Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo
A New York Post headline reads, “Biden Has Covid,” at a newsstand at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, July 22, 2022.
I’ve criticized the reporting ethos at Politico: one that leads journalists to focus on up-to-the-second micro-scoops whose significance often does not last beyond the hour in which they were brought to light. But perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut. I say this because, now that its “Playbook” feels compelled to publish three times a day (not including local versions), those later posts often indulge in “big think” articles that unintentionally reveal how much worse things would be if these people were given a wider berth to share their “thoughts.” What these also reveal, however, is the mindset behind so much of mainstream media political coverage.
Exhibit A this week arrived in my in-box on Tuesday afternoon, while the world was obsessing over the implications of the FBI raid of Trump’s private Florida residence. In it, Eli Okun, a Playbook producer and Playbook PM co-author, mused that “One of the most striking features of contemporary American politics is the degree to which its participants cast their work in existential terms for democracy. Policy achievements, campaign disputes and even law enforcement activities play out not just for their own sakes but on the grander battlefield of the American republic’s future.”
Lotta big words in that paragraph. Weirdly, however, nowhere in the article does its author notice that:
(1) All the quotes in it are from, or about, Republicans. (By the time he quotes a Democrat, we are on to semiconductors.)
(2) The quotes in question are in defense of a president and a party that do, unquestionably, pose an existential threat to democracy. This threat has so far taken the form of
- The attempted violent overthrow of an elected president;
- An attempt to rouse the military to shoot peaceful protesters;
- An attempt to bully public officials into supporting all of the above;
- The demand that elected officials refuse to certify authentic election results both before and after the election has already been certified;
- An insistence that everyone in one of America’s two parties lie about all of the above if they wish to remain members in good standing of that party.
In other words, it is only one side that is discussing “policy achievements, campaign disputes and even law enforcement activities” as (if the general of the fight against clichéd political writing, George Orwell, will forgive me for typing these words) “play[ing] out … on the grander battlefield of the American republic’s future.” And one big reason this conspiracy may actually succeed is that those charged with being democracy’s watchdogs lack the courage, the intelligence, the professionalism or, truth be told, the necessary patriotism to tell their readers, viewers, and listeners this obvious truth. I’m sure I have exhausted my regular readers by enumerating all the reasons for this over time in this newsletter, but the fact is, this is not going to change.
Part of the reason for that is money; part is fear; and part is an attachment to outdated professional mores that no longer work when one party has been captured by a fascist cult in which telling lies is not merely excusable, it is obligatory. There is not going to be any “pro-democracy” push from any for-profit major media institution; nor from any that—like NPR or PBS—receives government funding. Instead, the media are busy hiring right-wing Trump apologists like CBS’s Mick Mulvaney to help with their plans to suck up even more aggressively to the Republican insurrectionists, because they expect them to take the House in the 2022 elections.
Oh, and from the same column, this: “Reality check: If the FBI search does turn out to be just about improperly taking classified White House materials, ‘bringing a case will be difficult and—if successful—even the punishment would be open to legal fights,’ Bloomberg’s Erik Larson and Zoe Tillman report.”
Here’s a free headline I’m giving away to all MSM publications. “Trump takes Fifth 440 times; faces FBI seizure of documents he illegally stole and hid in his basement, likely to hide additional crimes committed while in office; faces trials in Georgia for racketeering; in NYC, for attempted rape; just had his tax returns sent to Congress, likely to reveal even more crimes; complained that his generals were not enough like Hitler’s; and has been shown by January 6th Committee to be guilty of attempting to inspire the violent overthrow of the government he is pledged to protect: Why this is all bad news for Biden.”
As someone who has written two books about presidential lies—much of it focused on war—I can’t honestly complain about a story about this one. It’s an accurate examination of Biden’s exaggerations of the importance of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s role in specific attacks against the United States. That’s the traditional job of a watchdog press and it does not indicate anti-Biden prejudice on the part of the Times for having printed it. But the manner in which it is presented, I think, displays a lack of a contextual comparison with his predecessor. This is true of virtually every story about the many shortcomings of this president and his party as published by the MSM. If Trump had maintained this level of shortfalls in accuracy with regard to any action his administration took during his four years as president, it would likely constitute the truest words he’d ever spoken (just as the 440 times he took the Fifth in New York constitute the most respect he’s ever shown for the U.S. Constitution).
Biden exaggerated his accomplishment the way most—but not all—presidents have tended to. Trump declared war on the concept of truth itself. Now his cult followers in the Republican Party have adopted this tactic with regard to every proposal by Biden or his party. Democrats do not have the answers to many of our problems, and in many cases lack the courage to pursue them when they do. Republicans, on the other hand, not only have no solutions, they refuse even to recognize them as problems and respond to questions about them with attacks on liberals, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and space lasers.
One important reason why this “context” and “history”—two near-profanities in the world of daily journalism—are so necessary is the likely conclusion from people not paying close attention—which is most people—who will simply conclude that lying is part of being president and that Biden is no better or worse than Trump.
I wrote a piece for Haaretz this week headlined “AIPAC vs. American Jews: The Toxic Victories of the ‘Pro-Israel’ Lobby.” (You might hit a paywall; some do, some don’t.) Interestingly, AIPAC could probably have taken out its public enemy number one, Ilhan Omar (or perhaps number two, as Rashida Tlaib is an actual Palestinian Muslim and holds the same views), had it dropped a few million into her primary, as it did with Andy Levin ($4.2 million), Donna Edwards ($6 million), and so many others. This piece on the right-wing website Jewish Insider offers an explanation from inside AIPAC as to why they didn’t. Another factor, however, is that it is useful for the organization to be able to put a face on the (often imaginary) threats it uses to gin up its fundraising, and losing Omar (and Tlaib, whom it also didn’t oppose, though it went after Levin next door) would make that a more difficult task.
Odds and Ends
Story with a headline that deserves the Pulitzer Prize for Absolutely Cosmic Insignificance, were there one: “Why Steve Jobs Chose This Designer’s Turtlenecks.”
I see that Yale University is advertising a job opening for an assistant director of its “International Security Studies/Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.” May I suggest that anyone interested in applying read this first?
I see also that Spider-Man is turning 60. It’s the only comic in which I still feel emotionally invested. I believe that my theory, that Peter Parker is Jewish and his parents died in the Holocaust, has never been disproven, so I’m sticking with it.
Most people are familiar with Bobbie Gentry’s wonderful, haunting song “Ode to Billy Joe” but not much else of her work. Back in 2018, we saw the release of a massive eight-CD box set of her entire oeuvre entitled The Girl From Chickasaw County—The Complete Capitol Masters. Forgive me if I say that struck me as a wonderful job of archival research but a little much for the casual fan. Now we’ve got a two-CD version culled from it, which strikes me as just right, plus an excellent booklet with a useful critical essay and a plethora of photos.
It is sensibly called The Girl From Chickasaw County: Highlights From the Capitol Masters and is available to you wherever fine CDs and LPs and streaming songs are sold. Its release gives me another chance to plug what is perhaps my favorite of all podcasts, Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine & Rhinestones, an often incredibly expansive (and discursive) history of country music. If you have any interest at all in the topic, I promise you’ll get hooked, and maybe even throw some coin the man’s way, as the entire thing is self-financed (initially by credit card debt). In any case, here is the Bobbie Gentry episode from Season 1. It’s really surprising and fascinating.
It’s August 12 and time to shake them Summertime Blues! Start here, then go here, then here. And if, like so many of us, you were wondering what Bruce was doing 50 years ago this week, well, he was apparently already developing into a “fine young songwriter with a very special talent.” See here and here.
