Monica Showalter "It's said a good scandal is one a casual bystander on the street can describe in one sentence.
"Well, we aren't seeing anything like this with the media-pumped Stormy Daniels scandal. Following her much advertised and much watched 60 Minutesinterview, all one can ask is, what the heck was this really about?
"Anderson Cooper interviewed the porn "star," who took $130,000 in hush money from Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, to conceal a one-night stand the pair had in a hotel several years ago. OK, it looks as if the hush money didn't work – we all know about the affair. Big deal. What's more, we weren't offered much in titillating sexual details in the 60 Minutes interview, which is what a sizable percentage of viewers were looking for. Cooper seemed most interested in whether a condom was used in the sexual encounter, which kind of gives a whiff as to how exciting this was. What we really heard was a lot about Stormy Daniels not being truthful about agreements she signed, not wanting to follow those agreements, being in league with left-wing political-machine lawyers (Cooper did have useful revelations there), and throwing out vague, hackneyed boilerplate claims about "threats." None of this impresses.
"Sixty Minutes seemed to realize this, which is why, in the second half of the interview, the program focused on the hush money as a potential campaign finance violation, citing a #NeverTrump Bush-linked lawyer as an authority on the matter. Even if there was merit in what he claimed, the penalty for such a violation, based on similar violations from Democrats and how those were resolved, would amount to some sort of small fine. Color us unimpressed on that, too.
"The obvious problem with this interview is that Daniels kept contradicting herself, and Cooper seemed too naïve to pursue those actual news angles:
"Daniels claimed early on that she wanted to be silent and that since all the news came out, she wanted only to "defend" herself.
"Given that she's a porn actress, it wasn't clear what she wanted to defend." . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment