I am still getting hate mail for my blog post, this time from a neighbor. She was so angry it took her a few days to calm down enough to write to me (in all caps!)
(I shut down comments yesterday)
When I wrote analysis for the Washington Post, I sometimes got angry email from MAGA people.
I did get a memorable letter from a librarian in Tennessee who was enraged at how I portrayed Andrew Jackson in one of my books.
But this has never happened.
I think it's interesting.
@queenofnewyork I get it.
I think when I wrote the Misinformation-Outrage cycle, even though I started with that Yankee analogy, people still felt comfortable. They thought I didn't mean them.
I this comes from the switch I made from talking people off the ledge by giving them facts to saying, "Stay off the damned ledge. You are a victim of a for-profit rage machine."
Nobody likes being told that.
From what I understand, it is very pleasurable to watch hours of MSNBC. One friend told me he enjoys it, but now he shuts it off when he starts feeling angry.
I think the anger is also pleasurable because of the Us v. Them mentality. They want to land blows on the enemy.
It brings people down to a base level.
Nobody is saying you should. This is the point people missed from my blog post.
Given who she is, and given the way she talks she could never possibly appear on an MSNBC talk show. The hosts were right. The execs were wrong.
But this is because of the nature of those talk shows. They are not news or fact based.
The real problem for a talk show or interview isn't that she makes stuff up, it's that she makes up the wrong stuff.
One thing that really annoyed people (I think) was that I put a left-wing pundits making up stuff (and being wrong) next to a right-wing example.
I did that to show that conspiracy theories are acceptable on MSNBC, but the whole point of a partisan pundit (partisan = speaks for a cause, pundit = offers opinions) is that they have to please the audience (partisan) with their opinions or the show won't work.
See why I pissed off MSNBC viewers?
Here is the funny thing: I said all of this in my series, the Misinformation-outrage cycle, but people felt comfortable becasue they didn't realize I was talking about them, even though I started with that "there are no Yankee's here" anedcote. Nobody thinks it's them.
My quibble here is that MSNBC is not a news agency. The talk show hosts are not news reporters.
News reporters have different needs. They confirm stories. This is why actual news reporters are dismayed by what happened.
Why does Ronna Daniel lose credibility for her lies, while Larry Tribe loses no credibility for being wrong almost all the time. Because she tells the wrong kind of lies.
And because they need entertainers. She wouldn't be right at all.
Teri Kanefield
Queen of Anxiety
cmasone
Joe ❌👑