SUNDAY: CNN's Blackwell noticed something!

SUNDAY, JULY 7, 2024

Having noticed, he asked: To his credit, Victor Blackwell did his job—performed his role within our failing "democracy."

Victor Blackwell had noticed something. Having noticed, he asked!

Blackwell serves as host of CNN's early morning weekend program, First of All. To his great credit, he noticed something yesterday.

Such people rarely do.

Blackwell had noticed something when he listened to a pair of radio interviews—major market radio interviews with President Biden. 

According to the New York Times, this is what we the people learned because of what Blackwell noticed:

Biden Aides Provided Questions in Advance for His Radio Interviews

The questions asked of President Biden by two radio interviewers this week were provided in advance to the hosts by members of Mr. Biden’s team, one of the hosts said Saturday morning on CNN.

Andrea Lawful-Sanders, the host of “The Source” on WURD in Philadelphia, said Biden officials had provided her with a list of eight questions ahead of the interview on Wednesday.

“The questions were sent to me for approval; I approved of them,” she told Victor Blackwell, the host of “First of All” on CNN. Asked if it was the White House that had sent the questions to her in advance, she said it was.

“I got several questions—eight of them,” she said. “And the four that were chosen were the ones that I approved.”

Simply put, but rather plainly, this sort of thing never stops. It never stops with the Biden team. In our view, the other team, broadly defined, may be even worse.

Later in the news report, readers are told why Blackwell asked this radio host about her interview with President Biden. He was speaking with the two (2) radio hosts, from two different radio stations, who had been given the chance to interview the president:

Mr. Blackwell, interviewing the two radio hosts Saturday morning, appeared surprised by the answer about the preapproved questions.

He had asked Ms. Lawful-Sanders about her four questions because he said he had noticed that they were almost identical to the four that Mr. Ingram had asked in his interview with Mr. Biden the same day.

Mr. Ingram, who was on Mr. Blackwell’s show with Ms. Lawful-Sanders, did not dispute her description of how the questions were selected.

“The reason I ask is not a criticism of either of you,” Mr. Blackwell told the two anchors. “It’s just that if the White House is trying now to prove the vim, vigor, acuity of the president, I don’t know how they do that by sending questions first, before the interviews, so that the president knows what’s coming.”

For the full CNN transcript, you can just click here.

For the record, the campaign (not "the White House") had provided the questions to the two radio hosts. As the Times news report describes, President Biden stumbled at times as he tried to answer them.

You may agree with Blackwell's assessment of this practice. Then again, you may not. 

Without question, the gaslighting of us the people can (and does) get much, much worse. That said, Biden officials have now said that they won't engage in this practice again.

All in all, we the people continue to live inside a ball of fictitions. 

Our presidential candidates seem like a pair of fictitions. They aren't fictitions in the same way, but they both seem like fictitions nonetheless.

Our journalists, and our other thought leaders, often seem like fictitions too. 

Our candidates frequently make statements which are inaccurate or incoherent. Sometimes, the statements they make are transparently crazy—are the apparent sign of a badly disordered mind.

Recent example, from Candidate Trump: 

ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON. RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.

That statement was transparently crazy. Sometimes, our journalists and our news orgs take notice of such transparently crazy statements. Remarkably often, they don't.

We're returning today to the framework introduced by Michael Moore at the 2003 Oscars. As we noted a few weeks ago, Moore introduced the framework—a new paradigm, built around a new word—in these brief remarks:

I've invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to—they are here. They are here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction.

We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. 

Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or the fictitions of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush.

Moore invented a new term—a term we plainly need. That new term was "fictition." In our view, it's a useful word.

At the time, that was a partisan speech. Today, the state of fictition strikes us as being "general over [the nation]."

Today, the culture of fictition is grotesquely widespread. The human message machines on the Fox News Channel reek of round-the-clock fictition—but are the message machines on MSNBC really that far behind?

We'll explore such questions in the week which lies ahead. That said, who could have predicted such an event? 

CNN's Blackwell noticed something. Having noticed, he asked!