Some industrial-strength sanewashing from Politico :
President Trump is leveraging his role as commander-in-chief in a much clearer and more urgent way than during his first term — whether that’s showing off the military in a parade or using it to quell protests.Related reading
A New York Times headline: “Trump Says He Doesn’t Know Crypto Billionaire He Pardoned.”
There’s a great difference between not knowing someone and not knowing who someone is. And it would not be unusual for a president issuing a pardon not to know the recipient. But what the current occupant said about Changpeng Zhao in his 60 Minutes interview with Norah O’Donnell was plainly bizarre: not that he doesn’t know Zhao but that “I don’t know who he is.” (My emphasis.) And: “Here’s the thing: I know nothing about it.”
The article itself acknowledges that the current occupant “has claimed he did not know who Mr. Zhao was.” And the occupant’s “I don’t know who he is” appears therein. But the headline tells a different story: no, I never met the guy. And the outrageousness of what the occupant claimed — that he pardoned someone without knowing who he is or anything about the case — went unchallenged in both the 60 Minutes interview and the Times article.
Stop sanewashing, NYT . You’re supposed to be better than that.
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November 4: An unidentified journalist asks Karoline Leavitt a question. And they’re both sanewashing:
“President Trump said to CBS in the 60 Minutes interview that he did not know the Binance founder which he pardoned. What exactly did he mean by that?”
“He means he does not know him personally. He means he does not have a personal relationship with this individual.”
Margaret Sullivan, former public editor at The New York Times writes about “the power of a single word about media malfeasance.” The word is sanewashing. The immediate context: reporting about Trump’s bizarre non-answer to a question about the cost of childcare:
Why does the media sanewash Trump? It’s all a part of the false-equivalence I’ve been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness.[From the Times: “The crisis for middle-class families struggling with child care? The economic growth he said would be spurred by things like tariffs.”]
And it’s also, I believe, because of the restrained language of traditional objective journalism. That’s often a good thing; it’s part of being careful and cautious. But when it fails to present a truthful picture, that practice distorts reality.
The New York Times is at it again, reporting on a judge’s ruling to halt ballroom construction:
In a winding post on social media reacting to the ruling, Mr. Trump lobbed criticisms at the National Trust, which is also involved in a lawsuit over the president’s attempts to seize control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.“A winding post”? You can follow the Times link and decide for yourself. Agitated? Yes. Disjointed? Sure. Rambling? Yep. Queeg-like? You bet. Pig-biting mad? Oh, indeed. “Winding” is a very polite characterization.
Kelly O’Donnell, on NBC Nightly News, last night, describing human behavior at Jimmy Carter’s memorial service:
“The thirty-ninth president brought together decades of his successors, their interactions appearing to set aside conflicts and politics and personalities. One handshake ended nearly four years of no contact between former vice president Pence and the president he served.”But if you watch, you can also see Karen Pence refusing to acknowledge that former president and his wife. If you watch a bit more, you can see George Bush walking right past that former president before giving Barack Obama a friendly pat on the stomach.
Pence shook Trump’s hand; his wife stayed seated, looking straight ahead. While Obama, sitting next to Trump, spoke to him, former president Bush refused to acknowledge Trump, instead walking past him and giving a familiar greeting to Obama.Whose interests are served by pretending that everyone is now getting along?
On MSNOW just now, Ashley Parker characterized the current occupant’s morning threat — “A whole civilization will die tonight” — as “outlandish” and “controversial.”
How about “genocidal” and “insane”?
Related reading
All OCA sanewashing posts (Pinboard)
I disagree with John McWhorter about all sorts of things — apostrophes and object pronouns, for instance. And I disagree with him about Donald Trump’s state of mind: McWhorter sees in Trump’s recent performances not dementia and disinhibition but boredom. Trump, says McWhorter, is “turning up the volume to keep himself entertained.”
Please notice that McWhorter’s New York Times column appeared before Trump’s most recent Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin performances, in which he fantasized about guns trained on Liz Cheney’s face, boasted about his “beautiful white skin,” hit a microphone mount with the microphone, and mimed oral sex.
Trump is dementing and disinhibiting. Stop the sanewashing.
