This is the part that drives me absolutely bonkers about media types tsk-tsking over Donald Trump:

What the fuck did you expect?

Here we are, a blog devoted to calling out the media. For more than ten years, we've pointed out the dangers of their indifference, their willingness to perpetuate "both sides do it" and on-the-other-handism. Their reluctance to confront Republicans on their toxic speech, their seeming inability to see the larger picture, the logical results of their abdication of the mission of a free press.

And we see it again with Donald Trump.

“In what is becoming a fairly routine ritual in a campaign that has seen no shortage of racially charged rhetoric from the Republican front-runner, America’s prominent white nationalists again found comfort in a proposal from The Donald,” report Andrew Kaczynski and Christopher Massie at BuzzFeed. At Vox, Max Fisher writes that “Trump isn’t actually the problem here. Rather, he’s merely indulging a sentiment that was already widespread.” And at The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog, political scientist David T. Smith tells Henry Farrell that Trump’s rhetoric is similar to bigotry faced by Jews, Catholics and Mormons in the past.

Hey, cable TV bobbleheads: What Trump says isn't new. It's just that he says it so much more unabashedly, unashamed. The Republican party didn't just suddenly become the party of extremism, of dangerous ideas. You watched as they became smaller, purer, crazier. Your response? "Hey, we'd better target that demographic!"

You guys own that. Your careerist asses went along with that corporate agenda -- I'd guess with very little meaningful pushback.

Did it never occur to you that chasing "stories" and "scandals" fabricated by Fox News and affiliated extremist groups would have consequences? Do you not see the teeniest spray of blood on your clean white shirts from the Planned Parenthood shootings?

How far do you suppose the Republicans would have gotten with racist dogwhistles if your talk show hosts got in their faces EVERY SINGLE TIME?

What if journalists had simply put their collective feet down and said, "No more birthers allowed?"

But no. You're the same careless people who present Paul fucking Ryan as some kind of economic heavyweight. Because you're so superficial. You're rich, you live in bubbles, and so you look at everything in a vacuum. He "sounds" like he knows what he's talking about, but he doesn't.

Close enough for cable news, I guess!

You are working in a profession that was considered so essential by the Founders, it was given special protection via a constitutional amendment.

They would be appalled to see what you did with it.