SATURDAY: There's a cancer growing on the discourse!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 2024

The question which won't be asked: In the past few days, a statement from the Nixon era has been bouncing around in our heads.

Over time, the statement became very famous. It's been simplified through repetition, but as you can hear on the White House tapes, this is what was said:

DEAN (3/21/73): Let me give you my overall, first.

NIXON: In other words, your judgment as to where it stands and where we ought to go.

DEAN: I think that there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. We have a cancer within—close to the presidency, that's growing. It's growing daily. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now, because it compounds itself.

That'll be clear as I explain, you know, some of the details of why it is...

There's a cancer growing on the presidency! Colloquially, that's what a very young John Dean is frequently said to have said.

According to the very young Dean, there was "no doubt about the seriousness of the problem." In the last few days, the particular statements Dean made that day have been floating around in our heads.

According to the young adviser, there was a cancer growing on the presidency! In the last few days, we've been struck by a related notion:

There's a cancer growing on the American discourse! 

(Such as that discourse has been.) 

There's a cancer growing on the discourse! That thought has bounced through our brains of late as we've watched the imitation of life we still describe as our national discourse. 

What in the world are we talking about? For an easy example from a much wider set, a primetime program on the Fox News Channel started this way last night:

HOST (8/16/24): Tim Walz's dog, Scout, was interviewed by Vogue magazine.

[PHOTO APPEARS FROM THE SPREAD]

Still no word on whether the dog, like Walz, has no balls.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

Cheap! I'll take it! I'll take it!

For whatever it may be worth, here's the Vogue profile in question.

This program is billed as a comedy show. Stating the obvious, that isn't what it actually is--but just for the record, this was the second joke its host unleashed last night:

HOST (continuing directly): Kamala Harris's website has nine options for pronouns.

They have male, female, and seven options for Randi Weingarten.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE] 

Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers. She's a constant target of the host of this disordered "cable news" program. 

His focus is always the same:

In the opinion of the host, Weingarten isn't traditionally feminine in a way he deems sufficient. Also, Nancy Pelosi has had too many facelifts (or has used too much Botox). Also, the women of The View, but especially Joy Behar, are much too fat and are constantly said to resemble various types of animals.

(Generally, they're said to resemble whales and the like, though they were compared, on Wednesday's show, to a collection of dogs.)

This is the remarkably ugly culture of this remarkably stupid and disordered "cable news" program. Ownership pretends it's a "comedy show," though that's clearly not what it is.

As far as that goes, ownership bills FNC as a "news channel!" Why would a news channel run a comedy show in primetime? We've never seen that explained.

In our view, what has happened on MSNBC in the past decade has been bad enough. Routinely, though, the Fox News Channel makes us flash on what John Dean famously said.

In fairness, the cancer in question isn't limited to the ridiculous conduct which is widespread, though not ubiquitous, on that corporate propaganda machine.  Nor is it restricted to the "cable news" industry as a whole, though our three cable news channels continue to play a significant role in the creation of our flyweight imitation of a national discourse.

In fairness, our national discourse has never been especially sharp. This site dates to the days in the mid-1990s when the mainstream press corps, over the course of more than a year, couldn't find a way to answer this question:

Did the Gingrich Medicare proposal involve cuts to the Medicare program? Or did it merely slow the rate at which the program would grow?

For more than a year, they couldn't puzzle it out! In 1996, Al Franken, still a comedian, untangled the conundrum in his humorous book, Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations.

Meanwhile, the so-called "flat tax" is long gone from the current pseudo-discourse, but at that time, the pseudo-proposal was extremely hot. The press corps' inability to riddle such proposals finally reached the point where Rep. Dick Armey, a former economics professor, published his unintentionally comical 1996 book, The Flat Tax: A Citizen's Guide to the Facts on What It Will Do for You, Your Country, and Your Pocketbook.

Comically, the book was built around this representation: The flat tax is progressive!

Given the way the "flat tax" was simultaneously being promoted, it would be hard to overstate the dumbness of that representation. We can't recall ever seeing a journalist explaining the sheer absurdity at the heart of this silly game.

Many of our major journalists "went to the finest schools." Frequently, we wonder why they bothered. The dumbness of the discourse they've helped create, often through their abject silence, is a tribute to the observations of several modern anthropologists, E. E. Cummings among them.

With that, we return to the Thursday event which was billed as the candidate's latest "news conference." As we noted yesterday, the hopeful began with ambling introductory remarks which lasted 47 minutes.

After that, the second question he faced was this:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (8/15/24): Thank you, President Trump. 

You've spoken very passionately about how God saved your life. And I'm wondering, have you put much thought into why God saved your life? As in, for what purpose has he been shielding and protecting you?

Why do you think God saved your life? Remarkably, this "question" can be asked at a major "news conference" without any further comment from the rest of the press corps.

Regarding Thursday's event, we refer you to the new post in which Kevin transcribes the thirteen questions the candidate was eventually asked. 

At least half of those questions were basically invitations for the hopeful to orate again. Here was Kevin's overview, including a basic question:

DRUM (8/16/24): Trump blathered for the first 47 minutes and then took questions for 34 minutes. Is it really a news conference if you spend less than half the time taking questions from reporters?

I'll let you decide that for yourself. I'm more interested in who actually attended the "news conference." For starters, Trump was greeted with cheers and applause when he came out, which doesn't strike me as standard reporter behavior. And the questions! 

With only one or two exceptions, every question was along the lines of either (a) "What is it that makes you so great?" or (b) "Your opponent is obviously a disaster, right?"

[TEXT OF THE THIRTEEN QUESTIONS]

There were some very mild questions about whether personal attacks were a good idea and whether the polls are turning against him. And for some reason, Trump took a question from a reporter who obviously didn't like the idea of firing workers who are on strike. Aside from that, you can't even describe the questions as softballs. They were plants.

Were there any real reporters at yesterday's event who can explain what happened?

Who were those guys? he essentially asked, reviving the famous question from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We'd call it a perfectly decent question—and we can offer this bit of information:

Speaking on Special Report immediately after the event, Fox News Channel reporter Aishah Hasney seemed to say that she had asked two of the thirteen questions—the question about the Fox News poll, but also the question about food prices and Candidate Harris' stance on price gouging.

"I got to ask several questions," Hasney told Bret Baier. "Actually, he took several questions today from several different reporters."

Vanity Fair's Brian Stelter reported that his request to attend the event was refused by the Trump campaign. Last night, the Gutfeld! gang clowned around about that statement, ridiculing Stelter for being too fat and too bald while failing to wonder about the larger question involved here.

For ourselves, we'll quit today with a basic point. We'll turn to The Question Not Asked.

It wasn't asked at Thursday's 84- or 85-minute event. In fairness to the people at that event, this obvious question also won't be asked anywhere else:

The obvious question not asked:
Sir, why do you keep telling your supporters that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged? 

Can you direct us to actual evidence which establishes that remarkable claim? In the absence of such evidence, why do you continue to insist on making this inflammatory claim?

Full disclosure! Trump angrily makes this claim at his campaign rallies. He didn't have the courage to do so at Thursday's closely watched event, though he did lodge several hints.

For the record, no one is ever going to present that question to Trump! The candidate's conduct has been thoroughly normalized through the press corps' benign neglect.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we don't have an actual discourse. Also, Governor Walz has no balls; Nancy Pelosi's face isn't right; Joy Behar is much too fat; and one disordered "cable news" host recently asked, in prime time, if Jill Biden has started f*cking Hunter Biden yet, now that Joe's out of the race.

(Yes, that's what he actually asked, right there in prime time.  You've seen this discussed nowhere else.)

Also, people are losing faith in our institutions! With a stunning lack of self-awareness, that's what the termagant host has been sadly saying in the past few days. His own ugly conduct—his routinely stupid, angry attacks on our various institutions—has been normalized as the rest of the press looks away.

Why do you keep making the claim that the election was stolen? That question won't be asked. Nor do we—we modern Americans—actually have a "discourse."

A cancer has grown all over the blather we still describe as a discourse:

Why did God spare Donald J. Trump? On Thursday, that was the second "question" the candidate found himself asked!