Let’s stop pretending it’s just Trump.
On Dec. 9, nearly a half million people in the U.K. had signed a petition requesting that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump be banned from entering the nation. Any petition garnering more than 100,000 signatures must be considered for debate by Parliament. Chancellor George Osborne criticized Trump, but rejected calls for him to be banned from the U.K.
The U.K. petition was yet another layer of outrage over what has been a lead news story for two days now: Trump, Republican frontrunner in the 2016 presidential race, has called for a ban on allowing any Muslim immigrants into the U.S.
Perhaps it’s the language of his rhetoric, perhaps it’s the hold he has on the lead in the Republican polls, a full 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Texas senator Ted Cruz. Or perhaps it’s finally a tipping point and even people who shrugged off Trump’s other assaults on large groups–Mexicans, women, blacks and the disabled–think banning Muslims sounds, well, Hitlerian.
Certainly the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Daily News thought so when they printed this cover with the dark pun “The New Furor” and Trump caught with his hand in the air in a semblance of the Führer–Adolf Hitler–on Dec. 8.
Philly Daily News Likens Donald Trump to Hitler with “Furor” Cover: https://t.co/lCZf9hEL35 pic.twitter.com/AFm1HGdU0W
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 8, 2015
It’s ironic that this is the rhetoric causing blow back from Trump’s Republican competitors (Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has raised objections to Trump’s anti-woman, anti-immigrant language throughout the campaign and Bernie Sanders cited Trump’s other anti-immigrant comments). Since he announced his bid for the presidency, Trump has made one outrageous bigoted statement after another with hardly a blink from fellow Republicans.
Two of the Republican candidates are Latino–Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) are both sons of Cuban immigrants. Former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, is married to a Mexican immigrant and his three children are biracial. Yet not one of these candidates objected to Trump’s characterization of Mexican immigrants.
A full six months ago, which is how long the media has been giving Trump a free ride on his racist and xenophobic comments–Trump said in his June 16 presidential announcement speech, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
It did not.
Nor did his comments about women. During the first presidential debate in August, Trump was called out on his misogyny by Fox News moderator Megyn Kelly, only to assail lesbian comedian Rosie O’Donnell. [I wrote about it here in Curve]
KELLY: You’ve called women you don’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.”
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: Your Twitter account…
TRUMP: Only Rosie O’Donnell.
(LAUGHTER APPLAUSE CHEERS)
KELLY: No, it wasn’t.
(APPLAUSE CHEERS)
Your Twitter account…
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: Thank you.
KELLY: For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell.
TRUMP: Yes, I’m sure it was.
KELLY: Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the war on women?
TRUMP: I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.
(APPLAUSE)
After the debate, Trump implied that Kelly had been having her period, and thus was too hard on him.
That controversy bled into Trump disparaging the looks of candidate Carly Fiorina. Then Trump said Black Lives Matter activists “promote hate. I think they’re trouble. I think they’re looking for trouble. I looked at a couple of people that were interviewed from the group. I saw them with hate coming down the street last week talking about cops and police and what should be done to them. That was not good. I think it’s a disgrace that they’re getting away with it. I think it’s disgraceful, the way they’re being catered to by the Democrats.”
And then at Thanksgiving, Trump mocked disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski by imitating him at a rally. Why was he upset about Kovaleski? Trump wanted the reporter to support his story that he saw “thousands of Muslims” cheering on 9/11 in New Jersey–something that never happened.
Yet it is only now–after six long months of racist, misogynist, homophobic, ableist, xenophobic statements laced with flat-out lies–that there is a groundswell of outrage.
The question is, should we support just anyone for the position of leader of the free world?
Since Trump’s “ban the Muslims” speech, which implied internment of Muslims already in the U.S., harkening back to one of America’s darkest periods, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, news outlets have shifted the tone of their reportage of Trump. The gloves are off.
Sort-of.
Witness this memo to reporters at BuzzFeed from editor-in-chief Ben Smith:
Here’s a memo I sent to @buzzfeed staff today on our social media policy, and Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/zCiDds3C29
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) December 9, 2015
Say whatever you want about Trump. But don’t tar other Republicans with the same brush because Dick Cheney and others decried Trump’s Muslim comments.
I disagree. I have covered national politics since the second term of Ronald Reagan when I was a fledgling reporter. Working for daily newspapers I was taught to keep myself out of the story and to keep my reportage unbiased.
For the most part I did that. Several years covering the U.S. Supreme Court. More covering the White House. But in the 1990s when I was covering AIDS, my tone shifted. I was no longer so unbiased. I had covered die-ins in front of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses.
When I became the first out lesbian in the country with a lesbian column in a daily newspaper (the Philadelphia Daily News), I no longer had to pretend to be objective: It was now my job to bring myself to the story, and two Pulitzer Prize nominations later, I seemed to have achieved that goal.
This election season I haven’t pretended to be unbiased. I think the Republican candidates are dangerous. I think every one of them is an extremist who would do extraordinary damage to the country. I have never voted Republican in a presidential race, though I have voted Green Party and Socialist Party in the past. But in 2016 I will be voting Democratic and I don’t care who knows it or who says it makes me un-objective in covering the “news” of the election.
Part of why Trump has gained such traction is the mainstream media’s insistence on so-called unbiased reporting. I say so-called, because we know it’s nothing of the sort. National Review is never going to endorse a Democrat any more than The Nation is going to endorse a Republican. Some left-leaning online magazines have been unabashedly in the tank for Bernie Sanders while some right-leaning online mags have been unabashedly for Ted Cruz. The New York Times, once the newspaper of record and once considered a liberal bastion, has given more space to Joe Biden than to Sanders and has spent the entirety of the presidential campaign delivering near weekly hit pieces on Hillary Clinton, the candidate most likely to be the next president of the U.S. while also doing puff pieces on Jeb Bush, the candidate least likely to be president. When Joan Walsh left her position as editor-in-chief of Salon for The Nation, Salon became the millennial “We Hate Hillary” site, with the most recent pieces (from a straight white male millennial) stating that if the former Secretary of State was the Democratic nominee, perhaps it would be better to let the Republicans win that vote for her. There’s no more biased reporting in the entirety of the presidential race than that attending coverage of Hillary Clinton. It’s misogynist, it’s homophobic (she’s repeatedly called a closet lesbian), it’s fabricated. ( https://www.curvemag.com/opinion/blogger/can-america-elect-a-woman-president/ )
What?
So–unbiased my derrière.
I understand Smith’s directive. He wants to try and keep the increasingly blurred line between social media and actual journalism distinct. It’s what we were taught, back when journalism was more than a bunch of tweets strung together with a byline.
But there is also the obligation of the media to tell the truth. To be transparent. The problem of bias has long been the problem of lack of transparency.
So let me be transparent: I intend to call out all the GOP candidates and even the Democratic ones if what they are saying is racist, misogynist, xenophobic, homophobic, et al.
The idea that Trump is the big problem and that Dick Cheney–a war criminal who duped America into the Iraq War, supports torture and who should be tried in the Hague–should represent some moderate wing of the GOP because he called Trump’s Muslim comments “unAmerican” is absurd.
Equally absurd is the idea journalists should be hands-off on the other GOP candidates. Cruz and Rubio–who represent a likely ticket next November–would be devastating for women and LGBT, especially, but their stance on immigration is no different from Trump’s.
The other GOP candidates are worrisome, but with their poll numbers in the single digits, they are not an immediate concern.
Cruz and Rubio are, as they are most likely to step into the void left if Trump finally begins to recede in the race. The day after the San Bernardino shooting, Cruz was at a gun rally. The day after the Planned Parenthood shooting Rubio–who objects to abortion under any circumstances and has, like Cruz, even protested birth control–was saying the shooting was not ideological.
For her part, Hillary Clinton has stated repeatedly that these men are no different in their rhetoric than Trump. “Some of his Republican candidates are saying that his latest comments have gone too far,” Clinton told a crowd in Salem, New Hampshire on Dec.8. “But the truth is, many of them have also said extreme things about Muslims. Their language may be more veiled than Trump’s, but their ideas are not so different. They are all driving the exact narrative that Jihadists want to advance. That we are at war not with barbarous, violent, murderers but with an entire religion. This is a grave mistake.”
Clinton’s comments point out the real issues here: that one of the most worrisome aspects of the GOP candidates is their lack of understanding of the nuances of foreign policy.
Clinton has also consistently reinforced her support for women’s health issues and LGBT rights and Sanders also spoke out against Trump’s comments, though he has not addressed the other GOP candidates like Clinton has.
And Clinton is right on another level, because while some of the candidates have come out against Trump’s latest statements about Muslims, like Jeb Bush, initially the frontrunner, who called Trump “unhinged,”
Donald Trump is unhinged. His “policy” proposals are not serious.
— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 7, 2015
Clinton notes that each has pledged to support the nominee–even if it’s Trump.
On Dec. 9, Time magazine announced its Person of the Year–German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was chosen for her “moral leadership” in dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe. Merkel has admitted 800,000 refugees this year and expects to admit the same number in 2016.
Trump, who had been in the top five, did not take the news well. Once again lashing out, saying Time was giving the honor to the person who is “ruining Germany.”
I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015
It’s six weeks until the first primaries and anything can happen between now and the first votes cast. But one thing is certain–Donald Trump is far too volatile a personality to sit in the Oval Office at this point in history. And his compatriots are no better–just quieter.
In a wonderfully ironic metaphor, a bald eagle attacked Trump in his office during a photo shoot for Time magazine this week. “Uncle Sam” spoke for many of us.
Donald Trump nearly attacked by bald eagle https://t.co/ikCeuZRvIo pic.twitter.com/RoiEE30tfq
— Variety (@Variety) December 9, 2015
So–call me biased, but nothing scares me more than the thought of a Republican winning the presidency in 2016. And it should scare you, too. There’s no room for women or LGBT people in the GOP platform, which all the candidates adhere to. Not voting is voting. So register now. We have a battle on our hands. And that video of Trump versus Uncle Sam is more than a metaphor.