“I’ve
read so many stories about his bluster and boasting and ill-founded attacks,
I’ve listened to speeches and hours of analysis, and yet I was still taken back
by just how disjointed and meandering the unedited president could sound.” . .
.
“[W]atching
just one press conference . . . helped me understand how the process of
reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming
incoherence.”
—Lenore Taylor, editor of
Guardian Australia, “As
a foreign reporter visiting the US, I was stunned by Trump's press conference,”
The Guardian, Sept. 20, 2019.
• Editorial Comment:
Thank you for saying that. It’s not just me.
• An Aside: In the old days (say, three years ago), anything a president said or did was newsworthy, and it was the reporter’s duty to deliver it to the public’s consideration. In the really old days, reporters would routinely clean up officials’ garbled syntax, reporting what they meant. That was normal. But nothing in politics is “normal” anymore.
PeezPix
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“I don’t think writers are sacred,
but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right
order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
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