"FAKE NEWS" in the era of TRUMP

One of the unfortunate side effects of the Trump era is that the phrase "fake news" has taken on the opposite meaning of what it used to mean. It used to mean that someone or some organization had put out a false news story- such as those put out by the Russian government's disinformation campaign during the 2016 election to damage Hillary Clinton. One of the most infamous was the wild and false allegation that Clinton and her campaign manager were running a child slavery sex ring out of the basement of a Washington pizza parlor, which provoked an armed man to arrive to try to free the fictional child sex slaves.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-man-with-assault-rifle-dc-comet-pizza-victim-of-fake-sex-trafficking-story/

(It can't be seriously argued that the Russians were trying to engineer the election of Donald Trump- not even Trump thought he was going to win. The Russians just wanted a weakened and embattled Hillary Clinton presidency.)

But Donald Trump has single handedly turned the phrase "fake news" around. Now the phrase "fake news" when uttered by Trump or members of his administration means a legitimate news story, based on sound reporting, that is well sourced, factual, and true- but one that makes Donald Trump look bad. Even when it's just video of Trump saying something wild, incoherent or obviously untrue (like his July 4th speech about the Revolutionaries attacking airports), Trump labels it as fake news. And now when Trump says something is "fake news," we can almost count on it being true.

Unfortunately, the rise of Trump has also led to a massive decline in awareness of current events by a significant minority of the U.S. population, as his cult followers have taken his lead and now refuse to accept or consider stories written or reported by mainstream, legitimate news organizations which follow journalistic ethics. Trumpers routinely reject news coming from organizations which try to report accurately, source their stories, not take accusations at face value without double and triple checking them, and which quickly try to correct the few errors that occur so they can get the record straight. Many if not most of Trump's cult followers are probably unaware that many of the reporters for these organizations came from respected schools of journalism (Columbia's School of Journalism founded by Joseph Pulitzer, Medill School at Northwestern, my alma mater's Annenberg School of Communications, etc.). In fact, they are probably unaware that there is such a phrase as "journalistic ethics" and could not understand what that phrase means if they have heard of it. Because the Trump cultists have been exposed to an unrelenting stream of lies, disinformation, and wild exaggerations, all intended to sow the seeds of fear, distrust, and hate from professional prevaricators like Rush Limbaugh (who really is a brilliant man who knows exactly what he is doing), Fox News (Fox & Friends, Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Piro, Dobbs, etc.), Breitbart, and who knows what else.

So now Trump cultists routinely discount anything coming from a flagship television news organization, unique in its inception circa 1980, CNN (which was attacked by Trump so often that one of his rabid cult followers mailed that organization a pipe bomb last year). They won't believe stories reported by The New York Times or The Washington Post. Things have gotten so bad that when Fox News (not the Hannity propaganda division) accurately reported that polls showed that Trump was being hammered by all of the leading Democrats in one on one matchups, Trump freaked out and lashed back at their disloyalty.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1154752797637783552

Later, when Trump complained that Fox wasn't doing what he wanted, Brit Hume responded (somewhat incorrectly) that "Fox News isn't supposed to work for you."

https://www.thewrap.com/fox-news-brit-hume-hits-back-after-trump-attacks-terrible-coverage-fox-news-isnt-supposed-to-work-for-you/

A recent example of Trump cultists being unable to accept a news story because of its source was a denizen of The Albany Chronicle who could not make the effort of checking the facts himself on the story about the Trump Administration's decision to pull the plug on life saving medical care for immigrant children previously given a medical clearance to remain in the United States to receive the care they need to stay alive. Here was his comment:

"Trey Dunbar: Your source is the same network that recently had to retract a story that they decided to air without any evidence to verify its authenticity. When your "news" agency leads a story with "If this is true...", they have no journalistic integrity. If you're truly interested in robust debate (instead of polemical trollings), starting with verifiable facts from impartial sources would probably go a long ways in proving your sincerity."

Here was my response:

"There is a wonderful tool called a "search engine." It works in conjunction with "The Internet." Try entering into a search engine the phrase "Trump Administration pulls the plug on immigrant children in Boston hospital." I got 771,000 hits. The story ran on the front page of the New York Times, in the Boston Globe, and in the Miami Herald. Hell, it was probably on Fox News. Here's the story that ran on the Fox television station in Boston. Took me 5 seconds to find it:

"BOSTON – A sudden policy change by President Donald Trump’s administration means hundreds of sick immigrant children could be deported, including many patients at Boston Children’s Hospital, WBZ reports.

Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Sanchez is battling cystic fibrosis and needs the help of a vibrating vest, nebulizer and special medication to stay alive. His family came to the United States legally from Honduras in 2016. They are part of a program that allows immigrants to receive life-saving treatments for up to two years.

But the Trump administration just changed that policy; the family was sent a letter telling them to leave the country by next month or be deported.

While wearing his New England Patriots shirt, Sanchez made his opinion on potentially leaving the country clear.

“The letter, in the words, it said that we need to leave the country in 33 days. But in my perspective, it’s making legal homicide,” he said in an interview with CBS This Morning."

https://fox2now.com/2019/08/30/immigrant-teen-at-boston-childrens-hospital-could-be-deported-after-trump-administration-policy-change/

It's going to take years to clean up the mess that Trump will have left behind. A good start will be making sure that in the future children in public schools learn out to learn- how to gather accurate information, and, more importantly, how to discover what "disinformation" is and how to unmask it. And when the right wingers try to avoid allowing their children to be exposed to actual knowledge by home schooling them or putting them in sketchy religious schools, the public will be served by ensuring that they don't receive an accreditation until they can show that their students have a cogent awareness of American history, civics, and the analytical ability to discern the difference between truth and propaganda.

An Encomium to a Great Judge......

(I wrote this on Facebook a few hours after I found out that my neighbor- as in, lives in my neighborhood and I would encounter him walking his dog as I trekked to Lake Loretta- Stephen S. Goss had died that morning.)

"I know it's early to write this, but the City of Albany and the State of Georgia had a great loss and a real tragedy with the death of Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Stephen S. Goss. I knew Steve as a young lawyer with one of the "silk stocking" firms in town (Watson Spence) but he became a Juvenile Court Judge around 1995 when Herb Phipps was appointed to a newly created third Superior Court Judge position in the Dougherty Judicial Circuit.

Steve did a tremendous job as a Juvenile Judge for about four years (it was part time then and became full time in 2005 under the current judge, Herbie Solomon). He was appointed to the Superior Court of the Dougherty Judicial Circuit in 1999, once again to replace Herb Phipps, who was appointed to the Georgia Court of Appeals.

In the 19 years Steve was on the Superior Court bench here, he accomplished far more than pretty much any other judge in the State. He wasn't just an excellent judge- he treated everybody with respect and courtesy, researched every case, read every pleading, and worked incredibly hard to try to reach the right decisions in his cases- but he created the first mental health court, which became a mental health and drug court. It became a model not just for Georgia, where it now exists in every circuit, but nationally. As one Atlanta lawer put it during a bar meeting here a couple of years ago, at national conferences on the subject Steve was "a rock star."

Speaking purely selfishly on my part, I was really sorry to see him appointed to the Court of Appeals last year, although I knew how much he wanted the job, because I felt that we were losing a tremendous judge here.

I appeared before him numerous times over the years, and I can honestly say that even when I strongly disagreed with his rulings (and that happened a few times) I always respected his process and I knew that he was trying to be fair and reach the right conclusion.

He was an extremely strong advocate for children (that is actually part of a judge's responsibility in domestic cases) in the sense that he tried to keep their interests first and foremost.

Having said all that, I know that no formal conclusion has been reached as to the cause of death, and although I'm fairly sure I know what happened and I have a pretty good idea as to why, probably very few- if any- will know the real reasons why.

I do know that he will be missed. But his ideas and the concept of treating people with mental health problems and drug issues as something other than criminals will live on after him."

POST SCRIPT: I published this on a Facebook site called "The Albany Chronicle" where I had received almost unrelenting personal attacks- one guy regularly called me a "Communist" and "Traitor" and some were worse (!)
And the reactions were 100% positive 92 "likes" and 16 positive comments."

One other thing: there are very few judges I have ever praised to their faces. As a rule, I don't suck up to judges, and during my career I've filed probably 10 different civil rights lawsuits spanning four decades against sitting judges. But I can think of two off the top of my head that I praised near the end of their careers. One was a former Cordele Judicial Circuit Superior Court judge, former Georgia Supreme Court Justice, Hardy Gregory. It was after he had announced his retirement from the Georgia Supreme Court. I don't recally how it was we ended up in a phone conversation (we had met a few times decades earlier when he was a relatively young Superior Court judge) but I told him what I thought of him and his career- all positive. And he, knowing me and where I was coming from, really appreciated it. The other was Steve Goss, after he was wrapping up his Albany career as a Superior Court judge and getting ready to head to Atlanta. I told him how much I had appreciated him and how he was the hardest working judge I'd ever known (all true). And now I'm glad I said that, since I would not have had the opportunity if I had waited until the end of his judicial career on the Court of Appeals.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY.... VERY LATE

Looking eerily like Jeffrey Epstein, Republican Tea Party Congressman (one term) and right wing talk show host Joe Walsh announces he's challenging Trump- for all of the reasons he never should have supported him in the first place.


I'm sceptical that we should somehow heap praise on people who were willfully blind, or who signed on to a shit show to get what they wanted, then finally came to realize that they had made a bad bargain with the devil. Witness the announcement this morning that a former Tea Party Republican Congressman, Joe Walsh (I thought he was with the Eagles?) is going to try to challenge Trump in the primaries next year.

George Stephanaopolous rightfully pointed out that this was the same guy who had spouted outrageous lies about Obama (he called him a Muslim- which shouldn't be outrageous in a religiously tolerant society, but was meant to be pejorative and was, Walsh admitted, a lie).

""I'm running because he's unfit; somebody needs to step up and there needs to be an alternative. The country is sick of this guy's tantrum -- he's a child,"

"I helped create Trump, and George, that's not an easy thing to say, I went beyond the policy and the idea differences and I got personal and I got hateful. I said some ugly things about President Obama that I regret."

"Did you really believe [Obama is] a Muslim?," Stephanopoulos asked.

"God no. And I have apologized for that," Walsh said. "I'm baring my soul with you right now on national TV. We have a guy in the White House who's never apologized for anything he's done or said."

When asked, Walsh also told ABC News' chief anchor that invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for being unfit should be "looked at" because "we've never had a situation like this. You can't believe a word he says."

Throughout Sunday's interview, Walsh used harsh, inflammatory language to describe the president — calling him "incompetent," "nuts," "erratic," "narcissist," "bully," "coward," "completely unfit," "disloyal," and "un-American."



https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclusive-joe-walsh-announces-republican-primary-challenge-president/story?id=65122073

In the same vein was this Washington Post column Friday by Megan McArdle:

"By Megan McArdle
Columnist
August 23

The left had an easy time settling on its attitude toward President Trump’s supporters: a mixture of horrified outrage and sneering contempt. For many of us on the right, though, it hasn’t been so easy. The president’s boosters aren’t our natural enemies; they’re former and hopefully future allies. For three years, we’ve been struggling to find some way to discuss Trump.

We don’t want to destroy Trump supporters but to convince them — that Trump’s main life achievements before the presidency lay in the fields of getting publicity, cheating people less powerful than himself and having a rich, politically connected father who could grease his way into the real estate business, rather than negotiating, managing or building; that impulsive, thin-skinned and belligerent people might be a great deal of fun to watch on television or Twitter but are rarely much good at their jobs; that Trump’s inexperience and lack of interest in policy have made him remarkably ineffective at pursuing even his stated political goals; and that the cost of his inexperience, his indifference to the day-to-day work of the presidency and his bitterly divisive rhetoric are not worth the transient joy of watching liberals have conniptions.

I wish I could say our attempts at persuasion have worked. Some of our former comrades agree with the indictment but argue that the liberal establishment’s radicalism has left them no choice but to support the race-baiting vulgarian. The religious right, in particular, senses an existential threat from a combination of overweening government and “woke capitalism,” and feels compelled to throw in with anyone who promises to fight on its side. Others simply write off our dismay as Trump Derangement Syndrome, or a desire to finally fit in at the proverbial Georgetown cocktail party.

Many days I wonder if I shouldn’t just concede defeat. And then … Greenland. Once more unto the breach.

This is a president who canceled a state visit because the prime minister of Denmark declined to sell part of Danish territory to the United States. Can you really look at that sort of behavior and think Trump’s critics have the derangement problem?

It’s not particularly odd to want to add Greenland to U.S. territorial holdings. President Harry S. Truman thought the same thing and tried to buy it from Denmark in 1946, because the massive island is in a strategically valuable location. What’s bizarre is thinking that the way to go about it was to openly discuss the matter — successful real estate moguls generally try to buy up land as quietly as possible, not float their plans to any random dinner companion who might run to the media, driving up the asking price.


It is odder still to cancel a long-planned state visit simply because the Danish prime minister called the idea “absurd” — which, as deal rejections go, is fairly tame. Besides, if Greenland is so strategically valuable, you’d think Trump would want to deepen the U.S. relationship with the government with which the territory is associated. Or at least you’d think this if you believed that Trump cared more about U.S. interests than about his own fragile vanity.

This is not normal. And I don’t mean that as in, “Trump is violating the shibboleths of the Washington establishment.” I mean that as in, “This is not normal for a functioning adult.”

I’m not trying to perform some sort of amateur diagnosis of Trump as a narcissist, or a psychopath, or an early-stage dementia patient. I’m not Trump’s doctor, and I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Very possibly, it’s simply a terminal case of “billionairitis,” a well-known condition where very rich people slowly lose the ability to tolerate anything except the most obsequious flattery.


But I don’t need a diagnosis to know that the symptoms are pretty worrying. If your company’s owner abruptly pulled out of a conference with an important joint-venture partner just because the other CEO said something mildly unflattering, would you try to defend it as some sort of cunning N-dimensional chess move? Or would you start looking for another job? If your mother canceled a family visit because your cousin wouldn’t sell her the bedroom, would you get mad at your cousin for slighting your mother’s honor? Or would you try to arrange a neurological consult?

Hopefully, you wouldn’t just smile and say, “No, really, everything’s fine,” when it’s very obviously not. The longer you humor people who have clearly gone off the rails, the more time they have to damage themselves and those around them. Moreover, the damage is usually fiercest to the people closest by — which in Trump’s case means the folks who have been standing loyally behind him for the past three years."