Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
@wdlindsy@toad.social“The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment."
~ Eugene Robinson
#Trump #dementia #Biden #media #MediaFail
/1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/10/trump-sharks-electrocuted-boat-story/
"House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.”
@wdlindsy Pardon my French, but #VonShitzinPantz has uttered that shark and boat gibberish before, why the fuck does the press only react to his free flow of bullahit NOW?
@Thorsten_Guenther Yes, he has riffed on that theme previously, and the riff was reported on by at least some media outlets. I suspect he got more attention now because this current riff was light-years crazier than the previous iterations, and it was performed to a crowd in a desert miles and miles away from any sea or sharks.
@wdlindsy The headline on that WAPO article is a great example of Betteridge's Law though.
@bytebro @wdlindsy
Just in case, others are curious as I am:
Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the principle is much older.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
@JoeStewart @bytebro @wdlindsy
I noticed this often didn't apply when Trump was in office. I think he just messed us up that badly
@bytebro Thank you. Yes, someone else posted about that matter. I had not previously heard of Betteridge's Law and am glad to know about it.
All Sharks will be voting for #Trump2024. Make sure your neighborhood sharks get registered. If you are in a Red State, all sharks are automatically registered to vote per Eric Trump. And his father will win in an avalanche of shark votes. Or so many #republicans believe.
Clever.
@wdlindsy @briankrebs And can you imagine what Trump supporters and right-wing media would say if Biden ever did this?
But it’s their guy, so they emphatically insist the emperor has clothes on.
@reay @wdlindsy @briankrebs
All commercial media are right wing, there's just various degrees of pandering to the left.
@wdlindsy The way he is acting and talking reminds me of two family members who had dementia.
@thomastraynor Same here.
@wdlindsy @briankrebs Oh, and side note: Either this isn’t the first time he’s done this, about exactly the same stuff, or I’m in some Mandala effect reality, because this was 100% a thing some months back, as well.
@reay @briankrebs Yes, he's done this electric-vehicle riff previously, but this iteration was off the charts in terms of craziness, while he spoke to people miles and miles from any sea or any sharks.
@wdlindsy @briankrebs Ah, but the coverage I heard back then included being on a battery-powered boat that was sinking, and whether he would rather be electrocuted than eaten by a shark.
@reay @briankrebs Yes, I had known a clip or clips were out there and had been commented on at the time.
@wdlindsy You can hardly blame the press if they find it more newsworthy a US President having dementia than a US Presidential Candidate, who speaks nonsense most of the time, speaking nonsense again.
On a side note, both have had COVID-19, which is known to damage the brain, so maybe this is the reason for their behavior; not their age.
@bontchev I'm confused: what does this mean?:
"If they find it more newsworthy a US President having dementia than a US Presidential Candidate, who speaks nonsense most of the time, speaking nonsense again."
Who's who in that sentence?
@wdlindsy What are you confused about? You don't know that Biden is the US President and Trump is a US Presidential Candidate?
@bontchev Who's who in that sentence?
@wdlindsy I just explained this, ferkrissake. Stop wasting my time and learn to read carefully.
@wdlindsy the short answer is he’s been awful his entire life. Question should be is he completely demented now or has this been a perpetual condition?
@Flowermob Yes, a good question to ask.
@wdlindsy trumps speeches are best understood to be a MAGA version of Garrison Keillor’s “news from Lake Wobegon”. Amusing slice-of-life vignettes of fighting back against govt mandates on electric batteries and stoves and toilets and stuff.
@branewave @wdlindsy It was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Those new fangled electric boats and cars are so quiet. The motors hardly make a sound.
Well, Earl came back from his day of fishing with the biggest smile on his face. He'd caught himself a shark! Earl said it was so still and quiet out on the lake he could hear the dun-dun dun-dun of that shark approaching his boat. He got his net ready and snatched that shark right up!
@branewave An interesting comparison, given that Keillor's rifts go to sane places and make some sense despite their non-linear organization, while Trump's are totally insane.
@wdlindsy That's the MAGAfication part. And actually a lot of it tracks logically just fine when viewed from inside the MAGA cinematic universe. You have to have prior understanding of the "my uncle from MIT" character and so forth. There's still people mad about the Shark Week discourse from a couple years back about how sharks are just misunderstood, not malicious. Basically it's all remixed genre tropes, we just have to identify the tropes.
@wdlindsy It's also kinda like "The Red Green Show". Absurdist humor played straight about a down-home man's man confronting a changing world. Quite a bit of Trump's audience understands that it's all a vaudeville show for their entertainment, though some of them tip too far into suspending disbelief. The politics of it makes the show more participatory.
@branewave I wonder if speaking of a MAGA cinematic universe and its inner logic is really giving too much credit altogether to what makes absolutely no sense at all.
@wdlindsy I suppose it depends on one's goals. I think this line of criticism fails to penetrate, because it is so easily dismissed as "you don't understand what we're talking about". We diagnose "dementia", and they diagnose "you guys fail to comprehend the genre tropes". It's like going to a modern art gallery and saying "my kid could fingerpaint that" -- the criticism betrays an ignorance of the ongoing cultural conversation.
@branewave Yes, I know this is how a lot of folks want to frame discussion of these matters. My own take is that Trump's speaking nonsense (as in non-sense) from the outset, no matter what he says, because he does not intend to carry on meaningful discussions. For that reason, I tune him out, since I don't intend to give non-sense mind room — and at the same time, I pay attention to what he's saying simply to chronicle the dangerous absurdities. Always recognizing that they're malicious nonsense
@wdlindsy But there isn’t BECAUSE media moguls want to extend the tax cuts that expire next presidential term.
@wdlindsy He’s clearly suffering from early onset dementia while still impacted by his severe sociopathic personality disorder
@hansbot So it seems to me. But the corporate media won't touch that story with a ten-foot pole.
BRAVO @TheDemocrats
About damn time you took #Project2025 #GOPFascists & their threats to our democracy seriously
This meme simplifies but is dead serious & accurate about the threat:
The "Unitary Executive" aka Dictator controls ALL 3 branches of government
Free elections END
https://accountable.us/accountable-us-applauds-new-stop-project-2025-task-force/
@Infrogmation Thanks for introducing me to this clever law.