CANDIDATES: On Fox, one of the candidates is "a wine drunk!"

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

But also, a child of vast privilege: In our view, talk show host Dana Loesch is good at what she does. 

The problem lies with what she does. In yesterday's report, we offered an example. 

On Wednesday evening, Loesch spoke with the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters. At the start of the interview, she offered this assessment of Candidate Harris's interview with Stephanie Ruhle: 

WATTERS (9/25/24): Nationally syndicated radio host Dana Loesch is here. Dana, did Kamala Harris just go on television and say the American Dream is gone?

LOESCH: Well. it was really hard, Jesse, to understand what she said because I don't speak Drunk Hallmark.

According to Loesch, Candidate Harris had been speaking a language known as "Drunk Hallmark." As we've noted, Loesch is skilled at what she does.

Elsewhere in the Fox News empire, a certain analytical theme may have taken root as Loesch offered this comment. Last night, on the prime time Gutfeld! show, the program's host offered these words of wisdom as he pretended to discuss the interview with Ruhle:

GUTFELD (9/26/24): Now we know why Kamala has been avoiding the press. I've never seen anyone so anxious and irritable while trying to express hope and joy.

She probably woke up with a headache. I don't know if she's a wine drunk, but her policies are those of a wine drunk—fake platitudes that could only impress other drunks matching her drink for drink until the morning when the harsh sun of reality peeks through the blinds.

She probably woke up with a headache. She seems to be a wine drunk!

Drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk drunk! Will this bit of invective join the sexual insults aimed at Harris which are now a routine part of this primetime "cable news" show?

We can't answer that question. But one of the program's D-list comedian guests soon jumped in with this:

GUTFELD: Joe, like Kamala—uh, Kamala [changes pronunciation]—you have performed in front on one person. What did you make of her performance?

DIPAOLO: I would say the two-drink minimum is for the audience. I don't know what it is, but there's something about the way she talks, the more I listen, I think, "Am I drunk?"

He's probably the nicest guy in the world But that's the way the game is played on this dominant "cable news" channel.

On Wednesday evening, Loesch had opened with "drunk." One night later, the children were possibly starting to follow her lead. 

That said, it's as we showed you yesterday. As Loesch continued to speak with Watters, she offered a claim about Candidate Harris we'd never heard before.

As it turned out, it was very hard to locate the source of this unfamiliar claim. As we showed you yesterday, this is what Loesch said:

LOESCH: This is what happens when you never—you don't know what it is to be middle-class, you don't know what it is to run a business. 

This woman, Jesse—I know you know this—she is soooo privileged. If you look up "privileged," it is like every Democrat candidate ever in the dictionary. 

She went—and I know she talks about busing—but she started in a very expensive primary school that most Americans could not even think of affording. And she lived in a really nice neighborhood. 

She had a two-parent home, which is a privilege now, thanks to Democrat policies ruining the American family. She's been privileged, nonstop, from a baby now to where she is...

Did Harris secretly grow up wealthy and highly "privileged?" We first saw that claim aggressively pushed last Saturday morning on the soul-draining propaganda show, Fox & Friends Weekend. 

Now, Loesch was selling that notion too, with Watters looking on. In this case, Loesch included a specific claim we'd never heard before:

Candidate Harris had "started in a very expensive primary school?" We'd never heard any such claim—and as best we could tell as we fact-checked the claim, Comrade Google had never heard this specific claim either.

A quick bit of background:

When you fact-check a claim like this from someone on the Fox News Channel, you'll typically find its source in an item from the New York Post or from the web site of Fox News itself.

Sometimes, the claims in question are defensible, possibly even accurate. A lot of the time, they aren't.

In this instance, a Google search didn't turn up any obvious source of Loesch's surprising claim. We had to Google around at length before we could get some idea of what she might possibly mean.

What was Dana Loesch talking about as she tried to paint a picture of Harris as a child of wealth? The best we can offer is this:

At first, we thought she might be referring to Harris's year or years in preschool. Way back in 2020, an article from the Berkeleyside news site had discussed that fairly familiar material. The report was republished this year:

How Kamala Harris’ childhood in Berkeley influenced her

[...]

Harris was bused to the [Thousands Oaks Elementary] school from a yellow home on Bancroft Way, between Browning and Bonar streets.

Combing through old phone books and real estate records, Berkeley historian Steven Finacom deduced that Harris lived in the building that now houses Berkeley International Montessori School. Harris’ spokeswoman confirmed the location. When Harris lived there, beloved family friends Regina and Arthur Shelton ran a preschool out of the bottom unit. Her family had previously lived on Milvia Street as well.

Around that era, redlining forced black Berkeley residents to live west of what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in the flatland neighborhoods like the area Harris grew up in. Finacom described Harris’ neighborhood at the time as “an integrated community with families of various races, both middle class and poorer residents, and both renters and homeowners.”

Harris lived in the Bancroft apartment with her mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris and her sister Maya...

Despite her massive wealth and privilege, Harris's family lived in an apartment in a redlined neighborhood. Also, she attended a mom-and-pop preschool on the first floor of the building where she lived. 

Decades later, that building "now houses Berkeley International Montessori School," a wholly different undertaking. At first, we wondered if that might be the tiny germ out of which Loesch had built the claim she turned loose, two nights ago, on several million Fox viewers.

Skillfully, we continued to search. We decided to seek the work of Steven Finacom, the Berkeley historian who was cited in the passage we've already posted.

Eventually, we landed on this extremely detailed recent report. After describing the mom-and-pop daycare run by the Sheltons, Finacom includes a single murky statement which may have triggered the novel claim of a certain highly skilled talker:

Kamala Harris’ Berkeley: 3 homes that shaped her early childhood

[...]

[J]ust before the Harris family’s time in the home, the ground-level garage was eliminated and converted into space that would accommodate the day care business of Regina and Arthur Shelton...

Today, the Sheltons’ former day care space houses the Berkeley International Montessori School. 

From the Bancroft Way house, Harris went to church in Oakland with the Sheltons; took piano lessons from another nearby neighbor; learned ballet from Madame Bovie, a world-famous ballerina; frequented the Rainbow Sign, a Black cultural center that would help shape her political imagination; and, after attending kindergarten at the private Berkwood School, [Harris] caught the school bus to first grade at Thousand Oaks Elementary School during the second year of Berkeley’s integration program. 

According to Finacom, Harris "attended kindergarten at the private Berkwood School." She then went to first grade (and beyond) in the Berkeley public schools. 

Assuming Finacom's report is accurate, is Berkwood supposed to be the "very expensive primary school that most Americans could not even think of affording?" 

We don't have the slightest idea, and neither does anyone else. "Cable news" doesn't work that way, especially when practiced by professionals like Watters and Loesch.

At any rate, our googling continued. Eventually, it yielded this:

Decades later, the Berkwood School merged with a second school, becoming the present-day Berkwood Hedge School. In all candor, we can't tell you what the original Berkwood School was like more than fifty years ago, when Harris was 5 or 6. 

At any rate, Finacom reports that Harris spent her kindergarten year at a private school. Is that what Dana Loesch had in mind when she launched her surprise attack on the candidate's life of wealth and high privilege? 

We don't have the slightest idea. Neither does anyone else.

"I know you know this," Loesch said to Watters, before she launched her attack. Almost surely, Watters had no idea what Loesch was talking about, but he did know enough not to ask.

According to experts, Loesch was speaking an emerging modern language known as Drunk Fox News Attack. Whatever is said in that drunk-adjacent modern tongue, everyone else will nod in agreement during a Fox News broadcast.

For the record, Kamala Harris didn't grow up in a "typical" middle-class family. In various ways, the cultural context within which she was raised differed from the American statistical norm.

That said, she did grow up in the Berkeley flats—in a redlined section of Berkeley. And she did get bused from that part of town to a public elementary school up in the Berkeley hills.

Also, she did grow up in a two-parent family, until her parents separated and then divorced. In fairness, she did grow up with one obvious type of privilege:

She wasn't surrounded by people like Loesch—by people who constantly invent new forms of garbage to air on Fox News Channel shows.

In our experience, the claim that Harris was the secret child of wealth began on Fox & Friends Weekend. It began with videotape from a very angry Breitbart staffer who grew up in Montreal.

A trio of friends told viewers that day that Harris had secretly grown up in the lap of wealth and privilege. Conduct of this type never stops on the Fox News Channel. People like Maggie Haberman are correct when they say that existing structures of our mainstream orgs weren't built to respond to such conduct.

Kamala Harris is a wine drunk. Also, Hunter Biden may have started "banging" (or "f*cking") Jill. This garbage can gets opened every night on this "cable news" channel as millions of voters look on.

Loesch is good at what she does! The problem starts with what she does, and with the surrounding silence.

Borrowing from Frost, is there something we're withholding? Is it making us weak?