MADNESS: Did Berliner call The NewsHour's shot?

SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 2024

The goddess Athene moves on: Today's was no Sunday morning via Wallace Stevens, opening with "complacencies of the peignoir."

We took early coffee in a slightly listing chair. Thus positioned, we could imaginably have "felt the dark encroachment of that old catastrophe" as C-Span's name-calling rolled on.

We'll try to transcribe later. But was a second cousin to clinical madness being enacted that way? Was a cousin to madness in operation in these, the first two comments to Kevin Drum's recent post about the workings of NPR in this age of Trump?

FIRST COMMENTER: The one [topic] I have particular knowledge of, as a molecular biologist and medical school professor, is the COVID lab leak hypothesis. It was a hypothesis worth considering at one time, but it long ago passed its sell-by date. Now, it's just an anti-China propaganda talking point.

FIRST RESPONSE: It was *never* worth considering. The theory was created to promote racism. Until some gathered clear evidence of a lab leak, which never happened, there was no good reason to publish nor advertise that theory.

AND, NPR did publish and promote that racist theory.

For Drum's sensible post, and for all the comments, you can just click here.

We're not saying that that response to that first comment was necessarily "wrong." Perhaps inevitably, it did lead on to a poisonous thread in which absurd hypotheticals, joined to denigrations of the commenter's character, quickly gobbled the ground.

It also tracked one of the claims Uri Berliner made in his long and extremely fuzzy critique of NPR's current journalism. Eventually, one of the commissars on Kevin's site authored this use of "fighting words:"

LATER COMMENTER: Berliner is a conservative who seems to be a bit of an ass.

Nonetheless, he is correct in that NPR has moved to the progressive Left over the past few years. I am a long-time listener because while it always had a bit of a leftist bias, it also had excellent journalism, covering important behind the headlines stories that were not covered elsewhere. It was a treasure.

These days, it is mostly progressive left stories with a heavy focus on identity politics, as are the the various talk shows and programs. The good stuff is mostly gone. For normie Liberals like myself, it grows tedious and annoying. I swear, they would cover the Zombie Apocalypse with headlines like "Zombie Outbreak expected to disproportionately victimize Communities of Color due to systematic racism..."

I am pretty sure this all has to do with Trump as much as the Floyd murders, or maybe just how younger journalists these days are rather progressive left and dragging the mainstream media newsrooms along with them in that direction.

FIRST RESPONSE: *citation not included

What turn to the left? "Identity politics"

How dare those black, latinx, gay, trans, whatever local culture get representation!

You do realize when you say that, you're saying you're upset because you're a bigot, right?

SAME COMMENTER: Yeah, that's it, if I am a normie liberal who prefers focusing on the Child Tax Credit rather than using the term Latinx, it must mean I am a bigot.

Which will be news to my non-white spouse and children, for one.

The next responder announced that the commenter was "as bad as Berliner." Apparently, that was because the commenter had said that NPR "always had a bit of a leftist bias."

(For ourselves, we were struck by the way commenter started. Under current rules of the road, Berliner remains "a bit of an ass" even when he isn't wrong!)

Within this realm, Berliner is known to be "bad" because of the various views he rather fuzzily expressed. (Once again, a key disclosure:  the fact that Berliner expressed his views in a fuzzy manner doesn't necessarily mean that his views are "wrong.")

 In his essay, Berliner said that he eagerly voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020. Within this realm, the fact that he disagrees with certain Standard Blue Perceptions means that he's "a bit of an ass," but many other things were said which were strikingly worse.

Meanwhile, the original commenter lashed back against that first responder, drawing a distinction with which we'd be inclined to agree. 

In our view, Blue America's journalistic response to the George Floyd murder was deeply rich in performative conduct, with little attention being paid to the deep, endemic, very difficult problems which assail so many of this nation's good and decent black kids (and their food and decent parents).

In our view, lots of terrible horrible journalism drove the performance along. We've never yet had the heart to wrote about Rev. Sharpton's speech. 

(We've long admired Sharpton for his obvious smarts and for his healing wit.)

Fighting words run through the comments to Kevin's sensible post. Several commissars seemed to be walking the beat, live and direct from the period in classical Athens when The Thirty seized control:

Led by Critias, the Thirty Tyrants presided over a reign of terror in which they executed, murdered, and exiled hundreds of Athenians, seizing their possessions afterward...They also hired 300 "lash-bearers" or whip-bearing men to intimidate Athenian citizens.

Borrowing from Woody Guthrie, some lash-bearers lash you with whips, "some with a fountain pen."

Is it something resembling madness when we humans take out our whips and try to form culture wars? There's no way to say who is perfectly right in the discussions which fell by the way as the fighting words took over the comments to Kevin's perfectly reasonable (if inevitably limited) post.

That said, the fighting words were soon general over the end of the discourse—and we were left thinking about that striking PBS segment. 

The segment was presented by two journalists we're strongly inclined to view in a favorable manner. We thought the journalism was astoundingly poor.

It aired on the NewsHour in late January. For transcript or tape, click here:

Trump deploys racist tactics as Biden rematch appears likely
Laura Barron-Lopez, Amna Nawaz. The PBS NewsHour, January 26, 2024.

Had Trump been deploying racist tactics on the GOP campaign trail? That headline employs a powerful term—one which cuts to the quick of our brutal American history.

As for the journalists, this:

We've been struck by the evident sincerity of Barron-Lopez since she arrived on the scene (first, at CNN). We've been struck by Nawaz's ability to project an air of calm ever since we saw two older women of our acquaintance—two people who are neither partisan nor heavy news-watchers—say they found her manner reassuring, admirable, sublime.

We're strongly inclined to favor this pair. But as for the journalism they did that evening, let's forget about NPT. Was it instead an example of Uri Berliner calling the NewsHour's shot?

In his perfectly reasonable post, Kevin started with this quote from Berliner's essay about the way NPR has allegedly changed. We'll focus today on the highlighted complaint:

There’s [now] an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless—one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.

Once again, the fuzzy language about that "assembly line," with little attempt at demonstrating that the allegation deserves to be seen as true (or as inappropriate). 

It's all about "supposed racism" now, he said—and that was Berliner himself, speaking of NPR. According to Berliner, the NPR of the Donald Trump years pursues one story after another about instances of such supposed policies and behaviors.

There would of course be nothing "wrong" with the journalistic pursuit of such "stories," until such time as there was. As we noted yesterday, Berliner makes no serious attempt to establish this sweeping claim.

Still, we thought back to that PBS segment, a segment we never got around to discussing. The journalism was virtually non-existent on The NewsHour that night. Let's start with this example:

BARRON-LOPEZ (1/26/24): There is a playbook that has been used by Republican politicians in the past that appeals to fears of the other, fears of brown and Black people.

We saw it used by Richard Nixon. We have seen it used by Ronald Reagan. And so this is something that isn't necessarily new to the Republican Party.

But I spoke to Ian Haney Lopez, who is from U.C. Berkeley, and he's a professor of race and constitutional law. And he explained how dog whistle politics animates American voters.

PROFESSOR LOPEZ: What's happening with dog whistle politics is, you have these politicians who are strategically, intentionally, purposefully seeking to exploit people's unconscious vulnerability by saying welfare queen, illegal alien, terrorist, gangbanger, terms that they know will trigger unconscious racist views, but which they can also say, hey, I didn't say anything racist. I didn't use a racial epithet. I didn't mention skin color.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Professor Lopez added that dog whistle politics is effective because it animates fear and anger among voters. And when voters become fearful or angry, they don't really listen to any other arguments.

Presumably, "dog whistle politics" can be "effective"--have been effective--in the manner the professor described.  

We'll note that the professor's statement has been removed from its place in a wider exchange. That said, it isn't journalism to quote one lone professor and simply assume that he's right.

Presumably, various forms of "dog whistle politics" have been effective in the manner described. We expect to suggest a recent example tomorrow.

That said, when's the last time you heard a Republican politician, let alone Donald J. Trump, use the term "welfare queen" as part of the public discussion?  Also, did Professor Lopez really mean what came next? 

Did he really mean that? When we see people use the word "terrorist," should we think that they are trying to trigger "unconscious racist views?" 

Quite a few people employ that term--and setting "gangbanger" off to the side, President Obama famously used the term "thugs" to refer to people committing crimes in the street at one point late in his tenure.

President Biden recently used the word "illegals" as a noun. Is everyone really barred at this point from using that term as an adjective?

We don't use that term that way ourselves, though it's true that some acts are illegal. But does some such use of that term mean that a person is engaging in dog whistle politics? Could it possibly be a second cousin to something when we jump up to assert that?

We've long admired Barron-Lopez for her evident sincerity and seriousness of purpose. We almost croaked as the segment continued and she offered these observations, with Nawaz nodding along:

NAWAZ (continuing directly): So tell us more about those voters. How is this rhetoric and this language resonating among those Republican voters?

BARRON-LOPEZ: I spoke to Denver Riggleman, a former GOP congressman from Virginia, and he said that this—these types of racist appeals and nativism from Trump and from other Republicans is essentially infecting the Republican voting base.

And then Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster, shared some responses that she's been getting in her focus groups. And specifically in this recent focus group, she was speaking to two-time Trump voters, which shows that Republican voters are repeating Trump's dog whistles when they're talking about some of the other candidates that were running in the primary, such as Vivek Ramaswamy.

MAN: I'm sorry. I'm not being prejudiced, guys, but I don't like his name. I don't like where he came from. After 9/11, I still harbor a lot of hard feelings about that.

MAN: No offense to any woman out there. I just feel like it's a man's job. They have got to make tough decisions that can't have any emotions involved. They're the commander in chief. They have that red button at their disposal at all times.

BARRON-LOPEZ: In that last one, we heard some sexism directed at Nikki Haley.

And so, again, Republican voters repeating some of the same sexist rhetoric used by former President Donald Trump.

In that passage, it's Denver Riggleman who is anointed as the oracle of Delphi! After that, the deluge:

According to Barron-Lopez, Sarah Longwell had found one person who said he wouldn't vote for a woman! 

Such sentiments were common in national surveys long before Trump came along. In a similar vein, many people would presumably have been reluctant to vote for someone named Ramaswamy back in that same ancient epoch.

One person says he wouldn't vote for a woman—and that's because of Trump? This isn't journalism at all. This is the end of the practice, with Mandated Tribal Storyline wedged into the abandoned slot.

And yet, this was them! This was two major figures at PBS behaving in something strongly resembling the way Berliner attributed to PBS. The absurdly lazy conduct in question is even more unfortunate because the topic in question lies so close to the heart of the American project, which is struggling mightily now.

(Just try watching Gutfeld! some night to see the kinds of warlike reactions such Blue American conduct can drive.)

For ourselves, we began teaching fifth grade in the Baltimore City Schools in the fall of 1969. Over the next dozen years, we never taught any "white" kids. 

Baltimore City had originally been a legally segregated, dual school system. All the kids we taught were "black" kids. They were the best, most decent kids in the world, though possibly tied with all the rest of the planet's kids.

Our view? Weve never seen so much apparent bad faith as came spilling out of Blue America's upper-end orgs after the death Trayvon Martin, but then especially after the murder of George Floyd.

We've never seen so much performance, so little ability to show any sign that these Blue American elites actually knew what to care about—actually knew what might actually matter. 

(This seems to be what that commenter meant when he said he was more interested in the Child Tax Credit rather than in the use of the term Latinx. To us, he was making an obvious point. Whip-bearers made him a bigot.)

As an example of journalism, that NewsHour segment struck us as astoundingly poor, even judged by previous declining standards in this general area. As always, your assessment may differ. That said, there's no such thing as the one perfect view which happens to be floating around right inside your infallible noggin. 

Calchas could read the flight of bords. At one point, Berliner complained about a report by NPR concerning the names of birds.

(That topic also rated a front-page report in the New York Times. That major newspaper has been an never-ending clown car clown show concerning the lives and interests of Gotham's black public school kids, except for the handful of such kids who might get into Stuyvesant High. 

(Blue America's cable stars never discuss that sweeping topic, and they never will.)

Do hints of madness linger here as we pretend to perform? Anthropologically, this is who and what we the people actually are. 

The whip-bearers were out in force. They were policing the comments to Drum's perfectly reasonable post. This is bred in the bone, wired inside our tribal brains, dating well back past the Iliad.

This doesn't mean that we're bad people. It means that we're people people.

It doesn't tell us where NPR has (or hasn't) gone wrong. It tells us that we're inclined to love the smell of war, even here in Blue America.

The Iliad was the poem of war. The Odyssey was the poem of subsequent homecoming.

A large amount of blood gets spilled when Odysseus, now in disguise, finally makes it home. Inevitably, a gang of men are fighting over access to the woman—in this case, to Penelope, Odysseus' faithful wife.

(Our trial about access to Stormy Daniels starts in New York tomorrow.)

In a scene long ago made famous, Odysseus' faithful nurse recognizes him by the scar on his knee as she ritually washes his feet. The faithful god Argus finally dies after seeing that his master has returned.

Odysseus is finally forced to eject the suitors by force. But soon, the voice of the goddess Athene is heard, as rendered by Richmond Lattimore:

Odysseus and his glorious son 
fell upon their front fighters, and began to
strike with swords and stab with spears leaf-headed.
And now they would have killed them all, 
and given none of them homecoming, had not 
Athene, daughter of Zeus of the aegis,
cried out in a great voice and held back all the company:
"Hold back, men of Ithaka, from the wearisome fighting,
so that most soon, and without blood, 
you can settle everything."

Is whip-bearing in comments a cousin to madness? That was what Athene said. On the other hand, she was a girl.

She had proposed the impossible dream. Eventually, Robert Kennedy bought her advice—Robert Kennedy. Senior.

Berliner's essay was very fuzzy. Are we completely sure that every part of what he said was just totally right-wing and "wrong?"