It is a decent article, but it feels like it would have been old news a half a decade ago. I remember when half the media and celebrities were calling for Trump’s win to be overturned through any means possible after he beat Hillary. That was followed by years of saying the Russians literally “hacked” the election. We even had a fake investigation into it lasting for years. Then we had years of the press knowingly lying about various subjects and insisting everyone who pointed it out was a conspiracy theorist. Remember all the reversals and censorship during Covid-19 (lab leak not possible, vaccines stop the spread) or how massive rioting was made to disappear? To make things even more egregious, many of the media “resistance liberals” now just happen to be former associates of the Bush Administration, and lied for him back in the day. This was followed by the media being the Obama Administrations greatest and most loyal asset. I seriously don’t know what there is to even add anymore.
“Western World’s media, institutions, and political systems continue to burn to the ground. More tonight at eleven!”
When you attack your opponents for things that you would object to them attacking your friends that is simply hypocrisy. Politics is shot through with hypocrisy particularly among the Democrat boosters in the MSM. But what can you expect of a party that insists a man who claims to be a woman should be entitled to be treated as a woman for all purposes. Lying is being baked into the system – just as it was in Soviet Russia.
Fox is popular, but its reach doesn’t come close to equaling that of the entire MSM, which properly understood includes dozens of major newspapers, every large-circulation legacy news/culture magazine, local TV and radio stations, NPR and PBS, entertainment/opinion outlets like the late-night “comics,” and nearly every Hollywood production.
…and you are sure that the multiplicity of news outlets on the left & centre, and the relatively few on the right, is an indication of bias? Is America not a relatively free capitalist society; do Republicans not have the money and resources to set up their own news sources? Outside of news, what’s to stop right wing comedians, film producers etc from setting up their own….?
Moreover in TV news terms – which is where most Americans get their news (newspapers and news magazines have small and diminishing circulations) – Fox does come close to equalising the ‘other side’.
When major media are willing to alienate half the country to broadcast leftist tropes, there is something going on beyond any business model I’ve ever seen. Fox gobbled up the other half and thrives.
The viewers of the alphabet networks news, staffed with the same sort of people as CNN and MSNBC, are seven times more numerous than FOX’s. These are the couch potatoes who absorb the journalistic poison drip daily and nightly and think they are getting the truth, poor fools.
CNN has nearly destroyed itself by forcing all commentators to go after Trump using negative spin constantly, day and night. Fox day is simple reportage on the events with a right wing slant but less personal attacking. Fox evening presenters are strongly conservative often pushed into defending that view.
The MSM is uniformly anti-Fox, almost obsessively so likely fearful of critique of a near uniform leftist viewpoint. Mahr has often gotten laughs as he exposes the nonsense that arrives.
Uh, not quite “for all purposes.” Biden has made it clear that trans women are just ordinary men when it comes to registering for military conscription.
I hesitate to put clarity and Biden in the same sentence. His handlers, I suspect, determine policy matters which they feed into his teleprompter or inculcate into his diminished brain. With mediation from Doctor Jill.
For sure, it’s hypocrisy, but it goes much deeper and darker. It’s an evil denial of reality, more like gaslighting in the sense that they roundly deny that it’s even happening. Reality is reversed and that’s perfectly “normal.” People are told that they are not seeing what they are clearly seeing. Mainstream media is “balanced.” Biden is just fine, and why would you even ask, you bigot?
It’s also abusive. Consider a family with two children where the parents routinely call out every possible flaw or mistake pertaining to one child, never acknowledging their good points or deeds, while doing the opposite for the other child. If everyone were an adult, you COULD simply label that hypocrisy. BUT, if the parents also knowingly made completely false statements of blame for one child—convincing half the people in their town that one child had embezzled their life savings when that child hadn’t taken a penny—that’s evil, slanderous, and abusive.
Children who are only ever praised are likely become adults who are blind to their own faults and unaware of their true motives when the motives are less than worthy (their darker purpose in Shakespearian language): the type who who would claim to be protecting transgender people by threatening J K Rowling, the type of person who takes on a ‘good’ cause for profit or vengeance.
I find it rather amusing, as well as intensely frustrating, that the media and ‘progressives’ chose to completely sacrifice their integrity on the hill called Trump. Coincidentally (was it?), in the U.K. the media and ‘progressives’ made the same sacrifice on the hill called Farage, managing to beat back Farage under May, then doubled down on the hill called Johnson. They got Trump and Johnson in the end, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory as both of them achieved key changes, and now the electorate are wise to their hypocrisy.
It’s interesting to see where this will go next. They didn’t get Farage though – maybe a comeback in 2024?
I find it deeply depressing, as well as intensely frustrating, that media, ‘MAGA’ and GOP choose to completely sacrifice their integrity on the hill called Trump.
Perhaps you don’t appreciate that the Tea Party movement was an effort to hold government accountable for irresponsible spending and corruption within both parties. It failed because there really was no leader and was completely trashed by the press and all democratic politicians with many Republicans silent about controlling their Tea Party advocates. Up comes Trump who renames the movement and actually leads. He has been knocked aside and there is an effort to demonize MAGA except the organic movement to reform government remains. That movement is too large to subside and will find a leader and perhaps a new name.
It wasn’t until I moved over to the US seven years ago that I realized the extent to which media projection is distorted to the rest of the world. From inside America and outside Democrat enclaves, Trump was seen to be doing a pretty good job. He was by no means perfect, but he was the only politician who seemed to have the energy to fight back an entrenched establishment that is becoming increasingly authoritarian. For all his faults, Trump loved America hence the slogan Make America Great Again.
I do wonder if his flaws were a necessary component of his character for him to have the energy and the will to carry on and not be deterred by endless slurs and negative press.
I remember arguing with my father a couple decades ago when he quoted Rush Limbaugh and droned on and on about the bias in the MSM. After seeing the hyperbolic reactions to Trump from 2016-present, I had to concede that he was right, and I was wrong. They have done far more damage to America than Trump and his army ever could.
and how did the MSM etc capture the judiciary, who ruled 79/80 against Trump’s cases, and Republicans (the majority of damning testimony against him comes from them, and ex Trump employees).
Who was found to be lying. He’s done nothing that every other politician before him has done except go against the entrenched establishment which is why he must be punished so hard that no-one ever dares stand up to them again.
Delusional. Other pols before him did not, for example, instigate, and lose, 79 court cases contesting the results if their non- election. He is an insider, his only threat to the establishment are his lies and grift. He has no real policies, just hot air that he blows upp the ass if his easily manipulated herd. There are of course many on the left who also do this, and I am critical of them in equal measure.
Buena Vista
1 year ago
Two things:
Why can’t the author actually call out the Left and their obediant servants in the press? If the wrongdoings of the Leftist media were weighed against the evils of the Right, the scales wouldn’t be anywhere close to balanced. Her essay becomes unfocused by trying to frame it as a “both sides” problem
“Trump’s America” was a nice place. No wars, lower taxes on the middle class, full employment, and a good economy. Is the last sentence an attempt at denigrating it?
Peter Johnson
1 year ago
I didn’t understand the last sentence. The US is likely going to give control of the house and senate to the GOP in November. What else are you supposed to do when faced with a President with dementia controlled by people who continue to push an extreme woke agenda that harms most people financially. Are they supposed to vote Democrat just because of Trump?
The answer to your last question is yes, they are, obviously. Trump is a threat to democracy even when democratically elected. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to treason. Are you some kind of alt-right terrorist? *sarcasm off* To be fair though, this is a British site, and for better or worse, the Democrats are the party of the establishment who will be more likely to continue the internationalist focus the US had pursued since the end of the Cold War. Trump and co. are much more likely to cut them off to tend to the needs of our own people. People in Europe have good realpolitik reasons to root for a Democratic regime.
Aaron James
1 year ago
As Steve Bannon puts is – the Democrats complaining hypocritically about Democracy – well that will soon change – as they are about to receive a “Democracy Suppository’ on November 8.
And how true it is.
Beginning on the first day the house flips is scheduled the Impeachment process against Biden for his Constitutional crime of not only failing to secure the borders of USA – but in fact handing the control of the Southern border totally to the Mexican Drug Cartels. There is no provision in the Constitution for this.
The Cartels are making many $Billions by charging every last one of the 4 Million ‘Illegals’ so far since Biden took Office, $Thousands each – Illegals who have just walked over the completely open border to free transport to anywhere in the country, medical, housing, cell Phones… Meanwhile Biden is spending $60 Billion so far trying to protect Ukraine’s border, and pretty much destroying the global economy in the process.
I don’t know what you mean by: “There is no provision in the Constitution for this.” There certainly is for impeachment, and the President has a constitutional duty to protect the country from invasion — which is exactly what’s going on, albeit with mostly unarmed invaders. His non-performance in this respect amounts to treason.
I don’t know what you mean by: “There is no provision in the Constitution for this.” There certainly is for impeachment, and the President has a constitutional duty to protect the country from invasion — which is exactly what’s going on, albeit with mostly unarmed invaders. Biden’s non-performance in this respect amounts to treason, as does the non-performance of Cackling Kamala, his designated “border czar”.
AC Harper
1 year ago
Doing so well until the last paragraph. It could easily have been:
And on that front, the upcoming midterms seem poised to be a watershed moment — one in which we either collectively move on from Biden’s America, or decide to live in it, forever.
Arguably Biden is the prime example of a gerontocracy – and older people, even in good health, may still mislay the car keys (or the codes for the nuclear response).
I agree fully – that final sentence “move on from Trump’s America” (move on is good she implies) “, or decide to live in it, forever” (eek! No escape from Trump and secure borders, peace in Middle East, Russia too concerned about retaliation to attack, energy independence, strong economy – eek!!) shows the author’s bias pretty clearly.
Well-corrected. It is not Biden’s age per se which is the issue. It is his obvious mental impairment. And the absolute refusal of his handlers, and his party’s propaganda arm in the media, to acknowledge it, poses a grave danger to the country.
Last edited 1 year ago by Douglas McNeish
John Murray
1 year ago
The observations of the article are well-taken, but I think Kat is showing her youth a bit regarding how long interest in the health of US candidates has been a feature. I can recall Paul Tsongas being given intense scrutiny in the 1992 US Presidential primaries over his cancer history, if I remember he was shown energetically doing swimming pool laps to show his full health (he died of cancer a few years later). Although that also highlights the change towards open media bias, even if Tsongas was a Democrat nobody back then thought it was weird or inappropriate to ask questions about his cancer risk.
Actually, Kennedy had Addison’s Disease, which is adrenal insufficiency. His primary health issue may well have been autoimmune illness starting in his youth. Reading this makes one wonder if he was really medically fit to be POTUS:
And interestingly, though even further back, is that I believe no media made anything of FDR’s polio and his almost complete inability to stand let alone walk.
That maybe because people recognise that the brain, cognitive impairment, psychological problems are relevant to a leader’s prime directives, whilst use of legs, not so much.
Yes, the newspapers and radio knew best about keeping the president’s physical condition secret. It was for the public’s own good, you see. Sort of like today, come to think of it.
Or how he squeezed the Japanese until they had no choice but to go to war and then denied intelligence to the naval and military in Hawaii about the approach of the Japanese Imperial Navy. A “bloody nose,” as FDR put it, was necessary to subdue the strong isolationist feelings of a large part of the nation and get us into the war before the British threw in the towel.
Warren Trees
1 year ago
“Everything, even the truth, is now filtered through the lens of tribal politics.” When truth becomes relative, anything goes. And when anything goes, ANYTHING will go. Buckle up.
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago
Brilliantly exposed and analysed. Organised religions might look on in envy at the way the partisan media refuses to acknowledge any inconsistency with orthodox party line in their “reporting.” And whosoever is proclaimed the heathen like Trump – anti-christ even – or heretic like Tulsi Gabbard*, can expect the full wrath of a pre-ordained “truth” brigade in the media. This is about the pursuit and retention of power, and as vicious and unrelenting as any in American memory.
*Gabbard, a highly intelligent and articulate woman of colour, and Congressperson from Obama’s state of Hawaii, was cast out of the Democrat Party, branded as a traitor throughout the Dem media, and called out by Hillary Clinton as a “Russian Asset” for daring to challenge the party’s war-mongering in the Middle East.
The trashing of Tulsi has been rather interesting. By not conforming to groupthink dogma she must be removed. Her sentiments never seemed motivated by personal anger as have been Cheney’s who also has been shoved aside. Tulsi has a likely future, Liz not so much once Trump becomes less an issue.
The American mainstream media has been in the bag for the Dems as long as I’ve lived, but their willingness to suppress the truth and outdo Pravda really took off during the Bush II years. And then 8 years of running interference for Obama, even when he had journalists spied on. They were perfectly poised for what they did to the Trump presidency.
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago
A Gallup Poll the other day showed that trust in the mass media has dropped to an all-time low, especially among Independent voters. You could swap the average journalist with the average social worker and you would get the same result on both sides.Living in the media bubble means you don’t know the contempt the audience has for you or you don’t care.
More obvious now is that the news media reporters seem all of the same mold created by a common training. The less educated but street wise reporters have aged out. Media might do better in building diversity of thought into their reporting. The nominal role of holding government to account is no longer operative.
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
And so it happened that the great Roman Republic, having conquered all its foreign enemies, stood astride the world, not as it once was, but as a shadow of itself corrupted by wealth and power, destitute of the pride and virtue of its forefathers, defended not by free farmers and citizens but by oligarchs in walled mansions with their personal armies. A Republic no longer, it became the Roman Empire, where politicians fought in the street and handed out bread and games, forsaking all dignity and decency, to garner the support of a frothing mob and rule the Empire.
Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Jolly
Ken Baker
1 year ago
“…despite his grungy aesthetic, Fetterman actually holds a PhD” Not to mention comes from a VERY wealthy family who he freeloaded off of until he was nearly 50 years old.
Lorna Dobson
1 year ago
Unfortunately Ms. Rosenfield isn’t acknowledging how deeply disturbing the whole scenario is.
Aldo Maccione
1 year ago
Morally bankrupt
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
I’ll take the seven words ending your last paragraph in a heartbeat.
Dominic A
1 year ago
” Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that’s who you become most like.”
Trumpers and Wokers mirror each other so well it’s spooky. Similar cognitive errors, anti-democratic arrogance, deficits in self-awareness, primitive defences…and spreading division and dysfunction in equal measure.
You’re absolutely correct that this is a real danger. Unfortunately, it seems that this has now become the way of the world. Disagreeable but polite discourse is abandoned for insults and slurs. As a bystander it’s important to avoid ideological capture. The best way to do that is to question everything, particularly news or articles that are written to rile instead of inform. At this point I hold the American media establishment wholly responsible for the hatred and division going on in the US at the moment.
It is a decent article, but it feels like it would have been old news a half a decade ago. I remember when half the media and celebrities were calling for Trump’s win to be overturned through any means possible after he beat Hillary. That was followed by years of saying the Russians literally “hacked” the election. We even had a fake investigation into it lasting for years. Then we had years of the press knowingly lying about various subjects and insisting everyone who pointed it out was a conspiracy theorist. Remember all the reversals and censorship during Covid-19 (lab leak not possible, vaccines stop the spread) or how massive rioting was made to disappear? To make things even more egregious, many of the media “resistance liberals” now just happen to be former associates of the Bush Administration, and lied for him back in the day. This was followed by the media being the Obama Administrations greatest and most loyal asset. I seriously don’t know what there is to even add anymore.
“Western World’s media, institutions, and political systems continue to burn to the ground. More tonight at eleven!”
When you attack your opponents for things that you would object to them attacking your friends that is simply hypocrisy. Politics is shot through with hypocrisy particularly among the Democrat boosters in the MSM. But what can you expect of a party that insists a man who claims to be a woman should be entitled to be treated as a woman for all purposes. Lying is being baked into the system – just as it was in Soviet Russia.
particularly among the Democrat boosters in the MSM
Surely Fox news, the biggest network (viewership larger than CNN and MSNBC combined) is as least as bad? Or so say Americans:
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-biased-news-outlets-in-america-cnn-fox-nytimes-2018-8?r=US&IR=T#1-fox-news-51-tie-1
Fox is popular, but its reach doesn’t come close to equaling that of the entire MSM, which properly understood includes dozens of major newspapers, every large-circulation legacy news/culture magazine, local TV and radio stations, NPR and PBS, entertainment/opinion outlets like the late-night “comics,” and nearly every Hollywood production.
And every woke TV show, movie and countless corporations’ “
re-education camps” mandatory diversity and sensitivity training programs.…and you are sure that the multiplicity of news outlets on the left & centre, and the relatively few on the right, is an indication of bias? Is America not a relatively free capitalist society; do Republicans not have the money and resources to set up their own news sources? Outside of news, what’s to stop right wing comedians, film producers etc from setting up their own….?
Moreover in TV news terms – which is where most Americans get their news (newspapers and news magazines have small and diminishing circulations) – Fox does come close to equalising the ‘other side’.
When major media are willing to alienate half the country to broadcast leftist tropes, there is something going on beyond any business model I’ve ever seen. Fox gobbled up the other half and thrives.
The viewers of the alphabet networks news, staffed with the same sort of people as CNN and MSNBC, are seven times more numerous than FOX’s. These are the couch potatoes who absorb the journalistic poison drip daily and nightly and think they are getting the truth, poor fools.
CNN has nearly destroyed itself by forcing all commentators to go after Trump using negative spin constantly, day and night. Fox day is simple reportage on the events with a right wing slant but less personal attacking. Fox evening presenters are strongly conservative often pushed into defending that view.
The MSM is uniformly anti-Fox, almost obsessively so likely fearful of critique of a near uniform leftist viewpoint. Mahr has often gotten laughs as he exposes the nonsense that arrives.
Uh, not quite “for all purposes.” Biden has made it clear that trans women are just ordinary men when it comes to registering for military conscription.
I hesitate to put clarity and Biden in the same sentence. His handlers, I suspect, determine policy matters which they feed into his teleprompter or inculcate into his diminished brain. With mediation from Doctor Jill.
For sure, it’s hypocrisy, but it goes much deeper and darker. It’s an evil denial of reality, more like gaslighting in the sense that they roundly deny that it’s even happening. Reality is reversed and that’s perfectly “normal.” People are told that they are not seeing what they are clearly seeing. Mainstream media is “balanced.” Biden is just fine, and why would you even ask, you bigot?
It’s also abusive. Consider a family with two children where the parents routinely call out every possible flaw or mistake pertaining to one child, never acknowledging their good points or deeds, while doing the opposite for the other child. If everyone were an adult, you COULD simply label that hypocrisy. BUT, if the parents also knowingly made completely false statements of blame for one child—convincing half the people in their town that one child had embezzled their life savings when that child hadn’t taken a penny—that’s evil, slanderous, and abusive.
Children who are only ever praised are likely become adults who are blind to their own faults and unaware of their true motives when the motives are less than worthy (their darker purpose in Shakespearian language): the type who who would claim to be protecting transgender people by threatening J K Rowling, the type of person who takes on a ‘good’ cause for profit or vengeance.
I find it rather amusing, as well as intensely frustrating, that the media and ‘progressives’ chose to completely sacrifice their integrity on the hill called Trump. Coincidentally (was it?), in the U.K. the media and ‘progressives’ made the same sacrifice on the hill called Farage, managing to beat back Farage under May, then doubled down on the hill called Johnson. They got Trump and Johnson in the end, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory as both of them achieved key changes, and now the electorate are wise to their hypocrisy.
It’s interesting to see where this will go next. They didn’t get Farage though – maybe a comeback in 2024?
I find it deeply depressing, as well as intensely frustrating, that media, ‘MAGA’ and GOP choose to completely sacrifice their integrity on the hill called Trump.
Perhaps you don’t appreciate that the Tea Party movement was an effort to hold government accountable for irresponsible spending and corruption within both parties. It failed because there really was no leader and was completely trashed by the press and all democratic politicians with many Republicans silent about controlling their Tea Party advocates. Up comes Trump who renames the movement and actually leads. He has been knocked aside and there is an effort to demonize MAGA except the organic movement to reform government remains. That movement is too large to subside and will find a leader and perhaps a new name.
The media does the opposite, as this article clearly points out.
It wasn’t until I moved over to the US seven years ago that I realized the extent to which media projection is distorted to the rest of the world. From inside America and outside Democrat enclaves, Trump was seen to be doing a pretty good job. He was by no means perfect, but he was the only politician who seemed to have the energy to fight back an entrenched establishment that is becoming increasingly authoritarian. For all his faults, Trump loved America hence the slogan Make America Great Again.
I do wonder if his flaws were a necessary component of his character for him to have the energy and the will to carry on and not be deterred by endless slurs and negative press.
I remember arguing with my father a couple decades ago when he quoted Rush Limbaugh and droned on and on about the bias in the MSM. After seeing the hyperbolic reactions to Trump from 2016-present, I had to concede that he was right, and I was wrong. They have done far more damage to America than Trump and his army ever could.
and how did the MSM etc capture the judiciary, who ruled 79/80 against Trump’s cases, and Republicans (the majority of damning testimony against him comes from them, and ex Trump employees).
Who was found to be lying. He’s done nothing that every other politician before him has done except go against the entrenched establishment which is why he must be punished so hard that no-one ever dares stand up to them again.
Delusional. Other pols before him did not, for example, instigate, and lose, 79 court cases contesting the results if their non- election. He is an insider, his only threat to the establishment are his lies and grift. He has no real policies, just hot air that he blows upp the ass if his easily manipulated herd. There are of course many on the left who also do this, and I am critical of them in equal measure.
Two things:
I didn’t understand the last sentence. The US is likely going to give control of the house and senate to the GOP in November. What else are you supposed to do when faced with a President with dementia controlled by people who continue to push an extreme woke agenda that harms most people financially. Are they supposed to vote Democrat just because of Trump?
The answer to your last question is yes, they are, obviously. Trump is a threat to democracy even when democratically elected. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to treason. Are you some kind of alt-right terrorist? *sarcasm off* To be fair though, this is a British site, and for better or worse, the Democrats are the party of the establishment who will be more likely to continue the internationalist focus the US had pursued since the end of the Cold War. Trump and co. are much more likely to cut them off to tend to the needs of our own people. People in Europe have good realpolitik reasons to root for a Democratic regime.
As Steve Bannon puts is – the Democrats complaining hypocritically about Democracy – well that will soon change – as they are about to receive a “Democracy Suppository’ on November 8.
And how true it is.
Beginning on the first day the house flips is scheduled the Impeachment process against Biden for his Constitutional crime of not only failing to secure the borders of USA – but in fact handing the control of the Southern border totally to the Mexican Drug Cartels. There is no provision in the Constitution for this.
The Cartels are making many $Billions by charging every last one of the 4 Million ‘Illegals’ so far since Biden took Office, $Thousands each – Illegals who have just walked over the completely open border to free transport to anywhere in the country, medical, housing, cell Phones… Meanwhile Biden is spending $60 Billion so far trying to protect Ukraine’s border, and pretty much destroying the global economy in the process.
Democracy Suppository….coming Nov 8, 2022.
That’ll be the Steve Bannon who is due to be sentenced to jail today?
I don’t know what you mean by: “There is no provision in the Constitution for this.” There certainly is for impeachment, and the President has a constitutional duty to protect the country from invasion — which is exactly what’s going on, albeit with mostly unarmed invaders. His non-performance in this respect amounts to treason.
I don’t know what you mean by: “There is no provision in the Constitution for this.” There certainly is for impeachment, and the President has a constitutional duty to protect the country from invasion — which is exactly what’s going on, albeit with mostly unarmed invaders. Biden’s non-performance in this respect amounts to treason, as does the non-performance of Cackling Kamala, his designated “border czar”.
Doing so well until the last paragraph. It could easily have been:
Arguably Biden is the prime example of a gerontocracy – and older people, even in good health, may still mislay the car keys (or the codes for the nuclear response).
I agree fully – that final sentence “move on from Trump’s America” (move on is good she implies) “, or decide to live in it, forever” (eek! No escape from Trump and secure borders, peace in Middle East, Russia too concerned about retaliation to attack, energy independence, strong economy – eek!!) shows the author’s bias pretty clearly.
Well-corrected. It is not Biden’s age per se which is the issue. It is his obvious mental impairment. And the absolute refusal of his handlers, and his party’s propaganda arm in the media, to acknowledge it, poses a grave danger to the country.
The observations of the article are well-taken, but I think Kat is showing her youth a bit regarding how long interest in the health of US candidates has been a feature. I can recall Paul Tsongas being given intense scrutiny in the 1992 US Presidential primaries over his cancer history, if I remember he was shown energetically doing swimming pool laps to show his full health (he died of cancer a few years later). Although that also highlights the change towards open media bias, even if Tsongas was a Democrat nobody back then thought it was weird or inappropriate to ask questions about his cancer risk.
JFK and Cushings
Actually, Kennedy had Addison’s Disease, which is adrenal insufficiency. His primary health issue may well have been autoimmune illness starting in his youth. Reading this makes one wonder if he was really medically fit to be POTUS:
https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/myofascial/autoimmune/john-f-kennedys-pain-story-autoimmune-disease-centralized-pain
And interestingly, though even further back, is that I believe no media made anything of FDR’s polio and his almost complete inability to stand let alone walk.
That maybe because people recognise that the brain, cognitive impairment, psychological problems are relevant to a leader’s prime directives, whilst use of legs, not so much.
Yes, the newspapers and radio knew best about keeping the president’s physical condition secret. It was for the public’s own good, you see. Sort of like today, come to think of it.
Well said!
Or how he squeezed the Japanese until they had no choice but to go to war and then denied intelligence to the naval and military in Hawaii about the approach of the Japanese Imperial Navy. A “bloody nose,” as FDR put it, was necessary to subdue the strong isolationist feelings of a large part of the nation and get us into the war before the British threw in the towel.
“Everything, even the truth, is now filtered through the lens of tribal politics.”
When truth becomes relative, anything goes. And when anything goes, ANYTHING will go. Buckle up.
Brilliantly exposed and analysed. Organised religions might look on in envy at the way the partisan media refuses to acknowledge any inconsistency with orthodox party line in their “reporting.” And whosoever is proclaimed the heathen like Trump – anti-christ even – or heretic like Tulsi Gabbard*, can expect the full wrath of a pre-ordained “truth” brigade in the media. This is about the pursuit and retention of power, and as vicious and unrelenting as any in American memory.
*Gabbard, a highly intelligent and articulate woman of colour, and Congressperson from Obama’s state of Hawaii, was cast out of the Democrat Party, branded as a traitor throughout the Dem media, and called out by Hillary Clinton as a “Russian Asset” for daring to challenge the party’s war-mongering in the Middle East.
The trashing of Tulsi has been rather interesting. By not conforming to groupthink dogma she must be removed. Her sentiments never seemed motivated by personal anger as have been Cheney’s who also has been shoved aside. Tulsi has a likely future, Liz not so much once Trump becomes less an issue.
The American mainstream media has been in the bag for the Dems as long as I’ve lived, but their willingness to suppress the truth and outdo Pravda really took off during the Bush II years. And then 8 years of running interference for Obama, even when he had journalists spied on. They were perfectly poised for what they did to the Trump presidency.
A Gallup Poll the other day showed that trust in the mass media has dropped to an all-time low, especially among Independent voters. You could swap the average journalist with the average social worker and you would get the same result on both sides.Living in the media bubble means you don’t know the contempt the audience has for you or you don’t care.
More obvious now is that the news media reporters seem all of the same mold created by a common training. The less educated but street wise reporters have aged out. Media might do better in building diversity of thought into their reporting. The nominal role of holding government to account is no longer operative.
And so it happened that the great Roman Republic, having conquered all its foreign enemies, stood astride the world, not as it once was, but as a shadow of itself corrupted by wealth and power, destitute of the pride and virtue of its forefathers, defended not by free farmers and citizens but by oligarchs in walled mansions with their personal armies. A Republic no longer, it became the Roman Empire, where politicians fought in the street and handed out bread and games, forsaking all dignity and decency, to garner the support of a frothing mob and rule the Empire.
“…despite his grungy aesthetic, Fetterman actually holds a PhD”
Not to mention comes from a VERY wealthy family who he freeloaded off of until he was nearly 50 years old.
Unfortunately Ms. Rosenfield isn’t acknowledging how deeply disturbing the whole scenario is.
Morally bankrupt
I’ll take the seven words ending your last paragraph in a heartbeat.
” Be careful who you choose as your enemy because that’s who you become most like.”
Trumpers and Wokers mirror each other so well it’s spooky. Similar cognitive errors, anti-democratic arrogance, deficits in self-awareness, primitive defences…and spreading division and dysfunction in equal measure.
You’re absolutely correct that this is a real danger. Unfortunately, it seems that this has now become the way of the world. Disagreeable but polite discourse is abandoned for insults and slurs. As a bystander it’s important to avoid ideological capture. The best way to do that is to question everything, particularly news or articles that are written to rile instead of inform. At this point I hold the American media establishment wholly responsible for the hatred and division going on in the US at the moment.