Zucker admits... Something?

[TheDrake]

This is from back in October, but I just came across it. Maybe it has already been discussed here.

“If we made any mistake last year, it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run,” Zucker said at a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School. “Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those on air.”

So, how can this be read in any way other than an admission of bias and favoritism? It sounds like he is suggesting that they should have prevented Trump's message from reaching so many people. Unfortunately, I can't find a transcript of this event, so his statement could be out of context, and in the quotes he doesn't actually say why he though it was a mistake.

[rightleft22]

I’m not sure what the word ‘bias’ means anymore.
Maybe it’s just meaningless now as it seems to be applied to anything that goes against what someone already thinks?
You’re not reporting the story the way I want you to = bias

I think we’re talking about the issue resulting from the 24 hour news/entertainment churn. Trump was/is polarizing and it makes for great TV. Did that impact the political outcome? Yes it did
I think an argument could be made that focusing so much attention on him helped him in the end when he should have been just a blip.

Then we have the bazaar focus on the ‘email scandal’ and criminal Hillary while ignoring the open law suits and other questionable activities against the master.
The alt-GOP twitter/blogosphere owned the media narrative while/by accusing the ‘media’ of bias .

We got/get so wrapped up in questions of why analysis we stopped paying attention to and or lost sight of what was happening.


"The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.” ― Garth Stein

the media and the public could not take there eyes off the wall.

[Gaoics79]

I said it before. Trump is like Godzilla, rising from the radioactive ooze of our toxic media culture. Or if you prefer a different analogy, think of him as an antibiotic resistent plague. The media 24/7 news cycle created a stifling environment where no politician could show any personality, speak any but the most bland platitudes, for fear of being vaporized by the media death ray. Howard Dean was probably the most notorious example of this, but it was evident for years since the dawn of CNN that media was suffocating political discourse by selectively breeding out candour, athenticity, and in a word - personality. Clinton was the apex of this evolution, the perfect CNN politician.

And the along comes this reality TV star already acclimated to the radioactive ooze from decades in the public eye, evolved perfectly to feed on its malevolent glare. The more they tried to extinguish him, the stronger he got. The media could attack, they could deride, they could dismiss, but could never do the only thing that would have worked -ignore.

[D.W.]

Trump is an entertainer.  He had his own TV show... we knew this.  So it's no shock that people wanted to watch.  Zucker is just admitting that they gave the people what they wanted. 

If you think it's sinister to suggest people as herd animals don't occasionally need to be protected from their own bad habits, then yes.  This would be a smoking gun statement. 

[Wayward Son]

What I can't understand is why all this publicity helped him.

I mean, when I heard what he was saying, my first reaction was "I would never want him for a boss.  Why the hell would I want him for my President?"

And the more I heard from him, the stronger that feeling got.

Why didn't everyone else feel this way?  Why did hearing his BS make people want to vote for him? 

You can blame the media all you want for delivering his message, but not for people buying into it.

[D.W.]

I blame the "HAHA What will this guy say next!  This is so new and different!" for keeping him in the race.  I blame Hillary for his win.  She is THE establishment candidate when that was what was on trial this election. 

I hate to say it to all here and my friends who actually are Hillary supporters.  If it wasn't for Trump, we would have suffered a crushing defeat instead of a narrow one if the Republican party had put forward a less absurd "outsider".

If only we had had our own "outsider" option...

[Wayward Son]

I said it before, and I'll say it again.

You can blame the Democrats for Trump winning.

But only the Republicans are to blame for Trump in the first place. 

[Fenring]

You can blame the Democrats for Trump winning.

But only the Republicans are to blame for Trump in the first place. 

No. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are to blame for that; or more specifically, the corporate machine that fuels them.

[D.W.]

I don't know.  I paid attention to him as the harbinger of doom for the Republican party.  I watched and listened in shocked disbelief at the things he said.  While the crowds he gathered did disturb me, I actually LIKED that he was Hillary's opposition.  Just as she was likely the only person he could win against, he was likely to be so bad that no matter how negatively a lot of the country felt about her... she could win anyhow.

I think Democrats gathering to watch the dumpster fire are partly to blame as well.

[rightleft22]

The American people are responsible.

You can blame the media all you want for delivering his message, but not for people buying into it

I think that’s where the shadow comes in. At some level a lot of people liked what Trump was implying.
And I use the word “imply” because it was so difficult know what he really stood for.   He said racist and sexist things that polarized but declared himself as not being racist or sexist and a lot of people bought it.  People excusing what he said by demanding that we look past the words and at the policies for which he stood, most of which remain unclear. 

Which is maybe why it worked?  Not ‘knowing’ for sure made it ok.

I was gob smacked watching reporter after reporter interviewing Trump supporters unable to push past this obvious pivot of looking past the words. Instead they just looked incredulous assuming I think that people would see through the circular logic not believing that a lot of people might not want to see through it. This to me was the great hubris of the DNC

Then we have 49% of woman voting for this man which I think begs the question, do woman really want the goals as set forth feminism or do they really want to be submissive and taken care of. 

I don't know

[Fenring]

He said racist and sexist things that polarized but declared himself as not being racist or sexist and a lot of people bought it.  People excusing what he said by demanding that we look past the words and at the policies for which he stood, most of which remain unclear. 

This is a twisting of what really happened, I think. What he did was to speak candidly about a number of things in non-PC ways, and was dubbed by his opposition as having said racist and sexist things. Then, when referring to Trump supporters, they were also referred to as being racists and sexists for following the man who was dubbed by those terms. This is entirely different, though, from saying that he "was" racist or sexist, and that people bought into that. You are thinking of it entirely from a severely slanted perspective where you own premise is used to prove your conclusion.

I'm not even trying to argue whether or not Trump is a sexist/racist. My point is about narrative and how you're bought into a narrative about him and about his followers. This narrative has expanded and by this point is being used to 'prove' that his followers are a bunch of evildoers out to roll back the civil rights movement. Check my the "Trump predictions" thread for a comment I just made on that topic.

In a strict sense you can blame the people for a candidate; of course. But you're omitting the heart of the matter if you ignore what conditions may have been in place such that they wanted an FU candidate in the first place. Which systemic corruptions, which media collusions, which banking cartels, which foreign policy boondoggles, and which repeated lies to the American people do you think must be mentioned when assessing why the people now want what they want? You can blame the people for being influenced by present realities, but you can't blame them for all of these things which make up those realities. No person elected or cheered for a banking cartel, or for oil wars, or for lobbying and corruption. Those happened despite what the vast majority of Americans want.

[rightleft22]

What he did was to speak candidly about a number of things in non-PC ways
That Statement forgives to much

What we say and how we say it matters. That isn't Political Correctness that's about taking responsibility.

[D.W.]

I think he was a lot closer to the sexist/racist end of the dial than just "non-PC", but being the FU candidate and saying shocking things gave him a lot more slack than any establishment candidate would receive for saying the same.

While the media and many of my left leaning friends have a tendency to read the worst into Trump's statements, they WERE heinous all by themselves taken in context.

[Fenring]

Again, I'm not arguing about whether or not any of Trump's comments in the particular were close to (or were) sexist/racist. My point is that the scenario was Trump speaking off-the-cuff in a non-PC way, and some of that as it comes out may end up more or less sexist/racist, which is different from saying that he "is" a sexist/racist. This semantic difference is quite important because by attributing those qualities as being intrinsic to him in all things he says (he "is" racist, rather than "some of what he says comes off as racist") one then moves on the attribute those intrinsic qualities to his supporters as well. It's a slippery slope of designating what people "are", when then gets turned around and used to prove that things they do are done because they "are" sexist/racist. Do you see how this is circular reasoning? It doesn't even require analyzing particulars to see how sexist/racist they may be to realize that this kind of echo chamber logic is in play.

[DJQuag]

Just so.

The media had for two or more decades decided that there are some things that can be said, and others that can not. And until this election, they had their way.

Some things are *censored*ed up to believe or say. Definitely.  But It's not the job of the media or anyone else to say what that is.

This bull*censored* over Facebook is an example of that.  Facebook reflects the people's ability to communicate with each other. And if you don't like what's in the Trending bar, well fine. Maybe the people suck. Convince them otherwise. But wanting to restrict that is some 1984 *censored* and distinctly unliberal.

I really didn't want Trump to be President for various reasons, but now that he is, I'm just going to hope for the beat and fight my hardest against whatever BS he comes up with.

But my hope lays in that he's *not a politician.* He has no connection and doesn't owe anything to anyone or any political party. I seriously doubt that at this point he cares about being reelected. He was an avowed liberal until eight years ago and could still turn back to that.

I hope.

[rightleft22]

Do you see how this is circular reasoning?

I do understand.

However I wasn't making a comment about the people following Trump's as being racist or sexist, but that his sexists and racist comments were dismissed by his followers and those that voted for him, often using the very pivot reasoning you presented.

Personally I could not stand behind someone who uses the kind of language and rhetoric of a Trump as I feel that doing so would reflect badly on the values I wish to live by. 

I also think it’s valid to ask Trump supporters if they think/feel that Trump reflects the values they hope to live by and what support of the man says about their values.

And yes before anyone goes there the same questions can and should be asked of anyone who supported this or that person. Actually any reflective person ought to asked themselves these questions before supporting someone.

[D.W.]

You are suggesting there is a distinction to be made between Trump saying things that MAY be perceived as sexist or racist when he himself is not.  I call BS on that.

Now what may be the case is Trump POSING as a sexist/racist when he actually is not.  We are not just reading into his statements and seeing anything other than what he wanted us to.  He blatantly ran as a sexist/racist persona.  After all, flipping the bird to the left wing establishment was part of his appeal.  I think that's why the right largely let him get away with it.  They are not all, or even dominated by, racists and sexists.  They are just sick of the left ignoring them accept when they are busy calling them all sexists or racists or ignorant or superstitious or evil or homophobic or...  You get the idea.

I honestly don't know if that's the real Donald.  I expect he is so use to being an exaggerated version of himself to get and keep attention even he doesn't know for sure.

[rightleft22]

The media had for two or more decades decided that there are some things that can be said, and others that cannot. And until this election, they had their way.

I do not believe that the media (whatever or whoever that is today) defines what Political Correctness is/was.   

What the hell is this thing we call political correctness today anyway?

Being Candid, saying it like it is? Is that the new PC?

How many people have responded to an argument as if saying “it like it is” meant that what was being said was worth listening to - without questioning or caring if what or how something was being said was true

My understanding of the intent of PC was encourage deluge by not resorting to intentional insult and offence which seems reasonable to me (I think today that makes me a elites but the definition of that word also seems to be changing)

If I call all Mexicans rapists and murders is my intent to say it like it is and speak candidly… or is it to polarize, offend and insult.  Does such language create positive dialog?

It appears Trumps toned down message is that he wishes to deport illegal immigrants especially those convicted of crimes. Why didn’t he just say that? He didn't Instead he incited people’s anger and fear which I think can be argued was his intent and it worked.

Trump became a politician when he decided to run for office don’t fool yourself

[rightleft22]

You are suggesting there is a distinction to be made between Trump saying things that MAY be perceived as sexist or racist when he himself is not.  I call BS on that.

Was that directed at me?

I believe words matter and that many of the things trump said were and are racist/sexist which in my opinion qualifies him for the label of racist and sexist. The worst kind as he does not see it or pretends not to.

Trump might think that it’s ok for a person to portray multiple personas with different even conflicting values and that it’s ok to exaggerate this or that quality to reach his goal. But that would also reveal something very troubling about who he is as well as his mental state.

[Fenring]

I believe it was directed at me, and no, D.W., that is not what I was getting at. Perhaps it's hard to articulate, but I was addressing an identity feedback loop where an "is" is assigned to a person, and thereafter that identity itself can be used to trace back actions or comments to designate properties to them. Think of it was a misuse of universal specification after having previous misused universal generalization. He says X things, he is therefore X, therefore when he says thing Y we can attribute X property to it because the speaker "is" X.

It was not meant to address whether or not Trump has a pattern of saying sexist/racist things. In practice, though, I am very hesitant to ever say of a person that they "are" X, because it is both reductionist as well as typically packaged to fit a narrative. I am perfectly comfortable suggesting that Trump comports himself like a pig, and that things that come out of his mouth are unsavory. But that's a description of his aesthetic mode of expression, rather than attributing some innate characteristic to him. When dealing with narcissists I find it's often profitless to micromanage the various adjectives that may describe them, as they are not so much the defining characteristic so much as the pattern of narcissism itself (I assume for the purposes of this argument he is one).

[TheDrake]

I think it useful to break down from "racist" into "prejudiced" and "discriminatory". Trump has at times delved into both aspects. The Mexican rapist characterization would demonstrate prejudice to my satisfaction. Ignoring parts of his housing project past transgressions, there's less blatant discrimination. Stop and frisk edges up on it. Then you can add a third aspect "insensitive". When he goes on TVB and says he has a great relationship with "the blacks", most of us hear insensitivity. Jumping all the way to prejudiced and discriminatory is a stretch. Meanwhile, small portions of his support come from people who would say "n*ggers" or "colored people".

I think this all bleeds together in a way of going from zero to sixty on such matters. I still remember a few years ago when a politician was goofing around with some kids in a photo-op type thing, and he referred to a girl as a monkey. The machinery went into overdrive organizing rallies and calls for resignation. Right up until they figured out the girl was white.

It can be hard to figure out sometimes. Sometimes not, like Michelle Obama being compared to an Ape recently or somebody using the perfectly non-racist word "niggardly".

I don't understand why many Trump supporters put so much energy into railing about people wanting you to be "PC" when you can expend far less energy to understand what offends people and avoid it. Unless you want to offend them, but don't want any repercussions. This is the dilemma of Trump. My personal guess, is that he is prejudiced. He believes that non-whites have inherently worse qualities than whites on average. He can also accept that "some" are good people (paraphrasing). I think a lot of Trump supporters fall into that category with him. They aren't about to roll out and lynch somebody, and they are probably cordial to people of color in their daily lives.

[DJQuag]

I think that two years ago, there was a man sitting at a White House Correspondents dinner who had a few jokes made at his expense. And that he decided then that he was going to run for President.

It was only AFTER that that he decided who he would target. Who to aim the votes for. But since the establishment(I.e. Obama) had made it clear that they had crowned Clinton as the next president, why not go Republican?

He ain't establishment,  thats for sure. But I'm going to hold.out help that this *censored* *isn't* Republican.

[D.W.]

Was that directed at me?

No rightleft22, it was directed at Fenring's post stating "...and some of that as it comes out may end up more or less sexist/racist, which is different from saying that he "is" a sexist/racist. This semantic difference is quite important because..."

My belief/opinion is that there is no credible way to deny Trump was at a minimum playing the part of a sexist or racist.  It wasn't interpretation or projection.  There is no defense (in my opinion) other than he was conning us and playing a roll for the attention / strategy of it.  He isn't being labeled unfairly.

Fenring's clarification does make a point I agree with.  I would still argue that this feedback loop allowed Trump to make statements which in isolation are defensible leaving him with clean hands while permitting him to generate outrage and pander to toxic voting blocks no politician is allowed to pander to.  I do not see the man as a buffoon.  I think that is an act he uses to good effect in making people underestimate him.  Like, half the country did...

[Gaoics79]

I do not see the man as a buffoon.  I think that is an act he uses to good effect in making people underestimate him.  Like, half the country did...

I think you give the man way too much credit.

[TheDeamon]

Gawd, I'm listening to talk radio for the first time in years. /vommit

Limbaugh is convinced Chris Christy got canned by Trump because he was looking at bringing on Lobbyists for running the Admin.

But conservative Talk Radio is living it over the media being in a constant hype mode about his "Transition being in chaos" even though he has already named more prospective Cabinet Heads for his administration than any of the previous 5 presidents did at the same point in their transition save for Bush (41) who had the advantage of drawing from the Reagan Administrations incumbency.

[rightleft22]

I don’t understand all this blaming the media
What is this media

Personally I think it’s understand able that the ‘media’ is following the transition story. People want to know what is going on.

I’m mean it’s absurd that America elected a guy they have no idea who he really is and what he might or might not do..

When you are not allowed to take what the man’s says at face value by accept the premise that words don't matter no wonder everyone is confused, frightened and uncertain.

What the Frack has America done?

[Fenring]

I don’t understand all this blaming the media
What is this media

That's a good question: you should probably go and investigate that. A good place to start would be who owns which media organizations and what their allegiances appear to be.

I’m mean it’s absurd that America elected a guy they have no idea who he really is and what he might or might not do..

Yeah, it is. Think about that for a moment. America chose a wild card over Hillary, who was very well known. What does that say about the DNC's choice of candidate?

[AI Wessex]

Think about that for a moment. America chose a wild card over Hillary, who was very well known. What does that say about the DNC's choice of candidate?

It was a responsible, competent choice.  Look what we ended up with instead.  What exactly are the priorities of people who elected a President who wants to live "part time" in the White House and favors cronyism and nepotism over those other qualities. 

For instance, his son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in getting Christie out of a prominent transition role in revenge for Christie prosecuting his father for tax evasion and witness tampering.  Giuliani has major conflicts of interest with other countries involving his business dealings, including Iran, yet he may become the Secretary of State.  Bannon, among many other deplorable qualities, has a long published history of racist and anti-semitic statements and will become his strategic advisor.  Ted Cruz may become the AG but was willing to shut down the government as a Senator over the opposition of his Party leadership.  Vice President-elect Pence is fighting his own legal battle to keep his emails secret to hide their contents from the public.  Just the tip of the iceberg...

Trump was the better choice?

[DJQuag]

There are two narratives there, Al.

One is that Christie was shown the door because he prosecuted the father of someone close to Trump. The other is that Trump saw Christie did something outrageous and threw his aides to the wolves to get away with it, and was disgusted.

You can of course insist that only one narrative is the correct one, but there is equal evidence either way, and our biases tend to point us towards the one we like best.

I can not say this enough. I'm on your side and believe what you believe.  But he won. He deserves a fair chance. If and when he steps over the line I'll be right there with you, but I am wary of boy crying wolf syndrome.

Because liberal voters are united, but moderates are what count and if we continually bring up things to them that turn out to be nothing, then they'll abandon us. And Liberals cannot run a government without moderate consent.

[TheDeamon]

I’m mean it’s absurd that America elected a guy they have no idea who he really is and what he might or might not do..

Yeah, it is. Think about that for a moment. America chose a wild card over Hillary, who was very well known. What does that say about the DNC's choice of candidate?

It took until I saw the above that I realized something. Stop and rewind this a moment.

I’m mean it’s absurd that America elected a guy they have no idea who he really is and what he might or might not do..

Now let us rewind further back and pose a trivia question: In the fall of 2008, what was the leading complaint and concern many people in the Conservative (Talk Radio) Talking head crowd about one Barack H. Obama?

Left foot, meet Right foot.

[TheDeamon]

For instance, his son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in getting Christie out of a prominent transition role in revenge for Christie prosecuting his father for tax evasion and witness tampering.  . . .  Bannon, among many other deplorable qualities, has a long published history of racist and anti-semitic statements and will become his strategic advisor.

So let me get this straight, the Orthodox Jew(Jared Kushner) decided to use his influence with Trump to bounce out Chris Christie, who was likely to be largely be irrelevant in a few weeks anyway, and decided to let the anti-semite stick around? Something does not compute here.

To be clear on sourcing of that claim on Kushner:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37986429

Which it should also note his Grandparents are described by the BBC as being "holocaust survivors" from Poland. Which tends to suggest he probably wouldn't have much sufferance for anti-semites if he's like most people of Jewish descent who personally knew holocaust survivors.

[cherrypoptart]

If the issue is about how much free press Trump got for himself we also should admit that Hillary basically avoided the press like a person who owes someone money and she went into virtual hibernation for extended periods during her campaign to recover from allergies and cram for debates, or something. She got all the press that she wanted to get. She figured more wouldn't help her since she already had it in the bag and could possibly hurt her if she said something unfortunate, which incidentally she did with her "deplorables" remark. Nobody is to blame for Trump getting more press than Hillary but Hillary herself.

[AI Wessex]

One is that Christie was shown the door because he prosecuted the father of someone close to Trump. The other is that Trump saw Christie did something outrageous and threw his aides to the wolves to get away with it, and was disgusted.

You can of course insist that only one narrative is the correct one, but there is equal evidence either way, and our biases tend to point us towards the one we like best.

Sure, let's split it 50-50.  He may have had two reasons and won't admit to at least one of them, maybe both.

So let me get this straight, the Orthodox Jew(Jared Kushner) decided to use his influence with Trump to bounce out Chris Christie, who was likely to be largely be irrelevant in a few weeks anyway, and decided to let the anti-semite stick around? Something does not compute here.

Trump likes his son-in-law and loves his daughter.  His son-in-law can probably chart his own course as long as he doesn't disrespect his father-in-law or his daughter.

To be clear on sourcing of that claim on Kushner:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37986429

Which it should also note his Grandparents are described by the BBC as being "holocaust survivors" from Poland. Which tends to suggest he probably wouldn't have much sufferance for anti-semites if he's like most people of Jewish descent who personally knew holocaust survivors.

Does that  trump (or Trump) his relationship with Trump?  After all, as your article points out, Kushner is himself vastly wealthy from real estate, so he and Trump are kindred spirits in different and perhaps stronger ways than with his impoverished holocaust survivor grandparents. I'll especially note Jared's ties to money as an influence on his thinking:

The young Jared won a place at Harvard despite poor grades, according to Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admissions: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges. The year of his admission, according to Mr Golden's book, Charles Kushner donated $2.5 million to the university, along with similar one-off donations to Cornell and Princeton.

His father donated a total of $7.5M to colleges to ensure his below-average student son would get into a top school.  Money buys a lot of love if you have a lot of it.  Christie busted his father for his money.  I would say that could lead to a measure of revenge, wouldn't you?

If the issue is about how much free press Trump got for himself we also should admit that Hillary basically avoided the press like a person who owes someone money and she went into virtual hibernation for extended periods during her campaign to recover from allergies and cram for debates, or something.

I suppose you could put it that way, but you could also say that Trump got $billions in free advertising and said whatever he wanted without suffering any consequences while Hillary was vilified and pilloried for everything she said by people who think like you.  Imagine if she had said that she could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes.  Instead she tried to protect herself from being attacked for coughing but was attacked anyway.

[Gaoics79]

Now let us rewind further back and pose a trivia question: In the fall of 2008, what was the leading complaint and concern many people in the Conservative (Talk Radio) Talking head crowd about one Barack H. Obama?

Left foot, meet Right foot.

And you'll note that a surprising number of people who voted for Obama probably voted for Trump. See if you can process that reality.

That to me is the biggest revelation about this election. People call Trump "polarizing" and he is - but not in the way that is usually understood in American politics. Trump is polarizing for his personal characteristics, but in terms of his appeal, he bridges an electoral divide that few have bridged in decades. That to me is a huge accomplishment on his part. He promised he'd put blue states into play that had never been in play in ages, and people scoffed. Well he didn't deliver New York, but he did still deliver on his promise. Gotta give the guy credit.

[TheDeamon]

So let me get this straight, the Orthodox Jew(Jared Kushner) decided to use his influence with Trump to bounce out Chris Christie, who was likely to be largely be irrelevant in a few weeks anyway, and decided to let the anti-semite stick around? Something does not compute here.

Trump likes his son-in-law and loves his daughter.  His son-in-law can probably chart his own course as long as he doesn't disrespect his father-in-law or his daughter.

To be clear on sourcing of that claim on Kushner:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37986429

Which it should also note his Grandparents are described by the BBC as being "holocaust survivors" from Poland. Which tends to suggest he probably wouldn't have much sufferance for anti-semites if he's like most people of Jewish descent who personally knew holocaust survivors.

Does that  trump (or Trump) his relationship with Trump?  After all, as your article points out, Kushner is himself vastly wealthy from real estate, so he and Trump are kindred spirits in different and perhaps stronger ways than with his impoverished holocaust survivor grandparents.

Evidently, Jared did one better, not only is he an Orthodox Jew, he converted Trump's daughter to Judaism, so she's now an Orthodox Jew too.

It gets better though:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/

(The entire blog post is worthwhile, but it's around 8,000 words long, and that's without following links.)

10. Isn’t Trump anti-Semitic?

I feel like an attempt to avoid crying wolf might reserve that term for people who didn’t win an Israeli poll on what candidate would best represent Israel’s interests, or doesn’t have a child who converted to Judaism, or hasn’t won various awards from the American Jewish community for his contributions to Israel and American Judaism, or wasn’t the grand marshal of a Salute To Israel Parade, or…

Or let's visit some other Anti-Trump supporter stories following on the aftermath of the election:

http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/11/election-night-hijab-attack-false

The first one to really go viral involved a Muslim female student at the University of Louisiana who claimed to have had her hijab ripped off and her wallet stolen the day after Trump's election by two white men wearing Trump hats. But on Thursday, local police announced that the young woman had admitted she fabricated the story. "This incident is no longer under investigation," the Lafayette Police Department said in a press release.

So uh, seems someone was seeking attention?

And an alleged incident of a gay man named Chris Ball getting beaten up by Trump supporters in Santa Monica on election night seems to have not happened the way it was initially recounted, if the incident even happened at all. The Santa Monica Police Department posted a message to Facebook Thursday saying that neither the department nor city officials had "received any information indicating this crime occurred in the City of Santa Monica" and "a check of local hospitals revealed there was no victim of any such incident admitted or treated."

So another invention, which created more hysteria, and more "negative optics" towards Trump.

Other instances of "Trump inspired" violence and vandalism have also turned out to be hoaxes or misinterpretations. An alleged Ku Klux Klan rally in honor of Trump's victory turned out to be an old photo of conservatives carrying U.S., Gadsden, and Christian flags that were billowing out in a manner mistaken in a grainy photo for Klan robes. There were no Southern Illinois University students posting blackface selfies to social media after Trump's win.

More inventions and hoaxes.

A Nazi flag that went up over a home in San Francisco Wednesday wasn't a show of support for anti-Jewish sentiment but "a comment on our new president-elect," according to the anti-Trump resident who put it up. "I am hoping people get that this is a political statement, and that I'm not a Nazi supporter."

So not a White Supremacist celebrating the victory of his candidate/cause in the recent election.

Other anti-Semitic imagery—such as "Sieg Heil 2016" spray-painted on an abandoned store front in Philadelphia—may have been legit expressions of bigotry or may have been similar attempts at commentary on Trump's election; it's unclear because no one is taking credit for them. The bulk of racist graffiti incidents appear to have happened around middle- and high-schools, which doesn't make their messages any less hurtful, I'm sure, but does suggest a phenomenon driven by mean and immature kids rather than rogue bands of serious neo-Nazis.

Emphasis added above by me. But I'd be inclined to agree, a lot of what's going on is probably a bunch of immature punks acting out to prove just how rebellious and "cool" they are by committing an act of vandalism that's going to stir up their local areas something fierce.

But getting back into potentially fabricated stories:

In one of the widely-shared stories, a black woman claimed that four white men had threatened her while she was pumping gas at a Smyrna, Delaware, gas station Wednesday. After talking about things would change now that Trump was president, one of the men allegedly approached her and asked, "How scared are you, black bitch?" before saying "I should kill you right now. You're a waste of air." Another of the men allegedly flashed a gun and said, "You're lucky there's witnesses or else I'd shoot you right here."

The woman, Ashley Boyer, posted about this awful incident on Facebook in an update that was since deleted; on Thursday, she followed up by noting that "charges were filed, fugitives were caught." But when PhillyVoice contacted Smyrna police Thursday, the department said no report about such an incident had been filed and no one had contacted them about anything similar. So PhillyVoice reached out to Delaware State Police... who reported that no neighboring police agencies had received any such reports either, and there was no record of any local 911 calls about such an incident. "There is no record of this occurring in Smyrna, if at all," said Corporal Brian Donner of the Delaware State Police.

So uh, suspects not caught, no charges filed... Because nobody reported the incident to the police, which the victim claims she did(...but the "victim" also claimed the perps are already formally charged).

The second alleged incident, out of Minnesota, involved an Asian college student named Kathy Mirah Tu who said she was accosted by a white man while crossing a bridge on the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus. "I was stop in my tracked by a white male, who yelled at me to 'Go back to Asia,'" Tu posted to Facebook, in an update that had received more than 17,000 shares as of Thursday evening. "I pretended to not hear any thing and continue on walking since I didn't want to create conflict. Shortly after that moment, I was stopped by that same man who told me 'Don't you know it's disrespectful to walk away from someone when they are talking to you?" After that, the man grabbed Tu's wrist and threatened to hit her so she punched him, according to her post. "His friends who were watching the entire situation go down saw that I was going to the win fight and came over to his rescue and accused me of assaulting him and called the police."

According to Tu, the police arrived and handcuffed her but eventually let her off with a warning. Yet neither the campus police nor the Minneapolis Police Department have any record of the incident Tu describes. "We heard complaint from student related 2 Wash bridge yestdy, UMPD didnt respond to bridge or make an arrest," the University of Minnesota Police Department tweeted Thursday, also asking Tu or anyone who did know about the alleged incident to come forward.

So yet another incident claiming police involvement, where the police have no record of being involved, or even in the area. Minneapolis PD even has a Twitter post asking for anyone involved in the incident to please come forward, as they don't seem to have any record of such a call being placed. So I imagine if the claim is true, they'd like to know what happened to the dispatch record that must have gone missing.

So either there is a police conspiracy in Minneapolis, or someone else fabricated a story in an attempt to get attention.

But hey, the Southern Poverty Law Center has their back, as Slatestarcodex noted in the long blog post previously linked:

SPLC said they have 300 such hate incidents, although their definition of “hate incident” includes things like “someone overheard a racist comment in someone else’s private conversation, then challenged them about it and got laughed at”.

Let us also ignore the following noted on Slatestarcodex

Oh, also, I looked on right-wing sites to see if there are complaints of harassment and attacks by Hillary supporters, and there are. Among the stories I was able to confirm on moderately trustworthy news sites that had investigated them somewhat (a higher standard than the SLPC holds their reports to) are ones about how Hillary supporters have beaten up people for wearing Trump hats, screamed encouragement as a mob beat up a man who they thought voted Trump, knocked over elderly people, beaten up a high school girl for supporting Trump on Instagram, defaced monuments with graffiti saying “DIE WHITES DIE”, advocated raping Melania Trump, kicked a black homeless woman who was holding a Trump sign, attacked a pregnant woman stuck in her car, with a baseball bat, screamed at children who vote Trump in a mock school election, etc, etc, etc.

But please, keep talking about how somebody finding a swastika scrawled in a school bathroom means that every single Trump supporter is scum and Trump’s whole campaign was based on hatred.

FWIW, slatestarcodex doesn't like Trump, views him as a horrible President-elect for other reasons. But thinks the current (preferred) narrative over racial/bigotry issues and Trump is destructive and dangerous for other reasons:

Stop fearmongering. Somewhere in America, there are still like three or four people who believe the media, and those people are cowering in their houses waiting for the death squads.

Stop crying wolf. God forbid, one day we might have somebody who doesn’t give speeches about how diversity makes this country great and how he wants to fight for minorities, who doesn’t pose holding a rainbow flag and state that he proudly supports transgender people, who doesn’t outperform his party among minority voters, who wasn’t the leader of the Salute to Israel Parade, and who doesn’t offer minorities major cabinet positions. And we won’t be able to call that guy an “openly white supremacist Nazi homophobe”, because we already wasted all those terms this year.

Stop talking about dog whistles. The kabbalistic similarities between “dog-whistling” and “wolf-crying” are too obvious to ignore.

Stop writing articles breathlessly following everything the KKK says. Stop writing several times more articles about the KKK than there are actual Klansmen. Remember that thing where Trump started out as a random joke, and then the media covered him way more than any other candidate because he was so outrageous, and gave him what was essentially free advertising, and then he became President-elect of the United States? Is the lesson you learned from this experience that you need 24-7 coverage of the Ku Klux Klan?

Stop responding to everyone who worries about Wall Street or globalism or the elite with “I THINK YOU MEAN JEWS. BECAUSE JEWS ARE THE ELITES. ALL ELITES AND GLOBALISTS ARE JEWS. IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT THE ELITE, IT’S DEFINITELY JEWS YOU SHOULD BE WORRIED ABOUT. IF YOU FEEL SCREWED BY WALL STREET, THEN THE PEOPLE WHO SCREWED YOU WERE THE JEWS. IT’S THE JEWS WHO ARE DOING ALL THIS, MAKE SURE TO REMEMBER THAT. DEFINITELY TRANSLATE YOUR HATRED TOWARDS A VAGUE ESTABLISHMENT INTO HATRED OF JEWS, BECAUSE THEY’RE TOTALLY THE ONES YOU’RE THINKING OF.” This means you, Vox. Someday those three or four people who still believe the media are going to read this stuff and immediately join the Nazi Party, and nobody will be able to blame them.

Stop saying that being against crime is a dog whistle for racism. Have you ever met a crime victim? They don’t like crime. I work with people from a poor area, and a lot of them have been raped, or permanently disfigured, or had people close to them murdered. You know what these people have in common? They don’t like crime When you say “the only reason someone could talk about law and order is that they secretly hate black people, because, y’know, all criminals are black”, not only are you an idiot, you’re a racist. Also, I judge you for not having read the polls saying that nonwhites are way more concerned about crime than white people are.

Stop turning everything into identity politics. The only thing the media has been able to do for the last five years is shout “IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS IDENTITY POLITICS!” at everything, and then when the right wing finally says “Um, i…den-tity….poli-tics?” you freak out and figure that the only way they could have possibly learned that phrase is from the KKK.

Stop calling Trump voters racist. A metaphor: we have freedom of speech not because all speech is good, but because the temptation to ban speech is so great that, unless given a blanket prohibition, it would slide into universal censorship of any unpopular opinion. Likewise, I would recommend you stop calling Trump voters racist – not because none of them are, but because as soon as you give yourself that opportunity, it’s a slippery slope down to “anyone who disagrees with me on anything does so entirely out of raw seething hatred, and my entire outgroup is secret members of the KKK and so I am justified in considering them worthless human trash”. I’m not saying you’re teetering on the edge of that slope. I’m saying you’re way at the bottom, covered by dozens of feet of fallen rocks and snow. Also, I hear that accusing people of racism constantly for no reason is the best way to get them to vote for your candidate next time around. Assuming there is a next time.

Stop centering criticism of Donald Trump around this sort of stuff, and switch to literally anything else. Here is an incompetent thin-skinned ignorant boorish fraudulent omnihypocritical demagogue with no idea how to run a country, whose philosophy of governance basically boils down to “I’m going to win and not lose, details to be filled in later”, and all you can do is repeat, again and again, how he seems popular among weird Internet teenagers who post frog memes. In the middle of an emotionally incontinent reality TV show host getting his hand on the nuclear button, your chief complaint is that in the middle of a few dozen denunciations of the KKK, he once delayed denouncing the KKK for an entire 24 hours before going back to denouncing it again. When a guy who says outright that he won’t respect elections unless he wins them does, somehow, win an election, the headlines are how he once said he didn’t like globalists which means he must be anti-Semitic.

Stop making people suicidal. Stop telling people they’re going to be killed. Stop terrifying children. Stop giving racism free advertising. Stop trying to convince Americans that all the other Americans hate them. Stop. Stop. Stop.

Emphasis belongs to SlateStarCodex, but I can agree with the sentiment.

[TheDeamon]

Now let us rewind further back and pose a trivia question: In the fall of 2008, what was the leading complaint and concern many people in the Conservative (Talk Radio) Talking head crowd about one Barack H. Obama?

Left foot, meet Right foot.

And you'll note that a surprising number of people who voted for Obama probably voted for Trump. See if you can process that reality.

Oh, I already had. A LOT of people voted "hope and change" in 2008. Quite literally voted that, they knew little to nothing else about Obama. Hell, I wanted to believe in an X-files kind of way in what Obama was talking about, but I was far too cynical to buy in. Many of those same voters switched to Trump this year because he was the general election candidate that challenged the status quo this year. It's very possible they'll stick with Trump in 4 years assuming he doesn't completely screw things over, and then promptly switch back to the Democrats in 8 years because they're once again unhappy with the status quo. Only time will tell.

[D.W.]

Pretty much.  I'm hoping for 4 but if we don't run "an outsider" it will be at least 8.  People are very grumpy about their government not functioning as effectively as we believe it should.  We blame whoever sits in the big chair.  The rest is designed to (or evolved to) be less of a contest anyhow.

[AI Wessex]

Hmmm, a report of media bias toward Trump:

In her book, [Megan] Kelly claims that certain television hosts were in the tank for Trump. These hosts would arrange with Trump in advance to ask him critical questions to certain hits on him so that they would appear to have some credibility. Kurtz asked Kelly about this, and she answered, “Yes, they were acting.” Kurtz added that Kelly claims that this happened at more than one network, but she couldn’t tell us who. Kelly continued, “No, because these are off the record conversations that I was privy to that I’m not at liberty to reveal, so while I’d love to tell you who it was, I have this information, and I’m not allowed to name the names. But, trust me. This did happen, and it has been confirmed to me by more than one television executive.”

I can only how Conservatives who were outraged about a possible leak of a question to Clinton will react.

[Fenring]

Hmmm, a report of media bias toward Trump:

In her book, [Megan] Kelly claims that certain television hosts were in the tank for Trump. These hosts would arrange with Trump in advance to ask him critical questions to certain hits on him so that they would appear to have some credibility. Kurtz asked Kelly about this, and she answered, “Yes, they were acting.” Kurtz added that Kelly claims that this happened at more than one network, but she couldn’t tell us who. Kelly continued, “No, because these are off the record conversations that I was privy to that I’m not at liberty to reveal, so while I’d love to tell you who it was, I have this information, and I’m not allowed to name the names. But, trust me. This did happen, and it has been confirmed to me by more than one television executive.”

I can only how Conservatives who were outraged about a possible leak of a question to Clinton will react.

I think the proper takeaway here ought to be not that Trump was pristine and that Clinton was cheating, but rather that Trump's general point about the media being disgusting was accurate, even if he was knowingly benefiting from it at the time himself.

[AI Wessex]

Yes, he has a habit of condemning things from which he has gotten huge windfalls and other benefits.  I suppose you should hire a crook to run the police department or an embezzler to run a bank because they know where the weaknesses are in the system.  For President, you need somebody who has really cleaned up.  He could clean up a lot of departments with his experience.

[TheDrake]

I no longer trust any media figure's claims of unnamed sources or high ranking officials, I've decided. Too often this comes out to be fabrication on the part of the source, selectively construed and rephrased by the journalist, a mischaracterization of the source's actual role, or disputed by other figures. Direct named quotes only, please, journalists.

[Kasandra]

This is worth quoting at some length, bearing in mind that Trump and his supporters were the ones crying foul about vote rigging and tampering even before the election was held.  As Cherry might now say, if it happened it's ok because it helped elect his candidate:

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery — including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human “trolls,” and networks of websites and social-media accounts — echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.

Two teams of independent researchers found that the Russians exploited American-made technology platforms to attack U.S. democracy at a particularly vulnerable moment, as an insurgent candidate harnessed a wide range of grievances to claim the White House. The sophistication of the Russian tactics may complicate efforts by Facebook and Google to crack down on “fake news,” as they have vowed to do after widespread complaints about the problem.

There is no way to know whether the Russian campaign proved decisive in electing Trump, but researchers portray it as part of a broadly effective strategy of sowing distrust in U.S. democracy and its leaders. The tactics included penetrating the computers of election officials in several states and releasing troves of hacked emails that embarrassed Clinton in the final months of her campaign.

“They want to essentially erode faith in the U.S. government or U.S. government interests,” said Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who along with two other researchers has tracked Russian propaganda since 2014. “This was their standard mode during the Cold War. The problem is that this was hard to do before social media.”

[Pete at Home]

Even if that's true, Kasandra, propaganda is not tantamount to vote Rigging. It's not even as serious as the 8 million the PRC was found  to have given Bill's campaign in the 1990s.

[Pete at Home]

" preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers."

Ha. Next you'lol be telling us that Bernie Sanders was a Turban agent.  Who died and made you Edgar J Hoover.?  Ruskies Ruskies everywhere and not a thought to think.

[Kasandra]

In other words, you think the alleged Russian intrusion into the election process had no effect?

Ha. Next you'lol be telling us that Bernie Sanders was a Turban agent.

Not even sure what this is supposed to mean or why you think an insult is deserved.

[TheDeamon]

Probably no more impact than usual. Pretending that foreign governments don't try to influence our elections(or that we try to influence theirs) is to play at being incredibly naive.

[Kasandra]

Do you think there is no difference in degree of "interference" or influence this time?

[Pete at Home]

In other words, you think the alleged Russian intrusion into the election process had no effect?

Not sure how you got that from what I said. 

As for what you call insult, like I said, since you said elsewhere that I have misunderstood you, I need to take time to reread everything, and will apologize and correct where I see I was mistaken.

[Pete at Home]

If the American people had ANY source of information that was not consistently manipulative and dishonest, then the People would not be so gullible to Russian lies.  Russia has as much right to manipulate our elections through disinformation and falsehoods as FOX, MSNBC, Daily Kos, or any other source of misinformation.

Why should I care which foreigner (Rupert Murdoch, Vladimir Putin, or George Soros) is leading the people by the nose?

[TheDeamon]

Of those 3, only Putin doesn't claim U.S. Citizenship and is ineligible to vote.