Trump clown hall on CNN: amusing American democracy to death

Though Neil Postman published Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, its observations, like the biblical prophets of old, have never been more relevant and ominous in this Age of Trump.

The premise of Postman’s book is this: electronic media is dumbing us down, transforming our dialogue into mere forms of entertainment, preventing us from not only speaking with each other on an adult level, but even thinking on an adult level, a phenomenon he observed particularly in politics, religion and education.

~ Joshua Charles on Stream.com, February 29, 2016

I cited the above essay in a March 2016 blog post about the increasingly cozy relationship between Scamworld and American politics. Joshua Charles did an excellent job of summarizing how prescient Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, had been, in light of the dawn of the Error of Trump.

My lead-in to that 2016 post was a quotation from a February 2016 politico piece, in which a long-time New York political consultant recalled Donald Trump (an epic grifter/Scamworld player if there ever was one) declaring that if he ever decided to run for president, he was going to "suck all the oxygen out of the room" because he knew "how to work the media in a way that they will never take the lights off of me."

Trump was, of course, right about that -- one of the very few things he has ever gotten right. And that says as much about the media and the American voters as it does about him. He continues to suck all of the oxygen out of the room (in addition to just sucking in general), as was painfully illustrated in the disastrous "town hall" meeting hosted by CNN in New Hampshire.

You absolutely need to read this review from the conservative Bulwark. On a Facebook post this morning, I wrote, "Shame, shame on CNN." (And shame on the deplorables -- a too-kind descriptor -- who sat in the audience and cheered and laughed and applauded as Trump spewed lie after lie after lie.)

How bad was it? Well, for starters...

For her part, [host] Kaitlan Collins was poised, prepared, and determined, but she never stood a chance. She raised all of the key questions and tried (not always successfully) to ask followups.

But Trump just rolled over her with a torrent of invective, jibes, and bullsh*t. The fact-checkers were reduced to asterisks. “He declared war on the truth,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said afterward. “And I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”

Where to start?

• Trump called a black law enforcement officer a “thug.”
• He repeated baseless conspiracy theories about 2020.
• He lied about losing the 2020 election. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I've lost count of how many times Trump has lied about the election. Collins keeps fact-checking him, but he keeps lying.”)
• He lied about calling for “terminating” the Constitution so he could be returned to power.
• He lied about his role on January 6th.
• He suggested that he would pardon many of the January 6th insurrectionists.
• He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election.
• He endorsed letting the country default on its debt, even if it would bring on an economic cataclysm.
• He claimed that residents of the Chinatown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., “did not speak English as part of an allegation that Biden stored boxes there after his vice presidency because he had nefarious ties to Beijing.”
• He refused to back Ukraine against Russia.
• He lashed out at Collins as “nasty woman” — and the audience CHEERED.

But this was hardly the worst of it. Actually, not even close.

The day after a federal jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Trump turned the episode into a joke, mocking and insulting his victim...

And so on, and so forth.

But the thing is... despite the fact that some on the CNN team were truly appalled by the shitshow, it was allowed to happen, and very likely will be allowed to happen again. Because -- and forgive me for stating the painfully obvious -- Trump means ratings, and networks live for ratings. It's all infotainment, or misinfotainment.

Amusing ourselves to death, indeed. American Democracy is on the chopping block, and Trump and the deplorables seem to be welcoming its demise.

Here's that Bulwark link again. Please read it.

PS, added May 13, 2023: And while you're at it, read this May 12 commentary on Daily Kos re the richly deserved blowback that CNN is getting for its continual defense of the indefensible, i.e., its choice to air the Trump clown hall.

[CNN] spent much of Thursday engaged in heavy damage control, sending out messages of support for the event. That included sending [Kaitlan] Collins back in front of the cameras to treat the event as if what had transpired was something wholly different from what everyone who dared to peek in had seen. Then Anderson Cooper was dispatched to attack those who were really to blame for the horrible decisions at the network: viewers who were just too stupid to get it...

...Collins’ statement didn’t garner anything near the immediate red-hot feedback that came from Anderson Cooper chastising Americans about “staying in their silo” and not sitting down to listen to Trump lie, incite violence, insult Collins, and defame E. Jean Carroll again. Because obviously, the responsible thing to do is sit down and listen to all those lies, all that hate, all that cruel laughter. Get out of your silo and climb into Trump’s bunker.

...It’s entirely likely that you could put the media careers of Mohammed Ali and Andy Warhol back to back, and the total amount of airtime and ink would almost certainly be exceeded by Donald Trump on any given Tuesday. No one—no one in America, no one in the world—was really short of an opportunity to see, hear, or sharpen their understanding of Donald Trump.

Put that in your “silo,” Anderson. We are not children, and we don’t need to be scolded for failing to watch another hour of The Donald Trump Show. It’s on every day, everywhere, already.

We have to fight this, not only in every available medium at our disposal, but also, and most importantly, at the polls. It may be an uphill battle, but we have to fight it.

 

En-blight-en us more: Death Ray documentary to premiere on CNN

This past April I mentioned a documentary on the rise and fall and attempted rise again of convicted killer James Arthur "Death" Ray: Enlighten Us, in advance of the film's premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Mostly I wrote about Salty Droid, aka jason Jones, writing about it, since he actually attended the premiere.

Now the work is finally coming to a wider audience; it is currently scheduled to premiere on CNN on Saturday, December 3, 2016 (that's tomorrow, as I write this) at 8 PM ET. There will be several encores later in the month; they're listed in the link above. No doubt it will be available for even wider viewing in due time via Internet outlets, Blu-Ray/DVD and the like. I'll wait.

Not surprisingly Salty weighed in again, ahead of the CNN premiere; he never did publish his full review of the documentary on his blog, but on today's post he did include snippets from one of his efforts. He describes meeting Ginny Brown, mother of one of Ray's victims, Kirby Brown. It was an emotional experience, to say the least.

This thing, The Salty Droid, is all about computer screens. I observe and capture the world as seen on my screens, and then I interact with that world via a half-crazed half-fictional character. The layers of abstraction help to keep my brain safe while I’m inhabiting one dark mire after the next; I try to crossover as rarely as possible. This is the first article I’ve ever published as myself.

Ginny and George are out trying to raise awareness for SEEK Safely [the Browns' nonprofit that attempts to bring responsibility and accountability into the self-help industry]. They feel like they’ve been completely shutout by the film makers. They’ve not been represented on camera, and their input has not been sought off camera. They haven’t even been invited to attend the premiere. They are visibly upset, and that makes me upset.

Jason noted that Ray was not in the theater where Enlighten Us was screening." Too bad :: because he missed the audience’s overwhelmingly negative reaction to him :: which manifested via audible groans :: and again during the Q&A with director Jenny Carchman."

Despite the seemingly uncritical lens through which the film presented Ray, Jason wrote that he "still comes off as a horrible disgusting monster." Not to mention a hypocritical one:

Ray tells the film maker’s camera …

I came out of prison in debt. My credit is crap. I’ve got nothing tucked away.

Juxtapose Ray telling a marketer’s camera …

I’d like to begin a conversation with you here today… it’s about the topic of wealth, abundance, and prosperity.

Scamworld in a James Arthur Ray nutshell.

Yep. It's all about Ray "pitching himself as a specialist in comebacks … while perpetually waiting for his own comeback to come." Salty also took some potshots at CNN for providing such a golden platform for Ray for years, and he got some shots in at Ray's "old-as-dirt mentor-in-scam Bob Proctor" (who has also been a frequent guest on my Whirled, particularly back in the heyday of The Secret).

Salty/Jason wasn't the only one of my pals to write about Ray in the wake of the CNN premiere buzz. Steve Salerno of SHAMblog had an excellent piece on Slate yesterday. And he published some "outtakes" on SHAMblog yesterday as well.

Apart from the fact that Death Ray is trying, mostly in vain, to regain his superstar status in the selfish-help industry, he is also trying to get his criminal convictions set aside so he can have all of his civil rights restored. If the motion were to be granted he would regain voting rights, and international travel would become less of a hassle.

Back in 2013, following his release from prison in Arizona, Ray had toyed with getting the convictions overturned, but in September of that year he moved to drop the appeal. In an affidavit he wrote, "I wish to ensure the prompt, complete and definitive termination of these criminal proceedings by dismissing this appeal and allowing the conviction and sentence to stand undisturbed." Apparently he didn't want to risk re-trial and possible re-sentencing. He insisted, however, that the convictions were flawed.

And now he's trying to push that narrative through the courts. As Steve Salerno wrote in the Slate piece linked to above:

In both the film and in life, Ray is poorly cast as the martyr of self-help culture. He’s far from it: Ginny Brown, mother of 38-year-old victim Kirby Brown, recalls that when Ray finally reached out to her after her daughter’s death, a full five days later, he kept saying over and over, that he “couldn’t believe this had happened ... to him.” Seven years later, Ray does not seem to have changed—indeed, he is currently petitioning to have his conviction set aside. The state of Arizona is countering the motion vigorously, as are families of those killed.

Legal maneuvers like the one Ray is attempting rarely succeed in homicide cases. But the hubris of even trying reaffirms that far from offering a story of redemption, Ray remains the epitomic reminder that self-help culture may be less about bettering the self than about creating alternative realities in which your unimproved self is just fine.

Couldn't have said it better myself. (And as I've written about numerous times on this blog, the selfish-help culture is full of false heroes and martyrs, imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau being one of them.)

Here is a link to Ray's October 2016 motion and to the State's response, requesting denial of the motion. If you aren't familiar with the events leading up to his conviction, or just want to refresh your memory, you can get a reasonably good overview by reading the response.

Ray may never get his luster restored, either legally or in the minds of a the public. But the very fact that he is still trying so desperately to do so says a lot about his character, or complete lack thereof.