As Kellyanne Conway wisely said of Trump, he knows the difference between what offends and what affects. This is the key to his brilliant tactics. Do something that affects, and distract by doing something that offends, something generally irrelevant of little or no consequence that gets his critics all riled up, barking away on Twitter, making memes, wearing pussy hats, totally missing the real story. This morning, he fired the Attorney General, and then hours later, banned CNN’s Chief White House correspondent. What’s everyone barking about? Acosta from CNN having his credentials revoked. On the scale of things, no big deal.
It’s like when Abbott delivered the worst Liberal Budget in living memory in 2014 and all anyone could talk about was how we winked at a sex worker, or Daniel Andrews signing secret agreements with China, but then distracting everyone with a funny video of sheep drowning out a policy announcement.
We’ve eroded the Fourth Estate with enough loser-generated content and focus on likes, clicks and other vanity metrics that we keep forgetting that policy and good Government really does affect us more than a retweet.
