like Ralphs, Aldi, Grocery Outlet and Sysco, officials said.
…
Last month, Bran settled with the federal government and agreed to pay nearly $3.8 million to workers. Earlier this year, he settled a separate wage-theft lawsuit with the California Labor Commissioner’s Office, agreeing to pay $1.47 million in unpaid wages and penalties. The fines follow a Sept. 28 search by agents from the Labor Department who were accompanied by the U.S. Marshals Service.
…
Armando Gudino, executive director of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, called L.A. “the wage-theft capital of the nation.”
More than half the Latino workers in Los Angeles get paid less than minimum wage, a report published earlier this year by the Los Angeles Worker Center Network found.
“Child labor is going to be the attention-grabbing issue, but the truth is that wage theft, retaliation and all kinds of labor abuses are prevalent in the entire immigrant population,” said Yunuen Trujillo, worker rights and labor legal services managing attorney at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-15/how-chicken-processed-with-child-labor-ended-up-at-ralphs-aldi
Steal a two dollar bottle of soda, go to jail.
Steal 1,470,000 from your employees, pay a fine.Report
This is liberal democracy in action. The government is responding to what its constituents want.Report
And by ‘constituents’, you mean ‘large donors’.Report
Rudy hit for $148,000,000. My guess is that it will be reduced on appeal, but not enough to matter.
https://www.aol.com/jury-giuliani-defamation-trial-reaches-211334145.htmlReport
The protesters who shut down the bridge will be charged with up to *FIVE* misdemeanors.
– false imprisonment (PC 236)
– refusing to comply with a peace officer (VC 2800(a))
– unlawful public assembly (PC 407)
– refusing to disperse (PC 409)
– and obstuction of street, sidewalk or other place open to public (PC 647c)Report
Holy cow. The new DA might actually take her job seriously.
S.F. DA Brooke Jenkins faces blowback after saying homeless people should be made ‘uncomfortable’
The article editorializes quite a bit (but you knew that already).Report
For a guy who has a near-obsessive fixation with San Francisco, you sound nonplussed at a rather banal dog-bites-man story.Report
I’m more “surprised”.
Hey, I posted a lot about Chesa and Chesa’s recall. It’s only fair that I note when the DA that replaced Chesa is not repeating Chesa’s stupid and silly mistakes.Report
San Francisco and Oakland have replaced New York City as the bogeyman for all that is wrong with Democratic governance in the Republican mind. It is simultaneously the home of ultra-wealthy Silicone Valley billionaires forcing woke media and values down the throats of Heartland Americans and a dysfunctional city filled with homelessness and social disorder.Report
Well, the DA seems to be trying to address homelessness and social disorder!
The woke media, however, is covering how insensitive the DA is being. Check this out:
The editor kept that in there! Unbelievable.Report
I’m particularly amused by the criticism of SF that sounds like a Yogi Berra-ism:”Nobody wants to live there- the rents are too high.”Report
The staffer who is accused of filming himself engaging in congress in one of the restrooms of congress is denying that he yelled “Free Palestine” at Jewish Representative Max Miller.Report
I believe he is an aid to Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, who is Jewish. Of course if these reports of his conduct are true his judgment is so non-existent that anything is possible.Report
Ben Cardin’s office just sent out a message: “Aidan Maese-Czeropski is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate. We will have no further comment on this personnel matter.”
We can now put this behind us.Report
Apparently sex scandals don’t have the punch they used to.Report
Meanwhile, in other news, the IDF just shot and killed three of the Hamas hostages that had either escaped or just been released by Hamas when they couldn’t hold position. (We don’t know what happened, because they’re dead.)
The IDF mistook these Israelis for Hamas, because the hostages had no guns, had taken off their shirts so as to show they had no explosive vest, were screaming in Hebrew that they were the hostages, and waving a white flag, but counterpoint, they were, indeed, persistently and willfully human beings that were physically located _within_ Gaza, so were clearly Hamas.
Two of them died immediately, one of them was wounded and fled inside a building, where the IDF stopped shooting…I joke, I joke. The IDF actually continued to try to kill the clearly unarmed man who had tried to surrender to them and then fled wounded. He died in the building, it seems.
And the only we know the these three were, in fact, hostages and the exact details of this, because one of the hostages had red hair and that was odd enough that the IDF tried to figure out who they were.
This is one of those situations that is bad, but when you think about the circumstances it happened in, it looks way worse, because it actually appears that the IDF mistook _Israeli_ very-clear non-combatants for _Palestinian_ very-clear non-combatants and felt free to just randomly shoot them. And it gets even worse when you ask yourself ‘Wait, how many of those hostages _didn’t have someone with red hair_ with them, and thus how many Hamas hostages are lying dead on thew street in Gaza right now with IDF bullets in them?’
Hey, remember that big talk we had about how the IDF shouldn’t be trying to head towards the sounds of civilians and would only, at minimum, endanger civilians, and were actually likely to be planning to target those civilians in some way. And everyone was acting like that was crazy? Hmm. Yeah. Maybe I’m just psychic, or more likely, was already paying attention.
—
In other news, IDF snipers just shot and killed a woman inside of a Catholic church in Gaza, and then shot and killed the woman trying to rescue her. And shot seven others. This is apparently the Catholic church that a huge amount of Christians have taken refuge inside of. Why? Who knows. Probably a bunch of Hamas in there, they’re well known for posting as Christian women.
In other, other news, they just drove a bulldozer over a bunch of people in tents in a hospital parking lot. (But we all know from Rachel Corrie that driving bulldozers of people is hilarious.)
Hey, um, speaking of that, does everyone remember when they weren’t attacking hospitals, and it was horrible slander to accuse them of that? Because they are actually literally demolishing them. Not ‘routing out Hamas’, but literally demolishing them with bulldozers.
…hey, um, at what point do people start admitting that _near immediate_ pushback against Israel that happened on Oct 7th, when a bunch of people said ‘Oh no, Israel is going to use this attack as an excuse to literally murder a bunch of civilians in front of everyone’s eyes, and we need to get in front of that’, was not actually a crazy thought and not caused by antisemitism but actual real knowledge of how Israel had behaved in the past and was likely to behave in the future?Report
“I know that everything that happened is absolutely not your fault, and nobody’s fault except that of Hamas, may their name be wiped out and their memory erased from the earth…
And don’t hesitate for a second if you see a terrorist. Don’t think that you killed a hostage deliberately. You have to look after yourselves because only that way can you look after us.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/not-your-fault-mother-of-hostage-slain-in-error-sends-love-support-to-soldiers-who-killed-him/Report
James Bennett’s huge piece on his resignation from NYT in 2020. Very long but seems like a must read. Not sure if NYT requires confidentiality agreements but if they do it seems like they must have waived it.
https://www.economist.com/1843/2023/12/14/when-the-new-york-times-lost-its-wayReport
The fundamental premise–and maybe he’ll refine it as I read more–is that the Times demonstrated a commitment to illiberalism by refusing to run an editorial endorsing the use of the military to crush protesters.
This is fucking for virginity.
If they wanted to report on the debate and its popularity on the Right, there are ways of doing it that don’t actually endorse it.
I don’t think we have ever come up with a truly convincing resolution to the Paradox of Tolerance, but I’m pretty sure that elevating illiberals to freely spread their message in your extremely precious and prestigious newspaper, one you yourself believe to be a bastion of liberalism, is not part of it.Report
He states:
“Trump’s manipulation and every one of his political lies became more powerful because journalists had forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work: their credibility as arbiters of truth and brokers of ideas…” (bolding mine)
Then proceeds to tell us that they should just act as stenographers whatever an advisor to the President has to say, without criticism or comment or analysis.
And he does all this without a trace of self awareness.Report
Or there was this:
By contrast, the old newsroom ideology seems cynical on its surface. It used to bug me that my editors at the Times assumed every word out of the mouth of any person in power was a lie.
Assume every word out of the mouth of any person in power is a lie, as long as that person isn’t Tom Cotton!Report
It is indeed an thorough and inviting read – and he would certainly know best what things are like in the Times. I remain troubled, however, by his references to his belief that openly debating nefarious ideas will make them go away – Trump and his Nativist/nationalistic populism is widely debated and still supported by a significant number of Americans who clearly believe it meets their needs. Needs which the rest of us can access and understand if we choose to. Even in 2016.Report
My other response is in moderation hell because I was swearing a bit, but I’ll just say that if the Times thinks an idea is worthy of explication or even debate, there are alternatives to presenting it on the editorial page.
For example, if you think Cotton’s ideas need to be presented to your audience so they understand where he and his supporters are coming from, they could consider interviewing him. Like push him and ask him questions on stuff, instead of just blithely letting Cotton expand the permission structure for using the military against protesters by showing that even the Times thinks his argument should be presented without them challenging or questioning it.
Bennet complains about the Times becoming a place where progressive elites only talk to themselves, and then defends decisions that only make sense if it’s a place where progressive elites only talk to themselves.Report
I have a weird feeling that NYT may have had a role in allowing this to come out as part of its own pivot back to normality. Again, not sure what they require people to sign but I would be hesitant to openly discuss internal matters in the depth this piece does without an assurance I would not be sued for violation of the terms of an employment agreement or some similar document.Report
We discussed the James Bennett thing at the time.
Reading his take on his take back then, I am pleased to have confirmation that, yes, James Bennett lied about not reading Cotton’s piece before publishing it.Report
Not for nothing but we have started a new week . . . .Report
That was a long hike, but worth the effort. I note that all of pillsy’s comments so far have misrepresented the incident, or at least Bennett’s version of it. They did publish the editorial. It wasn’t about crushing protesters; it distinguished explicitly between protesters and criminals. They didn’t present it unchallenged. It didn’t give Cotton preferential treatment, as it was fully fact-checked.
But I think it’s worth looking at more of the passage the pillsy quoted:
“The new newsroom ideology seems idealistic, yet it has grown from cynical roots in academia: from the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth; that there is only narrative, and that therefore whoever controls the narrative – whoever gets to tell the version of the story that the public hears – has the whip hand. What matters, in other words, is not truth and ideas in themselves, but the power to determine both in the public mind.
“y contrast, the old newsroom ideology seems cynical on its surface. It used to bug me that my editors at the Times assumed every word out of the mouth of any person in power was a lie. And the pursuit of objectivity can seem reptilian, even nihilistic, in its abjuration of a fixed position in moral contests. But the basis of that old newsroom approach was idealistic: the notion that power ultimately lies in truth and ideas, and that the citizens of a pluralistic democracy, not leaders of any sort, must be trusted to judge both.”
This is such an important passage, and it goes to the heart of a lot of our debate around here.Report
So he says news media used to be the “arbiters of truth”.
But then…
“Too many liberals,” read my notes about the Opinion line-up from a meeting I had with him and Mark Thompson, then the chief executive, as I was preparing to rejoin the paper. “Even conservatives are liberals’ idea of a conservative.” The last note I took from that meeting was: “Can’t ignore 150m conservative Americans.”
Well OK, which is it? Should the NYT print what it believes to be the truth, or just pass along all arguments equally without taking a stance because well, a whole lotta people believe the earth is flat, and “can’t ignore 150m Flat Earth Americans”?
Can we expect a guest editorial from a representative of Hamas explaining how it is time to “kinetically de-colonize” the settlements because well, can’t ignore the millions of Palestinians?Report
I have a number of not necessarily related thoughts on it. On the one hand there’s the question of whether Cotton’s piece does or should meet whatever the standard of NYT are. I am not sure there is an objective answer to that, and it’s more about what NYT feels its mission is.
The most interesting part I thought was just how much of NYT’s editorial issues (at least according to Bennett) arose from trying to digest content creators from lesser online media outlets. It won’t surprise anyone here that I have serious disdain for the kinds of dilettantes that insist words are violence, or that an entity that is in the business of publishing could somehow be said to create a ‘safety’ problem for its staff based on what they publish. The absurdity of that is right up there with a vegan taking a job at a steak house and being outraged about half off sirloin night. But I also don’t think Bennett is bringing us anything we didn’t already know on that subject.
Which all does bring me back to the question of why publish this now, 3 years later, and in a 40k word, highly personal essay? Unlike, say, WaPo I really do think NYT is making an effort to reconstitute itself. Bennett mentions that, unlike with the Cotton piece, NYT didn’t cave when it got some similar internal blowback on reporting around trans issues.Report
I said then, and I say now, the fact that it’s an essay from a US Senator with sufficient syntax makes it more or less a shoo-in to qualify as “fit-to-print”. If you want to disagree with it or say that’s it’s wrong, give a quick phone call to Schumer and ask him if he knows anybody who is capable of throwing together 800 words to disagree or is willing to sign their name at the bottom of this piece we happen to have in our breast pocket right here.Report
They did in fact publish counterpoints to it. However I am not sure that a Senator said it with sufficient syntax is enough. Not that it would ever happen but I can think of things Senator Menendez or former Representative Santos might write right now that would not be worth publishing no matter how eloquent.
Which, to be clear, if I’m NYT I’m definitely publishing the Cotton essay. People who are or claim to be frightened by an opinion article in the newspaper are in my estimation kind of sad and pathetic. I am also just saying when it comes to the question of curating a newspaper some things get in, some things don’t, and I don’t think there is an objectively right answer to it.Report
the fact that it’s an essay from a US Senator with sufficient syntax makes it more or less a shoo-in to qualify as “fit-to-print”
Why?Report
Because he’s a US Senator and he is weighing in on an important domestic topic.
What percentage of the US agreed with him, do you think?
If the number is over, oh, 40%, that’s why.
(That said, I am to the right of the average NYT Slack user. Probably twice as old, to boot.)Report
He’s a US senator, who at the time was advocating for a potentially unconstitutional “solution” to a “problem” that existed only because politicians can’t stand protests, and conservative politicians can’t stand protests based in the continued need for social justice in the US. His Op Ed brought nothing new to the table; it contained no real nuance beyond tat already in play from the President he was unquestioningly supporting.
While he may have deserved the opportunity to be published, he deserves the ridicule that was and still is heaped on him. As such he probably should have been published as a satirical piece in the weekend section, not an op ed. That a significant plurality of the US might have agreed with him – the same number who seem quite content to sacrifice democracy for the appearance of order – is mostly beside the point.Report
You’re arguing against me as if I were defending Cotton.
I am not. The content of Cotton’s op-ed is beyond the scope of my opinion.
I am defending Bennett.Report
I just think its funny how respectful of authority this is.
That since he is a member of the club, his voice is given automatic deference.
And the punchline of “And a lotta people believe it!”
OK then.
Again, in contrast to Bennet’s lamentation for the day when the Gray Lady was the arbiter of truth.Report
“Respectful of authority”. Pfeh.
See it as “respectful of reality”.Report
I had a funny moment last week when I was reading something about the Harvard president and the Post defending its investigation. I thought, finally, good for you! I clicked on the link: New York. It was the New York Post.
I just heard about this other one from last week. Biden at his press conference said “Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not financially involved in my business”. The NYT reported that he said “Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not involved in my business”. They’ve subsequently corrected the direct quote they edited.
I don’t know if they’re making an effort to clean their act up. And yeah, a lot of Bennett’s article read like everything conservatives have been saying about the media for years, so I can’t say I’m stunned by it. The interesting thing to me was that Bennett seemed surprised by how bad it had gotten. He can point to one or two principled stands here and there, but reading it you can really get the sense of how badly the ship was taking on water and how hard he was ignoring it. I don’t know why it took him so long to write this, any more than I can understand why I’ve stayed in bad situations that I could clearly perceive if I made the smallest effort.Report
I come at it with somewhat different priors. Journalism properly practiced is IMO an inherently liberal enterprise, in the sense that part of its purpose is to interrogate things, including things conservatives think worth conserving. In that sense it would be kind of strange in a small-l liberal society for conservatives not to be upset with journalism and the media. What journalism doesn’t have to be is unfair, or unprincipled, or overly wrapped up in day to day partisanship. More importantly though it shouldn’t go down the path of anti-journalism, or allow its mission to be destroyed by strange beurecratic capture. That’s more what I think happened here and almost everywhere.Report
Journalism, done right, can change the world.
Unfortunately, it then starts to attract people who want to change the world.
Soon thereafter, journalism starts not being done right.Report
I’m not so sure wanting to change the world is the part that’s the problem. Race to the bottom economic and deconstructive cultural movements on the other hand can hollow out anything.Report
As a conservative, I’m not worried about my principles standing up to scrutiny, and as an ethical person, I want to see individual bad actors caught, whatever their ostensible beliefs. I don’t say that conservatives have recognized the problem at the NYT because of something about conservatism, but only because it’s always easier to notice when the refs are biased against your team.Report
More importantly though it shouldn’t go down the path of anti-journalism, or allow its mission to be destroyed by strange beurecratic capture.
Like there are obviously parts of Bennet’s piece that I disagree with, and parts where I think he’s naive or just missed the boat, but the whole chaotic “corporate governance by Slack revolt” part is an insane way to run any sort of organization.
It’s almost shocking that the Times managed to get anything right at all.
The other thing he talked about–with the breakdown of the division between news and opinion, which I hadn’t really registered–is also something that was never going to end well.Report
One of the reasons I have become much less worried about these sorts of episodes, movements, trends, whatever in the private sector than I can be at times elsewhere is that they are inherently self defeating. You just can’t run organizations effectively that way and at a certain point people will want to go back to making money.Report
In this scenario, you have activists selling opinion-as-news to people who want it. That seems like a good business plan. And anyway, if the leaders think that money is less important than the message, you’re facing new definitions of success and failure.Report
Sure, if NYT wants to be Fox News for progressives it certainly can be, and there may even be a profitable business in that enterprise.
What I’m talking about though is the phenomenon where rank and file personnel think they should have a say in content produced or sold by a media company, or on a larger level where they feel they should have a say in personnel or other general company decision making. A successful business can’t function that way and any that tries will eventually cease to exist.Report
p1 – I think that’s exactly what the NYT is.
p2 – If the rank and file in a company share an agenda, they can band together to enforce it. They can even boot the Bennetts and Chapeks. If their stockholders or owners agree on the agenda, and they don’t collapse into factions, they could keep it going for a long time.Report
P1, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I think what Trump forced them to do with their respected election and polling team pushed the little toe they were keeping in reality off into the void. The NYT on the other hand is imperfectly working its way back.
P2, I think we are already passed the high water mark of that, at least with NYT which is why I referenced the trans reporting. Their woke employees tried to do the same thing that was successful with Bennett in 2020 but in 2023 they failed. On a larger level there has been article after article about the disbanding of private sector corporate DEI and similar teams and initiatives. As those go away so too will the attempts to exercise vetos. The places that will continue to be destroyed are progesssive NPOs, academia, and similar organizations where they can still cause paralysis and there is no straightforward mechanism to enforce accountability for stupid and/or non productive ideas.Report
Heh, if the NYT were Fox New for Liberals then Trump would never have been elected.Report
I suspect that’s right, but I would be interested in having you unpack that a little.Report
I mean, there’re so many ways that Pinky’s original assertion is so obviously falsifiable but, to try and be succinct, the idea that a left wing version of Fox News would have fixated on “her emailz” the way the NYT did specifically or, more generally, the idea that a left wing Fox News would have treated the candidate of their political arm party the way the NYT treated the Democratic party’s nominee in ’16 is ludicrous.Report
Even now as best as I can tell they have been pretty dutiful on reporting matters related to Biden, Hunter.Report
Yup.Report
Well, come on, they deliberately sat on the story during the last election. That’s got to count against their credibility, right?Report
I can definitely grant points against NYT’s credibility on a number of topics. I still take anything they say on any sort of identitarian touching issue with about a handful of salt, even if I think that fever is breaking.
However given that to date nothing has come to light substantiating an actual connection to Joe Biden personally profiting from or clearing Hunter to sell the family connection I am not sure this is one of them.Report
There are two separate topics here — (1) what should we think today about the level of Joe’s involvement with Hunter’s activities, and (2) Were the mainstream news outlets right to quash the story about Hunter’s laptop at the time?
(2) is the topic at hand — the story that was suppressed because it was “not confirmed” or “Russian disinformation” or whatever was later found to be accurate. You & North have your opinion about its relevance, and Trump supporters have theirs, but is it really the job of a national media source to preemptively decide in that moment that the public shouldn’t be informed about it and make up their own minds? Can we at least agree that Twitter went overboard by deleting the Post’s tweet about it?
Re (1), I will just say that there’s a difference between “nothing’s been proven” and “there’s no link” — switch the players around a bit and this same amount of smoke would be plenty enough for many on the left to be yelling Fire.Report
Happy to be corrected but IIRC the issue was twitter under old management blocking the NY Post story about Hunter’s laptop from circulation on their social media platform. NYT has no power to suppress something published by another newspaper or on third party social media. I don’t see how it’s relevant to the topic.
On the larger issue I can’t speak for ‘the left’ only myself. I’ve been consistently critical of the way the MSM approached the Trump administration. That doesn’t mean they’re somehow in the wrong on this when something that’s been under investigation for years now hasn’t turned up anything on Joe Biden. Maybe one day something will come to light and if it does they should report on it. However in the absence of facts I am not sure what more they are supposed to do beyond the follow up they have duly reported.
Your argument is like saying a negative somehow proves a positive.Report
Hmm, you’re right, i guess i was mixing up the stories — what I get for commenting at work. So I guess I’m not up on exactly what Bennet is faulting the Times for regarding the laptop story. It’s hard to keep track of what specific outlets decided vs what was “in the air” at the time.
Re Hunter overall, I wasn’t connecting that to the NYT coverage assessment — I just think that there’s enough eyebrow-raising information that I’m on the side of “odds are there was some inappropriate involvement”, even though there’s no smoking gun or basis for legal action.Report
It’s certainly possible that there has been. I tend to take it as more likely than not that anyone who has made it in national politics is, at minimum not a saint, and has probably crossed some line somewhere. Nevertheless there’s a point where I try to check myself against believing that which is unproven, maybe unprovable. I applied the same standard even to Trump, and for that reason was against impeachment 1 and the MSM beclowning itself by constant breathless reporting on things that were never substantiated.
But I also think over the long haul the analysis of the MSM is complicated. It’s certainly culturally cosmopolitan, and has statist tendencies, and is deferential to institutional authorities, and the cult of the savvy in ways that I think lead it to misleading places. But I’m also old enough to remember all of it eating out of the Bush II administration’s hand when the stars aligned the right way. All of which is to say that IMO the view that it just loves the Dems and hates conservatives doesn’t capture the actual dynamic.Report
As the article says: “The Times was slow to break it to its readers that there was less to Trump’s ties to Russia than they were hoping, and more to Hunter Biden’s laptop, that Trump might be right that covid came from a Chinese lab, that masks were not always effective against the virus, that shutting down schools for many months was a bad idea.”Report
Gosh, the last minute laptop story that continues to be a big fishing nothingburger? After, four years earlier, they leaped all over Comey’s nothingburger last minute story and threw the election to Trump and it turned out to be a big fishing nothingburger? I get that the righties are annoyed they weren’t able to play the media twice the same way but it sure doesn’t suggest that the Times is the lefts’ equivalent of Fox News.
As for Covid being a Chinese lab leak- last I the preponderance of evidence continues to suggest that it jumped over in wet markets- not in a lab leak.
And masking and school shut downs happened under Trump in case you missed it, though I grant that school shut downs were much more lengthy and pronounced in left wing parts of the country and it generally seems to have been a bad idea.Report
Nominated? Maybe. Maybe, maybe not.
But I don’t see how the NYT had an impact on MI, WI, and/or PA.
Here’s a fun flashback to October 2016: The New York Times on the Second Debate.
I don’t know what the NYT could have done to be *MORE* in the bag for Clinton.
Put a muzzle on Dowd, maybe.Report
It’s so cute reading their complaints about political prosecutions. It’s like hearing an eight-year-old boy say that girls are icky. The time is coming, young man, when you’ll reverse course so completely you won’t even be able to formulate in words why A and then B.Report
Heh, there little better encapsulation of what conservative thought has become than that they look at Trumps threats to invent prosecution against his opponents for made up crimes in ’16; then look at Bidens’ studious hands off approach as various AG’s prosecute Trump for crimes no one seriously denies he committed now and then say ‘These two groups of actions are the same and equivalent.”Report
All evidence points to both of them criminally mishandling classified material. I think they both ought to have been convicted. I don’t buy any argument that she shouldn’t have been, and I’m not persuaded by the cases against him beyond that. But to me, the classified documents cases are “you must be this candid to ride”.Report
One managed an email server for her office the same way Colin Powell did, (and being found negligent but not criminally culpable after years of investigation) the other moved boxes of classified documents around on camera like a skit from Benny Hill while boasting on tape about how he shouldn’t have had any of them while also spending over a year refusing to return any of them. The similarities are stark!Report
The two committed their crimes under different circumstances. As far as we know, she put more documents under greater risk of public exposure. Someone can double-check which of them interfered in his/her investigation for longer. In a system of “laws not men”, we set up a clear standard for criminality, and apply the law regardless of party, regardless of timing. The different circumstances should be part of a judge’s sentencing decision.Report
No, as far as right wingers imagine HRC put some documents at risk on that server and no one knows how many, if any, actually were compromised at all. Which is, among other reasons, why she had no charges laid against her.
Whereas your boy Trump absconded with box fulls of highly sensitive physical documents, refused to hand them back when he could easily have done so at no penalty to himself, actively worked, on video tape, to continue to conceal said documents and bragged on recorded audio about how he broke the law, knowingly and showed the documents off. That clear standard of criminality is why Trump is facing a trial and all the other difficulties he’s struggling with on the matter while HRC just putts around doing podcasts and occasionally writing eminently ignorable articles.
But you are right, they both had difficulties with classified document management. It’s beyond me why the media treat the two so differently! /sReport
Don’t get me wrong. I am a card holding member of the “Clinton is ultimately responsible for losing in ’16” club”; it’ll always be on her for letting it get that close and making the decisions she made.
That being said, the NYT’s behavior doesn’t remotement resemble some kind of left wing version of Fox News.
Heck, I’m not even certain that’s a good thing. It may be that we could use some good old fashioned unabashed yellow journalism. It might actually be better than the system we have with one party having (and being in thrall to) a full on powerful propaganda arm while the other party has only the muddled faux equivalence soup that is the main stream media which follows its own, distinct from the Dems, interests and foibles.Report
I’d agree and say that the NYT’s behavior in 2015-2016 is within acceptable parameters for an old-school liberal media bias. My quibble is with whether them wandering over into Foxland would have moved a handful of pivotal needles.
The NYT, arguably, dipped its toes into Foxland after Trump’s election and I think that they did a better job of confirming priors than they did of changing minds.Report
That being said, the NYT’s behavior doesn’t remotement resemble some kind of left wing version of Fox News.
Yeah.
Also, like, they’ve blown some stories in various ways because of various biases and institutional foibles over the years, including some huge ones (@in-md already mentioned Iraq but it deserves mentioning again), but the thing we’re mostly talking about here is the Opinion page, which, like, that is supposed to be biased.
I thing having the Times become the Team Blue version of the New York Post or Washington Times would be a terrible outcome. But having them become the Team Blue version of the Wall Street Journal would be extremely fine.
Seriously, a commitment to getting stories correct is a critical component of a journalistic enterprise’s quality.
A commitment to having a diverse range of views that challenge readers’ preconceptions in the Opinion section is a branding choice, and not necessarily a great one, especially since it’s so hard to actually do that in a worthwhile way.Report
I note that all of pillsy’s comments so far have misrepresented the incident, or at least Bennett’s version of it. They did publish the editorial. It wasn’t about crushing protesters; it distinguished explicitly between protesters and criminals. They didn’t present it unchallenged. It didn’t give Cotton preferential treatment, as it was fully fact-checked.
You know what, you’re right, my comments were bad and I completely misrepresented one critical aspect of the incident: that they ran it unchallenged. Bennet stated that they ran it alongside another editorial excoriating it, which is absolutely challenging it.
I missed that part due to sloppy reading, but worse an unwillingness to even pause and check Bennet’s piece and the actual record, because it was convenient for my argument. Sloppiness is bad enough, but that was also intellectually dishonest of me, and I should not have written it once, let alone twice.
I’ll stick by my other points and maybe defend them later, but that part was simply indefensible.
Apologies to all.Report
Hey look, that thing that hardly ever happens on the internet!Report
Big of you Pillsy.Report
Man, when the Bulwark guys get, it they get it:
The New York Times Is Part of the Effing Problem
The headline on the Schmitz piece is “The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism.”
I’m linking to it only out of guilt. I hope you won’t give them your click. Because this piece is trash.
Schmitz, who is one of the Catholic integralist MAGA fans, fills his essay with euphemisms about Trump’s actions. Here are some of them:
Trump is “pragmatic if unpredictable”
He occasionally uses “incendiary language”
And “intemperate rhetoric”
And “provocative comments”
And makes “outrageous statements”
Because he possesses “braggadocio”
And has a “combative personality”
And an “irreverent demeanor”
And is “politically incorrect”
There are more. The piece is filled with both euphemism and the passive voice, all in an attempt to obscure reality from readers and present a sympathetic case for Trump.
As we discussed about free speech, there is a range of acceptable opinions which are given legitimacy.
And almost all media outlets have their own boundaries of what is considered a legitimate if debatable opinion versus something illegitimate and unfit to print.
Cotton’s opinion was fit to print and we are encouraged, even demanded, to to give it a respectful hearing.
Oh, the opinions of the employees who criticized him? A howling mob of rabble who must be scorned and put down by whatever means.Report
I was saying above that presenting diverse perspectives in the Opinion section to challenge readers’ preconceptions is a branding choice, and one that is very tough to get right, and that Schmitz piece is a great example of why.
It does indeed present two very common anti-anti-Trump arguments: voters like that Trump actual stated policy positions differ from doctrinaire conservatism, and that he is so comprehensively full of sh!t that voters needn’t worry about his rhetorical commitment to fascism.
This is already self-contradictory argument really picks up speed when you get to the conclusion–that because voters believe he isn’t an authoritarian who threatens democracy on account of him being so full of sh!t–he isn’t actually an authoritarian threat to democracy.
I’m trying to imagine what kind of reader would have their preconceived notions about Trump challenged by this self-refuting slop, and I can only come up with literal infants: born yesterday and lacking object permanence.Report