Cue the world’s smallest violin for climate science denier/confuser Bret Stephens.
Hillary Clinton is emerging into more public engagement. There was her strong speech at Wellesley earlier today (full video after the fold). And, here is an engrossing New York magazine article Hillary Clinton Is Furious. And Resigned. And Funny. And Worried. Much of that article focuses on ‘why’, just why is misogynist Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
Part of the reason … media both-siderism giving credibility to the incredible (the incredibly insane, damaging, etc … #AlternativeFacts) along with having ‘right-wing advocacy press’. As per Clinton,
The press, she believes, didn’t make it any easier. “Look, we have an advocacy press on the right that has done a really good job for the last 25 years,” she says. “They have a mission. They use the rights given to them under the First Amendment to advocate a set of policies that are in their interests, their commercial, corporate, religious interests. Because the advocacy media occupies the right, and the center needs to be focused on providing as accurate information as possible. Not both-sides-ism and not false equivalency.”
False equivalency … as per giving equal weight to a peer-reviewed climate scientist and an industry-paid science-denialist lobbyist so that ‘both sides’ get equal time.
Sadly, Clinton (and others) don’t see the situation improving.
The impulse toward false equivalency is only getting worse, in her opinion. “The cable networks seem to me to be folding into a posture of, ‘Oh, we want to try to get some of those people on the right, so maybe we better be more, quote, evenhanded.’?”
This sparked a follow-on
When I mention MSNBC’s hiring of conservatives including George Will, and The New York Times’ new climate-change-skeptic opinion columnist, Bret Stephens, her brow furrows.
“Why … would … you … do … that?” she says. “Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people. So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision. But I don’t think it will work. I mean, they’re laughing on the right at these puny efforts to try to appease people on the right.”
Let’s take this in for a moment.
First, she’s right, who do they think they’re fooling? The NYTimes is begging people to provide them nice things to say about Trump and are hiring distorting columnists from the Wall Street Journal (Stephens). What do they think, all of a sudden Breitbart will suddenly start encouraging people to buy subscriptions? Clinton is right, “these puny efforts to appease” are being laughed at by the right while distressing those living in reality and concerned about real issues like climate change.
And, when it comes to reality, Hillary Clinton is (again) right — people want truthful engagement from outlets like the NYTimes and MSNBC.
People … would … appreciate stronger arguments on … the most existential challenges … climate change being one …
And, both George Will and Bret Stephens are columnists who have used their (pretty huge) soap boxes to promote confusion about climate science & the climate science consensus, to attack climate scientists and science, and to undermine efforts to make progress in addressing (mitigation and adaptation) climate change.
Hillary Clinton’s commentary evidently got under Bret Stephens’ skin:
https://twitter.com/BretStephensNYT/status/868237430167662592
Because Donald Trump was so egregiously bad that even right-wing pundits like Will and Stephens couldn’t stomach the situation, were #NeverTrump, evidently Stephens believes they are now beyond critique. Once they went #NeverTrump, reading Stephens’ implications, they evidently earned the right to be #NeverCriticized. Sorry Bret, the real world doesn’t work that way — no get out of jail card to play.
Let’s be clear, while there are a myriad of reasons for Donald Trump occupying the Oval Office even though Hillary Clinton received 3M more votes, not being sufficiently reverential to Never Trump Stephens isn’t one of them.