Longtime readers of my blog know that I am not a member of the Chris Cillizza fan club, but I don’t think I’ve been as succinct in my criticism as Cillizza’s CNN colleague Soledad O’Brien was last night.
It's not accurate. It's not funny. It's not clever. It's not analysis. It's facile. It shows an actual lack of understanding of reality tv (can't believe I'm typing that). It's mediocre. It's a time when viewers need to understand what's going on at the highest levels of govt.
— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 7, 2018
You’ll have to forgive @CillizzaCNN; he’s a little distracted. pic.twitter.com/x7gqsqbkAT
— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) March 7, 2018
I added Charles Gaba’s tweet because it’s both hilarious and illustrative of the problem with Cillizza’s no-stakes analysis of our nation’s politics.
And that’s really the problem with Cillizza’s latest piece because I actually think he has a point and did a fairly decent job of presenting it. Trump’s presidency is a lot like a reality show and people are captivated by it even if they don’t generally like it or feel good about themselves for tuning in. If Cillizza hadn’t poisoned his own well with too many of these substance-free pieces of “analysis,” he probably wouldn’t have been savaged for making these observations.
I read the piece twice just to be sure, but I don’t think it’s inaccurate nor do I see that it suffers from any glaring misunderstanding about what makes Reality television work. It could even be funny if the risks and consequences of having a man like Trump in the Oval Office weren’t so dire. What it’s not is actual analysis. It’s not useful to anyone. The only analytical statement in the whole piece is ludicrous:
The medium and long-term impact of running a White House and, therefore, a country, on the principles of reality TV remain to be seen. People can’t tear their eyes from the spectacle, sure, but lots and lots of them say they don’t like what they see.
Trump is betting that in a few years enough people will vote to renew the show, captivated by what possibly could come around the corner next — whether they can admit to themselves how much they like the show.
In other words, Trump’s White House is a hot mess because it’s all part of a deliberate strategy to create a car wreck so compelling that people will reelect the president just to see how much worse it can get. That might be Trump’s best hope, but it’s not a deliberate strategy. Trump’s presidency is a disaster because he is a terrible, insecure, hateful person who has no idea what he’s doing. Real analysis either explains the past or predicts the future. Cillizza offers weak snark and an up/down grading system. As Soledad O’Brien pointed out, that’s not what people need.
Genuinely sorry you feel that way. But appreciate your candor.
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) March 7, 2018
Cillizza is genuinely sorry a lot, but he doesn’t seem to make any adjustments in his approach.
And I wonder who gets paid more?
I’m not aware of anyone who is not both wealthy and connected that is watching this Presidency as some two-bit reality TV show entertainment.
The people I know are watching either to A) the 1/3rd basking in the human embodiment their resentment fueled vengeance against 2/3rds of this nation or B) the rest who are like hostages watching an unstable guard walk among them while juggling a live grenade.
Cillizza is a wealthy and connected because CNN et al. wants the responsibly for Trump to be on us paroles and idiotic excuses like our Reality TV addicted minds.
His job is to prevent the actual blame falling on CNN et al.’s 2016 reporting, the Republican Party, right-wing media, hostile foreign powers, and, especially, the people upstairs in the C- suites.
Damn, this fucking man is a walking, talking, shithead.
For those of us who are lifetime readers of the company paper for DC, the rise of Chris Fucking Cillizza has been odious. He’s a poster child for what’s been wrong with the Villagers. At least people like Mrs Greenspan have an excuse: they’ve been around so long, they’re sclerotic. Cillizza, in theory, came in on the ground floor during a time when he could have been good. But, it’s clear that in order to get ahead, he has to be as vacuous and facile as the likes of Mrs Greenspan.
This latest bit of writing shows you why his tumbrel number keeps getting higher and higher. Sure, it’s not up there in the rarified high numbers of people like the aforementioned Mrs Greenspan or Cokie Fucking Roberts or George Fucking Will and the rest but give Chris time and the deaths of some of the ancient Villagers and he’ll “rise to the top”. To quote the late, great Robin Williams “Assholes do vex meeeeeeee!!!!!”
The scary thing is that he can unironically say something so utterly jackass and unselfaware and that he thinks his “thank you for your candor” reply somehow gets him off the hook for his shoddy approach to his job.
He’s entirely insulated from the consequences of his shitty work and lives in a bubble, albeit one that O’Brien tried to pierce, in which most of his “peers” agree that he’s a genius speaking hard truths. He’s always patted on the head and assured that he’s a great journalist whose wisdom and that of those around him, are guiding America.
I think Charlie Pierce said it best about this man:
“When the Smithsonian opens its American Museum of Feckless Journalism, the Cillizza exhibit is going to be right there in the lobby, across from the statues of Maureen Dowd and David Brooks.”
You write:
Or…and this is so much more Bannonesque:
I am not at all sure than Bannon is “out.” I continue to have these visions of middle-of-the-night burner phone/secure line chats between Bannon and Trump as Bannon guides the ship of state right into the rocks.
After all…that’s what Bannon said he wanted right from the get-go, right?
Take it all down and rebuild in a more authoritarian manner.
And just last week Trump publicly mused on Xi’s “President for life” move, saying:
Hmmmmmmm…
I anticipate some outraged BooTrib kneejerkers screaming “That can’t happen here!!!”
Riiiight…
That’s what they said about a Trump presidency, too.
Duh!!!
You asked for it by accepting/ignoring the HRC/DNC boondoggle.
Now you’ve got it.
Deal wid it.
AG
You seem to have an incredibly low opinion of people for a humanist based on the assumptions you are making, and the generosity of your interpretations.
Must be that new paranoid humanism thats all the rage right now.
I was in Russia for several weeks just after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. It was nasty. And…it could happen here.
This culture has tanked. Ain’t about “humanism;” it’s about what happens when a functioning society stops functioning. “Humanism” devolves into “survival by any means necessary” at the drop of a hat.
AG
P.S. I do have an incredibly low opinion of a number of posters on this blog. So it goes. Y’all have earned it as far as I am concerned. I am more comfortable with many so-called HRC-style “deplorables” than I am with most of the self-satisfied, middle-aged, middle class, white, entitlement-poisoned, leftiness snipers that have come to dominate this site.
So that goes as well.
Go vote for the DNC’s choices this time around. See where that gets you.
Deal wid it.
Like i suggested, you love to make the worst assumptions about people AG.
I suppose its easier to attack your straw men than to engage anything of substance, which would take effort and goodwill to understand first.
The humanist remark i made was about your claim of being one, but like with any of your words they dont seem to have a permanent meaning.
I guess in that regard you are much like Trump, he uses any words to fit his needs, but when confronted with his own words he disregards them, and attacks aggressively in nonsensical ways, for reasonable people anyway.
But then , like you say, we live in a post truth world. I guess you adapted to the new situation, right? Except that this been your way for years, oh i know, the world was post truth before, and you knew it all along!
My guess is that most people go through a phase like that, and go past it. You seem to have gotten yourself stuck in a loop, thinking that you are superior in some way, and that it allows you to be a dickhead.
Grow The Fuck Up AG.
ag resembles Trump in so many ways . . . with illustrative examples.
The resemblance really is remarkable and, once noticed, grows with every new episode of ag garbage-spewing.
Imagine if tRump were trolling BT all these years, in the guise of a traveling jazz musician. That would be a hoot.
Actually, many of us saw the problem with Strongman Trump way before he was elected, and thought that it could happen here.
And we got lambasted by the more-liberal-than-thou with the highest level of ethics, morals and principles, that, well, Killery Clinton will probably be just as bad, if not worse.
Also: Shooting war with Russia.
So, you’re mixing up who did and didn’t see this as a possibility.
Or: how, yes, Virginia, the lesser evil is still, the lesser evil.
Vote for the Zombie Washington/Space Jesus ticket at your own peril. And, well, everyone else’s peril.
I will not vote for or otherwise support wanton murderers…from any party.
Why?
Bad karma.
AG
That’s how you get the worst evil, but whatever makes you personally feel better. It’s your vote, or non-vote, or whatever.
I disagree.
The I Ching:
Scoff if you must. The great souls who have tried to guide us for centuries are more often right than wrong.
If you do not see this?
Keep looking.
It is there for all to see.
Bet on it.
AG
Having only pure ethics, morals and principles works great in the abstract.
The inability to compromise in the real world has real world consequences, typically for people who are unable to negotiate.
I spent many years “negotiating,” n1cholas. One day I looked at my life and realized that after all of my negotiating…negotiating my art and craft for my family’s sake, negotiating in order to make a mainstream living, negotiating what I said to other people in order not to discomfit them, etc…it was time to stop doing so.
So I did.
25+ years later?
I am still here, still kicking ass and taking names when that seems to be the right thing to do.
“Real world consequences?”
That is what I am trying to get people to see here!!!
There are real world consequences for “negotiating” with evil, even if one somehow believes that it is a lesser evil. The good people who made a conscious decision to support HRC as the lesser of two evils?
They lost, n1cholas.
Big time.
And just look where we are.
We may have lost the remnants of our American democracy, tattered as it already was. That is most certainly Trump’s aim, as far as I can see. He envisions a country run on the same basis as his TV show, “The Apprentice.” He runs the show, everyone else is subject to his decisions. He moves closer to this stage every day. Meanwhile the people who should be opposing him are stuck watching yet another federal bureaucracy crawl along trying to…trying to replace his program with the approach that let him win in the first place, copororate-owned, media-disseminated legalistic bullshit. Trump moves faster than these bureaucracies, just as he moved faster than the RNC and DNC bureaucracies. They are left in the dust, just as Karl Rove said to Ron Suskind in 2002:
Only…Trump is even faster than the Bush II brigade, because he makes his own decisions instead of being run by a bunch of professional corporate hustlers like Rove and Cheney. Are his decisions well considered? I dunno…he’s some kind of evil genius, I think. He’s still in office, right? People mocked Hitler, too. He lasted…what…12 years in power? He eventually lost his mind and thus went down hard. Trump? We’ll see. Probably not as heavy as Hitler, but…probably not as obsessed, either.
All I am trying to do here is to point this reality out to a bunch of people who are still mired in a pre-information revolution reality, waiting for the lawyers to… “judiciously,” as is necessarily the case in a judicial system…study that reality and make some changes.
It ain’t working, and no amount of media blah blah blah can cover up that one fact.
When Trump says “You’re fired!!!” you are damned well fired, and on to the next new reality. Just look at what happened with Cohn and the tariffs this week for all you need to know about that. Cohn was Wall Street’s fair-haired boy for months, and then suddenly…NOT!!! Trump pulls the rug out once again.
Do I have a solution for this problem? Only one…waking up to what is really happening.
I do keep trying, and I will continue to keep trying here on this blog just as I do in conversation with my friends and colleagues on a daily basis. I have better results with them because…well, I would say mostly because at least half of them are intelligent people of color who (with good, historical reasons) have no real faith in this system as it stands.
Here?
Not so much. Mosty white, mostly from middle-class, college misedumacated backgrounds, mostly past 45 or 50, it seems. Sot in their ways. Good Dems, in a word. Only…the Dems themselves ain’t so good anymore.
So it goes.
AG
Did you miss this part Arthur?
“Advise
Good intentions can lead to good or to trouble. Control your stream; be careful as it can destroy and disable.”
And what about this?
“There are no obstacles, but you need to create them yourself- self-control and restraint are needed, otherwise impulse will result in aggression, a creative turn in destructive, chaos will prevail. Protecting your interests, do not be aggressive.”
But for all that you missed there, sure you imprinted this bit in your mind: “The superior man is firmly resolved. He walks alone and is caught in the rain. He is bespattered, and people murmur against him. No blame.”
That speaks to your superiority complex, your persecution complex and your self-righteousness ofcourse, the interesting bit are the last two words, “no blame”
The self centered person will without hesitation interpret that as “i am not to blame”, while the more thoughtful individual could see it as “don’t blame”
Where are you Arthur when you interpret these two words?
“No blame” in the I Ching means exactly what it says. There is no blame in firm resolution to tell the truth.
Murmur on. It means nothing to me.
AG
P.S. I am not alone. More and more people…perhaps somewhere near the majority of the U.S. electorate if census and polling numbers are to be believed…are so disgusted with the UniParty system now in place here that they choose not to vote.
And..the most intelligent people on his blog…a slowly diminishing number, granted, primarily due to the abuse of kneejerkers like you (many of whom seem to have web names that sound suspiciously like those of biblical demons, bazzz)…are saying much the same things that I am saying in different ways.
Bet on it.
Well, then you wont blame me for telling my interpretation of the truth about you, right?
Who are you with? I know i am alone, i make up my own mind, on the information that most suits my needs. I am not much of a group thinker, i thought you were the same, an individual.
Where you lack though, in my opinion, and which is truthful and honest, and which can be challenged if needed, is your consistency of truth. Or at least the words you choose to convey your truth. Also you seem scared to be open about your feelings that produce your truth, you claim you speak the truth, but you cower when challenged.
But i noticed that you claim a lot, but cant be challenged. Sounds very parallel to a certain “leader”
This is the guy who used a happy-face emiticon in a story about Congressional attempts to undo the ACA because millions would lose coverage.
God that was good. No fan of Soledad either, but it was great to see her drive over him with a steamroller.
Today he’s posting about his anxiety and how everyone has a burden to carry. In his case the burden is being a dunderheaded assclown.
Wait why don’t you like Soledad? I thought she was good at CNN, and has only been better since she left the network.
Its not a deliberate strategy but it IS an instinctual one. Trump always pivots into generating reality show outrage when things arent going his way. But that shows up what an empty person he is.
Note to Chris:
Do not tweet one-handed. Particularly about Ivanka. We can all see what your other hand is doing.
This is probably related to your general tendency to treat any silly thing that pops into your head as something the general public should read. Privacy has benefits for those of us in the audience too.
…he must have an audience of CNN thinks he does.
Is he worse than The Bachelor?
People have bad taste.