I didn't realize Wapo had changed the title, I only saw the latter one. The normalization is appalling itself but the fact that they deliberately changed it after publication seems somehow more egregious.
Thanks for reading, Tom. I barely would have noticed myself — I had been checking the article periodically throughout the day as the comments were multiplying so rapidly, but I left off for several hours in the evening. When I returned, I saw a stretch of comments noting either drily or irritatedly that the title was far too bland to capture what had happened that day on that stage. It just so happened that I’d seen another essay on Daily Kos that had captured the original title, so I was able to make a comparison.
I do find the practice sinister, in a way. It’s a form of memory-holing.
Thanks for writing this and following these attacks on Harris. The way the WP frames this and changes its headline, reveals something about how the reporting will be rolled out over the coming months. The big name papers are definitely helping this line of attack move from career ending to ho hum. We should not be surprised by this. It sure seems they are getting ready to elevate whatever line of attack Trump might use as valid. We saw this with Obama when we went through the whole “debate” over whether or not he was born in the US. We will likely see the same with attacks on Harris. They will question her identity, her citizenship, even her humanity. This is what they plan for ALL of us! Are you a citizen? Where were your parents born? You don’t deserve equal rights! Are you a man, a woman, a cat, have you given birth? They are casting around and showing us how anyone, …candidate, voter, resident, human… , ANYONE’S status is up for debate. And it looks like the big legacy newspapers and media has every intention of framing it as part of some normal process. Rough times ahead.
Thanks again for writing up this thoughtful piece. ❤️
In some ways, this . . . questioning of Harris is worse than what Trump did with Obama, because that at least could ostensibly be "answered" and put to rest. Was Obama born in the United States? Yes -- boom -- here's proof. I was among the many who were incensed that Obama had to "show his papers" to the whole country to put the controversy behind him, but publishing his birth certificate in newspapers across the country did curtail that entire squawkfest. Yet, with Harris, Trump is questioning whether she existentially has part of her own identity -- something that cannot be proven or disproven, only accepted or not accepted.
What I would like to see at least one major news outlet do is examine how race actually operates in this country. Partially it's a function of lineage or ancestry; but in large part race has to do with one's treatment by larger society. This almost always has to do with some arbitrary marker over which no one had any control. That's how it is that Harris is Black in America: because she's *treated* as Black. (And there is a treatment, as evidenced by the [White] guy who was stopped in an airport terminal several years back that was caught on camera, where security guards were roughing him up, and he yelled out indignantly, "You're treating me like a Black person!" Talk about saying the quiet part out loud....)
I agree that we are in for very choppy water, especially if this election goes bad, and there are many ways in which it can do so. I was stricken by the results of Election Night in 2016, so much so that I wept at my desk the next day at work three separate times. (I tried to be clandestine about it, but at least one coworker saw me and teased me about it.) By the end of the campaign season in 2020, things were so bad that I remember beginning to refrain from posting certain things on public message or comment boards, for fear that they would be rounded up by whatever monitoring agencies. It was a bad time, and I don't think I was being overly paranoid, just cautious. Some very regular Democrats are speaking among themselves about the possibility of deportation or even camps if Trump gets back into office. These are eminently reasonable people, expressing what normally would be unreasonable fears.
You said "a cat"! :) But the question, "Have you given birth?" Yes, that would become standard. There are some Republican lawmakers who want the federal government to enforce those state laws that prevent pregnant people from seeking abortions out of state. That's basically a revivification of the Fugitive Slave Law. Astonishing.
Thanks for the transcript on that section of the NABJ.
I had not heard of Wallnau before, and still don't have a handle on how much political influences he holds. It's stunning how some folks work so hard to deceive themselves and others in order to make a buck.
But I clicked on the WBUR link with the first line mentioning the SBC and a lot of dots aligned in my brain. I was thinking also about how this pervasive demeaning of women was the root of Jimmy Carter's decision to leave it in 2000 (?). He wrote a stirring piece about this later 2017 (?), "Losing my Religion for Equality".
I spent a lot of time exploring the links on the jezebel idea. It's always one thing to understand on a more abstract level how white RW evangelicals construct a authoritarian inspired social hierarchy. It is another to see the promotion of these with specific "archetypes" designed to go right to personifying them by smearing specific people they are afraid of. Cowards all. I suppose if I encountered such a person I could ask them what they are afraid of, but would I get a direct and rational answer?
I used to think that the American press did not know how to deal with Trump's skills to manipulate any given narrative and deflect any criticism. I think WaPo's reaction to this is likely about the big money in charge of the product, but for whatever cause I find their response to the NABJ conference racist.
Racism is about the social and political power differences in society, and a publication that touts "Democracy Dies in Darkness" every day has to do better when a leader of an anti-democratic party employs the kind of racist garbage that he used.
I thought even the first WaPo headline was a copout, a lazy "he said; this happened" account that was arguably true - but it was a half truth, a lie by omission. There were key facts missing in that headline, such as context that better reflected the whole truth of what happened. The Chicago Sun-Times had no diversions from stating it like it is:
Trump lies about Kamala Harris' race, bashes moderator at Black journalists convention in Chicago
Followed up in the heading with:
The shortened session was full of incendiary comments from the ex-president, including claims of undocumented immigrants taking “Black jobs” and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of “only promoting Indian heritage.”
Thanks for reading! I know that you are already ultra-familiar with framing, so that's already something under your belt, so to speak; but I'm glad you were able to find some marrow of value in some of the other concepts I explored here.
It's interesting that you talk about the compression of archetypes as basically shuttles of meaning. This takes me back to some things I learned about narrative warfare, which I've referenced previously. Dr. Ajit Mann, who describes NW, says that as humans we're obliged to understand the world through the structure of story. (She didn't use the word "condemned" but I think it could be a fair substitute.) She notes that while we wouldn't describe a story by saying, "I read about a rugged individualist," if someone said that they read about a Paul Bunyan-like protagonist, we would all understand what was meant by that. The concept of the rugged individualist is actually embedded in the narrative, and it's at that level that narrative warfare is waged.
"Jezebel" is a similar type of archetypal information, made all the more salient by the fact that there is an entire story attached to the character, and that the Biblical story is meant to illuminate essential traits of human nature. Growing up, I remember having a book in my children's library of Bible stories for children. (It may have come from the Watchtower society.) It was illustrated, and when it related the tale of Jezebel, the witchy temptress, the drawing attached to the story showed her being tossed from an upper-storey window into the hands of an angry mob below. So it's easily communicated that this is what you do with wrong-thinking (Jezebel worshipped a different deity), seductive woman with designs. She's to be disposed of. Quite a lesson for an eight-year-old to absorb.
I didn't know of "Jezebel" as a racial trope until I got to college. It probably would have been more salient as such had I grown up in the South. The symbol seems to have carried over from slavery times, where it was used to situate and excuse the sexual, forcible excesses of slaveowners (and, by extension, the entire slaveowning South) perpetrated on their enslaved female coteries. This is explored in the Jim Crow Museum's entry on the Jezebel stereotype (I'd linked this in a previous essay but not here): https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/jezebel/index.htm
I really appreciate you pointing to the Jimmy Carter essay. He is fundamentally a decent person, full of integrity. I've seen him in interviews (and he was the first president of which I have any memory), but I haven't read any of his work. I should make a point to do so.
As for WaPo, I could go on about it. :) I originally plunked down a subscription during the pandemic, because I knew I would need to have some sort of outlet -- or, rather, input -- of information. (I invested in several other newspapers at the same time, NYT and the Atlantic, though I've had to let the Atlantic lapse.) That's to say that I've seen the paper morph over that short four-year period. I can only imagine what truly long-time readers of it must think of its current journalistic standards. It does not help that WaPo recently had turnover at the top of its editorial structure recently. Lots of commenters have said, variously, that this is the last straw, that they're cancelling their subscriptions.
Was their headline about Trump's appearance at the NABJ conference racist? I can see why you would say that. I would say, in the vernacular of folklorist Merrill Kaplan, that their quoting of Trump's comments "carries [the] signal" that Trump meant to cue in the first place. I wish I could direct you to the video where I first came across Ms. Kaplan, but it's been made private. I took notes, though: she was speaking with regards to the far right, and she was talking specifically about jokes. Namely, she deconstructed the form of the leftist lampooning of the demonization of George Soros by joking about how they're still waiting for "Soros checks." Kaplan stated, "Nothing travels as fast as a joke, and sometimes the joke is carrying signal that is a dangerous narrative material." By telling these "Soros checks" jokes, those ironic jokers are carrying forward the "currency" in the original charge (otherwise, the joke would fall flat). In the joke itself is preserved the idea that Soros is this sinister, behind-the-scenes financier inserting funds in surreptitious ways.
Something similar happens in the WaPo headline, whereby the racist dig of Trump's original comments are in effect re-broadcast without situating context. So, yes, I would agree with you there. Still, at least there was a partial attempt to fulfill some of the 5 Ws (who, where, what was said), all of which disappeared in the subsequent rewriting of the headline. Others have noted that WaPo's change in stance communicated that the burden of "proof" had shifted to Harris, which truly is racist, IMO. The entire attack is out of bounds; she shouldn't have to "answer" for such impermissible questioning of her inmost person.
I didn't realize Wapo had changed the title, I only saw the latter one. The normalization is appalling itself but the fact that they deliberately changed it after publication seems somehow more egregious.
Thanks for reading, Tom. I barely would have noticed myself — I had been checking the article periodically throughout the day as the comments were multiplying so rapidly, but I left off for several hours in the evening. When I returned, I saw a stretch of comments noting either drily or irritatedly that the title was far too bland to capture what had happened that day on that stage. It just so happened that I’d seen another essay on Daily Kos that had captured the original title, so I was able to make a comparison.
I do find the practice sinister, in a way. It’s a form of memory-holing.
Thanks for writing this and following these attacks on Harris. The way the WP frames this and changes its headline, reveals something about how the reporting will be rolled out over the coming months. The big name papers are definitely helping this line of attack move from career ending to ho hum. We should not be surprised by this. It sure seems they are getting ready to elevate whatever line of attack Trump might use as valid. We saw this with Obama when we went through the whole “debate” over whether or not he was born in the US. We will likely see the same with attacks on Harris. They will question her identity, her citizenship, even her humanity. This is what they plan for ALL of us! Are you a citizen? Where were your parents born? You don’t deserve equal rights! Are you a man, a woman, a cat, have you given birth? They are casting around and showing us how anyone, …candidate, voter, resident, human… , ANYONE’S status is up for debate. And it looks like the big legacy newspapers and media has every intention of framing it as part of some normal process. Rough times ahead.
Thanks again for writing up this thoughtful piece. ❤️
Thanks for reading!
In some ways, this . . . questioning of Harris is worse than what Trump did with Obama, because that at least could ostensibly be "answered" and put to rest. Was Obama born in the United States? Yes -- boom -- here's proof. I was among the many who were incensed that Obama had to "show his papers" to the whole country to put the controversy behind him, but publishing his birth certificate in newspapers across the country did curtail that entire squawkfest. Yet, with Harris, Trump is questioning whether she existentially has part of her own identity -- something that cannot be proven or disproven, only accepted or not accepted.
What I would like to see at least one major news outlet do is examine how race actually operates in this country. Partially it's a function of lineage or ancestry; but in large part race has to do with one's treatment by larger society. This almost always has to do with some arbitrary marker over which no one had any control. That's how it is that Harris is Black in America: because she's *treated* as Black. (And there is a treatment, as evidenced by the [White] guy who was stopped in an airport terminal several years back that was caught on camera, where security guards were roughing him up, and he yelled out indignantly, "You're treating me like a Black person!" Talk about saying the quiet part out loud....)
I agree that we are in for very choppy water, especially if this election goes bad, and there are many ways in which it can do so. I was stricken by the results of Election Night in 2016, so much so that I wept at my desk the next day at work three separate times. (I tried to be clandestine about it, but at least one coworker saw me and teased me about it.) By the end of the campaign season in 2020, things were so bad that I remember beginning to refrain from posting certain things on public message or comment boards, for fear that they would be rounded up by whatever monitoring agencies. It was a bad time, and I don't think I was being overly paranoid, just cautious. Some very regular Democrats are speaking among themselves about the possibility of deportation or even camps if Trump gets back into office. These are eminently reasonable people, expressing what normally would be unreasonable fears.
You said "a cat"! :) But the question, "Have you given birth?" Yes, that would become standard. There are some Republican lawmakers who want the federal government to enforce those state laws that prevent pregnant people from seeking abortions out of state. That's basically a revivification of the Fugitive Slave Law. Astonishing.
Extraordinary writing. Thank you so much!
Thanks for the transcript on that section of the NABJ.
I had not heard of Wallnau before, and still don't have a handle on how much political influences he holds. It's stunning how some folks work so hard to deceive themselves and others in order to make a buck.
But I clicked on the WBUR link with the first line mentioning the SBC and a lot of dots aligned in my brain. I was thinking also about how this pervasive demeaning of women was the root of Jimmy Carter's decision to leave it in 2000 (?). He wrote a stirring piece about this later 2017 (?), "Losing my Religion for Equality".
https://womensordinationcampaign.org/blog-working-for-womens-equality-and-ordination-in-the-catholic-church/2020/3/4/jimmy-carter-losing-my-religion-for-equality
I spent a lot of time exploring the links on the jezebel idea. It's always one thing to understand on a more abstract level how white RW evangelicals construct a authoritarian inspired social hierarchy. It is another to see the promotion of these with specific "archetypes" designed to go right to personifying them by smearing specific people they are afraid of. Cowards all. I suppose if I encountered such a person I could ask them what they are afraid of, but would I get a direct and rational answer?
I used to think that the American press did not know how to deal with Trump's skills to manipulate any given narrative and deflect any criticism. I think WaPo's reaction to this is likely about the big money in charge of the product, but for whatever cause I find their response to the NABJ conference racist.
Racism is about the social and political power differences in society, and a publication that touts "Democracy Dies in Darkness" every day has to do better when a leader of an anti-democratic party employs the kind of racist garbage that he used.
I thought even the first WaPo headline was a copout, a lazy "he said; this happened" account that was arguably true - but it was a half truth, a lie by omission. There were key facts missing in that headline, such as context that better reflected the whole truth of what happened. The Chicago Sun-Times had no diversions from stating it like it is:
Trump lies about Kamala Harris' race, bashes moderator at Black journalists convention in Chicago
Followed up in the heading with:
The shortened session was full of incendiary comments from the ex-president, including claims of undocumented immigrants taking “Black jobs” and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee of “only promoting Indian heritage.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2024/07/31/donald-trump-nabj-q-a-kamala-harris-chicago-conference-black-journalists
I gave up on WaPo during Dubya's administration.
Thanks for reading! I know that you are already ultra-familiar with framing, so that's already something under your belt, so to speak; but I'm glad you were able to find some marrow of value in some of the other concepts I explored here.
It's interesting that you talk about the compression of archetypes as basically shuttles of meaning. This takes me back to some things I learned about narrative warfare, which I've referenced previously. Dr. Ajit Mann, who describes NW, says that as humans we're obliged to understand the world through the structure of story. (She didn't use the word "condemned" but I think it could be a fair substitute.) She notes that while we wouldn't describe a story by saying, "I read about a rugged individualist," if someone said that they read about a Paul Bunyan-like protagonist, we would all understand what was meant by that. The concept of the rugged individualist is actually embedded in the narrative, and it's at that level that narrative warfare is waged.
"Jezebel" is a similar type of archetypal information, made all the more salient by the fact that there is an entire story attached to the character, and that the Biblical story is meant to illuminate essential traits of human nature. Growing up, I remember having a book in my children's library of Bible stories for children. (It may have come from the Watchtower society.) It was illustrated, and when it related the tale of Jezebel, the witchy temptress, the drawing attached to the story showed her being tossed from an upper-storey window into the hands of an angry mob below. So it's easily communicated that this is what you do with wrong-thinking (Jezebel worshipped a different deity), seductive woman with designs. She's to be disposed of. Quite a lesson for an eight-year-old to absorb.
I didn't know of "Jezebel" as a racial trope until I got to college. It probably would have been more salient as such had I grown up in the South. The symbol seems to have carried over from slavery times, where it was used to situate and excuse the sexual, forcible excesses of slaveowners (and, by extension, the entire slaveowning South) perpetrated on their enslaved female coteries. This is explored in the Jim Crow Museum's entry on the Jezebel stereotype (I'd linked this in a previous essay but not here): https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/jezebel/index.htm
I really appreciate you pointing to the Jimmy Carter essay. He is fundamentally a decent person, full of integrity. I've seen him in interviews (and he was the first president of which I have any memory), but I haven't read any of his work. I should make a point to do so.
As for WaPo, I could go on about it. :) I originally plunked down a subscription during the pandemic, because I knew I would need to have some sort of outlet -- or, rather, input -- of information. (I invested in several other newspapers at the same time, NYT and the Atlantic, though I've had to let the Atlantic lapse.) That's to say that I've seen the paper morph over that short four-year period. I can only imagine what truly long-time readers of it must think of its current journalistic standards. It does not help that WaPo recently had turnover at the top of its editorial structure recently. Lots of commenters have said, variously, that this is the last straw, that they're cancelling their subscriptions.
Was their headline about Trump's appearance at the NABJ conference racist? I can see why you would say that. I would say, in the vernacular of folklorist Merrill Kaplan, that their quoting of Trump's comments "carries [the] signal" that Trump meant to cue in the first place. I wish I could direct you to the video where I first came across Ms. Kaplan, but it's been made private. I took notes, though: she was speaking with regards to the far right, and she was talking specifically about jokes. Namely, she deconstructed the form of the leftist lampooning of the demonization of George Soros by joking about how they're still waiting for "Soros checks." Kaplan stated, "Nothing travels as fast as a joke, and sometimes the joke is carrying signal that is a dangerous narrative material." By telling these "Soros checks" jokes, those ironic jokers are carrying forward the "currency" in the original charge (otherwise, the joke would fall flat). In the joke itself is preserved the idea that Soros is this sinister, behind-the-scenes financier inserting funds in surreptitious ways.
Something similar happens in the WaPo headline, whereby the racist dig of Trump's original comments are in effect re-broadcast without situating context. So, yes, I would agree with you there. Still, at least there was a partial attempt to fulfill some of the 5 Ws (who, where, what was said), all of which disappeared in the subsequent rewriting of the headline. Others have noted that WaPo's change in stance communicated that the burden of "proof" had shifted to Harris, which truly is racist, IMO. The entire attack is out of bounds; she shouldn't have to "answer" for such impermissible questioning of her inmost person.
Thanks for replying in such depth and texture.