No matter how well-produced the January 6th hearings are, if the only people who watch them are those who are already convinced that Trump is unworthy to be president, then the Congressional initiative will have failed.
From time to time here at NewGathering, we invoke David French, the conservative political commentator and legal analyst. Among other endeavors, he writes a newsletter for The Atlantic magazine called The Third Rail.
French is unusual among the commentariat in a couple of ways: he is a committed Evangelical Christian; and he lives in Tennessee, far away both geographically and culturally from New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles and other loci of political and social influence. But he has lived in both worlds - he is an Ivy League-educated attorney - and he often seeks to bridge the gaps (or chasms) that separate our cultural elites from the rest of the country.
Like many other pundits, French wrote today about the January 6 Congressional hearings which were televised last night in prime time on all the major networks. All week, news stories about these hearings have dominated traditional and social media. But French points out something today which ought to interest and concern those of us who don't live in a conservative media bubble: many Americans are surprisingly ignorant of the events of 1/6/2021, and former President Trump's role in those events. Here is French:
A few weeks ago I ran into an old friend, a salt-of-the-earth Christian conservative I’ve known for almost 30 years. He’s a lifelong Republican and quite possibly the nicest person you’ll ever meet, a Trump voter who’s about as different from Trump as day is from night. After we caught up on our lives and careers, he asked how I handle covering modern politics, where “so many people lie.” He specifically brought up Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
I joined him in lamenting general political deception, and then asked him what he thought of Trump’s lies. “What do you mean?” he responded, in all sincerity. He genuinely did not perceive Trump as dishonest. Even now. In 2022...
Here’s one thing I understand—one thing that’s directly relevant to the prime-time hearings about January 6: Rank-and-file Republicans are shockingly ignorant of Trump’s misdeeds. It is simply not the case that they understand everything that Trump has done and support him anyway. They have far, far more knowledge of Democratic misconduct and media malfeasance than they have of anything Trump has done.
This truth applies to every single one of the worst moments of Trump’s campaigns and his presidency. The average Republican has a completely different knowledge base about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the Ukraine impeachment, the election contest, and January 6, and while there are some people (especially on Twitter) who do know everything and either love Trump anyway or love Trump because of his misdeeds, that is not the dominant mindset.
As I’ve told countless progressive friends, if you trust or use mainly right-leaning media, you’d have a different view of Trump as well. You’d live with a perpetual, exaggerated view of the threat from the left at the same time that you’d be bombarded with the extended, passionate defenses of Trump and his supporters. Taken together, that means your average Republican believes that Democrats are worse than they really are, and that Trump is better than he really is...
After citing some research which shows that both left and right have distorted, exaggerated perceptions of the extremity of the other side's view, French points to right-wing media:
This perception gap is precisely why Fox News’s decision not to carry the January 6 hearings live is so pernicious. It relegated the coverage to Fox Business, a network that has a fraction of the prime-time viewers. This means that the community of Americans who most need to learn the facts about January 6 will once again be protected from the truth.
But it’s worse than that. Through the mockery and spin of the prime-time Fox voices they trust, they’ll become even more immune to legitimate concerns about threats to the American republic, and they’ll remain open to the idea that Donald Trump should once again occupy the Oval Office.
"Pernicious" strikes me as the right adjective. Fox News's influence can't be discounted. Its ratings exceed MS NBC's and CNN's combined viewership. Fox News is free to televise whatever it wishes - but to be taken seriously as a purveyor of journalism, it surely has a responsibility to report the news accurately.
I don't even remember what channel or network I was watching during the events of January 6, 2020. I just remember that I was watching the Capitol riot or insurrection as it played out in real time. As long as I live I will never forget what I saw that day. It is obscene for any media to airbrush it or claim that it was just a legitimate demonstration. I can't help but conclude that anyone who is ignorant of what happened that day is willfully so.
ReplyDeleteI think breaking the hearings into segments is a good idea, maybe in small segments some of the truth will sink into people. Even if it doesn't it is useful because it organizes and lays out what happened, with all the testimony, for the historical record. Liz Cheney's comment that someday Trump will be gone, but the dishonor to his political party will stay, is right on.
I don't watch FOX, but there is supposedly a straight news segment that reports accurately. The problem is that 30 minutes of relatively responsible reportage is pretty much drowned out by the army of commentators who dominate the network during prime time.
ReplyDeleteProbably have similar things with a leftist slant are going on on CNN and MSNBC, but I don't watch them, either.
I find it interesting that the pro-Trump Republicans refused to sit on the committee and generally defend Trump. For instance Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who appeared last night, sustained a severe head injury in the confrontation with protestors. A savvy pro Trumper would be asking how, if her injury was so terrible, she can trust her memory of events. A pro Trumper might also have challenged the assumption by Quested, the filmmaker, that the Proud Boys were looking for weak spots in the Capitol perimeter. How does he know they weren't just looking for an advantageous site to stage a protest without any intention to cause mayhem? And certainly, they might say with some fairness, that we are seeing is not a hearing, but curated highlights from the testimony already collected that has been cherry-picked.
Somewhere along the line, they decided that it would be best to characterize the hearings as a political witch hunt and to offer alternative characterizations of the riot and the seditionists and traitors leading it than to participate directly.
Any thoughts about what they have to gain from that strategy?
In a relationship that strategy would be called gaslighting. "There isn't any 'there' there. You are just imagining things."
DeleteWhy do people do that? It's about control, for one thing. Heads I win, tales you lose. It's about affirming their own validity. They aren't really interested in objective truth.
Yeah, but they could gaslight on the committee. Just don't know what it gets them not to be engaged.
DeleteI think they're the "too cool for school" kids.
DeleteWhile I think Trump's attack on democracy musf be exposed and punished, I tire of the Democrats constantly running against Trump and his weirdos. It would help if they just delivered something for the American workers besides another proxy war. I must admit that I didn't expect anything of Biden and the Democrats. Unless they come up with something besides "we're not Trump", this ping pong thing will continue ad infinitum.
ReplyDeleteI agree that as a nation we can't just be mono-focusing on Trump. But one outcome that I feel is absolutely essential, and that would be that Trump must never be allowed to run for office again. And that goes also for anyone who actually aided and abetted his attempt to overturn an election. If there is evidence of actual crimes committed, and there is, that should be a no-brainer.
DeleteTrump might win again. Right now it’s looking dismal for the Dems. And they still don’t really have a smoking gun to put in trump’s hand. Aaron Blake in the WaPo has a good, and sadly realistic, analysis of the hearings so far.
DeleteDeSantis will give trump a run for it. I’m not sure which prospect is the scariest. DeSantis is horrible but he’s also competent. He could bring about some of the worst policies that trump proposed, but managed to fumble.
Chris Hedges recently interviewed Socialist Alternative Seattle Councilwoman Kshama Sawant. She has been able to repel political attacks by the big companies. She doesn't yak about some future socialist paradise but delivers on specifics like the $15 minimum wage. If the Democrats actually delivered on things most Americans actually want, they could bowl the Repubs over. By the way, her district is presently under a gerrymander attack. By the Democrats.
DeleteAnne, was that Aaron Blake article the one about the "...lessons of Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Benghazi" ? The Watergate hearings were the only ones to have a major effect, but the others actually did move the public opinion needle. Maybe moving the needle is what we should hope for.
Delete« How damning was the Ivanka Trump and Mark Meadows testimony? The clips of them being informed that Trump’s claims were bogus are worth parsing — as are others featured by the Jan. 6 committee »
DeleteHe says they might not be enough.
I subscribe to French’s Atlantic newsletter. I wasn’t surprised by his report. It’s been clear for a very long time that MAGA people don’t ever hear the truth. The legitimate news folk like Chris Wallace at Fox have pretty much disappeared - they resigned or were fired. My son worked on a project at Google to try to identify the précise sources of the news bots that plant genuinely fake news on the internet and trace who picks them up and spreads the lies on their own platforms. Eight of the top ten who picked these fake stories up and propagate them are right- wing media outlets. Unsurprisingly Fox was near the top in spreading lies. As a researcher I learned the skill of personal fact- checking decades ago before finalizing reports and analyses. Most major news sources including NYT and WaPo employ factcheckers. Fox does not. BTW, my son told us that CNN is not particularly trustworthy either. They don’t pick up and spread the lies planted by Russian and Chinese bots, but their coverage is carefully selective. So they promote misunderstandings by eliminating relevant information. Fox spreads false information and obviously knows that it does, and doesn’t care that it’s false.
ReplyDeleteNote to self, do NOT get on Facebook, or else hide a bunch of people. There are several former high school classmates on my "friend" list. These are people I liked then, and still like, but don't see in person except for school reunions. The comments are running along these lines: "What a pathetic old fool our president is! I listened to his latest speech. I feel so sad for our country. The puppeteers are running him,
ReplyDeleteetc, etc.". It is as David French said, they're living in their preferred bubble. Normally these would be people whose intelligence I respect, or at least don't consider idiots.
Now I don't think Biden is a genius. But I think he is at least on the " normal" spectrum for political leaders. I am really having a hard time understanding the inverted worldview of people I actually know.
I didn't listen to Biden's latest speech. Now I'm going to have to find it and see what is so terrible about it.
I assume that this is the speech in question, which took place yesterday at the Port of LA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cq-Ip3TX_c
DeleteI actually thought it was good, don't know why it would have raised people's ire. Though he did get in some pretty pointed zings at Big Oil, particularly Exxon (sounds like they deserved it). And some swipes at MAGA Republicans. They probably thought that was offensive.
I don't know if they listen to content. They've been told by their FOXy friends that he is senile, so they listen for halting speech, repetition, poor articulation, and look for slow mobility and other signs of age that proves he's incompetent.
DeleteThe left has similarly pointed out Trump's resemblance to Mussolini, his jut-jawed chin, his pugnacious stance, so they assume everything he says is fascist without really listening.
Just one more bit of evidence that we are not a nation of critical or analytical thinkers, regardless of political affiliation.
Since I don't have television, I have not been following the hearings. I guess my assumption is that they will not change anyone's mind in Washington or elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that both the media and the politicians are owned by various billionaires who want us to continue to live in our various tribes at war with each other so that we do nothing about their exploitation of us and our natural resources.
The only real change will come from outside our political system such as the war in Ukraine, shortages, inflation, the pandemic etc.
Not urging you to watch. We all have our limits. But the hearing stream on several channels on YouTube.
DeleteI agree there are megaforces that benefit from the rest of us feeling stressed out, underpaid, and fighting each other for scraps from the table.