用法学习: 1. think long and hard (reconsider/rethink one's life decisions/choices, have a rethink of an idea, plan, or system) To consider something very carefully and thoroughly. You had better think long and hard before you say your next words, because you are on thin ice, mister. I thought long and hard about what colleges I want to apply to—it wasn't just a rash decision. Rudeness 粗鲁, 不礼貌 (also called effrontery ( [ɪˈfrʌntəri] [formal, disapproval] behavior that is rude or that shows a lack of respect. Effrontery is behaviour that is bold, rude, or disrespectful. One could only gasp 惊叹 叹为观止 at the sheer effrontery of the man. vocabulary: If you rudely behave as if you have a right to something that you have no right to, you're committing effrontery. When a couple stroll into a crowded restaurant, demand the best table, and threaten the staff unless they're seated right away, that's effrontery. People have been guilty of outrageously self-centered behavior at least since 1715, when effrontery was coined. Tracing to the French word effronté, meaning "shameless," the word effrontery is also connected to brazen 肆无忌惮的, 没有廉耻的 (brash), which means "of brass," and describes someone so accustomed to effrontery that he's hardened to it and has no concern for the harm done to others. insolent ['ɪnsələnt] (insolence) rude, especially when you should be showing respect. If you say that someone is being insolent, you mean they are being rude to someone they ought to be respectful to. ...her insolent stare. The officer stamped his boot. 'Don't be insolent with me, mademoiselle.' Pupils could be excluded from school for insolence 无礼貌, 不礼貌. brass [bræs] I. uncountable a shiny yellow metal that is used for making musical instruments and objects such as door handles. It is a mixture of copper and zinc. a faucet made of brass. doors with brass hinges. a. countable a flat piece of brass with a picture or writing cut into it, for example on a grave or in a church. II. the brass (= top brass in UK) 大佬们 American informal important and powerful people. In the army or in other organizations, the brass are the people in the highest positions. The brass are reluctant to fraternise with the enlisted men. The ceremony was attended by a stunning array of military brass. III. uncountable music musical instruments made of brass such as trumpets and trombones. a piece of music for woodwind and brass the brass all the brass instruments in an orchestra. the brass ring if someone tries to get the brass ring, they try hard to achieve success in a situation where many people are competing against each other. get down to brass tacks to start discussing the most important issue. If you get down to brass tacks, you discuss the basic, most important facts of a situation. Let's take a quick look round and then we can get down to brass tacks. ) is a display of disrespect by not complying with the social norms or etiquette of a group or culture. These norms have been established as the essential boundaries of normally accepted behavior. To be unable or unwilling to align one's behavior with these norms 遵守 known to the general population of what is socially acceptable is to be rude and are enforced as though they were a sort of social law, with social repercussions or rewards for violators or advocates, respectively. Rudeness, "constituted by deviation from whatever counts as politic in a given social context, is inherently confrontational and disruptive to social equilibrium". Rudeness, particularly with respect to speech, is necessarily confrontational at its core. Forms of rudeness include acting inconsiderate, insensitive, deliberately offensive, impolite, a faux pas, obscenity, profanity and violating taboos such as deviancy. In some cases, an act of rudeness can go so far as to be a crime, for example, the crime of hate speech. 2. eat it I. rude slang An interjection by a speaker who is annoyed or frustrated with someone else. a rebuke or dismissal Eat it, Ben! You cheated on me, remember? Eat it, Mum, you were wrong, it works. II. slang To fall down, usually in an especially clumsy manner. Whoa, she really ate it on the ice out there—is she OK? have a lot riding on 责任重大, 意义重大, 所有都指着这个 means one thing could result in many benefits. Be depending on the successful outcome or development of something After problems with their emissions systems damaged sales, Volkswagen has a lot riding on their new products. I just applied to a college. There's a lot riding on this application because it's my last chance. There's a lot riding on this match. ride on something if one thing is riding on another, it depends on it He knew he had to win – his reputation was riding on it. persuasion [pərˈsweɪʒ(ə)n] I. If you are of a particular persuasion, you have a particular belief or set of beliefs. a set of political or religious beliefs. governments of every political persuasion. It is a national movement and has within it people of all political persuasions. I got a call one night; the woman said to me — obviously not of the same persuasion as I was, politically — called me and said, "There's a dead dog on my lawn". II. Persuasion is the act of persuading someone to do something or to believe that something is true. Only after much persuasion from Ellis had she agreed to hold a show at all. She was using all her powers of persuasion to induce the Griffins to remain in Rollway. powers of persuasion 说服力: Using her powers of persuasion, she got him to help.
Critical Race Theory: disparate [ˈdɪspərət] I. disparate things belong to very different groups or classes. Disparate things are clearly different from each other in quality or type. Composed of inherently different or distinct elements; incongruous. The board of the company was decidedly disparate, with no two members from the same social or economic background. Scientists are trying to pull together disparate ideas in astronomy. The nine republics are immensely disparate in size, culture and wealth. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said Wednesday that the "appearance of what is racially disparate treatment 区别对待 is deeply, deeply disturbing." II. A disparate thing is made up of very different elements. ...a very disparate 多元化的 nation, with enormous regional differences. ...their disparate coalition of Southern conservatives and liberals. Critical 批判性的 race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary 跨领域的 intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice. For example, the CRT conceptual framework is one way to study how and why US courts give more lenient punishments to drug dealers from some races than to drug dealers of other races. (The word critical in its name is an academic term that refers to critical thinking, critical theory, and scholarly criticism, rather than criticizing or blaming people.) It first arose in the 1970s, like other "critical" schools of thought, such as Critical Legal Studies, which examines how legal rules protect the status quo. A key CRT concept is intersectionality 交叉性—the way in which different forms of inequality and identity are affected by interconnections 交互性 of race, class, gender and disability. Scholars of CRT view race as a social construct(Scholars of CRT say that race is not "biologically grounded and natural"; rather, it is a socially constructed category used to oppress and exploit people of color; and that racism is not an aberration, but a normalized feature of American society. According to CRT, negative stereotypes assigned to members of minority groups "benefit white people" and increase racial oppression. Individuals can belong to a number of different identity groups. The concept of intersectionality—one of CRT's main concepts—was introduced by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.) with no biological basis. One tenet 信条, 宗旨 of CRT is that racism and disparate 各不相同的, 不一样的, 区别对待的 racial outcomes are the result of complex, changing, and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals. CRT scholars argue that the idea of race advances the interests of white people at the expense of people of color, and that the liberal notion of U.S. law as "neutral" plays a significant role in maintaining a racially unjust 不公平的, 不公正的 social order, where formally color-blind laws continue to have racially discriminatory outcomes. Academic critics of CRT argue it is based on storytelling instead of evidence and reason, rejects truth and merit, and opposes liberalism. Since 2020, conservative U.S. lawmakers have sought to ban or restrict the instruction of CRT along with other anti‑racism education in primary and secondary schools. These lawmakers have been accused of misrepresenting the tenets and importance of CRT and of having the goal of broadly silencing discussions of racism, equality, social justice, and the history of race. Today, those same patterns of discrimination live on through facially race-blind policies 表面上和种族无关的政策, 看起来无关种族的政策, like single-family zoning that prevents the building of affordable housing in advantaged, majority-white neighborhoods and, thus, stymies racial desegregation efforts. This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation 说法, 表现 in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics—often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into "oppressed 被压迫者" and "oppressor 压迫者" groups; and urges intolerance. Here's a helpful illustration to keep in mind in understanding this complex idea. In a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court school-assignment case on whether race could be a factor in maintaining diversity in K-12 schools, Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion famously concluded: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." But during oral arguments, then-justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said: "It's very hard for me to see how you can have a racial objective but a nonracial means to get there." All these different ideas grow out of longstanding, tenacious intellectual debates. Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values 普世价值观, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism—tenets that conservatives tend to hold dear. CRT also has ties to other intellectual currents, including the work of sociologists and literary theorists who studied links between political power, social organization, and language. And its ideas have since informed ( inform I. If someone informs on a person 通风报信, they give information about the person to the police or another authority, which causes the person to be suspected or proved guilty of doing something bad. Somebody must have informed on us. Thousands of American citizens have informed on these organized crime syndicates. II. If a situation or activity is informed by an idea or a quality 影响, that idea or quality is very noticeable in it. All great songs are informed by a certain sadness and tension. The concept of the Rose continued to inform the poet's work. to influence something such as an opinion, attitude, or style His poetry is deeply informed by the experience of poverty. III. If you inform someone of something, you tell them about it. They would inform him of any progress they had made. My daughter informed me that she was pregnant. 'I just added a little soy sauce,' he informs us. inform someone as to how/what/when etc.: I haven't been informed as to whether he's coming or not. be reliably informed (=have information that you are sure is correct): I've been reliably informed that the delivery will arrive tomorrow. be fully informed (=be told all the details about something): The President has been fully informed of the recent developments. informed I. Someone who is informed knows about a subject or what is happening in the world. Informed people know the company is shaky. ...the importance of keeping the public properly informed. II. When journalists talk about informed sources, they mean people who are likely to give correct information because of their private or special knowledge. According to informed sources 知情人, those taken into custody include at least one major-general. III. An informed guess or decision is one that is likely to be good, because it is based on definite knowledge or information. An informed guess at his personal wealth was $1.25 billion. We are able to make more informed choices about how we use drugs. well-informed If you say that someone is well-informed, you mean that they know a lot about many different subjects or about one particular subject. ...a lending library to encourage members to become as well-informed as possible.This is a subject for serious, well-informed discussion, not tabloid headlines.) other fields, like the humanities, the social sciences, and teacher education. To an extent, the term "critical race theory" is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it's actually informed those programs. The theory says that racism is part of everyday life, so people—white or nonwhite—who don't intend to be racist can nevertheless make choices that fuel racism. Some critics claim that the theory advocates discriminating against white people in order to achieve equity. They mainly aim those accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that explicitly take race into account. (The writer Ibram X. Kendi, whose recent popular book How to Be An Antiracist suggests that discrimination that creates equity can be considered anti-racist, is often cited in this context.) Fundamentally, though, the disagreement springs from different conceptions of racism. CRT puts an emphasis on outcomes, not merely on individuals' own beliefs, and it calls on these outcomes to be examined and rectified. Among lawyers, teachers, policymakers, and the general public, there are many disagreements about how precisely to do those things, and to what extent race should be explicitly appealed to or referred to in the process. Scholars who study critical race theory in education look at how policies and practices in K-12 education contribute to persistent racial inequalities in education, and advocate for ways to change them. Among the topics they've studied: racially segregated schools, the underfunding of majority-Black and Latino school districts, disproportionate disciplining of Black students, barriers to gifted programs and selective-admission high schools, and curricula that reinforce racist ideas. Critical race theory is not a synonym for culturally relevant teaching, which emerged in the 1990s. This teaching approach seeks to affirm students' ethnic and racial backgrounds and is intellectually rigorous. But it's related in that one of its aims is to help students identify and critique the causes of social inequality in their own lives. Many educators support, to one degree or another, culturally relevant teaching and other strategies to make schools feel safe and supportive for Black students and other underserved 照顾不到的, 照顾不周的, 被忽视的 populations. (Students of color make up the majority of school-aged children.) But they don't necessarily identify these activities as CRT-related. As one teacher-educator put it: "The way we usually see any of this in a classroom is: 'Have I thought about how my Black kids feel? And made a space for them, so that they can be successful?' That is the level I think it stays at, for most teachers." Like others interviewed for this explainer, the teacher-educator did not want to be named out of fear of online harassment. An emerging subtext among some critics is that curricular excellence can't coexist alongside culturally responsive teaching or anti-racist work. Their argument goes that efforts to change grading practices or make the curriculum less Eurocentric will ultimately harm Black students, or hold them to a less high standard. As with CRT in general, its popular representation in schools has been far less nuanced. A recent poll by the advocacy group Parents Defending Education claimed some schools were teaching that "white people are inherently 天生的, 固有的 privileged, while Black and other people of color are inherently oppressed and victimized"; that "achieving racial justice and equality between racial groups requires discriminating against people based on their whiteness"; and that "the United States was founded on racism." Thus much of the current debate appears to spring not from the academic texts, but from fear among critics that students—especially white students—will be exposed to supposedly damaging or self-demoralizing ideas. While some district officials have issued mission statements, resolutions, or spoken about changes in their policies using some of the discourse of CRT, it's not clear to what degree educators are explicitly teaching the concepts, or even using curriculum materials or other methods that implicitly draw on them. For one thing, scholars say, much scholarship on CRT is written in academic language or published in journals not easily accessible to K-12 teachers. What is going on with these proposals to ban critical race theory in schools? As of mid-May, legislation purporting to outlaw CRT in schools has passed in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Tennessee and have been proposed in various other statehouses. The bills are so vaguely written that it's unclear what they will affirmatively cover. Could a teacher who wants to talk about a factual instance of state-sponsored racism—like the establishment of Jim Crow, the series of laws that prevented Black Americans from voting or holding office and separated them from white people in public spaces—be considered in violation of these laws? It's also unclear whether these new bills are constitutional, or whether they impermissibly ( impermissible [ˌɪmpərˈmɪsəb(ə)l] 未经允许的 something that is impermissible is not allowed by a law or rule. This is an impermissible encroachment on the President's ability to carry out core executive functions. impermissible to do something: It is morally impermissible intentionally to punish the innocent. ) restrict free speech. It would be extremely difficult, in any case, to police what goes on inside hundreds of thousands of classrooms. But social studies educators fear that such laws could have a chilling effect on teachers who might self-censor their own lessons out of concern for parent or administrator complaints. As English teacher Mike Stein told Chalkbeat Tennessee about the new law: "History teachers can not adequately teach about the Trail of Tears, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement. English teachers will have to avoid teaching almost any text by an African American author because many of them mention racism to various extents." The laws could also become a tool to attack other pieces of the curriculum, including ethnic studies and "action civics"—an approach to civics ( Civics is the study of the rights and duties of the citizens of a society. ...my high-school civics class. ) education that asks students to research local civic problems and propose solutions. How is this related to other debates over what's taught in the classroom amid K-12 culture wars? The charge that schools are indoctrinating students in a harmful theory or political mindset ( indoctrinate [ɪnˈdɑktrɪˌneɪt] 灌输 [disapproval] If people are indoctrinated, they are taught a particular belief with the aim that they will reject other beliefs. They have been completely indoctrinated. I wouldn't say that she was trying to indoctrinate us. ...political indoctrination classes. ) is a longstanding one, historians note. CRT appears to be the latest salvo in this ongoing debate. In the early and mid-20th century, the concern was about socialism or Marxism. The conservative American Legion, beginning in the 1930s, sought to rid schools of progressive-minded textbooks that encouraged students to consider economic inequality; two decades later the John Birch Society raised similar criticisms about school materials. As with CRT criticisms, the fear was that students would be somehow harmed by exposure to these ideas. As the school-aged population became more diverse, these debates have been inflected through the lens of race and ethnic representation, including disagreements over multiculturalism and ethnic studies, the ongoing "canon wars"over which texts should make up the English curriculum, and the so-called "ebonics" debates over the status of Black vernacular English in schools. In history, the debates have focused on the balance among patriotism and American exceptionalism, on one hand, and the country's history of exclusion and violence towards Indigenous people and the enslavement of African Americans on the other—between its ideals and its practices. Those tensions led to the implosion of a 1994 attempt to set national history standards. A current example that has fueled much of the recent round of CRT criticism is the New York Times' 1619 Project, which sought to put the history and effects of enslavement—as well as Black Americans' contributions to democratic reforms—at the center of American history. The culture wars are always, at some level, battled out within schools, historians say. "It's because they're nervous about broad social things, but they're talking in the language of school and school curriculum," said one historian of education. "That's the vocabulary, but the actual grammar is anxiety about shifting social power relations."
Durham report: On Saturday night former President Donald Trump declared 声称 that he was the victim of a scandal "far greater" than Watergate. He called for criminal prosecutions and "reparations 赔款." He said "in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death." Trump's statement made no sense -- except to the Fox audience base that badly wants it to be true. Four days later, Trump-aligned 站队特朗普的, 特朗普一边的 media outlets are still amplifying his bogus message far and wide and ranting about the circumstances of his 2016 election win over Hillary Clinton. Tuesday's cover of the New York Post portrayed "HILLARY THE SPY." The Wall Street Journal editorial page said "Trump really was spied on." Fox hosts have called it a "bombshell" dozens of times. The actual court filing at issue is much less newsworthy than the explosion of false claims that have ricocheted from it. Reporters who went down the rabbit hole to examine the evidence found something very different from what Trump and his media allies said. That should have been the end of it — but instead the careful reporting became fodder for commentators to allege a media cover-up. That's why it is worth examining this as a media phenomenon and an example of how talking points are spread(talking point something that lends support to an argument. a subject of discussion. We have several talking points we need to cover. I have a list of talking points here that support my case. wiki: A talking point, often used in the plural, is a pre-established message or formula used in the field of political communication, sales and commercial or advertising communication. The message is coordinated a priori to remain more or less invariable regardless of which stakeholder brings the message in the media. Such statements can either be free standing or created as retorts to the opposition's talking points and are frequently used in public relations, particularly in areas heavy in debate such as politics and marketing. ) by a massive media apparatus ( US: [ˌæpəˈrætəs] UK: [ˌæpəˈreɪtəs] ( asparagus [əˈsperəɡəs] 笋 ) I. countable/uncountable the machines, tools, and equipment needed for doing something, especially something technical or scientific. Apparatus is the equipment, such as tools and machines, which is used to do a particular job or activity. One of the boys had to be rescued by firefighters wearing breathing apparatus 仪器, 器具. They were setting up the apparatus for the experiment. II. singular the people and organizations involved in some aspect of government. changes within the administrative apparatus of the ruling party. The apparatus 组织结构 of an organization or system is its structure and method of operation. For many years, the country had been buried under the apparatus of the regime. ...a massive bureaucratic apparatus. III. countable/uncountable medical the organs responsible for the way a part of the body or mind works. ) and shared by millions of consumers. The talking points all stem from this: On Friday night, as CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez explained in a Monday article, special counsel John Durham "accused a lawyer for the Democrats of sharing with the CIA in 2017 internet data purported to 据称, 号称 show Russian-made phones being used in the vicinity of the White House complex, as part of a broader effort to raise the intelligence community's suspicions of Donald Trump's ties to Russia shortly after he took office." The accusation was couched ( be couched in something 表达方式, 以...的方式表达 to be expressed a particular way. If a statement is couched in a particular style of language, it is expressed in that style of language. The new centre-right government's radical objectives are often couched in moderate terms. This time the proposal was couched as an ultimatum. Couched in generalities, the report named no one responsible for the incident.) in what Polantz and Perez described as "vague, technical language" in a court filing. It was not accompanied by any indictments or other prosecutorial steps. But pro-Trump media outlets noticed the filing and started to share it on Saturday. The fact that this supposed "bombshell" 号称的, 声称的 had been buried in a motion related to claims about attorneys having a conflict of interest, and not an indictment, was the first sign that the story was not what right-wing outlets said. The second was that the initial stories never actually went beyond the technical language to explain what purportedly happened. But the ideological 意识形态的 outlets ( outlet [ˈaʊtˌlet] I. An outlet is a shop or organization which sells the goods made by a particular manufacturer. ...the largest retail outlet in the city. II. An outlet or an outlet store is a place which sells slightly damaged or outdated goods from a particular manufacturer, or goods that it made in greater quantities than needed. ...the factory outlet store in Belmont. III. If someone has an outlet for their feelings or ideas 出口 发泄口, 发泄渠道, they have a means of expressing and releasing them. Her father had found an outlet for his ambition in his work. IV. An outlet is a hole or pipe through which liquid or air can flow away. ...a warm air outlet. ...an underwater outlet pipe discharging waste into the sea. V. An outlet is an organization that publishes news 机构. Any respectable media outlet would have fired him. ...the Associated Press and other news outlets. VI. 电口 [ = socket in UK] An outlet is a place, usually in a wall, where you can connect electrical devices to the electricity supply. ) that blew the filing way out of proportion weren't incentivized 促使, 激励 ( a. to provide (someone) with a good reason for wanting to do something why not incentivize companies to relocate? b. to promote (something) with a particular incentive. an incentivized share option scheme. incentive [ɪnˈsentɪv] 动机 激励因素 something that makes you want to do something or to work harder, because you know that you will benefit by doing this. They want to stimulate growth in the region by offering incentives to foreign investors. There is little or no incentive to adopt such measures. Many companies in Britain are keen on the idea of tax incentives for R&D. incentive to do something: Many farmers have little incentive to invest in costly conservation measures. The promise of a job will give Mary an incentive to pass the exam. financial/tax incentive: Employers are being offered financial incentives to hire young people. an added incentive: The seaside venue of the conference is an added incentive. ) to apply journalistic analysis to the filing. They were incentivized to do the opposite. Among Trump loyalists, Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia probe is a shot at vindication. Right-wing TV and radio shows regularly hype Durham as a hero who is trying to right the perceived 被看做是 wrongs of "Russiagate." Key word: Perceived. Even though government and media investigations confirmed dozens of links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the candidate welcomed the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election, Trump boosters insist the issue was a "hoax" that was hyped by media outlets and intelligence officials to hurt Trump. So in this pro-Trump media bubble, any scrap of information that supports the "hoax" hypothesis or the idea that Trump was right when he said he'd been spied on, no matter how irrelevant or incomplete, is turned into a big story. In this case, the "entire narrative appeared to be mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage 一连串的一系列的 ( barrage [bəˈrɑʒ] noun. I. A barrage is continuous firing on an area with large guns and tanks. The artillery barrage 连续攻击, 连续袭击 on the city centre was the heaviest since the ceasefire. The two fighters were driven off by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. II. A barrage of something 大量的 such as criticism or complaints is a large number of them directed at someone, often in an aggressive way. a lot of criticisms, complaints, or questions directed at one person. a barrage of abuse. He was faced with a barrage of angry questions from the floor. III. A barrage is a structure that is built across a river to control the level of the water. ...a hydro-electric tidal barrage. verb If you are barraged 连番攻击 by people or things, you have to deal with a great number of people or things you would rather avoid. if you are barraged by criticisms, complaints, or questions, you have to deal with a large number of them at the same time Doctors are complaining about being barraged by drug-company salesmen. He was barraged with calls from friends who were furious at the indiscreet disclosures. ) of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies," Charlie Savage of The New York Times concluded in a point-by-point news article on Tuesday. But the frenzied chatter by Trump cheerleaders asserted otherwise. And incendiary talk, not news, is what drives right-wing outlets like Fox. Trump's Saturday night statement alluding to death penalty crimes cemented the weekend's right-wing storyline. On Sunday morning Fox ran an inaccurate banner on TV that said "Durham: Hillary Clinton's campaign paid tech company to 'infiltrate' Trump servers to link Trump to Russia." But that's not what the court filing asserted. And even though the banner had the word "infiltrate" in quotes, the filing did not actually include the word. Before normal news outlets even began to write about the court filing, Fox's abnormal operation ran a Sunday afternoon segment titled "MEDIA IGNORES DURHAM BOMBSHELL." That segment, coupled with Fox's massive coverage, inadvertently showed what was really going on. Fox's networks mentioned Durham at least 30 times over the weekend, 80-plus times on Monday and 55 times on Tuesday, according to TVEyes data. Almost all of the coverage was political talk driven by hosts and guests, not news reporting by correspondents. Through all the hype by Fox and social media, it became canon on the right: This was a major story, a scandal dwarfing Watergate, and the only possible reason other outlets hadn't covered it is that they were part of a cover-up. In reality, in-depth reporting with context and nuance takes time; slapdash stories and opinion columns barely any time at all. But the absence of reporting created an information vacuum that Trump allies filled with conspiracies and wild accusations 荒谬的指控. And once reporters did follow up and and debunk those accusations, that stirred even wilder claims about the media colluding with Democrats. Philip Bump of the Washington Post said, of the Republican complaints about a dearth of Durham coverage, "It's a sign of the strength of the pro-Trump/Fox News bubble that this is seen not as a reflection on the merits of the story but of a grand conspiracy." This happens because, as many former Fox staffers have admitted, the network (and others like it) needs enraging content to keep people watching. At times it seemed like MAGA media was trying to "will" a scandal into existence. "DURHAM REPORT ROCKS POLITICAL WORLD," one of the banners on One America News proclaimed. To the extent that was true at all, it was only true among Trump's closest political allies, not the GOP as a party or the political system as a whole. The talk had a snake-eating-its-own-tail quality, as Aaron Rupar, the author of a Substack newsletter called Public Notice, observed on Tuesday. "Republicans like Marco Rubio go on TV and give voice to the same lies about Clinton and spying that are being pushed by hosts, Rupar tweeted. "Hosts are then able to cover these comments as news, further legitimizing the story within Fox News's warped 扭曲的 propaganda framework." The media machine also works across mediums. Conservative media websites write about the most incendiary comments made on TV. Trump's communications operation sends out articles and statements to its mailing lists. His family members and marketers share reinforcing memes and messages on social media. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted on Tuesday, "You do have to admire the rightwing media echo chamber's ability to weaponize even the most hyped-up of stories (John Durham filing!), misrepresent & distort 歪曲 it, and then push it out with a relentless message discipline on cable and online that liberals could only ever dream of." Take the 7 p.m. hour of Fox on Monday: This was an "insurrection," host Jesse Watters said, while one of the banners beneath him said "HILLARY IS THE REAL INSURRECTIONIST." Watters was engaging in a grown-up version of the schoolyard taunt "I know you are but what am I?" and he's far from the only one. Trump and his allies have sought to diminish the actual insurrection on January 6, 2021 by labeling other events as insurrections. They have employed the same tricks with the term "coup." Watters' guest Sen. Ron Johnson claimed Trump suffered "an internal coup" during his presidency. "The primary co-conspirator is the mainstream media," Johnson said, prompting Watters to say "this is much worse than Watergate. I know they like to say that on other channels... but this actually is." Watergate has been invoked more than 50 times on Fox since Saturday, according to TVEyes data. Sean Hannity even showed footage from the film "All The President's Men." Writing for The Times, Savage observed that right-wing conspiracy theories "Upon close inspection 细看之下, are often based on a misleading presentation of the facts or outright misinformation. They also tend to involve dense and obscure issues( dense I. [disapproval] 晦涩难懂的. 艰深的. If you describe writing or a film as dense, you mean that it is difficult to understand because it contains a lot of information and ideas. His prose is vigorous and dense, occasionally to the point of obscurity. purple prose [proʊz] 晦涩难懂 a piece of writing that is written in a very emotional or complicated style. writing that is more complicated and formal than necessary Despite occasional passages of purple prose, her latest novel is still very readable. purple patch I. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) Also called purple passage a section in a piece of writing characterized by rich, fanciful, or ornate language II. Slang a period of success, good fortune, etc. The way he is playing football at the moment is in a real purple patch. wiki: In literary criticism, purple prose 华而不实, 辞藻华丽, 卖弄文笔 is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. Purple prose is characterized by the excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors. When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work. Purple prose is criticized for desaturating the meaning in an author's text by overusing melodramatic and fanciful descriptions. As there is no precise rule or absolute definition of what constitutes purple prose, deciding if a text, passage, or complete work has fallen victim is a somewhat subjective decision. According to Paul West, "It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity." arcane [ɑː(r)ˈkeɪn] 让人看不懂的, 让人摸不着头脑的, 让人摸不透的, 诡异的, 神秘莫测的 mysterious and difficult to understand. Something that is arcane is secret or mysterious. Until a few months ago few people outside the arcane world of contemporary music had heard of the composer. Their tasks include intense and cerebral ones, like helping proof read a judgement for court. However, they also include the more mundane and somewhat arcane. "Making him cups of tea with the teabag dunked 10 times: The way the associate's manual handed down year, to year, to year, described [how] he liked his tea," Ms Eggerking recalls. vocabulary: Something arcane is understood or known by only a few people. Almost everyone knows the basics of baseball, but only an elite few possess the arcane knowledge of its history that marks the true fan. A near synonym is esoteric, as in "relating to remote information or knowledge." Experts in academic fields often show off the depth of their knowledge by mentioning some arcane and esoteric fact as if it was common for everyone to know. The origin of arcane is Latin arcānus, "secret, closed," from arca, "a chest, box." Arcana (singular arcanum) are pieces of mysterious knowledge or information. esoteric [UK:ˌesəʊˈterɪk US:ˌesəˈterɪk] 少有人懂的, 不为人知的, 鲜为人知的 known about or understood by very few people. If you describe something as esoteric, you mean it is known, understood, or appreciated by only a small number of people. ...esoteric knowledge. His esoteric interests set him apart from his contemporaries. a rather esoteric debate about European tax rules. inscrutable = hard to read ( how did he feel? hard read on that. ) 猜不透的, 看不透的, 捉摸不透的, 看不穿的 If a person or their expression is inscrutable, it is very hard to know what they are really thinking or what they mean. if someone is inscrutable, it is impossible to understand what they are thinking or feeling from their expression or from what they say Anna's face remained inscrutable and unsmiling. In public he remained inscrutable. II. 反应慢的. 迟钝的. 愚蠢的. [informal] If you say that someone is dense, you mean that you think they are stupid and that they take a long time to understand simple things. He's not a bad man, just a bit dense. III. Something that is dense contains a lot of things or people in a small area. Where Bucharest now stands, there once was a large, dense forest. Its fur is short, dense and silky. They thrust their way through the dense crowd. Java is a densely populated island. The fire struck a densely wooded area of Oakland. IV. Dense fog or smoke is difficult to see through because it is very heavy and dark. A dense column of smoke rose several miles into the air. V. In science, a dense substance is very heavy in relation to its volume. ..a small dense star. opaque [oʊˈpeɪk] I. 看不穿的. opaque glass, liquid, etc. is difficult to see through. If an object or substance is opaque, you cannot see through it. You can always use opaque glass if you need to block a street view. II. 难懂的. If you say that something is opaque, you mean that it is difficult to understand. Most people found the theory rather opaque. ...the opaque language of the inspector's reports. convoluted [ˈkɑnvəˌlutəd] 复杂难懂的 [formal, disapproval] I. If you describe a sentence, idea, or system as convoluted, you mean that it is complicated and difficult to understand. very complicated, or more complicated than necessary the novel's convoluted storyline. Despite its length and convoluted plot, this is a rich and rewarding read. The policy is so convoluted even college presidents are confused. II. a convoluted shape or surface has many twists and curves. ), so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time -- raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims. Yet Trump allies portray the news media as engaged in a cover-up if they don't." This loop ( loop I. noun. A loop is a curved or circular shape in something long, for example in a piece of string. Mrs. Morrell reached for a loop of garden hose. verb. If you loop something such as a piece of rope around an object, you tie a length of it in a loop around the object, for example in order to fasten it to the object. He looped the rope over the wood. He wore the watch and chain looped round his neck like a medallion. II. If something loops somewhere, it goes there in a circular direction that makes the shape of a loop. The enemy was looping around the south side. The helicopter took off and headed north. Then it looped west, heading for the hills.) continued into Wednesday across right-wing TV. "Left-wing media dismissing the latest filing" was one of the lead stories on Newsmax's 2 p.m. program on Wednesday. A guest on the program, GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, assailed Clinton and said "this makes Watergate look like child's play." Norman uttered the exact same line on One America News on Tuesday evening. So did Hannity over on Fox. As always, Hannity urged viewers to keep watching by promising more bombshells to come: "This is just the beginning."
'You destroyed my love 毁掉了我的热爱 for the law': Alex Eggerking on working for Dyson Heydon at the High Court: Alex Eggerking says her treatment as a staffer to one of Australia's most powerful judges killed her faith in the legal profession, but she wants other people who have been sexually harassed to know that they can heal. The role of a young associate to a High Court judge is unique and unusual. Their tasks include intense and cerebral ( I. 冷静处理复杂问题的 If you describe someone or something as cerebral, you mean that they are intellectual rather than emotional. dealing with complicated ideas rather than with emotions. her rather cerebral style of fiction. Washington struck me as a precarious place from which to publish such a cerebral newspaper. II. Cerebral means relating to the brain. ...a cerebral haemorrhage. palsy [pɔːlzi] Palsy is a loss of feeling in part of your body. a medical condition that makes the muscles in your arms, legs, or face shake. Palsy is a medical term which refers to various types of paralysis[1] or paresis, often accompanied by weakness and the loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking. ) ones, like helping proof read a judgement for court. However, they also include the more mundane and somewhat arcane ( arcane [ɑː(r)ˈkeɪn] 让人摸不透的, 诡异的, 神秘莫测的 mysterious and difficult to understand. Something that is arcane is secret or mysterious. Until a few months ago few people outside the arcane world of contemporary music had heard of the composer. ). "Making him cups of tea with the teabag dunked 10 times: The way the associate's manual handed down year, to year, to year, described [how] he liked his tea," Ms Eggerking recalls. "You're sort of expected to smooth the judge's path through life." Ms Eggerking was 23 when she was chosen as an associate to the then 68-year-old High Court justice Dyson Heydon in the 2011 intake. The positions are highly prized 好处很多的, and considered a gateway to a career at the heights of the legal profession — the "absolute pinnacle [ˈpɪnək(ə)l] ( I. A pinnacle is a pointed piece of stone or rock that is high above the ground. A walker fell 80ft from a rocky pinnacle. II. If someone reaches the pinnacle 最高位, 最高峰, 达到顶峰 of their career or the pinnacle of a particular area of life, they are at the highest point of it. John Major reached the pinnacle of British politics. She was still a screen goddess at the pinnacle of her career. ...trophies that represent the pinnacle of sporting achievement. ) job 顶尖的" — Ms Eggerking says. In June 2020, the court's Chief Justice Susan Kiefel announced the investigation had found the women were harassed by Justice Heydon. She apologised to them on behalf of the court. At the time, the retired judge released a statement through his lawyers denying "emphatically 断然的, any allegation of sexual harassment or any offence" as well as "any allegation of predatory behaviour or breaches of the law". The statement said Dyson Heydon apologised for any inadvertent [ˌɪnədˈvɜrt(ə)ntli] 不经意的, 不小心的, 不当心的 ( not deliberately, and without realizing what you are doing. An inadvertent action is one that you do without realizing what you are doing. The government has said it was an inadvertent error. I inadvertently pressed the wrong button. I'm afraid I inadvertently took your purse when I left.) or unintended offence caused, and also noted that the inquiry was "an internal administrative inquiry and was conducted by a public servant and not by a lawyer, judge or a tribunal member". "It was conducted without having statutory powers of investigation and of administering affirmations or oaths," the statement said. This week, the Commonwealth reached a financial settlement with three of the women involved, including Ms Eggerking. On Ms Eggerking's third day of work at the High Court, celebratory drinks were to be held in the library to welcome the new associates. Ms Eggerking then recalls going back to the judge's chambers to finish some work on a trolley of documents that the judge would need in court the next day. She says Heydon hung around while she finished her work. He asked her whether she had eaten and whether she would like to have dinner. Ms Eggerking says the judge had been drinking, so she drove them to a restaurant in the city. Alex Eggerking had grand ambitions for a legal career and had wanted to be a barrister all her life. "I was thrilled, to be honest. I thought this is him offering to take a personal interest in me and become my mentor," she recalls. "And it was [a] perfectly professional and innocuous conversation, you know, talking about the court, talking about the law, talking about being an associate." On the car ride back to the judge's Canberra lodgings, the Commonwealth Club, he started asking her to come inside and take a look around. Ms Eggerking had thought the Commonwealth Club was a men's only club, but was mistaken. "I wasn't particularly well versed 不熟悉 in these things. He said, 'Oh, no, it's not. So why don't you come in and have a look?' I can't remember what his stronger arguments were than that," she says. "I sort of reasoned 思想斗争, 'Well, nothing's happened so far, maybe I'm overthinking this. There'll be people inside. It's a public place. When I went to leave, he said, 'I'd like you to come and see my desk where I work.' "I didn't want to see his desk. And I felt, at that point, as though he was trying to manipulate me into a situation where I might be alone with him. "He had this very quiet presence … that didn't take a lot of argument, and he sort of stood there waiting for me to follow him. "I can see his silhouette standing in the doorway to the next room and I can hear his voice saying – he has quite a quiet voice – saying, 'Close the door'. "I didn't want to close the door. Everything felt totally turned on its head ( turn something on its head = stand something on its head to treat or present something in a completely new and different way. health care which has turned orthodox medicine on its head. a. To misinterpret or misrepresent something so that it is completely incorrect or the opposite of what it should be. If you turn something such as an argument, fact or theory on its head or stand it on its head, you make it have the opposite effect or meaning. Instead of pleading for women's rights, the Equal Opportunities Commission should turn the argument on its head and point out the cost of denying women the right to earn. The effect of these arguments is to stand on its head a Convention framed to prevent the State from depriving citizens of life and liberty. I'm afraid we've turned the original mission statement on its head—this is the opposite of what we stand for. You just turned your previous statement on its head, and now you're contradicting yourself. b. To innovate or alter something, such as a field or activity, in an unexpected or unprecedented way. He has turned fine dining in this town on its head with three words: hot dog soup. ). I closed the door. "Once I closed the door, I could see that I was in his bedroom. And that's when I really started to panic. There's no desk in there. "It became so obvious that this had crossed into an extremely unprofessional situation. I felt like I'd been manipulated into his bedroom." Alex says she opened the door, told the judge she had to go, and fled. "I was terrified. I felt violated. I felt manipulated. And I felt trapped. And I had a question afterwards, which was, 'What if I hadn't got out?' And all of those feelings have stayed in my body and they're still there," she recalls. That was her third day at work. "On my fourth day of work, I was so distraught … and I had to turn around, put a smile on my face and serve him a cup of tea," Ms Eggerking says. Her deep love of the law started to unravel. But she did not leave right away. "A lot of my fellow associates around the court were making plans to study at Oxford and Cambridge or Harvard or Columbia, you know, to continue their path towards going to be barristers, or academics, or whatever it is they wanted to be," she says. "To do all of those things, you need a reference from your judge. "I decided at some point during that year that I would not — not ever — seek a reference from Dyson Heydon. "I was absolutely determined that he would not get to have one iota [of a] say in who or what I was next." Ms Eggerking moved to a corporate law firm with a good culture that made her feel safe, where she would work for three or four more years before deciding to leave the law altogether. She had gone from feeling "starstruck" on her first day at the High Court to feeling disillusioned about the whole system. Along the way, she had lost respect for other judges, for barristers, for the legal profession at large. She had fallen "out of love" with it all. She would later be diagnosed with PTSD by a forensic psychiatrist during the course of the Commonwealth compensation process. Now, Ms Eggerking has a message for other people who have been harassed. "What happened to you matters," she says. "It's possible for you to move through the shame, and the silence, and the feelings of fear and voicelessness and reconnect with yourself again. Because that is the most important thing. "It is possible to hold people … to account, though it's incredibly bloody hard and incredibly draining." And she has a different message for Dyson Heydon: "Dyson, you ruined my career. You destroyed my love for the law," she says. "You destroyed my faith in legal institutions and the legal and the legal profession. "You made me feel viscerally unsafe on my third day of working for you. "You made me feel worthless. "You treated me like I was an object that you could use when you wanted to with impunity ( with impunity 不承担责任的, 不管后果, 不被惩罚 [disapproval] If you say that someone does something with impunity, you disapprove of the fact that they are not punished for doing something bad. Mr Cook said future aggressors would be able to act with impunity if the objectives of the U.N. weren't met. These gangs operate with apparent impunity.). "What I also want to say is that you didn't get away with it. "Strong, courageous, vulnerable, bloody determined women stood up and said, 'That's enough. This is what happened to me, and you won't get away with it.'"
