STARTING TOMORROW: Ghost Dances?

MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2024

Intimations of defeat? We're sorry to say it, but we thought we might be watching a type of tribal "ghost dance" on our TV screen last Thursday night.

As many readers will know, that historical term dates to the subjugation of Native American peoples in the American West. This tragic process was nearing its end in 1890 when the ghost dance movement took form and grew among the Lakota people.

We're sorry to say that we thought we might be watching something resembling a modern-day, blue tribe ghost dance on the evening to which we refer.

We'd recently rewatched the Ken Burns documentary, The American Buffalo. In a six-minute excerpt, the film recalls the deeply tragic history of the historical ghost dance. You can watch that excerpt by clicking here, then clicking on "Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee Massacre."

We'd rewatched that part of the Ken Burns film. Now we were watching Alex Wagner and Melissa Murray discussing the apparently serious legal problem apparently afflicting Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney who is pursuing criminal charges against former president Donald J. Trump and a large number of others.

Were Wagner and Murray engaged in a type of ghost dance? To provide a bit of background, the conversation proceeded as Wagner's producers played these surprisingly frank chyrons on our TV screen:

WILLIS ACCUSED OF HAVING IMPROPER RELATIONSHIP WITH PROSECUTOR

TRUMP CO-DEFENDANT SEEKS TO HAVE FULTON CO. DA REMOVED FROM ELECTION INTERFERENCE CASE

If you're unfamiliar with this matter, that may be because we blue tribe members have largely been sheltered from this storm by our blue tribe outlets. For an AP News overview, just click this (no paywall). Yesterday morning, this matter reached the front page of the New York Times' print editions, as you can see by clicking here.

Up to a point, we admired the frankness of Wagner and Murray this past Thursday night. You can watch the whole interview. To get started, just click here.

Question! Has Fani Willis done something wrong in her pursuit of this sprawling case? Early in the interview, Professor Murray (NYU Law) had made it sound like Willis might be facing a very serious legal situation. 

Here's part of what was said:

WAGNER (1/18/24): I do wonder, given the fact that she may be romantically involved with the prosecutor in her case that the state is paying, is that—I mean, if you are a judge, Scott McAfee here, is this, is this open and shut in her favor? Or is there a potential avenue for a problem?

MURRAY: So, I mean, the optics are terrible if, in fact, there is a romantic relationship and he is doing some exorbitant amount of hours and profiting in some way from this. Like, this should be disclosed if they are in fact in a romantic relationship. And I think most people would say, to err on the side of caution, it would be better not to work with someone with whom whom you're in a romantic relationship on a matter as high profile as this one. 

But again, it doesn't undermine the charges that were brought against Donald Trump and his codefendants. It's just messy. Maybe it's an ethical problem with regard to how the prosecutor's office is working, but it doesn't necessarily mean that there are ethical problems with regard to the charges that they have brought...

The optics are bad. It's going to be really tough sledding for Fani Willis going forward because of this, but not because of the strength of the charges she brought against him. 

To be clear, this wasn't a Fox News program. This was a leading legal analyst speaking with Wagner on Wagner's nightly MSNBC program. 

To our ear, that legal analyst—she's very capable—was making some remarkable statements about the state of this case.

To be clear, Professor Murray kept drawing a basic distinction. Nothing involved in this new dispute bears on the quality of the charges Fani Willis has brought against Donald Trump and the other defendants. 

More specifically, the existence of this new dispute doesn't "necessarily" mean that there's a problem with those charges. It doesn't necessarily mean that—and having said that, good God!

Murray also said that there may well be "an ethical problem" with the way Willis has conducted herself in this matter. She said it's going to be "really tough sledding" for Willis because of this matter's emergence.

Wagner and Murray both asserted that they don't know the truth of the claims being made about Willis and Nathan Wade, one of her three externally hired, outside assistant prosecutors. But Wagner also noted that Willis has not denied these charges, and the general tenor of the conversation seemed to suggest an assumption that the basic factual charges here are accurate.

Beyond that, dear God! As the conversation continued, Wagner even speculated about the possibility that Willis will be "ordered to step down from this case." 

Murray acknowledged that possibility. She even said it might be hard to get some other D.A. to proceed with the prosecutions against these defendants—that the Fulton County case against Trump and the others might simply cease to exist.

We were surprised, but also impressed, by Professor Murray's frankness. We hadn't heard a ghost dance yet—but then, we heard Murray say this about the "tactic" being employed against Willis by the defense attorney who first raised these points of concern:

MURRAY: It's a really sort of "go big or go home" tactic. You know, smear this woman, blow up her life, but also blow up this prosecution and maybe blow it up to the point where it doesn't come back.

We'd call that a very strange statement—and the possible start of a ghost dance.

Readers, please! As far as we know, defense attorneys will always try to "blow up" a prosecution to the point "where it doesn't come back." As far as we know, that's a defense attorney's job.

For that reason, we were amazed, and disappointed, to see Murray move on in this way from her earlier statement. 

In that earlier statement. Murray had said that Willis might be engaged in a highly consequential "ethical problem." Now, she was describing the revelation of this matter as a mere "tactic"—much more remarkably, as a "smear!"—as a tactic and a smear designed to "blow up her life."

From there, Wagner went on to report suggestions made by Willis that this whole thing is being done because some people don't respect black women. From that point, the conversation had the sound of a very familiar old card—and it almost sounded like we were listening to a ghost dance. 

At this point, there seems to be little real doubt that that Willis and Wade have been involved in a romantic relationship. (For the record, we think it's good when people find romance with one another.)

We bring no legal expertise to assessments of this matter, but Professor Murray does—and she had clearly said that there may well be an ethical problem with what Willis has done, with possible serious consequences for the state of this high-profile case.

We don't know what's going to happen. With respect to Thursday evening's conversation, our general view runs like this:

In recent weeks, the shortcomings of our blue tribe's elites have been crashing down around us in ways which have sometimes been hard to ignore, even for tribals like us. In our view, this sort of thing has actually been a problem for decades, dating back to the start of this site in 1998, when our "liberal" mainstream press corps was already engaged in a long-running war against Clinton, Clinton and Gore.

In recent weeks and months, the shortcomings of those blue elites have become more and more visible. As last Thursday's conversation proceeded, it seemed to us that Wagner and Murray had begun to placate us blue tribe viewers by playing a familiar old card.

This coming year will almost surely turn out to be a major "Year That Was." We'll explain that bit of language in the reports ahead.

That said, we thought we might be hearing the sound of a ghost dance as Murray and Wagner switched gears midway through their discussion. As they did, a report they seemed to think was accurate was now being framed as a "smear."

Was that the start of a ghost dance—a form of tribal denial? Correctly or otherwise, we think we see an array of such dances being performed across the sweep our blue tribe's dial as it becomes more and more clear that Candidate Donald J. Trump could actually win this year.

We think we see such dances being performed all across our embattled blue tribe. As with the deeply tragic story of the Lakota people in the 1890s, it sounds to us that our own thought leaders are emitting the last dying gasps of a people which has come to see that it has been subjugated, at least for the present time.

We think we might hear a ghost dance forming when we pretend—based on a handful of flimsy examples—that it's really Candidate Trump who is losing his cognitive focus. We think we might hear a ghost dance forming when we keep pretending that we have a blue tribe candidate who will be able to go out and make his own forceful case this year.

We don't know what's going to happen this year. That said, this year will almost surely go down as a major "Year That Was." 

Meanwhile, at this site, we'll be bringing in the gloom this week. With apologies, we're going to say the things we say because we think they're accurate.

The Lakota "ghost dance" was, and is, a tragic part of our national history. Did we hear the hint of a ghost dance last week? Are such dances being performed here within our blue tribe?

Tomorrow: Sound advice, too late?