Great piece as always Nancy. I have one comment/expansion. In your piece you write, "reality itself is a contested space in America, where bands on the right and left spend far more time fighting about control of the narrative than battling on the streets – where protest has become a form of theater to be documented and then propagandized." This is a beautifully written sentence and I think it is one of the most important observations you've ever made (and that is saying something). It bothers me a little that it is so deep in the piece that some might not see it and read it.
Maybe it's because I'm a Gen-Xer with hippie parents who grew up seeing protest as performance, but there are three books that have shaped how I view almost every protest in American history -- or at least American post-Mass Media history. These are Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Edward Bernays' Propaganda, and most importantly Daniel Boorstin's The Image. The combination of these three books convinced me that the vast majority of protests are what Boorstin called "pseudo-events," and your description of how Trump hopes the inclusion of the Guard transforms this into a real event fits perfectly with Boorstin's argument. That these pseudo-events are created by actors for propagandistic purposes by their allies, which the left leaning fake "reporters" of the 2020 protests and the right and left leaning ones now fit. And that most normies who don't live in Portland or the Mountain West/PNW, have to fill what Walter Lippmann called their "pseudo-environment" with some information and they use the propaganda to fill it.
It's a depressing way to view the world, but it's what I see every day and polarization makes it worse and worse all the time.
I think it's interesting that Pamela Hemphill (Ex-MAGA Granny) was there, since she's a Boisean which adds a little ammo to the "their from out of town" narrative.
I'm also left wondering what your thoughts were regarding Katie Daviscourt now. You've shared her coverage in the past, but she participated in the Trump press conference too. Is she somewhere in the middle of a continuum that ranges from reality to Sortor, or is she narrowcasting as much as Sortor? Or is it more complex than that for her?
I did not wind up meeting Katie and I had previously taken at face value that she was an honest broker. I no longer believe that. Having her stand atop the roof with ICE agents looking down at the rest of us one night helped cement that opinion. As a journalist I certainly would have toured the ICE facility ( asked; never heard back), and might even have gone to the roof for a 15-second gander. Five hours is a very clear statement on taking sides. I've also witnessed her doing the same as Sortor, exploding small moments that do not merit exploding. She previously worked with TP USA, which is fine; people are allowed to have jobs and to move on. She's found a soft landing (albeit with a hit in the eye) in that the news she reports is deeply wanted by and important to the White House. In some parts of the world they call this PR
Sorry to read that Katie isn't the honest broker you believed she was. I will, however, say that most of what passes as journalism today is little more than PR. There are exception, like you and a couple of other old school muckrakers, but when one's goal is to "speak truth to power" instead of "inform the public accurately" one's own preferred political outcome becomes the message.
I recently read a piece here on Substack lamenting the tearing down of the East Wing, and I have sympathy with that position, but the person who wrote the piece (a political scientist and not a journalist) had been a part of the Clinton administration and I couldn't help but wonder how many W keys they still had in their desk drawer. I'll admit that tearing down a building is very different than doing $15-$20k in damage out of spite. Heck, I'll even posit that Trump chose the East Wing because FDR built it, but someone who participated in petty partisan vandalism (who then paints the transition as without any issues) has lost a bit of my respect from the get go.
Thanks for the quote! ;) You’re the GOAT.
"One lesson I learned five years ago is that reality itself is a contested space in America," So true.
Great piece as always Nancy. I have one comment/expansion. In your piece you write, "reality itself is a contested space in America, where bands on the right and left spend far more time fighting about control of the narrative than battling on the streets – where protest has become a form of theater to be documented and then propagandized." This is a beautifully written sentence and I think it is one of the most important observations you've ever made (and that is saying something). It bothers me a little that it is so deep in the piece that some might not see it and read it.
Maybe it's because I'm a Gen-Xer with hippie parents who grew up seeing protest as performance, but there are three books that have shaped how I view almost every protest in American history -- or at least American post-Mass Media history. These are Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Edward Bernays' Propaganda, and most importantly Daniel Boorstin's The Image. The combination of these three books convinced me that the vast majority of protests are what Boorstin called "pseudo-events," and your description of how Trump hopes the inclusion of the Guard transforms this into a real event fits perfectly with Boorstin's argument. That these pseudo-events are created by actors for propagandistic purposes by their allies, which the left leaning fake "reporters" of the 2020 protests and the right and left leaning ones now fit. And that most normies who don't live in Portland or the Mountain West/PNW, have to fill what Walter Lippmann called their "pseudo-environment" with some information and they use the propaganda to fill it.
It's a depressing way to view the world, but it's what I see every day and polarization makes it worse and worse all the time.
I think it's interesting that Pamela Hemphill (Ex-MAGA Granny) was there, since she's a Boisean which adds a little ammo to the "their from out of town" narrative.
I'm also left wondering what your thoughts were regarding Katie Daviscourt now. You've shared her coverage in the past, but she participated in the Trump press conference too. Is she somewhere in the middle of a continuum that ranges from reality to Sortor, or is she narrowcasting as much as Sortor? Or is it more complex than that for her?
I did not wind up meeting Katie and I had previously taken at face value that she was an honest broker. I no longer believe that. Having her stand atop the roof with ICE agents looking down at the rest of us one night helped cement that opinion. As a journalist I certainly would have toured the ICE facility ( asked; never heard back), and might even have gone to the roof for a 15-second gander. Five hours is a very clear statement on taking sides. I've also witnessed her doing the same as Sortor, exploding small moments that do not merit exploding. She previously worked with TP USA, which is fine; people are allowed to have jobs and to move on. She's found a soft landing (albeit with a hit in the eye) in that the news she reports is deeply wanted by and important to the White House. In some parts of the world they call this PR
Sorry to read that Katie isn't the honest broker you believed she was. I will, however, say that most of what passes as journalism today is little more than PR. There are exception, like you and a couple of other old school muckrakers, but when one's goal is to "speak truth to power" instead of "inform the public accurately" one's own preferred political outcome becomes the message.
I recently read a piece here on Substack lamenting the tearing down of the East Wing, and I have sympathy with that position, but the person who wrote the piece (a political scientist and not a journalist) had been a part of the Clinton administration and I couldn't help but wonder how many W keys they still had in their desk drawer. I'll admit that tearing down a building is very different than doing $15-$20k in damage out of spite. Heck, I'll even posit that Trump chose the East Wing because FDR built it, but someone who participated in petty partisan vandalism (who then paints the transition as without any issues) has lost a bit of my respect from the get go.