I love it when a headline invites the interview subject to fuck himself:
Chuck Todd Thinks It’s Important to Stay Neutral
We all have needs, I guess? People in Puerto Rico think it’s important to have electricity. Flint wants clean drinking water. The North Korean people are anxious that our president not start a nuclear war since they’ll all die. But you do you, Chuckles.
In politics, 90 percent of the disagreements are about policy or ideological point of view.
Yet you’re a fucking fashion blogger who thinks it’s a major issue that Hillary Clinton sounded ready to be president. The 10 percent of disagreements that are not about policy, why do you devote 90 percent of your show to them?
This whole interview with Chuck is just an excuse to let him drop this steaming turd:
Do you think you did a good job covering the events of 2016? I’m going to give you a Donald Rumsfeld answer: You cover the campaign that’s in front of you. You don’t get to cover the campaign you want. There are always lessons to be learned, and look, it’ll impact what happens next. Someday, we’ll say that somebody would’ve never been elected had 2016 not happened, right? Barack Obama might not have become president if Hillary Clinton had run in 2004. If Katherine Harris didn’t ever run for secretary of state in 1998, and the Democrat ends up winning that race against a scandal-ridden Republican incumbent at the time, whom Harris beat in the primary, so the Democrats control the certification process in Florida in 2000 — who knows what happens? That’s what I love about politics: that butterfly effect. We don’t try to erase a result; we just move on from it and build from it.
People are dying, you solipsistic prick. People are dying and being deported and every six weeks we need to scream at Congress not to take away our shitty health insurance. An economy that wasn’t really all that great is about to get really, really bad and there will be no help. Everyone in the White House is engaged in actively denying the president’s oncoming dementia, plus even when he’s with it, he’s a racist sexist old asshole.
Oh, and nobody’s asking you to erase the result. You don’t get to do that. This soulless butthole, he will be the 45th president of the United States forever, and you’re dumb but you’re not dumb-dumb, Chuck, you know that. You know that if you call a reasonable request to consider whether the old way of doing things is inadequate a request to nullify the election you get to call your critics unhinged and act like you’re somehow above it all.
Which pose wouldn’t offend me so much if you WEREN’T above it all. You’re not risking a damn thing going out there every Sunday reinforcing the view that Democrats are in disarray and Republicans are basically good and people of color/women always need to prove themselves twice as much and the world is basically the same as it was 20 years ago when we were all in school. You’re not gonna miss a meal because that’s all bullshit, so you go on, pretend there’s something noble in it.
FFS, this is what we think of in the journalism world as smart. This is who we elevate and parade around to our J-schools as some kind of celebrity speaker. This is who we teach the next generation of reporters to emulate. This is what we say has value in the world, this bullshit bias toward the status quo.
BTW, quoting Donald Rumsfeld, who should be in chains in the Hague, like it’s fucking cute is an example of the problem here. Donald Rumsfeld and the Iraq War are not neutral. Were not neutral. Were never neutral but that tells you a lot about where Chuck and his posse think the north-south dividing line really is.
It’s all a big ironic joke to them, and they mistake that for neutrality, and they mistake neutrality for virtue, and they think they’re gonna get out of this alive. Meanwhile Trump calls them the enemy of the American people and they profess shock and dismay at how we got to that point. Next on Meet the Press, Ann Coulter! Is she just a “misunderstood goddess” or what?
A.
I got nothing to add with the exception of a hearty, “AMEN!”
I’m sure he knows that news organizations actively help shape campaigns by making editorial decisions (or more bluntly, biased judgments – no shame in that; we all have them, but let’s just be honest about it) about which campaign events are worthy of coverage (& what prominence they deserve), and which campaign events are not.
I think he knows that too. The interviewer was gently trying to point him in the direction of EMAILS, but since she didn’t make it explicit or follow up when he mumbled nonsense he wriggled away. But everyone knows the coverage of EMAILS was exaggerated to almost surreal proportions, like one of those totem pole figures where the dude’s penis is twice the size of his body.
And he could have also mentioned the last time the eventual popular vote winner was someone the campaign press decided was a weenie and a jerk, so they slanted their coverage in favor of the underachieving frat boy who gave them Dove bars. (I’ll leave it to you to add the details for coverage of your boyfriend.)
He wants it both ways, wants the press to be fearless truth teller and passive stenographer. I’m sure he knows as much, that he’s arguing in complete bad faith and is just trying to cover his ass. Which means we still can’t move off of square one with these motherfuckers, their terribleness is bone deep.