Common sense takes a holiday

Someone much smarter than all of us once said you don't ever pick a fight with them that buys their ink by the barrel. You take on the press (or today's many ink-less versions) in a free society, you lose. Or you take steps to make it a less-free society.

Which is what our Glorious Leader, President Donald J. "Donny" Trump took the first baby steps toward yesterday by barring several news outlets -- including the New York Times -- from the White House press briefing. It of course did not have the desired effect, because the outlets that weren't barred immediately shared everything they got out of the press briefing with the barred outlets.

This is what happens, see, unless you're willing to go all the way and just take a jackhammer to the First Amendment. Which GL and his minions might yet do. It's hard to put anything past the Child President at this point. He is, after all, the Child President.

In the meantime, all their chuckleheaded stunt did yesterday was make their "news briefing" even more irrelevant than usual. These deals always to some extent have been setpieces for disseminating propaganda. Barring news organizations that dare to raise uncomfortable but pertinent questions only enhances that perception.

So your "news briefing" just becomes something to be ignored, and more fodder for SNL. And meanwhile serious news reported by serious journalists continues to be reported without interruption.

As the Blob has been known to say before: Damn these people are dumb.

And apparently it's catching.

Out on the opposite coast, see, Glorious Leader has a kindred soul, apparently. As reported by the website Deadspin, University of Oregon football coach Willie Taggart has decided he will no longer speak to the Oregonian because he's mad at one of their reporters for doing his job.

That reporter is Ducks football beat writer Andrew Greif, who last month broke the story that an offseason workout regimen landed three players in the hospital. This set off a kerfuffle in which the newly-hired strength coach was fired and Taggart formally apologized.

Apparently Taggart hasn't gotten over it. So he's banned Greif's news outlet for characterizing  workouts that landed three players in the hospital as excessive.

That seems like a reasonable conclusion to me. But what do I know?

I'm still interested in knowing what sort of shenanigans the president and his cabal of outliers and conspiracy kooks are up to with the Russians. Silly me.