Oh, no, haven’t you heard? She ran a bad campaign. It’s her fault…it has to be her fault. Because if it isn’t her fault…why, it might be suspected that the media played a role. The voters played a role. Someone might try to claim misogyny played a role. So it must be her fault.
I think it’s funny how people talk about the one good thing about this election being the fact that the candidate who spent less won. WTF? Yeah, he spent less. He didn’t need to spend. He was on the front page every damn day. He was on Twitter, on television, on everybody’s feed…and she was being trashed by not just the Enquirer, but by reputable outfits. The Trump juggernaut would have outspent her by tons if all that “in kind” was counted. And for some reason, bad press helped him, bad press hurt her…that reason, of course, being her…um….pantsuits.
Isn’t the Enquirer one of the supermarket tabloids that usually carry headlines like Aliens From Saturn Ate My Wife or N.J. Housewife Gives Birth To Shark? Seriously, how does anybody with more than a single figure I.Q. read some, if not all of the headlines in that pic and not immediately think ‘Bullshit’?
The Enquirer is on display at every single check-out station in American supermarkets. Its practically an official organ. The screaming headlines were inflicted on just about every American citizen. Day in, day out, month after month, whether they buy the rag or not.
For the target audience, that me be the only actual text they absorb.
My mother believed the Enquirer. Her IQ was definitely beyond single figures, and she had a real talent at skepticism and critical thinking on things she did not already believe. But she was vulnerable to the Enquirer because they validated some of her core beliefs – ghosts and the like. She would have eaten up the Hillary headlines because she hated Hillary. Why did she hate Hillary? Because she hated every women who didn’t behave in a way she thought women should behave (she never acknowledged hating me, and probably didn’t, but did have a lot of problems with my lack of submissive wifeliness and baby-making).
The headlines simply fed into what people wanted to believe about Hillary, and reinforced their beliefs. Later, they only knew that “the news” said these things. They didn’t know which “news”.
You are thinking of the Weekly World News and similar tabloids that invent wild tales full of supernatural or paranormal elements.
The National Enquirer is the most successful participant is in a separate vein of the tabloid press focusing on celebrity scandals and gossip. Its stories may or may not be true, though even whatever elements of truth they contain are most likely distorted to favor the most sensational possible interpretation of events (and as is often the case with this genre, often have a socially conservative moralizing subtext). It is taken much more seriously by the sort of people who read these things than the weirdo sci-fi stuff.
One parallel might to consider the influence of Art Bell compared to that of Walter Winchell.
@6: The Enquirer used to do the super trashy stuff, then they cleaned up their act and did more celebrity news. The same company did the Weekly World News, moving the trash stories to that tabloid and printing it on the old Enquirer presses.
Yeah, I was surprised to see how hard they went after Hillary. A few times I’d see it at the checkout line and take a picture of their cover and send it to people, laughing at how ridiculously over the top it was (several times they had Hillary and Bill near death).
Did people take it seriously enough to tip the election? I’m sure, in isolation. If the rules are we are finding factors that made enough of a difference to put Trump over the top if everything else is kept the same, then we can come up with dozens in an election this close. And, yes, Hillary running a bad campaign is certainly one of them. If she’d bolstered her “blue wall” of the Great Lakes states at all, the “horrifying” news story would have been “omg can you believe Trump got so close to winning”.
Did people take it seriously enough to tip the election
I think for a lot of people, they see the headline, and don’t necessarily remember later where they saw it. It sort of mixes in with all the other news. That happens to me a lot…where did I read that? Since I have a certain suite of news sources I follow, I usually don’t worry that it will be the Enquirer, or its ilk, but things can get into your head if you just see a bank of magazines and their cover.
And frankly, I have discovered that a lot of people don’t know what is legitimate news source and what isn’t. I give my students guidance on sources for their assignments, because they don’t know what is what in many cases. And when I tell them “no tabloids”, I have to explain which those are. I finally resorted to saying “no magazine sold in the checkout line of grocery stores”. Yeah, there are some respectable publications (the cookbooks, some of them, if you ignore the paleo), but as I explain to my students, none of those magazines are there to be scientifically accurate journals, so if they just avoid all of those, they won’t miss a good source.
I’ve found that most people will accept what they read if it fits with what they already believe. If they think Hillary is a bad person, then the feeding frenzy will make sense to them.
Oh, no, haven’t you heard? She ran a bad campaign. It’s her fault…it has to be her fault. Because if it isn’t her fault…why, it might be suspected that the media played a role. The voters played a role. Someone might try to claim misogyny played a role. So it must be her fault.
I think it’s funny how people talk about the one good thing about this election being the fact that the candidate who spent less won. WTF? Yeah, he spent less. He didn’t need to spend. He was on the front page every damn day. He was on Twitter, on television, on everybody’s feed…and she was being trashed by not just the Enquirer, but by reputable outfits. The Trump juggernaut would have outspent her by tons if all that “in kind” was counted. And for some reason, bad press helped him, bad press hurt her…that reason, of course, being her…um….pantsuits.
Rachel Maddow had a nice breakdown on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e4oMar_nh0
Isn’t the Enquirer one of the supermarket tabloids that usually carry headlines like Aliens From Saturn Ate My Wife or N.J. Housewife Gives Birth To Shark? Seriously, how does anybody with more than a single figure I.Q. read some, if not all of the headlines in that pic and not immediately think ‘Bullshit’?
#3
The Enquirer is on display at every single check-out station in American supermarkets. Its practically an official organ. The screaming headlines were inflicted on just about every American citizen. Day in, day out, month after month, whether they buy the rag or not.
For the target audience, that me be the only actual text they absorb.
AoS @3:
My mother believed the Enquirer. Her IQ was definitely beyond single figures, and she had a real talent at skepticism and critical thinking on things she did not already believe. But she was vulnerable to the Enquirer because they validated some of her core beliefs – ghosts and the like. She would have eaten up the Hillary headlines because she hated Hillary. Why did she hate Hillary? Because she hated every women who didn’t behave in a way she thought women should behave (she never acknowledged hating me, and probably didn’t, but did have a lot of problems with my lack of submissive wifeliness and baby-making).
The headlines simply fed into what people wanted to believe about Hillary, and reinforced their beliefs. Later, they only knew that “the news” said these things. They didn’t know which “news”.
@3:
You are thinking of the Weekly World News and similar tabloids that invent wild tales full of supernatural or paranormal elements.
The National Enquirer is the most successful participant is in a separate vein of the tabloid press focusing on celebrity scandals and gossip. Its stories may or may not be true, though even whatever elements of truth they contain are most likely distorted to favor the most sensational possible interpretation of events (and as is often the case with this genre, often have a socially conservative moralizing subtext). It is taken much more seriously by the sort of people who read these things than the weirdo sci-fi stuff.
One parallel might to consider the influence of Art Bell compared to that of Walter Winchell.
@6: The Enquirer used to do the super trashy stuff, then they cleaned up their act and did more celebrity news. The same company did the Weekly World News, moving the trash stories to that tabloid and printing it on the old Enquirer presses.
Yeah, I was surprised to see how hard they went after Hillary. A few times I’d see it at the checkout line and take a picture of their cover and send it to people, laughing at how ridiculously over the top it was (several times they had Hillary and Bill near death).
Did people take it seriously enough to tip the election? I’m sure, in isolation. If the rules are we are finding factors that made enough of a difference to put Trump over the top if everything else is kept the same, then we can come up with dozens in an election this close. And, yes, Hillary running a bad campaign is certainly one of them. If she’d bolstered her “blue wall” of the Great Lakes states at all, the “horrifying” news story would have been “omg can you believe Trump got so close to winning”.
I think for a lot of people, they see the headline, and don’t necessarily remember later where they saw it. It sort of mixes in with all the other news. That happens to me a lot…where did I read that? Since I have a certain suite of news sources I follow, I usually don’t worry that it will be the Enquirer, or its ilk, but things can get into your head if you just see a bank of magazines and their cover.
And frankly, I have discovered that a lot of people don’t know what is legitimate news source and what isn’t. I give my students guidance on sources for their assignments, because they don’t know what is what in many cases. And when I tell them “no tabloids”, I have to explain which those are. I finally resorted to saying “no magazine sold in the checkout line of grocery stores”. Yeah, there are some respectable publications (the cookbooks, some of them, if you ignore the paleo), but as I explain to my students, none of those magazines are there to be scientifically accurate journals, so if they just avoid all of those, they won’t miss a good source.
I’ve found that most people will accept what they read if it fits with what they already believe. If they think Hillary is a bad person, then the feeding frenzy will make sense to them.