This is an extremely important topic as we face the 2024 election. I'm glad you're writing about it and hope you continue to share your perspective.
I'd always thought that the unprecedented media time given to Trump was by far the biggest factor in his victory. After reading your article, however, I can look back and detect my own lack of enthusiasm for Clinton in 2016 being influenced by the media coverage of her. Exactly your point.
I voted for Clinton (not very helpful as a NEW YORK resident) , but did nothing else. That was an error born of laziness.
I was much more pro-active for Biden in 2020 and plan to be even more so in 2024.
Susan, I’m so glad I came across this, because it’s a reminder of how horrifying it was for me, as a feminist, to watch Hillary get ripped to shreds by mainstream media - immediately after the 2016 election, I heard some mea culpas (especially regarding the attention paid to those emails) among journalists in private. They were willing to admit that they gave Trump way too much airtime. But you’re so right, none of this made it into public coverage, and I’ve grown increasingly tired of elite liberal outlets seeing themselves as freedom fighters (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”).
To your roll call of prescient thinkers (Marx, Orwell, Foucault, Marcuse), I’d add McLuhan - and a host of second-wave feminist writers (Steinem, Lorde, Millett, Brownmiller) who spoke to the power of the Patriarchy, which is rooted in institutions like the media. Thanks for continuing to question and resist.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yes. Kornacki, the God of the Big Board! But your point about statistics is so well taken. They love to report the results of polls, but never do a deep statistical dive into beliefs or behavior.
As I’ve said, there are things I don’t like about Hillary. But I voted for her, and I would do it again. And if any of what I don’t like about her was fueled even a little by any of this, that’s cause for embarrassment.
No matter how many things I might list as negatives, they add up to difference of opinion, and a frankly emotional response to a person I respect quite a bit.
The propaganda narrative against her-- even the liberal version of it-- is a bunch of horseshit. And you’ve laid out that case here, in a way that’s so well-written and so passionate that it’s actually entertaining.
It’s a little disturbing, how entertaining you can be when writing about things that convince me we’re sliding into a toxic swamp of no return.
The unwillingness to recognize their own complicity-- that’s the most damning argument against mainstream liberal media. I knew something was amiss when I realized I didn’t want to spend any more time with Rachel Maddow.
I don’t watch her any more either. Used to. But besides the fact that I don’t find her as full of integrity as I once did, I don’t think she’s all that into her show any more. She used to do interesting and unexpected historical commentaries, now they seem forced. And I really don’t like how excited she gets—smiling, laughing—when reporting depressing news. “Lots of news for you tonight, guys!!”
I’m pleased that you find my writing entertaining even when it’s about the toxic swamp. I’ve worked hard to learn to present serious, complex, and even disturbing ideas in a way that won’t put people to sleep or alienate them. Most of it was unlearning what I learned in graduate school! I was always a writer (not an academic) at heart. But needing to support myself, I got into academia. And almost immediately started to resist the stuffier, elitist bullshit in it. Your praise means a lot to me!
I also can’t stand that cheery persona. It’s all part of the preaching to the choir liberal brand. My guess is-- on no evidence-- she’s burned out on the shtick, because anyone with any integrity would have to recognize the core phoniness of it.
I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, but my husband voted for Trump in both elections, and I felt so guilty that I wasn’t able to persuade him not to vote for Trump despite arguing about it endlessly in 2016 and 2020. This helps me understand more about why it happened so thank you. My husband was a moderate in terms of his political views when we met 12 years ago (with some conservative leanings because he’s a police officer and grew up as one of 4 children whose parents divorced so they didn’t have a lot of money). He voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 so when we got married in 2013, I had no idea what I was getting into since his views ended up going much more conservative the closer we got to 2016. Political conversations and the ability to have a discussion without it devolving into something disrespectful around how different our views are is something we have really worked on, but I am just so frustrated by his continued support of Trump.
That must be really hard!! Although my husband and I are very different people and often struggle over those differences, we feel exactly the same way about Trump and the GOP, and it’s great to sit with him and scream at the television together. (Actually, we mute it much of the time nowadays.) You have my heartfelt sympathy. And feel free to vent on my posts whenever you need to!!
Remember that Twitter conversation between Chris Hayes and one of his bros in which Hayes agreed that Trump would unquestionably be to the left of Clinton?
Hillary Clinton has always fascinated me as she is one of my mother's generation. - my mother died in '21 but was an feminist activist in Nrew South Wales in the 1970s and she remarked at how her generation of feminists' could only look on in bewilded dismay whilst watching how the world twisted things and called them feminist achievements. Girl Power wasn't meant to be solely "Ellen Ripley" - feminism's desired goal was to have *all types* of girls and women uplifted and considered to be Girl Power - *including* girls and women with naturally soft and quiet personalities and who *chose* to be girly girls. Likewise, the feminists of the 1970s intended and wanted to liberate little boys at the same time as they were liberating little girls. That got mangled into "i hit boys!" being seen as a feminist statement - which you see in fiction e.g. Buffy Summers forcing the male Riley to let her perform oral sex upon him is not treated as a rape scene by the writers but Buffy's own later rape in the series *is*, and some girls interviewed in the mid 1990s by a NYT reporter (and indeed, the reporter herself) for Take Our Daughters to Work Day seeing the Ms. Foundation's idea of a equivalent "Take Our Sons Home Day" as a way to torment boys ("delighted cackles") rather than free them from gender roles and stereotypes - https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/29/opinion/editorial-notebook-a-day-for-daughters.html
I was never really a fan of Hillary Clinton. Though I voted for her in 2016. Started back when Bill was in the White House and I remember hearing about "our health plan." I respect her intelligence but didn't vote for a co-president. But what really did it (and maybe a few that pulled the lever for DJT) was that as of 2016, I was aghast that in the 24 years I had been eligible to vote for the President (first in 1992), there has been two presidential elections out of 6 that didn't involve a Bush or a Clinton representing one of the parties. If you include the 2008 primary that number dropped to a single election. I was ready for all of them to go away. We needed new blood in leadership then, we need it more so now. I'm tired of the gerontocracy.
You don't seem to realize the mainstream media is entirely owned by the morbidly wealthy ruling class who have a financial interest in ensuring people like Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, etc. hold the reigns of power. Not sure why you are so surprised "journalists" did exactly what they are paid to do by their Capitalist Masters. That the DNC ignored reality and put their thumb on the scale for such a despised candidate (warranted or not, doesn't matter) shows their complicity in the descent into fascism. The Dems and Republicans are both beholden to their Capitalist Owners. Elections are just a dog and pony show.
Who said I was surprised by any of what I wrote about?
A deep dive into the problem with journalism today, however, would have to include more than a classical Marxist analysis. Even Marx himself believed things more complicated than the straightforward pay-off by “Capitalist Masters.” He still has a lot to say to our situation—we agree on that—but not without Marcuse and Foucault. IMO.
I would love to discuss that with you further. I'm one of those marginalized people Marcuse believed were necessary to bring about Revolution. And I agree with Foucault that those who hold power get to control and define what counts as knowledge. My life has been a case study in being affected by such controlled "knowledge," especially knowledge around mental "illness," and my entire career defined by speaking truth to power and being punished for it, though I didn't realize that's what was happening at the time.
There's no denying the media's role in manufacturing the people's consent, but who are they manufacturing it for if not for the bourgeoisie that determines which journalists get to keep a job, a reputation, and a paycheck?
I was always unwilling to demonstrate the dishonesty the powerful required of me to remain in their good graces, which is why I've been kicked to the edges of society again and again. It took being kicked to the curb by an Ivy League business school's propaganda arm to finally recognize what was going on. I, a person with a working class background and a community college business degree ended up seeing things not meant for someone of my station. I saw how the capitalist sausage was made and found it revolting. I saw the "progressive" corporate coopting of the language of liberation and how disingenuous it all was. I hope to live long enough to see them destroyed.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s so important to know more about the person the words on the page are coming from, and I feel I know you a little better from this comment.
In the interest of seeking to know more about you, I just read the Wikipedia entry about you and I suspect we could engage in some very interesting conversations.
I am a late-recognized autistic person who identifies as agender because the concept of gender doesn't make any sense to me, much as my family and peers tried to impose the identity of "girl/woman" on me. My parents even enrolled me in a young ladies finishing school in Louisiana, which caused me many years of distressing and distorted views of self. I eventually went on to become anorexic in my 20s.
Now, unmasked in my mid 40s, I refuse to perform "woman" any more. I view myself not as my body, but as my thoughts. My body is the meat sack that does what my thoughts ask it to (and when it can comply, it does) and I decorate that meat sack sometimes, using it as a gender-agnostic canvass of self expression.
I've written about some of my experiences of feeling like I was born with a "natural immunity," via autism (which again, I didn't realize until later in life, in my 40s, that I am autistic), to the coding consumer capitalist society (and religious indoctrination) tried to impose on me, not just as the coding relates to gender, but to every social construct we silly apes make up.
I’m very interested in reading about the “natural immunity” you describe, as I have a friend who has Asperger’s who feels much the same way. I don’t think I’ve seen anything written about it though. It must have been difficult growing up undiagnosed!! My daughter has ADHD and because she’s so smart, it wasn’t correctly diagnosed until high school. By then she was totally alienated from school, reading, etc. There were some extremely horrible years for her. Now she’s 24 and doing what she loves and is expert at: caring for and training horses. Never did finish high school, and thus escaped some of the norming that you describe (although some teachers tried in grade school.) Anyway, I’m glad to know you and have you here!
The difficult part for me wasn't so much the growing up, I think in large part because the education system hadn't yet been beset by such standardizing atrocities as No Child Left Behind, though I can definitely look back on some of my childhood experiences and think "If only my parents had known I wasn't being a willfull, disobedient child, maybe they would have been less abusive." But entering adulthood and the workforce with numerous disadvantages was pretty horrific. I was diagnosed with ADHD and MISdiagnosed with bipolar disorder in my early 20s, which destroyed me financially, wrecked my career potential and my relationships while heavily medicated on debilitating psychiatric drugs. I hold a lot of bitterness towards the psychiatric-industrial complex.
Speaking of neurominority members and U.S. education, the system is tailored to the needs of, and only rewards, the neuromajority that most easily conforms to serve the needs of capitalist enslavers. It is completely failing our neurominority youth, and largely failing the neuromajority youth as well, being designed for an archaic workforce.
Both of my kids (now adults) are of the neuro- and gender-minority, and both will likely be trying to heal from the trauma inflicted on them by the system for the remainder of their lives. My youngest dropped out of school at the beginning of his sophomore year, with my full blessing. Had he been forced to remain in school, I knew he would have ended up a casualty of the mental distress inflicted on members of the neuro- and gender-minority. He started a business at 15 and was quite a successful entrepreneur until the pandemic and fascism disrupted it. He's almost 20 now, and still trying to find his way in this upside down world. We fled the U.S. and now reside in Portugal.
You’re reminding me that I taught “1984” in 1984! I had totally forgotten. Prescient, that Orwell. Wonder what it would be like to teach that book now—or have they banned it?“Politics and the English Language” is even more relevant now, too.
Hi Susan,
This is an extremely important topic as we face the 2024 election. I'm glad you're writing about it and hope you continue to share your perspective.
I'd always thought that the unprecedented media time given to Trump was by far the biggest factor in his victory. After reading your article, however, I can look back and detect my own lack of enthusiasm for Clinton in 2016 being influenced by the media coverage of her. Exactly your point.
I voted for Clinton (not very helpful as a NEW YORK resident) , but did nothing else. That was an error born of laziness.
I was much more pro-active for Biden in 2020 and plan to be even more so in 2024.
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
Thanks so much for this. It’s great that you read it with a mind open to re-thinking. Makes me feel less like I’m hammering away at a dead issue!
Susan, I’m so glad I came across this, because it’s a reminder of how horrifying it was for me, as a feminist, to watch Hillary get ripped to shreds by mainstream media - immediately after the 2016 election, I heard some mea culpas (especially regarding the attention paid to those emails) among journalists in private. They were willing to admit that they gave Trump way too much airtime. But you’re so right, none of this made it into public coverage, and I’ve grown increasingly tired of elite liberal outlets seeing themselves as freedom fighters (“Democracy Dies in Darkness”).
To your roll call of prescient thinkers (Marx, Orwell, Foucault, Marcuse), I’d add McLuhan - and a host of second-wave feminist writers (Steinem, Lorde, Millett, Brownmiller) who spoke to the power of the Patriarchy, which is rooted in institutions like the media. Thanks for continuing to question and resist.
Thank you! Judging from your comment and your list of prescient thinkers, I need to subscribe to you!
Ditto 😉
MSNBC newscasters seem to think that if they occasionally bring in Steve Kornacki, it’s ok for them to be statistically illiterate. It’s not.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yes. Kornacki, the God of the Big Board! But your point about statistics is so well taken. They love to report the results of polls, but never do a deep statistical dive into beliefs or behavior.
Fuck. This is really damning.
As I’ve said, there are things I don’t like about Hillary. But I voted for her, and I would do it again. And if any of what I don’t like about her was fueled even a little by any of this, that’s cause for embarrassment.
No matter how many things I might list as negatives, they add up to difference of opinion, and a frankly emotional response to a person I respect quite a bit.
The propaganda narrative against her-- even the liberal version of it-- is a bunch of horseshit. And you’ve laid out that case here, in a way that’s so well-written and so passionate that it’s actually entertaining.
It’s a little disturbing, how entertaining you can be when writing about things that convince me we’re sliding into a toxic swamp of no return.
The unwillingness to recognize their own complicity-- that’s the most damning argument against mainstream liberal media. I knew something was amiss when I realized I didn’t want to spend any more time with Rachel Maddow.
I don’t watch her any more either. Used to. But besides the fact that I don’t find her as full of integrity as I once did, I don’t think she’s all that into her show any more. She used to do interesting and unexpected historical commentaries, now they seem forced. And I really don’t like how excited she gets—smiling, laughing—when reporting depressing news. “Lots of news for you tonight, guys!!”
I’m pleased that you find my writing entertaining even when it’s about the toxic swamp. I’ve worked hard to learn to present serious, complex, and even disturbing ideas in a way that won’t put people to sleep or alienate them. Most of it was unlearning what I learned in graduate school! I was always a writer (not an academic) at heart. But needing to support myself, I got into academia. And almost immediately started to resist the stuffier, elitist bullshit in it. Your praise means a lot to me!
I also can’t stand that cheery persona. It’s all part of the preaching to the choir liberal brand. My guess is-- on no evidence-- she’s burned out on the shtick, because anyone with any integrity would have to recognize the core phoniness of it.
« the last thing the mainstream media will do is blame itself for anything »
Thank you.
I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, but my husband voted for Trump in both elections, and I felt so guilty that I wasn’t able to persuade him not to vote for Trump despite arguing about it endlessly in 2016 and 2020. This helps me understand more about why it happened so thank you. My husband was a moderate in terms of his political views when we met 12 years ago (with some conservative leanings because he’s a police officer and grew up as one of 4 children whose parents divorced so they didn’t have a lot of money). He voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 so when we got married in 2013, I had no idea what I was getting into since his views ended up going much more conservative the closer we got to 2016. Political conversations and the ability to have a discussion without it devolving into something disrespectful around how different our views are is something we have really worked on, but I am just so frustrated by his continued support of Trump.
That must be really hard!! Although my husband and I are very different people and often struggle over those differences, we feel exactly the same way about Trump and the GOP, and it’s great to sit with him and scream at the television together. (Actually, we mute it much of the time nowadays.) You have my heartfelt sympathy. And feel free to vent on my posts whenever you need to!!
I appreciate that- I do enjoy venting!
Remember that Twitter conversation between Chris Hayes and one of his bros in which Hayes agreed that Trump would unquestionably be to the left of Clinton?
oh my god, I’d completely forgotten that!
This. Still makes me so angry. All the BS and shrill voices adding to the stinking pile of crap that Conservatives want everyone to gobble down.
Oomph...hard to read, to relive that time, realizing it was even worse than I experienced. And seeing it happen again with Biden.
But you were literally on the hot seat. Not only reporting on media bias against Hillary, but also a victim of it, live on air.
Hillary Clinton has always fascinated me as she is one of my mother's generation. - my mother died in '21 but was an feminist activist in Nrew South Wales in the 1970s and she remarked at how her generation of feminists' could only look on in bewilded dismay whilst watching how the world twisted things and called them feminist achievements. Girl Power wasn't meant to be solely "Ellen Ripley" - feminism's desired goal was to have *all types* of girls and women uplifted and considered to be Girl Power - *including* girls and women with naturally soft and quiet personalities and who *chose* to be girly girls. Likewise, the feminists of the 1970s intended and wanted to liberate little boys at the same time as they were liberating little girls. That got mangled into "i hit boys!" being seen as a feminist statement - which you see in fiction e.g. Buffy Summers forcing the male Riley to let her perform oral sex upon him is not treated as a rape scene by the writers but Buffy's own later rape in the series *is*, and some girls interviewed in the mid 1990s by a NYT reporter (and indeed, the reporter herself) for Take Our Daughters to Work Day seeing the Ms. Foundation's idea of a equivalent "Take Our Sons Home Day" as a way to torment boys ("delighted cackles") rather than free them from gender roles and stereotypes - https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/29/opinion/editorial-notebook-a-day-for-daughters.html
I was never really a fan of Hillary Clinton. Though I voted for her in 2016. Started back when Bill was in the White House and I remember hearing about "our health plan." I respect her intelligence but didn't vote for a co-president. But what really did it (and maybe a few that pulled the lever for DJT) was that as of 2016, I was aghast that in the 24 years I had been eligible to vote for the President (first in 1992), there has been two presidential elections out of 6 that didn't involve a Bush or a Clinton representing one of the parties. If you include the 2008 primary that number dropped to a single election. I was ready for all of them to go away. We needed new blood in leadership then, we need it more so now. I'm tired of the gerontocracy.
You don't seem to realize the mainstream media is entirely owned by the morbidly wealthy ruling class who have a financial interest in ensuring people like Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, etc. hold the reigns of power. Not sure why you are so surprised "journalists" did exactly what they are paid to do by their Capitalist Masters. That the DNC ignored reality and put their thumb on the scale for such a despised candidate (warranted or not, doesn't matter) shows their complicity in the descent into fascism. The Dems and Republicans are both beholden to their Capitalist Owners. Elections are just a dog and pony show.
Who said I was surprised by any of what I wrote about?
A deep dive into the problem with journalism today, however, would have to include more than a classical Marxist analysis. Even Marx himself believed things more complicated than the straightforward pay-off by “Capitalist Masters.” He still has a lot to say to our situation—we agree on that—but not without Marcuse and Foucault. IMO.
I would love to discuss that with you further. I'm one of those marginalized people Marcuse believed were necessary to bring about Revolution. And I agree with Foucault that those who hold power get to control and define what counts as knowledge. My life has been a case study in being affected by such controlled "knowledge," especially knowledge around mental "illness," and my entire career defined by speaking truth to power and being punished for it, though I didn't realize that's what was happening at the time.
There's no denying the media's role in manufacturing the people's consent, but who are they manufacturing it for if not for the bourgeoisie that determines which journalists get to keep a job, a reputation, and a paycheck?
I was always unwilling to demonstrate the dishonesty the powerful required of me to remain in their good graces, which is why I've been kicked to the edges of society again and again. It took being kicked to the curb by an Ivy League business school's propaganda arm to finally recognize what was going on. I, a person with a working class background and a community college business degree ended up seeing things not meant for someone of my station. I saw how the capitalist sausage was made and found it revolting. I saw the "progressive" corporate coopting of the language of liberation and how disingenuous it all was. I hope to live long enough to see them destroyed.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s so important to know more about the person the words on the page are coming from, and I feel I know you a little better from this comment.
In the interest of seeking to know more about you, I just read the Wikipedia entry about you and I suspect we could engage in some very interesting conversations.
I am a late-recognized autistic person who identifies as agender because the concept of gender doesn't make any sense to me, much as my family and peers tried to impose the identity of "girl/woman" on me. My parents even enrolled me in a young ladies finishing school in Louisiana, which caused me many years of distressing and distorted views of self. I eventually went on to become anorexic in my 20s.
Now, unmasked in my mid 40s, I refuse to perform "woman" any more. I view myself not as my body, but as my thoughts. My body is the meat sack that does what my thoughts ask it to (and when it can comply, it does) and I decorate that meat sack sometimes, using it as a gender-agnostic canvass of self expression.
I've written about some of my experiences of feeling like I was born with a "natural immunity," via autism (which again, I didn't realize until later in life, in my 40s, that I am autistic), to the coding consumer capitalist society (and religious indoctrination) tried to impose on me, not just as the coding relates to gender, but to every social construct we silly apes make up.
I’m very interested in reading about the “natural immunity” you describe, as I have a friend who has Asperger’s who feels much the same way. I don’t think I’ve seen anything written about it though. It must have been difficult growing up undiagnosed!! My daughter has ADHD and because she’s so smart, it wasn’t correctly diagnosed until high school. By then she was totally alienated from school, reading, etc. There were some extremely horrible years for her. Now she’s 24 and doing what she loves and is expert at: caring for and training horses. Never did finish high school, and thus escaped some of the norming that you describe (although some teachers tried in grade school.) Anyway, I’m glad to know you and have you here!
The difficult part for me wasn't so much the growing up, I think in large part because the education system hadn't yet been beset by such standardizing atrocities as No Child Left Behind, though I can definitely look back on some of my childhood experiences and think "If only my parents had known I wasn't being a willfull, disobedient child, maybe they would have been less abusive." But entering adulthood and the workforce with numerous disadvantages was pretty horrific. I was diagnosed with ADHD and MISdiagnosed with bipolar disorder in my early 20s, which destroyed me financially, wrecked my career potential and my relationships while heavily medicated on debilitating psychiatric drugs. I hold a lot of bitterness towards the psychiatric-industrial complex.
Also, glad to know you, too!
I talk about the natural immunity to social constructs in this Substack post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jdgoulet/p/are-you-or-a-loved-one-suffering?r=10bxpq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Speaking of neurominority members and U.S. education, the system is tailored to the needs of, and only rewards, the neuromajority that most easily conforms to serve the needs of capitalist enslavers. It is completely failing our neurominority youth, and largely failing the neuromajority youth as well, being designed for an archaic workforce.
Both of my kids (now adults) are of the neuro- and gender-minority, and both will likely be trying to heal from the trauma inflicted on them by the system for the remainder of their lives. My youngest dropped out of school at the beginning of his sophomore year, with my full blessing. Had he been forced to remain in school, I knew he would have ended up a casualty of the mental distress inflicted on members of the neuro- and gender-minority. He started a business at 15 and was quite a successful entrepreneur until the pandemic and fascism disrupted it. He's almost 20 now, and still trying to find his way in this upside down world. We fled the U.S. and now reside in Portugal.
So agree. The system totally failed my daughter. But that’s a long story, and involves details that she may not want me to share. (She’s 24 now, btw.)
Dance when they pass on to dust.
You’re reminding me that I taught “1984” in 1984! I had totally forgotten. Prescient, that Orwell. Wonder what it would be like to teach that book now—or have they banned it?“Politics and the English Language” is even more relevant now, too.