Thomas Zimmer on the Scourge of "Both Sides" Commentary and the "High Priests of White Dude (Increasingly Reactionary) Centrism"

A pictorial commentary on bothsidesism at Merriam-Webster's "Looking at ‘Bothsidesing’"

In a posting today entitled "The Self-Important Arbiters of Reason and the Scourge of 'Both Sides,'" Parker Molloy features a thread that Thomas Zimmer recently posted on Twitter responding to a tweet by Nate Silver defending "both sides" journalism. Every word Zimmer writes in response to Silver, whom he rightly characterizes as "one of the high priests of white dude (increasingly reactionary) centrism," is just so on target and important that it's difficult to choose sections of his thread to highlight. 

On Media and Trump: "Trump and the Media Are One and the Same"; and on Not Taunting the Alligator

White House photo by Benjamin Applebaum of Trump and press in Oval Office, 21 March 2017, at Wikimedia Commons

In the wake of the announcement of the former reality t.v. show host who fomented insurrection in the nation's capital and was twice impeached that he's running for president again, there's continuing good commentary on the role the media have played in putting wind in this man's sails, and what the media could and should do now — though some signs already tell us the media is not learning and does not want to learn, to paraphrase George W. Bush on the nation's children: 

More Post-Election Commentary: "If they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all"

Photo of stack of newspapers by Daniel R. Blume, Wikimedia Commons

Post-election commentary continues. Here are some pieces I've read that I'd like to recommend:

Robin Givhan: "The attack on Pelosi graphically highlights just how indecent this country has become"

Nick Anderson's cartoon commentary on the Pelosi attack — and more

Robin Givhan takes a look at one exceptionally disturbing aspect of the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul: what it says about the growing toleration of seemingly many Americans for elder abuse:

McCarrick Story Continues to Chug Along, While McCloskey Story Loses Steam: Why?

Number of articles Religion News Service has posted featuring the McCarrick story: at least 20, by my count.

Number of RNS articles featuring the McCloskey story: ZERO.

Why, one wonders? Why the discrepancy? Or, more precisely, why the total silence re: the McCloskey story? /1

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 16, 2019

"People Who Are Most Likely to Appear in These Kinds of Stories Are the Least Likely to Have a Say in How Those Stories Are Told": Lessons for Catholic Media Reporting on LGBTQ Community

A diptych for you today — news commentary dancing two-by-two which, in my view deserves to be highlighted, and which illuminates, I think, themes I've discussed here in the recent past:

National Catholic Reporter Announces It Will Restrict Its Commenting Services, Due to "Dramatic Increase in Trolls and Disruptive Comments"

Last week, I pointed you to some valuable (and worrisome) commentary about how trolls are trashing open discussion spaces online and causing some news sites to shut down their commentary threads. 

If Catholic Leaders Are Permitted to Convince Us That Symbol Represents Substance, Who's to Blame? If We Choose to Believe That the Telenovela Is Real . . .

You realize, don't you, that probing the uneasy interface between symbol and substance, in the case of authority figures, is a revolutionary act? It's a necessary act, if religious and social authority figures are to be called to accountability.

Papal Visit Wrap-Up, Or Unwrapping Media Spin Along with Women, Abuse Survivors, and LGBT Catholics

Not a wrap-up of the papal visit, but an attempt to unwrap the neatly wrapped package that has just been delivered to us vis the media (i.e., via the self-appointed official mediators of reality for the rest of us) in the visit of Pope Francis to the U.S.:

Ezra Klein on How New Online Media Technologies Shift U.S. Political Conversation: Implications for "Pope Messiahs" and Centrist Catholic Media Gatekeepers

This is what I mean when I keep saying repeatedly that new media made possible by online technology, as well as the tools of social networking, are changing the game for the centrists who have long sought to control public political and religious discourse in the U.S.: Ezra Klein explains what, in his view, is going on with the rapidly shifting terrain of American politics:

Chris Morley on Updating the Pope's Media Machine for the 21st Century

And another valuable Sunday-morning resource — another report from Chris Morley, this one on the tipc of the pope's media machine (and its dire need of updating for the 20st century):

Weekend News: John Shore on Pope Francis and Gay Catholics, Open Letter to New Chicago Archbishop, Reading Synod Tea Leaves, Betty Clermont on Abuse Tracker

For the weekend, a selection of miscellaneous news stories about Catholic-themed issues including the treatment of gay Catholics by Catholic institutions, the synod on the family, and the Catholic media:

Let's Talk: The Continuing Challenge of Blogging in the American Catholic Context

People do want to talk, you know. Together: they want to talk together.

More News: Pope Francis and the Nuns, Clericalism and Abuse Crisis, Right-Wing Policies and Women's Health, Unbearable Whiteness of Liberal Media

More news: 

Pope Francis Continues in News: Jerry Slevin, Sarah Posner, New York Times, Colleen Baker

As the new year goes on, I'm seeing more and more news coverage about news coverage about Pope Francis. All of it fascinating . . . .

E.J. Dionne on Media's Ability to "Turn on a Dime": Critical Reflections about Media's Claim to Mediate Social Reality to Rest of Us

This is the kind of thing I'd have written in my journal, before I began blogging--and as I read the day's news and news commentary. Now that this blog has become my journal . . . .

In the News: George Zimmerman, Obamacare, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Moral Sickness of Cultures

News commentary about disparate topics (though interconnected ones, to my way of thinking) that has caught my eye this week:

Politics: Dueling Hymns in Congress, Paul Ryan and Contraception, Pat Buchanan on Shutdown, MSM and Centrist Myths, Anonymous and Maryville Rape Story, Malala's Meeting with Obama

1. As Peter Montgomery notes, yesterday appears to have been dueling hymn day in the U.S. Congress: House Republicans sang "Amazing Grace" as their latest plan to solve the government-shutdown crisis went up in flames, while a group of interfaith leaders gathered by Faith in Public Life sang the same hymn as the group walked through the halls of the House.

And Another Quote: "The Whole Point of the Professional Journalistic Creed Is to Form a Closed Circle of Gatekeepers"

Scott Tucker

And yet another quote: Scott Tucker at Truthdig on (mainstream) journalism as a form of priestcraft for states whose spectacles demand devoted servants--not to mention golden calves, incense, and human sacrifices burnt on sacrificial pyres:

Thomas Roberts and Melissa Harris-Perry: To Fix a Broken Social Contract, We Need an "I Am Other" Agenda

In response to the George Zimmerman verdict, Thomas Roberts and Melissa Harris-Perry conclude that the American social contract is broken, and propose that the American media begin focusing for a change on those construed by the mainstream as threatening "others," and on letting those others have voices and tell their stories. Roberts states,