NORMALIZATION(S): The soul of Joe McCarthy survives...

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2024

...with respect to Walz and China: From weekend to weekend, the lineup changes on the Fox News Channel's ramblin' wreck of a "cable news" program, The Big Weekend Show.

Other elements of the show are completely reliable. There are always four panelists on the show—and they always agree with everyone else on every single point. 

That said, The Big Weekend Show is pure propaganda—and the Big Stupid never leaves.

This journalistic garbage can is broadcast on Saturday and Sunday nights. Last evening, the lineup looked like this:

The Big Weekend Show, 8/11/24
Joe Concha: Fox News contributor
Sara Carter: Fox News contributor
Gianno Caldwell: Fox News political analyst
Anita Vogel: News reporter, Fox News Channel

It's hard to believe that Vogel doesn't know better, but that was last night's cast. The program aired at 7 p.m., with rebroadcasts all through the night.

The ridiculous conduct seen on this show has been normalized through mainstream press corps neglect.

There's nothing to see here—just move along! Skillfully avoiding a battle with Fox, that's what Blue America's high-end journalists and news orgs have relentlessly said.

These normalizations have been general over the Fox News Channel. For today, let's consider what those four cast members said, last night, about Candidate Tim Walz.

More specifically, let's consider what they said about Candidate Walz and his troubling affection for China.

A front-page report in today's New York Times makes last night's recitation especially relevant. Online, the lengthy report by Qin and Bradsher carries this dual headline:

Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes
Mr. Walz, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, taught in China and has visited the country around 30 times. But he has also been critical of the Chinese government’s human rights record.

This lengthy report echoes the report in the Washington Post which we discussed last Wednesday. This was the theme of the Post's report:

Tim Walz has had a lifelong love affair with the people of China. But in part for that very reason, he has often been harshly critical of the Chinese government.

How did this relationship with the Chinese people begin? Here's the nugget account from today's report in the Times:

Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes

[...]

Mr. Walz was 25 when he arrived at Foshan No. 1 High School in southern China, near Hong Kong, as part of the WorldTeach program, a nonprofit affiliated with Harvard University. The school is in one of Foshan’s oldest neighborhoods, where thick banyan trees dangle aerial roots over sidewalks and streets.

Mr. Walz soon settled into the cocoon of daily life on a small-town campus, even as the chaos of the Tiananmen Square crackdown more than 1,100 miles away rippled across the country. He taught four English and U.S. history classes a day with about 65 students in each class. As one of the first American teachers at the school, he was afforded small luxuries like an air-conditioner and a monthly salary of around $80—double what the local teachers earned.

Students loved their “big-nosed” teacher, giving him the nickname “Fields of China” because his kindness, they explained to him, was so expansive. For Christmas, some of his students and friends cut down a pine tree, decorated it and brought it to his room.

“No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” Mr. Walz told the Star-Herald in Scottsbluff, Neb., in 1990.

Upon his return to Nebraska in 1990, he told the Star-Herald that going to China was “one of the best things” he had ever done. But he said he also felt that the Chinese people had been mistreated and cheated by their government for years.

“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” Mr. Walz said at the time. “They are such kind, generous, capable people.”

We can't verify every word, but that's how the nugget explains it. Based on the Times' reporting, it doesn't seem that Walz had been brainwashed by the Chinese Communists at this point in time.

As in the earlier Post report, Qin and Bradsher report the aftermath of that initial trip. "The one year that Mr. Walz spent teaching English in southern China was the start of what would become a decades-long relationship with the country," they write. 

"As high school teachers in Nebraska and Minnesota, Mr. Walz and his wife, Gwen, regularly led trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce students to China’s history and culture. 

"Mr. Walz has said that he has traveled to China some 30 times, including for his honeymoon," the reporters note. That said, they also describe his approach to the Chinese government during his twelve years as a congressman:

As a congressman, Mr. Walz did not shy away from talking about his experience in China.

But he was also critical of the Chinese government from the start. And over his 12-year tenure in the House, Mr. Walz’s criticisms of China’s human rights record became even sharper, especially as the Chinese government took a more authoritarian turn under Xi Jinping.

Mr. Walz served on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a bipartisan group of lawmakers focused on monitoring and reporting on human rights and the rule of law in China. Transcripts show that other commission members often praised Mr. Walz for his expertise.

“You are a great asset to our commission,” Representative Chris Smith, Republican from New Jersey and then-chairman of the commission, said to Mr. Walz during a 2011 hearing.

For the record, Rep. Smith was a very conservative Republican. Based on the Times' reporting, he apparently didn't think that Congressman Walz was a dupe of the Red Chinese. 

There's a lot more detail in the Times report. We'll skip ahead to what happened last night after the journalistic clown-car arrived at the Fox News Channel.

The functionaries spilled out of the car and were handed their scripts. They started the segment to which we refer by playing tape of Senator Tom Cotton offering this flashback to an earlier era:

VOGEL (8/11/24): What should voters make of this All-American man's love affair with China? Tom Cotton warns this is something to worry about:

COTTON (videotape): Tim Walz has a terrible record on China, just like Kamala Harris does. 

He's consistently appeased and conciliated the Chinese Communist Party, and has repeatedly said we don't need to have an adversarial relationship with China, when China is insisting on having an adversarial relationship with the United States because they want to replace us as the world's dominant superpower.

That's the tape Vogel played. The pseudo-discussion continued from there:

VOGEL (continuing directly): OK. So Tim Walz has spent a lot of time in China. He was a teacher there during the Tiananmen Square crackdown and he said, of his time in China, "No matter how long I live, I will never be treated that well again."

CALDWELL: [Laughter]

CARTER. Wowwwww! Woww! You know, I think he thinks that if he wears his camo hat and flashes his Dad bod, Xi Jinping will just cower to him, right?

Just so you'll understand, the flyweights were blending their pseudo-discussion of China with pointless commentary about a Harris-Walz camo hat. Also, with commentary about an opinion column about masculinity in the Washington Post.

With that explained, let's move ahead. And since you're asking, here's your answer:

No, you can't get dumber than that! And as the employees continued their chatter, the stupidity only grew:

VOGEL (continuing directly): I don't know—I mean, it's sort of an odd thing to say. I mean, Joe, when you hear that, what— I mean, we do have an adversarial relationship with China.

CONCHA: Who knew there was a Beijing Disney, right? I mean, that sounds like a really wonderful place.

Vogel was puzzled by the comment! For the record, the chronology goes like this:

The comment was made in 1990, and the comment involved the conduct of the Chinese people. Vogel was puzzled because, 34 years later, we do have an adversarial relationship—with the Chinese government. 

Why would he have said that in 1990, Vogel wondered, thoroughly puzzled. Why would he have said that in 1990, given what things are like today!

This is the kind of practiced stupidity these employees bring to the task of cashing their "cable news" checks from the Fox News Channel. After Concha spouted on several other alleged topics, Vogel threw to Caldwell:

VOGEL: Gianno, when you think about China—you know, we had Covid, there are human rights abuses, environmental problems. I mean, we need an administration that's going to be tough on China.

CALDWELL: 100 percent! And not someone who's looking at them as their superhero, and that's the feeling I get.

That's the feeling he gets! Eventually, Carter buttoned up the pseudo-discussion of this mangled topic:

CARTER: China—as nice as Walz is to China, and as nice as [Harris and Walz] try to be to all of our adversaries, our adversaries are killing our young men and women in America. 

Over 140,000 deaths due to fentanyl, chemical precursors going into Mexico, the drug cartels pushing that into the United States. We have China buying farmland here, spying on our national security establishments. It's really quite frightening that we have two people in office that could potentially make that even worse in the future.

CALDWELL: That's right.

VOGEL: A dangerous time.

For the record, it never isn't "a dangerous time" on these gong-show "cable news" programs on this propaganda channel.

Full disclosure! No mention was made, at any point, of Walz's record in opposition to the Chinese government. This is what these employees do to keep those large paychecks coming in.

Conduct like this has been normalized over the course of the past many years. The journalistic syndrome starts with "segregation by viewpoint," the administrative practice according to which everyone on a "cable news" show will automatically agree with everyone else.

As a natural consequence, the employees who appear on these shows are never challenged on anything they say. For that reason, they're allowed to sift the facts in the way which suits the corporation's political interests. 

Also this:

As this happens on Fox, major news orgs in Blue America agree to avert their gaze. The ridiculous conduct by these flyweights goes unreported and undiscussed.

Last night, no one ever mentioned Congressman's Walz's opposition to the Chinese government. Vogel took a statement made in 1990—a statement about the Chinese people—and wondered why he would have said such a thing, given the way the Chinese government conducts itself today.

Everyone went along with this braindead framework. The whole thing started with that video clip from Cotton—with an attack which called to mind the behavior of a famous Wisconsin senator from a long time ago.

This kind of conduct has been normalized over the past many years. That said, a lot of normalization(s) have occurred within our embarrassing national discourse in the past many years.

MSNBC is bad enough. What happens at Fox is much worse. 

The normalization(s) have been general over the American discourse. Tomorrow, we'll start to look at familiar conduct by Donald J. Trump—familiar conduct which has been normalized all the way down.

Can you run a large modern nation this way? We'd say that the answer is clearly no.

For the record, their names were Carter, Concha, Caldwell, Vogel. We think it's time to say the names of the well-paid people who are eager to mistreat the nation they live in this way.

Tomorrow: Trump's bizarre claims in St. Cloud