DMZ America Podcast Ep 171: Why Americans Distrust the Media

Two major newspapers owned by billionaires with business interests tied to the government, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, prompted reader anger when they nullified their intention to endorse Kamala shortly before the election. More than 250,000 people canceled their Post subscriptions.

The non-endorsement scandals are the latest manifestation of Americans’ longstanding distrust of the news media upon which democracy depends in order to function.

In the 1970s, when the media went after Nixon, Watergate and the Vietnam War, 70% of people told Gallup they trusted the media. Now, just 31% express a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in the media to report the news “fully, accurately and fairly.”

Why so much distrust? What are the different reasons people with different politics cite for their feelings?

What and how can media organizations and reporters do to restore trust?

Keywords: news media, newsmedia, news, journalism, newspapers, Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, Los Angeles Times, Pat Soon-Shiong, trust, misinformation, factchecking, bias

The TMI Show Ep 11: Is “Make America Healthy Again” Real?

Stream This Episode on: Rumble.

(It was censored on YouTube.)

TMI Show Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan delve into an almost-familiar acronym: MAHA, which stands for “Make America Healthy Again.” An improbable alliance between former President Donald Trump and Democratic scion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has culminated with their shared MAHA agenda, which calls for reforming federal regulations on food and pharmaceuticals, switching up farm subsidies, and purging public health agencies.

The still-developing MAHA plan taps into longstanding frustrations with the U.S. healthcare system and issues — such as ultra-processed food, the spread chronic disease and declining U.S. life expectancy — that Democrats rarely talk about—not to mention Trump, whose dietary preferences infamously trend toward fast food. Ted and Manila interview Dr. John Dombrowski, CEO of the Washington Pain Center and a practicing physician, about MAHA. What is it? Is it real and serious? What should we expect from a second Trump Administration, and why haven’t Democrats addressed the issue?

In the headlines: The White House memory-holes Biden’s latest big gaffe. Halloween by the Numbers. And Much More!

Keywords: MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, Donald Trump, John Dombrowski, health, public health, diet, nutrition, obesity, addiction, preservatives, regulations, RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr., drugs, pharmaceuticals

Why Can’t Kamala Talk Dude?

           One of the most persistent challenges faced by Kamala Harris’ abbreviated presidential campaign is a vexingly wide gender gap. Men just aren’t that into her.

            Democrats have deployed several approaches to convince male voters to feel the joy.

            Divide and conquer: Harris’ policies divvy up guys by race. Her “opportunity agenda for Black men” would offer special loans and internships to Black entrepreneurs (no word on whether that’s been lawyered for constitutionality), fund federal studies on sickle-cell anemia and other diseases that disproportionately affect Black men and give them priority to profit from the emerging legal marijuana business (note to Democrats: cannabis equity failed in New York). Harris’ “opportunity agenda for Latino men” (see a trend?) would offer Latino guys more small business loans. A Google search for “opportunity agenda for white men” comes up empty but hey, there are still a couple hours left in the race.

Kamala is also playing the class card. A spot for the Pittsburgh TV market features a Steelers fan and maintenance worker who calls himself a “yinzer” (Pittsburgh native). “Donald Trump does not care about the working man whatsoever,” he says. “He’s a little rich kid too; he ain’t me. Little silver spoon boy Donald Trump. How is he relatable to me whatsoever? The guy literally lives in a country club. Do I look like a country club kind of guy?” Don’t tell the yinzers that Harris, worth $8 million and a member of an exclusive country club with a $300,000 initiation fee, is more at home with the Trumps than with them.

            Humor: A Harris super PAC made news with “Man Enough,” an ad that showcases six hypermacho dudes—evoking more than a smidge of homoeroticism (“my full-throated endorsement”)—who say they’re so butch that they eat “carburetors for breakfast” and aren’t “afraid of bears,” but also like chicks and plan to vote for Harris and support abortion rights. An official Harris ad depicts a burly Black finance bro who ditches his plan to refrain from voting after confronted by a passel of disapproving ladies. Ladies are doters for early voters!

            Shame and guilt: Former president Barack Obama called out sexist men whom, he finger-wagged, “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” His wife Michelle helpfully reminded the XY set that “your wife and mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care.” As if men didn’t care about their wives, sisters, mothers and female friends.

            This is a portrait of a campaign that wants men’s votes enough to embarrass itself, but isn’t willing to do much, if anything, to earn them. Democrats suffer from a prepositional disconnect: Harris and her surrogates talk at men, not to or, better still, with them.

            If she loses to Trump, a major contributing factor will be the perception that Harris and the Democrats don’t like men.

This is puzzling. Harris knows men. She’s married to one. Most of her Senate colleges are men. Her running mate is a guy, albeit a goofy beta. Why can’t Kamala speak fluent dude?

            A more talented politician would recognize male voters—especially white male voters—less as an obstacle to fool, bully or circumnavigate than as what they realty are: virgin electoral territory.

American men are suffering from a set of very real, very serious problems with which neither political party has begun to identify, much less engage.

            One of Trump’s superpowers in 2016 was his recognition of the pain, frustration and anger of Rust Belt voters (including men) left behind by deindustrialization to wallow in poverty, addiction and dysfunction. Trump, and now his running mate J.D. Vance, described the shuttered factories and the blighted neighborhoods in places like Dayton, Ohio, where I grew up. They argued that American citizens deserved better and promised to fix it. Trump didn’t fix it as president. Maybe he couldn’t.

But he did see the people of Flyover Country. That was enough to take over the GOP, defeat Hillary Clinton and build the MAGA movement.

            Today, boys and men represent an even bigger untapped reservoir of political support for the politician and party with enough vision to recognize it. Males are in crisis. They are angry and confused.

            Men are in crisis.

They are desperate for compassion and looking for leadership.

            Males are far more likely to abuse and become addicted to illegal drugs than females. Boys drop out of high school more than girls. Males are 50% of the population yet account for most fatal cancer and nearly 80% of suicides. Trapped in an increasingly feminized system of primary, secondary and higher education with rules designed for “calmer” females, boys and men are now being taught that they are historically responsible for rape, colonialism, imperialism and every other conceivable form of oppression. They are ordered to sit silently by as they are passed over for jobs, awards and other opportunities in order to make up for the historic sins of systemic sexism and misogyny. Men cannot and should not be proud of masculinity or maleness.

They ought be ashamed. As a liberal pundit put it in 2019, “Old White Men Like Me Need to Shut Up and Step Aside.”

            The Male Problem blows up during adulthood. 58% of college students are women; 42% are men. Moreover, women graduate in higher numbers—68% compared to 61% for guys—so the proportion of women with college degrees in the workforce is even higher. This is not a new problem; colleges began admitting more girls than boys in 1979. Nor is it a correction. Flipping a historical injustice, sexual discrimination, on its head does not redress it; it merely reverses the role of victim and oppressor.

            Cultural progressives posit an identitarian version of trickle-down economics in which equity erases the old gender pay gap that favored men, lifting up women without hurting men. But wages are a zero-sum game that men are losing. “In 1979, the median hourly wage for women was 62.7% of the median hourly wage for men; by 2012, it was 82.8%,” according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. “However, a big chunk of that improvement—more than a quarter of it—happened because of men’s wage losses, rather than women’s wage gains.”

            Gender inequality increasingly looks like a two-way street, with males bearing the brunt not only economically but socially because high-earning women are not willing to marry, support or subsidize lower-achieving men. Trophy husbands, cultural shifts notwithstanding, are not a thing.

            It’s hardly surprising that the unabashedly macho swagger of Trumpism finds a receptive audience among America’s lost boys. As the conservative activist Charlie Kirk told Vanity Fair, guys “want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them.”

            That’s not the Democrats.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

 

The TMI Show Ep 9: Halloween Takes the District!

Pre-BOO! It’s the day before Halloween and The TMI Show is turning dark with DC By Foot tour guide Trevor Comeau, who guides scaredy-cat out-of-towners through the scariest haunts of Georgetown and other terrifying nabes in the city that keeps America’s darkest secrets: Washington. Co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan help remind you that it’s not just the looming showdown between the Orange Ghost of Nativism Past and Present, and former A.G., aka She Who Supplies Old Sparky at San Quentin with new corpses-to-be that ought to scare you.

In the headlines: A leading pro-Iraq War neocon quits the Washington Post for not endorsing Kamala. Georgian Elections on Our Mind. And Much More!

 

DMZ America Podcast Ep 170: Canadian Cartoonist Michael deAdder on Our Crazy Election

With one week left before Election Day 2024, editorial cartoonists with opposing politics and a great friendship, Ted Rall (Left) and Scott Stantis (Right) ask: why is Kamala Harris dead-even in the polls, and seemingly losing ground, against a maniac like Donald Trump? How did we get here? What did Biden, Harris and the Democrats do wrong and what could they have done better? And, if she wins, will they learn any lessons from the votes they left on the table through their own unforced errors?

Joining Ted and Scott is award-winning political cartoonist Michael deAdder, a Canadian artist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and many other American publications. What is the view of the American race as seen by our northern neighbor? What would be the likely reaction to each potential outcome?

Watch the Video Version: here.

 

The TMI Show Ep 9: What Should Lefties Do About Kamala?

What do you do as a voter when your party isn’t that into you? On today’s TMI Show, in which there’s no such thing as Too Much Information, Ted Rall and Scott Stantis (guest hosting for Manila Chan) Progressive and other left-leaning Democrats are once again wrestling with a dilemma they’ve seen before: Kamala Harris has pivoted to the right of her party, eschewing progressive policies, campaigning with far-right Liz Cheney and supporting Israel against Gaza, and Ukraine against Russia.

Should progressives support Harris despite her snubs, hoping she secretly plans to move left of she wins? Should they punish her by voting third party or even for Trump? Or should they abstain from voting?

 

The TMI Show Ep 8: What Is Fascism?

As a history major at Columbia University, The TMI Show’s own Ted Rall’s thesis advisor was Professor Robert O. Paxton. Paxton wrote THE book on French fascism, “Vichy France.” He went on to write THE book on fascism writ large, “The Anatomy of Fascism.” Now age 92, Paxton recently gave an interview in which he cautiously agreed with the description of the MAGA movement led by former President Donald Trump as fascist in the traditional 20th century sense of the word. Kamala Harris has also weighed in, calling Trump himself a fascist.

What is fascism? Does Trump fit the bill? What about Trumpism?

Ted and TMI Show Guest Co-host Scott Stantis explain fascism’s historical origins in Italy after World War I through its radical manifestation in Nazi Germany and work to answer the question: is Donald Trump, with a 50% chance of winning the 2024 presidential election, a fascist?

The TMI Show: What is Fascism?

Tomorrow at 10 am ET live on The TMI Show, Manila Chan and Robert Paxton former student Ted Rall will focus on Fascism. What is fascism? Is Kamala Harris right that Donald Trump is a fascist?

DMZ America Podcast Ep 169: Kamala Flagging as Trump Gains

Less than two weeks before Election Day, polls and a general sense of zeitgeist has many political commentators feeling that the tide is running away from Kamala Harris and toward Donald Trump in a razor-tight election campaign. Is it too late for Harris to solve her big problems: voters who don’t feel that they know her well enough to trust her with the launch codes, and her failure to articulate an enticing policy agenda they can easily understand? Political cartoonists and best friends Ted Rall (recovering Democrat, now Left) and Scott Stantis (recovering Republican, now Libertarian) walk you through the lay of this strange new land.

Watch the Video Version: here.

DMZ America Podcast, DMZ America, Ted Rall, Scott Stantis, politics, political podcast, politics podcast, editorial cartoons, political cartoons, cartoons, 2024 election campaign, polls, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris

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