NEW YORK—I can prove to a mathematical certainty that The New York Times will endorse Donald Trump for president.
My forensic investigation started two weeks ago when I wrote a column about media hysteria called “Donald, You Ignorant Slut,” and the column got passed around to various teetotaling members of the working press (the alcoholic ones were busy), all of whom sent me emails that started out, “YES BUT…”
I’m not talking about commentators and pundits and editorial writers. I’m talking about the daily grind reporters who won’t quite admit that they do various sneaky takedowns of Donald Trump in their coverage.
But apparently, I was wrong. I repent.
I should have waited four more days so that I could read the column by Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times explaining that there’s no media bias because all the rules of journalism have changed.
Damn, Jim, if you’d told me in advance, I could have saved Taki some money.
I learned from this article that the way it works now is, if you’re a working reporter and you think Donald Trump is a demagogue, “you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you’ve never approached anything in your career.” You have to “move closer than you’ve ever been to being oppositional.”
Then he asks the question “Do normal standards apply?”
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And the answer is NO THEY DO NOT. Hell, no. Screw that. If a reporter thinks Donald Trump is dangerous, what do you expect him to do? Contort himself into a mere cyborg forced to report on ideas he doesn’t agree with?
“Balance,” you see, is “an idealistic form of journalism.”
The new standard is “normal versus abnormal.”
In case you’re not following, Hillary is “normal” and…well…
And the reason for that is that Donald Trump’s political positions are (a) stupid, and (b) new. (I’m using “stupid” to represent all the words used by the press to describe Trump so that I don’t have to constantly say “psychopathic obnoxious thin-skinned vulgarian.” The 40 most common Trump adjectives are listed in the aforementioned article “Donald, You Ignorant Slut” if you’d like to memorize them and play parlor games.)
At any rate, Jim’s point is that history has reached a turning point. The very nature of the expository written word has been forever altered. We have a candidate for office whose DNA demands that we grind him into dust. As he goes on…
No living journalist [but many dead ones, I assume] has ever seen a major party nominee put financial conditions on the United States defense of NATO allies, openly fight with the family of a fallen American soldier, or entice Russia to meddle in a United States presidential election by hacking his opponent (a joke, Mr. Trump said later, that the media failed to get). And while coded appeals to racism or nationalism aren’t new—two words: Southern strategy—overt calls to temporarily bar Muslims from entry to the United States or questioning a federal judge’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage are new.
It’s NEEEEWWWWWWW stuff, Mommy, I can’t write about it.
