3427

I’m still gobsmacked by that tweet, given who wrote it. It has to be up there in terms of public statements that demonstrate how woefully ill-equipped someone is for their profession.

3428

I mean, I enjoy the pile-on and I get it, but… are we missing the point? Seems similar to how Biden says about racism / BLM issues, “This isn’t who we are in America.” And everyone (rightfully) says, “Of course it’s who we are.”

Idealism can seem naive but it doesn’t make the person wrong, does it? The Trump administration was far worse than normal on all three counts.

(And I realize that political leaders and journalists play very different roles.)

3429

It does when your job is to do the opposite, imo.

And it’s not naivety so much as her pushing a political position (Trump was uniquely bad). Which, while true, doesn’t suddenly make everything else fine. Trump was uniquely terrible, but the shit she’s attributing to Trump as uniquely terrible, isn’t remotely unique to Trump. It’s fucking commonplace and well known.

As someone who is supposed to be a check on this sort of thing, it makes her look like an idiot at best.

Edit: Cited for emphasis:

“As an American journalist, you never expect:”

If you never expected the things after that, you’re an idiot that hasn’t been paying attention.
That she was a big wig at one of the largest news orgs on the planet, makes it worse.

If she had phrased it as “As Americans we should never accept…” that would be plausible and akin to your statement about “this isn’t who we are”. Her statement isn’t aspirational or opinion, she’s stating something that obviously isn’t true as fact. If she believes the words she said, then she shouldn’t be a handling anything more serious than feel-good fluff stories at a local paper.

3430

I guess she set herself up with the “you never expect” framing and her point went flying out the window.

But you never would expect that degree of bad faith governing.

3431

True, but did the media push back? No, not really. Instead they pretended it was normal and treated it like it wasn’t the obvious horseshit that it was. Which is why people are coming down so hard on her. She was part of the problem.

3432
3433
3434

Yeah, that is phrased in an odd way.

Fuck the New York Times, btw.

3435

I thought of you as I posted that one. :)

3436

3437

Apple really should just add a way of properly highlighting text like this for people who can’t be bothered to wander over to their desktop PC.

3438

The United States is a monarchy and the usurper to the throne is not issuing royal edicts properly.

3439

I think both Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel, Republican Secretaries of Defense under Obama, also argued that one of the reasons for worse foreign policy under Obama was that he demanded hours of debate. I’m paraphrasing from memory, but I think Hagel said that they were always in meetings with too many people at the table. And every person at the table has to speak, so you spend hours going round and round hearing from everyone, and not everyone has good input, so instead of a good debate between two or three points of view, you have a round robin endless input and debate with too little of substance actually getting through to the President for his decision making.

3440

Sure, there’s maybe a legit critique of management style in there somewhere.

3441

I could also see bull-headed SecDefs who wanted to do things their way right away and getting frustrated by “the committee” having to discuss it. The quality of the input may be a little subjective. :)

3442

Oh, burying you in a committee is a well trodden corporate way of saying no.

3443
3444

And he immediately sticks his hand out for a donation.

3445

That’s a really funny tweet. Kudos to Stephen Robinson, whoever that is.

3446

This seems like a mistake on Lightfoot’s part.