Civility ... what a quaint idea. Being a retired journalist who worked my way up through many small papers to bigger media, I agree with Rex's view of how the loss has changed the equation for politics. But it's more than that these days. Much of what is being said is being reported by the surviving media, but they've been undercut by the far-right internet culture. Consider the following, all; of which have been noted in newspapers lately.
Are you feeling "dark and depraved?" House speaker Mike Johnson recently lamented that American culture was “so dark and depraved it almost seems irredeemable.”
Wow!?!? Irredeemable, imagine that.
I can't say I'm feeling my usual "dark and depraved" as my wife and I prepare for our extended family Thanksgiving dinner. Nor do I look back at age 71 and feel as if I've live a life that's "irredeemable," though I must admit I do recognize the occasional regret. How about you?
Of course, I'm not a Republican. So here's what happened with this joyous GOP group over the last couple of weeks:
-- Former speaker McCarthy is alleged to have given someone who opposed him in his quest to remain speaker a "mean kidney shot" as he passed him in the hallway.
-- Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator who was formerly a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, threatened to step down from his seat and fight someone giving testimony in a Senate hearing. A day later, he repeated his threat, saying he’d bite the guy if they fought, adding "and I don’t care where I bite by the way."
-- And the ever-colorful Marjorie Taylor Greene got anatomical in her insults, recently calling a fellow Republican a "prick" for voting against one of her silly bills. Meanwhile, she likened Dems to "destructive feral hogs" before shooting a pig with a rifle to make her point about what should be done a touch more explicit.
-- Meanwhile, LI favorite son George Santos was found by the House's Ethics panel to have spent campaign funds on OnlyFans (y'know, the dirty pictures site), Botox and a wide variety of other personal items. His response: "If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the “Ethics committee,” they would have not released this biased report.”
-- Finally, of course, there's the big guy himself, Trump, who likes to refer to anyone not among his cult members as "vermin," and says he plans to replace everyone in government with folks personally loyal only to him.
Wow!?! ... and Yikes!?!
My paragraphs of the day come from S.E. Cupp, a well-known Republican, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times:
"Politicians and presidents before Donald Trump were certainly no angels." she writes. "But Trump ushered in a new kind of ugliness. From admitting to grabbing women by the genitals — also known in legal terms as “assault” — to threatening reporters, encouraging his supporters to assault opponents, calling his detractors vicious names, parading his hateful and open bigotry around in the guise of patriotism, and of course inciting a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, Trump turned the presidency into a never-ending WWE cage match of “I got next.”
And now, sadly, we are seeing this play out among Republicans at all levels of government and within the political realm.
Cupp's smart commentary continues: "With the decorum gone," she writes, "the vengeful policies followed. So too did a politics of punishment, where rooting out heretics became far more important than winning converts, and where Republicans decided to be identified more by whom they hated instead of what they stood for. Punishing became more useful than governing. Threats became the normal means of doing business. Things like civility, decency, empathy and compassion became synonymous with wokeism."
Civility, decency, empathy and compassion. Wouldn't they be nice things for a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people" to be based on? The religious right that supports these far-right folks seems to have forgotten that's much of what constitutes the teachings of Jesus, the original turn-the-other-cheek guy.
Now, I'm not saying the other three LI Republicans in the House are as out of control as some of the folks above. But they support the hard-right with their votes and help to give them a majority in the House so folks like Rep. Greene and Donald Trump can continue to make our government and our politics into something incredibly nasty.
Think about that when you vote, dear readers of Rex, whether you're a Republican like C.E. Cupp that is horrified by all this crap, or a former Independent recently turned Democrat like me who actually supports at least some of the old-time GOP values. Our Republican House members may indeed be nice guys. But who are they supporting in Washington -- you or the far-right? And what's come of that support so far.
Just ask Chip Roy, a GOP congressman from Texas. He says the following: "One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!" He then asked Republicans to come down to the floor and "explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, well, 'I guess it's not as bad as the Democrats.'"
Rex, like you, I decry the decline of quality local journalism. Maybe I’m an alarmist, but in the current political climate, I fear what could happen to the free press in general. Who dreamt that books could be banned in the 21st century? But, it has come to pass. The threats to American Democracy are coming at an alarming rate. I remember with great relief when the Washington Post, with Woodward and Bernstein, took down Nixon. I can only open that in the time remaining that a similar fate is waiting for Trump.
It is a shame indeed to read corporate pre-packaged News From Nowhere For Everywhere and see it passed off as news with a local angle. We read "content" rather than "reporting." Institutional knowledge walks out the newsroom door with every downsizing. That the Times-Union continues to buck that trend is one reason I continue to subscribe, notwithstanding my residence some 2800 miles away. It's refreshing to read reporting.
Having taken a shot at reviving community news in one small town through its time-honored weekly newspaper, though, I can see why reporters and editors are frustrated. Publishers and owners have their own priorities there, too -- subtle priorities that might be inconsistent with an editor's viewpoint or reporter's work. As much as we lift up these last bastions of local journalism, we, as readers, must read carefully to ensure we're not duped by the nostalgic feeling of reading the weekly paper and keep our discerning hackles raised.
I share your hope that we'll all work to find the news rather than skimming the surface. We're smarter than that, generally, but it's so easy to be dumbed down.
I appreciate your weekly reminders to try to live up to our capabilities.
Civility ... what a quaint idea. Being a retired journalist who worked my way up through many small papers to bigger media, I agree with Rex's view of how the loss has changed the equation for politics. But it's more than that these days. Much of what is being said is being reported by the surviving media, but they've been undercut by the far-right internet culture. Consider the following, all; of which have been noted in newspapers lately.
Are you feeling "dark and depraved?" House speaker Mike Johnson recently lamented that American culture was “so dark and depraved it almost seems irredeemable.”
Wow!?!? Irredeemable, imagine that.
I can't say I'm feeling my usual "dark and depraved" as my wife and I prepare for our extended family Thanksgiving dinner. Nor do I look back at age 71 and feel as if I've live a life that's "irredeemable," though I must admit I do recognize the occasional regret. How about you?
Of course, I'm not a Republican. So here's what happened with this joyous GOP group over the last couple of weeks:
-- Former speaker McCarthy is alleged to have given someone who opposed him in his quest to remain speaker a "mean kidney shot" as he passed him in the hallway.
-- Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator who was formerly a Mixed Martial Arts fighter, threatened to step down from his seat and fight someone giving testimony in a Senate hearing. A day later, he repeated his threat, saying he’d bite the guy if they fought, adding "and I don’t care where I bite by the way."
-- And the ever-colorful Marjorie Taylor Greene got anatomical in her insults, recently calling a fellow Republican a "prick" for voting against one of her silly bills. Meanwhile, she likened Dems to "destructive feral hogs" before shooting a pig with a rifle to make her point about what should be done a touch more explicit.
-- Meanwhile, LI favorite son George Santos was found by the House's Ethics panel to have spent campaign funds on OnlyFans (y'know, the dirty pictures site), Botox and a wide variety of other personal items. His response: "If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the “Ethics committee,” they would have not released this biased report.”
-- Finally, of course, there's the big guy himself, Trump, who likes to refer to anyone not among his cult members as "vermin," and says he plans to replace everyone in government with folks personally loyal only to him.
Wow!?! ... and Yikes!?!
My paragraphs of the day come from S.E. Cupp, a well-known Republican, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times:
"Politicians and presidents before Donald Trump were certainly no angels." she writes. "But Trump ushered in a new kind of ugliness. From admitting to grabbing women by the genitals — also known in legal terms as “assault” — to threatening reporters, encouraging his supporters to assault opponents, calling his detractors vicious names, parading his hateful and open bigotry around in the guise of patriotism, and of course inciting a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, Trump turned the presidency into a never-ending WWE cage match of “I got next.”
And now, sadly, we are seeing this play out among Republicans at all levels of government and within the political realm.
Cupp's smart commentary continues: "With the decorum gone," she writes, "the vengeful policies followed. So too did a politics of punishment, where rooting out heretics became far more important than winning converts, and where Republicans decided to be identified more by whom they hated instead of what they stood for. Punishing became more useful than governing. Threats became the normal means of doing business. Things like civility, decency, empathy and compassion became synonymous with wokeism."
Civility, decency, empathy and compassion. Wouldn't they be nice things for a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people" to be based on? The religious right that supports these far-right folks seems to have forgotten that's much of what constitutes the teachings of Jesus, the original turn-the-other-cheek guy.
Now, I'm not saying the other three LI Republicans in the House are as out of control as some of the folks above. But they support the hard-right with their votes and help to give them a majority in the House so folks like Rep. Greene and Donald Trump can continue to make our government and our politics into something incredibly nasty.
Think about that when you vote, dear readers of Rex, whether you're a Republican like C.E. Cupp that is horrified by all this crap, or a former Independent recently turned Democrat like me who actually supports at least some of the old-time GOP values. Our Republican House members may indeed be nice guys. But who are they supporting in Washington -- you or the far-right? And what's come of that support so far.
Just ask Chip Roy, a GOP congressman from Texas. He says the following: "One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing—one—that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!" He then asked Republicans to come down to the floor and "explain to me one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done besides, well, 'I guess it's not as bad as the Democrats.'"
Sigh ...
Rex, like you, I decry the decline of quality local journalism. Maybe I’m an alarmist, but in the current political climate, I fear what could happen to the free press in general. Who dreamt that books could be banned in the 21st century? But, it has come to pass. The threats to American Democracy are coming at an alarming rate. I remember with great relief when the Washington Post, with Woodward and Bernstein, took down Nixon. I can only open that in the time remaining that a similar fate is waiting for Trump.
It is a shame indeed to read corporate pre-packaged News From Nowhere For Everywhere and see it passed off as news with a local angle. We read "content" rather than "reporting." Institutional knowledge walks out the newsroom door with every downsizing. That the Times-Union continues to buck that trend is one reason I continue to subscribe, notwithstanding my residence some 2800 miles away. It's refreshing to read reporting.
Having taken a shot at reviving community news in one small town through its time-honored weekly newspaper, though, I can see why reporters and editors are frustrated. Publishers and owners have their own priorities there, too -- subtle priorities that might be inconsistent with an editor's viewpoint or reporter's work. As much as we lift up these last bastions of local journalism, we, as readers, must read carefully to ensure we're not duped by the nostalgic feeling of reading the weekly paper and keep our discerning hackles raised.
I share your hope that we'll all work to find the news rather than skimming the surface. We're smarter than that, generally, but it's so easy to be dumbed down.
I appreciate your weekly reminders to try to live up to our capabilities.