The issue isn't outing him. I don't like that but fuck it. We decided that's okay a while back and so it's going to happen. It's the public claim that they decided, out of the goodness of their hearts not to do it but they could if they wanted to. It is weird and fucked up regardless of who it's being done to.

No. I mean that CNN is in a very specific way responsible for selling the Iraq war. This isn't a 'issues with the system thing' . This is CNN was the major mouthpiece, singular even among the broader selling of the Iraq war by the media, for selling the Iraq war.

Not made the threat at all?

His has had his hair cut elegantly into a coif in the shape of a thinkpiece about Barb.

Eh. To be fair apart from the acting, Reagan was pretty much a stock standard presidential candidate. Treating him as some wacky actor who lucked into the presidency excuses a lot of shit.

No.

Not really. The Call Out years were so fucking ugly because the line is entirely determined by the observer and other people will go along with wherever you put the line because they're more invested in the idea of the line than where it's located.

Again, that's not the point. Why make the threat? Why make a show of it? Why not just not mention you could out the guy at all?

He is a Salon Man. Among the Saloniest of The Salon People.

Yeah. But everyone gets to decide what constitutes being an asshole. I mean, three quarters of Breitbarts modus operandi is 'Hey, look at this asshole.'

Every time someone says that I kind of want to slap them.

Angela Merkel is, in terms of actual doing harm, at this point worse than Trump. She managed to impose worse than the AHCA on an entire other country. She's a right wing Thatcherite.

That's not the important part, though.

You'll have twelve more years of Trump because he has no meaningful opposition beyond Not Trump, not because of some random internet assholes.

Why exactly did they feel the need to include the 'threat to do journalism on him'? That's the important part of this. The threat. Not the journalism, which is at best tangential to the entire affair.

That's going to destroy your life regardless of what's posted there.

I've mentioned this before but there is a generic internet site and at that moment that generic site is talking about Turmp. It almost certainly shouldn't because it has nothing interesting to say about the topic and everything it does say is framed entirely in terms of pop culture but it talks about Trump.

No. It isn't. Reporting his name is journalism. Saying we could've but we didn't and hanging it over him like the sword of damocles is a threat.

CNN is responsible in a very, very real way for the Iraq War?

Which is kind of fucked up.