On today’s BradCast: Listen for yourself to the speech that top politicians and corporate journalists have claimed to be furious about since the annual White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday night. Then ask yourself: What the hell are these people talking about? [Audio link to full show is posted below.]
Over the weekend, we learned that the U.S. Department of Justice has literally rewritten their prosecutorial guidance manual for U.S. Attorneys in order to, among other things, remove the section on the “Need for [a] Free Press”. That, just a week or two after we learned, via memos [PDF] written by then FBI Director James Comey immediately after several private meetings last year with Donald Trump, that the President seemed obsessed with the idea of arresting and throwing journalists in prison. “They spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend, and they are ready to talk,” Trump reportedly said to Comey, according to one of the contemporaneous memos.
Despite all of that, many elite journalists in the corporate media, from the New York Times to NBC News to Fox “News” and beyond, have spent much of their last two days claiming to be outraged by a comedian’s routine at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. The (somewhat grotesque) annual event, which usually features the President (but hasn’t in the two years since Trump took office and has refused to attend) is specifically, according to the first several hours of the event and the huge banner on the wall behind the dais, meant for the purpose of “CELEBRATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT”.
Nonetheless, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and the NYTimes‘ Maggie Haberman among others in the media, joined high-ranking Republicans to blast that comedian, Michelle Wolf, in the days since the event, demanding an apology for Wolf’s jokes that, they claimed, were divisive and, worse, attacked the physical appearance of White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders. Only problem with that: Wolf didn’t attack her physical appearance. She appropriately roasted Sanders (and many others) for lying to the press and the American people every day.
As many have probably heard about Wolf’s outrageous “attacks” and what a “bomb” her routine was — (Trump tweeted as much, along with the journalists, many times since) — we thought it might be useful and informative to actually celebrate the First Amendment by playing Wolf’s entire WHCD routine in full, so listeners can decide for themselves about the corporate media’s bizarre response to it…at an annual event where thousands of the country’s “access journalists” hobnob and back-slap with the very elected politicians they are supposed to be skeptically reporting on.
Then, we open up the phone lines to callers, just in case they heard the offense to Sanders’ physical appearance that I must have missed. (Spoiler alert: Listeners didn’t hear it either, even after I played Wolf’s sometimes raunchy and satirically biting remarks in full! Go figure. But, listeners do have a few thoughts on why many elite politicians and members of the corporate media may have heard it that way.)
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[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_PressFreedom_WHCDMichelleWolf_Callers_043018.mp3]
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Boy oh boy is this secretly recorded conversation (link below) ever disturbing. It is ominous in terms of the light it shines on the true workings of the Democratic Party’s inner power structure (i.e. the voters be damned!).
JMO, but Levi Tillemann would make a great inteview subject for the Bradcast.
With everything we have to oppose in Trump and the GOP, the Democratic Party’s inclination AGAINST Progressives is depressing to me.
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/steny-hoyer-audio-levi-tillemann/
On Ms. Wolff’s roast of the D.C. political class:
It was horribly WONDERFUL!
Disgustingly GREAT!
Revoltingly BEAUTIFUL!!
Thank you and Desi AND Ms. Wolff for your service to America!!! Your lead-in to Ms. Wolff’s presentation was spot-on.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is liar on the public payroll and deserved the non-sexist insult that she got.
Good grief. The reaction to Ms. Wolf’s remarks at the White House Correspondents Dinner is the reason for my constantly referring to the whiners as the self-styled “mainstream” press. For what is actually mainstream, or should be, is truth. And my annoyance at such things, as what transpired over the weekend, is why this was added below the title of my blog: “Because truth cannot be seen in a narrow band, contemporary context is insufficient without historical perspective. Therefore an attempt is made to use all the colors of the spectrum.”