MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Chris Perez @ NYPost.com, Aug. 16
White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon claims he wants to “crush” the far-right — calling them “losers” and “a collection of clowns” — during a shockingly candid interview with a liberal magazine.
“Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers. It’s a fringe element,” Bannon said during a surprise phone call with The American Prospect writer Robert Kuttner.
“I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more,” he added. “These guys are a collection of clowns.”
The rare interview, which was published Wednesday, covered a wide range of topics — including the events in Charlottesville, Bannon’s ongoing rivalries inside the White House, and economic tensions between the US and China [....]
More on the original piece, which comes from a phone interview occurring soon after Trump's infamous Tues. news conference, below the fold...
Comments
I posted the secondary source for this first, Murdoch's NYPost, because I saw it first and I think what they are highlighting is surprising and important and may indicate a change in right wing media news.
But here's the actual piece, the whole is also important, the title is quite appropriate, sounds real sure of himself, almost arrogant:
Steve Bannon, Unrepentant
By Robert Kuttner @ The American Prospect, August 16, 2017
Trump’s embattled strategist phones me, unbidden, to opine on China, Korea, and his enemies in the administration.
edited mistake duplicate in quote
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 1:42am
Bannon, who's the clown? You're the clown. Your job is running the alt-reich circus, which just crashed and burned.
The CEO's of the biggest US companies decided they can handle things without Trump Bannon hate. lies and fraud.
by NCD on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 12:44am
Axios' Jonathan Swan talked to a couple of Bannon's friendlies about this interview and they think he's made some trouble for himself here and has some 'splainin to do, and not about the white nationalists, but on like 5 other points, summary:
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 2:44am
I really hope CNN today keeps talking about this part "He talked about changing personnel in a way that made him sound like the president"
That should go down well with Donald
by Obey on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 3:01am
New OED entry: The Scaramucci - Trump era government official committing accidental Hara Kiri by means of a cocaine-infused phone call to a journalist. Example: "Steve Bannon totally scaramucci'd that one".
by Obey on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 11:05am
you should have copyrighted it right away, too late now:
Steve Bannon just pulled a Scaramucci @ Vice News, Aug. 17
The comparison by using the word actually brings up something that interests me, whether it is really accurate remains to be seen. Scaramucci clearly desperately wanted to work for and please Trump and be a Trump mouthpiece to the point of it ruining his marriage. He seemed genuinely clueless about his call to LIzza being on the record, and that in fact was a major reason he would be unqualified to be communications director--he did not even know the basic rules of the game for manipulating media.
I saw a panel last night on either CNN or MSNBC, all journalists, with Kuttner included, where they went into Kuttner's puzzlement with Bannon's call, the odd nature of it being right around the time of the Trump press conference, Bannon being in a good mood, him reaching out to a liberal journalist, supposedly on a whim. Kuttner pointed out: this is no newbie at media rules, this is Mr. Breitbart, he more than knows the rules about this all! That if you don't say this is off the record, it's on the record. Kuttner on air still seemed genuinely puzzled by the call, he still wasn't sure whether it was a Machiavellian Bannon politically move or an idiotically arrogant and clueless Bannon move. Precisely because it was reaching out across the divide. Especially because he dissed white nationalists.
Whatever the case, it is clear Bannon still believes there can be a new political coalition in this country across certain divides. What is really delusional is to think that Trump as president can make that work now! That would be the bubble effect of him being in the White House? I can't emphasize enough how Kuttner on TV last night still seemed puzzled by whether the call was Machiavellian or just plain stupid. It's all very interesting.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 12:48pm
p.s. on TV, Kuttner was almost like reaching out to fellow journalists with: help me figure out why this happened.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 12:56pm
Oh forgot about this: it could not have been total whimsy on Bannon's part because he also went on the record for this New York Times piece published yesterday, whether they called him or he called them is not clear:
Trump’s Embrace of Racially Charged Past Puts Republicans in Crisis
By JEREMY W. PETERS, JONATHAN MARTIN and JACK HEALY AUG. 16
So I interpret both pieces together this way: he told Kuttner that "they" would eventually have to crush the clownish white nationalists, but for now they were a useful tool to troll the identity people in the Dem party, and the identity politics people's reaction will turn off the general public to the Dem party, and that will cause a revolution, a new coalition to grow.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 1:12pm
Interesting. But I'm still going with the massive-piles-of-cocaine explanation for this one. I run into enough sniffling dickhead finance guys in the local nightlife and I read Bannon and the Mooch in exactly that voice.
Insulting his boss's foreign policy, "I make the decisions around here" braggadocio, the exuberant confidence to think they can talk over that liberal academic over there. It's kind of like a reverse Die Hard, in that scene where cokehead Ellis thinks he can talk his way into a deal with Hans Gruber. (Bannon being Ellis, Kuttner being Gruber and Miller as McClane telling him "You don't know who you're dealing with!").
Kuttner's confusion? Maybe doesn't hang out with the right crowd, I'm guessing.
by Obey on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 1:24pm
Excellent use of Die Hard as allegorical story for the ages! Love it.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 1:25pm
Kuttner's confusion? Maybe doesn't hang out with the right crowd, I'm guessing.
Also an excellent point! He seemed very ivory tower liberal, types away at policy opinion, white-paper-type, from a book-lined hidey hole for a publication that few read anymore, ponders and ponders and maybe talks on the phone with Katrina Van Der Heuvel once in a while, gets her take on what's going on with politics....
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 1:30pm
Haha! And to think he mentored those giants of online punditry Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein. Think Spencer A(tta)ckerman went through there too. He now has fewer twitter followers than my nephew's local dance school.
by Obey on Thu, 08/17/2017 - 4:53pm
Steve Bannon’s claim to have played the media with his bizarre interview is deluded
by Heather Timmons @ Quartz, Aug. 17
She goes over most of the related coverage after the article was published, including things like a tweet from Jay Rosen and concludes:
by artappraiser on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 11:38am