Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/18/anderson-cooper-calls-out-dona.html
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But, but… fake news.
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Because Cooper shouldn’t even have to do this segment.
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I don’t even understand the accusation here. Are they saying that because the guy with the equipment stayed on higher ground it means it’s not as deep as it appears where Cooper is standing? What a weird little world conservatives live in.
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The picture also isn’t even from Hurricane Florence. The camera man in the picture has been deceased for over a year.
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It’s hard to know what to do here. They are middle school bullies, and everyone knows that you shouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a response. Having been bullied though, I know that is easier said than done.
I think its good for reporters to do this sort of segment every once in a while, you have to remember that Trump Jr. et. al. succeeded in diverting the public’s attention from other things for another 10 minutes. And it doesn’t move the needle - it won’t convince anyone who is a Trump supporter that uh, maybe they shouldn’t support the worst family on earth. As @beschizza said,
They being the 40% or so of people who are supporting Trump through thick and thin.
If I were Anderson Cooper and CNN’s investigative team, I am digging into Trump’s family as much as I can, following the money and the paper trails as best as I can. Although being vengeful is probably against journalistic ethics, maybe that doesn’t matter if your reporting is truthful.
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Basically, yes. The fact that the guy in the photo is standing so much higher than Cooper means, to the people who choose to interpret it as such, that Cooper is kneeling and the water is really only ankle deep. Never mind the fact that with a quick glance I can see five reference points that show basically for certain that Cooper isn’t kneeling, and is just higher off the ground, either on a slightly submerged platform, or just some other higher ground. If the cameras and other equipment are sitting on a raised roadway, and Cooper is standing at what is generally ground level (which appears to be the case) then Cooper is more accurately representing the situation.
In order to interpret it in the way that the president’s terminally thick-headed son has, you’d have to come at it looking for any reason, no matter how flimsy, to denigrate Cooper, which is pretty obviously the overall goal here.
Edit: I also just looked it up. Cooper is 5’10" (178cm) which also happens to be the same height as me. Assuming Cooper doesn’t have highly atypical limb proportions, the position of his left hand suggests that the water is no deeper than about 2.5 to 3 feet. That’s deep, but far from shocking in a hurricane or flood, so one would think that if you were going to exaggerate something, you’d at least make it look worse than average, would you not? Making it just look like a pretty average flood doesn’t seem like it’d really do the trick, so to speak.
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He missed another point. Even if it had been Florence, even if he had been kneeling… in what way would that make Donald Trump look bad? Do good Presidents get smaller floods? Or is he so powerful the flood waters rise up at the lift of his mighty arm?
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This provides insight into the conservative mind, they are looking for things to crow about, looking for evidence of the fake news they know must exist, and in doing so create their own fake news-- by calling Anderson Cooper dishonest and fake, they are being dishonest and fake. Donny Jr. can just spread lies and never really have to atone for it because he and other conservatives exist in their own bubble where they will never even hear about Cooper’s rebuttal.
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Yes, I understood it wasn’t from Florence, but really don’t get what they were alleging was the deceit.
He’s kneeling, or standing in a ditch, or standing in the one place that has significant flooding, because the media always wants to say things are worse than they really are, because that’s their business model, that’s how they get the ratings.
When they say it is a flood, it is really a puddle. When they say 3000 people died, it was probably closer to 3. When they say Republicans and their judges are child molesters, wannabe rapists, actual rapists and sexual assaulters, and racists, they really are just normal guys do normal guy things.
And when they say the president is breaking every law, destroying the U.S.'s place in the world, speeding up environmental collapse, and courting economic disaster, it is just more nonsense to get ratings.
So, trust Trump and Fox, the only ones who have no reason to lie.
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If you’re already convinced they’re deceiving you, you can project any sort of fantasy you want onto this picture.
If you’re not convinced, you’re supposed to take note that things look different depending on where you put your lens and be disheartened.
It’s basically your daily 2 minutes hate.
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Basically, yes.
There are many religious conservatives who believe that everything is a result of our morality - that poor people are poor not because they were born into a place with low employment or got sick without insurance or have a sick relative they need to care for rather than seek remunerative work, etc. - or at least, that if they did get sick, this was because they were bad people and did something to deserve sickness.
So in this view, yes, severe flooding in North Carolina would be a signal from God that Trump is a bad president. If the flooding is worse in Virginia, it would be a signal from God that Clinton would have been worse.
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But… the gays!
This administration seems to be one big refuge in audacity.
Scarily it seems to be working on enough people to keep it going.
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It’s almost as if Donnie Jr. has some kind of role model / mentor figure who teaches by example that lying is just fine and has no consequences.
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Projection. It’s not just for movie theaters anymore.
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I thought it was pretty funny that Trump had to cancel a couple rallies because of the hurricane. It’s like God is telling him to shut up.
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Check out Adam Curtis on HyperNormalisation (will only take you about three hours) describing a state of affairs where you are given so much conflicting information that you give up trying to find out what is true or false anymore.
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