Summary: James Bowman examines the Stormy Daniels Affair, showing aspects of it ignored by journalists (lest it ruin the narrative).
Stormy telling her story on “60 Minutes.”
“Stormy Weather“
By James Bowman.
From The New Criterion, 31 May 2018.
Far be if from me to say “I told you so,” but the media’s spring offensive against President Donald Trump, based on his alleged sexual misbehavior as predicted in these pages four months ago (see “Putting Down the Big Dog” in The New Criterion of January 2018), within days of the 100th anniversary of the Germans’ Kaiserschlacht offensive in France {March – July 1918} which almost turned the tide of WWI in their favor. Leading the charge on this occasion was one Stephanie, “Stormy,” Daniels, porn star, who told Anderson Cooper of “60 minutes” of a long-ago sexual encounter – it could hardly be said to rise to the dignity of an “affair” – with Mr Trump and a subsequent payment to her of a considerable sum of money to keep silence about it. …
It might be a bit of a stretch to see Ms Daniels as a victim …as she never alleged that her relationship with Mr Trump was anything but consensual. Moreover, it must have been pretty obvious that her marketability as a porn star, or even as a garden-variety celebrity, now washed clean of her past sins (if any) …increased with every media appearance. But her presence on so celebrated a TV “magazine” show as “60 Minutes,” watched by millions, made her a sort of ex officio victim, and some of the immunity from criticism or even skepticism {of victims} …may be supposed to have rubbed off on her.
Stormy fixed up differently.
Still, I thought it a bit odd that she and not one or more of the women currently alleging sexual harassment or assault against Mr Trump was chosen to lead the media’s Sturmtruppen. Presumably, the allegation that he or his agents paid her for her silence about the alleged “affair” is regarded as the more potentially fatal scandal for him – on that other well-known media principle that the “cover-up” is always more scandalous than the crime. So much so, indeed, that by now there needn’t be any actual crime to be covered up, as both Scooter Libby and Michael Flynn have found to their cost. I wonder, however, if the media have not made a mistake in tactics by turning Ms Daniels – with her eager cooperation, of course – into a new-minted celebrity opponent of the president, taking her place in line alongside the likes of Rosie O’Donnell and Megyn Kelly and Alec Baldwin and Stephen Colbert and Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezeznski.
For if Mr Trump’s admirers have been able to ignore such people on account of their obvious animus against him, doesn’t giving the porn star the celebrity treatment just invite them to ignore her as well? Turning every criticism of himself and thus every potential scandal into just another celebrity feud has worked astonishingly well for him so far, the most spectacular example being James Comey. But the media, perhaps because they are more than half-crazed by their own hatred of the man, seem incapable of avoiding this trap – which, if one dared to suppose the President the political and PR genius he sometimes appears to be, he might have set for them.
All the media attention lavished on Ms Daniels appeared to have had no more effect on the President’s approval ratings than any other of the parade of scandals during the past two years {as evident in Gallup’s weekly polls.} ….
But even if scandal fatigue should set in, its obverse, which is government by virtue-signaling has never been stronger, on the #NeverTrump right as much as on the left. For two generations since Watergate, little boys and girls destined by birth and breeding for the information economy’s upper echelons have grown to maturity dreaming not of governing but, like Paul Greengrass, director of the 9/11 film United 93 {review here, available at Amazon}, “of being an investigative reporter and bringing governments down.” To him and to many others like him “being an investigative reporter” is itself the ultimate virtue-signal, the guarantee of their righteous entitlement to break democratically-elected governments which fail to live up to their own high standards of morality.
For this reason, it would be foolish to expect that, even in an age like ours of widespread public disgust with such self-righteousness and entitlement, the media will ever lay their broken sword at the feet of a victorious Donald Trump. The best we can hope for is that they might one day be persuaded by a growing public indifference to their shrieks of indignation that scandal has finally played itself out as the most effective weapon in their arsenal.
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About James Bowman
Bowman is a Resident Scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
He has worked as a freelance journalist, serving as American editor of the Times Literary Supplement of London from 1991 to 2002, as movie critic of The American Spectator since 1990 and as media critic of The New Criterion since 1993. He has also been a weekly movie reviewer for The New York Sun since the newspaper’s re-foundation in 2002. He has also contributed to a wide range of other major papers.
Mr. Bowman is perhaps best known for his book, Honor: A History
See his collected articles at his website, including his film reviews going back to 1994.
For More Information
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- Important: see The Big List of Lies – a selection, not a comprehensive list, of lies in the past 5 decades by Presidents and high officials.
- James Bowman’s explains Trump’s scandalology.
- Methods of Madness in the Resistance to each president.
- These are the last days of Trump. Next: the rise of Pence.
- Bowman explains why the Democrats burn Bill to get Trump.
About Bowman’s great book.
It is about a lost but vital element from our culture. I recommend reading Honor: A History
“The importance of honor is present in the earliest records of civilization. Today, while it may still be an essential concept in Islamic cultures, in the West, honor has been disparaged and dismissed as obsolete.
“In this lively and authoritative book, James Bowman traces the curious and fascinating history of this ideal, from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and to the killing fields of World War I and the despair of Vietnam. Bowman reminds us that the fate of honor and the fate of morality and even manners are deeply interrelated.”