Just days after Mr. Helms, a Republican from North Carolina, created a furor by saying that President Clinton was not up to the job of Commander in Chief, he told The News and Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."
-- New York Times, November 23, 1994
From the DC Comics Wiki:
A retcon is a turn of phrase used by comic readers and industry professionals to describe alterations in the existing internal history of a particular comic character or series of events. Short for retroactive continuity, the term can be applied as either an acting verb or a noun and is only recognized in the external environment of comic book creation...
Purposes of a Retcon
As a writing convention, a retcon serves the function of revising older material, which may be deemed unpalatable to modern readers by altering specific details...
As I have documented to the point of tedium on my blog, one of the four characteristics common to all Conservatives from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to Michael Gerson and David Brooks, is a dependence on "a massive, ongoing and self-reinforcing regime of historical revisionism and 'doublethink'" for ideological and political cohesion.
And for the last 20 years or so (and picking up speed as the Bush Administration fell apart) they have all been retconning the sh*t out of the history of American Conservatism and their various roles within it.
Which is why the single funniest damn thing on teevee today has to have been the Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough mercilessly chastising Donald J. Trump for lying about Trump's own very public remarks and blaming "the media" for deliberately misrepresenting what he had said...
...which was followed immediately by Joe "Never Punch Down" Scarborough lying about Joe Scarborough's own very public support of Donald J. Trump and blaming "stupid people in political circles" for deliberately misrepresenting him.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: I do want to say though, ...just point of personal privilege here and I'm not talking about Peter here, there's a lot of stupid people that in, in political circles, who have watched this show and who have seen us predicting Donald Trump's success, suggesting that somehow means that we supported him and enabled him from the very beginning. No, all we said was -- before almost everybody else did -- that the guy's gonna win the Republican nomination. As I said from very beginning I couldn't vote for this guy. said I was going to support Jeb, I was going to support Kasich. I also said after the Muslim ban came out, we tore him to shreds and when was that, November? Back in the Fall said I could never vote for... I said that I've said that so many times... would never vote for a guy that did that.
MIKA BREZINSKI: You hung up on him on the air and also revealed some very prescient statements about Vladimir Putin...
JOE: Exactly, and you look at again when asked him about Putin and his love and admiration for Vladimir Putin and I reminded him that he assassinated journalists, asked whether this is what Germany looked like in 1933... I mean, again, it's kind of like if John Madden said that a team that he was going to hate was going to win the Super Bowl
MIKE BARNICLE (off screen): As if he's rooting for him.
JOE: Actually I talked to Gary Danielson? Gary Danielson said before that when he analyzes sometimes people get confused and think he's actually rooting for or against a college team.
WILLIE GEIST: Yeah I mean I get asked that question all the time to about this show... and Donald Trump and we were talking about and explaining last year when people come on the set... people live in New York and Washington... and roll their eyes and laughs at Donald Trump to this is going to be over in the summer and I think you haven't been in the Republican Party saw something that a lot of those people didn't see. So I would it was an advocacy it was explanation and analysis.
JOE: And by the way, David Axelrod also... He thanked David Axelrod for his support Donald Trump did. Again, a confusion between understanding what was going to happen.
MIKA: All right we will be right back
It was...perfect. I mean, Squint was already a shoo-in for the silver medal in Olympic Frantic Backpedaling, but did you see him stick that f*cking landing?
This collision of fake indignation and failed retconning apparently caused some, tiny ember buried under the ashes and stumps and alley detritus in Mike Barnicle's brain to stir momentarily to life. Perhaps, Mr. Barnicle opined painfully, the, uh, media, has, uh, something to do with this,..um...problem. Perhaps the media always trying to be, uh. "objective" and talk both sides, has, um, let Trump get away with stuff. (10:30 at this video)
Aw, how adorable! He thinks he's people!
And then he went back to sleep on the park bench they keep on set for when Mike exerts himself too much.
Meanwhile. seeing that Abusive Asshole Dad Joe Scarborough was apparently not handing out beatings for uttering heresies today, Morning Joe's most expendable subaltern, Willie Geist, took some of that action (from Media Matters):
WILLIE GEIST (CO-HOST): Everyone, including members of the press, have to stop falling to the trap of [Donald Trump] made a speech about the economy, he read off a teleprompter, he said somethings that made sense if you're a Republican, he fed some red meat to those people, and thinking that this means it's a new day, that he's changed. We know who Donald Trump is. There are a lot of people who like this guy. A lot of people who voted for him, but this is who he is. It's not -- there is no pivot, there's no change.
Yes! Yes! "Members of the press " failed us, says member-of-the-press Willie Giest. "They" need to stop falling for Trump's Jedi mind-tricks says a jumped-up haircut who never, ever finds the 'droids he is looking for. Like they did back in... July?
Finally, I would be derelict in my duties as the outcast, broke-ass Liberal Josephus-with-dick-jokes chronicler of the collapse of our political media if I did not mention that the moment when Squint firmly remind his Meat Puppet that her place is at the foot of his f*cking bed was also super-special.
Excerpted from Driftglass
