The most obvious takeaway from the “Attaboy Joe” editorials and commentaries is not that they’re offering sincere thanks for a fine president’s selfless act.
No, they’re congratulating themselves, having played a central role in hounding him off the ticket. They’re feeling powerful now.
Keep that in mind, because they like the idea that they can exert power from their safe perches, outside the arena where they take no risks, and are never held accountable for their epic failures. But they only even attempt to do this kind of thing with Democrats. Republicans hold journalism in pure contempt. A lot journalists — perhaps rationally — act as though they are physically afraid of the consequence of telling truth to right-wing power. They know Democrats are too civilized to do more than complain.
God, I want journalism that respects the people it claims to serve.
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This comment probably isn’t a good idea from a risk/reward perspective. But I keep asking what stops journalist-activism-democracy from becoming a spiral of being PR flacks for the Democratic Party. And here is an example of the danger.
It seems objectively true that Joe Biden has declined significantly in the past few months. The first problem saying that, is what I call The Parade Of Strawmen, where there’s a whole bunch of strawman replies which need to be handled. Yes, the Republicans have been claiming that he’s: 1) Demented for years 2) Senile 3) Nearly dead 4) Replaced by a body-double … Indeed, all that’s false. But even while they’ve repeatedly said those false things, it’s still true that right now, today, Biden is substantially diminished by his age, and just does not have the stamina to campaign extensively. Further, while not certain, it appears highly likely he wouldn’t survive another term, at least in any reasonable shape.
If you recall, “gaslighting” as a concept originally was about being told not to believe what you saw, which really seems a better fit to some of the denial around Biden’s aging (now the term is like “fake news”, just meaning things politically inconvenient).
My non-rhetorical question: How SHOULD the press have covered this story? Ignore it entirely as Bad For The Cause? Keep saying it’s all Republican propaganda, given all the “misinformation” there? Make sure any story about it has extensive disclaimers? (one joke, please? “Although Biden seemed confused and rambling today, remember Trump’s A RACIST SEXIST FASCIST, and any vote for him is NAZI DEATH OF DEMOCRACY!”).
The problem is, this was a real issue, even given all the noise. There are many media-created pseudo-scandals, but not everything is such. Every time Biden spoke in a old-man croaking whisper, and looked like a reanimated corpse, that’s something that concerned many voters. And it just wouldn’t work to make it go away by shouting louder about how Orange Man Bad.
Biden got forced out because big-money donors and Democratic Party power-brokers could see Biden’s physical decline, read polls, and it was looking like he’d lose and drag the entire party down too. That’s major, high-level stuff. My assertion is that this is not something which could be changed even if every mainstream media outlet went 24/7 all-in on NAZI TRUMP!!! Because there’s just limits to Narrative, and this case is one of them. And the danger I keep talking about is because coverage does affect some things, it’s too tempting to fall into a spiral that it has to be propaganda on everything.
[…] That outpouring of media thanks to Biden for withdrawing isn’t gaslighting, is it? […]