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?"