Purposely Negative

Barred from entry: On Friday, President Donald Trump declared that he was done with the negative news coverage of his administration that was coming from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. “There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he told reporters, after announcing a ban on those outlets being part of the press pool. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” he added on Truth Social. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

Now, the three outlets will sue the administration, arguing that such a ban is a violation of their First Amendment rights. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting,” they said in a joint statement. “Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”

“The Constitution does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting,” they added.

Of course, people should be allowed to write “purposely negative stories”! That’s my whole raison d’être. I hate most of what the government does, and a lot of what each party does, and am constantly annoyed by people looking to accumulate ever more power in order to force the rest of us into submission and compliance. Let the negativity flow, baby!

What Trump doesn’t understand is that the problem with most of today’s mainstream media outlets is actually that they’re not critical enough. They tend to be very critical of Trump, yes (good!), but a little more criticism of his predecessor could have helped us, for example, avoid that Weekend at Bernie’s situation we got into toward the end there. The media could stand to be more critical of teachers unions and police unions; corporate cronyism; indiscriminate drug boat bombings; unlawful Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions (and excessive force); foolish claims made about data centers; NIMBYs thwarting new builds; personal enrichment of the first family; oh, and did I mention CONSTANT GOVERNMENT SPENDING?!

That Trump’s ego is bruised by the media’s coverage of him really should not become my problem or yours. That’s what the First Amendment is for: Egos of presidents may be bruised, but the law doesn’t really care. Thank God for that.

Scenes from New York: “In fighting for every black child, did I betray my own?” asks the, uh, notorious New York Times Magazine journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. “A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.”

The whole article is a devastating indictment of both New York City’s public schools and Hannah-Jones’ ability to change them for the better:

We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there. From my past reporting, I knew that P.T.A.s at poor schools often can raise only a few thousand dollars, but Faraji and I could write checks that exceeded the annual P.T.A. budget. I witnessed how dismissive school officials could be to lower-income parents who lodged complaints or made demands for resources and how deferential they were to wealthy ones. I believed Faraji and I could bring some of that power with us. We had connections and time and status that should not matter, but that we all know do. And more than that, we believed strongly that if families like ours went into schools like this one, it would challenge other families with similar values to do the same.

That’s not how it played out in practice. Najya fell behind and suffered from all kinds of injustices that no student should have to bear: teachers failing to grade her work, not detecting that she was falling well below grade level in math; not being given sufficiently challenging work to help her advance; chronic absenteeism from teachers and total unresponsiveness to her parents when she was struggling. When it came time to choose a high school, Najya went against her parents’ educational philosophy—deliberately choosing poor, mostly black, underperforming schools—and chose a higher-ranked school that was predominantly white and Asian.

The piece has inspired a lot of discussion. I personally liked this response, from Maud Maron: “Your daughter’s chosen high school would not exist but for parents like me who fought so hard to keep screened schools.” And some levity, if you’ll allow it.

• “An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot ​and wounded a man in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, city officials said, adding that the man was in serious but stable condition,” reports Reuters. “The ‌man was shot in the torso and taken to a local hospital, officials told reporters at a press conference. The ICE agent shot him during a brief pursuit on foot shortly before 1 p.m. (1800 GMT), Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said.” The man who was shot is ​an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, according to the cops. His attorney has told The Texas Tribune that her client entered ⁠the country legally.
• Good Atlantic piece: “Researchers Say They’ve Found the Truth About Thomas Jefferson.” Link here. “A secret 15-year effort has produced genetic evidence that one of the nation’s Founders fathered children with a woman he enslaved.”
• “At a sprawling waterfront mansion facing Biscayne Bay, a group of wealthy Cuban-Americans has spent months hatching detailed plans for a country that doesn’t yet exist,” reads an excellent Wall Street Journal lede.
• From The Washington Post: “The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a colossal pet project by the man who invented the Star Wars franchise, makes no apologies for looking like a spaceship arrived from outer space. Co-founded by George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, the soaring biomorphic structure designed by architect Ma Yansong’s firm MAD displays Lucas’s vast and motley personal collection of figurative art. The museum, which opens to the public Tuesday, reportedly cost somewhere around $1 billion, and given the eccentric form and size of the building (more than 300,000 square feet), and the amount of art inside (a dizzying mix of ancient relics and reproductions, a few Renaissance and baroque paintings, and great heaps of the finest dreck), it’s easy to believe that eye-popping figure.”

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