I think I know the reason that it was the Boston Globe that led the editorials' charge in reply to Trump's attacks on the press. I made a reference to it in a comments' section entry a few Bradblog posts ago, with an advisory that I would not spoil a certain sequence in an episode from the second season of "The Handmaid's Tale". As it happens, it has become well known and inspired a lot of commentary. If you saw that episode, you will figure it out and know the reason yourself. Again, I won’t spoil it. But it is clear to me.

If you have not seen it but don't mind spoilers, check this out. You will get it then. It just HAD to be the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe....Fzn2RrygkY5jM/story.html

And here: https://www.elitedaily.c...res-a-dark-story-8878127

My only worry is that this intervention by the press is, frankly, nearly half a century too late. They should have jumped on the Republicans when they first floated the idea of the "liberal media" back in the 1970s and into 1980s, and hard. The press could have beaten it back in those days by accusing the Right of being a bunch of anti-democratic crybabies who, after all the crimes they had committed, had a fat lot of gall accusing the press of being unpatriotic. It would have been a blow they could not have recovered from and they would not have tried it again.

But the Cold War was raging and the Southern Strategy was working and so on. After Watergate and America's War in Viet Nam, it was quite a feat for the Right to attack the press and succeed. After all these decades, the expression "liberal media" is now so familiar and accepted without question that the press's response NOW and to Trump could easily be explained away and dismissed by that expression without the speaker having to justify it. He or she need not even define "liberal" - nearly five decades of Rightist propaganda has already done the "work". Just say it and it is true without question.

So now the press raises its battered head to gurgle through a mouth of blood and broken teeth its tiny defiance to Trump. I have my doubts that it will take in the absence of a coordinated campaign of relentless truth-digging and truly aggressive reporting, and willfully accepting that Trump is not merely the object of their political reporting because he is supposedly the President of the United States. Rather, he is THEIR enemy. With certain important differences aside, Trump is unwittingly styling himself as a jihadist of sorts and the press is his Charlie Hebdo.

It is time that everyone woke up to that reality. But it precedes Trump by decades. By letting it go on so long and even internalizing it (sometimes by waging war on itself: soon, we'll say "good bye" to the New York Daily News - and that is just ONE example, with media consolidation being another) the press has made itself weak in defiance on the one hand and openly complicit in the state's official crimes on the other. Judith Miller, anyone?

Still, what we have is a start. But it is only a start. The press must truly understand what its role is in a democracy, and as such the only profession explicitly provided with Constitutional protection from the state. Let's see where this goes, y'all.

Donald Pruden @1 said:

They should have jumped on the Republicans when they first floated the idea of the "liberal media" back in the 1970s and into 1980s, and hard.

Beggers, choosers, etc!

You are, of course, correct. I'm happy to see them stand up for themselves (finally and sorta), and I discussed, on yesterday's show, the years that the GOP have been priming the pump for all of this. And, while I made clear my disdain for the media's bad work (while making clear that it doesn't make them "the enemy of the people"), I probably didn't drive home the point you make well here, that, in many ways, they have much themselves to blame for the pickle that they (and us along with them) are now in.

So, thanks for pointing that out here.

And thank YOU for that tribute to Aretha Franklin. "Long live the Queen" indeed. Well said.

Ms. Franklin was only one of two stars I fell in love with.

The other was Carol Burnett.

Operation Mockingbird. The CIA tainted the free press well before people started calling it "liberal."

Donald Trump says bad things about the New York Times and other press and calls them an enemy so he is evil, right? Fair enough if the answer is yes, that is certainly inflammatory language.

Facebook/Youtube/Apple/Twitter are out there wholesale banning and shadowbanning people who they don't agree with because of "hate speech" or "violations of community guidelines." Most of those affected are conservative or libertarian. Some are also liberal/left that are actually independent, have integrity, and are willing to challenge the ever expanding list of PC police sacred cows.

Does anyone here think that Donald Trump's twitter rants are more dangerous than what the social media and tech companies are doing right now? Does anyone here care about election meddling? This banning or restricting the reach of the most prominent independent conservative and liberal voices will have a serious effect on the election results.

Does this bother anyone here? Would it bother you if it was mostly progressive voices being banned?

These are all rhetorical questions and I am just making a statement; these issues obviously aren't really on the radar of this blog or the radio show.

It is becoming increasingly clear that in fact history can repeat itself.

The minority report (How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 2).