Adopting the Pecksniffian pose!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2017

Easy to stampede: But first, a question:

Who the heck writes the headlines in the New York Times? We refer to the following headline, concerning the tax proposal which is currently getting buried by all the excitement concerning Roy Moore:

"Senate Plan Could Increase Taxes on Some Middle-Class Workers"

The Senate plan could increase taxes on some middle-class workers? That headline seems to suggest that it also might not!

In fact, the report which sits beneath that headline says something quite different:

"The Senate bill unveiled on Thursday would raise taxes on millions of middle-class families, according to a preliminary New York Times analysis...[The analysis] found that roughly one-quarter of families in the middle class would see their taxes increase in 2018."

That headline writer changed "would" to "could," a rather significant change. Similarly, he or she vastly downplayed a rather large number—"millions," as found in the rather striking phrase, "millions of middle-class families."

Many more people will see that headline than will read that report. Their understanding of that tax proposal will have been vastly doctored by what that headline says.

So it goes as we rational animals attempt or pretend to conduct a public discourse! Then too, there's the question we kept asking ourselves as the stars of cable news, shouting yay yay yay yay yay, discussed the story involving Roy Moore in lieu of those big boring tax hikes:

Have these people actually read the Washington Post's report?

We especially wondered about that when journalists referred to the "thirty sources" the Washington Post said it had. Also, when they referred to the accounts given, not by Leigh Corfman, who says that Moore molested her in 1979, but by the three additional women who described interactions with Moore.

Has Jake Tapper read the report? We asked that question yesterday afternoon as we watched his CNN program.

How about his panelists, Kirsten Powers and Mary Katharine Ham? Have they read the Post report? Based on various things they said, we also wondered about them.

As usual, though, the strangest factual claim came on Thursday night's Rachel Maddow Show. On Wednesday night, a question had popped into our heads:

At this point, does Maddow ever make a factual claim which hasn't been vastly embellished?

We asked that question on Wednesday night as she made an absurd factual statement while discussing gerrymandering in Virginia. One night later, on Thursday night, the cable star said this:

MADDOW (11/9/17): But that charity scandal is nothing compared to this 3000-word blockbuster in the Washington Post today reported by Stephanie McCrummen and Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites. They interviewed 30 sources, including four women who say they were teenagers as young as 14 when Roy Moore, then a man in his 30s, made aggressive sexual advances to them.

You'll note the mandatory citation of The Thirty, few of whom seem to have said anything especially relevant to the claim of molestation. Do any of our cable stars understand this fact?

On Thursday's program, Maddow had already played the Governor Bentley sex tape for perhaps the ten millionth time, wonderfully covering her eyes and pretending to be five years old. Around the country, liberal brain cells screamed in pain as they initially writhed, then keeled over and died.

Past traumatization of some unknown kind may lead to such behavior. But when she moved on to the Roy Moore case, we were struck by this absurd misstatement:

"Four women say they were teenagers...when Roy Moore, then a man in his 30s, made aggressive sexual advances to them."

Did Rachel Maddow actually read that Washington Post report? In that report, do four women actually "say that Moore made aggressive sexual advances to them?"

Well actually no, they don't! And how do we know that they don't say that? Simple:

"Because we can understand the English language. It's our mother tongue!"

Go ahead—read the final quarter of the Post report. See what the three additional women say, then answer our award-winning questions:

At this point, does Maddow ever make a factual claim which isn't grossly embellished? Also, how many cable journalists actually read that report?

Please understand. We aren't saying that Corfman's account in wrong. In all honesty, though, we can't exactly swear that her account is right.

We do know that the three additional women didn't say "that Moore made aggressive sexual advances to them." Through what process does a former Rhodes scholar make such an inaccurate claim?

In part, we'd have to say this: errors of that type occur when the stars of stage and screen adopt the Pecksniffian pose. Maddow has been invested in that pose at least since 2009.

So, perhaps, are Scherer and Weigel, in this morning's Post. This passage strikes us as ridiculous and sad:

SCHERER AND WEIGEL (11/11/17): In the interview with Hannity, Moore recalled knowing two of the older women, Gloria Thacker Deason and Debbie Wesson Gibson, as well as their parents. “I knew her as a friend,” he said of Gibson, who has said Moore asked her on a date when she was 17, after speaking at her high school. “If we did go out on dates, then we did, but I do not remember that,” Moore said.

When asked about Deason’s claim that he provided her wine on dates when she was 18, Moore said: “In this county, it’s a dry county. We never would have had liquor.”

Alcohol sales began in Etowah County in 1972, years before the alleged encounter, and The Post confirmed that wine was for sale at the time at the pizzeria where Deason remembered Moore taking her when she was under the legal drinking age of 19.

Did Scherer and Weigel actually read the Post's original report? If they did, did they decide to con their readers with some slippery language?

We ask that because Deason doesn't say, in the original report, that Moore bought wine for her before she turned 19. (She only says he might have.) But then, note today's slippery construction! Scherer and Weigel don't say that Moore did that. They just convey that impression!

That said, are we really down to arguing about the offense of (possibly) buying someone wine in the last few months before she turned 19, thereby becoming wine-legal under the laws of her state? Granted, we love to adopt our Pecksiffian pose when the occasion permits. But have we really descended to the point where we take our pose that far?

Leigh Corfman has alleged a criminal act of molestation. We have no reason to doubt her account, though we can't truly swear that it's accurate.

That said, do we really want to say that a gentleman of 32 can't date someone who's 19? To be sure, it's a wonderful pose. Are we sure we want to adopt it?

We found ourselves thinking, just this morning, about the ways of the world. We thought of the Paul Simon song in which a father tells his 9-year-old son about the first time he saw the boy's mother.

The song, one of our favorites, is taken to be semi-autobiographical. In that reading, the song's "traveling salesman" would actually be a performer. This is the context in which the fictional first meeting occurred:

A long time ago, yeah, before you was born, dude
When I was still single and life was great
I held this job as a traveling salesman
It kept me moving from state to state

Well, I'm standing on the corner of Lafayette, state of Louisiana
Wondering where a city boy could go
To get a little conversation, drink a little red wine
Catch a little bit of those Cajun girls dancin' the Zydeco

Personally, we'd rather see Simon stay way from the word "girls." But how old do we think those Cajun girls were when this particular travelling salesman went to see them dancin' the Zydeco?

As we adopt our Pecksniffian pose, we may be ignoring an observable fact of life. For better or worse, for good or for ill, older men tend to be somewhat inclined to catch a little bit of those somewhat younger women.

Because we spent years in the comedy trade, we may have been positioned to see this familiar impulse in action. Perhaps the Pecksniffs simply don't know the way our world tends to work.

Catching the Cajun girls dancin' the Zydeco? In no way is that the same as molesting someone who is 14. In all honesty, though, neither is buying wine for someone who's 19.

Do men as old as 32 sometimes engage in such conduct? Pecksniffs, please! It happens every day of the week!

Just this morning, we were thinking about our own years as traveling salesmen. We never "dated" a teenager, we thought. But then we said, Uh-oh!

Wait a minute! We thought of Name Withheld, who we met at the long-lamented Gampy's when we were 39 and she was a wickedly funny 19.

Bill Scheft, who went on to be Letterman's head joke writer, once said that there's no place in all of Manhattan quite like Gampy's. The lively staff was always part of the deal. During the years in question, few comedians, at least few male comedians, came through Gampy's without noting the wit and vitality of Name Withheld, who was also, it must be said, quite beautiful, as judged by conventional norms.

At the time, she was also a somewhat stymied child of an ongoing, horrendous divorce, a bit as Corfman describes herself at the age of 14.

On our one "date," we went out to lunch to celebrate her 20th birthday. Comedian Jon Hayman was in town that weekend.

"Congratulations," he wryly told us. "She's no longer half your age!" Almost surely, we came back with an instant witty rejoinder. If memory serves, Wayne Cotter was appearing with Hayman that week.

Might we tell you something about things which occur in the world? For better or worse, for good or for ill, older man and younger women do in fact interact all the time. Also, this sometimes happens:

Sometimes, Person A and Person B may possibly like each other. Amazingly, that too can occur. Beautifully, Chekhov explores this remarkable fact in The Lady with The Lapdog. Also, Willa Cather, in My Antonia.

We never "dated" Name Withheld. Nor did we "date" the Hollins women, or the other Name Withheld at Gampy's, with whom we went out one time, for reasons we can't recall. We never dated Name Withheld from the Columbia Punchline, the most unforgettable person we ever met in the world of comedy, though we will guess that she was at least 21.

(More unforgettable than Leno, who was so funny that night in his hotel room in Fort Lauderdale, or Barr, who struck us as the brightest person we ever met in comedy during her week in Baltimore in 1985, before she massively hit? More unforgettable than the Poundstone of 1983, who wasn't yet known at all? More unforgettable than Name Withheld, the unforgettable fellow who went on to be Leno's head joke writer?

(Yes, she was even more unforgettable than them, with her angry attacks on "northern condescension" and her claim that she could tell what county you were from in South Carolina just by assessing your accent. Also, if we plan to be honest, because, judged by conventional norms, she was remarkably beautiful, which served to position the regional fury as a bit of a cultural mystery.)

We never "dated" those people, but trust us! For good or for ill, a whole lot of city boys go to catch a little bit of those Cajun girls dancin' the Zydeco! There's nothing automatically "wrong" with this conduct, until such time as there is, although the impulse is problematic all around the world.

Did Roy Moore molest a 14-year-old girl? We will guess that he probably did, but we can't say we're totally certain.

What makes us withhold our certainty? Pecksniff, please!

Remember how the professors stampeded in the Duke lacrosse case? Uh-oh! It was the prosecutor who ended up going to prison!

After that, remember how the professors stampeded in the UVa case? Uh-oh! Rolling Stone ended up paying millions of dollars to several of the people they had managed to slander.

Years before that, the milk carton crowd stampeded about the McMartin preschool case (and others). Innocent people spent years in prison. And how weird! We'd all been so instantly certain!

One final note about Moore, in the form of a guess:

Posing pundits are amazed that he would go out with women whose ages ranged from 17 to 19. They mock the fact that he (and they) said this was done with the permission of their mothers.

We've seen quite a few pundits who didn't seem to realize that this point was described in the original report. That said, we'll offer this:

This practice may have seemed a bit less strange in the Biblical realms of Alabama in 1979. Issues of age may have been calculated differently there. And by the way:

In the Post report, two of the mothers said they were thrilled that Moore was dating their daughters. To them, this dating apparently seemed quite normal. We've seen quite a few pundits who didn't quite seem to have read quite that far in the Post report.

The Pecksniffs have been blowing right past that. In part, it's because they've been adopting a pose. In part, it's because they didn't read the Post report.

Is it also because of the northern condescension concerning which a memorable staffer at the Punchline once so hotly complained? Meanwhile, imagine:

Imagine! Imagine that we can't defeat Roy Moore except by chasing this sex story down! As we've told you many times, our liberal approach has devolved to this:

We can't beat them at the polls, so we pray pray pray pray pray that we can get them locked up! Oh please please please please please please please! Please let us helpless liberals get The Others arrested!

The Pecksniffs have been stampeding this week. At the same time, it isn't entirely clear that they ever got around to reading the Post's report.

Molestation isn't OK. It is, and should be, a crime. That said, it's fairly clear that liberal elites have ignored harassment, assault, misogyny and molestation all over our liberal warrens for a great many years.

Molestation isn't OK, but neither is the dumbnification which comes to us in our liberal tents from the increasingly ludicrous Maddow on down. Neither is the need to stampede in somewhat selective ways. Imagine, though! We're so pitiful we know of no other way to defeat a clown like Roy Moore!

"Four women say...Moore, then a man in his 30s, made aggressive sexual advances to them?"

Maddow has a staff of twenty. Did anyone read that report?

Franz Kafka felt vindicated last night!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Convicting Donald J. Trump concerning the five Russian women: Franz Kafka was nodding and smiling last night as he watched cable TV.

Consider the way our liberal stars treated the news about Moscow. Donald J. Trump's security man said the Russkies had offered to send five women to the oligarch's hotel room during his 2013 visit!

Keith Schiller says he rejected the offer, but so what? All over liberal cable, this denial was skillfully treated as a type of confession.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" Franz Kafka said. The craziest analysis of them all was offered to Ari Melber:

MELBER (11/9/17): Let me bring in NBC national security reporter Julia Ainsley, who has also been following the Russia probe, and a former Watergate special prosecutor, Nick Ackerman.

Nick, prosecutors sometimes look at things more aggressively than others. But how do you view this development?

ACKERMAN: I mean, I view this as an absolutely dynamite development. To me, this confirms the Steele report and the dossier that this did happen.

Say what? Schiller's denial that something occurred confirms that something did happen?

Somewhere, Kafka felt vindicated in all the weird things he had written. For his part, Melber seemed to need more:

MELBER (continuing directly): How does it do? How does it do that when you have a bodyguard saying no?

ACKERMAN: Because you've got a bodyguard who is a longtime loyalist, who actually admitted that Trump was offered five women up to his hotel room. You have to ask yourself, "Why did he make that admission?"

Might we jump in here?

Why did Schiller "make that admission?" Could it be because he was testifying under oath and someone had asked him a question?

Not to Ackerman, it couldn't! Or at least, it couldn't be that simple.

Let's provide some background. Over the past few months, Ackerman has played the role of the partisan hangin' judge on MSNBC. He's the guy who can interpret every event in the way the herd prefers.

Ackerman has been like this for months. After asking his puzzling question, he continued as follows:

ACKERMAN (continuing directly): From a prosecutor's standpoint, my guess would be, he had to do it because other people who are honest, who are third parties, overheard that admission. Overheard that statement. And so Keith Schiller had no choice but to admit to that, unless he wanted to put himself into a perjury box.

What he did is, he pulled the old selective memory trick. "Yes, I remember what everybody else remembered about the offer. But I do know that when we went back to the hotel room, no one is ever going to be able to testify to that. Because it was just me, Donald Trump and some Russians who are never going to testify to that.

MELBER: Julia—

ACKERMAN: To me, this is extremely disturbing.

Finally, a point of agreement! We think this is extremely disturbing too.

To us, though, the disturbing behavior is Ackerman's. Stating the obvious, MSNBC should take this ludicrous old hack and toss him headfirst down the stairs, across the sidewalk and out into the street.

In that passage, Ackerman engages in the rankest form of speculation. More accurately, his presentation is pure novelization. He imagines a reason for Schiller's statement, then imagines that Schiller is lying in the rest of what he said.

Did Schiller "pull the old selective memory trick" when he explained what happened? Ackerman has zero evidentiary basis for this claim, in which he accuses Schiller of committing a felony. He's simply dreaming it up. What in the world is this crazy old man doing on national television?

Surely, we all know the answer! All over partisan cable last night, liberal and mainstream pundits displayed an amazing array of ways to turn Schiller's denial into a confession, thus pleasing the stampeding herd.

We saw no one else as ludicrous as Ackerman. But everyone seemed to be equipped with an instant group talking-point, which was handed to poor Melber by NBC's on Ken Dilanian.

Dilanian had written a report to which everyone was reacting. Somehow, he also had a talking point which everyone would ape:

MELBER: There's a lot of different reactions to your piece. And Nick Ackerman here is giving a view, but The Daily Caller today, a conservative site, says no, this helps Trump.

Do you want to get into that scorecard?

DILANIAN: I wouldn't go so far as Nick went. But I think it's interesting and notable, certainly, that the idea of Russian women to Donald Trump's hotel room was raised. You really can't imagine that offer being made to Barack Obama or George W. Bush. I think that`s why people are reacting to this.

And as Julia said, there is a history of Russian kompromat, particularly at this hotel. The Ritz Carlton in Moscow is reputed to be wired for sound and video as a honey trap by the Russian intelligence services.

Say what? "You really can't imagine that offer being made to Barack Obama or George W. Bush?"

People, of course you can! As Dilanian notes, this is regarded as a common practice of Russkie intelligence services. Had Obama or Bush hit the Ritz before they were president, why wouldn't the Russkies have tried the very same thing?

Through the reach of whatever group dynamic, Dilanian's ridiculous talking point was repeated far and wide last night, all over CNN and MSNBC. Everyone agreed to agree:

Pundits simply couldn't imagine the Russkies trying this with Obama of Bush. They couldn't imagine this offer being made to anyone but Donald J. Trump!

As for Melber, he returned to Ackerman after Dilanian floated his point. The crazy old coot said this:

MELBER (continuing directly): Nick, I mean, you'd need more, though, right?

ACKERMAN: Well, you don't have proof beyond a reasonable doubt or even by a preponderance of the evidence. But if you look at the character of the individual involved. You look at the witness that's involved and his closeness to Trump, the fact that he even mentions that there is an offer of five women to go to his hotel room, and you compare that to the Steele dossier, it corroborates half of the story. I mean, it`s not like there was nothing that was ever said about prostitutes or women.

"You don`t have proof beyond a reasonable doubt?" Go ahead! Laugh out loud!

During the rest of Ackerman's spiel, even Kafka might have hung his head, depressed by what he had seen. Try to believe that the crazy old coot was actually willing to say this:

"The fact that he even mentions that there is an offer of five women to go to his hotel room, and you compare that to the Steele dossier, it corroborates half of the story."

It corroborates half the story! More precisely, it corroborates the half of the story where an offer is made. It only contradicts the half of the story where the offer is accepted!

At this point, Melber ended the segment, with a bit of a jibe thrown Ackerman's way. But will your lizard let you see the general drift of this ludicrous presentation, in which our own tribe is coming to be so very much like the ship of fools over at Fox?

Our prisons are full of innocent people because of prosecutors who are willing to "reason" like Ackerman did in that segment. That said, he's been offering bullshit like that on MSNBC for the past quite a few months.

Meanwhile, all over cable, people recited the Dilanian talking point. They couldn't imagine the Russkies making an offer like that to Obama or Bush! Somehow, this seemed to mean that the Steele dossier's remarkable claims in this area are maybe perhaps and very possibly just very likely correct.

(Editor's note: Even for Trump, the claims made in that dossier seem almost impossibly crazy. Or has anyone actually read it?)

Last night, all over cable, malfunctioning minds were turning denial into confession. Meanwhile, hallelujah! In the first ten minutes of Anderson Cooper, a former CIA senior officer managed to offer this:

COOPER (11/9/17): Joining us tonight is former FBI and CIA senior official Phil Mudd, former CIA senior officer and Russia expert Steve Hall, and CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Steve, this offer of—alleged offer of the women to then-citizen Trump, would you be more surprised if the Russians hadn't tried to do something like this?

HALL: Yes. Frankly, Anderson, I definitely would have been more surprised. This is standard operating procedure for the Russians. You have to remember, in 2013, this is before obviously Trump was a candidate. But nevertheless, he was what the Russians I think would have considered an American oligarch. So somebody from their own world view, somebody with money, somebody with power and somebody who you just never know one day what they're going to end up being.

That normally triggers the very low threshold for the FSB, which is the internal service of the internal Russian intelligence service for the beginning of collecting all sorts of information, anything they can get their hands on or set up that could be used in a compromising situation in the future kompromat.

So this would have been done—if it hadn't been Donald Trump, I don't know how many senior American millionaires, billionaires came through Moscow at that time, but they all would have had this type of collection. And it's very aggressive and it's very assertive. And the FSB has been doing it for, you know, since Lenin's time. And so, they're just very good at it and they would have done it as a routine thing.

Ken Dilanian couldn't imagine! At CNN, it was clear that Steve Hall pretty much could.

Somewhere, Kafka was exulting last night. He was also asking an obvious question:

Where in the world does corporate cable come up with these pitiful guys?

Tomorrow: Rachel Maddow's exciting claim about "aggressive sexual advances"

GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRAZY: Governor Bentley's sex tape again!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Part 4—One modern strain of The Crazy: In the future, if there is a future, geographers, if such people exist, will examine the geologic strata of the craziness which seized control of American discourse at least by 1992.

If they exist, they'll pick through the various geologic strata of The Crazy. At some point, embarrassed, chagrined, they'll be forced to discuss what happened again last night.

During the era in question, did Louis C. K. make people watch him masturbate over and over again? Apparently yes, he did.

Somewhat similarly, the geographers will have to explain the role of the Governor Bentley sex tape, which cable viewers, just last night, were forced to confront again.

In this case, the purveyor of The Crazy was a major cable news star who shall go unnamed. She has risen to the top through her "performance of the [Name Withheld] figure," or so the ridiculous Janet Malcolm has ever so weirdly said.

C. K., who we tinily semi-knew long ago, has long been engaged in his performance of the Louie figure. At times, he's produced superlative work. He's also produced a large amount of transparent "startle laugh" crap.

Last night, the unnamed cable star in question returned to the Governor Bentley sex tape for perhaps the ten millionth time. In this way, her liberal viewers were again exposed to The Crazy, disordered and ill.

If there actually is a future, historians will marvel at the fact that liberals weren't able to see The Crazy when it came at them from this corporate source. They'll marvel at the fact that liberals couldn't spot The Crazy in this cable star's work. They'll link this to an even larger point of amazement:

They'll note the fact that liberals couldn't spot the spread of The Crazy, not until The Crazy adopted the form of one Donald J. Trump.

They couldn't or wouldn't see The Crazy when it was performed by Chris Matthews in his endless attacks on "today's man-woman," Candidate Al Gore. They couldn't or wouldn't see The Crazy when Matthews kept sliming Hillary Clinton, then the nation's first lady, in blatantly misogynistic ways. (Nurse Ratched! Evita Peron!)

They couldn't or wouldn't see The Crazy when the children pretended that Hillary Clinton had been performing seances. Later, they had oodles of fun when she said, apparently accurately, that she had rooted for the Cubs and the Yankees when she was a child.

They couldn't see The Crazy when the children of the corporate press slimed Naomi Wolf within an inch of her life. (Earth tones! Alpha male!) They couldn't see it when the children kept playing that funny videotape of the extremely funny Asian people at the Buddhist temple, where nothing actually happened, in spite of what Matthews said.

They couldn't see it when the children announced their love for Gennifer Flowers, for whose truthfulness they stood in line to vouch.

In 1995, Flowers had written this about her first glimpse of Hillary Clinton: "I was shocked. She looked like a big fat frump with her hair hanging down kind of curly and wavy. She had big, thick glasses; an ugly dress; and a big, fat butt."

Four years later, liberals couldn't see the existence of The Crazy when Matthews fawned to this person for half an hour, for example like this:

MATTHEWS (8/2/99): Well, Mrs. Clinton has offered herself up in a new role. For a long time she offered herself as the new Eleanor Roosevelt. She channeled with her; she apparently talked to her.

I'm just kidding here. But she has clearly tried to model herself after that great first lady, liberal first lady of Franklin Roosevelt's. And now it seems like she's offering herself in a new role, as a kind of a person who's had a therapeutic role in life. Her job is to take care of a delinquent, someone with psychological problems that she's had to fix or deal with or accept or maintain, or whatever you will, not as particularly a political partner, which was a role she offered up before. You know, you get two for the price of one. Now you get a nurse for the price of the patient, all right? What do you think about her offering herself as Nurse Ratched to the cuckoo's nest here?

[...]

You know, I gotta pay a little tribute here. You're a very beautiful woman, and I, and I have to tell you, he knows that, you know that, and everybody watching knows that; Hillary Clinton knows that. How can a woman put up with a relationship between her husband and somebody, anybody, but especially somebody like you that's a knockout? I don't quite get this relationship.

FLOWERS: Gosh, you make me blush here. I'm telling you, I'll tell you, this—

MATTHEWS: It's an objective statement, Gennifer. I'm not flirting.

Three years later, he was still selling the seance! Beyond that, he was kissing the ascot of the very beautiful woman who had so thoughtfully described the "big, fat butt" of the first lady, who was also the world's most gigantic lesbo, according to his knockout guest.

(For the record, we know of no evidence that Flowers' claim of a torrid, 12-year love affair with "my Bill" was in any way accurate. The children all pretended that he had confessed, much as the children are doing this week with one of their newest targets.)

Future historians will note the fact that liberals couldn't spot The Crazy in Matthews' relentless crazy behavior. Later, they couldn't see it when Keith Olbermann kept airing his smutty misogyny with Michael Musto, his smutty little pal.

Rather, than did see it in that instance, and they discussed his misogyny by name. But they only did so in private, not in public, where their careers might have been affected. Geographers will name the names of the horrible "career liberals" who, in this inexcusable way, permitted The Crazy to spread.

If a future exists after Trump, historians will discuss the way The Crazy routinely spread on page one of the New York Times. They'll discuss the way the liberal world rolled over and died when the Times ran its 4400-word, Bannon-funded, absurdly crackpot "news report" about the scary uranium deal in April 2015, thereby attacking Candidate Clinton in the latest crazy way.

They'll discuss the way that insane report met with zero "resistance" from the fiery TV stars of the career liberal world. They'll discuss the way those same TV stars rolled over and died in 2012 as the Benghazi fables were being assembled.

They'll discuss the way these stars rolled over and died four years later, when James B. Comey, Comey the God, launched his astounding attack on Candidate Hillary Clinton. The fiery stars were too afraid to challenge the famous god's conduct.

In all these discussions, these future historians, if such people exist, will discuss the transparent craziness of our unnamed cable news star.

They'll discuss the fervent way she kept vouching for Matthews, the greatest cable purveyor of The Crazy during the Clinton-Gore years (and one of our greatest misogynists). They'll discuss the fervent way she vouched for Greta Van Susteren (her drinking pal), the Fox News Channel's leading enabler of Donald J. Trump's birtherism.

What kind of person does things like that? With humanity exceeding our own, they'll try to sort that out. Beyond that, they'll discuss the way the liberal rank and file couldn't see the problem with the crazy behavior by this unnamed major star.

Mostly, though, they'll discuss the times when her craziness took center stage under the brightest lights. Last night was the latest such night. Enabled by the report about Roy Moore, the unnamed star, C.K. style, returned to the scene of her repetitive crime.

Good God! She played the Bentley sex tape again, saying we needed to hear it! As she did, she employed all her performance hooks, in which she covers her eyes like a little girl, pretending she can't bear to see (or hear) what can be heard on that horrifying tape.

There was zero reason to play the tape, but that's how past traumatization forces the damaged to work. Not unlike C. K., the unnamed star seems to need some sort of help. Instead, historians will explain that she was a corporate cable star, and that, like Donald J. Trump, she played an active role in spreading The Crazy and normalizing its parts.

You can watch the cable star playing her little girl game right here. Below, you see the transcript of last night's compulsive performance, in which her clowning was helped along by an audience which seemed to be composed of giggling teen-aged girls:

MADDOW (11/9/17): (Ridiculous, crazy transcript to follow, if it's ever published)

Again, you can watch her C.K.-like performance of the Rachel figure by just clicking here.

If history survives Donald J. Trump, geologic strata of The Crazy will come under embarrassed review. At this site, we've endlessly posted past transcripts in which The Crazy has reigned.

Everyone else has agreed that those manifestations shouldn't be discussed. Instead, we liberals pretend that The Crazy arrived with Donald J. Trump.

Our story is crazily bogus. We think of the Cummings poem, little tree:

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

"the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads?" Let's borrow that beautiful meter! In this case, it's the chaits the drums the various players dumb and/or dishonest who have refused to tell the rank and file about The Crazy's spread.

Today, our tribe pretends it started with Trump. We're very much like the innocent children adorning their little tree.

Last night, an unnamed multimillionaire put her hands over her eyes (again) and pretended that she couldn't see or hear the very bad words on that audiotape. It's what she persistently does when she plays the Bentley sex tape, which she seems to love.

The unnamed star was pretending that she was a child. This unnamed star could use some help. So could the liberal world, which agreed to normalize The Crazy long before Trump came along.

Go ahead—watch that tape! Will your lizard let you see the truth? Will your lizard let you see that you're looking at a major steward of The Crazy, whose vines, after all these lunatic years, have basically strangled the world?

She vouches for Matthews; she vouched for Greta. She hid from Benghazi, then from Comey.

She mugs and clowns and entertains us. What kind of horrible person does this?

What kind of person behaves this way? We'll suggest that you read the Times report about whatever is wrong with that other damaged soul, Louis C. K.

Go ahead—watch the tape! Just as light from distant stars permits us to "look back in time," you'll be looking back through one key strand of your nation's deeply disabling Crazy.

Take a good look around, Springsteen said. This is your home town.

Virginia turnout and turnout rates down through the many long years!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Taking a look at the record: Democrats scored a lot of good wins in Virginia Tuesday night.

Beyond that, new House of Delegates member Danica Roem gave one of the best interviews we've ever heard to Lawrence on Tuesday night.

Danica Roem knows how to talk! We plan to discuss her remarks this weekend.

Yesterday, we decided to explore the size of Tuesday's turnout. We hit upon some information which we thought was worth recording.

First, how big was Tuesday's turnout? The answer: Turnout was substantially larger than in the 2013 gubernatorial election, but significantly smaller than in years not long past.

Let's start at the beginning! According to the leading authority on Virginia elections, these were the turnout rates, through 2013, in gubernatorial elections:

Turnout rates, Virginia gubernatorial elections (percent of registered voters)
1977: 62.7 percent
1981: 64.8 percent
1985: 53.0 percent
1989: 66.5 percent

1993: 61.1 percent
1997: 49.5 percent
2001: 46.4 percent
2005: 45.0 percent

2009: 40.4 percent
2013: 43.0 percent

For all data, just start here, then click back through past years. Or you can just click here.

As you can see from these numbers, participation has substantially dropped in the years since 1993. Based on the number of votes cast this week (see below), it looks like this year's turnout rate was roughly 50 percent. That's a big jump from 2013, but it only restores the overall turnout rate to where it stood in 1997.

(Given Tuesday's outcome, we'd assume the increase in turnout came from Democrats more than from Republicans. Presumably, some of the overall rise was caused by Governor McAuliffe's restoration of voting rights to an estimated 156,000 felons this year.)

How much was raw turnout up this year? Here's the figure for this year, as compared to 2013:

Total votes cast, Virginia gubernatorial election
2013: 2.24 million votes
2017: 2.61 million votes

That's an increase of 370,000 votes, or roughly 16.5%. A few points of that increase is attributable to population growth. Presumably, McAuliffe's action helped a bit more.

As compared to recent years, that was a large turnout for a gubernatorial election. Still, turnout fell far short of the norm for a presidential year:

Total votes cast, Virginia presidential election
2012: 3.85 million votes; turnout 71.1%
2016: 3.98 million votes; turnout 72.1%

As you can see, this year's raw total was substantially below where it was last year. Last year, 3.98 million votes were cast in Virginia. This year, the number dropped to 2.61 million. This fact is reflected in the comparative vote totals for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Ralph Northam this year:

Total votes received, Virginia elections:
Hillary Clinton (2016): 1.98 million votes
Ralph Northam (2017): 1.41 million votes

If Democrats liked this year's turnout, there's almost surely room for improvement next year.

Democrats scored a lot of wins across the state. Also, Danica Roem really knows how to talk.

We're most struck by the drop in overall turnout rates since 1993. That pattern still obtained even in this higher-interest year.

Did Carter Page say he had a meeting?

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Well actually no, he did not: Did Carter Page do something wrong last summer? More specifically, did he do something wrong when he journeyed to Moscow in July 2016?

Like you, like the New York Times' Michael Schmidt, we don't know the answer to those questions. Let's make our question a bit more precise:

Has Page now said that he met with, or had a meeting with, or had a private meeting with, Russian government offcials during his trip last summer? More specifically, has he said that he met with, or had a meeting with, Arkadiy Dvorkovich, the deputy Russian prime minister, while he was on that trip?

Because the children are on a stampede, many of the boys and girls are trying to make you think that yes, Carter Page has said that. In reality, he has said no such thing.

How do we know that Carter Page hasn't said that? More specifically, how do we know that he didn't say that to a House committee last week?

How do we know he didn't say that? Let us quote from Senator Ervin, in the sagest reply ever made by a pol:

"Because [we] can understand the English language. It's [our] mother tongue."

We don't know what happened in Moscow last summer. We do know that Page didn't tell the House committee that he met with Dvorkovich when he was on that trip.

We also know that many children, including Schmidt, are trying to make you think different. Before we look at what Schmidt recently did, let's take a look at Gail Collins' new column in search of some comic relief.

The column appears in today's New York Times. What follows is vintage Collins. It also tracks a crackpot archetype, live and direct from the McCarthy era:

COLLINS (11/9/17): The Trump campaign adviser Carter Page made quite a splash with his rambling, six-hour-plus testimony before a congressional committee that demonstrated not only that he had been in contact with Russians during the campaign, but also that the man Trump picked to be one of his top coaches on foreign policy issues is … sort of nuts.

According to Collins, Page was "in contact with Russians!" As the analysts howl in pain, let's try to answer an obvious question:

So who is "sort of nuts" now?

Dearest stampeders, let's understand. There is absolutely nothing "wrong" with being "in contact with Russians!" It's rather hard to go to Moscow without committing such acts.

People are "in contact with Russians" every day of the week! The notion that this would constitute some sort of confession, some sort of offense, comes to us straight from the crackpot days when a Communist was known to be lurking under every bed.

Unless a dog is strapped to the roof of your car, there's absolutely nothing wrong with "being in contact with Russians!" The fact that Collins can author such crap—well, this helps you track the mental horizons of Collins' foppish, ridiculous newspaper.

How foppish is the Hamptonscentric world of the New York Times? This morning, in its Here to Help feature, the great newspaper helps us with this:

Here to Help
ARE FACE MASKS WORTH ALL THE HYPE?

TO SAY THAT FACE MASKS have become popular is a bit of an understatement—Sephora has more than 400 varieties...

And so on. That question comes from the low-IQ world we liberals foolishly regard as smart, chic, intelligent, bright, tres au courant and upscale. Collins' ridiculous statement about Page's offense comes from that same stupid place.

That said, it's true! Carter Page has indeed admitted to "being in contact with Russians!" But has he admitted to having a meeting with Dvorkovich, the deputy prime minister, when he journeyed to Moscow in July 2016?

Not if we're speaking the English language, our own mother tongue! When Page testified to that House committee last week, he said he spoke with Dvorkovich for five or ten seconds, in passing, at a public forum where each man was giving a speech.

He said the "handshake" exchange lasted ten seconds tops. He also drew an obvious distinction about one element of our English language, the one in which Collins pretends to work:

PAGE: Again, I did not meet with him. I greeted him briefly as he was walking off the stage after his speech.

[...]

It was literally— It could not have been more than—it was well less than ten seconds, probably closer to five seconds in terms of that interaction.

That's what Page testified to last week. See pages 36 and 38 of the official transcript.

Like Schmidt, we have no way of knowing if that statement is accurate. But that's what Carter Page actually said. He said he shared a "handshake" exchange with Dvorkovich. He testified that the exchange lasted "well less than ten seconds."

We don't know if that statement is accurate, but that's what Carter Page said. Unless you read the report by Schmidt in yesterday's New York Times, in which he tried to make you think that Page admitted to something else before that House committee.

Schmidt did this by offering clownishly selective excerpts from Page's testimony. Laughably, the cherry-picked excerpts are described, in the Times headline, as "Major Takeaways From Carter Page’s Congressional Interview."

In fairness, the excerpts were certainly "taken away" from all relevant context! The first excerpt appears under this bold-faced heading, in which Schmidt makes a claim which is flatly false:

SCHMIDT (11/8/17): Mr. Page contradicted his previous public statements that he never met with Russian government officials during his trip.

Sad! Schmidt goes on to offer a cherry-picked, extremely short excerpt from Page's testimony. He eliminates the several passages where Page explains that the interaction in question lasted "well less than ten seconds"—all this in the course of claiming that he "contradicted his previous pubic statements" (specifically, those from the Chris Hayes show) during the testimony.

We're sorry, but he didn't do so. We know that because we understand the English language, which may not be the youngster Schmidt's mother tongue.

Here comes a basic fact about our English language. If Person A shares a five-second handshake with Person B in the midst of a public forum, we wouldn't normally say that these two people had thereby "had a meeting" or "had a private meeting," a term Schmidt cherry-picks.

You know that if you understand English—and if you aren't conducting a major stampede.

Like the slippery young Michael Schmidt, we have no way of knowing what Page did in Moscow. For all we know, he devised a plan for World War III with Putin and with Putin's niece!

We don't know if he did that last summer, on his Moscow trip. But we do know what he said to the House committee. He know what he said because a transcript exists, and because the English language is our mother tongue.

We also understand the look of a star chamber. Such chambers are currently being conducted, in stupid ways, all over cable TV.

Chris Matthews conducted one such chamber on Hardball Wednesday night. Long ago, he endlessly ran such operations against Clinton, Clinton, and Gore. Doe to changes in ownership, he now conducts these operations against a whole different set of targets.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what Pettypiece said. As was true way back back then, so too today:

The strivers will make fools of themselves in order to echo the views of their powerful cable news hosts. Either that, or the strivers don't understand the simplest elements of their mother tongue.

Carter Page admitted that he was in contact with Russians! Truthfully, we aren't making that up. The pundit who had the dog strapped to her brain actually filed that complaint!

Meanwhile, are face masks worth all the hype? And had you ever heard of this hype?

The New York Times provides no links to its daily "Here to Help" feature. In fairness, we would be embarrassed too, if we published garbage like that.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE CRAZY: New York Times reader does happy dance!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Interlude—Long before Trump: Democrats got good results in Virginia on Tuesday night. This led to letters in today's New York Times—letters from the long misserved and therefore from the deluded.

The first letter came from a frequently-published writer of letters. For our money, he may be over-exulting a bit:

I awoke Wednesday morning on the anniversary of the worst day in American political history, immediately grabbed The Times, turned on the television and broke into my happy dance! In the first major election since Donald Trump was elected, the Democrats stormed back, not only in Virginia and New Jersey, but in races all across the country.

One of the most striking examples of this tsunami was the erasing of a 32-seat Republican majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. These results were a stunning rebuke of the president...

Donald J. Trump is off in China, brandishing the nuclear codes as he prepares for his (possible) war. Traditionally, that's the way a president get his approvals up.

Meanwhile, Democrats may have retaken the Virginia House of Delegates. Surely, that will show him!

That happy dance may have come too soon, or too late. Meanwhile, another letter writer hailed this week's turnout by the Democratic base in Virginia. This analysis isn't "wrong"—or is it?

The main lesson from Tuesday’s election results is that when the Democratic base is energized to actually come out to vote, the Democrats win—and win big. Historically, those voters don’t show up for off-year elections, and as a result the G.O.P. wins statehouses, which it then leverages to gerrymander.

Did the Democratic base "come out to vote" in Virginia this week? In fairness, it may all depend on what the meaning of "the Democratic base" is! That said, these are the vote totals for two recent Democratic candidates in Virginia:

Vote totals in Virginia:
Hillary Clinton (2016): 1.98 million votes
Ralph Northam (2017): 1.41 million votes

For whatever it's worth, at least thirty percent of Clinton's voters didn't turn out this week! Tuesday night still produced many wins in Virginia. We'll show you more detailed turnout data before the week is done.

A third letter to the Times was perhaps most striking. Assuming the letter is on the level, it came from a long-time Republican voter who won't be fooled again:

Fool me once, shame on me. But fool me twice? That will never happen.

I generally vote for any and all Republicans, except Donald Trump. However, on Tuesday I voted a straight Democratic ticket in Virginia. Why? First and foremost, because I do not like the debased and degraded tone that President Trump has set for our nation and the Republican Party.

Second, and very important, because I never thought that I would see the day when Republicans sold out their loyal, hardworking blue-collar workers, salary earners and white-collar professionals in favor of corporate interests and the uber-rich. The lock step Republican support and enthusiasm for President Trump’s shameful, proposed tax plan—a plan that undercuts every single class except the 1 percent and corporations—are incomprehensible. What became of the party of lower taxes and fiscal responsibility?

If that letter is on the level, its writer only noticed this year that Republicans, in their tax proposals, "sell out their loyal, hardworking blue-collar workers, salary earners and white-collar professionals in favor of corporate interests and the uber-rich!"

If that letter is on the level, this writer seems to think this type of tax proposal started with Donald J. Trump! But it didn't start with Donald J. Trump. If that letter is on the level, it seems that its writer has maybe been fooled many times in the past.

(Which isn't surprising, given the way our national discourse works.)

That self-assured letter writer is just one person. None of us people are perfect—certainly not the person who selects the letters which get published in the Times.

That said, it's interesting that this person seems to think our degradation started with Donald J. Trump. Absurd tax plans didn't start with Trump. But neither did The Giant Crazy, the kudzu vines which have long been choking the land.

This brings us to an area where even we self-assured liberals have been fooled many times. To wit:

The Crazy didn't start with Donald J. Trump! The Crazy subsumed our discourse many years in the past.

The Crazy came from many sources. It came from Sean and Rush and Bill; also, from the pitiful souls on the ludicrous Fox & Friends. But it also came from Chris and Brian and Lawrence, and from Maureen and Gail, and of course, again and again, from "the great Frank Rich."

If that one letter is on the level, its writer didn't know that previous GOP tax proposals "sold out loyal, hardworking blue-collar workers, salary earners and white-collar professionals in favor of corporate interests and the uber-rich." Then too, we liberals don't seem to understand the origins of the smothering vines which have now spread The Crazy all through our (non-voting) land.

(Overall, turnout in Virginia this week seems to have been roughly 50 percent of eligible voters. More data to follow before the end of the week.)

We're so old that we can remember Lerone Bennett's 1962 book, Before the Mayflower. We're so sharp that we can assure you of this:

The Crazy was very much here long before Donald J. Trump.

The Crazy didn't reach our shores on the crazily listing Trumpflower. The Crazy had made its way all over the land long before Donald J. Trump threw his bizarre head of hair in the ring.

Chris and the others all planted the seeds, then tilled the soil through which the kudzu crept. Eventually, Rachel came along. She kept vouching for Chris, her "dear friend," and then she even vouched for Greta, her drinking buddy—also, the prime enabler of Trump's birtherism over the prior four years. Our dear child's favorite drinking pal had served as Trump's birther caddie!

What kind of person does that? Also, what kind of audience buys it? Answer to the second question:

An audience which has been badly disserved by its putative leaders.

We succumbed to The Crazy long before Trump. Donald J. Trump was pre-normalized. Tomorrow, our series continues.