As American news watchers begin to tire and grow bored with the seemingly endless Russiagate narrative, a former porn star, one who claims she was paid off by President Trump to keep an affair back in 2006 quiet, has appeared at just the right time.
There’s nothing more entertaining than titillating sleaze and it’s even better when it involves a sitting U.S. president, one who may have been sleeping with an adult film star while he was married. Add to that delicious cocktail some hush money paid to her in 2016 before an election and you have all the makings of a feeding frenzy for newsrooms all across the country.
The fact that Trump at the time was a multi-millionaire real estate tycoon with a reputation for enjoying all the perks of his money and fame would seem to make the story a bit less scandalous than the talking heads seem to suggest, but who cares? It’s a story perfectly suited for the ET style of news we are now accustomed to seeing in the main stream media these days.
The talking heads could not have asked for a better story to milk, stretch, and get excited over. With the Russiagate story growing stale and boring, Stormy Daniels has come in from the bullpen to provide some much needed relief. She is the Kenley Jansen for the newsroom set.
Why bother covering boring stories like yesterday’s vote in the Senate on whether or not the U.S. should continue its assistance to Saudi Arabia in its bombing campaign and blockade of Yemen, a relentlessly bloody three-year-long onslaught that has led to the deaths of over 10,000 people, mostly civilians.
Perhaps the talking heads over at MSNBC, FOX, and CNN feel that discussing the U.S. support for that war and the effects it has brought about, namely, the outbreak of cholera and mass starvation, is not entertaining enough. Better to provide their audiences with more entertaining content, like a story about a former porn star who slept with the president.
And, besides, these stories of infidelity, betrayal, and extramarital liasons at the highest levels of government, are much easier to cover for those roving TV reporters than, say, an aerial bombardment and starvation blockade in a poverty-stricken country on the other side of the world. What assignment would you prefer if you were a reporter for CNN? Yemen or Pennsylvania Avenue?
And getting dispatched to Yemen would upset all kinds of social plans.How would these dogged and fearless field reporters covering Ms. Daniels ever be able to meet their colleagues for drinks at the local happy hour if they had to go all the way to Yemen to cover some massacre no one has ever heard about. It would be so inconvenient, not to mention a bit more dangerous than reporting from outside The White House about a real life soap opera, an ongoing reality TV show dressed up as news.
And by avoiding covering the massacre in Yemen, and the U.S.’s role in it, the TV networks have managed to avoid upsetting those 55 Senators who voted to continue it. They also are assured of preserving their sources within the Pentagon and intelligence community who will be more than happy to feed them more material for their next story on how well we are doing in Syria and Iraq. And, besides, who wants to get on the bad side of the intelligence community. That could be a career killer.
As Senator Schumer warned President Trump, it’s best not to pick a fight with intelligence officials as they “have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you,” a lesson thoroughly learned and faithfully followed by those fearless truth seekers chasing after a former porn star for their next big story.
