
Here’s a snapshot in the form of a headline about the NYT’s Maggie Haberman who has written a book about Trump. She’s only about the 50th or 500th person to do so.
But that’s not what matters.
‘It’s My Curse and My Salvation’: Trump’s Most Famous Chronicler Opens Up – Politico
Narratives like these aren’t unusual. Haberman’s stories have focused more on her than on Trump. That’s shades of Michael Wolff who became the star of his Trump books.
Writing about Trump is a way to get famous. A dynamic that Trump, after a lifetime of marinating in New York City’s media culture, understands quite well. And that’s another way of saying that reporters who write about Trump are really writing about themselves.
“So what is it about Michael Wolff that has brought him so close to the egomaniacs,” the New York Times unironically asks at one point of the famously egomaniacal hack.
The tidbits from Haberman’s Trump book are headlined with her name in it.
Typical of these are, “Trump to Maggie Haberman: I ran for fame”, “Donald Can’t Quit Maggie” and “Maggie Haberman Responds to Latest Trump News on CNN: Biggest Demagogue”.
In one of these, Haberman even comes in ahead of Trump in the headline.
The psychology here is no mystery. And the celebrification of journalism is an old matter. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t create any new monsters, they just wrapped it in earnest clothing. The Trump era took away a lot of the pretense. Writing about Trump isn’t journalism, it’s about fame and money, and obviously political takedowns, but ones that keep on giving.
What is the objective and what is the subject is an equally old one. The old journalism was meant to remind the scribes that they were not the subject. Not unless they wanted to write columns in the editorial page. With the collapse of even the pretense of objectivity and the universalization of bias, the only subject left is the writer who takes center stage.
Maggie Haberman’s coverage is about her because the book is about her. There are few books written about Trump, but many books written about those writing about Trump.
Her book will be on the bargain rack with all the other fake Trump books faster than she can snap a photo of sooper double top secret files about nuclear secrets before they’re flushed down a magic toilet.
Yeah, I wonder who buys all those books.
The economics of it must be weird.
There’s money to be made in tearing down America and all her stalwarts.
Libraries buy that shit that readers don’r want, especially school libraries. It’s a scam industry that few people notice – and the culprits like it that way.
Write about that, Greenfield. You’re a conscientious guy. God knows I’m not.
Good point. I guess if one factors in all the libraries and schools that will buy a copy, one can figure out how to make a profit.
Projection, of course. And anti-Trump smears and spin. Trump is their Devil they can project their inner demons on.
The journalist writes about herself, because her reality is limited to her own thoughts and feelings – the ceaseless contemplation of her navel.
Her need for acclaim requires the unified energy of envy and hatred, which Trump provides in spades.
That’s it exactly.
They are almost as obsessed with Trump as Trump is with himself.
Trump needs to go. He had his time and time moves on. We are not where we were 10 years ago and pretending will not get us back there. Trump needs to shut up for once in his life and back a younger candidate(not Oz). That is all that he and his little golf club buddy Lindsay Graham can do for us. Obviously they will do much less in a negative sense than even that.
You have an extremely poor sense of what is taking place in this world. The tectonic shift to a global, corporate communism currently happening and increasing in pace daily is a terrible event in the history of humanity as it’s a liberal blight spreading to all the areas of this Earth. You do know what a blight does, don’t you? It’s an eradication of the cornerstones to which solid families, communities, regions, states, and countries are built upon and replaces them with a foreign and diseased foundation incompatible with sustaining and improving the quality of life for the average human being. It’s part of the ever-long fight between good vs evil that has been written about for centuries which culminates into an insufferable and inescapable woe upon humanity. Those who are blinded by their own hubris and ignorance validates the deceitful and darkened heart methodologies utilized in effecting the sea change to which we are currently experiencing in every facet of our lives.
Regardless of one’s personal opinions on Trump, he has been the only president in decades to develop policies and bring about actions to reverse or at least stall the path of destruction we see in such administrations as the current debacles in office in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. The only moving on from Trump should be that which improves our system so other than that you are just part of the evil machine.
I don’t think so. I don’t care if Trump is the nicest person in the world or the biggest jerk. I don’t care about Trump at all. I only care about political outcomes.
You left out……”at any cost”. The rest of us are concerned about moral outcomes and economic outcomes. Thomas Sowell described you I think. He said,”It takes considerable knowledge to realize you don’t know much.” I don’t think you have reached that point.
What part of economic or moral outcomes do you think aren’t political? It’s all political to the Left. You might have other ideas.
Actually, you hear this a lot from people. Such and such shouldn’t even be political, they say. It’s all political. That’s what it means to be taken over by the Left.
You outline a situation as if Trump is implicitly some sort of antidote to it. If that was the case we wouldn’t be here. Also you are not paying attention to any signals he’s sending which are not intended for your frequency. This is why we’re in trouble.
You think you can hide behind Trump? There’s no hiding.
We own politicians, they don’t own us.
TDS requires serious medication.
“And the celebrification of journalism is an old matter. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t create any new monsters, they just wrapped it in earnest clothing.”
Watergate – and Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting on it – had a lot to do with creating the popular idea of the journalist as crusader, speaker of truth-to-power, and generalized hero and celebrity. Although journalists may have always thought of themselves in this manner, the public didn’t share that view. If you look at pre-Watergate movies and TV shows, journalists were typically portrayed as excitable, boozy, cigar-chomping buffoons with a pack mentality.
I haven’t seen the show, just the ads, but it looks like Hilary Swank is starring in a new show about a crusading journalist in Alaska, continuing the post-Watergate trend of journalist as hero.
Ironically, that idea seems to have so thoroughly penetrated the egos of real journalists that their professionalism, fairness, and objectivity have suffered, resulting in the increasingly negative public assessment of journalism that we see today.