The other night Hasan Minaj hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner and later went on to drop an epic dis piece on the entire free press. His catch line: Stay in the pocket. In other words he reminded the press that in order not to be called fake news, you gotta stop being snarky about Trump. As hard as it may be, you gotta. Be deadpan and logical and journalistic. Reveal his nonsense for what it is and do so playing the journalist role so people cannot point to you and say you’re full of it. Give them no reason to doubt the voracity of your claims. Because they aren’t claims. They aren’t alternative facts. Trump has done some shady stuff, so we gotta be able to call him on it.
Stay in the pocket is the new version of stay in your lane. The news ought to leave comedy to late night where we can step back from these stories and laugh at the absurdity of the situation. That only works if there remains a forum to take these stories seriously and snark free.
Some Thoughts:
- That thing I said about James Harden got worse. Harden was humiliated by Jonathan Simmons yet again. Leading to memes such as these: https://youtu.be/krLgx9aADss