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Epstein Files | Patel: Trust us

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Here are a few patterns I’ve noticed:

Too much personality politics, not enough structural analysis. Outlets like MSNBC and CNN spend hours dissecting the latest Trump soundbite or political gaffe, but they spend far less time talking about things like wage stagnation, corporate consolidation, or housing policy. It's politics as theater rather than substance.

Labor movements get short shrift. Huge strikes and union drives like those at Amazon, Starbucks, and among teachers often get ignored until they boil over into a national story. Even then, coverage is usually surface-level. There’s rarely sustained reporting on the conditions that led to the unrest in the first place.

Coverage often reflects an upper-middle-class worldview. Liberal media can be great on cultural representation but often substitutes that for economic justice. Pretty obvious why this is the case when you see who owns these cable outlets.

Too many corporate-friendly experts. On healthcare, for example, liberal media tends to elevate voices that push tweaks around the edges like a public option while ignoring or marginalizing Medicare for All advocates. There’s a reason the Overton window on these issues shifts slowly, if at all.

This isn’t to say liberal media is the enemy. But people tune out for a reason. These blind spots matter, especially when they affect people’s material reality. When we handwave those failures, we just feed the broader crisis of institutional trust.
You actually think the bulk of Americans want TV news to do in-depth programs on “wage stagnation, corporate consolidation, and whatever?” Really!

I thought the same in the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s - “If the media would just do in-depth reports, Americans would see that Reaganomics is BULLSHIT.”
 
I'll be honest and just say that I'm too damned tired to make an effort anymore to meet everyone where they are at. I just began to wonder why it always was me having to adjust, understand, empathize, etc and never the other way around. I can say without much reservation that practically nobody has ever tried to modify their own approach to meet me where I was. I've done a lot of that kind of thing for a lot of people for a long time and it really hasn't helped much politically. It's made me successful and popular...but also exhausted and emptied out.

I look back on all the years of advocacy and work and wonder what exactly I was ever fighting for in the first place. It surely didn't make any difference in a positive direction.

At this point I just feel like leaving it to the various factions to tear it apart and piece it back together as they see fit...seems that's pretty much predestined.

As someone who makes a living building connections with people through media, I disagree with Paine that one can create a media environment that values truth and ideas over sensationalism and lies. We have become such voracious consumers of the train wrecks in society that we can't back away from it. I don't personally think it's condescending to simply observe that 95% of what holds the attention of Americans now is absolutely mindless and silly or outrageous.
10000 Maniacs sing to this...


 
You actually think the bulk of Americans want TV news to do in-depth programs on “wage stagnation, corporate consolidation, and whatever?” Really!

I thought the same in the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s - “If the media would just do in-depth reports, Americans would see that Reaganomics is BULLSHIT.”
I think you might be missing what I’m actually saying. I’m not arguing that cable news needs to turn into C-SPAN seminars or that Americans are dying for 60-minute segments on monetary policy. I’m saying that the stories media chooses to emphasize (the endless Trump drama, the lack of serious labor coverage, the narrow policy debate) reflect structural blind spots, not just audience preferences.

People don’t need lectures, they need reporting that connects to their lives. When you treat politics as a game and ignore people’s material concerns, they stop paying attention, not because they’re too dumb to care, but because it doesn’t feel like it matters. That’s a media failure, not a public one.
 
I think you might be missing what I’m actually saying. I’m not arguing that cable news needs to turn into C-SPAN seminars or that Americans are dying for 60-minute segments on monetary policy. I’m saying that the stories media chooses to emphasize (the endless Trump drama, the lack of serious labor coverage, the narrow policy debate) reflect structural blind spots, not just audience preferences.

People don’t need lectures, they need reporting that connects to their lives. When you treat politics as a game and ignore people’s material concerns, they stop paying attention, not because they’re too dumb to care, but because it doesn’t feel like it matters. That’s a media failure, not a public one.
We may have a chicken or egg conundrum here...

Back in the day when reporting the "straight" news was a profit $$$ loss but had an audience actually interested in "real" news, there was a national consensus when it came to trust in accuracy of reporting.

Fast forward to Rupert and Roger Ailes eschewing "straight" news and going for a targeted conservative audience to generate a profitable "news" organization that appealed to our not so better part of angels of our nature.

MSM corporatists saw that the news could be a profit generating engine if giving up on "straight" reporting was replaced with what Natalie Merchant sung..."give them what they want "

So did the soft and lazy minds of America create the media we have today or did the media create soft and lazy minds we have today ?
 
We may have a chicken or egg conundrum here...

Back in the day when reporting the "straight" news was a profit $$$ loss but had an audience actually interested in "real" news, there was a national consensus when it came to trust in accuracy of reporting.

Fast forward to Rupert and Roger Ailes eschewing "straight" news and going for a targeted conservative audience to generate a profitable "news" organization that appealed to our not so better part of angels of our nature.

MSM corporatists saw that the news could be a profit generating engine if giving up on "straight" reporting was replaced with what Natalie Merchant sung..."give them what they want "

So did the soft and lazy minds of America create the media we have today or did the media create soft and lazy minds we have today ?
I think you're right that there's a feedback loop between media and public demand, but I don’t think it’s actually a mystery which came first.

The consolidation and commercialization of media shaped what the public came to expect. When media outlets are owned by massive corporations with a mandate to maximize profit, they’ll chase eyeballs over substance every time. These outlets are engineering desire.

People are still hungry for real stories that speak to their lives. Again, that’s why shows, podcasts, and outlets that break from the usual corporate formula are rising in popularity. But the dominant media ecosystem makes it hard for those voices to scale. The public didn’t ask for politics to be treated like a reality show. That was a decision made by people in power, and now we’re dealing with the fallout.

It’s not about romanticizing the past or pretending the public was ever perfectly informed. It’s about recognizing that structure, ownership, and incentives matter. What we have now didn’t evolve naturally, it was built.

If it really were a mystery whether the chicken or the egg came first here, then why did Americans watch more straight news back in the day? Was it purely because that was all that was on, or was it also because the big three networks actually felt some level of civic obligation to inform the public?

I’d argue it was both and that the shift didn’t happen because Americans suddenly stopped caring about real information. It happened because the media stopped prioritizing its civic function once profit became the overriding incentive. The Fairness Doctrine was repealed, media ownership consolidated, and “infotainment” became the model. People didn’t vote for that with their remotes, it was imposed from the top down.

So yeah, the audience changed. But they were shaped by what the industry gave them.

The tension here is that many posters believe podcasts are just an extension of this “slopification” of American news. I think that’s certainly true of some, but their explosion in popularity also reflects something deeper: a hunger among everyday people to be spoken to directly, without the condescension or spectacle.
 
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I think you're right that there's a feedback loop between media and public demand, but I don’t think it’s actually a mystery which came first.

The consolidation and commercialization of media shaped what the public came to expect. When media outlets are owned by massive corporations with a mandate to maximize profit, they’ll chase eyeballs over substance every time. These outlets are engineering desire.

People are still hungry for real stories that speak to their lives. Again, that’s why shows, podcasts, and outlets that break from the usual corporate formula are rising in popularity. But the dominant media ecosystem makes it hard for those voices to scale. The public didn’t ask for politics to be treated like a reality show. That was a decision made by people in power, and now we’re dealing with the fallout.

It’s not about romanticizing the past or pretending the public was ever perfectly informed. It’s about recognizing that structure, ownership, and incentives matter. What we have now didn’t evolve naturally, it was built.

If it really were a mystery whether the chicken or the egg came first here, then why did Americans watch more straight news back in the day? Was it purely because that was all that was on, or was it also because the big three networks actually felt some level of civic obligation to inform the public?

I’d argue it was both and that the shift didn’t happen because Americans suddenly stopped caring about real information. It happened because the media stopped prioritizing its civic function once profit became the overriding incentive. The Fairness Doctrine was repealed, media ownership consolidated, and “infotainment” became the model. People didn’t vote for that with their remotes, it was imposed from the top down.

So yeah, the audience changed. But they were shaped by what the industry gave them.

The tension here is that many posters believe podcasts are just an extension of this “slopification” of American news. I think that’s certainly true of some, but their explosion in popularity also reflects something deeper:Google Search
I can't disagree other than to offer the possibility that people did vote with their remotes when they flocked to Fox "News"

but moving a tiny step away from political media to entertainment media that enthralled the hoi polloi such as :

Jerry Springer
Morton Downey
Geraldo
Maury Povich

Did media create the interest in this or did they recognize the sizeable sordid low minded interest in shows like these ?
 
I can't disagree other than to offer the possibility that people did vote with their remotes when they flocked to Fox "News"

but moving a tiny step away from political media to entertainment media that enthralled the hoi polloi such as :

Jerry Springer
Morton Downey
Geraldo
Maury Povich

Did media create the interest in this or did they recognize the sizeable sordid low minded interest in shows like these ?
I think you're right to point to those shows as early signals of the media industry realizing there was profit to be made in sensationalism. I’d still argue that identifying an audience’s lowest common denominator and then relentlessly feeding it to them is a choice. It’s a business decision.

Obviously there was an appetite for that kind of content. But the same was true for serious journalism, for local news that covered community issues, for documentaries that aired in primetime.

Those audiences didn’t vanish overnight. They were slowly crowded out by executives chasing higher margins and faster ratings. Once you stack the incentives to reward outrage and novelty, it warps what’s viable in the marketplace. So the feedback loop forms, but it’s not a natural law.

The problem isn't that people want to be stupid. It’s that the media profits more when they’re distracted and divided than when they’re informed and empowered. When that becomes the operating principle, even good faith viewers start to tune out or become cynical.

This is also why I think so many people gravitate toward podcasts. Sure, some of them are absolute garbage, but the explosion in long-form, unscripted conversation about history, politics, even philosophy, shows there’s a real hunger for something different. Not because people want a lecture, but because they want to be talked to like adults.
 
What strikes me in a lot of these discussions is how fundamentally conservative some of the underlying assumptions are, even when they’re coming from liberals. There’s often this default view that humans are base creatures, driven only by shallow, selfish impulses. That the public is lazy, unserious, or incapable of wanting something better. It’s a kind of soft nihilism disguised as realism.

But to me, the whole point of liberalism, real liberalism, and certainly of any left politics worth fighting for, is that we don’t accept that framing. At its best, it’s about cultivating the human spirit, not surrendering to cynicism.

If the left doesn’t reclaim that basic humanism, it will never win people over. Too much of our media, and too many of our institutions, have internalized the idea that the average American doesn’t want more. I think that’s wrong. I think people are desperate for meaning, for dignity, for someone to speak to them like they matter. But if we keep treating them like they don’t, then we’re handing that ground over to the worst actors in our politics.

In my view, the antidote is what the best left movements have always offered: faith in people’s capacity to learn, to act, and to fight for each other when given the tools and the truth.
 
I can't disagree other than to offer the possibility that people did vote with their remotes when they flocked to Fox "News"

but moving a tiny step away from political media to entertainment media that enthralled the hoi polloi such as :

Jerry Springer
Morton Downey
Geraldo
Maury Povich

Did media create the interest in this or did they recognize the sizeable sordid low minded interest in shows like these ?
As far as modern multimedia, think about how shows like Candid Camera, I've Got a Secret and Kids Say the Darndest Things, all "wholesome family entertainment" was really an attempt to capture a real life faux pas. I suspect that it's probably endemic to the human condition and started the first time someone laughed when someone else fell on their ass. We just do it in color with sound and send it around the world.
 
What gets covered and how it’s framed is shaped by a range of structural factors:corporate ownership, advertising pressures, access journalism, and a professional culture that often prioritizes elite consensus and incrementalism over deep structural analysis.
Serious question: What is elite consensus? I mean, I know what it means, but I'm talking about specifically. You've used this term several times throughout the discussion, just trying to get an idea of what issues and ideas the "elites" are in lockstep over...
 
What casual podcast listener or MSM media consumer did not know this despicable fact years upon years ago?
Exactly. It is indeed old news. Even Trump tried to slough it off as just that. Elon knows this too... BUT he did it on social media just to jab Trump. Musk knows it won't move the needle of any magas, but he knows it will get Trump's goat by saying it in front of God and everybody one more time.
 
Serious question: What is elite consensus? I mean, I know what it means, but I'm talking about specifically. You've used this term several times throughout the discussion, just trying to get an idea of what issues and ideas the "elites" are in lockstep over...
good question...

Also, addressing his diss on incremental change, I have argued that incremental change has allowed Americans to metabolize change...civil rights, gay rights, women's rights

But I would welcome being informed by Paine when left radical change has moved America forward with deep structural analysis
 
good question...

Also, addressing his diss on incremental change, I have argued that incremental change has allowed Americans to metabolize change...civil rights, gay rights, women's rights

But I would welcome being informed by Paine when left radical change has moved America forward with deep structural analysis
To my notion it's been the combination of the rate of cultural changes and technological dislocations destroying and changing employment conditions that has led to the revanchism on the right. It needs to be more like the myth of boiling a frog.
 
I think you're right that there's a feedback loop between media and public demand, but I don’t think it’s actually a mystery which came first.

The consolidation and commercialization of media shaped what the public came to expect. When media outlets are owned by massive corporations with a mandate to maximize profit, they’ll chase eyeballs over substance every time. These outlets are engineering desire.

People are still hungry for real stories that speak to their lives. Again, that’s why shows, podcasts, and outlets that break from the usual corporate formula are rising in popularity. But the dominant media ecosystem makes it hard for those voices to scale. The public didn’t ask for politics to be treated like a reality show. That was a decision made by people in power, and now we’re dealing with the fallout.

It’s not about romanticizing the past or pretending the public was ever perfectly informed. It’s about recognizing that structure, ownership, and incentives matter. What we have now didn’t evolve naturally, it was built.

If it really were a mystery whether the chicken or the egg came first here, then why did Americans watch more straight news back in the day? Was it purely because that was all that was on, or was it also because the big three networks actually felt some level of civic obligation to inform the public?

I’d argue it was both and that the shift didn’t happen because Americans suddenly stopped caring about real information. It happened because the media stopped prioritizing its civic function once profit became the overriding incentive. The Fairness Doctrine was repealed, media ownership consolidated, and “infotainment” became the model. People didn’t vote for that with their remotes, it was imposed from the top down.

So yeah, the audience changed. But they were shaped by what the industry gave them.

The tension here is that many posters believe podcasts are just an extension of this “slopification” of American news. I think that’s certainly true of some, but their explosion in popularity also reflects something deeper: a hunger among everyday people to be spoken to directly, without the condescension or spectacle.
"I don’t think it’s actually a mystery which came first."
There is no mystery. It was Reagan doing away with the Fairness Doctrine. The very next thing we got was Rush Limbaugh coming over the FREE BROADCAST AIRWAYS spouting his hard-right-wing bull shit. His radio show got traction amongst: the redneck, racists, homophobic, misogynists and rich Chamber of Commerce/small government Libertarian types who actually believed Reagan and the lies about the "Welfare Queen" and the "they're coming after our guns" and "Gays shouldn't be allowed to get married", and the "big government is bad" type of tea-partying magas we see today. There was advertising money to be made. There was a market there. Darn near half the country - the "silent majority" ate that shit up big time. Couple years later - in walks FOX "News" - a self -admitted entertainment cable network and Bill O'fuckin'Reilly and the rest is history.

THAT is exactly what came first. And now, that same mind-set and same type of folk are doing it all over again on streaming platforms with their "podcasts" and "SubStacks" - and your "long-form" diatribes. Sure, they're more in-depth and go deeper down the Q-Anon rabbit holes.

But it's still all insidious and only a fool thinks that the old school, main stream and Legacy Media of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and even CNN - before Fairness Doctrine died - came first in the destruction.

Today's right-wing podcasts are INDEED just an extension of this “slopification” of American news.
 
Serious question: What is elite consensus? I mean, I know what it means, but I'm talking about specifically. You've used this term several times throughout the discussion, just trying to get an idea of what issues and ideas the "elites" are in lockstep over...
When I talk about elite consensus, I’m referring to a set of core economic and political beliefs broadly shared among the dominant political, business, and media classes, regardless of party, that shape the framework within which “serious” policy debates happen.

This consensus isn’t about every detail, it’s about the major underlying assumptions that guide how elites think about governance, the economy, and social order.

Some key features of this elite consensus include: a commitment to neoliberal economic policies such as free markets, deregulation, low taxes on capital, and trade liberalization. It includes acceptance of the global capitalist system, supporting globalization, financialization, and multinational corporations as the engines of growth. There is a prioritization of fiscal responsibility, with a strong focus on balanced budgets and debt management, often at the expense of expansive social programs.

Maintaining social and political stability is important to elites, who tend to resist mass movements or redistributive policies that threaten the existing order. There is also bipartisan agreement on national security and foreign policy goals, with a broadly hawkish stance on maintaining US global hegemony. Finally, there is a consensus on the limits of government intervention, especially regarding labor markets, corporate power, and financial institutions.

The result is that debates among elites tend to be about how to implement these principles best, not whether to challenge them fundamentally.

But this narrative is now complicated by the fact that this elite consensus is shattering before our eyes. Neoliberalism has clearly run its course, and the elite class is actively searching for what comes next. You could see this plainly in the Trump presidency, when billionaires and corporate elites flocked to support him, despite his erratic populism, because he offered a new political arrangement that preserved their interests.

On the Democratic side, the emergence of the “abundance agenda” reflects a parallel attempt to reshape elite consensus around techno-optimism, deregulated building, and innovation, while still avoiding a full reckoning with neoliberalism’s failures.

Both of these currents show that elites know the old model is broken, but they’re trying to ensure whatever replaces it still works for them.

Despite this change that we’re starting to see, elite media institutions still largely reflect the old neoliberal consensus because they remain structurally embedded in that world. Whether it’s because their funding models rely on the same corporate advertisers and billionaire owners who benefited from neoliberalism, or because their top editors and journalists were shaped by decades of elite education and professional incentives, many of these institutions are slow to adjust to the shifting political landscape.

Their worldview was formed during the long neoliberal era, and it still frames what they consider “serious,” “pragmatic,” or “realistic” politics. As a result, even as the broader political order begins to fracture, elite media often remains a lagging indicator, clinging to a version of consensus politics that no longer matches the public mood or material reality.
 
"I don’t think it’s actually a mystery which came first."
There is no mystery. It was Reagan doing away with the Fairness Doctrine. The very next thing we got was Rush Limbaugh coming over the FREE BROADCAST AIRWAYS spouting his hard-right-wing bull shit. His radio show got traction amongst: the redneck, racists, homophobic, misogynists and rich Chamber of Commerce/small government Libertarian types who actually believed Reagan and the lies about the "Welfare Queen" and the "they're coming after our guns" and "Gays shouldn't be allowed to get married", and the "big government is bad" type of tea-partying magas we see today. There was advertising money to be made. There was a market there. Darn near half the country - the "silent majority" ate that shit up big time. Couple years later - in walks FOX "News" - a self -admitted entertainment cable network and Bill O'fuckin'Reilly and the rest is history.

THAT is exactly what came first. And now, that same mind-set and same type of folk are doing it all over again on streaming platforms with their "podcasts" and "SubStacks" - and your "long-form" diatribes. Sure, they're more in-depth and go deeper down the Q-Anon rabbit holes.

But it's still all insidious and only a fool thinks that the old school, main stream and Legacy Media of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and even CNN - before Fairness Doctrine died - came first in the destruction.

Today's right-wing podcasts are INDEED just an extension of this “slopification” of American news.
I'm not sure we actually disagree on the timeline here. Yes, the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of figures like Limbaugh and Fox News are central to how we got here, and I said exactly that in the post you’re responding to. But those didn’t happen in a vacuum. They were part of a larger shift in media ownership, political economy, and the abandonment of civic obligations in favor of profit.

That’s my point: the current media landscape wasn’t just the result of consumer demand. It was built by deregulation, by consolidation, and by a political elite that abandoned public media infrastructure.

I'm also not defending the slop that fills the podcast ecosystem today. I'm saying it is a symptom of that structural failure. Yes, the right has filled the void with conspiracy and grievance. But the void itself was created by the collapse of meaningful, accessible, public-oriented media. That collapse wasn’t caused by podcasts. It came long before them, and the fact that people now seek out unfiltered, long-form content shows that the appetite for real storytelling still exists. We ignore that at our peril.

You keep trying to collapse my argument into a defense of right-wing podcasts, but that’s not what I’m doing. I don’t think you’ve engaged with the podcast space in the same way I have, and that lack of direct experience makes your view of it pretty blinkered.

The podcast space isn’t just chock full of right-wing slop. It’s also full of serious journalism, long-form reporting, and real stories that mainstream outlets either won’t or can’t tell. To write it off entirely as a cesspool of misinformation is both inaccurate and strategically dangerous.

If we don’t engage with the space, the disinformation that does exist will continue to dominate it. People will keep drifting further into reactionary politics.

The only way to counter that is to fill the space with a liberal and left humanism that speaks to people directly and treats them with respect.
 
But I digress... back to the OP. Musk jabbed Trump with the Epstein comment just to fuck with Trump. Period. He knows it wouldn't move the needle on the left or the right.

Also in the OP - the damn Director of the FBI has no fucking business going on some pod cast - Especially the likes of Joe fucking Rogain. And the VP has no friggin business going on a Theo Von "trap" show.
 
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It cannot be said enough times: the Fairness Doctrine or its absence is not at all how we got here. It only applied to broadcast media -- not radio, not cable, and of course not internet had it been around.
 
It cannot be said enough times: the Fairness Doctrine or its absence is not at all how we got here. It only applied to broadcast media -- not radio, not cable, and of course not internet had it been around.
No, but the attempt by Congress to replace it and do so was vetoed by Reagan and a later attempt ran into the same threat from Bush. It's not that the appreciation of the need for it vanished, it's that the Republicans wouldn't allow it to continue.
 
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