Who’s Using Who? A Quick Test to See If the Media Use Trump for a Ratings Boost

Do you know you are being played by mainstream media, but want one easy-to-identify bit concrete proof?

Here’s a test.

Starting January 20, 2017, a report by New York Magazine reveals that Trump, once sworn into office, will gain access to the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) System. The WEAs, established by Congress after passing the Warning, Alert, and Response Network Act in 2006, deliver only three types of messages: Amber Alerts, critical emergency situations and alerts by the President.

You may not have registered this news item back on November 30, a mere 16 days ago. Why would you? The media likely distracted your attention with ... Trump’s tweets.  Covering Trump is a windfall like none other for network news, although there is not much proof made available to the public.

So, here is a test case, albeit rudimentary, you will be able to check for yourself.

To date, WEAs have never been used by a president, but soon Trump’s windbaggery will, potentially, blow into every American mobile phone whether they like it or not. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that cell phone ownership among adults has exceeded 90% which means he will be able to send unblockable messages to 287.01 million people about how much he hates Alex Baldwin’s SNL skits.

The good news is his messages will be reduced down to 90 characters from his previously verbose 120 characters. The other good news for everyone north of the 49^th parallel is that there’s a virtual wall from the Atlantic to the Pacific which those texts will not cross, except in poor Alaska. I can just see the border signs now: Welcome to Canada. It’s safe to look at your phone now.

Wondering if Trump will be able to resist the urge is one thing? Given Trump not only doesn’t play by the rules, he seems to not actually care that there are rules, so odds are he well may use WEA’s.

Wondering if the media will cover this is the deeper question. At one point, Trump needed the media to communicate his message to the public. Then the tables turned in July, 2015 and he used social media to connect directly. The media then tailored their news to follow his social media messaging. Now, the media need his tweets more than Trump needs the media.

The test is based on the understanding that ‘news’ is information not previously known to someone. Since more than 90% of the public would get these messages, those messages will not qualify as news.

So if CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, PBS and all the other 3 letter sources of news run a story on every one of his messages, just like they have been doing since Trump took to Twitter during his campaign, the questions is why?

The answer: ratings.

What can you do about it? Well, changing your news sources is one option. It's also your choice if you'd like to let the networks in question know your thoughts.

Will it make a difference? If it does, the networks would never admit it.

On the off chance that mainstream networks stop reporting Trump messages (and you’ll know that because the Weather Network will also be reporting that hell has frozen over), rest assured that that subject will be ably handled by Alex Jones on Info Wars and Trump TV because it’s clear they won’t be covering anything else anyway. Besides, they’ll be doing one-quarter of the US population (that being the ones who voted Republican) a public service by offering remedial reading lessons. Viewers can move their lips when the newscaster reads the texts to them.

What is Vogue Magazine Doing in Politics?

Less than a week after I posted my column on Melania Trump and noted that Vogue magazine would capitulate to the normalizing. And here it is:

Kellyanne Conway, Ivanka Trump, and the Role of Working Mothers in the White House

DECEMBER 8, 2016 3:22 PMby PATRICIA GARCIA

http://www.vogue.com/13511370/kellyanne-conway-ivanka-trump-working-mothers-white-house/?mbid=nl_120916_Daily&CNDID=27119440&spMailingID=13917754&spUserID=MTM2MzQ0OTAzNDQyS0&spJobID=883245678&spReportId=ODgzMjQ1Njc4S0 

Who knew Anna Wintour, Vogue's Editor in Chief and Patron Saint of Quality Footwear, would crawl out her cave like Lazarus and bring us this breaking news about the difficulties of being a working mother in politics.

Let's be straight forward about Vogue and fashion magazines. They are what they are and what they are, assuming they stick to their mandate, is wonderful.

They write about clothes and makeup and 'it bags' and shoes and fashion shows and more clothes and luxury vacations and which models spurned which musician boyfriends on fashion runways and not only who wore what on red carpets, but they allow readers to vote on who looked best in those clothes and everything you could really live without if you really think about it. They have reworked Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to absurdity.

They covered the Kim/Kanye wedding like Christine Amanpour covered the Bosnian war. They led the charge of Lena Dunham's angst about being photoshopped for her cover shot because Vogue is precisely where anyone who has an issue with fake beauty being more important that the ugly truth would go. They debate, in alarming depth, the qualifications of what makes for a legitimate fashion writer vs fashion blogger which, naturally, affects who should be permitted to occupy the precious real estate of the front row of runway shows. Their idea of political appointments is which actress is named the ambassador for a nail polish brand, while the closest they get to a legitimate scandal is the television series, Scandal.

The notion of going to Vogue for breaking news is so misguided that if you search 'scandals Vogue', Google reworks that search to 'sandals Vogue'.

So why are they writing about Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump, with Conway's name as the lead?
It's one thing to put Trump on the cover of Time Magazine, but defend the choice, not as an endorsement. http://forward.com/culture/356537/why-times-trump-cover-is-a-subversive-work-of-political-art/
This is something entirely different and frightening.
You can pull the fine Merino wool over readers' eyes, but that doesn't mean it's a tight knit.

Behold the Trump Tower Elevator

   

In Canto III of Dante’s Inferno, there is the antechamber and then the Gate of Hell.  At Trump Tower, there is the lobby and then the four elevators.

I could basically stop writing right here.

If you are a masochist, here’s something that can fill the next eight hours of your life: the Trump lobby pool feed from the press area from November 18, 2016. (https://www.c-span.org/video/?418748-1/watch-pool-feed-trump-tower-lobby ). I guarantee you Andy Warhol is doing a half-gainer in his grave.

Presumably, anyone can enter the lobby. As for the elevators, hithertofore thought as nothing more than a method of conveyance, access takes on an entirely new meaning.

This photo of Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, entering one of the elevators to ascend to a fate yet to be determined, is emblematic of what is becoming the iconic image of this period before the inauguration. Perhaps it is the franchise luxury of the Trump black and gold motif, or maybe it is the symmetry-induced claustrophobia of the photo’s composition, or it might be nothing more than the reflection of the photographer, but something about this photo seems like there should be a dialogue bubble over Mnuchin’s head saying, “Tell my family I love them.”

On the other hand, it totally makes me think of The Shaft, the 2001 horror film from director Dick Maas about a killer elevator. "Nine people out of ten make it out of an elevator alive," quips one character.

On the internet, an array of listicles (such an offensive degeneration of journalism, with the exception of year end “Best Of” summaries) can be found detailing the best TV/movie elevator moments. But lists do not establish creative or symbolic significance, even if one of these articles appears in Vanity Fair, in its perpetual search to make the mundane sublime. VF waxes dyspeptic about the forced intimacy, the pressure cooker, the soothing ding and it all sounds wonderfully lyrical. But still, it’s just an elevator. Hardly road trip status.

And yet, these elevators are different. They are Trump elevators and we know he enjoys manufacturing iconic moments. Remember what he did for the escalator? Take the grand entrance he made in July, 2015, descending the Trump Tower hotel escalator for his presidential announcement (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/watch-donald-trumps-grand-escalator-entrance-presidential-announcement-31802261). Nothing about this scene was legit. The ‘homemade’ signs in the video (https://twitter.com/meganspecia/status/610847067427221504/photo/1 ) were supplied by the Trump team, the people in the video are actors paid $50/head to populate the space and like well-timed extras, they cheer on cue, (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/donald-trump-campaign-offered-actors-803161) , and even the use of the music, "Rockin' in the Free World" by Neil Young, was unauthorized  (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/neil-young-donald-trump-spar-over-rockin-in-the-free-world-use-20150617 ).

The Trump Tower elevator, however, smacks of something slight more Machiavellian and I don’t mean in the modern political sense. I do mean that there is something … power-mad about it, something perniciously narcissistic, something 'Idi Amin despotic' about it. It's akin to inviting Mitt Romney for dinner, offering a first course of his own soul, with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, and then making sure the press were present to bear witness. (On that point, this dinner was not the first time Trump made the press play Where’s Waldo. A pattern is developing and while it signals a troubling secrecy, I think it speaks to Trump enjoying making people chase him.)

Television and social media offer Trump’s amour-propre a round-the-clock biofeedback boost. This hunger would have been thwarted when his arrival at the back door of the White House, via the South Lawn, on November 10th was arranged so it would not be viewable by the public. Trump was further denied the trophy 4-shot photo op with the President and the First Lady (which would have looked wonderful on the mantelpiece next to his sons’ big game-hunting photos).

But that White House visit was only one moment, forgotten now in the endless news feed. My guess is that Trump has a whole new way to make himself feel good. It’s really just speculation, but perhaps Trump’s new idea of Reality TV is watching elevator security camera footage every night, relishing in the daily parade of politicians, statesmen, and personalities traveling up to the 58^th floor to kneel at his feet in humble supplication.

Maybe that’s the case, maybe not. What would make me happy is to imagine that one of those elevator passengers would figure out they are being filmed and go all Buddy the Elf with the Trump elevator buttons (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH3oNBnEqu8).