The Times also starts to try to explain!

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 2024

Also, Hannah Dreier's Pulitzer Prize: Yesterday, to its credit if somewhat belatedly, the Washington Post finally began to try to explain.

In yesterday afternoon's report, we linked you to David Nakamura's report. Yesterday morning, his report had appeared online under this dual headline:

This obscure N.Y. election law is at the heart of Trump’s hush money trial
Prosecutors say a misdemeanor state conspiracy statute spells out the underlying crime Trump aimed to conceal when he made hush money payments in 2016. 

Nakamura was trying to explain the nature of the felony—actually, the nature of the 34 felonies—with which Trump stands charged. Perhaps because the Post had finally made this effort, the New York Times followed suit yesterday afternoon:

Why Does Trump Face Felony Charges? Prosecutors Say He Was Hiding Other Crimes.
Donald J. Trump faces 34 felony counts in his Manhattan trial, but none involve the other misconduct that prosecutors say he engaged in.

Now the Times has started to try to explain! It seems to us that these "explainer" attempts have arrived rather late in the game.

That said, better somewhat late than never! At any rate, it seems that almost everyone agrees with some version of the following:

The New York election law is obscure, or at least is conceptually complicated. Also, Trump is faced with 34 counts—but for some reason, none involve "the other misconduct that prosecutors say he engaged in."

Do you understand that small fandango? At this site, we'll request another day or two to work our way through these reports.

For today, we turn to yesterday's announcement of this year's Pulitzer Prizes. We especially direct your attention to one of the three million topics those of us in Blue America don't seem to give a flying felafel about.

We refer to the reports in the New York Times for which Hannah Dreier won this year's Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting. Headline included, this morning's report in the Times tells us this:

The New York Times and The Washington Post Win 3 Pulitzers Each

[...]

The prize for investigations went to Hannah Dreier of The Times, for an exposé of migrant child labor in the modern United States, and the governmental blunders and disregard that have allowed the illegal practice to persist. This was the second Pulitzer awarded to Ms. Dreier, who won the 2019 feature writing prize for her coverage of the criminal gang MS-13 for ProPublica.

That was the thumbnail in the Times.  In its official list of winners, the Pulitzer organization describes Dreier's work as shown:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Hannah Dreier of The New York Times

For a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States—and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.

"Deeply reported?" You can say that again! Also, widely ignored—but then, what else is new?

Dreier's first report about this topic appeared on the front page of the Times on Sunday, February 26, 2023. 

We wrote about it the next day. To review that report, just click here.

As the year proceeded, Dreier followed with several other reports on this topic. You've never heard about those reports because nobody actually cares.

Nobody cares in Red America; nobody cares in Blue. In Blue America, we spend the hours of our days talking, in endless, thoroughly useless detail, about the chances of getting Donald J. Trump frog-marched off to jail.

Nicolle doesn't seem to care about exploited kids, including those 12-year-old roofers. Judging from appearances, neither do her favorite reporters and friends.

To borrow from sacred Thoreau, we denizens of Blue America "labor under a mistake." Over the years, we've managed to persuade ourselves that we're very, very smart and that we deeply care.

Neither proposition is especially true. Our thought leaders spend their days talking to themselves and to their various friends and to no one else.  They talk about the tiny handful of topics which please them, and they talk about no one and nothing else.

Might we denizens of Blue America learn to see ourselves more clearly?  The chances of that are very poor. 

That said, Dreier's work was deeply impressive. Also, no one gives a flying farthing about her prize-winning front-page reports, and no one ever will.

Donald J. Trump may have had consensual sex, on one occasion, in 2006! As with the Argives, so too here:

We care about that with all our hearts, and we care about little else.