INDIGNITY MORNING PODCAST

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: On the front of this morning's New York Times, all the way down at the bottom of the page is a little referral box directing the reader to page C2 to read about the news that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are engaged to be married. If you do a search for Taylor Swift on Google, or at least when I just did one, it sets off a cascade of animated confetti and some kind of floating glyph that kind of looks like the Sacred Heart of Jesus with an animated bubble above it that is shooting off hearts and seems to be saying that something, maybe the animation itself, has 93.64 million likes. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The New York Times did not think that the mayor, in the midst of his reelection campaign, having his people hand out cash bribes in public, was anything that its readership might need to know in a timely manner. They got scooped on the news simply because the bribery was so widespread and so blatant that another outlet, one that actually cares about reporting on the city, bumped into a bribe on its own. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: You just invented a completely fake justification for lawless behavior from the president and then appealed to the authority of experts to say that it's completely fake. The reader gains nothing from the effort to reframe completely abnormal behavior as if it were normal, followed by the conclusion that the frame just doesn't fit. The president is shaking down companies for ownership shares. Don't pretend there's some sort of case that this could be something other than what it is. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Nowhere in this story about malicious and defamatory behavior by the so-called group Libs of TikTok, the account, the Times writes, “did not respond to questions regarding its post about Mr. Paris.” Is there a single mention of the name Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The fact that Andrew Cuomo, whose own residency in New York City is extremely tenuous and recent, even by the most charitable accounts, is trying to recover his standing by pounding away on the Hamptons fundraiser circuit, could be an embarrassing front page story in its own right. It just emphasizes that the anti-Mamdani movement, such as it is, basically represents the desires of a bunch of jerks who want to rule the city from afar, and of the people who operate the New York Times. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times describes Trump's deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops in Washington, DC as “an actualization of one of his most tried and true political arguments. Democrats, often black Democrats, have let lawlessness run rampant in the cities and states they were elected to run.” Now, is that an actualization of the argument? Or is it an invitation to treat the argument as having been actualized? This declaration of what purpose Donald Trump is achieving gets as counterweight the Times writing, “among Democrats, there is widespread agreement that Mr. Trump is stoking fear for political gain and exaggerating statistics to justify a power grab.” Is Trump's relationship to the actual crime statistics something for Democrats to debate among themselves? Or is it something for a newspaper to publish as a fact? Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Sustained a traumatic head injury amid an Israeli shell explosion” is a fairly convoluted way of saying that Israeli forces shot a 14 year old boy with an artillery shell. And now the Free Press reports that he is completely paralyzed, so it only makes sense that he would be malnourished if you accept the premise that getting adequate nutrition to paralyzed children is an impossible challenge, rather than something doctors routinely do all over the place, or wherever there is an adequate ordinary supply of food and medical equipment and the hospitals aren't being bombed. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Once the Times has developed a rooting interest in the news, it loses all sense of proportion. Cuomo and Adams are both actually scandalous figures who are totally unfit for office. But rather than documenting that, the Times is obsessed with trying to prove that the squeaky clean Mamdani must also somehow be disqualified. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: If Donald Trump were taking Fred Trump's words literally, if Fred Trump had meant his words to be taken literally, the federal government would be sending out the National Guard with paint rollers and power washers. They'd be building housing for the homeless people so they're not living messy lives out on the street. But when Donald Trump says a place is dirty, what he means is that it has the wrong kind of people in it. And what you do in New York real estate, if you're a certain kind of person, is you chase those people out with the help of the cops, if you can get it. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: We're really getting back to the kind of presidential time wasting that came with the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, “during the 78-minute news conference, during which he was flanked by several members of his cabinet, Mr. Trump took the lectern in the White House briefing room and said he also intended to clear out the Capitol's homeless population without saying how officials would do it or detailing where those people would go.” This story is also nicely illustrated with a photograph filling the remaining four columns across the top of the page of the journalists in the briefing room, all thrusting their hands up eagerly to engage with the president's lunatic gambit. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

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EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: If I were writing a news story about the president going to the Federal Reserve to put public pressure on the chairman and having the chairman point out with cameras rolling that the president's complaint was essentially a fabrication I would make that the top of the story, an official who the president is trying to push out, despite lacking the legal authority to do so openly fighting back against the president, when subjected to a staged struggle session, seems like the noteworthy aspect of what happened, and notably that was how the Times website played it, in the collection of live blog items and squibs from which the front page story was assembled online the headline is “Powell fact-checks Trump on cost of Fed renovations” and their dispute makes it into the third paragraph, after what's otherwise the same lead as the print story and a separate live blog entry has the headline “Face to face Powell told Trump He was wrong about a construction project.” Somebody needs to let the live blog editor into the page one meeting. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: In addition to being possibly the biggest superstar of professional wrestling, Hogan was also a racist and a fraud artist whose major legacy was his willingness to commit perjury as the plaintiff serving as the front person for Peter Thiel's successful campaign to abuse the legal system and the power differential, that comes with a reactionary billionaire class, to destroy Gawker, where I worked at the time, and to set the template for the Trump administration's current omnidirectional assault on the media, higher education, and pretty much everything else. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: These are Steve Bannon's own guests, telling him on his program that they're still upset about the Epstein question, and then Bannon turns around and tells the Times and everyone else that the movement is rallying around the president and the Times prints it. That's literally the opposite of NEWS ANALYSIS. It's a press release from the permanent campaign. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Zoran Mamdani,” the Times writes, “is unleashing a full-scale charm offensive of private meetings, phone calls, and public promises aimed at wooing top party leaders, donors, and activists,” and runs through a list of the meetings that he's taken with influence groups and elected officials. But underneath that, it's a story about the lack of sophistication on the side that considers itself more sophisticated. “In his meetings,” the Times writes, “Mr. Mamdani has surprised some Democrats with his affability and ability to listen to their concerns, perhaps hinting at his willingness to make some concessions.” If you're expressing surprise in July of 2025, that Zoran Mamdani is friendly and a good listener, what you're saying is that your understanding of New York City politics lags considerably behind that of the 573,000 people who voted for him. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

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EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Basically, if you can imagine the stupidest and most destructive ways to either spend more money or not spend money, the bill is going to hit all of them. Despite the fact that nobody but a handful of lunatics really wants this to happen, it's on its way to happening. The easy interpretation of this is that the country is in the hands of a malevolent dictator, and it is, but there's a strange hollowness at the center of that dictatorship. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Senate Republicans chose to embrace a fake accounting maneuver in which the $3.8 trillion expense of extending Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, past their expiration date, doesn't count as an expense since the tax cuts are in effect right now. This directly contradicts the accounting that was used to pass those tax cuts in the first place. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

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EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Nowhere in the paper is the news that 128 Democrats in the House of Representatives joined the Republicans to prevent Texas Representative Al Green from getting the House to vote on impeaching Donald Trump for his congressionally unauthorized attack on Iran. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: A big morning for newsworthy cuss words from the executive branch. I guess the job here on this podcast is to try to make sense of the news, but I gotta confess, I'm whipped. I know the potential smoldering fuse of World War III is a heck of a thing to throw up one's hands about, but it seems pretty clear that the people doing the war also have no idea what's really going on. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: the Times has a five-byline story narrating the process by which Donald Trump chose to send the bombers, and it essentially is not a story about military strategy at all. It was simply a child-minded and senescent president balancing his whims against the lobbying of his advisors and largely what he saw on television before deciding to do what seemed like the biggest most drastic and most satisfying thing. visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “I don't reach out to persuade you,” Huckabee says, “only to encourage you. I believe you will hear from heaven. And that voice is far more important than mine or anyone else's.” And that is how the United States's current administration is approaching a military crisis precipitated by a nuclear-armed ally. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: “Today, the "Times writes, "while most Americans do not support political violence, a growing share have said in surveys that they view rival partisans as a threat to the country or even as inhuman. Mr. Trump,” the Times continues, “has had a hand in that. Since his 2016 candidacy, he has signaled at least his tacit approval of violence against his political opponents. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to ‘knock the hell' out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body slammed a reporter, and defended the rioters on January 6th, 2021, who clamored to hang Mike Pence. One of his first acts in his second term as president was to pardon those rioters.” Yeah, I think the approval of violence is considerably more than tacit there. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

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EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Last term, people told him he couldn't have that military parade and that he couldn't send the troops to shoot protesters. But this time around, he's gotten rid of those people and with them the limits on his ability to play around with deadly force to make himself feel powerful. If you can't grasp that simple fact, you need not to be presenting yourself as an expert on defense policy or for that matter, as the editor of a major general interest magazine. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: This, it turns out, is how a violent fascist takeover manifests itself operating in the uncanny nexus between completely made up pretexts and complaints and genuine power and violence. Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth go on TV, done up like Bratz dolls of themselves and make flamboyantly idiotic and fantastic claims about reality, while somebody's real head bangs into a real curb, and they end up locked up and facing extravagant criminal punishment, in the real criminal justice system. Burning vehicles really feature prominently so far in the iconography of what's happening in LA. They make nice dramatic pictures, which is presumably a large part of why people set them on fire. And they're easier to get a nice composed shot of than the crowded, chaotic and fast moving spectacle of, say, police horses trampling protesters underfoot. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The New York Times would not allow itself to write a news headline asserting that the president is abusing his power, but it's perfectly happy to go fishing for a quote that will say that. In this case, the fishing line is still visible, as what Trevor Potter, the president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission says, specifically is, “and yes, this is an example of Trump publicly and improperly threatening,” etc. which points back to his having been asked by the reporter to affirm the proposition that Trump is abusing his power. So he got the quote, the quote goes in quotation marks, and the Times simply reports it, as a thing in the world that someone factually spoke. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: It seems like there would be several more salient reasons why someone would avoid publicly attaching their name to a story about defying the out-of-control authoritarian president, but journalistic conventions are journalistic conventions. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: It is June 4th, the date the tanks rolled in, drawing approval, at the time, from Donald Trump for the Chinese government's display of the "power of strength," as he told Playboy in an interview. But that was all very long ago and surely not relevant here in the 21st century. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: It wasn't just a demonstration of the capacity for military action. It was a military action. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The whole gambit of snatching people out of immigration court completely contradicts the message of the Trump campaign and administration, that it is turning ICE loose to seize and deport the most dangerous criminal elements in the country because Trump's preferred arms of federal law enforcement are lazy and incompetent, and because the real point is to create a spectacle of brutality, instead of trying to track down hardened criminals, they are literally going after the most law-abiding immigrants they can lay their hands on by seizing them as they're in the middle of trying to abide by the law. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Driven by his subliterate vulgar Darwinian unto eugenicist belief system, Kennedy, in concert with Mehmet Oz, the Trump administration's head of Medicare and Medicaid, wants to import a diseased flock of birds to the United States and turn them loose on a ranch owned by Dr. Oz in Florida. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

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EASY LISTENING DEP'T. If you're a person who cares about Venezuelan babies, this may tug at your heartstrings. But given that the people who are running this country hate Venezuelan babies and want the worst for them, the story reads like a more literally constructed version of a triumphalist memo that the White House would put out. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: For an instructive contrast of approach, there is the lawsuit filed yesterday by Shira Perlmutter, on the question of who is in charge of the United States Copyright Office, in which the plaintiff identifies herself as Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office, while naming the defendants Todd Blanche “in his capacity as the person claiming to be Acting Librarian of Congress” and Paul Perkins “in his capacity as the person claiming to be the Register of Copyrights.” Just because Donald Trump says he's taken a job away from someone and given it to someone else, that doesn't mean change is reportable as a fact in its own right. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The president of the United States somehow becomes an adjective attached to a “broadside,” a broadside that then “embroils” the South African president. This generates a mood, a mood of “tension.” And then comes a little action, sharing a video, but the video is only "echoing false assertions over white genocide." “Over” is just a weird space-filler, wrong choice of preposition there. Apparently, “of” would have left the line too short. But what is this “echo” of an “assertion?” Where was the assertion coming from that the video that the president of the United States played only contained a reflection of its substance? Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: This all starts to sound a little bit like the episode where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft handed Vladimir Putin one of his Super Bowl rings to show it off, and Putin tucked it in his pocket and declared it a gift. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Saying Trump cares about supposed Afrikaner persecution because he cares about DEI is just an incredibly tortured way of saying that the president is a racist crank. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The Times carries on its recent welcome habit of writing direct and unmediated assessments of the president's shortcomings, “President's Opponents Getting Wise to His Ways / A Pattern of Blustering Negotiating Tactics Ending in Retreat.” Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: On the front of this morning's New York Times, four columns wide, is a picture of a greeting between the lawless strongman leader of a corrupt petrostate and Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, as the latter stretches out his hands to welcome Donald Trump. “During President Trump's first term,” the piece begins, “the idea that special interests and governments were buying meals and booking rooms at his hotels set off legal and ethical alarms about the potential for corruption. Mr. Trump's second term is making those concerns look trivial.” Or you could just say, during President Trump's first term, special interests and governments bought meals and booked rooms at his hotels. Mr. Trump's second term is making those dealings look trivial. See? Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: The story cites Trump telling Bob Woodward that he saved Mohammed bin Salman's ass by making the congressional hubbub over bin Salman's decision to murder Jamal Khashoggi of the Washington Post and chop his body up with a bone saw go away, and it recalls how the Saudi sovereign wealth fund gave Jared Kushner two billion dollars to play with, after Trump's first term was over, and how Trump used the Saudis upstart professional golf tour to enrich his own golf courses and hotels, and it brings up the real estate and crypto deals on top of that. It's a very nice roundup, but it's not clear why it should be a news analysis piece instead of just being inserted as standard boilerplate into every story about the president's Middle Eastern dealings. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: This is only about “dueling perspectives” in the same sense that New York City and Al-Qaeda had different ideas about the best use for the World Trade Center. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: One thing that is missing from this morning is your Indignity Morning Podcast's physical copy of the New York Times. There is neither a bagged one nor a soggy, unbagged one anywhere to be found, and so this edition is going to face the news with only minimal hierarchical guidance. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T. Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.: Please visit, read, and support INDIGNITY! https://www.indignity.net/