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The Trouble With Corey Lewandowski on CNN |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=17265"><span class="small">Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Sunday, 07 August 2016 13:23 |
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Talbot writes: "Lewandowski's signal quality is a kind of unsmiling, nonironic loyalty that admits of no countermanding or even complicating detail; he's like the ultimate faithful retainer, still fixedly serving his master as the mansion crumbles around him."
Fired by the Trump campaign, Corey Lewandowski quickly relocated to CNN, where he distinguished himself this week by reviving the birther canard. (photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images)
The Trouble With Corey Lewandowski on CNN
By Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
07 August 16
 his week, Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN, offered an upbeat assessment of one of the network’s newest additions, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, whom Zucker hired as an on-air political commentator in June. “I actually think he’s done a really nice job,” Zucker said in an interview with Variety. “He’s come under a much greater spotlight because of who he is, and the relationship he’s had with the media. As a result, people are going to be more critical.” It’s hard to know quite what to make of this. Bosses like to stand by their hiring decisions when they can—fair enough. But Lewandowski has manifestly not been doing a “really nice job” in his new role, unless his role is not so much to comment on the Trump campaign as to embody the pathologies of it.
The trouble with Lewandowski is not that he came out of a campaign or that he is clearly partisan. Both cable and broadcast networks have been hiring people answering to that description for years—Democrats like Paul Begala and David Axelrod, Republicans like Nicolle Wallace and Karl Rove—with the idea that, taken en masse, their perspectives add up to a kind of nonpartisan X-ray of American politics. Those old hands may be prone to repeating their parties’ talking points, but at least they have experience in the White House or in multiple campaigns, and they know they’re supposed to be offering some kind of insider’s insight into the process that may not always pay robotic obeisance to the candidate they worked for most recently. Most of the time, that campaign was long enough ago that they aren’t still being paid severance by it, as Lewandowski is. (To be fair, his CNN interlocutors say so every time he is introduced on air.)
Lewandowski, though, is a special case. CNN hired him just a few days after the Trump campaign fired him. As Trump’s adjutant, he had upheld an authoritarian attitude toward the press, banning the Washington Post, among other media outlets Trump doesn’t care for, from covering the candidate’s events. On his first CNN appearance, on June 25th, Lewandowski would neither confirm nor deny having signed a “non-disparagement” agreement of the kind other former Trump employees have. (In that interview, the CNN anchor Erin Burnett produced an example that read: “During the term of your service and at all times thereafter, you hereby promise and agree not to demean or disparage publicly the company, Mr. Trump, any Trump company, any family member, or any family member company.”) But, if he did, and if he were worried about being sued or just frozen out by Trump—not unreasonable worries, in his position—that would certainly make it unlikely he would say anything critical or even specific or surprising about his former boss.
Yet that was something his new CNN bosses could reasonably have expected: a few crisp anecdotes, a little texture, a sprinkling of behind-the-scenes flavor. Zucker said in the Variety interview that the network simply needed someone representing the G.O.P. nominee’s point of view: “It’s hard to find a lot of those. Our competitors tried to hire [Lewandowski], too.” But Lewandowski’s signal quality is a kind of unsmiling, nonironic loyalty that admits of no countermanding or even complicating detail; he’s like the ultimate faithful retainer, still fixedly serving his master as the mansion crumbles around him—Erich von Stroheim in “Sunset Boulevard.” He refers to Trump as “Mr. Trump” and speaks reverently about “the family,” meaning Trump’s family. When that interview with Burnett turned to how he felt about having been fired, Lewandowski said, “I’d go back and do it exactly the same way, only better. And if I did something to disappoint the family and I didn’t accomplish what they needed, then they do what they need to do, because the campaign is bigger than Corey Lewandowski.” He said he was “fully committed”—meaning fully committed to Trump. “In my private time with my family and my friends, I’m telling everybody that I know that Donald Trump is the only person who’s going to save the country for my children and, hopefully, their children someday.”
At one point, Burnett asked for a little glimpse into the process by which Trump was then picking a Vice-President. Campaign staff members are always coy about this, but there are ways of saying something moderately substantive about what the candidate’s priorities are, and, anyway, Lewandowski wasn’t working for the campaign anymore. This is what he said: “There’s been some speculation out there that people don’t want to be part of this. It’s absolutely the opposite. Every person that he has talked to, every person that he has had an interest in talking to, has reaffirmed with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that they would be absolutely welcome on the ticket.” Absolutely, one hundred per cent: you get the picture.
Lewandowski has not grown into his job since. It could still happen, I suppose. Once in a while, as Callum Borchers pointed out, in the Washington Post, Lewandowski will emit a brief display of empathy. Lewandowski’s CNN colleagues have been doing their best, and when the dogged Alisyn Camerota asked if he could understand why some people might look askance at Trump’s comments about Brexit and the falling value of the pound—namely, that they would be good for business at his golf resort in Scotland—Lewandowski said he could. “This qualifies as progress,” Borchers wrote. “He is at least capable of seeing a non-Trump point of view and granting an unfriendly premise.” Borchars continued,
For the most part, however, Lewandowski is bad television. He remains prone to spouting fiction and doesn’t stay on-topic, grinding segments to a halt as CNN hosts have to correct his misinformation or interject to steer the conversation back to the point.
Since then, some of Lewandowski’s more memorable moments have included a weird outburst with Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council and a designated liberal commentator who he’s often been paired with on air. When Quinn, gesturing, brushed his hand with hers in the midst of a heated exchange about Trump’s reaction to the Khan family, he snapped, “Don’t touch me!” And then he said it again.
This week, Lewandowski distinguished himself by reviving the birther canard—the thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. One of the other panelists that night, Angela Rye, remarked, “Donald Trump has been attacking the President long before he began campaigning for this important office. He is the one who was the spokesperson of the birther movement” and “saying the President was an affirmative-action admittee of Harvard.”
Though she was bringing this up only to establish that Trump had long had it in for Obama, Lewandowski hijacked the conversation: “Did he ever release his transcripts or his admission to Harvard University? You raised the issue, so just yes or no. The answer is no.” After they had wrangled for a few more minutes, Lewandowski went full birther. “And the question was: Did he get in as a U.S. citizen, or was he brought into Harvard University as a citizen who wasn’t from this country?” he said.
Birtherism was the crucible and the template for Trump’s Presidential campaign. It foreshadowed so many of its hallmarks: dog-whistle racism, the brazen spreading of thoroughly disproven allegations, the just sayin’ tone in which Trump smears people. Advancing birtherism in the guise of political analysis is a firing offense. But then there have been so many already. Earlier this summer, Politico reported that the publisher HarperCollins was backing away from a $1.2 million offer to Lewandowski to write a book about his time on the campaign, “Let Trump Be Trump.” According to Politico, the publisher had decided that Lewandowski’s non-disclosure agreement would prevent him from producing anything valuable enough. Too bad CNN didn’t reach a similar conclusion.
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Donald Trump's Electoral Map Is Shrinking |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36874"><span class="small">Jim Newell, Slate</span></a>
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Sunday, 07 August 2016 13:20 |
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Newell writes: "Trump has so few Electoral College paths-i.e., he's losing the election-because he is an unqualified, ungrounded, and omnidirectionally offensive presidential candidate. If you look at the narrowing of his map and the still-scant post-convention state polls, you can see early signs of how and to whom that's playing out."
With Virginia and Colorado looking solidly blue, Donald Trump's available paths to the White House are shrinking. Above, Trump speaks in Daytona, Florida, on Wednesday. (photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Donald Trump's Electoral Map Is Shrinking
By Jim Newell, Slate
07 August 16
You can count his paths to victory on two very short fingers.
 illary Clinton’s campaign and the main super PAC supporting it are pulling some ads out of Virginia and Colorado. Not forever: The super PAC, Priorities USA, says it will be back on the air at the end of the month, and the Clinton campaign says that at this moment it is still running a handful of Virginia ads. But consider the states where the Clinton campaign, at least, will continue running state-specific ads without interruption: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Apparently it considers Virginia and Colorado safer than all of them at this point.
The withdrawals are shocking because these are not traditional blue states. Barack Obama converted them in 2008 and held onto them in 2012. It takes the mind some time to adjust first to the changing of the colors and then, after multiple elections, their deepening. But the numbers seem to check out. Clinton has always polled strongly in Virginia, and there haven’t been any new public polls since the Democratic convention or her selection of Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate—or, for that matter, since the beginning of Trump’s ongoing nightmare week. Colorado, meanwhile, hasn’t looked competitive for a while.
Take these two states and their 22 electoral votes off the table and Trump’s available paths narrow from a few to … two. Let’s start with the 2012 map as a baseline. Trump could flip Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to get to 273. He could win Florida and Ohio, lose Pennsylvania, and then win Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire to get to 269—i.e., an Electoral College tie and a vote in the House of Representatives. There’s still time for other states to enter competition: Maybe Michigan or Wisconsin starts feeling the red itch. And then there’s always the path in which Trump wins every state, beautifully, by a landslide, look at these crowds, and it would be terrific, just terrific.
Here’s the problem with the first two scenarios. His chances of winning either Pennsylvania or New Hampshire seem next to none. It is strange how deeply observers have been entertaining the idea of Pennsylvania as a true toss-up state, as though the punditocracy is 100-percent composed of alarmist Ed Rendell clones. Some weird numbers have come out of the state, but it all averages out to a mid-high single-digit Clinton lead. As does New Hampshire.
Trump has so few Electoral College paths—i.e., he’s losing the election—because he is an unqualified, ungrounded, and omnidirectionally offensive presidential candidate. If you look at the narrowing of his map and the still-scant post-convention state polls, you can see early signs of how and to whom that’s playing out. The arguments about how Trump could reshape the map have always centered on him rallying to his side white working-class voters, especially men, in overwhelming numbers. That’s not happening. What he is doing, though, is turning off college-educated suburbanites. And that’s why the narrow map you see is what it is.
Consider Pennsylvania, which, according to legend, is always decided in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Well, about that: As MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki noted on Thursday, Obama won the southeast counties of Pennsylvania by 9 percentage points in 2012, and he won the state itself by about 5 percentage points. The latest Franklin & Marshall poll of the state released Thursday showed Clinton up 11 points on Trump in a two-way race and 13 in a four-way race. She was leading in the southeast counties by 40 points, 60 to 20.
Obama won Allegheny County—i.e., the Pittsburgh metropolitan area in Western Pennsylvania—by 14 percentage points in 2012. Thursday’s poll had Clinton up by 19. It’s not because Clinton’s support had jumped, either; it was actually, at 52 percent, 4 percentage points lower than Obama’s 56 percent. But while Romney earned 42 percent in Allegheny in 2012, Trump was sitting at 33 percent. That means you’ve got Republican-leaners in the Pittsburgh area not sold on Trump.
It’s not just the college-educated, suburban swing voters in Pennsylvania who decide these elections anymore. It’s the folks in growing metropolitan regions around Denver; Northern Virginia; Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and Atlanta. These are people with whom Republicans at the very least need to improve on from the Obama years instead of scaring them away even further. We’re talking 45-year-old suburban married women who are ready to vote against a third consecutive Democratic presidential term but can’t bring themselves to do it, because the Republican candidate thinks it would be sorta cool to play with nuclear weapons and watch them go BOOM.
Trump thinks he can stake his claim on the more demographically consistent states with higher numbers of voters without college degrees—Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire—but you don’t need to be a yuppie to also fear a nuclear winter. And if your hatred of Hillary Clinton surpasses whatever global apocalyptic fears Trump has reintroduced to the day-to-day political discussion, bless him, then you were probably already a Republican. There weren’t enough of them for Romney in 2012, and there look to be fewer for Trump in 2016.
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We Can Do Better |
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Sunday, 07 August 2016 13:19 |
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Zellweger writes: "Although we have evolved to acknowledge the importance of female participation in determining the success of society, and take for granted that women are standard bearers in all realms of high profile position and influence, the double standard used to diminish our contributions remains, and is perpetuated by the negative conversation which enters our consciousness every day as snark entertainment."
Renee Zellweger. (photo: Getty Images)
We Can Do Better
By Renee Zellweger, Reader Supported News
07 August 16
 am lucky. Choosing a creative life and having the opportunity to do satisfying work that is sometimes meaningful is a blessed existence and worth the price paid in the subsequent challenges of public life.
Sometimes it means resigning to humiliation, and other times, understanding when silence perpetuates a bigger problem.
In October 2014, a tabloid newspaper article reported that I’d likely had surgery to alter my eyes.
It didn’t matter; just one more story in the massive smut pile generated every day by the tabloid press and fueled by exploitative headlines and folks who practice cowardly cruelty from their anonymous internet pulpits.
In the interest of tabloid journalism, which profits from the chaos and scandal it conjures and injects into people’s lives and their subsequent humiliation, the truth is reduced to representing just one side of the fictional argument. I can’t imagine there’s dignity in explaining yourself to those who trade in contrived scandal, or in seeking the approval of those who make fun of others for sport. It’s silly entertainment, it’s of no import, and I don’t see the point in commenting.
However, in our current culture of unsolicited transparency, televised dirty laundry, and folks bartering their most intimate details in exchange for attention and notoriety, it seems that the choice to value privacy renders one a suspicious character. Disingenuous. A liar with nefarious behavior to conceal. “She denies,” implies an attempt to cover up the supposed tabloid “exposed truth.”
And now, as the internet story contrived for its salacious appeal to curious minds becomes the supposed truth within moments, choosing the dignity of silence rather than engaging with the commerce of cruel fiction, leaves one vulnerable not only to the usual ridicule, but to having the narrative of one’s life hijacked by those who profiteer from invented scandal.
I am not writing today because I have been publicly bullied or because the value of my work has been questioned by a critic whose ideal physical representation of a fictional character originated 16 years ago, over which he feels ownership, I no longer meet. I am not writing in protest to the repellent suggestion that the value of a person and her professional contributions are somehow diminished if she presumably caves to societal pressures about appearance, and must qualify her personal choices in a public court of opinion. I’m not writing because I believe it’s an individual’s right to make decisions about his or her body for whatever reason without judgment.
I’m writing because to be fair to myself, I must make some claim on the truths of my life, and because witnessing the transmutation of tabloid fodder from speculation to truth is deeply troubling. The ‘eye surgery’ tabloid story itself did not matter, but it became the catalyst for my inclusion in subsequent legitimate news stories about self-acceptance and women succumbing to social pressure to look and age a certain way. In my opinion, that tabloid speculations become the subject of mainstream news reporting does matter.
Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I did not make a decision to alter my face and have surgery on my eyes. This fact is of no true import to anyone at all, but that the possibility alone was discussed among respected journalists and became a public conversation is a disconcerting illustration of news/entertainment confusion and society’s fixation on physicality.
It’s no secret a woman’s worth has historically been measured by her appearance. Although we have evolved to acknowledge the importance of female participation in determining the success of society, and take for granted that women are standard bearers in all realms of high profile position and influence, the double standard used to diminish our contributions remains, and is perpetuated by the negative conversation which enters our consciousness every day as snark entertainment.
Too skinny, too fat, showing age, better as a brunette, cellulite thighs, facelift scandal, going bald, fat belly or bump? Ugly shoes, ugly feet, ugly smile, ugly hands, ugly dress, ugly laugh; headline material which emphasizes the implied variables meant to determine a person’s worth, and serve as parameters around a very narrow suggested margin within which every one of us must exist in order to be considered socially acceptable and professionally valuable, and to avoid painful ridicule. The resulting message is problematic for younger generations and impressionable minds, and undoubtably triggers myriad subsequent issues regarding conformity, prejudice, equality, self acceptance, bullying and health.
Ubiquitous online and news source repetition of humiliating tabloid stories, mean-spirited judgments and false information is not harmless.
It increasingly takes air time away from the countless significant unprecedented current events affecting our world. It saturates our culture, perpetuates unkind and unwise double standards, lowers the level of social and political discourse, standardizes cruelty as a cultural norm, and inundates people with information that does not matter.
What if immaterial tabloid stories, judgments and misconceptions remained confined to the candy jar of low-brow entertainment and were replaced in mainstream media by far more important, necessary conversations? What if we were more careful and more conscientious about the choices we make for ourselves, where we choose to channel our energy and what we buy into; remembering that information — both factual and fictitious — is frequently commodified as a product, and the contents and how we use it are of significant personal, social and public consequence?
Maybe we could talk more about why we seem to collectively share an appetite for witnessing people diminished and humiliated with attacks on appearance and character and how it impacts younger generations and struggles for equality, and about how legitimate news media have become vulnerable to news/entertainment ambiguity, which dangerously paves the way for worse fictions to flood the public consciousness to much greater consequence. Maybe we could talk more about our many true societal challenges and how we can do better.
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6 Ways the Rio Olympics Are Failing on Sustainability |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=38082"><span class="small">Kate Yoder, Grist</span></a>
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Sunday, 07 August 2016 13:16 |
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Yoder writes: "Brazil wooed the International Olympic Committee with promises of sustainability when it made its bid in 2009 for Rio to host the games, but it hasn't followed through on those pledges. From waters teeming with pathogens to transportation troubles, the Rio Olympics are looking like a hot mess."
A beach in Brazil. (photo: Sergio Moraes/AP)
6 Ways the Rio Olympics Are Failing on Sustainability
By Kate Yoder, Grist
07 August 16
 razil wooed the International Olympic Committee with promises of sustainability when it made its bid in 2009 for Rio to host the games, but it hasn’t followed through on those pledges. From waters teeming with pathogens to transportation troubles, the Rio Olympics are looking like a hot mess. Of course, lots of past Olympics looked disastrous just before they kicked off too.
1. There’s something in the water
Athletes have been advised to keep their mouths closed when swimming or sailing, as Olympic waters have been found to have virus levels 1.7 million times higher that what would be considered worrisome in the U.S. Rio constructed barriers to keep trash out of the main areas where events are being held, but that won’t stop the sewage and pathogens from floating in (though they might stop body parts from washing ashore).
2. A transportation nightmare
Rio’s traffic is so bad (it’s the fourth most congested city in the world) that members of the International Olympic Committee are already regretting the decision to hold the games there. A $3 billion subway extension was massively delayed and has just barely opened. And earlier this year, a new bike path constructed for the games collapsed, raising safety concerns.
3. Scary diseases
Even though Zika infection rates are slowing down because it’s winter in Brazil, there are plenty of diseases and illnesses to worry about, including dengue fever, rotavirus, norovirus, and hepatitis A. Oh, and as if that’s not already enough, drug-resistant superbacteria.
4. Injustice to residents
An estimated 77,000 people have been evicted from their homes to make way for infrastructure for the games, and entire neighborhoods have been bulldozed.
5. Clashes with critters
The controversial Olympics golf course was built in a sensitive coastal area, and environmentalists say it destroyed habitat and harmed native plants and animals, including endangered species. But it didn’t drive all the animals away: The golf course is still teeming with wildlife like capybaras, sloths, boa constrictors, and miniature crocodiles, so organizers have hired five handlers to keep potentially dangerous critters away from players during game time.
6. Shoddy construction
The Olympics require a vast amount of construction in a short amount of time, and that’s led to buildings that aren’t up to code. Haphazard construction has already caused gas leaks, a small fire, and plumbing mishaps in the Olympic Village. Conditions have prompted some athletes to stay in hotels or luxury cruise ships instead.
Most Brazilians think the 2016 Olympics will do more harm than good. Judging by what we’ve seen so far, the average Brazilian citizen just might be smarter than the Olympic organizers.
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merica's violent summer — egregious shootings of more black men; egregious shootings of cops — has been exhausting, and far more exhausting than the extended aftermath of the riots of 1992, when the city exploded for six days following the acquittal of the four Los Angeles Police Department officers who beat black motorist 
