What's happening to Spicer?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Kizmet, Jun 20, 2017.

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  1. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  2. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    It could simply be that those in the West Wing have decided to treat the White House press corps as contemptuously as the press corps treats them. I may not be impressed by the Trump administration, but that doesn't mean they're wrong about the mainstream media.
     
  4. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    As it began, so it ends.

    Why is there a White House press corps? To manipulate favored correspondents through the granting of special status. But the status outgrew the granter with the coming of the boob tube.

    Times change and times are changing. The change is at your fingertips. As it began, we are all the press if acting in that capacity.
     
  5. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Maybe the Administration just doesn't like Melissa McCarthy.

    J.
     
  6. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

    Yeah, I feel sorry for the poor guy. I mean, when you have to resort to things like hiding in bushes, you know things are bad. :smile:
     
  7. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    We were informed that he was not "hiding in the bushes," he was simply "standing amongst the bushes." BIG difference there Abner.
     
  8. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    I don't think that anything is "happening to" Spicer. He's currently doing two jobs, Press Secretary and Communications Director. So he went eight whole days (horrors!) between appearing at those little in-person denunciation and accusation morality-plays with the opposition media.

    That isn't what the media like, they want the White House to constantly be kneeling, groveling and retreating before them.

    They were already angry at Spicer, because a) he represents the Trump administration, which makes him a fascist in their eyes, and b) he's dared to publicly criticize their own professionalism. So they started floating their own imaginative theories about supposed infighting inside in the White House and how Spicer is supposedly on the way out. As if imagination can somehow become reality. (Maybe it comes close, when you control the public's knowledge of events.)

    So the whole idea that something "is happening" to Spicer seems to be an imaginative concoction that probably only has tangential relation to reality.

    I don't think that it's any secret that Spicer doesn't enjoy being treated as the foil for reporters grand-standing as "reistance" fighters for their partisan base. He doesn't enjoy the daily hostility and aggravation. So I expect that Spicer is angling for the Communications Director job or something like that, hoping to hand off the Press Secretary duties to somebody else (perhaps Mike Huckabee's daughter, the Deputy Press Secretary). If that happens, you can imagine the chortling in the media: We called it! What a humiliation! Screw Spicer!

    In real life, if Spicer is moving at all, I expect the move to be a promotion, not a demotion. He will be staying at the highest levels in the White House media operation. Trump likes Spicer's combativeness, even if the MSM doesn't.
     
  9. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I think the whole "nerd prom" culture of the White House Correspondents Dinner supports your idea that the press corps and the administration are far too close socially to be properly distant professionally.

    I agree. Trump also apparently appreciates loyalty, which no can deny that Spicer has demonstrated in spades.
     
  10. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    And the internet.

    Trump has publicly floated the idea of eliminating the White House press corps entirely, evicting them from their treasured White House offices and halting the more or less daily press Q and As. He suggested taking written questions and answering them in writing on a Whitehouse media website.

    You can imagine the deafening shrieking if that ever happened. But I think that half the country would be with him in doing it.

    There's no longer any need in this day and age to channel everything through "journalists" that hate everything you stand for and wish you dead.
     
  11. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    There's no need for them at all. Not picking their toes in the White House, anyway. They are called the news media for being the medium through which we are fed news. Doing that as it was done a century ago makes little sense.

    Why do I suddenly feel like Zero Mostel singing Tradition?
     
  12. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Eliminate the White House Press Corps

    Oh that's actually a totally awesome idea. It's totally logical and it's directly to the voters/people. It doesn't just bypass the MSM, but it totally eliminates the MSM middleman's White House cash cow. Americans don't need the MSM to get White House news because the president can directly provide it to us -- thanks to the internet.

    Would you rather get President Trump's message from a CNN reporter -- or from Trump himself? LOL
     
  13. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    "Pharma may be shit, but it doesn't mean you can cure cancer with carrot juice" (Ben Goldacre, quoting loosely).

    MSM bashing reminds me of peer review criticism. PR has clear, clear problems, and is criticized quite legitimately all through the science community. Yet attempts to go around it usually fail, and people calling for its elimination are usually cranks bitter that their crank ideas are not recognised by mainstream science for their self-perceived brilliance. Cure for MSM ills is not getting information from Russia Today.
     
  14. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    Well, the Trump version is clearly more entertaining.
     
  15. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Actually, TRUMP(TM) loves to give interviews to MSM - and MSM loves to air them. Ratings gold. WH's problem with MSM is not difficulty in getting their message out - it's allergy on any kind of criticism.
     
  16. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Okay, so then in your view, what is? (Asking genuinely.)
     
  17. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Demanding MSMs (they're not all one entity) follow their own standards. Calling them out when they don't. Both bloggers and other MSMs do this, by the way; it's not there is no discussion of journalistic integrity out there. Meanwhile, you stand better chance of being informed correctly relying on MSM than going to ideological silos like Breibart or whatever is your poison or, God forbid, trusting even a shred of narrative originating from a "non-linear warfare" weapon (deployed according to the openly admitted"Gerasimov doctrine") like RT.

    Oh BTW, you can't avoid hearing Trump point of view if you only watch CNN: both his officials and his surrogates have an ample platform there. You don't have Clinton or Soros people on Sputnik or RT.
     
  18. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

  19. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

  20. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I'll bet he feels a lot like O.J. Simpson today. :wink:
     

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