THE AMERICAN NATION'S NEW CLOTHES: A new suit of clothes has appeared on the scene!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2024

The Times keeps averting its gaze: No one was perfect at last week's debate. For the record, no one ever is. 

Last Tuesday, no one was perfect! For ourselves, we would have liked it better if Linsey Davis of ABC News hadn't offered this:

TRUMP (9/10/24): ...For 52 years they've been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states. And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court Justices, we were able to do that.

 Now, I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also. 85% of Republicans do. Exceptions. Very important. But we were able to get it. And now states are voting on it. And for the first time, you're going to see— 

Look, this is an issue that's torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that's what happened. Now, Ohio, the vote was somewhat liberal. Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal. Much more liberal than people would have thought. But each individual state is voting. It's the vote of the people now. It's not tied up in the federal government. 

I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six Justices.

DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.  

Madam Vice President, I want to get your response to President Trump...

For the full debate transcript, click here.

Davis made an accurate statement, but it wasn't directly relevant to anything Candidate Trump had said—and what he had said was littered with baldly absurd misstatements of the endlessly fact-checked kind.

Meanwhile, a poisonous claim went unmentioned. Earlier in that same statement, the candidate had also said this:

Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth—it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born—is okay. And that's not okay with me. 

Execution after birth is OK? Has Candidate Walz ever made any such statement? 

That was a truly remarkable claim. But is there any actual example of any such statement by Walz?

As a marker of the basic lack of skill of the current mainstream press corps, we've seen quite a few news orgs report that they've fact-checked that claim.  We've seen no one report that they engaged in the most obvious possible journalistic behavior:

We've seen no one report that they asked the Trump campaign to cite an example of any such statement by Candidate Walz. We've seen no one report what the Trump campaign said when they were asked to do that.

Did Candidate Walz ever say such a thing? We've seen no news org ask! It would occur to a high school sophomore to direct that question to the Trump campaign. That said, the giants who people our mainstream news orgs are sometimes imperfect these days.

We would have liked it better if Davis hadn't said what she said at that juncture. The candidate's presentation had been full of giant misstatements. She let them go, then offered an accurate statement which was only tangentially relevant to the strange things the hopeful had said.

In fairness, Davis had a tough assignment that night. In our view, her work wasn't perfect. We also would have liked it better if Candidate Harris hadn't said this:

HARRIS (9/10/24): 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. 

The candidate clearly seemed to say that President Trump had said that there "very fine people" among the broken-souled antisemites who marched through the UVa campus on August 11, 2017—on the soul-draining Friday night before the violent events of the following day.

That's what she plainly seemed to say. For better or worse, Pepperidge Farm no longer remembers that he also said this at that same press event:

"I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally."

There's plenty to criticize about the way President Trump discussed the events of that Charlottesville weekend.  

But during the same Tuesday press event from the which the "very fine people" quote has been pulled, he said, on several separate occasions, that he wasn't referring to neo-Nazis or white nationalists or to "white supremacists" when he made the statement in question. 

In a statement at the White House, he had said the same thing the day before.

For ourselves, we'd score what Candidate Harris said as basically inaccurate. There's plenty to criticize (or not) about Trump's reaction to that weekend's events, but our blue tribe loves the simplified tale which the candidate offered, and we endlessly repeat it.

For ourselves, we'd say that the candidate's statement very much leaned toward "wrong." We think her performance would have been stronger that night if she had said something else.

No one was perfect last Tuesday night, and no one ever is. Having said that, in our view, one particular person stood out.

He's long been draped in a new suit of clothes. He issued strange howlers all through the night.  At one point, he even said this:

TRUMP: 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.

Forget about Springfield's cats and dogs. On that occasion, he even threw Aurora into the mix! 

We speak of Aurora (Colorado). Assessing the work of the New York Times, let us say this about that: 

By now, everyone knows that this candidate's statement about the cats and dogs of Springfield (Ohio) was highly disordered that night. That said:

When the New York Times reported the aftermath of the candidate's wildly inaccurate claims, the report got buried on page A21 in its print editions. Jordan and Baker even opened their report about the mayhem which followed the candidate's angry remarks with a slightly humorous air.

A few days later, in this additional report, the Times reported the various problems with the candidate's ongoing claims about Aurora. In print editions, that report also got buried, consigned to page A12. 

In fairness, no one's news judgment will ever be perfect—and it would be very hard for any newspaper to keep up with the endless array of crazy, false and puzzling statements issued by this particular candidate. That said, it seems to us that an ongoing problem is involved in these placement decisions.

ABC's moderators were imperfect that night. In our view, so was Candidate Harris.

In our view, Candidate Trump was different. He made wild statements all through the night. He's been behaving this way for nine years.

Seven years ago, a Yale psychiatrist edited a best-selling book in which 37 mental health specialists said this situation was dangerous—and they said it would only get worse.

The fact that they said it didn't mean it was true. That said, Dr. Lee's book was a New York Times best-seller—and, like other major news orgs, the news division of the paper decided to disappear it.

You can judge that decision as you like. No one has perfect judgment. 

That said, the candidate in question mas been making wild statements all across the fruited plain. In our view, newspapers like the New York Times have refused to come to terms with this blatantly obvious fact.

The cats and the dogs are the latest example, but the examples go on and on. As they do, the very fine people at our finest news orgs—many went to "the finest schools"—seem to have agreed that life is better, and possibly easier, when we ignore this fact.

Presidential TV debates began in 1960. There has never been another candidate as disordered as the candidate under review.

No candidate ever went on the debate stage and alleged the eating of cats and dogs. Then too, no candidate ever made statements as visibly crazy—as blatantly false—as many of the other statements this candidate made last Tuesday night.

Muir and Davis were forced to decide, on the fly, as to what they should probably do.

We won't try to list his many crazy statements of the past few weeks—his crazy claims about the rally crowd which wasn't there; his subsequent claim about the rally crowds which are getting paid and brought in on buses; his ongoing claims about the cognitive tests he amazingly aced, in a way no one else has ever done.

His inexcusable claims, which never stop, about the way the last election was supposedly stolen. About the way he will win California this year if only the votes get counted.

Everyone knows that "something is wrong" with this particular candidate. Like other news orgs, the New York Times has refused to come to terms with this challenging state of affairs.

In our view, Candidate Harris was imperfect last week. With Candidate Trump, it was different.

The candidates weren't like that in 1960, when these debates began. The moderators of those debates didn't have to decide, on the fly, how to respond to the transparently crazy claims one of the hopefuls kept making.

At the Times, Aurora was buried on page A12. Springfield got buried inside the hard-copy paper as well.

For ourselves, we've said this every step of the way: 

When a president or a candidate makes the kind of crazy claims his particular candidate makes, that's front-page news every time! 

It's also news when the disordered star of our most-watched "cable news" channel keeps asking if Hunter Biden has started f*cking the first lady yet, now that Joe Biden has left the race.

That sort of thing happens on Fox every night. To appearances, the very fine people at a certain newspaper have decided that life is sweeter, but also possibly safer, if we all just avert our gaze.

Before June 27, the New York Times agreed not to see the infirmities of Candidate Biden. Now, the New York Times is refusing to see the infirmity of Candidate Trump.

Long ago and far away, a similar breakdown occurred. An emperor was parading around in a highly unusual new suit of clothes. But something kept his various subjects from seeing what was right there before them.

"Something we were withholding made us weak." So said Robert Frost, reciting from memory at President Kennedy's inauguration.

In the poem he recited that day, Frost was referring to colonial Americans before they decided to come to terms with the need for a new arrangement. In our view, something is being withheld today all over the mainstream press corps—even at sacred MSNBC, where the overpaid stars we're trained to adore refuse to tell you what's occurring on that other channel.

They've normalized the Fox News Channel. For years now, many news orgs have also normalized one candidate's new suit of clothes.

There's nothing to look at, these orgs seem to say. Nothing to see! Move along!

Many went to the finest schools—but what in the world did they do there?