I try to be polite, but really...

Sinclair Davidson turned up in comments here recently:  whether that means he reads this blog regularly, semi-regularly or only when he gets a mention, I don't know.   (Actually, he gets a mention here pretty often, so the last two categories are pretty close.)

Now, this may not be quite on a par with the gobsmacking, how-could-he-possibly-ask-that-question, reputational harm of asking why calling an aboriginal man an ape was (or even, could be) racist; but for a person obsessed with free speech, it comes very close.

I'm talking about his post today in which he pretty much defends Trump repeatedly calling the media "the enemy of the people".   OK, let's be generous to Trump and note that after his daughter said they weren't, he tweeted that he didn't mean all,  just a "large percentage" of the media that spreads "fake news".

Davidson notes in comments to his post that this is what he understood Trump to mean - "just CNN and some others."

Some others, hey?

Cue his mate Andrew Bolt - who will soon be dying his hair red so as to feel ever closer to the very soul of  Pauline Hanson after his "I hate the way immigrants cluster together - it makes me feel yucky and uncomfortable and I don't like it" column yesterday - has attempted a similar, pathetic defence of Trump as not condemning all media as "enemy of the people" - just the media that criticises him.

I mean, honestly, Bolt's post itself notes that Trump has specifically cited and attacked as "fake news purveyors" the New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, Associated Press, MSNBC, "and so on".   That's all three of the big broadcast media networks in the US!   We all know what Trump means - any media which has criticised him and his administration, and in particular, reported on Russian collusion, is peddling "fake news", is not to be believed, and is "the enemy of the people".

 It's a serious joke that Davidson cannot see, or excuses, the authoritarianism inherent in any President labelling the professional establishment media (we're not talking some internet bozo like Alex Jones or Jim Hoft) as "an enemy of the people" -  and I would say that regardless of the size of the media element that is so labelled.   In Trump's case, it's virtually all of  the media save for Fox News, Breitbart and the Washington Times - all of which, while privately owned, are so close in allegiance to Trump that they are effectively the same output as State media.

You thought a man who hails from South Africa might have a better idea about racism than he did, and a better nose for authoritarian rhetoric?

You thought a frequent defender of free speech might have qualms about a President who wants his followers to completely ignore, and worse - consider their enemy, all media free speech which has reporting and opinion said President doesn't like?

Well you would be wrong.

But illustrating again the embarrassing intellectual and moral joke that the Right, whether conservative or libertarian, has become in Australia?   You would be right.

PS:   it's clear what this is about - it's in the extracted commentary in Sinclair's post explaining that CNN has to realise that the rage of the Trumpkins is just them finally having their chance to let the media finally hear their frustration with their product.    

Yes, it's the media's own fault for not respecting enough the views of the Right - or the Trump right, or whatever.   It's the "but you don't take me seriously enough" cry of the people who believe that climate change is a massive conspiracy, Obama was a Muslim born in Africa and the Worst President in History, that Hillary is a murderous harpy, etc, etc.

In Sinclair's case, I think he may be having trouble coping with not getting enough respect from the media, even though he campaigned for years in his own way against climate change,  made a big and wrong warning on Keynesian spending after the GFC leading to stagflation in Australia, and completely voluntarily opened himself to ridicule on the matter of the use of "ape" in a racist context.

Maybe if he owned up to errors instead of blustering past them,  he might get more media respect and be less inclined to want defend dangerous authoritarian sentiment?   Just a suggestion.

Update:  for those who seem to need educating, or reminding:  in the Guardian this morning:   'Enemy of the people': Trump's phrase and its echoes of totalitarianism