Jeffrey Toobin and guiding perceptions: guilt by emotion
It’s not the Onion. Not the Babylon Bee.
It’s just Jeffrey Toobin, Harvard Law graduate and legal analyst for CNN, giving us the benefit of his Deep Thoughts from a Deep Mind:
Happy people don't obstruct justice. Trump's frustration at leaks and investigation are evidence of guilt, not innocence. But let's see the report . .
— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) April 18, 2019
Hey, I’ve got an idea, Jeff. Let’s investigate you for something you didn’t do—like, for example, treason—and then leak lies about it like a sieve, lies that implicate you in massive guilt and threaten your family, your job, and everything you hold dear. And then let’s have people report on every single thing you do and say after that and analyze your emotions. Of course, you won’t be the least bit frustrated, I’m certain.
Oh, and by the way, if Trump had not been frustrated and angry, Toobin would have found that to have been evidence of guilt, too.
In this post so far, I’ve treated Toobin’s tweet as though for laughs. But really, although it has humorous aspects, it’s not funny. And the state of mind that leads someone like Toobin to write something like that for public consumption—and then to continue to be a supposedly expert and respected legal analyst for liberal media—is worth looking at.
Is Toobin stupid? No. He knows what he says is legally absurd. It’s a cliche to say that Trump makes people on the left lose their minds, but it’s not literally true. Toobin’s not out of touch with reality, and he actually does have enough understanding of the law that he knows what he says is garbage, in the legal sense.
But he’s not speaking legally there, he’s speaking quasi-legally, or rather pretend-legally. It goes like this: he’s a legal expert, has good legal credentials, and he’s talking about guilt. That’s a legal term, right? However, he’s using it in the vernacular sense, the emotional sense, speaking almost as a psychologist or a novelist to explain human behavior and its meaning, and cloaking himself in the mantle of “legal expert” to make it sound to the gullible and willing as though he knows what he’s talking about when what he is actually saying is an absurdity.
Most democrats have been waiting for the Mueller report for years, and they didn’t get what they wanted out of it, nor what they’d been led to expect. They might feel pretty shaken, actually. Toobin is providing some guidance for a way to think, a way out of the Mueller maze and to the endpoint of still believing Trump to be guilty. To people who might desperately want to preserve this belief, he offers a possible way to do it. Whether or not Toobin is successful in that endeavor or not, that’s what he’s trying to do for them, and perhaps even for himself.
Is he successful? Hard to say. Many of the responses to that tweet of his are pretty brutal (and pretty funny), but that’s mostly from people who seem to be on the right anyway. Those on the left might buy what he says, just as similar arguments were used (and accepted) against Brett Kavanaugh, whose reaction to Ford’s lies about him were labeled as being too emotional, too heated, and therefore supposedly indications of guilt rather than innocence.
It was preposterous when applied to Kavanaugh. His emotional reaction was exactly what you would imagine from an innocent man. But that didn’t stop a lot of people on the left from believing the argument then, and still believing it today.
Just so with Trump. Toobin is suggesting a version of that same argument. One of the main problems with it, though, is that it falls into the category of phenomena people can observe for themselves in their ordinary lives. How do innocent people act when falsely accused? How would I act if falsely accused of heinous crimes? Most people are well aware that the normal reaction would be outrage. And yet a lot of Democrats were able to override this common sense conclusion during the Kavanaugh hearings, and my guess is that quite a few will manage to do so again in order to continue to implicate Trump.
In a logical world, the Mueller report would change a lot of minds in favor of Trump. But the world isn’t so very logical is it? I haven’t seen any polls yet that try to measure the effect of the report and all the commentary following it. But I know that the frantic and almost dizzying spinning of the MSM has a purpose, and might very well hit the mark for a lot of people who are searching for a way to maintain their hatred of Trump.
ADDENDUM:
Also, by the way, there’s this:
Toobin hasn’t been a working lawyer in more than 25 years. (And, as a human being, he’s the title character in the Candy Slice song, Scuzzbucket from Nantucket).
“Believing” or knowing better while hoping to fool others?
Yeah, when I read Toobin’s quote about how “Happy people don’t obstruct justice,” I thought, what the hell is this?
Obviously, being CNN, this is high level analysis, this is inspired genius at work.
Why not “people who once stubbed their toe are more likely to rob banks,” or “anyone who likes cotton candy is obviously a serial killer” or, “if you weighed more than seven pounds at birth, then it’s obvious that you’re a drug smuggler”?
I was blind–never even saw it until Toobin spoke, but now is see, the clues are endless and everywhere.
Sherlock, hang your head in shame!
Its a revolution in criminology, all thinks to Toobin of the giant brain.
Kafkatrapping.
One of the usual self-hating bed fouling schümers with schiff for brains who debase, demean and undermine the host Civilization: WCPGW
Toobin was born to a Jewish family[4] in New York City in 1960,[5] the son of Marlene Sanders, former ABC News and CBS News correspondent, and Jerome Toobin, a news broadcasting producer.[6]….
E.ve.ry.times ….
Also: a cad …
Toobin had a longtime off and on extramarital affair with attorney Casey Greenfield.[21] She is the daughter of American television journalist and author Jeff Greenfield and the ex-wife of screenwriter Matt Manfredi.[22] They had a child in 2009, which Toobin initially resisted acknowledging.[20][23] Ultimately, Toobin’s paternity was confirmed with a DNA test and separately, a Manhattan Family Court judge ordered Toobin to pay child support.[24]
Griffin:
Yes, Kafkatrapping.
why do nonsense is more accepted in the national arena than in a more personal everyday circumstance. For example, no one is going to fault you if you refuse to let in a homeless illegal immigrant into your home and let him live for months but when the same situation is applied into the national arena now a nation must accept everyone who wants to come in.
My theory is when nonsense is being pushed and vouched by respected people (those appear on TV as an expert of something) or elected politicians everything no matter how ridiculous suddenly becomes more believable because of halo effect.
Also, by the way, there’s this:
It’s the clowns.
It’s always the clowns–those flappy feet, those big red noses, those big, big smiles, those horns they sound with the big red bulbs on their ends, and those teeny tiny, brightly colored cars they ride around in.
Oy!
It’s always the clowns, I tell ya!
You wanna find out who dunnit, look for the nearest clown.
Square peg, round hole? No worries, the peg, and fool/tool “legal analyst” identify as round and unbiased, then say anything, no matter how untrue. He weally, weally wants to sound authoritative! Dinosaur media will provide cover for all. Next…
“Oh, and by the way, if Trump had not been frustrated and angry, Toobin would have found that to have been evidence of guilt, too.”
Yep, so true.
Reminds me of a good friend of mine. Her husband went to a palm reader who told him his wife was having an affair.
When he told his wife (my friend) about what the palm reader said her first reaction was to laugh! She thought it was hysterical – with working full time, taking care of the kids and taking care of the housework when was she suppose to have time for an affair? She also laughed because it had become so typical of his behavior to believe a stranger before his wife. So, her husband said it must be true since she was willing to laugh about it.
Then my friend got mad. Mad because her idiot husband believed a stranger before his own wife. So then her husband said it must be true since she was getting mad about it.
It is just like that with Trump – no matter what he does or doesn’t do it is “proof” of his wrongdoing.
There is just no pleasing some folks.
Time for payback: Barr, Horowitz, Nunes, Collins, Graham, Wray et al – time to turn the tables on the left axis.
Trump might want to stop whining about Don McGahn and start declassifying documents that incriminate his real enemies.
If we follow the Toobin method, we can just about eliminate say, kidnapping, since all we have to do is find anyone who ever screamed “shit” after they dropped a fragile glass jar of something very, very sticky on a freshly washed floor, and they’re your prime suspect.
Case closed.
But he’s not speaking legally there, he’s speaking quasi-legally, or rather pretend-legally.
He knows perfectly well what he’s doing. His education regardless, he’s organizing and addressing a lynch mob. Perhaps the Harvard ‘credential’ enhances his feelings of righteousness, but law has nothing to do with it. This is just essential hatred on display, by all means necessary.
He has removed himself from the confines of Western civilization, and his cronies with him.
charles:
That’s quite a story. Sounds like the husband was one of those perennially jealous people. Sometimes the person actually has been cheated on in other relationships and has become very suspicious in general. Sometimes the person is the child of a parent who was habitually unfaithful to the other parent. Was either true in the case you describe?
I was going to say Toobin is a bad advertisement for Harvard Law until I remembered Obama also has a Harvard Law degree.
About the only good thing about twitter is it does an incredible job of stripping away the facade that so many supposedly well educated elites like to present to the world.
Whether it’s something stupid like this or showing off bias or displaying ignorance to history it’s almost perfect.
Was Toobin a Laurence Tribe student? It would explain a lot.
Heard someone mention Toobin before as some sort of prodigal son to conservatives… not sure how that turned out.
Toobin be tubin’
I suspect Toobin’s reasoning is more common on the Left than we suppose. I wrote a story for a fiction writing class about a university student who was falsely accused of rape. The prof told me that his vehement denial of that crime convinced her that he was guilty. It’s just an anecdote, but might be indicative of a breakdown in logical reasoning ability among some lefties.
But of course!:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/timothymeads/2019/04/20/11-3-cnns-april-ryan-accuses-mike-huckabee-of-inciting-violence-after-he-quote-n2545087
H/T Instapundit
“Hey, I’ve got an idea, Jeff. Let’s investigate you for something ….”
What?
Harvard Law, followed by CNN, isn’t enough of a clear and present danger?
This reminds me of something heard in many courtrooms across the country:
When the prosecutor or the judge remarks, during closing statements or sentencing, that a defendant has shown no sign of remorse while at the same time, the defendant is pleading Not Guilty and maintaining their innocence.
This happens all the time, all over on a smaller stage, by people who should know better.
I would add that in my career, I have known exactly two (2) judges and one (1) DA who I would trust if I was wrongly accused of a crime.
Ha Neo! You’ve made me really think with that follow-up question.
No, he wasn’t cheating himself or anything like that. But, now that I think about it their marriage situation does, sort of, reflect on the situation between the Democrats, the media, and Trump.
In my friend’s case she was the one who was bringing home money – he was out of work and failing at a couple of “get rich” schemes.
The husband going to a palm reader was originally to see if one of his latest schemes was going to work. (that action, in itself, would be a problem to me if it were my family member – spending good money on something so stupid when out of work I just don’t get).
So, I think it was some sort of jealousy on his part since he was “failing” as a husband and provider for his family. He had to find some sort of fault with her.
Aren’t the Democrats sort of like this? Trump is the one delivering what the American public has asked for; while the democrats are trying all sorts of schemes that fail? So, their blaming Trump might be like her husband’s jealousy? They, too, have to find fault with Trump.
And, the same is sort of true with the news media – they said Trump couldn’t get elected and yet he did! He proved them wrong; so, they have to find fault.
So many said that the economy wouldn’t be able to create more jobs – and yet Trump has gotten unemployment down to record levels.
Maybe it is jealousy on the part of anti-Trumpers that they say all this stupid stuff?
(ok, I’ll stop now; I really shouldn’t engage in armchair psychology)
BTW, my friend is happily re-married to a really nice guy.
There is a group that uses astro science to determine stock market trends. They provide private services at a return rate well above mutual funds or the SnP.
Fractal Rabbit:
I have long been bothered by that very thing: if a person professes innocence (and actually IS innocent), the last thing you should expect from that person is to show remorse. It’s perverse to think otherwise.
Why the hell should you show remorse if you are innocent?
Neo,
It is indeed perverse. It sickens me.
I have worked for the NYS Court System for a long time and unfortunately, I’ve heard it many times. And I have seen two convictions, where such a thing was stated by the presiding judge, overturned on appeal.
Related to this, I have had nothing change my mind on the death penalty more than working for the court system: In my youth, I used to believe the death penalty was immoral because it was immoral to execute murderers. (Hey, they call it callow youth for a reason) But now, I’m opposed to it because I’ve seen too many shenanigans to think that a fair share of innocent people wouldn’t fall prey to it.
Most human antics are perverse and sickening. That hasn’t changed much over the years.