Mike DeWine is saddened by Trump and by Vance!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

Candidate Kennedy's jokes: Mike DeWine is the Republican governor of the state of Ohio. Re-elected in 2022, he's in his second term.

In our view, his guest essay in the New York Times is the number-one read of the day.

In these latter days of societal dissolution, his essay has a certain throwback feel. He lives less than ten miles from Springfield, Ohio—and he's saddened by Trump and by Vance:

I’m the Republican Governor of Ohio. Here Is the Truth About Springfield.

I was born in Springfield, Ohio. My wife, Fran, and I have lived our entire lives less than 10 miles from this city.

When we were dating in high school, we would go there to see movies at the Regent or State Theater or to eat fried clams at Howard Johnson’s. I remember Fran taking the bus about eight miles from our hometown, Yellow Springs, to Springfield to shop at Wren’s Department Store. Over the years, we’ve eaten countless doughnuts from Schuler’s Bakery, worshiped at St. Raphael Catholic Church and we logged many work hours there when I represented Springfield in the U.S. House and Senate.

Springfield has a rich history of providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity. As a stop on the Underground Railroad, the Gammon House, which still stands, was a safe haven for escaped slaves seeking freedom. And, as a stop on the Old National Road, America’s first east/west federal highway, Springfield attracted many settlers both before and after the Civil War. Immigrants from Ireland, Greece, Germany, Italy and other countries helped build the city into what it is today.

[...]

As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield. This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.

The Biden administration’s failure to control the southern border is a very important issue that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are talking about and one that the American people are rightfully deeply concerned about. But their verbal attacks against these Haitians—who are legally present in the United States—dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border.

The Springfield I know is not the one you hear about in social media rumors. It is a city made up of good, decent, welcoming people. They are hard workers—both those who were born in this country and those who settled here because, back in their birthplace, Haiti, innocent people can be killed just for cheering on the wrong team in a soccer match.

This is a lengthy, enlightening essay. We're leaving a whole lot out. 

In many ways, the essay seems to come from a different time and place. For reasons which go unexplained, the governor still supports Trump and Vance, but he's saddened by "their verbal attacks against" the Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, who are legally present there. 

Stated a slightly different way, the governor is saddened by the verbal attacks the candidates don't plan to stop.

With that, we take you back, once again, to the dawn of the era which has now become "too much with us." We take you back to Candidate Kennedy's humorous speech at the Al Smith Dinner, as transcribed by Theodore White in The Making of The President 1960.

By tradition, the Al Smith Dinner is an evening on which the presidential contenders break bread together, then deliver humorous speeches. As happenstance has it, we contributed a joke for that dinner to one of the candidates in the 2000 campaign—a joke which got a fair amount of play in the press.

(While glancing at the other candidate: Al Smith was the kind of governor I admire most—the kind who runs for the White House and loses.)

Rereading Teddy White's famous book, we were surprised to see that this tradition already existed at the dawn of this era. Actually, White seems to suggest that Kennedy may have initiated this approach to the evening before it was a tradition.

In a footnote on page 298, White presents the text of Candidate Kenndy's remarks. We won't attempt to explain every reference. According to White's transcript, here's what the candidate said:

KENNEDY (10/19/60): I am glad to be here at this notable dinner once again and I am glad that Mr. Nixon is here also. 

[Applause]

Now that Cardinal Spellman has demonstrated the proper spirit, I assume that shortly I will be invited to a Quaker dinner honoring Herbert Hoover.

 [Laughter] 

Cardinal Spellman is the only man so widely respected in American politics that he could bring together amicably, at the same banquet table, for the first time in this campaign, two political leaders who are increasingly apprehensive about the November election—who have long eyed each other suspiciously and who have disagreed so strongly, both publicly and privately—Vice-President Nixon and Governor Rockefeller.

[Laughter]

Mr. Nixon, like the rest of us, has had his troubles in this campaign. At one point even the Wall Street Journal was criticizing his tactics. That is like the Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope.

But I think the worst news for the Republicans this week was that Casey Stengel has been fired. 

[Laughter]

It must show that perhaps experience does not count.

[Laughter and applause]

On this matter of experience, I had announced earlier this year that if successful I would not consider campaign contributions as a substitute for experience in appointing ambassadors. Ever since I made that statement, I have not received one single cent from my father.

One of the inspiring notes that was struck in the last debate was struck by the Vice-President in his very moving warning to the children of the nation and the candidates against the use of profanity by presidents and ex-presidents when they are on the stump. And I know after fourteen years in the Congress with the Vice President that he was very sincere in his views about the use of profanity. 

But I am told that a prominent Republican said to him yesterday in Jacksonville, Florida, “Mr. President, that was a damn fine speech.” 

[Laughter]

And the Vice President said, “I appreciate the compliment but not the language.” And the Republican went on, “Yes sir, I liked it so much that I contributed a thousand dollars to your campaign.” And Mr. Nixon replied, “The hell you say.” 

[Laughter and applause]

However, I would not want to give the impression that I am taking former President Truman’s use of language lightly. I have sent him the following note: 

“Dear Mr. President: I have noted with interest your suggestion as to where those who vote for my opponent should go. While I understand and sympathize with your deep motivation, I think it is important that our side try to refrain from raising the religious issue.” 

[Laughter and applause]

The popular vote was a virtual tie. Kennedy went to the White House, with Nixon soon to follow. A fuller transcript of Kennedy's remarks can be found right here.

As it turns out, the Al Smith Dinner is scheduled for October 17 this year. According to this report, neither candidate has announced plans to attend.

These very much seem like latter days here within "our democracy." In our view, "our democracy" is under tremendous stress, primarily from two major societal changes—the so-called "democratization of media," along with the journalistic practice known as "segregation by viewpoint."

The Fox News Channel has learned to build much of its evening around the power of humor. On that degraded, flyweight "cable news" channel, one of last night's bits of analysis went to a typical place:

GUTFELD (9/19/24): When the Teamsters polled their members about the Dems' new candidate, Cackles McKneepads—

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE] 

(In an aside): Terrible. Terrible.

—Trump came out way ahead at almost 60 percent.

On this pitiful, brain-damaged program, the Democratic candidate is now known as "Cackles McKneepads." The reason?

The incels booked on this clown show each night have noticed that she's a gurrrl. The women of Fox sit around on the program each night and pretend they can't hear what's been said.

This is who and what these idiots are. On the other hand, this is also what our society has become as we continue to slide toward the sea.

This happens in prime time every night. The New York Times won't tell you that. Neither will the favorite reporters and friends who people MSNBC.

Final point: Reportedly, Casey Stengel once told our sainted mother that he liked her because his wife was named Edna too. Just a guess:

We'll guess she was dating one of his players when he managed the Boston Braves, known then as the Boston Bees.

When Kennedy spoke at the Al Smith Dinner, Stengel had just been released by the Yankees. Before long, he moved on to the Mets.

OUR NATION'S NEW CLOTHES: Moderators have never encountered...

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

...a problem like Candidate Trump: Should David Muir have said what he said about the last election?

We refer to some of the things Muir said during last Tuesday's presidential debate. Along with a colleague from ABC News, Muir served as moderator of the debate between Candidates Harris and Trump.

It's likely to be the only debate the candidates have. Midway through the forum, Muir introduced a new topic:

MUIR (9/10/24): I do want to focus on this next issue to both of you. Because it really brings us, this into focus: Truth in these times that we're living in. 

Truth in these times that we're living in—Muir hoped to focus on that! Across the nation, observers dreamed a little, and felt the dark encroachment of that old catastrophe, much as Stevens once said.

To wit:

"What is truth," Pontius Pilate is said to have said. 

It's often said that Pilate's remark was made sarcastically, perhaps in jest.  Now, Muir introduced the same topic.

The next day, the New York Post criticized Muir and Linsey Nelson for fact-checking Trump five times. This complaint about the five checks would quickly become mandated fare on the Fox News Channel.

According to the Post's report, one of the five fact-checks occurred in the ensuing discussion—in the discussion about "truth in our times." A hint of the problem appeared right away as Muir turned to Trump with his question:

MUIR (continuing directly): Mr. President, for 3 and a half years after you lost the 2020 election. you repeatedly falsely claimed that you won, many times saying you won in a landslide. In the past couple of weeks leading up to this debate, you have said, quote, you lost by a whisker, that you, quote, didn't quite make it, that you came up a little bit short.

TRUMP: I said that?

MUIR: Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?

There's nothing obviously wrong with Muir's eventual question. But along the way, the moderator said that the candidate had repeatedly made a false claim.

Should the moderator have said that?

For ourselves, we wouldn't have approached this important topic that way. At any rate, when the candidate gave his answer, left little doubt about his current stance.

His answer takes us to the heart of the question Muir raised: What the heck is truth in these times? Trump's answer went like this:

TRUMP (continuing directly): No, I don't acknowledge that at all.

MUIR: But you did say that.

TRUMP: I said that sarcastically. You know that. It was said, "Oh we lost by a whisker." That was said sarcastically. 

Look, there's so much proof. All you have to do is look at it. And they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes. The most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which was what I got in 2016, you can't be beaten. 

The election, people should never be thinking about an election as fraudulent. We need two things. We need walls. We need—and we have to have it. We have to have borders. And we have to have good elections.

Our elections are bad. And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that's why they're allowing them to come into our country.

So many possible statements to fact-check! But also, so little time.

For ourselves, we don't doubt the claim that the statements in question had been made sarcastically. Now, though, the exchange continued, as did the moderator's challenges to the hopeful:

MUIR (continuing directly): I did watch all of these pieces of video. I didn't detect the sarcasm—"Lost by a whisker, we didn't quite make it." 

And we should just point out, as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies—sixty cases in front of many judges. Many of them—

TRUMP: No judge looked at it.

MUIR: —and said there was no widespread fraud.

TRUMP: They said we didn't have standing. That's the other thing. They said we didn't have standing. A technicality. Can you imagine a system where a person in an election doesn't have standing, the president of the United States doesn't have standing? That's how we lost. 

If you look at the facts, and I'd love to have you—you'll do a special on it. I'll show you Georgia and I'll show you Wisconsin and I'll show you Pennsylvania and I'll show you —we have so many facts and statistics. 

But you know what? That doesn't matter. Because we have to solve the problem that we have right now. That's old news. And the problem that we have right now is we have a nation in decline and they have put it into decline. We have a nation that is dying, David.

MUIR: Mr. President, thank you. Vice President Harris, you heard the president there tonight. 

He said he didn't say that he lost by a whisker. So he still believes he did not lose the election that was won by President Biden and yourself... 

As he turned to Candidate Harris, Muir flatly contradicted Trump's claim once again. "The election was won by President Biden and yourself," the moderator flatly said.

Full disclosure! As far as we know, the 2020 election was won by President Biden. We've never seen any serious evidence suggesting anything different.

Also this:

Close to four full years have passed, and Candidate Trump, as far as we know, has never produced anything resembling a serious "white paper" which seeks to justify his endless claim that the election was stolen.

It's a highly inflammatory claim. As we've noted in recent weeks, the candidate has angrily been making this inflammatory claim at his rallies—in the state of Minnesota, in the state of Georgia. This angry claim is a basic part of the candidate's work on the stump.

Stating the obvious, this angry claim lies at the heart of the question of "truth in these times." For our money, our major news orgs have never found a journalistically serious way to address this inflammatory claim.

For our money, Muir didn't accomplish that task at last Tuesday's debate. In fairness to Muir, he had  accepted a very challenging assignment when he agreed to moderate this TV debate.

The first of our presidential TV debates took place in 1960. The moderators had a relatively easy assignment at that particular time.

In 1960, the moderators threw their questions at Candidates Kennedy and Nixon. Neither candidate made the types of peculiar claims made by Candidate Trump all through last week's debate.

Politically and journalistically, this is a challenging time! Just consider the things the candidate said in that exchange with Muir about the last election.

For starters, the candidate continued to say that he won that election. (As Muir noted, the candidate has sometimes said that he won it "in a landslide.") 

Did Candidate Trump win the last election? Eventually, he seemed to say that he had a profusion of facts and statistics which would establish the truth of his claim.

He said he had a profusion of facts and statistics! Sadly, though, this was the childish statistical argument the candidate presented:

I got almost 75 million votes. The most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which was what I got in 2016, you can't be beaten. 

In fact, the candidate did get "almost 75 million votes" in the last election. Also, that was "the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten." 

For example, when President Eisenhower sought election as the sitting president in 1956, he only got 35.6 million votes—and he did win a landslide! Sadly, though—and childishly—the obvious problem is this:

Today, the nation's population is more than double what it was back then. And Candidate Biden got 81.3 million votes in the 2020 election! 

Trump did get a lot of votes. But, as every third grader knows, Biden got way, way more! 

In the course of the 2020 election, did advisers ever tell President Trump that he couldn't lose if he got 63 million votes?

Everything is possible! But if someone did tell hm some such stupid thing, the person who told him was wrong.

Despite these obvious, bone simple facts, there the aging candidate stood, rattling off this kindergarten level nonsense to a fully intelligent journalist. Of course, he says these things, again and again, at the angry rallies he stages—at the rallies where he angrily says that the last election was stolen.

Dating back to 1960, no moderator has had to deal with embarrassing, childish claims of this type in a presidential debate. No candidate has ever made such claims. No moderator has ever had to decide how he or she should react. 

No precedent for moderators like Muir and Nelson exists.

We suggest that you pity the poor moderators at last Tuesday's debate! In the matter of Trump's response to the specific question Muir posed, we also note that the candidate made such remarkable statements as these:

A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that's why they're allowing them to come into our country.

According to the candidate, some unspecified "they" have been trying to get a lot of illegal immigrants to vote. That's why "they" have been allowing these illegal immigrants to come into our country.

That too is a remarkably serious charge—one which was made without any attempt at justification. What's a moderator supposed to do when such charges are flying around?

We offer this as a way of grasping the size of the challenge confronting Davis and Muir last week. No moderators in TV history have ever been forced to deal with claims like the ones this candidate made all through the course of the debate.

Dating back to 1960, no moderators ever had to decide what to do in the face of wild, unsubstantiated claims like the claims we discussed yesterday:

Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down? You know why? Because they've taken their criminals off the street and they've given them to her to put into our country. And this will be one of the greatest mistakes in history for them to allow—and I think they probably did it because they think they're going to get votes. But it's not worth it. Because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. 

There's never been anything done like this at all. They've destroyed the fabric of our country. Millions of people let in. And all over the world, crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.

All over the world, crime is down? All over the world, crime is down because they've taken their criminals off the street and they've given them to [Candidate Harris] to put into our country?

Has any moderator ever been faced with the task of responding to claims of that type? Similarly, has any moderator ever been faced with the task of responding to pre-debunked clownage like this?

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country—and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States! And a lot of towns don't want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. 

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs! The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.

...She's destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success. We'll end up being Venezuela on steroids.

The mention of Aurora went unexplained. But in Springfield, they're eating the cats and the dogs! In Springfield, they're eating the pets!

 In Springfield, they're eating the pets, this untethered candidate said. Dating back to 1960, no moderator has ever been forced to adjust to such conduct as this. More on Aurora tomorrow!

The very next day, the New York Post swung into action. The journalism was C-minus work at the very best. But as we noted yesterday, the basic assertion was accurate:

Trump was fact-checked by ABC moderators 5 times during debate—while Harris was left alone

Former President Donald Trump was fact-checked at least five times by moderators during his Tuesday presidential debate showdown against Vice President Kamala Harris—while the Democratic nominee was noticeably left alone.

And so on, at length, from there. The overall journalism was poor, but the basic assertion was accurate. The moderators did fact-check the one candidate anywhere from three to five times. And, by way of contrast, they did pretty much leave the other hopeful alone.

Today, we're offering a basic framework—a basic framework which ought to operate in any discussion of these events or of this overall topic. We offer this basic claim:

No candidate has ever made so many wild claims in the course of a televised presidential debate. This constitutes a major part of the new suit of clothes which currently drapes "our democracy," making a joke of our public discourse—which currently challenges the basic workings of our floundering nation.

No previous candidate has ever made such claims. The blizzard of claims this candidate made, and persistently makes, has helped sew a new suit of clothes.

Other individuals and orgs are involved in this wider societal mess. In our opinion, the New York Times has had a very hard time coming to terms with the change in our world which we have described. In our view, the Times still hasn't been able or willing to acknowledge the embarrassing societal problem we've described as a new suit of clothes.

What is truth, Pontius Pilate once said. In what way should major news orgs be addressing our new suit of clothes?

Tomorrow: "Something we were withholding made us weak?" 

That's what Robert Frost once said. He recited the poem in question in January 1961, at Candidate Kennedy's inauguration as Candidate Nixon looked on.

"Something we were withholding?" Have major orgs like the New York Times possibly been averting their gaze from the depth of the change in the culture? Has something perhaps been withheld? Has some such failure to function perhaps been making us weak?

The Manchurian (Vice Presidential) Candidate!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

We still say, Pity the child: A few years back—we're not sure how many—we watched The Manchurian Candidate (1962 version) maybe four or five times.

We came away thinking that it's a very deep, complex film. More and more, we find ourselves thinking about that film as we watch JD Vance in action.

We still recommend that you pity the child—the child who grew up in the profoundly dysfunctional family culture Vance described in his best-selling 2017 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

After Vance was selected to run for vice president, we scanned his memoir again. It wasn't as well written as some people are inclined to say, but it describes a culture of neglect and abuse dumped on the head of a child,

That child grew up to be JD Vance, who increasingly strikes us as one of the biggest demagogues we've ever seen. 

As we noted as the time of the Republican Convention, childhood trauma, and resident anger, may emerge later in life.

Is that what's happening in the matter described below? Dual headline included, this is the start of a New York Times news report:

Vance Says He Will Keep Calling Haitians Legally in Springfield ‘Illegal’
The immigrants are mainly in the United States under temporary protected status, which the executive branch can grant to people whose home countries are in crisis.

Senator JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, said on Wednesday that he would continue to describe Haitian residents in Springfield, Ohio, as “illegal aliens” even though most of them are in the country legally.

The immigrants are mainly in the United States under a program called temporary protected status, which the executive branch can grant to people whose home countries are in crisis. Mr. Vance claimed falsely that this program was illegal.

“If Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” he said in response to a reporter’s question after a rally in Raleigh, N.C. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal.”

Pity the child—but defeat the man! Increasingly, he strikes us as thoroughly damaged.

Increasingly, there seems to be nothing this guy won't say, especially on TV. For example, are Springfield's Haitians in this country thanks to "an illegal action from Kamala Harris?" 

That's what Vance is quoted saying in the Times report. We highlight one particular statement as the report continues:

Congress created the temporary protected status program in 1990 and presidents from both major parties have used it in response to wars, natural disasters and other humanitarian crises in various countries. The program allows people from countries designated by the Department of Homeland Security to live and work legally in the United States for 18 months, a period that the department can renew indefinitely. It does not include a path to permanent residency or citizenship.

The Obama administration granted the temporary protected status to Haitians living in the United States illegally after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010. Under President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security has granted or renewed temporary protected status to immigrants from a number of countries, including Haiti, Ukraine and Venezuela. Ms. Harris did not make those decisions.

Interesting! The Obama administration made a decision concerning Haitians in 2010.  Under President Biden, the Department of Homeland Security made certain additional decisions concerning Haitians.

"Ms. Harris did not make those decisions," the Times report says. As a general matter, that may be the most obvious observation available in the world. 

Duh! As a general matter, vice presidents don't call the shots! That's a blindingly obvious observation, but much of our journalistic discourse is devoted to blowing right past it when vice presidents run for the White House.

That said, no one plays this particular card quite like Candidate Vance. Here he was at the start of his interview with CNN's Dana Bash on last Sunday's State of the Union:

BASH (9/15/24): Before Donald Trump talked about eating dogs and cats on a debate stage, it was you, Senator, who first elevated this baseless rumor. These are your constituents. So, why are you putting them at risk by continuing to spread claims about Haitian immigrants, despite officials in your state saying that there's no evidence and pleading for you to stop?

VANCE: Well, Dana, first of all, what's putting the residents of Springfield at risk, which was a town completely ignored by the American media until Donald Trump and I started surfacing some of these concerns, is that they can't afford housing, they can't afford health care.

The schools have been overwhelmed. The hospitals have been overwhelmed. And they're overwhelmed because Kamala Harris allowed 20,000 Haitian migrants to get dropped into a small Ohio town of about 40,000 people, and it's completely overwhelmed the services. 

That was the first Q-and-A! Just like that, right out of the box, Vance was saying that Springfield is overwhelmed "because Kamala Harris allowed 20,000 Haitian migrants to get dropped into" that city.

During the interview, Vance played that card early and extremely often, as we'll show you below. But while we're at it, when was Springfield ever "a small Ohio town of about 40,000 people?" Here are the recent figures from the Census Bureau:

Population of Springfield, Ohio
2000 census: 65,358
2010 census: 60,608
2020 census: 58,662
2023 estimate: 58,082

Springfield is located in the state Vance represents in the Seate. When did its population drop all the way down to 40,000? Inquiring minds want to know!

At any rate, are some unknown number of Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio "because Kamala Harris allowed it?" In his session with Bash, Vance quickly cast himself in the victim's role, then proceeded to play that card again and again and again.

Seriously! Here's what he soon said:

VANCE: What we have said is that this town has suffered terribly under the problem—under the policies of Kamala Harris. Now, you just accused me of inciting violence against the community, when all that I have done is surface the complaints of my constituents, people who are suffering because of Kamala Harris' policies.

Are we not allowed to talk about these problems because some psychopaths are threatening violence? We can condemn the violence on the one hand, but also talk about the terrible consequences of Kamala Harris' open border on the other hand.

Now, let me just fact-check a couple of other things that you said, Dana, because it's important. You said that all of these migrants are in the country legally. They're in the country through what's called temporary protective status.

BASH: Right.

VANCE: That is when Kamala Harris waved a magic amnesty wand, taking people and giving them legal status. That is not a—that is not to say that they're here legally. That is a terrible indictment of her amnesty policies that have further opened the border and further caused terrible migration into this country.

BASH: But they're not—but it's not illegal. You might be—you might not agree with the policy and, obviously you don't, which is totally fair and legitimate. There are policy disagreements all the time. But the fact is, it is the law because President Biden and Vice President Harris are—

VANCE: Dana— The point is, Dana—

BASH: But I don't want to get— I don't want to, frankly, go down this conversation about policy, because—

VANCE: No, no, no, Dana, I— I— You made—you made a point. You don't—I agree, you don't want to talk about policy, Dana, which is why you're talking about other distractions, instead of about the fact that—

BASH: No, what I want to talk about—what I want to talk about— Senator, it was your distraction! You were the one who started talking about eating dogs and cats.

VANCE: —Kamala Harris, Dana, granted amnesty at a mass level. She granted amnesty at a mass level.

He said it and said it and said it again. Every decision of the past four years was made by Kamala Harris! 

Candidate Vance kept this up all the way to end of the session. Believe it or not, "murders are up by 81 percent because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen to this small community!" 

When you get right down to it, there's very little that Kamala Harris hasn't specifically done! Bash never challenged this sleight of hand. There was no sign that she even noticed.

In our view, one major problem was working here—Vance is quite good at this sort of thing. In our view, Bash unwisely began interrupting and arguing with Vance, but he's more skillful at this game. It's like the old saw about the wrestling match:

You don't want to get into a wrestling match with a pig. You'll each get muddy, but the pig will like it.

In The Manchurian Candidate, Raymond Shaw gets dragged away and gets brainwashed by the Chinese Communists. He has his soul (almost) taken away. The Frank Sinatra character sees that he deserves to be pitied.

It looks to us like a certain person emerged from a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing but, as it seems to have turned out, he didn't emerge unscathed.

We'll suggest that you pity the child. But we get the feeling that a whole lot of damage was done to that child and that it has begun to emerge.

Final point:

Looking back at that Times report, how many of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were actually in this country "illegally" when protected status was first declared back in 2010?

("The Obama administration granted the temporary protected status to Haitians living in the United States illegally after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti in January 2010.")

The Times report blows past that question. Because facts are no longer a part of our discourse, the answer will never emerge. 

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: When the moderators challenged some lunatic claims...

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

...a powerful empire fought back: When Candidates Kennedy and Nixon debated, they did so at the dawn of the modern political era.

In real time, Theodore White had a complaint—a complaint about the new shape of the public discourse as this new era came into being.

As we noted yesterday, this was the general shape of White's complaint:

White thought that Kennedy's initial statement about Quemoy and Matsu "was probably one of the sharpest and clearest responses to any question of the [four] debates." But the candidate had only been given two-and-a-half minutes to state his view about this central issue of the day.

In White's assessment, two-and-a-half minutes only permitted that well-versed candidate the chance to offer "a snatch of naked thought and a spatter of raw facts." 

And then, things got even worse. 

One week later, on Columbus Day, Kennedy offered an "extraordinarily lucid half-hour speech on Quemoy and Matsu in New York." But when the candidate presented that speech, only three newspapers in the whole country published the full text of his lucid address!

Today, no newspaper would even dream of publishing some such text, not even in online editions. In White's assessment, the fact that only three newspapers had done so was a sign of how bad things had already become. 

In Tuesday's report, we posted the full text of Candidate Kennedy's statement in that second debate. It was only two-and-a-half minutes long, but it was crammed with detailed information and with references to the actions and the views of statesmen of the day.

In White's view, that statement by Kennedy in that debate barely scratched the surface of the candidate's relevant thinking and knowledge. Our question to you is this: 

Could Theodore White have imagined the day in which a major party nominee, in a televised presidential debate, would offered a statement like this as part of the two (2) minutes he had been allotted?

TRUMP (9/10/24):  ...We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. 

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country—and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States! And a lot of towns don't want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. 

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs! The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.

...She's destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success. We'll end up being Venezuela on steroids.

The candidate had mainly (though not exclusively) been asked to state his view about an immigration bill he had allegedly helped to defeat. 

In his response, he had wandered the countryside, speaking about the size of crowds at political rallies. It's generally agreed that he was "baited" into doing that by Candidate Harris's previous statement.

Has Candidate Harris been paying people to attend her rallies? That strange claim by Candidate Trump, offered as part of this two-minute statement, went unaddressed by the moderators of the debate. 

His claim about the eating of cats and dogs produced a different reaction. 

As of last Tuesday night, this stupid but inflammatory claim had already been widely debunked. Despite that fact, he candidate angrily made it. 

Within that context, wisely or otherwise, moderator David Muir responded in the manner shown:

MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.

An exchange with the candidate proceeded from there. Were cats and dogs being eaten in Springfield? 

"We'll find out," the candidate eventually said. Our question today is this:

Back at the dawn of the era, could Theodore White have imagined a presentation like that from a major party nominee during a presidential debate?

We're willing to guess that the answer is no. This leads to a second question:

In the face of that candidate's angry claims, did Nuir show good judgment by seeking to "clarify" the claim Trump had made about the cats and the dogs?

In our view, the answer is yes. Elsewhere, the answer was no. 

The pushback came the next day! From within the Murdoch Empire in the redoubts of Red America, an accusatory piece in the New York Post started off like this:

Trump was fact-checked by ABC moderators 5 times during debate—while Harris was left alone

Former President Donald Trump was fact-checked at least five times by moderators during his Tuesday presidential debate showdown against Vice President Kamala Harris—while the Democratic nominee was noticeably left alone.

ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis interjected and debunked the Republican nominee, 78, nearly a half-dozen times during the 90-minute debate in Philadelphia as Trump spoke about abortion, crime and immigration.

Meanwhile, Harris, 59, was allowed to speak uninterrupted—despite rattling off falsehoods about active US military in combat zones, as well as Trump’s stance on abortion, the right-wing Project 2025 blueprint and his “very fine people” remark about the Charlottesville race riot.  

Trump has since slammed both ABC and its moderators, arguing the debate was “rigged,” “unfair” and a “three on one” affair.

This lengthy piece appeared on September 11, the day after the debate. Trump had been "fact-checked at least five times," a pair of reporters said. 

(That amounted to "nearly a half-dozen times," the reporters further explained.)

For the record, how many times was this candidate "fact-checked?" For ourselves, we could set the number as low as three. It seems to us you have to stretch to get it up to five.

You can teach the number flat or round. In our view, two of the "fact-checks" were clumsily handled. 

In one instance, moderator Linsey Davis simply inserted an accurate statement about the illegality of killing babies after birth. Her abrupt statement, while accurate, wasn't obviously relevant to the various things Trump had said in his rambling statement, which included a heinous, apparently unfounded claim about Candidate Walz—a claim which went unchallenged.

In another instance, moderator David Muir tried to insert this "fact-check" in the aftermath of a wild set of apparent misstatements by Candidate Trump:

TRUMP: ...They allowed criminals. Many, many, millions of criminals. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country, and they're now in the United States. And told by their countries like Venezuela, "Don't ever come back or we're going to kill you."

Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down? You know why? Because they've taken their criminals off the street and they've given them to her to put into our country. And this will be one of the greatest mistakes in history for them to allow—and I think they probably did it because they think they're going to get votes. But it's not worth it. Because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. 

There's never been anything done like this at all. They've destroyed the fabric of our country. Millions of people let in. And all over the world, crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.

MUIR: President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country. 

There are obvious questions which might be asked about border policy in the past four years. It's widely agreed that this is a policy area which presents a serious challenge to Candidate Harris, fairly or otherwise.

That said:

Are crime rates really "way down...in countries all over the world?" Have governments in countries all over the world actually "taken their criminals off the street and given them to [Candidate Harris] to put into our country?"

On their face, those are the astoundingly serious claims. To appearances, those claims are also lunacy-adjacent. 

Before Tuesday night, had the candidate ever extended this familiar storyline to this extent? As far as we know, he had not. 

More commonly, this candidate has said that a few specific countries have been emptying their prisons and jails and sending such criminals into this country. As far as we know, he had never extended this claim to the point where countries all over the world are reducing their crime rates by dumping their criminals into this country, in concert with Candidate Harris.

As normally offered, this analysis hasn't exactly made sense. If the criminals in question were already in prisons and jails, how could exporting them reduce a nation's crime rate?

By Tuesday night, the criminals were being gathered "off the streets"—in nations all over the world! That said, the candidate's claims about crime rates all over the world are wholly unfounded. 

In the rational world of a Theodore White, they would have sounded a bit like the claims of a lunatic.

In a similar vein, is crime in this country really "through the roof?" We know of no reason to believe such a claim, but there is no perfectly reliable way to measure the occurrence of crime in this country. 

In this instance, it seems to us that Muir would have been on firmer ground if he'd simply asked the candidate to comment on the FBI data, rather than by presenting those data as a matter of established fact.

That said, the candidate's statement had been littered with apparently lunatic claims. The same was true of his angry claim about the eating of cats and dogs. It was also true of his remarkable claim that Candidate Walz has said it's OK to murder new-born children.

In that sense, Muir and Nelson faced a difficult challenge in their roles as moderators last Tuesday night. Arguably, they were confronted with "a task greater than that which rested upon General Washington!"

Could Theodore White have imagined the day when a presidential candidate would offer a statement like the last one posted—a statement about declining crime rates around the world, created by the rounding up of criminals for delivery into this country, in a televised White House debate?

We'll guess the answer is no. We'll make the same guess about the candidate's disordered claims about the eating of the cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio.

Assigned to moderate that debate, Muir and Nelson faced an unprecedented challenge.  In our view, they could have performed their assignment more perfectly, but none of moderators in 1960 had to deal with claims as peculiar as those which came from this one candidate on this peculiar night.

For the record, the other candidate made statements that night which we would regard as inaccurate. As a matter of personal privilege, we wish she hadn't said this:

HARRIS (9/10/24): I was at the Capitol on January 6th. I was the Vice President-Elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation's Capitol, to desecrate our nation's Capitol. 

On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died. And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason. 

But this is not an isolated situation. Let's remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate. And what did the president then at the time say? "There were fine people on each side."

At best, we'd score the highlighted statement as substantially misleading or as insufficiently fair. Within our own demanding realm, we might even score it as simply inaccurate.

Even there, it's hard to say that Candidate Harris made the kinds of claims her opponent routinely made last Tuesday night—inflammatory claims which were baldly inaccurate, joined to other inflammatory claims for which the candidate has never offered any basis in fact.

In our view, Muir and Nelson could have done a more perfect job in their attempts at clarification. In our view, they also could have challenged other wild things Candidate Trump said that night.

In his gloomiest dreams at the start of this era, could Teddy White have imagined a candidate making a statement like the one this candidate made about the eating of pets?

We'll suppose the answer is no. But the New York Post leaped into action, and the tribunes at the Fox News Channel were soon reciting their corporation's talking point. 

Our democracy, such as it is, continued to spin downhill from there. Out of the hustings, Candidates Trump and Vance continue to declaim about the eating of cats and dogs. 

Our culture is draped in a new suit of clothes. Our general view on the matter is this:

Even as we speak today, it's proving hard for some of our nation's finer citizens to come to terms with that deeply challenging fact. 

Tomorrow: Is the New York Times refusing to see our society's new suit of clothes?

(Mature) life doesn't begin at 60!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Aging Fox star proves the point: It's been a while since we looked in on the moral progress of the aging star who sits at the helm of the Fox News Channel's primetime Gutfeld! program.

That star grew up in a sunny land. Last week, he turned 60.

Having reached the age of majority, would he begin to show moral growth? Inquiring minds wanted to know!

Last night, he was accompanied by a standard type of panel—one former professional wrestler, a pair of flyweight D-List comedians, plus consultant Erin Perrine, who ought to know much better. 

The first two panel discussions achieved unparalleled levels of intellectual cluelessness—but we thought you might want to check in on the cable star's sexual politics.

Simply put, this pilgrim is showing no progress. As he typically does, he opened his "cable news" program with a few minutes of jokes. 

He started with an evergreen sally about President Biden's state of near-death, but by 10:01 he had moved on to this world-class throwback groaner:

GUTFELD (9/17/24): An investigation into the immigrant crisis in Springfield, Ohio reveals that auto accidents have increased fourfold. 

I didn't know the Haitians were all women.

ANNOUNCER: A sexist would saaaaaayyy.

For now, try to ignore the factual claim, which we'll fact-check below. Just try to believe that a cable star is still so braindead that he goes on TV offering jokes which turn on the theme that women simply can't drive their cars as well as we strong muscled men.

He turned to that joke at 10:01. That announcer's hook—A sexist would saaaaaayyy!—is part of the pitiful infrastructure of this braindead "cable news" program.

The Incel emitted that joke at 10:01. His next joke went like this:

GUTFELD: RFK Junior is being investigated for allegedly cutting off the head of a whale carcass twenty years ago.

But it appears Joy Behar is doing fine.

[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

(Scoldingly) You people!

Comparisons of Behar to cows or elephants or whales are a constant theme with the undergrown child. At 10:02, he moved ahead to this:

GUTFELD: Hillary Clinton's fourth memoir is coming out today. There are as many accounts of her life as there are of Christ's.

The similarities end there. Jesus brought a dead man back to life, and Hillary brought a live man to a prison and had him hung. 

[PHOTOS OF CLINTON, JEFFREY EPSTEIN]

[APPLAUSE]

(That was part of the ongoing campaign in which the aging star advances the notion that Jeffrey Epstein was actually murdered by Hillary Clinton.)

Right after that, at 10:02, the cable star offered his final joke. His final joke went like this:

GUTFELD: And on MSNBC, Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a danger to our country. 

Meanwhile, men are calling Hillary a danger to their boners.

Believe it or not, the sheer stupidity of the ensuing discussions exceeded the stupidity—and the astonishing tastelessness—of this little guy's humor selection. Even so, he had again displayed the "Incel chic" for which his program has become famous.

So you'll know, he quickly threw in an additional comment establishing the eternal claim that all the women of The View are just way too fat. That crowd-pleasing theme goes on and on, night after night after night.

At 10:21, he kicked off a pseudo-discussion of Hillary Clinton's recent comments about Candidate Trump. As he did, he referred to Clinton as "that broad with the kankles."

(That was a reference to a long-standing Limbaugh claim according to which the former senator's ankles were way too fat.) 

That pseudo-discussion turned on a bogus impression produced by some bogus editing. Thanks to the bogus edit, the aging star conveyed the impression that Clinton has proposed imprisoning people (implicitly, political opponents) for acts of misinformation. 

Having established that phony premise, the aging star threw this in:

GUTFELD: Being jailed for misinformation! Well, I guess that means that Bill Clinton will never call you pretty!

As you can see, it routinely goes well beyond pitiful with this 60-year-old man. For the record, four flyweights—two of whom identify as women—sat around watching this pathetic yet standard display.

Concerning the claims about auto accidents in Springfield, it's based on a news report in the New York Post. That news report actually says that injuries in auto accidents for the entire county have increased by fourteen percent. 

The "fourfold" figure involves a jump in deaths in auto accidents (countywide) from two in 2022 to a total of eight last year. You can, of course, refer to that a fourfold increase, but it's built on an N which is basically meaningless. 

(The Post report specifically notes that it isn't known if Haitian drivers were involved in these accidents. Translation: The aging star is even slipperier than reports in the New York Post!)

How did this famously motherless child ever get this way? As we often note, he grew up in a bright, sunny land.

This can is opened, in primetime, on the Fox News Channel each night. It's an endless cancer on the society, and nobody says a word.

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: A good, decent person made a mistake!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

Dozens of bomb threats have followed: Was our flailing nation's public discourse once a different critter?

In 1960, the Kennedy-Nicon TV debates marked the start of the modern political era. Our national discourse was perhaps different then. Consider what Teddy White said.

Theodore White, age 46, was smart and highly experienced. Writing in a famous old book, he offered this observation about the candidates' second debate:

WHITE (page 292): Kennedy’s response to the first question on Quemoy and Matsu was probably one of the sharpest and clearest responses to any question of the debates; in that response, actually, Kennedy was tentatively fingering at one of the supreme problems of American statecraft, our relation with the revolution in Asia. 

In yesterday's report, we showed you the full text of Candidate Kennedy's statement. Also, we linked you the videotape of that sharpest and clearest response.

Do presidential candidates speak that way in debates of the present day? As a general manner, no—but White was unhappy, way back when, even with that response.

According to White, the fact that Kennedy had only two-and-a-half minutes to speak meant that he'd been "out too far with such a thought" to fully explain his view. 

Indeed, White offered that very response as an example of how limited our discourse had become that year. In a footnote, he added this:

WHITE: For a full development of this two-minute answer, one had to wait for days, until Kennedy’s extraordinarily lucid half-hour speech on Quemoy and Matsu in New York on Columbus Day, October 12th. That speech was heard only by a local audience, and its full text was reprinted, so far as I know, in only three newspapers in the country. It was as fine a campaign discussion of an issue of national importance as this correspondent can remember—yet its impact on the nation was nil.

So it went, according to White, in that dumbest of all presidential campaigns—a campaign in which only three (3) newspapers bothered to publish the full text of an "extraordinarily lucid half-hour speech."

Only three newspapers published the text! In White's view, that was one marker of our nation's badly failing discourse.

Today, no imaginable candidate would actually give such a speech. No newspaper would even dream of publishing some such text.

Today, our discourse is draped in a new suit of clothes, in a way which calls to mind the foibles of a famous old emperor. Our discourse is draped in a new type of raiment—in a wardrobe which has changed in fundamental ways, yet may be hard for us to see. 

Where does today's discourse come from? In the wake of the so-called "democratization of media," our discourse may flow downhill from the type of stream described in today's New York Times.

Way back then, Theodore White was a summa cum laude Harvard grad. Candidates Kennedy and Nixon were both remarkably well informed, as judged by modern standards.

Where are the headwaters found today? Thanks to the democratization of media, the news report to which we refer starts exactly like this:

Ohio Woman Says She Regrets Sharing False Rumor About Haitians on Facebook

When Erika Lee wrote the Facebook post, it was just another summer day in Springfield, Ohio.

It was before the city got dragged into the presidential race, before former President Donald J. Trump stoked debunked rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating household pets, and before an ensuing wave of bomb threats upended life in the town of about 60,000.

Ms. Lee had heard that a neighbor’s cat had disappeared and that one of their Haitian neighbors might have taken the animal, so she posted the rumor on Facebook...

Erika Lee, age 35, is plainly a good, decent person. As the news report continues, she is quoted voicing her deep regret at her decision to "post the rumor on Facebook."

That said, the news report describes what happened after she posted the rumor. The report continues as shown:

Ms. Lee had heard that a neighbor’s cat had disappeared and that one of their Haitian neighbors might have taken the animal, so she posted the rumor on Facebook. But then she decided to go back to her neighbor.

It turned out the cat that had supposedly gone missing wasn’t the cat of a neighbor’s daughter, as Ms. Lee had posted. And if there were such a cat, it belonged to a friend of a friend of the neighbor’s daughter, Ms. Lee learned.

“And at that point, we are playing the game of telephone,” said Ms. Lee, who said she had no information herself about any abducted cats.

She has since deleted the post, but it had taken on a life of its own—eventually finding its way into the right-wing echo chamber, where it was picked up by Mr. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who grew up in Middletown, about 40 miles from Springfield.

[...]

Ms. Lee, 35, says she now regrets writing the Facebook post and feels bad about the racially charged fallout that has consumed the city for days.

“I was not raised with hate,” Ms. Lee said, speaking through sobs. “My whole family is biracial. I never wanted to cause problems for anyone.”

Erika Lee made a rookie mistake. Like almost every good, decent person, she isn't a highly trained journalist. 

That said, an astonishing person came along and decided to run with her rookie mistake. Last Tuesday, the man who sits at the top of that person's ticket angrily wailed about this confection during a presidential debate.

Yesterday, we showed you what happened when he did. Because what happened is highly instructive, we'll show you the text once again:

DAVID MUIR (9/10/24): I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community—

TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television—

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is—

TRUMP: The people on television say, "My dog was taken and used for food." So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that—

TRUMP: We'll find out.

Should David Muir of ABC News have sought to "clarify" what that particular candidate said? 

The candidate had angrily repeated a ser of claims which had already been widely debunked. Should the moderator have simply "moved on?" Or should he have done what he did?

From that day to this, Muir has been savaged all over the Fox News Channel for daring to call attention to that angry candidate's apparently bogus statement. Having made a set of inflammatory statements to 67.1 million people, the candidate merely said that "we'll find out" if what he said was true.

We've come a very long way, baby, from the dueling statements by Candidates Kennedy and Nixon concerning Quemoy and Matsu. As White reported, their dueling statements about those islands continued into their third debate. 

Those candidates were well-informed and highly articulate, although they held differing views. 

The candidate from whom Muir sought clarification made other statements last Tuesday night which may have emerged from the twilight zone on the border of mental disorder. In our view, major news orgs like the New York Times still haven't found the way—or perhaps haven't found the journalistic courage—to come to terms with the new raiment that particular candidate has draped on our public discussion.

Tomorrow, we'll show you some of other statements that particular candidate made that night—statements which seemed to arrive on the scene from a zone near Lala Land. On Friday, we'll try to think about the way the New York Times has chosen to deal with that particular candidate's long list of baldly disordered statements.

For today, we'll direct your attention to the point of origin of this current blight on what's left of the national discourse.

 According to the Times report, the point of origin was a bit of bad judgment by a good, decent person with connections to Facebook—a good, decent person who posted a rumor before she went back to check facts.

"Every man [sic] a king," a famous politician once said. The leading authority on his career offers this initial thumbnail:

Huey Long

Huey Pierce Long Jr. (August 30, 1893 – September 10, 1935), nicknamed "The Kingfish," was an American politician who served as the 40th governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and as a United States senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935. He was a left-wing populist member of the Democratic Party and rose to national prominence during the Great Depression for his vocal criticism of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, which Long deemed insufficiently radical. 

As the political leader of Louisiana, he commanded wide networks of supporters and often took forceful action. A controversial figure, Long is celebrated as a populist champion of the poor or, conversely, denounced as a fascist demagogue.

Some saw Long as "a populist champion of the poor." Some saw him as a demagogue. 

His famous cry—Every man a king!—was aspirational at that point in time. In the wake of the democratization of media, his famous cry has instead become descriptive.

Today, everyone with an Internet link can end up driving the American public discourse, whether for good or for ill. 

Inevitably, "democratization" sounds like a very good thing. But in the instance under review, this particular type of democratization empowered a good, decent person who made a mistake to set in motion a chain of events which has led to dozens of bomb threats and to the evacuations of public schools.

A good, decent person made a mistake. For whatever reason or reasons, a pair of candidates for higher office stepped in and took things from there.

Last Tuesday night, David Muir of ABC News sought "clarification" of a statement one of those candidates made during a presidential debate. Muir has been widely criticized for that outrageous decision.

Moderators in 1960 were faced with no such decisions. Neither candidate in those debates alleged the eating of cats and dogs. Neither candidate in those debates made equivalent statements. 

Our discourse has come a long way since then—and it's wearing a new suit of clothes. 

Tomorrow, we'll take a look at the Fox News Channel and the New York Post—at the outrage which has emerged from those particular orgs in the wake of Muir's decision. From there, it will be on to Blue America's leading newspaper—on to the New York Times! 

In our view, our discourse is draped in a new suit of clothes—and we don't mean that as a compliment. In our view, news orgs like the Times are politely averting their gaze from this fact—from the new arrangements which are driving our vastly changed discourse, and from its disordered participants.

At the dawn of this failing era, Theodore White was upset. One candidate delivered a lucid address—and only three American newspapers had published that hopeful's full text!

Tomorrow: "Who ordered tax?"

Milbank blasts the Fox News Channel!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Scribe doesn't get it right: Can anyone here play this game?

Over at the Washington Post, Dana Milbank was doing the highly unusual. He was describing the eternal spotlessness of the Fox News viewer's mind.

Hic column appeared last Friday, three days post-debate. Its dual headline said this:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess
After the debate, the network worked to keep the MAGA faithful in a state of blissful ignorance.

Unheard of! Milbank was describing an important component of the Fox News Channel playbook. Its viewers are routinely kept from hearing the truth when the truth doesn't go the preferred way.

For whatever reason, journalists rarely talk about Fox. The column started like this:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”

And then, in a universe all its own, there was Fox News.

“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”

“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.

Briefly, let's be fair! Some commentators on Fox voiced a different point of view about the debate. 

The channel's post-debate program was hosted by Baier and Martha MacCallum. They quickly threw to Brit Hume.

Hume briefly criticized the ABC moderators. Then, however he offered this as the bulk of his analysis:

HUME (9/10/24): Now, look, make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night. He rose to the bait repeatedly when she baited him, something I’m sure his advisers had begged him not to do.

You know, in the first debate, when Biden attacked him, he just kept his cool and kept going. In this debate he rose to the baiting—and we heard so many of the old grievances that we’d long thought Trump had learned were not winners politically. And there they all were, you know, talking about how he didn’t lose the election and all that.

So my sense is that she came out of this in pretty good shape. Now, how long this will last is anybody’s guess. But for tonight, at least, this was pretty much her night.

BAIER: You’re saying she had a good night?

HUME: I’m saying she certainly did.

Hume was the first analyst brought on the air that night. As you can see by clicking this link, that critique was offered to Fox News viewers roughly two minutes after the end of the debate.

Shortly thereafter, former Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) was brought on the air. "I agree with Brit," he said. "This has to be seen by supporters of Donald Trump and people in that campaign as a disappointment."

The gentleman continued from there. Sean Hannity had been allowed to take a turn between the two nay-sayers.

Eventually, the anchors got to Watters. The channel's resident "Silly Boy" made the remarks Milbank quoted. It's surprising to us to see that Baier did seem to voice agreement.

Milbank may have picked and chosen his examples just a tad. More awkwardly, he eventually said this in Friday's column:

Fox News cleans up another Trump mess

[...]

It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.

Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Oof! In our view, Candidate Trump did make a lot of "odd statements" that night. But even three days post-debate, Milbank apparently still didn't know the source of the quoted statement about transgender operations. 

For ABC's fact check from September 11, you can just click here.

Trump was referring to a pledge Harris made to the ACLU in 2019 during her presidential campaign. Unfortunately in our view, several positions she adopted back then represent potential problems for her current effort.

That said, our focus today is on Milbank's column. Our advice to the consumer is this:

Be careful when reading the types of things you've been longing to hear!

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: Is our culture draped in a new suit of clothes?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Pepperidge Farm remembers: Long ago and far away, Hans Christian Andersen blew the whistle on an emperor who was wearing a new suit of clothes.

There was an obvious problem with the ruler's new ensemble. But as Andersen capably reported, citizens of the empire in question seemed unable to spot the problem with their emperor's new suit of clothes.

(Something we were withholding made us weak, Robert Frost once alleged.)

Is it possible that we the people, right here in this country, are having a similar problem today? Is our public discourse—"our democracy," our political culture—possibly draped in a new suit of clothes? 

Is it possible that we the people have been unable to identify the major societal problem encased in this new suit of clothes? If Pepperidge Farm is allowed to remember, it seems that the answer is yes.

To what extent is our public discourse—including our political journalism—now draped in a new suit of clothes? Let's start by considering something Bret Stephens has said.

He makes the statement in this morning's New York Times, in this week's version of The Conversation. As always, his interlocutor is Gail Collins. Thinking back, and squinting a little, the gentleman posits this:

We Cannot Go On Like This

[...]

Bret: Thanks to YouTube, you can now go back and watch politicians from two or three generations ago discuss the issues of the day: For instance, Ronald Reagan debating George H.W. Bush on the subject of immigration—which they both favored—during the 1980 G.O.P. primary campaign, or Richard Nixon debating John F. Kennedy on foreign policy, or listening to Robert F. Kennedy reciting Aeschylus from memory in his heartbreaking eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. They’re all Gullivers compared to today’s Lilliputians.

He says the pols were smarter then. Is this simply an angry dream? Or could this distant memory possibly be true?

He mentions the Kennedy-Nixon debates from the dawn of the modern era. Bringing Pepperidge Farm center stage, let's take a look at the record.

In The Making of The President 1960, Theodore White describes those famous debates. At one point, he describes the way the second debate ended, and the way the third began.

The issue he cites is now lost to the world. Below, we'll call your attention to the way the issue was discussed by the pair of hopefuls:

WHITE (page 290): ...The second |debate concerned itself with foreign policy and ranged from Cuba’s Castro through the U-2 and espionage to the matter of America’s declining prestige, and closed on the first sharp clash of the series—the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. 

The third debate resumed, like a needle stuck in a phonograph groove, with the subject of Quemoy and Matsu, hung there almost indefinitely, then broke away with Nixon’s stern disapproval of President Truman’s bad language, and went on to other matters such as bigotry, labor unions and gold outflow. This, according to all sample surveys, was Nixon’s best performance in terms of its impact on the audience... 

The third debate was Nixon's best. But on and on the hopefuls had gone, debating Quemoy and Matsu!

Those tiny islands are rarely mentioned today. At issue was this nation's willingness to defend "Formosa" (today's Taiwan) against the menace of China. 

As we've noted, White claimed that television's role in this campaign had dumbed the political discourse way, way down from where it had been in the past:

"Rarely in American history has there been a political campaign that discussed issues less or clarified them less."

That's what the gentleman said. In White's view, the candidates could offer "only a snatch of naked thought and a spatter of raw facts" in the measly two-and-a-half minutes allotted to them when they answered the moderators' questions at their four televised debates.

With that in mind, we thought we'd show you what Candidate Kennedy said about Quemoy and Matsu during the second debate. 

Warning! We're going to show you his full statement, as recorded in this transcript of that second debate. To watch the candidate making this statement, you can click right here.

Full disclosure:

Theodore White was very bright. In his opinion at that time, these debates were part of the dumbest public discussion to which we the people had ever been exposed in one of our White House campaigns. 

Edward Morgan of ABC News presented the question that night. The less experienced Candidate Kennedy pretty much took it from there:

MORGAN (10/7/60): Senator, Saturday on television you said that you had always thought that Quemoy and Matsu were unwise places to draw our defense line in the Far East. Would you comment further on that, and also address to this question: 

Couldn’t a pullback from those islands be interpreted as appeasement?

CANDIDATE KENNEDY: Well, the United States has on occasion attempted, mostly in the middle fifties, to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to pull his troops back to Formosa. I believe strongly in the defense of Formosa. 

These islands are a few miles—five or six miles—off the coast of Red China, within a general harbor area and more than a hundred miles from Formosa. We have never said flatly that we will defend Quemoy and Matsu if it’s attacked. We say we will defend it if it’s part of a general attack on Formosa. But it’s extremely difficult to make that judgment. 

Now Mr. Herter, in 1958, when he was Under Secretary of State, said they were strategically undefensible. Admirals Spruance and Callins in 1955 said that we should not attempt to defend these islands, in their conference in the Far East. General Ridgway has said the same thing. 

I believe that when you get into a war—if you’re going to get into war for the defense of Formosa, it ought to be on a clearly defined line. One of the problems, I think, at the time of South Korea was the question of whether the United States would defend it if it were attacked. I believe that we should defend Formosa. We should come to its defense. To leave this rather in the air, that we will defend it under some conditions but not under other, I think is a mistake. 

Secondly, I would not suggest the withdrawal at the point of the Communist gun. It is a decision finally that the Nationalists should make and I believe that we should consult with them and attempt to work out a plan by which the line is drawn at the island of Formosa. It leaves a hundred miles between the sea. But with General Ridgway, Mr. Herter, General Collins, Admiral Spruance and many others, I think it’s unwise to take the chance of being dragged into a war which may lead to a world war over two islands which are not strategically defensible, which are not, according to their testimony, essential to the defense of Formosa. 

I think that we should protect our commitments. I believe strongly we should do so in Berlin. I believe strongly we should do so in Formosa, and I believe we should meet our commitments to every country whose security we’ve guaranteed. But I do not believe that that line, in case of a war, should be drawn on those islands, but instead on the island of Formosa. And as long as they are not essential to the defense of Formosa, it’s been my judgment ever since 1954, at the time of the Eisenhower Doctrine for the Far East, that our line should be drawn in the sea around the island itself.

That was "the snatch of naked thought" Candidate Kennedy managed to cram into his meager few minutes of time. 

Candidate Nixon's response was equally littered with facts and with what seems to have been a perfectly logical analysis.

"I disagree completely with Senator Kennedy on this point," the candidate quickly said. On this special occasion, we're going to go ahead and show you what Nixon said:

CANDIDATE NIXON: I disagree completely with Senator Kennedy on this point. I remember in the period immediately before the Korean War, South Korea was supposed to be indefensible as well. Generals testified to that. And Secretary Acheson made a very famous speech at the Press Club, early in the year that the Korean War started, indicating in effect that South Korea was beyond the defense zone of the United States. 

I suppose it was hoped when he made that speech that we wouldn’t get into a war. But it didn’t mean that. We had to go in when they came in. 

Now I think as far as Quemoy and Matsu are concerned, that the question is not these two little pieces of real estate—they are unimportant. It isn’t the few people who live on them—they are not too important. It’s the principle involved. These two islands are in the area of freedom. The Nationalists have these two islands. We should not force our Nationalist allies to get off of them and give them to the Communists. If we do that we start a chain reaction; because the Communists aren’t after Quemoy and Matsu, they’re—they’re after Formosa. 

In my opinion, this is the same kind of woolly thinking that led to disaster for America in Korea. I am against it. I would never tolerate it as president of the United States, and I will hope that Senator Kennedy will change his mind if he should be elected.

So it went in that second debate. As White notes, the discussion of Quemoy and Matsu spilled over into the third.

At the time, Theodore White thought that these statements were part of the dumbest public discussion to which we the people had ever been exposed in a presidential campaign. 

It wasn't the candidates' fault, he said. He said they couldn't present the full sweep of their thinking in the tiny few minutes they had.

As a point of courtesy, we aren't going to post those presentations side-by-side the wide array of mumble-mouthed foofaw on display at last Tuesday's debate. 

In our view, one candidate embarrassed himself, again and again, with a wide array of baldly ridiculous statements. When his statements were questioned on four occasions by the debate's moderators, Red America's pundit class rose in fury to denounce what the obvious hacks from ABC News had done.

Full disclosure! The other candidate seemed to avoid several direct questions at that same debate. We'd score her first post-debate interview as a bit underwhelming too, though we're inclined to cut her some slack because of the "accidental" nature of her late-starting campaign.

For such reasons, Pepperidge Farm offers dark, mordant chuckles as it remembers that exchange about Quemoy and Matsu—and as it lets its thoughts drift back to what Theodore White said, in a famous book, about the dumbness of that year's political discussion.

Staring the obvious, our modern discourse is a clown show compared to what happened back then. Incredibly, each of those four debates attracted a viewership of 65 to 70 million people—at a time when the nation's entire population stood at just under 180 million.

Time was slower then, Harper Lee suggested in her own famous book. There was much less to do. The American public was even willing to sit through the long, stupendously dull ballet which ends An American in Paris.

We the people—even the men!—sat through that endless ballet. In Tinseltown, An American in Paris was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 1952!

Today, our discourse is decked in a new suit of clothes. The clownishness has crept in slowly, on little cats' feet, during a time when the cats and the dogs were still feeling safe.

The clownishness of our public discourse—of our gong-show political culture—has crept in on little cats' feet. This has possibly made our predicament perhaps a bit hard to see. 

It was less Lilliputian then, Stephens has said. Could it be that the Timesman is right?

Tomorrow: Fact-checks and clarifications

COMING THIS AFTERNOON: Is our society draped in a new suit of clothes?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Pepperidge Farm remembers: We're losing a chunk of time this morning. We won't be posting until this afternoon.

At that time, we'll continue with this week's discussion—with a discussion of our flailing society's unmistakable new suit of clothes.

It was Hans Christian Andersen who recorded the history of the emperor who was mal-adorned in that famous manner. As Andersen noted, it was hard for citizens of his empire to see or acknowledge the problem with his suit of clothes.

To what extent are we the people failing to see the suit of clothes currently being paraded about in ours? How many individuals and organizations might be involved in this process?

Is our flailing national discourse currently draped in a new suit of clothes? This afternoon, Pepperidge Farm has agreed to remember the raiment we the people were willing to wear at the time of Quemoy and Matsu!

Stephens will never vote for Trump!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Possibly not for Harris either, but also possibly yes: In our view about who to vote for this year, we differ from the New York Times' Bret Stephens.

We're going to vote for Candidate Harris. Here's what Stephens tells Gail Collins in this week's episode of The Conversation:

We Cannot Go One Like This

[...]

Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.

Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. 

What hasn't Harris sealed the deal? Earlier in their conversation, Stephens offers a list of the ways he sees the dueling nominees. 

In our view, some of this doesn't quite make sense—but also, some of it does: 

Bret: If Trump wins the election, I’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, I’ll feel scared. 

A Trump victory is going to complete the G.O.P.’s transition to a full-blown MAGA party that trades conservative convictions for illiberal ones. A Harris victory puts an untested leader in the White House at a moment of real menace from ambitious autocrats in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran. 

A Trump victory means the country is again going to go crazy with all the cultural furies he unleashes, both for and against him. A Harris victory means four more years of misbegotten economic policies, like the threat to put controls on prices some federal bureaucrat deems to be too high. 

A Trump victory is dreadful for Ukraine. A Harris victory could be terrible for Israel. 

A Trump victory empowers people who don’t accept the results of an election. A Harris victory empowers a candidate who has never won a primary and whose supporters want to jail their political opponent.

If Trump wins, he says he’ll feel sick. If Harris wins, he'll feel scared. 

In our view, that list of ruminations gets weaker as it proceeds. That said:

As someone who will be voting for Harris, we'd say it's true that she's "untested" in certain ways. It's true that there's no clear way to know how she'd proceed in the White House. 

In our view, that isn't exactly her fault. We think of what President-elect Lincoln was reported to have told a crowd of well-wishers as he left that other Springfield on his way to the White House:

My friends:

No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. 

I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon General Washington. 

Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. 

To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

It was February 11, 1861. It's called the "Farewell Address." Lincoln said he was leaving the friends among whom he had grown to be an old man "to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington."

It's a bit like that with Candidate Harris. With President Biden's withdrawal from the campaign, she suddenly faced a highly unusual task. No one before her has had to assemble a presidential campaign on such remarkably short notice, presumably with almost no planning at all.

It's stunning to us, but not surprising, that we've seen so few analysts say that.

Harris has been asked to do something which few people have done before. In many ways, she's done an amazing job at this task. It's still the case that she's a bit of an "accidental" nominee—a nominee whose instincts, views and capabilities aren't extremely well-known.

For ourselves, we'd limn it like this:

If Trump wins, we hope we get to live long enough to see, and to attempt to record, the essence of what he does. On balance, we assume he's some version of (clinically) "mentally ill"—and for that reason, we regard this as a dangerous time.

People like Stephens and Collins aren't allowed to discuss that fairly obvious possibility. The guild has chosen to cling to its hoary rule in the face of approaching disaster.

In our view, Stephens is possibly being just a bit fastidious in the way he scores the race between the candidate who's mentally ill and the candidate who isn't. In fairness, he may not see it that way. Tens of millions of neighbors and friends don't see this the same way we do.

At any rate:

If Trump wins, we hope we live long enough to see the history unfold. If Harris wins, we agree with Stephens to a certain extent:

It's hard to know what she will be like as an American president. In our view, she delivers a truly sensational speech, but it's even less clear than it typically is where things go from there.

We'll close with something else Stephens said. The fuller exchange went like this:

Bret: Can I vote for Trump? Never. Will I vote for Harris? Maybe, but she hasn’t sealed the deal with me yet.

Gail: Hey, at least you’re moving in the right direction. Maybe you could create a I-Hate-Harris-But-At-Least-She’s-Sane movement.

Bret: Just so you know: I absolutely do not hate Harris. She exudes warmth. And disagreement isn’t hatred.

Gail: I reserve the right to go back to harping on your voting plans...

We agree with Collins. Candidate Harris does seem to be sane! The warmth and the strength she's exuded so far have been a bit of a joy to the world. 

That said, General Washington faced a daunting task. If elected, she'll face a daunting task too.

Let us hope that all will be well, Lincoln said that day. With respect to his friends in Springfield, he did find a way to "save the Union," but he wasn't allowed to return.

OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: Theodore White was very bright!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Could he have imagined these clothes? Could "our democracy" possibly die in disorder? 

As we float that question today, forgive us if we ask you to think about Theodore White again.

Quite literally, White wrote the book about the presidential campaign which inaugurated the modern political era. Even today, his famous book bears a famous title:

The Making of The President 1960

White was 46 years old when he wrote his famous book. That said, who was Theodore White? The leading authority on his life offers this instant thumbnail:

Theodore H. White 

Theodore Harold White (May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist and historian, known for his reporting from China during World War II and the Making of the President series.

White started his career reporting for Time magazine from wartime China in the 1940s. He was the first foreigner to report on the Chinese famine of 1942–43 and helped to draw international attention to the shortcomings of the Nationalist government.

After leaving Time, he reported on post-war Europe for popular magazines in the early 1950s, but lost these assignments because of his association with the "Loss of China." He regained national recognition with The Making of the President 1960...

So goes the initial thumbnail. As the profile continues, additional background appears. We apologize for offering all this info. But this is part of "the way it was" at the dawn of this failing era:

White was born May 6, 1915, in Dorchester, [a part of] Boston. His parents were David White (born David Vladefsky, a Russian immigrant) and Mary Winkeller White. His father was a lawyer. He was raised Jewish, and as a teenager was a member of the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. 

He was a student at Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1932; from there, he went on to Harvard College, from which he graduated [summa cum laude] with a B.A. in history as a student of John K. Fairbank, who went on to become a leading China scholar and White's longtime friend...

Awarded a Harvard traveling fellowship for a round-the-world journey, White ended up in Chungking, China's wartime capital. The only job he could find was with China's Ministry of Information. When Henry R. Luce, the China-born founder and publisher of Time magazine, came to China, he learned of White's expertise, the two bonded, and White became the China correspondent for Time during the war. He was the first foreign journalist to report the widespread Henan Famine and he filed stories on the strength of the Chinese Communists.

White chafed at the restrictions put on his reporting by the Chinese government censorship, but he also chafed at the spiking or rewriting of his stories by the editors at Time...

Although he maintained respect for Luce, White resigned and returned home to write freely, along with Annalee Jacoby, widow of fellow China reporter, Mel Jacoby. Their book about China at war and in crisis was the best-selling Thunder Out of China.

And so on from there, including a couple of best-selling novels in the 1950s.

White was 46 years old when he wrote the book which described the start of the modern political era. Some of his claims in the book strike us as perhaps a bit eccentric. That said, he was a summa cum laude Harvard grad who had seen large chunks of the world.

At the dawn of the modern era, White complained about the shriveled political discourse of the 1960 presidential campaign. Our question today will be this:

Smart and experienced though he may have been, could White have imagined what happened at last week's debate between Candidate Harris and Candidate Trump? Even at 46 years of age, could Theodore White have imagined the shape of our society's new suit of clothes?

More specifically, could White have imagined a major party nominee like one of the two in last week's debate? Could he have imagined a nominee who advanced the sorts of claims one candidate chose to advance during last Tuesday's event?

In our view, Candidate Harris was less than perfect during last Tuesday's debate. So were David Muir and Linsey Davis (ABC News), the moderators of that debate. Perfection is rarely achieved.

That said, our floundering nation's flailing discourse groans under the weight of the ongoing behaviors of the other candidate at the debate. We refer to behaviors our major news orgs don't seem to know how to describe—or may not want to confront.

We'll take a guess! The candidate made an array of claims which White could not have imagined. According to the ABC transcript, one of the most disordered of those claims started off like this:

TRUMP (9/10/24): Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. 

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country—and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States! And a lot of towns don't want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. 

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs! The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame...

In Springfield—he seemed to mean in Springfield, Ohio—"the people that came in" are eating the cats and the dogs! According to the candidate, "the people that came in" are "eating the pets" of the people who live there! 

Within the context of "our democracy," the candidate almost seemed to be wearing a new suit of clothes. But so the candidate angrily said—and a large amount of public disorder has followed along from there.

Could Theodore White have imagined a major party nominee making such a presentation—it was only one of many—during a presidential debate?  We're willing to guess that the answer is no. We'll guess that he couldn't have done that.

Now for the rest of the story:

In a judgment for which he's been aggressively trashed, one of the moderators decided to "fact-check" what the candidate said about the eating of the dogs and the cats.

Rightly or wrongly—we have a mixed view—he didn't just let it go. This is what happened when David Muir, wisely or otherwise, decided to "clarify" the strange thing the hopeful had said:

MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community—

TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television—

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is—

TRUMP: The people on television say, "My dog was taken and used for food." So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that—

TRUMP: We'll find out.

MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you heard.

"We'll find out," the candidate said. In the meantime, he was willing to broadcast the claim, which had already been widely disputed, to 67.1 million American citizens.

He was willing to broadcast the claim to the 67 million. Also, to the additional tens of millions of people who would see his claim amplified all across the programs of the Fox News Channel.

Should Muir have stepped in to "clarify" this point? By now, he and Davis have been savaged all through the halls of Red America for having engaged in such conduct during last Tuesday's debate.

As the week proceeds, we'll show you text from the several other times they fact-checked or sought to clarify statements by Candidate Trump. 

In our view, their approach to such matters wasn't always perfect. But in fairness, they were struggling with highly unusual statements.

Putting it a different way: 

They were trying to deal with this candidate's peculiar new suit of clothes.

To be clear, it wasn't just the eating of Springfield's pets. The candidate made other highly unusual claims in the course of the evening.

Candidate Harris also made statements which we would regard as inaccurate. In our view, it's hard to say that she made statements as disordered and "new" as those which emerged, with some regularity, from the other candidate in this year's White House campaign.

Candidate Trump was willing to say that some unspecified group of people have been eating the cats and dogs of some under-identified town. 

He said he'd seen someone say that on TV.  "We'll find out," he eventually said.

Starting with the Kennedy-Nixon debates, have moderators ever been forced to deal with such behavior? In support of Muir and Davis, we're prepared to suggest the possibility that this was a new suit of clothes.

The candidate emitted his statement about the eating of pets on Tuesday night. Yesterday morning, the New York Times was reporting on some of the effects of his behavior.

In Springfield—and yes, that would be Springfield, Ohio—there have been bomb threats since last Tuesday night. The FBI has been forced to step in. More than once, children have been evacuated from some of the city's public schools. 

In yesterday's print editions, the Times pushed its report about this state of affairs all the way back to page A21. Rightly or wrongly, they didn't think this remarkable state of affairs deserved a spot on the famous newspaper's front page.

It seems to us that the highly educated players at that famous newspaper didn't exercise perfect judgment about this matter. About the way to respond to behaviors like these—to this candidate's new suit of clothes.

We're prepared to cut the moderators some slack concerning the way they responded, in real time, to some of this candidate's statements. We'll even cut the New York Times some slack—for that newspaper's ongoing failure to come to terms with our society's new suit of clothes.

In fact, very few people have had to deal with this sort of disorder before. We'll guess that Theodore White—he of the summa cum laude degree—couldn't have imagined such disordered conduct during a presidential debate.

Long ago and far away, a famous emperor was striding about in a new suit of clothes. Citizens of the empire in question had a famously difficult time seeing the truth of the matter—had a hard time coming to terms with what was right there before them.

The New York Times has refused and refused, and refused and refused, to come to terms with our own society's new suit of clothes. People wear that raiment on the Fox News Channel, and that raiment was recently worn by one of the candidates in a presidential debate.

Final question for today:

Could "our democracy" die in this way? Imperfect though it always has been, could our democracy die in disorder as a gaggle of under-performing journalists insist on averting their gaze?

Could Teddy White have pictured this? Despite his summa cum laude degree, we'll guess that the answer is no!

Tomorrow: And on and on from there