“The Horror! The Horror!”
Howie Kurtz’s “Heart of Disingenuousness”
Howard Kurtz (and never trust a grown man who goes by Howie), who hosts Media Buzz on Fox, just came out with a new book —
That may not be the exact title and cover art.
It’s actually called Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth, and Kurtz’s premise is that the media is enabling the president by apparently doing its job. Kurtz suggests that if only reporters and editors would lighten up on their negative coverage of Donald Trump, Trump wouldn’t be so inclined to be Donald Trump all the time.
This from political wire.
The media’s negative coverage of President Trump is actually helping the White House, Howard Kurtz argues in his new book, Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth.
The book will not be formally released until next week, but CNN reviewed the sections that were briefly available on Google Books before they were taken down on Tuesday afternoon.
Kurtz writes that the press is “falling into the president’s trap” as Trump stakes his presidency on “destroying the credibility of the news media” and that the media have become “their own worst enemies.”
Media, Howie — all of them? You mean, Matt Taibbi and Ainsley Earhardt, Dahlia Lithwick and Tomi Lahren? No distinction? What in the name of Bob Woodward carrying water for George W. Bush, do you want the media to do when, say, the president fucks and then pays off some porn actress two weeks a month before the election? Talk about how white Americans, to whom he still speaks, feel left behind and don’t begrudge him his golf outings and dalliances? We have a president who marginalized Nazis, mocked a disabled reporter, potentially obstructed justice, grabbed pussy, dissed McCain, and called an entire continuent a “shithole” to name 6 out of about 1,237 things? Do you really think the media is picking on him?
And even if the media in fact turned away from criticizing the daily Trump dump, as you suggest, what indication is there that Donald Trump would be more presidential? Wouldn’t that make him and his followers even more insufferable, more dangerous?
A Fox host advising the rest of the media on how to cover Trump is a little like Newt Gingrich counseling husbands on how to treat their wives undergoing chemotherapy.
(Promise. No more Gingrich metaphors the rest of the week.)
But I digress.
Every tweet Kurtz offers, every insight of his, is some variation of “Trump isn’t so bad when you think about something else that is also bad.”
Here are some examples of Kurtz being Kurtz
We have a President Donald Trump in large measure not because the media was too tough on him, but because they weren’t tough enough.
Oh, and here’s Kurtz defending Trump’s temper tantrum last week.
To be fair, the book does, according to early reviews, reveal a fairly dysfunction White House, but, hell, the daily press briefings do that. Besides, the dysfunction Kurtz displays is perfunctory — Priebus was marginalized, Bannon was a bully — and parenthetical to Kurtz’s central point: that the press, rather than the president, is the problem. Whatever good Kurtz once did, whatever clarity he once had, whatever fresh air he once blew through the press room, he is now mostly a shill, camped out at the Trump Tent, standing at a podium, screaming about and hiding behind false equivalences.
I can see it now.
@HowardKurtz
Trump Jails Reporters. It’s ourageous, but did they deserve it?
