February 2019 – Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms

Klobuchar staffers cry Bad Boss

Presidential Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar got sandbagged last week by Klobuchar staffers who were characterized as “terrified aides” likening her to no less a petty tyrant than Donald Trump. Reports of her abusiveness headlined in Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post, followed up by a piece in Vanity Fair by Tina Nguyen (February 8). Nguyen’s coverage fortunately came around to positive comments by Klobuchar supporters (yes, current and former aides! with skins, we are made to think, are like a rhinoceros!).

Last week, NPR’s night anchor Mary Louise Kelly was interviewing a politics specialist regarding Klobuchar, who had at the time not yet declared as a candidate for President. The guest journalist mentioned the knock against Klobuchar’s alleged bitchiness, at which Mary Louise observed that the same kind of criticism would rarely be leveled at a male candidate for office.* The reporter (a woman whose name I don’t recall) hesitated for a moment and then said, in the tone of someone being thrown slightly off her game, something like “yeah, you have a point.”

Mary Louise Kelly’s suggestion of a double standard being applied to Senator Klobuchar does not excuse Klobuchar’s behavior if she was/is in fact, cruelly abusive. Of course I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, but I do know that many admired and inspiring leaders do not and have not suffered fools gladly. I also know that there are other staffers who have come to Klobuchar’s defense. I know that on the Rachel Maddow show a few days ago Klobuchar admitted to losing her temper on occasion, with her usual matter-of-fact tone, sans defensiveness. (She made a similar admission to George Stephanapoulos on live TV.)

Continue reading “Is She Too Tough? Amy Klobuchar Takes Heat”

What you see is often not what you get.

The now infamous video of a confrontation between a Catholic high school student and a Native American elder near the Lincoln Memorial on January 18th shook the cable news landscape like the launch of a Saturn Five rocket. Much of what was left after the first 48 hours of media conflagration was a lot of hot dust and scorched earth. Many were outraged, some were burned, many were confused, and no one was happy.

(I’ve embedded the initially-released video at the very end of this post.)

After a cool-down of a few days, some perceptive commentators noted that what went most terribly wrong in the immediate aftermath of the incident was the dependence on one three -and-a-half minute video, shot from one angle with the camera held almost perfectly still throughout, to convey truth. It was that video— and one intense image in particular pulled from it—that triggered a righteous media blast from the Left. A tweetstorm erupted, blown initially from the Left and soon answered by gusts from the Right, while more, and increasingly ambiguous, information flowed in.

Continue reading “How Bad a Joke Are “Alternative Facts?””