Yesterday, the blogging Madison, Wisconsin, retired law professor began a post titled with this from Mediaite, “Elon Musk Gives Rambling Explanation of DOGE’s Work In Oval Office Address” by by stating, “I’m laughing at that Mediaite headline.” Then she goes on one of her trademarked rants about a tangential detail in a serious topic, the fact that the website used the word “rambled.”
It was the first thing I read this morning, and, to use vernacular that Anderson Cooper might use, it pissed me off. This is typical Althouse, but I have about reached the metaphorical end of my rope with her elite, arrogant, “Oh, the things you lesser proles concern yourself with!” approach to vital national controversies that normal Americans—you know, people who don’t have generous pensions and an estimated net worth of around $5 million dollars—have good reason to be very concerned about. She just sits on her “fiercely” non-partisan and laughs from her scholarly “What fools these mortal be!” perch.
I watched Musk’s unusual Oval Office monologue while he let his kid climb all over him. By any legitimate standard, his performance, while eccentric, was impressive, and compared to the bottom-of-the-barrel rhetorical standards of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and, yes, Donald Trump, it was dazzling. The man is obviously intelligent and focused, and, unless you are blinded by ideologically inspired hate, likeable. Most people don’t have or take the time to watch things like Musk’s off-the-cuff explanation of what DOGE is doing, so they rely on their supposedly astute and engaged friends and, because it is supposedly why they exist, news sources like Mediaite.
The fact that most of these sources are furiously spinning and manipulating their accounts to turn public opinion against Trump and Musk isn’t funny. It’s a ongoing crisis that needs a unified, measured, forceful and unified response by the people who have the intellect to understand what’s wrong with an unethical and untrustworthy journalism culture and the time and resources to help everyone else understand it too.
Here’s a headline from a New York Times editorial today: “If Trump Triggers a Constitutional Crisis, No Part of Society Can Remain Silent.” That’s classic, sinister, fake news. If any President “triggers a constitutional crisis” all parts of society should speak up, and so what? This is the variety of fake news propaganda that I call “future news.” The objective is to frame Trump as a potential dictator, and to fuel the Trump-Deranged narrative that his election triggered a constitutional crisis because he’s really the reincarnation of Hitler. That headline isn’t funny either. It is one more bit of terrible evidence that one whole side of the American political system is dedicated to using any means necessary to expand its power while rejecting core values (do I have to list them again?) of the United States of America as laid out in the nation’s founding documents.
Headlines like Mediaite’s support truly unhinged anti-Musk/ anti-Trump hate like….let’s see, I’m visiting Facebook now….Oh! Here’s a meme with 59 likes, sads and cares from a nice, normal, baseball loving lawyer…
This guy is ashamed that voters rejected a party that pretended its elected President was sharp as a tack when he couldn’t speak without notes and a teleprompter and then ran someone for President who was chosen purely because of her lady parts and skin shade. He’s ashamed that the nation is finally—-oh, maybe a half-century or more late, but still—making a genuine effort to slow down unaccountable spending and agency agendas that the public doesn’t endorse or even know about. He feels this way because the indoctrination camps we call “universities” imbued him and most of his generation with a fondness for Marxism and European nanny states.
I just saw another one from a vocal Trump-Deranged lawyer:
That post also had over 50 likes and loves. Isn’t it great that once-sane people who fervently supported civil right want a company to be punished for not discriminating on the basis of race, ethnicity and gender?
I have to let these brain-damaged people—and they have been brain-damaged by years and years of distortions like that Mediaite headline—go on their merry, deranged way because they no longer are capable of accepting or respecting anything but the Trunp-Deranged messages of the social media Borg.
And Ann Althouse thinks that’s hilarious?
I’m suspending the Althouse blog for a month. Let me know if Ann has anything useful to say when she isn’t giggling over a genuine threat to American democracy and its philosophical foundations.
Ethics Alarms 
From my reading, Althouse is laughing derisively at Mediaite’s headline. She gives some examples of what Mediaite calls rambling, and then calls for Musk to ramble on, because it is indeed far better than anything that came out of the Biden administration. I came away with the impression that she’s supportive of Musk and frustrated with Mediaite, because the news should have been Musk’s revelation that someone increased her net worth by orders of magnitude above her salary. Instead, Mediaite tries to discredit Musk by avoiding substance and claiming his unscripted remarks were “rambling.” I can understand being frustrated, though, with the subdued tone Althouse takes, in sort of the same way you object to Turley’s classic understatements. I tend to read her blog more for her commentariat’s reactions than for her analysis.
By now I think I can tell the difference between a Nelson “Ha-Ha!” and Alhouse’s above-it-all amusement. She defines the Ivory Tower mentality. It’s sickening.
I definitely didn’t want to imply a Nelson “Ha-ha!”! That’s more for the descent of condign justice, correct? And yes, I’ll agree that her bemusement is from a lofty height, derision at ungainly games the plebes performed. But I do agree with her sentiment that if what Musk did was rambling, then please, ramble on!
I know. But, again, that’s a trivializing frame job by Althouse, burying the lede. The issue isn’t Musk, it’s the news media’s efforts to undermine a patriot who is giving his unbelievably valuable time to the nation to address a genuine crisis.
Agreed, Althouse is weird with her flighty, random focus on language, “garner” in particular. But given she’s a retired law prof in a wildly lefty locale, it’s refreshing when she’s lucid. An occasionally reasonable voice in a deep corner of leftism. Sometimes you have to take what you can get.
I wonder what the opportunity cost of Musk’s time is in terms of dollars. I would venture it is in the 6 figures per hour.
By now I think I can tell the difference between a Nelson “Ha-Ha!” and Alhouse’s above-it-all amusement.
Not this time. Her post absolutely dripped fully earned sarcasm at Mediaite’s expense.
And sarcasm is passive-agressive criticism. She’s supposed to be a truth-teller, not Jerry Seinfeld. She criticizes word choice rather than what the news media is doing, or trying to do.
Opening para: I’m laughing at that Mediaite headline. Musk speaks at length, extemporaneously, answering all the questions, managing his little son, keeping up good cheer, and making a lot of us viewers feel energized and optimistic, and Mediaite needs to stress that he rambled.
That is in the face criticism — nothing passive about it.
I thought Musk’s observing “take your son to work” day was great. Lefties were horrified. The kid was well behaved and deferential and calm. Incredibly refreshing. And Trump was genuinely at ease and fatherly and engaged with the boy. Let’s compare Master X to, oh say, Hunter Biden. No lefties complained when Joe “took Hunter to work” with him. Or when he “took his wife to work” with him. Or was it vice versa? Of course, had he taken a daughter to work, that would have been admirable.
Anyway, I loved going to work with my dad, visiting customers or rattling around at “the shop.” Nice Musk did the same for his kid.
And yes, Musk was impressive. It’s nice having people who can speak and answer questions at the top of the government. All those Obama operatives should be shot for inflicting four years of absolutely no one at the helm on the country and the world.
As to media being more truthful, it wouldn’t make any difference. The Trump Deranged Lefties, but I repeat myself, are going to believe what they want to believe regardless. Only the moderates and conservatives will save the country. And moderates and conservatives know full well what the media and the blob are up to, so they ignore the mainstream media.