An arc described with mathematical precision: The well worn path of Tucker

by liberal japonicus

I'm a bit late with this, but I have a few thoughts about Tucker completing his collection of pink slips (CNN, MSNBC and now Fox) It seems to me that rather than an outlier, Carlson's path was, in hindsight, rather predictable, and is a path that others take as well, though none as flamboyantly as him.

This is not about the external, though I would note that there are a number of different theories as to which straw it was, and a quick list would be:

• It was discovering what Carlson had actually said
• It was Tucker finding religion
• He wasn't making that much money for them
• He was too vulgar for the network

However, it seems like a shit-ton of straw. But I'm thinking that the path Tucker followed is not some kind of unique trip, but a sadly common one.

This Atlantic article (I think, it is now behind a paywall, but I think this is the one I read) wondered how a person who was essentially raised within that Washington bubble and someone who could have, with a little more finessing, easily played the role he started out on, as token conservative who was 'just asking questions'. To me, there's an interesting tendency at the bottom of that. People like Carlson back in the day, wanted to be able to simultaneously stand apart from the majority, but wanted to be lauded by it. While we have gotten a Tucker's greatest hits album, with him touching on wokeness, white replacement theory, CRT and a host of other boogeypersons, that's describing where he ended up. This article, discussing Carlson's reporting of George Bush's mocking of Carla Fay Tucker's appeal, is interesting in that regard. Here's what Carlson wrote:

In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ” “What was her answer?” I wonder. “Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”

The article writes that Carlson then ran away from that reporting, and it was never mentioned again. But what interests me is that there was Tucker was tapping into, and seemed to want credit for tapping into liberal impulses. Prospect had this bizarre encomium which hails Carlson as a puncturer of social pieties. It's a truly stupid piece when writing about where Carlson is (or at least was until the weekend), it helps illuminate Carlson's path. I don't think the article is wrong in the particulars and it does catch how he was able to carve out his audience, but I'm not sure why Prospect felt like it was important to note this.

As a parallel, think of Matt Taibbi. His book I Can't Breath was a sympathetic account of Eric Garner's death at the hand of the police, and in another reality, one could have imagined him taking up a position as an insightful critic from the left, maintaining his bona fides by throwing some rocks at the other side. It's not like the left is perfect, so there would be the opportunities. Yet now, he's taking point on the twitter files (and getting dismantled). He hasn't crashed as hard as Carlson, but only because he didn't go as high. But the trajectory seems to be the same. And it seems to me that you could identify any number of people who path can be described in the same way. Why is this?

I leave it to the interested reader to come up with more examples, but the arc is to start off as the 'just asking questions' type and when you aren't lionized by the left, go to the right and get people to tell you how good you are because you have rejected that echo chamber. These stories all seem to share a moment when they get their ideas roasted in front of everyone. Jon Stewart famously ripped Carlson apart on CNN. Taibbi had his life in Moscow, which he had held up for the world to see in his co-written memoir entitled The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, examined and found himself beat over the head with it. 

As Tucker goes on to whatever is in store for him, it's something I've been wondering about lately. If my description is accurate, who's next? And if it's not, why is it wrong?

Comments

[JanieM]

lj -- I haven't done all the reading you have, only headlines over the years. So this is very much off the top of my head.

On the one hand, I would suggest that left/right doesn't matter the tiniest bit to someone like Carlson. I think what matters to him is basically what you might call adding to the amount of slime in the world, and he'll take the best opportunities he can to do that, while at the same time getting the concomitant rewards of $ and ego trip.

On the other hand, the yearbook story suggests that he was spreading slime from a right-wing foundation from the start.

Another aspect: what do you imagine is the $ opportunity connected with spreading slime from the left compared to the right? How many left-leaning billionaires (yeah, Soros, ha ha) have been flooding the world with their unimaginable wealth to create a paradise for the ordinary person?

Ummmmmm....

I.e., if you want the big paycheck, you go right.

My impression about Taibbi is that he got pissed off when he was called out for the way he treated women.... But there again, I don't follow this stuff closely, so I could be very wrong about that.

[McKinneyTexas]

Tabbi routinely and effectively takes down the Progressive Left's pronounced authoritarian, anti-constitutional craving for silencing disagreement. He juxtaposes the left of the past with the left of the here and now. It's not a pretty picture. Content moderation, USG, sensitivity readers re-writing history and literature, word police and so on. He, Freddie DeBoer and others 'of the left' remember their roots and aren't cowed into the now mandatory thought conformity. Below is an example of Tabbi's current work. This is why the current Progressive Establishment can't stand him.

https://www.racket.news/p/america-the-single-opinion-cult?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1042&post_id=117376638&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

[bobbyp]

I can understand someone undergoing an ideological shift, but what is incomprehensible to me is watching somebody who used to write some good solid stuff now putting out absolute drivel

[wj]

On the one hand, I would suggest that left/right doesn't matter the tiniest bit to someone like Carlson. I think what matters to him is basically what you might call adding to the amount of slime in the world, and he'll take the best opportunities he can to do that, while at the same time getting the concomitant rewards of $ and ego trip.

I think you've got this backwards. The money and the ego trip are the whole point. Getting to spread slime is merely a side benefit -- if he could (had the skills) to get the money a different way, he'd do that instead.

[bobbyp]

What's this? Pot calls kettle black.

But it all comes down to this: If you are "afraid" to say what you really think in this country today then the problem is with you and not some mythological "authoritarian left".

[bobbyp]

Texas, bastion of FREEDUM!

Somehow, McKinney has never mentioned these developments-now why is that?

[nous]

Both Carlson and Taibbi make perfect sense once you realize that they are both basically Gen X frat boy edgelords that refused to grow up. Taibbi is the older version of every Christian Slater rebel character from the late 80s after they hit their midlife crisis. Carlson is just William F. Buckley if Buckley were being played by Sam Kinison. It's Howard Stern hijinks for the age of ubiquitous media. There's really not much more depth to it than that. They both grew to prominence being edgelords and modeling a sort of aspirational punkishness for insecure boys and the girls who want them. If you watched a ton of 80s teen movies in the 80s (and who with a video rental membership did not?) then you know the type intimately.

They are the ginger faction instigators that stir the shit and move the plot towards the conflict.

What both have in common is a hubris too big to submit to an editorial process. And in this current media ecology that is an exploitable niche so long as there are slow witted assholes looking for someone to model the role and feed them the punchlines, and a halo of others sitting on the couch and enjoying watching the targets of these assholes getting "triggered."

I have no time for fans of either of these tragic vacuoles.

[Girl from the North Country]

I have no time for fans of either of these tragic vacuoles.

I know so little of Taibbi, and don't read/see most of the media outlets in which he features, so I have no strong feelings about him except my reaction as it happens to any pieces of his I am alerted to.

But, and I realise this is far from a good look, I actually despise anybody who likes or listens to Carlson. It's not just his appalling views, and his rabble-rousing, although God knows they are despicable. But I can't understand how someone watching him could be fooled for a minute by his ridiculous affect*, for example his faux-sincere puzzlement, or his weird laughing. They and his other mannerisms shout "bad actor" to me so loudly, that I think you'd have to be a moron to think him anything other than a mediocre actor and/or scam artist.

* I use affect here in its somewhat rarer meaning as a noun, which is to say "a display of emotion". Or in this case, a fake display of emotion.

[nous]

I don't think his fans are fooled by his affect. I think they look at his act and think, "hey, I can steal that line and piss off a lot of snowflakes myself. Because eff 'em."

[Michael Cain]

Kimberly Guilfoyle followed a similar arc. Left her days as a prosecutor in California behind her and moved to New York to be a personality. Worked a couple of jobs then landed at Fox. When Fox fired her, moved straight into big-time right-wing grifting. In her personal life after the move, divorced Gavin Newsom and started pursuing heirs of billionaires.

[nous]

She's the right age to fit in that company. Carlson, Taibbi, Guilfoyle, Drudge...all born between '66 and '70. Could have all been in high school together if geography had a sick sense of humor. Kind of a Lose Your Breakfast Club.

[liberal japonicus]

I love that our own herald of epistemic closure is waving the flag of Freddie DeBoer.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/09/why-tiger-beatdown-has-jokes-on-it-turns-out-some-motherfucker-had-to-ask-me/

But how did he miss Jordan Peterson?

[JanieM]

Freddie. Honestly. I almost fell off my chair when I read that paragraph this morning. Now you have me laughing all over again. Thanks for the Tiger Beatdown post.

[liberal japonicus]

I was torn between that one and this
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/11/boners-for-fun-and-profit-the-extent-to-which-you-dont-care-about-boners-revealed/

[JanieM]

@lj: I gotta say, it was an era where people did go on and on and on!

[Donald]

I largely agree with Taibbi. Here is a counter to the Mehdi Hassan criticism.

https://www.leefang.com/p/msnbcs-mehdi-hasan-gets-basic-facts

My main disagreement with Taibbi is that I think the press has always been unreliable on some issues. Taibbi talks like it has gotten worse but that is mostly about partisan politics in the US. In general the press does some good work and they also do some really awful work and they have often been a conduit for “disinformation”fed to them by our government, especially from the intelligence world.. One hilariously stupid example was when the Hunter Biden laptop story was said to bear all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation operation according to 50 or so geniuses from the intelligence world.

Any serious investigation into disinformation ( I hate that word) would look at the incestuous relationship between news organizations, corporate funded think tanks, and government officials. If it just focuses on foreign countries, and only the ones designated as our enemies, then it is just going to be yet another form of propaganda.

Here is a piece that is somewhat sympathetic to Hamilton 68

https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hamilton-68-russian-online-influence-tracker-2023-2

Note which countries are the scary villains and how apparently we need to track people who might be subconsciously influenced by their propaganda, as evidenced by the fact that they say the sorts of things the evil country might say. Yeah, nothing problematic about that. Maybe we should track everyone who has views that echo those of some foreign government with a dubious human rights record. You might end up tracking virtually everyone in Congress.

[liberal japonicus]

Apropos of nothing, the etymology of disinformation is interesting
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=5069

"Stalin gave the department what he thought was French-sounding name in order to claim the name had a Western origin."

[bobbyp]

I largely agree with Taibbi.

With all due respect, Donald, I do not. Musk released those twitter files to Taibbi and the following:
1. Lee Fang. Seems to be a refugee from the Intercept. Appears to be a leftist, but I am not familiar with his work. I clicked on the link to Eric Holder's "wild conspiracy theory" and let us say I was unimpressed. Some of the other links were similarly not persuasive.
2. Michael Shelleberger. This guy asserted trans activists are "in the grip of a woke cult that rests upon the denial of sex." Crank.
3. David Zweig. Anti CDC crank.
4. Alex Berenson. Unchallenged holder as "the pandemic's wrongest man". Crank.
5. Bari Weiss. Fascist.

Given this lineup, the whole enterprise stinks to high heaven. I used to read his stuff back in the days when he was taking on Goldman Sachs, but now Taibbi is mixing in with some really bad company.

Respectfully,

[nous]

Note which countries are the scary villains and how apparently we need to track people who might be subconsciously influenced by their propaganda, as evidenced by the fact that they say the sorts of things the evil country might say. Yeah, nothing problematic about that. Maybe we should track everyone who has views that echo those of some foreign government with a dubious human rights record. You might end up tracking virtually everyone in Congress.

As usual, I largely share your concerns here, Donald, but that does not preclude me thinking that Taibbi is being (and enjoying being) a shallow gadfly and a polemicist on this.

The Alliance for Securing Democracy seems to be full of neoliberal statist types who see themselves as important defenders of institutionalism. That certainly colors their approach to the project and some biases get baked into the way that they talk about the data. That deserves scrutiny. I'd also be concerned if I found that they had been passing information about those accounts over to the state national security aparatus so that the government could surveil the people who owned these accounts.

Is that happening? Don't know. Taibbi certainly treats the database as if this should be our main worry, and does his best to frame the owners of these accounts as victims of some sort of Deep State witch hunt.

But the data being aggregated here is public data. And the Alliance is an NGO. And what they are reporting here is how disinformation that originates in known foreign state organizations gets propagated on social media.

From that standpoint it does not matter if JordanPetersonFan (made up name, though there is probably someone using that handle) is actually an account created by the Iternet Research Agency to mimic a US citizen with contrarian leanings and amplify their propaganda, or if it is a real US citizen with contrarian leanings who has shit media literacy skills and a taste for IRS propaganda. Real or not, they function in identical ways.

I'd have no problem with Taibbi if he were to say that he'd followed up on Hamilton 68 and found that some of the people that the ASD were claiming were Russian bots were actually just people who consistently, but unwittingly passed on memes and stories that originated with the IRS because they agreed with the anti-government spin, and that we should be skeptical of the size being reported for these "Russian disinformation networks." But that's not what Taibbi does. Taibbi mostly uses his platform to try to undercut trust in mainstream media and to amplify paranoia about the Deep State, and he pals around with hacks like Weiss to build his brand and (I believe) exact some measure of revenge against the editors who (he believes) betrayed him.

[Donald]

Bobbyp

I don’t agree with that sort of reasoning, where you go down a list of people and dismiss their arguments because of their other positions or general ideological stance. You put yourself in a bubble doing that.

For example, I have never liked Bari Weiss because of her early history going after Palestinian professors. It is ironic to see her as a supposed champion of free speech. But I would judge her current arguments based on their merits. As it happens, I haven’t read much of what she has said on these issues but based on secondhand references I would probably agree with some of it.

There isn’t anybody I agree with 100 percent of the time. And even people I might reelly dislike could be right on occasion.

I don’t think Taibbi has changed much. Yeah, Musk released the files. Musk is a jackass. So what? Musk’s own commitment to free speech is dubious at best. That doesn’t discredit the Twitter Files.

I think liberals went off the deep end on Russiagate and I don’t have to like Trump to think that even a seriously screwed up and nasty human being could be falsely accused of being a Russian agent. And I strongly disagree with the notion that one can trust any group ( and certainly not the MSM or any government) to be the trustworthy judges of which opinions are valid. Labeling people as unwitting agents of the current US enemy is deeply repugnant. Leftists of all people should know better than to tolerate this crap.

I think Taibbi’s own approach is not perfect, and he has in fact said it has gotten personal with him. Again, though, I don’t much care. You can probably find mixed motives with everyone. For people who work in the msm, they probably have to toe the line on certain issues.

I have cut way back on my internet ranting as I have said most of what I want to say, but on the issues I rant about, Western officials are deeply hypocritical, take absurd positions, and are mostly allowed to do so without much challenge by the press, which largely passes on what they claim without much pushback. Again, they can do good work. But they can also function almost as state media.

[Girl from the North Country]

I don’t agree with that sort of reasoning, where you go down a list of people and dismiss their arguments because of their other positions or general ideological stance. You put yourself in a bubble doing that.

For example, I have never liked Bari Weiss because of her early history going after Palestinian professors. It is ironic to see her as a supposed champion of free speech. But I would judge her current arguments based on their merits. As it happens, I haven’t read much of what she has said on these issues but based on secondhand references I would probably agree with some of it.

Donald, you describe something that I also have a problem with. I dislike dismissing someone's argument because they also believe other things with which I disagree. I try, as much as possible, to examine someone's argument or view on its own merits, because that seems intellectually more rigorous, and I have frequently got into trouble (even here) by doing so. But it's not just intellectual rigour; as you say, doing the opposite has a tendency to put (or keep) one in a bubble.

I have always objected to what I called the phenomenon of "cluster of ideas" or "cluster of attitudes". I have had this fight with people on the left, and on the right. People (and their views, and attitudes) are complicated. In my opinion, it is good (and necessary) to engage with that.

[wonkie]

What annoys me is that so much of the reaction to someone's thoughts seems to be more about what pose the author is taking rather than what was said. I don't care if Carlson was trying to prove some credentials with some group, or if he was trying to be the an "insightful" person by being a "puncturer of social pieties." NOus is right upthread: Tucker is a poser.

To me, that's not what matters. What matters is that Carlson and the other grifters are professional haters. Their role is to do to us waht Goebbels did: derive for themselves power and money by promoting hate.

As for the authoritarianism of the left: BS. Yes, college students object to cranks, weirds, grifters and professional haters coming to campus. They have a right to do this. A campus is a platform and the university decides who gets to use it. No one is entitled to access. There is no obligation to anyone to let them use the university platform. The university, on the other hand, has an obligation to establish criteria to use for choosing who they allow on their platforms. ANd that criteria shouldn't be, "Let some rightwing hater come here so we can show we aren't prejudiced against conservatives." It isn't the fault of universities that contemporary conservativism is dominated by freaks and con artists and hate propagandists. Conservative need to stop promoting these creeps and find some conservatives who aren't morally-stunted intellectually dishonest exploiters of the worse in human nature. If they can.

[CharlesWT]

Yes, college students object to cranks, weirds, grifters and professional haters coming to campus. They have a right to do this.

But once a university agrees to let someone speak, the students don't have a right to a heckler's veto. Such as creating disruptions so the speaker can't speak. And sometimes physically assaulting the speaker or the people who came to hear them.

[nous]

CharlesWT - I wish it were that simple, but it isn't. We both know that the groups who invite these provocative speakers have no interest whatsoever in hearing what they have to say, having already heard what they have to say over and over again. The invitation is extended to the provocative speaker precisely to provoke a confrontation with fingers crossed that it will all make the news and let the people who invited the speaker grab some airtime and pose as victims.

That's the game.

And what I resent about this cynical game is that every time another round of it gets scheduled, another campus gets swarmed by third party hoodlums who are just there for the conflict. It's like football ultras only with a layer of martyr narrative baked in. And every time it happens the likelihood of someone getting seriously hurt or killed on campus goes up.

It's got jack all to do with free speech.

[wj]

Conservative need to stop promoting these creeps and find some conservatives who aren't morally-stunted intellectually dishonest exploiters of the worse in human nature. If they can.

It might be nice if someone (perhaps even a liberal group, if no conservative campus group will do it) were to invite someone like Cheney or Kinzinger to talk about Jan 6. Or a couple of the Republican legislators** from South Carolina to talk about (anti-)abortion legislation.

Nobody can argue that these are flaming liberals. But they could offer some interesting perspectives.

** Obviously the ones who voted No.

[CharlesWT]

The invitation is extended to the provocative speaker precisely to provoke a confrontation with fingers crossed that it will all make the news and let the people who invited the speaker grab some airtime and pose as victims.

And a pox on both sides for dangling the bait and for taking it.

But there are times when a speaker who most people wouldn't consider all that controversial will get subjected to a heckler's veto.

[wj]

there are times when a speaker who most people wouldn't consider all that controversial will get subjected to a heckler's veto.

At any large university, you can find somebody who will object to almost anything. And, I remember vividly from my own university days, there are always some kids who will show up just for the excitement. Demonstration, riot, whatever -- they'll turn out, swell the crowd and amplify the yelling. Without knowing, or caring, what the supposed issue is.

[liberal japonicus]

Interesting stuff. Taibbi reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's warning in Mother Night
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Taibbi pretended to be a clone of Hunter S. Thompson and it bit him in the ass. It's unfortunate, as I said, his book about Eric Garner is a great read and it would be have been wonderful if that had been lifted up. And maybe if he had a crystal ball, he might have taken a step back from Mark Ames. But then again, he might not have gotten an attention and never been in a position to write that book.

Double checking on Wikipedia about Ames and what he is doing, some things come up that I think relate to my question. Here's what he said about his time as a student as Berkeley

was a student at Berkeley in the late Reagan years. We had a lot of ideas back then, big dreams about getting famous and destroying the "Beigeocracy" that we thought stifled and controlled American Letters. Everything seemed possible then: world war, literary fame ... Anyway, something Really Big, with us at the center of it all. We'd ridicule the boring lefties, our enemies. We'd drop all sorts of drugs and go to the underground shows: Scratch Acid, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth. It felt like something might happen, and soon.

juxtaposed with a review of the book that Taibbi has renounced, but Ames has (I think) argued that it was more true than false
The product of Ames and Taibbi's union is rude, cruel, pornographic, self-aggrandizing, infantile, and breathtakingly misogynist, with a dozen pages of news and another dozen of gonzo entertainment listings. It's also one of the biggest success stories of the tiny, incestuous world of expatriate Moscow. Pranks are sharper – and meaner – than others, but they're all conceived under a towering belief in the righteousness of the paper's mission. The eXile has kept up a holy racket, railing away against stupidity, corruption, and influence peddling . . . It has covered mind-numbingly complex topics like privatization in a straightforward style that's not only comprehensible but actually interesting to a reader with no background in Russian economic history and little enthusiasm for acquiring one.

more background here
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2010/02/exile-201002

While I don't look at Tucker and think I could have been like him, I look at Taibbi and think that if I had found a similar niche, I could have been on that same path.

[Donald]

I don’t know what Taibbi actually did in the 90’s, but remember just how acceptable misogynist thinking was back then. Think of how Bill Clinton was defended at the time. Taibbi was the Hunter Thompson version of this.

I have never liked the Hunter Thompson style very much— he was a brilliant writer, but I just don’t find that behavior admirable. It’s also boring. About the only version of this that I do find funny is the Big Lebowski movie, but there is nothing mean spirited or nasty in the main character or his pals. Taibbi probably did think he was like Hunter. I don’t know how far he went in reality. And none of this means he is wrong today. Liberals were fine with Taibbi in recent years when he was writing about police brutality and Wall Street corruption.

Anyway, my own reaction to the notion that the press can’t be trusted is to think that this is obvious. You have to take them on a case by case basis. I think the NYT is a master at lying by omission and yeah, I have specific examples in mind. But I limit my internet activity these days.

GFTNC— Agreed. People on the left, right, and center all tend to exist in bubbles and it is hard to step back and ask if those otherwise wrong people might be right about this particular issue.

[bobbyp]

I don’t agree with that sort of reasoning, where you go down a list of people and dismiss their arguments because of their other positions or general ideological stance. You put yourself in a bubble doing that.

I merely point out that Musk, noted civil libertarian (LOL) that he is, set up this whole enterprise with a certain purpose-based as it was on the premise of government malfeasance and who he chose to go through this trove of data. There was not one among that disreuputable bunch of journalistic "deep state" gunslingers who does not routinely bring their finely honed axes to a political fray.

And I am to begin by giving them the benefit of the doubt? Pointing this out is eminently reasonable.

I read the Fang article. It was garbage.

Did you read my link above at 10:24 4/29?

Here's another:

https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/03/16/uw-cip-election-integrity-partnership-research-claims/

If you want to believe Taibbi, go ahead and make the case, but the premise that the government is "usually lying" is as much an ideological blinder as any rabbit hole I have had to climb out of (been there more than once!).

I agree with you most of the time, but as I stated previously, this whole enterprise stinks to high heaven for some rather obvious reasons, and I also enjoy my bubble very much. After all, that is what they are for.

Have a nice day.

[nous]

Both Taibbi and Weiss are consistently disingenuous in their framing of issues. If you pay close attention you can see the way that their writing goes from solid source evidence to unwarranted conclusions by way of a biased mischaracterization of what is being reported upon.

Bubbles are absolutely a danger. If you must read either Weiss or Taibbi, do so with an eye toward finding their sources and reading them first before going on to read what either of these questionable individuals have to say about them.

[wj]

I also enjoy my bubble very much. After all, that is what they are for.

Props for honesty.

[bobbyp]

tiny bubbles....in the wine...make me feel happy...make me feel fine.

[wj]

It's a great missed opportunity. As you may have heard, the commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture has mandated that employees wear "gender appropriate clothing" at work. This is, obviously, aimed at trans employees. (At least, I doubt anyone has decided to come to work in drag otherwise.)

But apparently the new dress code does allow women to wear pants. One has to wonder how the reactionaries' back-to-the-50s (or earlier) enthusiasm missed this chance to insist on dresses for female employees. Surely you don't have to be old enough to personally remember it to know how things were at work back in the day.

[Girl from the North Country]

As it happens, I very rarely read either Taibbi or Weiss. But I stand by my unwillingness to dismiss what look like (or, in my estimation, are) reasonable arguments or views because of ideological objections to some of their (or anybody else's) other views or even associates. It seems to me (I am not talking about anybody here, just the phenomenon) a kind of laziness, and the dangers of inhabiting any kind of bubble are becoming increasingly apparent. (Excepting the ones bobbyp refers to @1200 above. I like those very much!)

[wj]

tiny bubbles....in the wine...make me feel happy...make me feel fine.

Yet another point on which bobbyp and I are on different pages. (Although I do know that his is very much the majority opinion.)

To my mind: Coke, 7-Up, champagne -- it's all the same. It spits in your face when you drink it.

[bobbyp]

Bubbles are absolutely a danger.

Well sure. Grain of salt and all that. But Alex Berenson? Bari Weiss? This was not a serious enterprise. Not from the start.

I assert this should have been obvious.

Taibbi has written some good stuff, but in this instance he is in bad company. He seems to be going down the "deep state" rabbit hole. I see too many of my fellow leftists getting on that path...you want bubbles? Well, the tankie left's bubble membrane is as strong as anything you see of the conservative side of things. I find this to be most distressing.

But it all started with Marx vs Bakunin. Sigh. Some things never change.

[nous]

One other quick thought before I forget. Taibbi's writing does resemble Thompson's writing, and the Rolling Stone connection reinforces that impression. But Thompson was a New Journalist with a slippery style that freely incorporated fictional elements, and he generally signposted the transition from reality to fiction through hyperbole. His frequent references to drug use further problematize his position as a reliable narrator, which enhances the feeling of slipperiness and lets Thompson play with bias in ways that a normal journalist cannot.

Taibbi has the form down, and clearly loves the gonzo persona, but he also tries to have the "serious journalist" thing going in parallel, and I don't think that he does a good job of tracking and managing the slip. That comes across to me as a problem of ethos that I never had with anything Thompson wrote.

[bobbyp]

That comes across to me as a problem of ethos that I never had with anything Thompson wrote.

A very good point.

[JanieM]

I get what you're saying wj, but "pant suits" for women were acceptable in a lot of contexts decades ago, whereas dresses on men ... no way, ever. Not then, not now, for these people.

[JanieM]

Anyhow, too bad half the department doesn't just walk out because of such rules.

[bobbyp]

GFTNC,

Below is a link to an article about the Twitter Files from NPR, an outfit that gets (yes it does) a good deal of criticism from some quarters on the liberal left.

For what it's worth.

Bottoms up!

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor

[JanieM]

The people who are terrified of other people climbing out of the boxes they're supposed to stay in are having their revenge now for the progress (as I consider it) that we have made in my lifetime. I hope it doesn't last.

[wj]

I get what you're saying wj, but "pant suits" for women were acceptable in a lot of contexts decades ago

"Decades ago"? Sure. But in the 1950s? The definitely existed. But acceptable in the workplace? Not so much. In fact, even into the 1970s they were quite uncommon. Even in back office environments with zero customer contact. (And anything after the mid-1960s, at the latest, appears to be right out for the typical reactionary.)

[CaseyL]

JanieM: "I get what you're saying wj, but "pant suits" for women were acceptable in a lot of contexts decades ago, whereas dresses on men ... no way, ever. Not then, not now, for these people."

...kilts? We might suddenly see a lot of people wearing kilts in the Texas Dept of Agriculture.

[Michael Cain]

Re women in pants... In 1938 a judge in LA held a woman in contempt for wearing slacks to court. She was only in jail for a few hours, and the citation was overturned on appeal, but still.

OTOH, it was 85 years ago. Realizing how much stuff I tend to think of as happening not all that long ago is "ancient" history makes me feel old.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"...kilts? We might suddenly see a lot of people wearing kilts in the Texas Dept of Agriculture."

I was going to suggest having bagpipes, but with TX that's entirely too likely to get you shot.

[jack lecou]

GFTNC: I stand by my unwillingness to dismiss what look like (or, in my estimation, are) reasonable arguments or views because of ideological objections to some of their (or anybody else's) other views or even associates. It seems to me (I am not talking about anybody here, just the phenomenon) a kind of laziness, and the dangers of inhabiting any kind of bubble are becoming increasingly apparent.

I think there's a big difference between "dismissing" arguments outright because of the source's history -- i.e., refusing to hear them at all -- and simply applying heightened skepticism to claims from sources that have previously proved to be unreliable.

In particular being unwilling to invest lots of additional time in the verification and cross checking that would be necessary to trust an argument from an unreliable source strikes me as quite reasonable in our saturated information economy.

Fundamentally, this is just how trust works, and the application of trust is very different from "laziness", or living in a bubble.

In that vein, Bobbyp's observations about how and to whom the "twitter files" were released is absolutely relevant, and part of the kind of heuristic trust analysis we need to do before trusting information (or deciding how much time to put into trusting it). If the likes of Bari Weiss were the only other "journalists" Musk could get to sign on to the project, that definitely says something.

It's also worth noting that, IIUC, prior to this affair, Taibbi's previous reputation was relatively decent. He *was* the reputable journalist this was supposed to be filtered too. People aren't rejecting the reporting because it came from Taibbi, instead they're rejecting Taibbi because of the sh*t reporting.

We're just watching a real time evidence-based adjustment in trust heuristics.

[JanieM]

wj -- nevertheless, for my entire lifetime it has been acceptable in many contexts (okay, you can have the workplace) for femmales to wear pants and not for males to wear skirts. I wore jeans or shorts all summer as a child, as did all the other little girls I knew, and that went on through adolescence; no boys wore skirts, it would have been wildly unacceptable. My great-aunt, a farm woman, wore coveralls (except to church) and was considered "queer" (in the sense of "peculiar") because of it in her rural town in Ohio. But if my great-uncle had put on a skirt they would have locked him up.

[Girl from the North Country]

bobbyp: I don't know why you direct that to me particularly, because I was talking purely theoretically about the principle of the thing, as opposed to about any current situation/story/commentator. FWIW, however, your link seemed to me very reasonable. Personally, I have often wondered (particularly in the last couple of years) if Musk is mentally ill, or at least seriously unstable, and nothing in his Twitter odyssey makes me really doubt it, although I suppose just being an arsehole also explains many of his actions, which (along with lots of his views) are so often highly objectionable, or worse. He is a marvellous example of how dangerous it is when someone is too rich or powerful. Also, anything that plays into (or stokes) conspiracy theories, is in my opinion extremely dangerous, and becoming more so.

On a side note, although I have sort of gathered over the last several years that NPR is no longer regarded so highly (perhaps an understatement) by liberals like myself, I cannot shake the memory of when I lived in the States on and off for a year in the mid-90s. At that time, it seemed to me the only source of news and factual programming that was remotely respectable, prepared to go fairly deep, and comparatively unbiased. This link you sent me does not seem to me to be so very, very different.

I think there's a big difference between "dismissing" arguments outright because of the source's history -- i.e., refusing to hear them at all -- and simply applying heightened skepticism to claims from sources that have previously proved to be unreliable.

In particular being unwilling to invest lots of additional time in the verification and cross checking that would be necessary to trust an argument from an unreliable source strikes me as quite reasonable in our saturated information economy.

jack lecou: I don't disagree with this. I was talking about theoretical argument, on principles, as opposed to basing the argument on the use of examples the reliability of which then have to be checked. And of course, trust particularly enters into it if someone has a reputation for dishonesty, as opposed to opinions with which you disagree.

[bobbyp]

bobbyp: I don't know why you direct that to me particularly...

Our shared predilection to enjoy a good wine?

My car radio is always tuned to NPR, and they generally do a good job (the local station's jazz and blues offerings are the best!). They have usually been portrayed as "left-wing". This is pretty dumb.

Dean Baker (one of my favorite economists) sometimes takes them to task for their not at all uncommon shallow treatment of economics, statistics, and government fiscal policy, but that is a common failing in the media industry.

[Michael Cain]

I have often wondered (particularly in the last couple of years) if Musk is mentally ill, or at least seriously unstable...

Myself, I've wondered if he's just bored. Tesla is well on its way to being a battery company that happens to make cars on the side. The Falcon 9/Heavy rockets make weekly or more frequent launches look routine, including landing the boosters, something no one thought possible just a few years ago. Starlink is past a million users and growing. Starship is... well, the decision to put Starbase at Boca Chica is looking worse and worse, the NASA Artemis contract means it's got to be more Shotwell and less Musk. The Boring Company was pretty much a bust.

Twitter's a chance for him to be dynamic again.

[nous]

In general I'd say that the split in attitudes towards NPR among people who vote Democrat in the US has less to do with whether or not they think that NPR does a good job in its reporting and more to do with the cultural niche that NPR occupies. The NPR audience is older, white, and college educated, and the stories that get told there are shaped to appeal to that demographic. That sheen of respectability politics and high culture is bound to rub a lot of the activist, labor, and minority left the wrong way.

And age plays into this a bit as well. I know socialist labor lefties in their 60s who love NPR, and Millenial MOR Democrats who listen to it all the time, but the younger the demographic, the more that the respectability politics runs the risk of turning people off. Same with race. Older minority listeners and readers are more patient with the NPR tone and focus than are younger ones.

[Priest]

In certain corners of the lefty blogosphere NPR has been tagged as standing for “Nice Polite Republicans”, don’t recall if anyone here has used that.

[Girl from the North Country]

Our shared predilection to enjoy a good wine?

A predilection which I am very happy to share with you - and pace wj, I'm particularly fond of champagne! I'm also very glad to gather from the various responses that NPR is not regarded as beyond the pale - I depended on it, and really liked a lot of it.

[wj]

We might suddenly see a lot of people wearing kilts in the Texas Dept of Agriculture.

Wonder if that will cause them to specify highland or lowland? And what lucky devil gets to do the (presumably random spot) checks.

[wj]

I wore jeans or shorts all summer as a child, as did all the other little girls I knew, and that went on through adolescence; no boys wore skirts, it would have been wildly unacceptable.

I did know one kid who wore a kilt (as did his father, routinely). But then, it was Berkeley in the 70s, so hardly typical of the wider culture.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Unfortunately I have not been able to get back to France for some years, but when I could, one of my favorite activities was toodling around in the Champaign region, stopping at wineries to sample and buy.

The most memorable was a "tasting room" that was the living room of a young couple (with kid toys scattered about). The only indication was a small sign just outside their garage. I made sure to buy a couple of bottles.

[liberal japonicus]

A little late to reply, but I don't think the solution to bubbles is having a chinese menu of people's views to take on, it is _how_ one takes new information onboard. If I were to suggest that we couldn't argue about some issue because we weren't around when the fight started, I'm trying to imagine how that would be treated. I don't know who did or didn't know about Taibbi's history, but, to take my metaphor to the breaking point, deciding that you like his take on twitter with no reference to anything else he has done is a bit like taking one point on the arc and deciding that this tells us everything we know.

Nous' observation about Taibbi's oscillation between gonzo writing and a more serious journalism is a good one, but that is not an invitation to dismiss out of hand what Taibbi says, it just means that you have to weigh a lot more carefully what he says. I failed to mention Taibbi's Griftopia, which was good, but it is hard, as nous points out, to see where the lines between serious and seriously pissed off are drawn. I'm not on twitter and I certainly can't follow the ins and outs of the fight because I don't know the mechanisms that are involved, but a lot of the framing of issues and the insistence to go down side paths makes me wonder how much is of the problem of media and how much is a pissing match.

What prompted this post was not any particular issue, it was the phenomenon. Nous points to a particular age and ethos, which makes a lot of sense. Dr Oz might be a similar example, earnest enough to fool Oprah, but then making a fool of himself. The only example I can think of that might possibly represent the mirror image is RFK Jr. as the anti-vax crusader. But after that, I can't think of any other examples.

[Donald]

I come at the Twitter Files business from the pov that of course the press is biased on some issues and spins its coverage accordingly. Most of the time I am looking at this from the pov of criticizing US foreign policy, but it is logical to assume they are going to show varying levels of bias elsewhere, sometimes against people I don’t like.

The conservative portion of Taibbi’s fan club ( he also has leftists) like him because he has been pointing out, along with Jeff (?) Gerth and others, the ways in which liberals and the press went overboard with Russiagate and conspiracy theories. They don’t like McCarthyism when it is directed at their side. They are correct, even if many ( but not all) are hypocritical in their free speech concerns..

[hairshirthedonist]

Funny, lj. My thought was that, since you can't eat everything at the buffet anyway, the one thing you sure as hell aren't going to eat is the food that smells like rotting fish. Not the same point, but still a food metaphor. ;^)

[JanieM]

hsh -- i've been thinking along those lines throughout this discussion. Thanks for the pungent metaphor. ;-)

[JanieM]

Even without the rotting fish metaphor, there are more people pundit-ing than anyone could possibly ever keep up with....

[ral]

I just hang out here and at Balloon Juice, so I suppose you could say I live in a bubble, though I'd disagree.

Regarding Twitter I leave it to others to pick apart the Twitter Files. My personal opinion is the company is doomed.

[wj]

I just hang out here and at Balloon Juice, so I suppose you could say I live in a bubble, though I'd disagree.

My sense is that we have a rather more disparate group than most blogs. Including linking to a fairly varied group of other blogs/newspapers/etc. Which, at minimum, makes us a more transparent bubble than many.

[CharlesWT]

I hang out here in spite of, or because I don't often agree with almost everyone most of the time.

I also spend some time on Twitter, YouTube and listening to podcasts.

[bobbyp]

Even without the rotting fish metaphor, there are more people pundit-ing than anyone could possibly ever keep up with....

and i cannot read chinese either.

[CharlesWT]

Valuetainment has just made Carlson a five-year $100 million offer.

[Michael Cain]

Valuetainment has just made Carlson a five-year $100 million offer.

A quick survey around the internet suggests Valuetainment's revenue is about $600,000 per year. The offer strikes me as "We'll give you a platform, of sorts, and you can keep the first $20M per year of any revenue you generate with it." Is there any pundit who generates $20M per year in revenue on a streaming platform?

[Pro Bono]

I'm particularly fond of champagne!

This is the comment I most agree with.

Re. the other sort of bubble: the public face of the US right is nasty and lying, essentially a confidence trick to persuade a large enough minority of the electorate to vote in the interests of the rich and powerful. But there are real concerns, held by right-wingers motivated by something other than entitlement, which I would like to hear more about.

[liberal japonicus]

The danger of tying oneself to a rapidly descending object is that you might have your judgement subjected to questioning

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/04/10/after-matt-taibbi-leaves-twitter-elon-musk-shadow-bans-all-of-taibbis-tweets-including-the-twitter-files/

[nous]

The Medhi Hasan interview with Taibbi seemed to me to be less devastating to Taibbi than is reported in the story. Hasan seemed to be mischaracterizing Taibbi's reporting a lot and Taibbi seemed to be talking past Hasan trying to score points with his own subscribers who had tuned in to watch the confrontation. The whole thing then seemed to turn into journalistic dick waving. Hasan seemed railroad-y and Taibbi seemed happy to grind the axe and take shots at MSNBC for Russiagate while downplaying his own juicing of the Hunter Biden stories.

Taibbi said in the midst of the crosstalk that he was happy to report on the Twitter Files and he was happy that people were giving it oxygen because he thought it was something that needed to be talked about more, which sounds a lot like what Donald said about being happy that Taibbi criticizing the American press because so few others would. But it's all just sensationalism and shit stirring. I'm not really seeing any quality reporting from either the mainstream cable news networks or the Substack dissidents who can no longer tolerate having an editor checking their shit. I'd like more criticism of a lot of things, but only if that criticism was accurate and well contextualized and aimed at helping the public understand the complexity of our big issues.

We have sensationalist news and badly reported science and foreign policy on one hand, and densely written specialist wonkery behind institutional paywalls on the other. In between is a vast wasteland where there should be smart, articulate people trying to explain our best info in as much color and complexity as can be mustered for an outside reader.

That wasteland is why we are probably heading for 3C warming and decades of migration driven conflict.

What we need is not more criticism, what we need is good, measured criticism and a public prepared to do the work of understanding it.

Failed on both counts.

[liberal japonicus]

Just out of curiousity, how many people here are either reading Twitter or 'on Twitter' (i.e. interacting with others on a regular basis) I tried to follow Twitter here in Japan, but was so confused and finally gave up, though I have friends who felt like it allowed them to get in touch with people they wouldn't have.

I looked at the original interview and it seemed to hinge a lot 'well, you said on Twitter'. Journalistic dick waving is an apt description.

[CharlesWT]

Twitter is a way for nobodies to get fifteen seconds of attention from somebodies.

[wj]

I'd like more criticism of a lot of things, but only if that criticism was accurate and well contextualized and aimed at helping the public understand the complexity of our big issues.

Amen

[wj]

I occasionally click on a link to something on Twitter. (So if you see a link to Twitter here from me, that's the origin.) But look at it otherwise? No.

[bobbyp]

But there are real concerns, held by right-wingers motivated by something other than entitlement, which I would like to hear more about.

Might be a good discussion topic.

As for me, I do not Twit.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

I was totally banned from Twitface, back in 1994, by some dude named 'Snarki'.

Definitely for the best, though.

[bobbyp]

In between is a vast wasteland where there should be smart, articulate people trying to explain our best info in as much color and complexity as can be mustered for an outside reader.

Don't despair. They are out there. Here is an example:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/24/magazine/dr-fauci-pandemic.html

[CharlesWT]

Without the pay wall.

Dr. Fauci Looks Back: ‘Something Clearly Went Wrong’: In his most extensive interview yet, Anthony Fauci wrestles with the hard lessons of the pandemic — and the decisions that will define his legacy.

[Girl from the North Country]

I joined Twitter just to watch a particular story's participants, of only parochial interest in the UK. Other than that, I very occasionally look at the tweets of people I am interested in, and hilzoy when I remember.

But there are real concerns, held by right-wingers motivated by something other than entitlement, which I would like to hear more about.

Ditto, obviously. And not just rightwingers, but also leftwingers who have somewhat strayed, or indeed the non-aligned. But then, I value the opinions and thought processes of intelligent people who do not necessarily fit neatly into categories, whether left, right or anything else.

[Girl from the North Country]

More TC news from today's Guardian:

A racist text message allegedly sent by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson set off alarm bells at the top of the network and ultimately contributed to his firing, the New York Times reported.

The text, which remains redacted in court filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News but which the Times published in full, included the line: “It’s not how white men fight.”

The message allegedly shows Carlson describing how he saw a group of Trump supporters beat up an “Antifa kid”, or anti-fascist counter-protester.

Carlson allegedly described the encounter as “three against one, at least” and added: “Jumping a guy like that is dishonourable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.”

Carlson allegedly wrote that he initially found himself “rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it.” He then noted such thoughts were not good for him.

[Girl from the North Country]

Italiexo!

[JanieM]

I never had a Twitter account, but for a year or so I checked Connie Schultz's feed every day -- she's a journalist and the wife of Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, but her real claim to fame is that she grew up around the corner (literally) from where I did. (We didn't know each other; she's seven years younger, plus I was embedded in my Italian/Catholic world and that wasn't hers.)

I also love Anne Laurie's cullings of Twitter at BJ -- she does the sifting, I do the enjoying. There's a particular kind of wry, often word-based humor and repartee that Twitter is perfect for, and there are many nights when I go to bed chuckling over stuff AL has found.

There must be stuff on Twitter that I don't see because I don't have a login, but there's also a trick to going on reading comment threads after Twitter tries to stop you, so I've seen quite a lot. But even the funny comment threads get old pretty quickly...it's the repartee that's fun.

Too bad Elmo has ruined it.....I'm hardly ever inspired to dig deeper anymore.

*****

Also, just because it has been on my mind, the more I think of it the more I'm bemused by the original premise of this post, which puts Tucker Carlson in the same category as Matt Taibbi. That seems wrong to me ... I don't see what TC has done over these years of fame as having anything whatsoever to do with journalism. It's malevolent, intentionally destructive rabble-rousing, which I don't think is what Taibbi is doing at all. Maybe the arc is still the same shape... I dunno.

[Michael Cain]

Italiexo!

Of just over 509,000 comments in the latest backup, 504 contain unbalanced <i>, <em>, <b>, or <a> tags.

[CharlesWT]

Carlson hasn't been fired yet, just taken off his program. He has about a year and a half and $30 million left on his current contract. One theory is that Fox is releasing damaging information, true or not, to try to provoke him into violating his contract. Like calling them liars or releasing some information of his own that is damaging to Fox. Otherwise, Fox will have to come to some kind of buyout agreement with him.

[nous]

I've been thinking a lot about the things we have discussed in this thread because it's all at the heard of what I'm teaching this term in my research class. It's nominally a writing class, but a big part of what we do is actually teaching media literacy and ethics. We've been going over articles (mostly Pro Publica and NPR) to look at what questions get asked in a research project, how those questions get answered and by who, and how uncertainty gets negotiated and signposted in the writing.

I know that we have discussed both Pro Publica and NPR here recently, working through some fair criticism of each, but I return to them a lot for teaching because they just do a better job of framing, informing, and discussing context(s) than do most other news outlets in the US.

I'm reticent to use anything at all from Substack, especially anything built on a subscription model. I think subscription models incentivize the stringing together of sensational discoveries and shocking appearances and discourage analysis and contextualization work that runs the risk of creating a sense of closure while the audience is still hungry for more "feet to the fire" reporting about their favorite villains. Taibbi is guilty of this, but he is absolutely not alone in it. I think all the big names there suffer from this dynamic.

Anyway, gotta run. I've got a class to lead where we are discussing the wind power lobby's political clout and what should be done to balance the need for renewable energy against the cost of this construction to local commercial fishing. Always good to pose a complex dilemma and force my learners to work through and weigh the consequences in ways that crosscut the usual framing of sides.

[wj]

what should be done to balance the need for renewable energy against the cost of this construction to local commercial fishing.

Query, because I know nothing about the subject.
What would be the prospects for doing enough wind power (and its negative impact) to keep commercial fishing down to sustainable levels?

In some cases, multiple problems can help address each other.

[nous]

The article I was making them consider is this one: https://www.propublica.org/article/fishermen-endangered-offshore-wind-political-power

Our main points were - More wind power is good because it reduces reliance on carbon polluting non-renewables - but construction of wind turbines is going to disrupt fishing in this major region...perhaps for a decade or more - are the harms to fishing and to food security enough to outweigh the benefits of power production - if not, how do we balance the net gains against the cost to local fishing?

And since they are having to write papers that tackle tough climate change advocacy problems...the article mentions two potential courses of action for the situation - change federal rules to prevent regulators from lobbying for the industries that they regulate after they leave to lessen regulatory capture and conflicts of interest and/or - shift the mechanism of payment for financial losses to local fishing so that it is overseen by government and not by the corporations involved. Can we do both or do we have to choose? How would we decide and on what might we base that decision?

Then they were to take what they learned from this exercise and try to apply it to the problems that they have been researching for their own projects.

What level of fishing is sustainable is a separate question that they might have to do on their own and then try to figure out how that situation might impact or intersect with this other problem.

[liberal japonicus]

I like the Guardian longform articles, though they have a lot more atmosphere as opposed to more information. I often find juxtaposing these with their other reporting and the opinion is interesting.

I am teaching research writing here, though it is a totally different beast here. I'm trying to get them to use explainpaper.com to get through a larger amount of research than they might have before, but getting them to interact with the research in a way that is their own voice is way beyond where they are.

[liberal japonicus]

Don't want to make this a separate post, but I found this NYT piece by A.O. Scott to be interesting
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/03/books-review/tucker-carlson-text-message-whiteness.html

save as html and drop on your browser if you need to get past the paywall.

When I saw the original story, I was confused, I didn't know if the implication was that Carlson was fired because he felt some sympathy towards the guy getting beaten or if he sympathized too much with the people doing the beating. As I said, I don't think there was a single straw, though I can imagine, in the "How do we solve a problem like Tucker" scene played out in the Fox boardroom, at some point, something was waved something in front of everyone that made them all decide. It would be interesting if this was it.

[Nigel]

That's an interesting article, nous.

What is doesn't seem to do very well is tease out the difference between the risks to commercial fisheries (which might fairly easily be dealt with by reasonable compensation), and genuine long term damage to fish habitats.

This is about as far as it goes, without much data to back it up.
...For Vineyard Wind, fisheries scientists outlined how repeated blasts from pile driving into the ocean floor can cause “fish kills.” The sound wave impact, which can be felt underwater from as far as 50 miles away, can cause a “cumulative stress response” that disrupts the ability of fish to feed or spawn. Suspended sediment on the ocean floor kicked up by construction could also harm fish, and digging long and deep trenches to connect turbines to shore by cable would result in “permanent loss of juvenile cod” habitat...

(It's not impossible, for example, that large structures, by impeding fishing, might in the medium term provide a degree of protection to habitats.)

is there anything more informative about that ?

[Girl from the North Country]

lj: I absolutely assumed when I read the story that what Fox was concerned about was the incredible statement about how that's not the way white men fight. Even they couldn't spin that as anything other than horrifically racist, and they would have known that. As for his "Christian" musings about the damage to his soul etc, and the possible sufferings of whoever might have loved the "Antifa creep", it never occurred to me that Fox would pay much attention to that. It seemed pretty performative to me, but I guess it depends who he sent it to. I suppose you can make a case for it factoring in for Fox, but my guess is it's all about the TC racism issue getting turbocharged, and perhaps the knock on effect on the black vote etc.

[Girl from the North Country]

In today's Guardian about the playing of the tape of Trump's deposition in the E Jean Carroll case:

The former president also said he could not remember when he was married to his various wives, but could find out. Asked if he had affairs while married, Trump said: “I don’t know.”

I wonder if the tapes of depositions are publicly available, such that political ads could play this snippet? Not that I expect MAGAts care about his morality, about which after all much is already known, but some might think it goes to his cognitive faculties....

[JanieM]

Quoting from Nigel's quote: Suspended sediment on the ocean floor kicked up by construction could also harm fish, and digging long and deep trenches to connect turbines to shore by cable would result in “permanent loss of juvenile cod” habitat...

Cod was a huge presence in my experience of New England from 1968 onward, and still when I moved to Maine in 1987. It was readily available in the grocery store, and indeed we ate it quite often. ("Here's to good old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the Cabots speak only to Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to God.")

In the years since I moved to Maine, the cod fishery has dwindled and then died. I haven't kept up, but wikipedia says this:

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, cod fishing off the coasts of Europe and America severely depleted cod stocks there, which has since become a major political issue, as the necessity of restricting catches to allow fish populations to recover has run up against opposition from the fishing industry and politicians reluctant to approve any measures that will result in job losses. The 2006 Northwest Atlantic cod quota is set at 23,000 tons, representing half the available stocks, while it is set to 473,000 tons for the Northeast Atlantic cod.

Note the date: 2006; I believe it has gotten much worse since then -- I stopped seeing cod in the grocery store long ago, although to be honest I don't even look anymore, I get my fish elsewhere.

Two points: the notion of worrying about juvenile cod habitat seems a little off, i.e. so much too late as to be a misdirection, unless it's totally from the point of view of people who are trying to revive the species.

Secondly, skimming this article brought home to me for the first time how piecemeal is "our" (human) approach to global problems. We might succeed in figuring out how to balance the need for energy (wind farms) against the need for food (and jobs), and find ourselves blindsided by some other threat (pollution from runoff?) that's going to ruin the fishery anyhow. Nothing like this can be adequately dealt with in small slices. And it doesn't seem that we're very good at "big picture" thinking.

Off the top of my head in the morning.

[wj]

Not that I expect MAGAts care about his morality, about which after all much is already known, but some might think it goes to his cognitive faculties....

Sure Trump boasts about his (supposed) intelligence, and will likely campaign against Biden's supposed cognitive decline. But I find it impossible to believe that his cultists vote for him for his brains. As with his morals, the utter lack has long since been evident.

[hairshirthedonist]

And it doesn't seem that we're very good at "big picture" thinking.

Or even "medium picture" thinking. To wit:

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, cod fishing off the coasts of Europe and America severely depleted cod stocks there, which has since become a major political issue, as the necessity of restricting catches to allow fish populations to recover has run up against opposition from the fishing industry and politicians reluctant to approve any measures that will result in job losses.

So how many jobs will there be catching cod when there are no cod left?

[wj]

And it doesn't seem that we're very good at "big picture" thinking.

I don't think it's a problem with the size of the frame. It's a problem dealing with the multiple (and interacting) details. Even with a relatively narrow focus, a simplistic solution seems most likely to be seized upon.

[Pro Bono]

"I don't know" is an obvious lie. MAGAts think Trump is entitled to lie. And, tbf, Bill Clinton lied about the same thing.

[Girl from the North Country]

Bill Clinton lied outright, with the added undesirable element of lawyerly semanticism, whereas Trump feigns forgetfulness, or dementia. I suppose whichever seems more undesirable in a president is down to personal preference.