I find myself using two words a lot more since 2016. One is gaslighting, the other is collaborator.
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both she and the interviewer were blinking up a storm. maybe there’s some sort of protection there that people should look into.
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No need anymore. You’re living it.
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See PM.
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Nor I. I don’t condone her response, but I also don’t envy her in any way.
I did enjoy Tapper’s mild bristling at her implication that the free press was to blame for reporting on 45’s transparent stupidity. I get some medical officials might see no other choice but to compliment the emperor’s new clothes, but I admire that Tapper could both show understanding of that dilemma and still defend the Fourth Estate.
Minor quibble. The Walking Dead portrayed less clownishly incompetent leadership among both protagonists and antagonists. Pitching this timeline to any producer would get the writer laughed out of the office.
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If that’s what she meant, that is true. Looking at the statistics before it hit the US, no kids were dying at all, and very few young people. In the US, the number of young people dying was unprecedented and more than a little surprising.
He should know at this point that even asking those kinds of questions is a threat to their jobs. (I’d go so far as to say it seems a bit reckless, when directed at a competent public health official.) No one who lasted this long in this administration will give an honest answer because they know they can’t, so by asking, he knows they’ll either not answer or - at best - give a weak-tea repudiation of what Trump said while not actually seeming like they did. That just ends up giving the (false) impression that they’re saying Trump was correct - or at least what he said wasn’t that bad. Far better to ask those kinds of questions of doctors who can answer forthrightly because they’re not in a position of fear.
I think we’ve seen how things go in the current administration and can say, with certitude, that any successor appointed would be dangerously worse because they’d be either totally ignorant of any science, and/or crazy. That’s the consistent pattern. I mean, there’s a high certainty that her replacement would be Jared. (I’m not entirely kidding here.)
I quickly stopped watching the show/reading the comic because of the never-ending series of choices the characters had to make for survival (and everything constantly getting shittier anyways) was too depressing. But gods, this conversation made me realize we’ve been living that with this administration anyways.
Jesus, it’s true.
Also the Walking Dead lacked a bunch of people demanding that they be bitten by zombies…
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That’s what really galls me; we are so far beyond any conceivable fiction or parody that it seems unbelievable… even though we’re actually living it.
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I get what you’re saying, but I have to partially disagree. While I don’t think the freedom of the press should self-censor to defend officials against populists, I do partially agree in that there’s a way to ask questions that delivers the news to the public and defends the freedom of the press while acknowledging the dilemma of those officials, but IMHO Tapper handled it adroitly. As with the qualified medical officials, the press has an unenviable job of navigating a perilous course.
That said, even as we get a handle on this, we need to examine the choices that got us here.
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I agree about the kinds of questions they asked, both in this interview, interviews with Dr. Fauci, and interviews with Dr. Aylward of the WHO. These are medical professionals and scientists. Their jobs are not political. Yet they get asked political questions. While they should definitely answer questions on the science policy truthfully and in full, when an interviewer pivots to a political question, IMO they have every right to refuse to answer or dodge it. My approach in that situation would just be to say straight up, “I’m not answering political questions, Jake.” But even that could get you fired in this administration.
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Of course, but some questions just aren’t productive. Even if it’s not particularly reckless, in this administration, many questions are totally pointless.
I watch reporters posing questions to Trump each day that everyone knows he’s not even going to try to answer. (And some which, these days, if he does, the answer will be potentially deadly misinformation.) Why even bother asking them? I feel like the press are still dangerously stuck in the past, acting like we have a normal human president, still not having learned from the last three years.
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Because the truth matters. And every time that the truth is ignored, or obscured, or denied, or twisted, is another step down the road to authoritarianism. The point is not to get the truthful answer, because we all know that won’t happen, but instead to highlight that the answers are phony.
My opinion is that every time the press chooses NOT to ask the appropriate question is an example of how the administration has corrupted the process. They should be asking harder questions, not easier ones, and they should keep insisting on an answer because the denials and lies in response are important to define. Any official (and Dr. Birx is an official whose responsibility is to provide public information that is accurate and complete) who avoids answering factual questions is shirking their duty to the public.
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That’s true. And while me might disagree on the utility of some questions, I want to add that I think it’s just a critically important for the public to be free to be constructively critical of the press as for the press to be free to question power. So even though we may have some points of disagreement, a good faith debate on them is healthy.
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I’ve sometimes tried to hold on to the slim and slippery hope that Birx – in playing the soulless lackey mouthpiece – is intentionally sacrificing her standing in the polls as a gambit to stay in Trump’s good graces and thereby be there (behind the scenes) to guide him ethically and correctly through this pandemic. Unfortunately, any proper guidance from her doesn’t seem to be taking (given Trump’s continual remarks short-circuiting the science out there), and her public performances so far only seem to pad out a resume for someone actively seeking a higher paying job someplace as someone’s soulless lackey mouthpiece.
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JHC these people are sooo full of shit.
She is full of shit. Come on people she’s working for trump, nobody, nobody would do that right of mind.
Nobody.
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it’s just Si over and over. Is she Italian?
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She was working for us long before she was working for Trump. She’s literally part of the “Deep State” that’s been holding this shitbag government together for more than three years. I don’t want to find out how much worse things would be without them.
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Birx and Fauci’s reluctance to call out Trump directly is scary AF, but they are still the only ones within Trump’s sphere of influence who have anything remotely intelligent to say about the pandemic.
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The fact she didn’t get up and screamed “Don’t drink bleach!!!” at this press conference was already a problem.
Now it’s out there and people are loosing time and energy fighting disinformation coming from the US president. Again.
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She stopped “fighting for us” the first time she lied in praise of her boss. Her goal is to retain her job, not provide accurate information. Fauci’s reputation is intact because he doesn’t kowtow to the Moron, nor lie for him. Hers is in tatters, and rightfully so.
As for this doctor being in the military excusing her behavior, she too two oaths: the Hippocratic and to protect the Constitution. She has broken both. “Just following orders“ is the excuse given at Nuremberg, and she fits into the collaborator role perfectly.
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