The New York Times - USA (2020-10-17)

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2020 Y A

Election

College. Among men, the race is
tied.
Mr. Trump’s suburban deficit
has emerged as a significant prob-
lem for his re-election bid, one
that’s left the president begging
with women to come home.
“Suburban women, will you
please like me?” the president
said at a rally in Johnstown, Pa.,
this week. “Please. Please.”
For Ms. Rabinovitch, no amount
of pleading will undo the damage
of the past four years. On a chilly
October evening in a suburban
Columbus backyard, she gathered
with three other women, all moth-
ers of young children, to discuss
their political evolutions.
Not all of them voted for Mr.
Trump, but all carry regret about

For them, the president’s
words and actions have forced an
intimate re-examination of their
deep-rooted, more conservative
political identities — taught in
church and school and inherited
from their families — and some
things that are even more person-
al: their sense of morality and the
values they hope to impart to their
children.
Perhaps most worrisome for
the president and his party is that
the shift could go beyond Mr.
Trump on the ballot this year, and
outlast him. Armed with tumblers
of wine, the women described how
Mr. Trump had turned them off
from a Republican Party they
once supported, one that they now
see as intertwined with the presi-
dent’s divisive rhetoric.
“I cannot imagine a Republican
candidate that I would rally be-
hind,” said Hannah Dasgupta,
who is a stay-at-home mother of
two school-age children and grew
up in a conservative home. “Wow,
that’s mind-blowing to think
about. That’s a huge departure.”
Ms. Dasgupta, 37, said she had
never liked Mr. Trump but had
been unable to support Hillary
Clinton in 2016. For Ms. Dasgupta,
who was raised attending Chris-
tian schools, opposition to abor-
tion was central to her political be-
liefs. After Mrs. Clinton offered an
unapologetic defense of abortion
rights in the final presidential de-
bate, Ms. Dasgupta cast her ballot
for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian
candidate.
“The crazy thing is like, I would-
n’t know the guy if he was sitting
next to me,” Ms. Dasgupta said. “I
don’t think I could identify him.
But those Republican roots were
deep, and the abortion issue is
strong.”
Over the past four years, Ms.
Dasgupta’s views on abortion
have shifted to the left as her opin-
ion of the president has sunk. She
has grown tired of explaining his
actions — such as his comments in
this week’s town hall questioning
the effectiveness of mask-wearing
— to her young children.
She connects her support of Mr.
Biden to her role as a mother, say-
ing that she spends time teaching
her children basic skills like shar-
ing and speaking respectfully —
traits she believes the president
lacks.
“In the last four years, my chil-
dren have grown and developed
more than he has in regards to the
way he speaks to other people, the
way he speaks about other peo-
ple,” she said.
Katie Paris, the founder of Red,
Wine and Blue, an all-female team
of “P.T.A. mamas and digital di-

vas” focused on organizing suburban female voters for Ohio Demo- crats, hears such sentiments frequently. She believes that for Democrats to keep the support of women like Ms. Dasgupta, they must recog- nize the intimate nature of their politics. Ms. Paris’s philosophy of political organizing is a mix of Da- vid Plouffe, the famed Democratic data guru, and Brené Brown, the research professor who has be- come a viral self-help star. Ms. Paris, who brought togeth- er the group of women around the backyard firepit, believes that

moving away from a political iden- tity takes “courageous conversa- tions.” And the way to encourage people on that path involves “being vulnerable with each other about what’s going on in our lives at a personal level.” Many suburban women already have doubts about Mr. Trump, she said, but may be reluctant to ex- press their political opinions, par- ticularly to a young campaign or- ganizer from out of state. Her group hires as organizers women who have lived in their suburban communities for over a decade, tapping into their existing net-

works of class parents and tee-ball coaches. “We can’t leave this all on Black voters to carry all the weight in Ohio,” added Ms. Paris, who is white. “It’s going to take all of us.” She and her team are particu- larly proud of their large presence on social media. One recent viral effort featured women posting photos of themselves in aprons and curlers with Democratic campaign signs while holding cock- tails, a spoof on Mr. Trump’s Twit- ter appeals to the “Suburban Housewives of America.” Ms. Paris and the Democrats

hope to repeat the strategy that won their party control of the House in 2018, driving up their margins among suburban women in swing districts. They have some reason for opti- mism: Four years ago, Mr. Trump won Ohio by eight percentage points. Now, polling shows a tied race. Still, Ohio may remain out of reach for Democrats this year. The 2018 strategy was far less successful there than elsewhere in the Midwest, and the popular in- cumbent Senator Sherrod Brown was the only Democrat to win statewide. The perennial swing

state has trended Republican recently, and plenty of female voters still support the president. “I’ve heard people say, ‘How can you vote for Trump when you’re a woman and the things he says about women?’ ” said Rachel Antonelli, 35, a banker in Dela- ware, Ohio, who is pregnant with her second child and plans to vote for Mr. Trump. “Personally, what I care about is that he gets things done for the country.” Since the summer of racial jus- tice protests and unrest around the country, Republicans have tried to woo back white suburban women with a focus on “law and order,” stoking racial fears and de- picting the increasingly diverse suburbs as the sole province of white, affluent families. Accord- ing to William Frey, a demogra- pher at the Brookings Institution, white people made up 77 percent of the population in inner-ring suburbs in 1990; today they are 58 percent, he said. The women in Columbus, who are all white, described the killing of George Floyd as a seminal event in their political awak- enings, one that drew attention to issues of racism and police vio- lence beyond their personal purview. “I’m not going to lie and say, like, in February, I was worried about racism in America,” said Ms. Rabinovitch, who has a 4- year-old son. “Like, I wasn’t.” The video of Mr. Floyd’s killing, she said, forced her to acknowl- edge structural problems in American society. “I have to think of everybody,” she said. “So if I’m voting against Donald Trump, that’s not a vote for me or a vote for my son. That’s a vote for everyone. Everyone’s sons.” In the final months of the campaign, the pandemic and its cas- cading effects on schools and the economy have deepened the opposition to Mr. Trump among female voters. Unlike some of the women in her social circles, Andrea Granieri knew four years ago that she couldn’t back Mr. Trump. Raised in a conservative Catholic family, her vote for Hillary Clinton was the first she had ever cast for a Democrat. “I just looked at my daughter, who was 3 at the time, and the way that he talked about and treated women,” said Ms. Granieri, 34, who lives in Anderson Township, a suburb of Cincinnati. “I was just like, I cannot put a check next to his name.” After Mrs. Clinton lost, Ms. Granieri found herself becoming increasingly engaged in local Democratic causes. Her involve- ment escalated after the pandemic began, and she found herself juggling a full-time job at a charter school and home-school- ing her own children along with the pressure of her husband’s los- ing some of his work. “I felt like, do you understand?” she said. “Like, I am on my last shred of sanity here. And you guys have no idea. You’re not sending help. I don’t know how much long- er I have to do this.” A Facebook post she wrote about her frustrations with the state’s Republican leadership cap- tured local attention, becoming a piece of campaign mail for a candidate for the State Senate. “I had so many regrets after 2016, because I took for granted that — I just thought Hillary would win,” Ms. Granieiri said. “I’m determined not to have regrets on Nov. 4 this time.”

Hannah Dasgupta, with her daughter Priya, 5, in Ohio, said she was tired of explaining President Trump’s actions to her children.

HAIYUN JIANG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

In the Suburbs, Women Who Supported Trump in 2016 Have Soured on Him

From Page A

Katie Paris is the founder of Red, Wine and Blue, a team focused on organizing suburban female voters for Ohio Democrats.

DA’SHAUNAE MARISA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Kate Rabinovitch voted for Trump in 2016. “I thought, ‘Oh, what’s the worst that could happen?’ ” She supports Biden now.

DA’SHAUNAE MARISA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jessica Cheung contributed re-
porting.

The Babylon Bee’s most successful articles in terms of online engagement are the ones that are

... less obviously satirical.
Totally. And that’s landed them in
some hot water.

Like, one from the other day was called “NBA Players Wear Special Lace Collars to Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” People were sharing that think- ing it was real.

Yes! They certainly play to that for virality — their best content is right on the reality-satire line.

I’m wondering the extent to which being a satire site — which makes them exempt from Facebook’s fact-checking program — has allowed them to traffic in misinformation under the guise of comedy. Do you think that’s a deliberate strategy? Well, that’s a great question, because it’s been a big source of controversy for them. They’ve had a few articles that were fact-checked by Snopes and rated “false.” Which The Bee’s writers and editors claim prompted Facebook to threaten them with being demonetized (Facebook denies this). The

On Friday, President Trump
tweeted an article from an un-
usual source: The Babylon Bee,
a right-wing satire site that is
often compared to a conservative
version of The Onion.

“Twitter Shuts Down Entire
Network to Slow Spread of
Negative Biden News,” read the
article’s headline. The article
was a joke, but it was unclear
whether Mr. Trump knew that
when he shared the link, with
the comment “Wow, this has
never been done in history.”
Emma Goldberg, a reporter
for The New York Times, re-

cently profiled The Babylon Bee, and wrote about how the site’s satire is frequently mistaken for reality. I chatted with Ms. Goldberg about her article, The Babylon Bee’s habit of skirting the line between misinformation and satire, and how it capitalizes on its audience’s confusion.

So, Emma, you wrote about The Babylon Bee, a satirical news site I’ve been fascinated by for a long time. It’s basically the right-wing version of The Onion, right? Exactly. And what fascinated me in reporting this is that I’ve fol- lowed The Onion for a long time — but The Babylon Bee currently gets more traffic than them, at least according to their internal numbers.

That’s so interesting! (As an aside, I’m looking at some engagement data from Facebook now, and it’s telling me that The Babylon Bee has gotten about 45 million interactions with its Facebook page in the last year, compared with 35 million for The Onion.) Why do you think The Bee is doing so well? Well, they certainly don’t pull any punches. Their mantra seems to be that everything is fair game: the left, the right, Trump. And in

general, on the right, swiping at Trump is considered a red line, but The Bee doesn’t seem to care. They’ve also tapped into a large audience of people who aren’t hard-line Trumpers, but are much more pissed off by the outrage that Trump generates on the left.

Right, sort of the anti-anti-Trump crowd. And the people who run the site, are they pro-Trump? What do they see themselves as doing, within the larger conservative movement? They are ambivalent about their views on Trump, but they also proudly identify as Christian conservatives. But I noticed that their early coverage of Trump, back in 2016, was much more vitriolic than today’s. They called him a psychopath, or a megalo- maniac. Now they’re more be- mused by him and the ghoulish ways he’s described on the left. But I think their willingness to swipe at him, even gently, gets at an important element for successful humor. What the media scholar Brian Rosenwald told me is that the humor always has to come before the politics.

So this is a blog about distortions and misinformation, and one thing I’ve noticed recently is that a lot of

Bee’s founder, Adam Ford, has claimed that Snopes fact-checked them in ways that were “egre- gious,” with standards that wouldn’t be applied to, for exam- ple, The Onion. The Bee feels that they’re being targeted unfairly. But Snopes has poked at the fact that theirpieces can sometimes be easily mistaken for real news — which might fall on them, not their readers.

Politics aside, it sort of speaks to the impossible nature of being a satirical site in the age of the mega-platform. Because on one hand, you’ve got to write things that are so obviously made up that they can’t reasonably be mistaken for real news, but also close enough to the truth to be funny. One hundred percent. Truth is funnier than fiction these days.

One thing I’ve wondered is what the whole “owning the libs” media industrial complex (which I’d categorize The Bee as belonging to, even if they wouldn’t) will do if Trump loses in November. Do you get the sense that The Bee cares who wins the election, from the standpoint of comedic potential? What’s funny is that because they aren’t Trump loyalists, they

can see an advantage for their comedy either way. In some senses, comedy comes a lot easi- er when you’re not the party in power. But on the other hand, Trump is such an absurd figure that he can lend himself to some really wild caricatures. The edi- tor in chief of The Bee told me Trump is great for comedy, so he’d be happy to see him win — a little later, he added that maybe they’re sick of Trump humor and ready for a change. They also see a lot of humor opportunity in the Biden camp, especially playing off the “Sleepy Joe” motif.

So what I’m taking from this conversation is: The Babylon Bee is not a covert disinformation operation disguised as a right-wing satire site, and is in fact trying to do comedy, but may inadvertently be spreading bad information when people take theirstories too seriously? For the most part. But they also seem to find it pretty funny when their content is mistaken for real news — and they’re not exactly going overboard to stop that.

Every day, Times reporters will chronicle and debunk false and misleading information that is going viral online.

Via @TheBabylonBee Wow, this has never been done in history. This includes his really bad interview last night. Why is Twitter doing this. Bringing more attention to Sleepy Joe & Big T Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

DISTORTIONS

A Right-Wing Satire Site That Sometimes Tricks a Bit Too Well

By KEVIN ROOSE

The New York Times - USA (2020-10-17)

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