Worst tv reality show ever made. MAGA, cancelled.
The boy who cried "FAKE".
Former star of Apprentice fame flails and fails at spin off project.
All dressed up at Mar a Lago on December 31, 2022. It’s been reported that TFG gave an open invite to the media to cover the party. Nobody came.
There is little rebuttal to the idea that we have been served up some kind of mix of real life happenings and show spin, for years. We have accepted this without much fussing since Jack Kennedy won the election over Richard Nixon because of Nixon’s five o’clock shadow or so the story goes as it was told, perhaps by Nixon. The first election was decided after tv became a part of the presidential campaign. Nixon and Kennedy went head to head in the first ever nationally televised presidential debate. As Nixon told it, his heavy five o’clock shadow made him look scowling huckster criminal and people fell in love with JFK’s looks and so he lost the election. Surely that story was part of the spin.
We have seen the power of telling a story about real events as told by the January 6 Hearing Committee. Words with pictures explain much more than words alone. They literally can paint a picture for the viewer enhancing their experience. Today, January 2, 2023, is their last day before disbanding. The latest releases of transcripts from their interviews is in the thousands of pages giving plenty of grist for many mills to grind. There hasn’t been an investigation more important to our country, ever. The documents and other records will serve us for decades. We owe them a debt of gratitude.
The story of MAGA and Trump has seen more bumps than a Queens County road. There has be the obvious coverups and recalibration of the media from the first to spin the Trump story and craft Melania into genuine First Lady material. It’s easiest to see in the Melania case how it just didn’t work. She was either not informed of the role she was to play or the commitment to the role was poor or perhaps her coat said it best, I don’t really care.
We may recall the first days when Ivanka would, we were promised, tame the moods of her father, reel him in. The boom closet style office that didn’t last long. And then how Jarred was ever present at first defending his right to be included in top secret briefings with tarnished credentials. The promise of separating the business from the white house, the emoluments clause. Making the kids in charge of the business because every president has let go of their previous business holdings and responsibilities in the past but for Trump, it became another precedent or almost rule, not exactly a law, he would bend, bruise then break. We will look at taxes and what happened there, very soon.
The four years plus the difficulties around the first campaign (Russia if you're listening), the Jan 6 coup attempt seemed to daily ratchet up anxiety in us all as every rule, every norm was, bent, bruised and broken.
The media has not recovered. It likely won’t for a great while if ever. The leaning to the right, for even the bastion of liberal thought, for decades, the New York Times has been seen recently as having a terrible bias skewed to the right, and more than that. The Gray Lady seems a bit the bent of the MAGA crowd which seems to always slink away from criticism of Putin, even now.
Reading the same story reported in multiple places is a good way to check out the general tone or bias of a publication. Over time is clearly the better way to discover this.
The media once was responsible for public service. The few stations were responsible to give both sides to every issue reported on. The Fairness Doctrine gave guidelines for this. Instituted in the late forties, it was considered by some journalists and the Reagan administration to be outdated and too limiting by the late seventies. It was finally dispensed with in the Bush years, in 1987. Many people attribute our current woes to these conditions as guides and limits being taken away for less regulations as to what actually constitutes news.
2023 is poised to be a year where we begin to drift away further from the Trump administration years and their style of truth inversion through yelling fake at reality (the pounding the judicial system took with multiple demands to review election results, to mention one topic of wasteful court time). Stories both big and small were attacked. Attack it all, so it is all suspicious.
In a news climate that spans Fox “news” shows to, in a spectrum, MSNBC. It is more important than ever to have a news diet of those dedicated to our future and the changes we face with political landscape morphing, economic shifts and climate. Up and coming journalists and the newer platforms they arrive on will grow into a newer group of trusted people, proving us with the news we need to know to vote, make financial decisions and more.
Technology is bringing us the good with the bad. For all the unvetted urls, for the all the scam shoes and clothing that don’t arrive after purchase, there are also all your brick and mortars you depend upon now in your virtual space. We bank, we buy and some even sell or run a business virtually. There are legions of journalists and reporters waiting to be discovered. Good ones with accurate information and most importantly information that the main stream media ignores. Ignores.
For a 2023 new news diet on media platforms and with people you may not yet know, there is a very short list included here:
Substack. This is the platform this writer uses. The app available for all devices is truly wonderful and available for free. Writers are on Substack in a spectrum of topics so news is only one. On there is: Heather Cox Richardson (well loved writer and historian), The Warning written by Steve Schmidt (former campaign manager of John McCain), Joyce Vance (often seen on tv as a legal authority), Mary Trump (writer and niece of Donald J. Trump), Noel Casler (comedian and stellar human) are all recommended with five stars.
YouTube. meidastouch, Narativ with Zev Shalev, Eric Garland’s Game Theory, Justice Matters with Glenn Kirschner. Meidastouch with nearly a million followers is fast becoming a mainstream source for news.
Podcasts. Mary Trump, Noel Casler, and the daily fabulous rantings of Keith Olberman (sports guy, animal rescue poster on twitter, and now podcasts his views.
Happy discovering new platforms and talent. A diverse diet is a healthy diet, always.
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