I love boycotts, and have for years. There’s just something empowering about a whole bunch of us small, insignificant little pissants using collective action to “stick it to the man,” regardless if it’s a country, a personality, or a large, monolithic corporation.
Personally, I boycott all kinds of shit. I was quite the fan of the “Flush Rush” boycott when I could still see well enough to spend long hours in front of the monitor, sending e-mails to corporate sponsors. And personally, I’ve been boycotting Papa John’s pizza for years, ever since their asshole founder said that he planned to cut employee hours just enough to make sure that he didn’t have to offer them medical insurance. And though I have never tried one, I will never set foot into a Chik-Fil-A, or a Hobby Lobby, due to their discriminatory anti LGBTQ policies. It’s like a mosquito on an elephant’s ass, they don’t even notice, but it makes me feel all righteous and shit, so I’m happy.
But we are rapidly approaching the day of the commencement of a new boycott. But not by us, you and I, at least not immediately. Give me a minute here to explain, and I think you’ll get the picture, and the benefits of the boycott.
If there’s one thing that El Pendejo Presidente is an expert at, it’s victimization, on both sides of the coin. For decades now, His Lowness has been victimizing both his customers, with the substandard crap he peddles, as well as his long history of welshing, and his employees, through his racism, misogyny, and dehumanizing practices. But Trump is also a world champion at playing the victim, portraying himself as a helpless innocent, being cruelly abused by anybody who doesn’t think that he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I can smell another round of victimization, and a whopper at that, commencing shortly.
Trump has always had a love-hate relationship with the media. He loves it when they plaster his ugly mug all over the television, but hates it when they treat him like he’s not all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips. The perfect example of this is when he abruptly cut off the daily White House press briefings, to keep Sarah Huckabee Sanders from telling the portly behemoth to take-this-job-and-shove-it.
But that’s about to change. forget the fallout of the Mueller report, Trump is about to need the media more than he has in years. Because, he’s up for reelection, and it’s shaping up to look like Armageddon.Trump cruised through 16 other challengers in the GOP primary field of 2016 by denying all of the other candidates oxygen. This was strictly the fault of the major networks, who saw his improbable campaigning combination of Ernest-goes-to-camp coupled with the less savory aspects of Andrew Dice Clay as ratings gold. After the election, the media got taken behind the woodshed over its conduct, and that seems to have stuck. Both CNN and MSNBC have started giving extended interviews to not only announced Democratic candidates, but to Wlliam Weld, Trump’s primary challenger as well. Both networks have started airing frequent candidate “town halls,” and even FOX was shamed into hosting one with Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg’s campaign is in negotiations. Congressman Eric Swalwell was also a repeat guest on FOX, and it can only be assumed that he’ll be back. Trump will not have monolithic control of the airwaves going into 2020.
But Trump is going to have to start not only campaigning, but in defending himself against a relentless barrage of congressional investigations, as well as starting to get what passes in Toontown as a positive message of his accomplishments as President. And he’s going to have to try and do that without having any shit blow back on him. But how does he accomplish this feat?
Well, the simplest solution would be to crank up having the White House daily press briefings again. That’s right, start sending Blarah Flackabee Slanders, the nursemaid of administration bullshit back out there again, to feed the kitties. This would allow Trump to get out any message he wanted, on a daily basis, without having to defend himself to the press, just as long as he could manager the impossible task of keeping his big, fat trap shut on the way across the White House lawn to board Marine One to head off to Mar-A-Lago for the weekend.
But there’s a problem with this strategy. Slanders is damaged goods. But as much as the media could push back against her at the daily briefings for her fantasy world bullshit, as long as she stuck to the mantra of “The best information I have available,” they couldn’t actually call her a liar, just impugn her accuracy. But that has changed. As miserable as Slanders was about not being able to go into restaurants anymore without a police escort, it’s even worse now that she had to admit to Mueller’s investigators that she was regularly pulling shit straight out of her ass from behind the White House podium, and that ended up in the public copy of the Mueller report.
This is where the boycott comes in. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a self admitted liar, and the American people deserve better from their government. The media should make it abundantly clear to the white House, right now, before the briefings even fire up again, that they will not send reporters, either print or broadcast, to the briefings for as long as Sanders is involved with them in any way. And they should also make it abundantly clear that their reporters will flee the scene en masse at the moment that they feel that they are being purposefully, maliciously misled by the press secretary.
Now, this is where we come in. Starting immediately, we should be making it clear to the networks, as well as the print media that we will not tolerate live coverage of any more fact free press briefings, and make that fact public. We will switch the channel, or we will buy another publication. The purpose of the free press is as an independent source of fact and analysis, not as a sock puppet to an obviously manipulative, fact free administration more concerned with covering up their misdeeds than in serving the people.
If we can boycott companies for making an ad we find personally offensive, or for insulting or insensitive behavior by their top executives, then we sure as hell can demand that our own press hold this corrupt administration accountable, and “speak truth to power,” and not simply be a transmission service for childish nonsense.
Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are still sitting around collecting dust, and Amazon is starting to send me nasty e-mails. And what better time to get reacquainted with the roller coaster that was the 2016 election cycle than before the release of the final volume of the trilogy, President Evil III, All the Presidents Fen.
Cross posted on Politizoom.com
To receive articles of mine not published elsewhere become a patron on Patreon.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35