That’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a train.
We’ve seen this movie. We watched it in 2016. The press, driven by capitalist imperative to sell newspapers and attract eyeballs, promoted every right-wing smear against Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, most importantly the faux scandal about her private email server.
Clinton was likely the most qualified presidential person Democrats have ever fielded for the presidency. To win the presidency, Clinton first had to be an excellent candidate. She was not that, nor was her campaign up to the job. (Don’t get me started.) Nevertheless, the race to defeat Donald Trump, the TV celebrity and failed casino operator, was close. Her campaign suffered death by a thousand media cuts, flogged by right-wing outlets and in the eleventh-hour by grandstanding of FBI Director Jim Comey.
It’s happening again with the stream of media attention to President Joe Biden’s age. Republican’s all-but nominee Trump is only three years younger and in obvious cognitive decline. (He was mentally unstable in 2016, but that just made him a colorful novelty.) But fear of Trump’s MAGA mob makes Biden look like a softer target.
Ratings, eyeballs, and profits again make Trump better for business. The media’s collective thumb is again on the scale with this year’s “but her emails” narrative hook. News outlets cannot resist “Biden’s too old.”
But this year’s election is not a ratings game or a high school popularity contest. Over a million Americans died under Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s openly declaring his intention to reduce the country to a third-world dicatorship in fact or in effect.
So far, Americans who should know better are watching the same train roll towards them down the same track as 2016 and doing nothing.
Michael Tomasky has something to say about that:
Well, of course both The New York Times and The Washington Post led with stories Saturday morning about Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity. The story of special counsel Robert Hur’s report and its petty rhetoric about the president’s supposed memory lapses broke Thursday afternoon. It was the lead story in both papers Friday, perhaps understandably. But then it was still the lead Saturday. And even on Sunday both papers were still chewing it over, although to its credit, the Post’s Sunday piece didn’t just lazily extend the narrative with another beard-scratching “news analysis” about Democrats’ “deep concern” but reported on what actually happened during Biden’s two interviews with Hur. (Spoiler alert: Nothing occurred in the sessions to make White House aides think that attacks on Biden’s memory would feature in the report at all).
We’re at a fateful crossroads here. On one road, the Avenue of Responsible Sobriety traveled by the Times and the Post and most of the mainstream media, lies legitimate and necessary dialogue about whether any octogenarian, and this one specifically, is fit to be president. But the other road, the Mad Max Hellscape Expressway, has been taken over by the right-wing media, whose interest is not legitimate dialogue but the utter destruction of the octogenarian in question.
We can see where this is headed, writes, Tomasky. “[T]he souped-up Hummers of the Hellscape Expressway will overrun the dainty Priuses of Responsibility Avenue.” Again. Right-wing propaganda outlets pave the national media road that even the “responsible” outlets will drive.
Tomasky summarizes the well-trodden history of the Powell Memo, and the fallout from Trump’s 2020 loss, contested to this day on the right. Surprise, the right quadrupled down on crazy. “Fox, Newsmax, One America, all those Sinclair radio and TV stations, Christian radio, most newspapers out there around the country, the majority of prominent opinion journals, most of largest social media personalities, and more—that now sings from the same hymnal.”
So now what re: Biden’s age? For one, Trump’s speeches are a trove of “but his mental decline” material:
And: What about Donald Trump’s brain? For God’s sakes, he confused E. Jean Carroll with his ex-wife! He makes verbal gaffes all. The. Time. Just last Friday in a speech before an NRA crowd, he made several. He slurred “subsidies” as “subsies.” He groused that it gets covered if he “said one word a little bit mispronunciation.” He confused Biden with Barack Obama (again). He said the Democrats were going to rename Pennsylvania (?!?).
He also said: “Nice Saturday afternoon. I could tell you, if I weren’t doing this, where I would have been, I would have been in a very nice location.”
It was Friday.
Night.
Can you imagine if Biden had done that? The Times covered the NRA speech, as did the Post. Neither piece made any mention of these malapropisms.
The Times emphasized Trump’s comments about Biden’s handling of classified documents, while the Post led with his promises to the crowd on guns. Those were legitimate news judgments by traditional standards. But I can’t help suspecting that if Biden had confused his days, it would have made it into their stories. Maybe even led them.
The problem here is that on the left what we see are complaints about the slanted coverage, as Jason Statler pointed out over the weekend, and as Tomasky does here, observing, “hewing to traditional news standards will do nothing but play handmaiden to democracy’s demise. So sure, Joe Biden’s age is an issue. But I mean, come on.”
“Come on”? That’s it? “Come on”?
As I suggested on Sunday, “Come on” is not going to cut it. What “refs” the right does not own it works. Somehow (Spocko?) those of us who expect this republic to live to fight another day have to actively pound the press as hard as the right does. I’m not sure how, but simply complaining won’t stop the train we all see coming.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.