“It takes two to tango” and other one-liners

President Donald Trump has a famously rocky relationship with the media, one he courted as candidate Trump, pointing to the press enclosure at his rallies, inviting the condemnation of the crowd and ignoring a sage bit of advice:

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” — variously attributed to every quipster from H.L. Mencken to Mark Twain to Ben Franklin

Last week Pres. Trump tweeted:

“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

There is actually a lot of truth in that. It all depends on which names you put inside the parentheses. Deliberate falsehood in reporting is toxic waste in the drinking water of public discourse. Those who wish to cloud the matter might quote from the Bible:

“What is truth?” — Pontius Pilate

This week the Trump administration barred some of those named “enemies” from White House briefings, ignoring another bit of sage advice:

“Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” — Michael Corleone, Godfather 2

As a formerly loud-mouthed young opponent of Vietnam War policy, this is not my first experience with a president who lumps me and my ilk in among the “enemies of the American people.” But as a worker in the media for nearly two decades, I see myself more as a superhero in my own Marvel universe, lacking only cape and goggles. I do not, however, insist that everyone agree. That might raise constitutional questions.

“War is hell.” — Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

In her current NPR Ombudsman column, Elizabeth Jensen responds to critics of NPR coverage of the new administration, and to the bad blood between the White House and the media. Paraphrasing NPR news executive Michael Oreskes, she writes:

“NPR is not in a war with the White House; it is there to do its job.”

Me, too.

“It takes two to tango. . .” — 1952 song by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning

. . .and I don’t dance.

Tags: listeningpost