All I Know Is What I Read in the Fake News
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/opinion/all-i-know-is-what-i-read-in-the-fake-news.html?emc=edit_th_20170425&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923&_r=0
The Conversation
By GAIL COLLINS and MATT LABASH APRIL 25, 2017
Gail Collins: Welcome back, Matt. It’s good to be conversing again, and since you and our readers are now acquainted, I don’t need to mention that you’re a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Or a hard-core fan of fly fishing.
And that you love dogs and hate politicians. I’m with you on the first but I have to admit I have a soft spot for politicians. It’s a hard life. Somebody has to do it.
Matt Labash: Careful, Gail, or you’ll normalize me. But thanks for inviting me back to your safe space, even as I’m still trying to pry the nails out of my hands after readers crucified me for my quasi-defense of Trump’s wall last week. We like to kid ourselves that we contain multitudes. But most of us aren’t nearly as complicated as we think, and you pretty much captured me in three sentences, neglecting only to mention that I’m a Gemini who likes to take long walks on the beach.
I hasten to add, however, that I don’t hate all politicians. I’ve always been soft on Edwin Edwards, the four-time Louisiana governor and one-time convict, who I’ve profiled on a couple of occasions, even as he was headed to prison. During one of his many corruption trials, after a sequestered jury was caught stealing towels from the hotel, Edwards said he had been judged by a “jury of my peers.” On another occasion, when a prosecutor asked Edwards if he’d been lying on the stand, Edwards replied, “No, and if I were, you’ve got to assume I wouldn’t be telling you.” You have to respect a guy who is that honest about his dishonesty.
Gail: I was down in Louisiana when he was running for governor against David Duke of KKK fame, who had the Republican nomination. People had bumper stickers saying: “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important.” Can’t hate that story.
Matt: Louisiana has always been political Candyland. I caught up with your old pal David Duke at his house years after that election, when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress, where he let me take a peek at his record collection. Some highlights, none of which I’m making up: “The Sound of Music” soundtrack, Dan Fogelberg and Hitler speeches (which sound so much warmer on vinyl). People knock Duke for hating African-Americans. Which is really unfair — he hates the Jews a lot more. But musical taste aside, I’ll still take dogs over politicians. Dogs have more soul, are less needy, smell better and tend not to mess where they eat.
Gail: Don’t know that I’d trust mine to pass an honest budget. She’ll do anything for a treat.
Matt: Which is different from Congress, how? People dislike Donald Trump for lots of reasons. Some say he has an elastic relationship with the truth (a polite way of saying he lies a lot). Others now resent him for being out of his depth, potentially enmeshing us in dicey foreign goat rodeos instead of sticking to what he knows best: live-tweeting “Fox & Friends.” But I think the story that troubles me most is that Trump could be the first president in 130 years not to have a dog in the White House. What kind of monster has no need for dogs? Though at least he’s never eaten dog, which is more than you can say for Barack Obama.
Gail: As far as I can tell, Trump’s never had a pet in his life.
Matt: Not true! He had Chris Christie.
Gail: Good point. Also, he did have a racehorse he managed to cripple for life.
I’d like to talk about presidential pets all day — looking up John Quincy Adams I noted that his pets were an alligator and silkworms. Which tells you a lot.
But we should get down to business. Congress is back! And facing a government showdown. Any predictions?
Matt: The only prediction I’ve made for 2017 is that I will stay out of the predictions business. Since the only prediction that seemed to come true with any regularity in 2016 was that everybody would be wrong about everything. As a reluctant optimist, I like to hope Democrats and Republicans will pull up their socks, join hands and do what Congress does best: spend money we don’t have, while kicking the can down the road. Since the government hasn’t been fully funded this year and we’re already working off an extension, even if the current funding showdown is resolved, the new fiscal year starts in October, beginning the horrors anew.
As a jaded realist, I’m not holding my breath. My knowledgeable sources at Wikipedia note that there has been at least a partial government shutdown during all but one administration going back to Ronald Reagan.
Gail: Yeah, we long for those good old days of bipartisan cooperation, when people enjoyed working together, talking about the latest episode of “Miami Vice” over the water cooler and humming the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever.”
Matt: And the current patchwork expires on April 29th, which just so happens to be the last of Trump’s first 100 days. What better way to celebrate the rancor, recriminations and perpetual volatility that is now a permanent feature of our politics than by making a government shutdown the 100-day headstone? So who knows.
Gail: I believe this group has the moral fortitude to put their collective shoulder to the wheel and get us a solution that will keep the government open into May. Otherwise Paul Ryan is just going to have to retire to a life of contemplation in a Tibetan monastery.
The president, however, has big plans — he seems to be promising to avoid a government shutdown this week while simultaneously delivering on health care, the Mexican wall and tax reform. The Democrats say they won’t do a budget if it has the wall in it, and that they won’t consider any tax changes until Trump releases his own tax returns. What do you think about that?
Matt: Well, all I know is what I read in the fake news. But Trump needs a win. You can’t coast on allowing coal companies to dump mining debris into streams forever, which aside from appointing Neil Gorsuch, is his signature achievement so far. (I know it’s all the rage to rage these days, and that enraged me as a fly fisherman.) But I think the likelihood of Trump releasing his tax returns is right up there with the likelihood of him divorcing Melania in order to make Rosie O’Donnell first lady.
About the same likelihood as Dems becoming collegial, coequal partners in the search for enlightenment and understanding of the Trump voter, to go all Tibetan on you.
Gail: Not denying both sides are equally recalcitrant. But secretly saying to myself that the Republicans started it.
Matt: I consider myself second to none as a Trump detractor. I was NeverTrumping (minus the hashtag – I am a person, not a hashtag) back when many liberals were still orange-crushing on him as a Republican-primary wrecking ball and a hilarious carny sideshow who couldn’t possibly slay Hillary, for whom the presidency was assumed to be a birthright.
And I understand why Trump infuriates people. Often, he infuriates me. But don’t you think that at some point, the wall-to-wall 24-7 outrage industrial complex — the Rachel Maddowization of America — helps him more than it hurts him? When everyone is outraged about everything, nothing seems outrageous anymore. Anyone who remembers the embattled Clinton presidency knows this already.
Gail: I’d be sort of disappointed if there wasn’t any blue rage, given the fact that we’ve got conservative Republicans in control of Congress and a president you might call right-wing if he could manage to stay on the same page long enough to be categorized.
Not so sure why the red side is seeing red. They want to be in control — more?
Democrats understand that the white working class is angry, having heard about it every two minutes since the election. But do the Republicans? So far all the working class has gotten from Trump is that much-vaunted effort to increase employment by taking credit for corporate job expansion that was already in the works in 2016.
Matt: Yes, there is all kinds of outrage on the red side, as well as on the blue one. Our country might not make much anymore, but we still manufacture plenty of angry people in an assortment of colors. And yes, the blue side has plenty of real stuff to complain about. Which is precisely why they should stop complaining about so much unreal stuff, like implying that Venezuelan unrest occurred because of Citgo donations to the Trump inauguration, or suggesting that Kellyanne Conway having her feet up on the Oval Office couch is an “ultimate signifier of privilege.”
Gail: I believe we have moved past Kellyanne Conway paranoia. Any more complaints about liberal complainers?
Matt: It’s like you’re reading my mail. Constantly complaining about dopey things, from pronouns that “misgender” to whether Ann Coulter should be allowed to speak at Berkeley (cradle of the once-hallowed Free Speech Movement), has become a hallmark of Team Blue over the last decade. It’s no small part of the reason Red America threw up their hands, looking for any alternative to push back against the inanity, even if that pusher comes in the form of a medicine-show huckster like Trump, who was just crazy enough to take it on.
Gail: I’m a big fan of free speech movements, having spent much of my college career sitting on the floor of the dean’s office, protesting the Catholic administration’s refusal to allow Allen Ginsberg to come to campus and read his poems. (O.K., maybe not the biggest lift in the world, but he never did get to come.)
So I have no sympathy for people who try to bar speakers from colleges. At all. But I really doubt they’re the main thing moving the angry white working class. I’m going to presume those folks are as reasonable as other voters and that their basic complaint is job opportunity. What I’m wondering is whether they’ll turn on Trump when he fails to bring good-paying manufacturing jobs back to their towns. Which you know is going to happen.
Matt: I disagree. While job opportunity might be a prime motivator, I personally know tons of Trump supports — upper-middle and upper class among them — for whom the anti-PC pushback made them reach for their MAGA hats. In fact, the corporate drone may have political correctness inflicted on him even more aggressively than your average pipe fitter does — by everyone from his HR department to his sensitivity-training facilitator — while still seeing his job at risk of being offshored. Which is why up and down the economic ladder, pipe fitters and corporate drones alike embraced the way Trump talked.
