This is what we've been talking about!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2024

Atlantic writer muses: In a new essay at the Atlantic, Megan Garber muses about what Candidate Trump said.

We invite you to take the Garber's Construct Challenge. Does this presentation make sense?

WHAT ORWELL DIDN'T ANTICIPATE

[...]

Earlier this month, Donald Trump mused aloud about the violence Americans might anticipate on November 5. If Election Day brings havoc, he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, the crisis would come not from outside actors but instead from “the enemy from within”: “some very bad people,” he clarified, “some sick people”—the “radical-left lunatics.”

The former president further mused about a solution to the problem. “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard,” he said, “or, if really necessary, by the military.”

A presidential candidate who may well retake the White House is threatening to use the military against American citizens: The news here is straightforward.

For the record, Trump "mused aloud about the violence Americans might anticipate on November 5" because he was specifically asked about that possibility by Bartiromo.

He didn't raise the topic himself; Bartiromo raised the topic. After Trump's one brief response, the two moved on from there. 

At any rate, ponder the logic of that construct. According to Garber, Trump was "threatening to use the military against American citizens" in his response to Bartiromo's question. The problem there seems fairly obvious:

Trump won't be president on November 5! President Biden would be able to call out the National Guard (or the military, "if really necessary") to deal with some type of "havoc" next Tuesday, but Candidate Trump wouldn't be able to do that.

He wouldn't be able to call out the Guard! With that in mind, in what way was he "threatening to use the military against American citizens" in his brief response to Bartiromo's hypothetical question?

"The news here is straightforward," Garber says. In our view, her logic pretty much isn't.

In sum:

Trump has said at least a million crazy things by now. That brief Q-and-A with Bartiromo struck us as a major nothingburger.

At that point, in our view, creative outrage took over. That said, the vast majority of the mainstream press has gone along with this construct.

(At the Times, they seem to know that this construct doesn't make sense. They just keep fact-checking around it!)

What did he say and what did he mean?

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2024

King Lear on the moors: Can a large modern nation function this way?

Plainly no, it can't. At issue is a pair of questions:

What did President Biden say? Also, what did President Biden mean by whatever it is that he said?

Yesterday evening, Kevin Drum was upset by the flap which resulted from President Biden's most recent disastrous comment. 

He was especially mad at Politico. You can read the Drum post here.

We've long recommended Kevin's work. That doesn't mean that he's always right. Presumably, no one is.

Below, you see Kevin's thumbnail account of this latest disaster. We've long recommended Kevin's work, but we'd have to score this presentation as basically incoherent—as the fruit of partisan rage:

Politico floods the zone over fake “garbage” outrage

[...]

This is all about fake Republican outrage over some remarks by Joe Biden yesterday. Responding to a comic saying that Puerto Rico was a floating island of garbage, he said, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters."

But wait. What Biden almost certainly said was "The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s...demonization of Latinos." See? There's an apostrophe there that was obviously silent when he spoke. Plus he mangled his words in typical Biden fashion and made it hard to parse what he was saying.

This is so plainly a case of fake outrage over a nothingburger that I'm surprised it has any legs at all, let alone massive front-page coverage in Politico. I know, I know: I shouldn't be surprised by anything any more. I just can't help myself. By now we all know the press treats every outrage by conservatives as genuine and every outrage by liberals as calculated for political effect. It's just the way things are.

We agree with some of that. Plainly, there is a lot of "fake Republican outrage" floating around in this latest incident, though we'd attribute that to Republican (and Fox News Channel) leadership, not to Republican voters.

We agree with something else. We agree that President Biden "mangled his words in typical Biden fashion." Also, we agree that this "made it hard to parse what he was saying."

Stating the obvious, the fact that President Biden "mangled his words" helps lay this latest disaster directly at his feet. The fact that this "made it hard to parse what he was saying" is also the obvious doing of President Biden.

This was the latest bungle by President Biden! In this latest incident, blame for this disastrous give-back plainly starts right there.

We disagree with other parts of what Kevin said. Regarding our claim of incoherence, please consider this:

On the one hand, Kevin starts by telling us what President Biden "said."

From there, he moves directly to a statement about what President Biden "almost certainly said."

Stating the obvious, that too doesn't quite parse! Presumably, Kevin means that the second statement is what the president "almost certainly meant."

Sadly, though, there is no obvious way to know what President Biden meant. He might have meant his remark one way, or he might have meant something else.

The way his statement actually sounded was politically poisonous. For that reason, the White House began "cleaning it up"—but there's no way to know with any certainty what he initially meant.

Major players are supposed to avoid such bungles. They're supposed to be able to say what they mean without creating an obvious source of uncertainty.

In fairness, everybody makes mistakes. At this point, President Biden is making mistakes every time he speaks.

It seems to us that Kevin is trafficking here in a form of partisan true belief. In our view, observers like Kevin should simply insist that President Biden stop making public statements until late  in the day next Tuesday.

At any rate, President Biden just keeps doing this. Sadly and destructively, this is King Lear on the moors redux, on a very down-market basis.

One additional point:

We liberals have been creating a fair amount of manufactured outrage ourselves. In the past few weeks, to cite one example, we've created a lot of (real but) manufactured outrage concerning one lone Q-and-A between Candidate Trump and Maria Bartiromo.

The question Trump was asked that day concerned Election Day of this very year, full stop. So did his single answer.

Candidate Trump won't be president on that Election Day. For that fairly obvious reason, he won't be calling out the National Guard and he won't be calling out the military on that particular day.

Having said that, so what? Our tribunes took what he said to Bartiromo and ran, with Jake Tapper leading the way. 

In Blue America, our tribunes do this a fair amount of the time. The mainstream press often plays along with our massaged outrage, as it has generally done in this specific instance.

In this particular instance, large segments of the press have played along with our creative paraphrase of what Candidate Trump was asked and actually said. Simply put, it isn't true that the press always favors GOP outrage while coming down on ours.

Our final point is this: 

Candidate Harris is trying to win. Through his horrible, unbelievable bungling, President Biden keeps screwing things up.

This disaster lands squarely on President Biden and on the people around him. The fake outrage by people like Trump follows along from there.

HOW WE GOT HERE: It could have been the October Surprise!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2024

The president handed it back: What was happening in the 6 o'clock hour as today's "news coverage" started?

It could be described in various ways. One way would be this:

On Morning Joe, Mika was crying (again). On Fox & Friends, the four friends were exulting:

Specifically, they were exulting over President Biden's latest wayward remark.

Mika was crying about this important report in ProPublica—an important report whose chronology she flatly misstated. Over on the Fox News Channel, the four regular friends were all aglow, sitting right there on the couch—and Pete Hegseth was on location in a jampacked diner, up in the swing state of Michigan.

Hegseth was on location in a diner up in the town of Romeo. A series of voters told him how they felt about the president's latest wayward comment. One of the diners said this:

"You can call me a deplorable or you can call me garbage. You can call me anything you want..." 

Sure enough! The eight-year-old "basket of deplorables" comment was back!

You can call me anything you want, that Michigan man told Hegseth, as long as you fix the economy. Other people made similar comments, culminating in this:

"I would rather be called garbage than be called a Democrat."

Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses? In this more recent instance, such was the reaction, in that diner and on "cable news," to the president's latest remark.

So it went after President Biden issued his latest remark. Over here in Blue America, some who refuse to see were insisting that this was the press corps' fault. You may recall the basic anthropological insight:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

It has to be someone else's doing. By a basic law of human nature, the fault can't lie with Us!

At any rate, sad! On Sunday, the Trump campaign had handed the Harris campaign what looked like a very large gift.

As we noted on Tuesday morning, it could have turned out to be this year's (self-inflicted) October surprise! But then, President Biden broke loose from his chains and managed to give it all back.

On this annual holiday, American children dress up as who they aren't. All through the year, we the humans engage in a larger such act:

We dress up as "the rational animal." Here's how this latest disaster got started:

How this disaster started:

For the sake of simplicity, we'll say that this disaster started last week—on Tuesday, October 22. 

For unknown reasons, President Biden was off in Concord, New Hampshire. Inevitably, he issued his latest wayward remark.

You can watch the C-Span videotape. To see this bit of foreshadowing as it unfolds, you should click ahead to the 12-minute mark.

At that point, the president made his latest clumsy remark. In its news report, NBC News—can we trust them?—described the latest efforts by the White House to clean the comment up:

Biden says ‘Lock him up—politically lock him up’ in remarks about Trump

President Joe Biden on Tuesday echoed language former President Donald Trump has used in the past, saying of the former president that "we gotta lock him up."

Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Biden said Trump’s policies are so “bizarre” and dangerous that if he’d warned about them five years ago “you’d lock me up.”

“We gotta lock him up,” Biden said to applause from the small crowd before he appeared to catch himself and added, “politically lock him up.”

“Lock him out,” Biden continued. “That’s what we have to do.”

A White House official later said that Biden’s two immediate clarifications—specifying “politically” locking up Trump and locking him “out”—are how the president’s comments should be interpreted. Biden was speaking to how voters should think about the stakes of the election, the official added.

The Trump campaign responded Tuesday night by challenging Vice President Kamala Harris to condemn Biden's remark.

Sad! Let's repeat what may well be may the saddest sentence ever composed. 

You know Mike Memoli from Deadline White House. Here' what he now reported:

A White House official later said that Biden’s two immediate clarifications—specifying “politically” locking up Trump and locking him “out”—are how the president’s comments should be interpreted. 

Sad! As the White House official noted, the president had issued two (2!) instant clarifications According to that White House official, those clarification(s) provided a guide to the way we voters should "interpret" what he had said.

There's an old saying in this game. That saying goes like this:

If you're clarifying, you're losing. 

Presumably, it's even worse if you're clarifying twice. In this case, the statement which triggered these clarification(s) produced only a small, minor flap.

This incident damaged the Harris campaign—but only up to a point.

That said, you'd think that sane people would have learned a valuable lesson that day. But sad! This past Tuesday evening, the president broke loose from his chains again—and this time he really did it.

On Sunday afternoon and evening, the Trump campaign seemed to have handed a major gift to Candidate Harris. We refer to the succession of ugly and stupid remarks issued at the other candidate's Garden Party, with a great deal of focus directed at one ugly and stupid remark about a big pile of garbage supposedly found in the ocean.

That ugly event at the Garden had the look of a giant gift. Imaginably, it could have turned out to be this year's (self-inflicted) October Surprise.

Candidate Harris already is a contender.; imaginably, this could have made her the champ! Instead, President Biden broke loose from his chains and handed the October gift back.

Yesterday, the White House was "clarifying" again. This time, they were explaining where the apostrophe was supposed to go in the president's spoken statement.

(First, they clarified that the president was talking about Trump's supporters'. Then they moved the apostrophe, clarifying further that he should be interpreted as having said supporter's. Yes, that's what they said.)

Result?

This morning, the regular quartet of friends were exulting on Fox & Friends. Hegseth was up in Romeo, Michigan. A string of people in a diner were offering their interpretation of what the president said.

Around the dial, some of Blue America's analysts were blaming press organs for this unforced error. Some of these were the same people who kept insisting, all through the past year or so, that there was nothing wrong with President Biden, that he was sharp as a tack.

On June 27, the Biden-Trump debate took place. On that occasion, the president's performance was so awful that it could no longer be wished away, not even by Us.

Even after that awful event, it took four weeks to persuade the president that he needed to step aside as a candidate. (He did so on July 21.) As of Tuesday afternoon, Candidate Harris may have been moving in for a win—but every time she turns around, the president breaks free from his chains and puts his foot in his mouth.

President Biden is still surrounded by the handlers who refused to let the public know that something seemed to be wrong. Now, those handlers aren't able to keep him locked up inside the White House—and his remarks on Tuesday evening have produce a very large flap.

This morning, the children were exulting on Fox & Friends. Mika was crying again on Morning Joe, this time about a very important incident whose chronology she flatly misstated.

(Do these tribunes ever get clear on their facts? Not in this universe, no.)

Candidate Harris had been gaining ground. The president handed it back.

No, it isn't the press corps' fault. This one is squarely on us—but also, on the basic fact:

There is no cure for human.

The president won't stop doing this. Our tribunes won't stop deflecting. On the brighter side, the candidate won't stop trying. And yes, she still might win!

Over here in Blue America, this one is squarely on Us.  Our tribunes insisted that nothing was wrong. In the beginning was the end, some poet somewhere has said.

The kids will be dressing up tonight. Sadly, here's the controlling fact:

We the humans—we the "highly educated" adults—dress up in our "rational animal" raiment every day of the year! According to experts, there is no cure for the Halloween we stage all through the year!

Up in Michigan: To read Hemingway's highly controversial 1921 short story, you can just click here.

The New York Times discussed the story in June 1971, upon the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. For a basic thumbnail, click this.

The Times zeroes in on those "four-letter words!"

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2024

Also, the president does it again: Let's start on the brighter side of the matter in question. 

This morning, in a news report, the New York Times reports what happened at one candidate's Garden Party. It does so to a reasonably full extent.

The paper doesn't restrict itself to that "one [insulting] joke" about Puerto Rico. The Times even cites Hulk Hogan's "oral sex joke," though it doesn't cite Hogan by name.

Rather quickly, the report then takes a somewhat silly turn. In fairness, it does manage to start like this:

Trump Long Ago Crossed the Line From Propriety to Profanity. Then Came the Garden.

Four-letter words were flying everywhere. One speaker flipped his middle finger at the opposition. Another made what was interpreted as an oral sex joke regarding Vice President Kamala Harris. Another suggested she was a prostitute. Still another discussed the supposed sexual habits of Latinos rather explicitly.

All in all, former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was a cornucopia of crudeness, punctuated by the kind of language that once would have been unthinkable for a gathering held to promote the candidacy of a would-be president of the United States... 

Right there in paragraph 2, the report heads off in a somewhat silly direction. It begins to focus on the "four-letter words" at Sunday's event, rather than on the remarkable content of the racial, ethnic and sexual insults delivered through the use of such naughty words.

Still, the report managed to mention the fact that Candidate Harris was subjected to sexual insults. A bit later on, it even recorded this:

In total, a computer search of 17 of the speakers at Madison Square Garden found epithets used at least 43 times. One of the most prolific was Sid Rosenberg, a conservative radio host. “What a sick son of a bitch,” he said of Hillary Clinton. “The whole fucking party, a bunch of degenerates, lowlives, Jew haters and lowlives. Every one of them.”

As we noted on Monday, Rosenberg also called that former first lady a "bastard." Still, as measured by current norms of normalization, one out of two ain't half bad!

In a somewhat childish way, the report focuses on the use of naughty words rather than on the delivery of racial / sexual insults. Still, the report gives readers a decent sense of the wide range of unusual, insulting behaviors which were put on display during this highly unusual event. 

That's the upside to the report. At the risk of sounding repetitious, we'd also mention this:

This sort of thing takes place every night on the Fox News Channel! In our view, it's news when this sort of thing happens in that setting too.

In fairness, let's be fair! On Fox, the naughtiest words do get BLEEPed. For example:

On the insult-laden Gutfeld! program, participants are allowed to say that President Biden has allegedly "pooped in his pants." The program's host, then just 59, used to do so on an extremely regular basis. 

But if participants say that the president [sh*t] in his pants or [sh*t] his bed, that naughty word gets BLEEPed. And so too with respect to Jill Biden:

On Gutfeld!, host Greg Gutfeld is allowed to wonder of Hunter Biden has started "banging" the first lady yet. But if he asks if Hunter is "f*cking" Dr. Biden, that naughty word does gets BLEEPed.

Our point here is simple:

What happened Sunday at the Garden was a giant break from traditional American practice. For that reason alone, it deserves the kind of coverage it is receiving:

It deserves to be treated as what it is. It deserves to be treated as news.

That said, what happens on the Fox News Channel also represents a giant break from traditional cultural norms. When a major news org behaves in that way, that also qualifies as news, and the (ugly and stupid) behavior in question should be reported as such.

The New York Times has been reporting the Garden Party, if in a way which makes the event seem somewhat more presentable. (It wasn't the sexual / racial / ethnic insults. It was just the four-letter words!)

The Times should also be reporting what happens on the Fox News Channel, which millions of people watch each night. What's happening there is actual news. It should be reported as such.

Finally today, also this:

Yesterday, President Biden did it again. If we were Candidate Harris, he'd have us tearing our hair.

Every time the president goes out and makes a comment, he seems to be putting his foot in his mouth. Yesterday, he did it again—and the Fox & Friends gang was pushing yesterday's incident hard during this morning's first hour.

The White House has tried to clean up what the president said. At CNN, the report about this latest bungle starts off like this:

Biden may have handed Trump a big assist with his ‘garbage’ gaffe

Joe Biden had largely been an afterthought one week before the election in which he’d once hoped to win a second term.

Not anymore.

The president inadvertently injected himself into the homestretch of the campaign and may have handed a big assist to his erstwhile rival, ex-President Donald Trump, who is struggling to quell a furor over his bigotry-filled rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week.

Biden mentioned Puerto Rico, slandered as a “floating island of garbage” by a comedian at Trump’s event on Sunday night. But his clumsy defense of the self-governing American territory—and the vital swing voters in its diaspora on the US mainland—sparked a new political firestorm and distracted from Vice Kamala President Harris’ big closing argument speech against a White House backdrop on Tuesday night.

It's true! President Biden did, in fact, make another "clumsy" remark. In some quarters, it's been distracting attention away from the Garden Party itself, and away from the speech by Candidate Harris.

As you can read in CNN's report, the White House is trying to clean up this latest gaffe—but this sort of thing seems to happen every time out. Can someone prevail on President Biden to rein it in through next Tuesday?

The larger drama surrounding President Biden's possible medical condition hasn't yet been fully reported. For today, we'll leave it at this:

Within the past year or so, viewers of the Fox News Channel were frequently told that the president seemed to be diminished. Over here, in Blue America, our tribal scribes kept us in the dark, and we kept wishing it all away. 

(We also kept wishing the border away. The president's policy there remains unexplained, a matter we'll soon discuss.)

Candidate Harris is actually trying to win this election! Could someone please discover a way to let her make this attempt without a steady succession of Oval Office gaffes?

This morning, the friends were all over this latest event. Lawrence Jones was talking to voters in a crowded breakfast nook.

The breakfast nook was in a swing state. The friend in question was milking the incident hard.

HOW WE GOT HERE: Jesse Watters, President Biden!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2024

Two of the ways we got here: Last evening, Candidate Harris engaged in some rude behavior.

She was making a major address—a speech which had been billed as her "closing argument." Rudely, the candidate let her comments extend into the 8 o'clock Eastern hour.

At that point, she was devouring time reserved for the Jesse Watters. At age 47, the Fox News Channel's primetime host is widely regarded as the silliest child ever let loose on the nation's failing discourse.

To its credit, the Fox News Channel had been airing the Harris address. At 8 o'clock sharp, the channel briefly interrupted its coverage to air this important alert:

"Fox News Alert: Kamala Harris is wrapping up a pretty tedious closing message in Washington. Let's listen in."

That was the Fox News Channel's "silliest child," messaging millions of viewers. At this point, the Channel returned to the candidate's speech, airing it through its conclusion.

Why have so many experts dubbed Watters "the silliest child?" Let's take a look at the record:

During the 5 o'clock hour, Watters co-hosts The Five, the most-watched program in all of "cable news." On a regular basis, he engages in towel-snapping interludes with fellow co-host Greg Gutfeld while the other panelists sit and watch.

According to experts, these dimwitted bromantic interludes have helped establish the channel's new culture—the culture now widely described as "Incel Chic."

So behaves Watters at 5 o'clock. At 8 o'clock, he's back for the full hour, on his own, hosting Jesse Watters Primetime in the evening's premium timeslot. As an example of what transpires during these nightly hours, consider what happened last night when the Channel returned to its broadcast of the candidate's speech.

More precisely, consider the chyrons.

Last evening, Watters broke in at 8 o'clock to report what viewers should be thinking as they watched the Harris address—but sad! Even before the cameras returned to the candidate's speech, the silliest child's producers placed this chyron on the screen:

KAMALA DELIVERS DARK CLOSING ARGUMENT

That's the chyron which appeared on the screen as the silly boy offered his warning about the "pretty tedious" speech. Just that quickly, though—still during the first minute of the 8 o'clock hour—that chyron was swapped out for this:

KAMALA PLEDGES UNITY WHILE ATTACKING TRUMP

At 8:02, the chyron changed again. The chyron now said this:

KAMALA MAKES HER CASE AFTER 4 YEARS OF CHAOS

At 8:03, then at 8:05, Fox viewers were messaged as shown:

KAMALA: ELECT ME TO FIX MY MISTAKES

KAMALA VOWS CHANGE AFTER 4 YEARS IN POWER

And then, incredibly, this:

KAMALA CLOSES WITH FEAR & FASCISM

Yes, that chyron appeared on the screen! But then, with lightning speed, the undisguised clowning of this:

KAMALA: AT LEAST I'M NOT TRUMP

It was still just 8:05 p.m.! All this messaging had been delivered as the candidate continued to speak.

For the record, the rude nominee continued to speak until 8:07 p.m. In the process, she gobbled seven minutes normally reserved for Watters. 

When the candidate finally stifled herself, the silliest child came back on the air, and the chyron was switched back to this:

KAMALA: ELECT ME TO FIX MY MISTAKES

So the chyron said as the child began to speak. Quickly, though, that chyron was swapped out for these:

KAMALA'S JOY TURNED INTO ANGER

KAMALA'S MOMENTUM IS PETERING OUT

KAMALA FALLS FLAT IN THE FINAL STRETCH

At this point, it was still just 8:08 p.m. On display was the essence of the Fox News Channel's corporate enterprise: 

No Messaging Left Behind!

In the past few weeks, a certain question has been popping up in Blue America. In our view, it's an important question—one which was captured in the headlines which sat atop two recent New York Times opinion columns:

David Brooks: October 17, 2024
Why the Heck Isn’t She Running Away With This?

Stephens and Collins: October 24, 2024
How Could the Election Be This Close?

In our view, there's nothing "wrong" with asking that question. There was nothing "wrong" with those two opinion columns.

Way back in 1988, a famous skit on Saturday Night Live presaged this modern-day question. 

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy," SNL's version of Candidate Dukakis said in the famous skit. He said that after watching a fatuous statement by SNL's version of Candidate Bush the Elder.

You can watch that part of that skit simply by clicking this. Today, a version of that bewilderment is common in our own Blue America. During the Trump years, the question posed in those two headlines has been answered in various ways.

There is, of course, no single answer to that important question. But part of the answer lies in the clownish behavior we've just described—the pseudo-journalistic behavior which holds sway on the Fox News Channel all day long and then on into the night, as members of our finer news orgs agree to avert their gaze.

Last night, as the silliest child began to speak, his producers were beclowning his viewers again. As his viewers were being beclowned, the finer people in our Blue news orgs all knew they should look away.

Over at Mediaite, Colby Hall was one exception. His report started like this:

Fox News Chyrons During Kamala Harris Speech Reveal What the Network Thinks

Vice President Kamala Harris gave her closing argument speech at The Ellipse near the White House on Tuesday night, and all networks covered it live throughout. Fox News, however, opted to offer its own derogatory opinions of Harris’s speech through a series of increasingly unhinged and absurdly biased chyrons, or lower thirds as they are called in the biz, designed entirely to undermine Harris’s campaign.

"The immediate reaction to Harris’s speech on mainstream media outlets was largely positive," Hall reported. "Fox News chyron writers, however, spent almost the entirety of Harris’s speech appending lower thirds that mocked her address."

Hall included a listing of other chyrons served up during the Harris address. We don't know when those chyrons appeared; Hall presented them without any time stamps. (We switched over to Fox just before 8 o'clock.)

With the Internet Archive still down and out, we can't link you to videotape of the start of Watters' program. (If you have the right cable arrangement, you can watch the foolishness here.)

Nothing will change because of the pseudo-journalistic stupidity captured in last night's chyrons. That said, this form of stupidity rules the imitation of discourse offered by this counterfeit "news channel" every night of the week.

As the clowning rolls along, the finer news orgs agree not to notice. This is surely one of the ways we the people have reached the current place.

How can it possibly be this close? Inquiring minds in Blue America very much want to know.

In part, it's the work of the Fox News Channel. In part, it's also the concomitant silence of the New York Times and of other such news orgs run by a much finer class.

Harris was giving a tedious speech. A silly child, in a Fox News Alert, jumped in to offer that message!

This afternoon: The president does it again

HOW WE GOT HERE: This whole discourse is Eyes Wide Shut!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024

Kubrick does it again: This very morning, far off campus, we found ourselves thinking, again and again, of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

We plan to rewatch it this weekend. For today, this capsule, from memory:

In Eyes Wide Shut, the Tom Cruise character discovers that the actual world is not at all the way he thought it was.

He discovers this as he stumbled upon a peculiar scene in a mansion somewhere out on Long Island. Shout out, North by Northwest?)

(Apparently, the actual location for the shoot was a British mansion called Somerton. No known relation.)

Out on Long Island, the Cruise character stumbles upon the "masked orgy of an unnamed secret society"—a set of rituals built upon ancient desires concerning sexual subjugation. We can't quite recall where the plot goes from there, but how much more do you need?

Last night, we watched as several of our major broadcasters swept aside large chunks of what happened in Madison Square Garden this Sunday. 

Within the framework offered by these TV journalists, it all came down to that one (indefensible, ugly and stupid) non-joke. You would have thought it was just that one joke—just that one joke, all by itself, in the course of a very long evening!

A viewer would have thought it was just that one joke! Swept away was this part of Sunday's evening's sick ritual:

ROSENBERG (10/27/24): She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party—a bunch of degenerates. Low lives. Jew-haters and low lives. Every one of them. Every one of them.

Watching some of the shows we watched last night, a viewer would never have known that the Garden Party included such disordered, atavistic remarks. 

No one tried to explain, or even to cite, the oral sex insult Hulk Hogan pulled from the garbage can and directed at Candidate Harris. Swept away were other such slimy remarks from this long throwback ritual.

In fairness, Kubrick may have undershot his mark by a bit. In Eye Wide Shut, participants in the throwback ritual feel they must do so in secret. 

Sunday night, at the Garden, participants felt they could engage in their ancient ritual conduct right out in the open. Their secrets were protected by several major news shows last night as Sunday evening's full range of events went unmentioned and undiscussed.

That said, vast amounts of our failing discourse have been built upon an eager agreement by our major journalists—the agreement that they should be keeping their eyes (and their traps) wide shut.

We're sorry, but once again this:

Last night, clinical psychologist Mary Trump told Lawrence O'Donnell that her grandfather, Fred Trump, was "a sociopath." She doesn't say the same thing about her uncle, perhaps for reasons of liability.

Whatever! The point we'll propose is this:

Our nation's discourse is currently being overrun by a cadre of men who show all the signs of being (clinically) disordered. 

It isn't just Donald J. Trump. It's also Elon Musk, whose taste for blatant, bald misstatement seems to know no bounds.

The preference for constant wild misstatement is a basic symptom of at least one major clinical disorder. Nor is it only Trump and Musk who display this obvious taste. We'd be inclined to wonder about Kennedy Jr. and Vance as well.

That said:

We American citizens can wonder as much as we please. The people who pose as our nation's journalists have agreed, long ago, that our spotless minds must not be robbed of their sunshine by such fairly obvious points.

We Americans go on and on, then on and on, as our journos conspire to keep their eyes shut. One recent example:

Has anyone ever struggled so hard, or at such length, to defend an indefensible practice of his guild as Ezra Klein did in this recent presentation for the New York Times?

We'll review that absurdly lengthy piece in the days ahead. It seems to us that Nicholas Kristof is now working to keep our eyes shut too—to keep ruminations safe.

On Sunday, the most ancient, atavistic impulses were general over the Garden. Last night, again and again, the entire prehistoric ritual was whittled down to one joke.

The sexual insults aimed at Harris were set aside and forgotten. For the record, such sexual insults have been widespread at the Fox News Channel.

Those sexual insults are aired every night—and Blue America's most trusted tribunes choose to avert their gaze.

MeToo came and went with great speed. In our view, it was baldly faux a very large part of the time. As a nation, we've now reached a very dangerous place—and this is a major part of the way we all got here.

For us, it's back now to a different campus for more of the day's crucial medical research. That said:

We're going to rent Eyes Wide Shut this weekend. In the last film of his stunning career, did the great Kubrick do it again?

BREAKING: Harris ahead by four in a pair of polls!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2024

Perhaps no more fish today: We expect to be losing a large chunk of time today. Yesterday, some encouraging news came in.

For the record, there's no way to tell from the various polls who is going to win the election. But as of Monday morning, the new poll from ABC News/Ipsos had Harris ahead among likely voters nationwide, 51-47.

We saw those numbers on Monday's Morning Joe. Later, up jumped Drum with virtually identical numbers from a different polling outfit:

CES says Kamala Harris is comfortably in the lead

The 2024 CES pre-election survey, based on a huge sample of nearly 80,000 adults, puts Kamala Harris ahead of Donald Trump 51-47% among likely voters. She's ahead 52-46% among very likely voters. Here's their breakdown by age and gender...

At Drum's post, a graphic displays those breakdowns by age and gender.

There's no way to know who's going to win. That will remain true until the votes get counted.

Still, this was the first encouraging news of this type in a while. And, of course, the possibility exists that Candidate Trump's "Garden Party" will turn out to be this year's "October surprise"—will turn out to be a self-inflicted wound which helps decide the election.

Or not, of course.

Concerning that pitiful Garden Party, Mediaite has captured some of the reaction on Monday morning on the "cable news" show, Fox & Friends. 

In this post, Colby Hall records the behavior of Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who said this to the friends:

"I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian rather than the truths that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had."

One joke? Is that all there was? Sadly, we have more on that construct below.

Earlier on yesterday's Fox & Friends show, Brian Kilmeade had jumped in to explain how bogus the criticisms had been, with the other friends playing along. For Hall's report on that exchange, you can just click this.

So it went on Monday morning's Fox & Friends. Sadly, Leavitt wasn't alone in framing this matter as a flap about just "one joke."  We saw an array of other broadcasters adopting that framework last night, not excluding Lester Holt and Wolf Blitzer. 

In a display we'd regard as instructional, the sexual insults directed at Candidate Harris went completely unmentioned. Sid Rosenberg's thoughtful remarks about Hillary Clinton had also disappeared. It's much as we've noted in the past:

There is no cure for human.

For denizens of Blue America, the largest challenge remains unchanged. We need to become a great deal more clear about how we ever got to this place—about the various ways our own instincts and our own behaviors may have helped create the dangerous situation we're now in.

In the short run, has the Garden Party become this year's (self-inflicted) October Surprise? As of now, there's no way to know. 

For ourselves, we're supporting medical science today! We may not be back on our sprawling campus until mid-afternoon. We may have no more fish today.

How did we get from there to here?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2024

IN RE What's goin' on: Within the past month or so, we've suggested that we the Americans may have reached the end of the modern political era.

The era began in 1960, with the iconic Kennedy-Nixon election. It seems to be grinding to a halt in this, the age where it's no longer clear that we the people even retain the capacity to conduct an election.

We expect to return to The Making of the President 1960 for a day or two at the start of next week. For today, let's use a different cultural touchstone to ask ourselves a basic question:

How in the world—how on earth—did we get from there to here?

We'll jump ahead to 1972, twelve years into the era. As our cultural touchstone, we'll consider Rick Nelson's hit song from that year:

Once again, here it is: "Garden Party."

The "Garden" in question was the same hall which featured Candidate Trump's latest furious rally. To recall one of the vibes from that earlier time, you can immerse yourself in the mellow tone of Nelson and his group, the Stone Canyon Band.

What was the background of the Rick Nelson song? The song in question is so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page! Here's part of what the leading authority tells us:

Garden Party (Rick Nelson song)

"Garden Party" is a 1972 song written by Rick Nelson and recorded by him and the Stone Canyon Band for the album Garden Party. The song tells the story of Nelson being booed at a concert at Madison Square Garden. It was Nelson's last top 40 hit, reaching No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard pop chart.

On October 15, 1971, Richard Nader's Rock 'n Roll Spectacular Volume VII concert was given at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The playbill included many greats of the early rock era, including Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Bobby Rydell, with Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band listed in advertisements as a "special added attraction."

Nelson came on stage dressed in the then-current fashion, wearing bell-bottoms and a purple velvet shirt, with his hair hanging down to his shoulders. He started playing his older songs like "Hello Mary Lou," but then he played the Rolling Stones' "Country Honk" (a country version of their hit song "Honky Tonk Women") and the crowd began to boo. While some reports say that the booing was caused by police action in the back of the audience, Nelson thought it was directed at him. Nevertheless, he sang another song but then left the building and did not appear onstage for the finale.

The authority moves on to explain some of the lyrics in the song Nelson wrote about this experience. Example:

"Garden Party" tells of various people who were present, frequently in an oblique manner ("Yoko brought her Walrus", referring to Yoko Ono and John Lennon)...

One more reference in the lyrics pertains to a particularly mysterious and legendary audience member: "Mr. Hughes hid in Dylan's shoes, wearing his disguise." The Mr. Hughes in question was ex-Beatle George Harrison, who was a next-door neighbor and good friend of Nelson. Harrison used "Hughes" as his traveling alias, and "hid in Dylan's shoes" most likely refers to an album of Bob Dylan covers that Harrison was planning but never recorded.

Stuff like that!

Was Nelson booed when he and his band tried to move past the bubblegum hits he'd recorded as a teenager? We have no idea. 

But he responded in mellow fashion, one of the basic tones of the era. The lesson he took from his perceived rejection was summarized in the chorus to the song:

But it's all right now
I've learned my lesson well
You see, you can't please everyone
So you've got to please yourself.

That was the ethos of one part of the nation during that earlier era. Elsewhere, experiences were substantially different—but in the same year of that Garden concert, Marvin Gaye recorded this enduring anthem:

What's Goin' On 

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, yeah

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, oh 

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Come on talk to me
So you can see
What's going on...

Talk to me / So you can see / What's going on? We've always been in awe of Gaye for having the confidence to assign himself that role in the healing he dreamed about.

There was a lot of anger back then too. That said, in certain ways, the society was easier to contemplate and negotiate at that time. 

In certain very basic ways, the society was much less complicated and complex. That said, how did we ever get to this? 

Also, will those of us in Blue America ever be willing to ask the key question? Will we ever be willing to examine the way our own behaviors, in Blue America, may have helped place us where we all are?

We never don't think of [NAME WITHHELD] when we hear Gaye's moral anthem. "Naaaahhh—non-violent," he said to us one day, almost surely in 1971 or 1972.

At the time, he was the greatest high school basketball player Baltimore had ever produced. (There were quite a few others to come.) We clearly remember his statement today—but how did we get to this place?

For the authority's report on What's Goin' On, you can just click this.

HOW WE GOT HERE: How did it [ever] get this far?

MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2024

One candidate's Garden Party: On balance, Sid Rosenberg isn't a well-known national figure.

Yesterday, he was a featured speaker at a Garden Party. 

It wasn't Rick Nelson's Garden Party, concerning which he wrote and recorded this song in 1972. It was the Garden Party of one of the candidates—of Candidate Donald J. Trump.

Rosenberg was just one speaker among quite a few, including the policy nutcase Elon Musk. Providing a rough idea of the vibe along with a walk down memory lane, here's who Sid Rosenberg is:

Sid Rosenberg

Sidney Ferris Rosenberg (born April 19, 1967) is an American radio personality. He is currently the host of Sid and Friends in the Morning and "Sid Sports Sunday" plus sports reporter on 77 WABC in New York City.

[...]

His radio career started in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he hosted the syndicated sports radio program The Drive on Sports Fan Radio Network in the late 1990s...In 2000, he returned to New York City to co-host WNEW-FM's turbulent morning show, the Sports Guys. A year later, he joined the Imus in the Morning program...

Rosenberg was no stranger to controversy on the Imus show, which was also simulcast on MSNBC cable television. Among other things, he said on-air that Venus Williams was an "animal," and that she and Serena Williams would be better suited for National Geographic magazine than for Playboy, that "faggots play tennis" and that the United States women's national soccer team were "a bunch of juiced up dykes."

Rosenberg was fired from the Imus show after making crude remarks about Australian singer Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis...As a substitute sportscaster on April 4, 2007, Rosenberg reported on Rutgers University's 59-46 loss the previous evening to the University of Tennessee, in the final game of the NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championship. This served as a lead-in to Imus and other cast members, who made comments that resulted in the cancelation of the program one week later.

That's who Rosenberg is, or at least who he was in the past. His role on Imus recalls the era when this garbage can behavior was working its way inside the culture in various disguised and camouflaged forms, with major members of Blue America's media elite straining to get on board.

(We think here of the early Howard Stern, along with the more presentable Imus.)

That's who Rosenberg seems to be, or at least that's who he's been in the past. Yesterday, speaking at one candidate's Garden Party, he offered such thoughtful ruminations as these:

ROSENBERG (10/27/24): She is some sick bastard, that Hillary Clinton, huh? What a sick son of a bitch. The whole fucking party—a bunch of degenerates. Low lives. Jew-haters and low lives. Every one of them. Every one of them.

So said the "radio personality" at one hopeful's Garden Party.

For better or worse, you can hear the full seven minutes of his remarks through the auspices of 77ABC, a corporate entity which apparently isn't embarrassed by the conduct of this employee. Included will be this remark—a remarks which were plucked by Acyn from the stew and subsequently headlined in this post at Mediaite:

ROSENBERG: But the fucking illegals, they get whatever they want.

You can hear the full seven minutes here, but we'll offer a type of warning. In the midst of Rosenberg's ugly, profanity-strewn rant, you'll possibly be exposed the some of the ways those of us in Blue America have actually managed to get here.

In our view, we've done that over the past sixty years. As is true of human tribes all across the globe and all through the annals of time, those of us in Blue America aren't especially skilled at seeing such things about ourselves and about our own behavior.

Yesterday's Garden Party was full of ugly denunciations and rants. Perhaps the stupidest boy of them all was comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose remark about a certain "floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean" was later disowned by the Trump campaign itself.

That said, the vitriol, and the sheer stupidity, were general over the Garden. In the course of the rally's mayhem, a journalistic rule of thumb seems to have emerged:

When this is done on the Fox News Channel, the New York Times (and other such orgs) will avert their gaze. But when it's done at Madison Square Garden, in a highly-publicized event, even the finer people apparently feel they have to report what happened.

That' what the Times has done, at long last, in today's news report:

Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism

Donald J. Trump’s closing rally at Madison Square Garden on the second to last Sunday before the election was a release of rage at a political and legal system that impeached, indicted and convicted him, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.

A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock-throwers, and called out a Black man in the audience with a reference to watermelon.

Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with “pimp handlers.” A third called her “the Antichrist.” And the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson mocked Ms. Harris—the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father—with a made-up ethnicity, saying she was vying to become “the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor ever to be elected president.”

By the time the former president himself took the stage, an event billed as delivering the closing message of his campaign, with nine days left in a tossup race, had instead become a carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism.

[...]

Later, the television host Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, lectured the crowd on why Mr. Trump did not fit the definition of “a bully” because a bully requires “an imbalance of power,” seeming to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump has enormous power as a billionaire and former president.

During the speech by Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Vance, the entire arena spontaneously burst into chants of “Tampon Tim” to disparage Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate.

[...]

David Rem, a childhood friend of Mr. Trump, called Ms. Harris “the devil.”

You can't get dumber than Dr. Phil. At long last, that's perfectly clear.

That said, even the New York Times couldn't get to everything that was said in this news report. Unmentioned was the ugly oral sex insult the former "professional wrestler" known as Hulk Hogan directed at Candidate Harris. 

In fairness, this insult may have gone unmentioned in the Times because it was too hard to explain. Mediaite explains the oral sex insult here, with background from last summer offered here and also offered here.

(Warning! Dagen McDowell sightings!)

For the record, insults of this type, directed at Candidate Harris, have been general over the Fox News Channel in the past few months. 

We regard that as a remarkable fact; it's a remarkable fact which we've been noting in our own reports. It's also a fact which we've seen no one among Blue America's journalist crowd mention anywhere else.

The candidate who staged this Garden Party may well get elected next week. (Or not.) Polling suggests that the race is very close, though there's no way to be sure even about that widely stated assessment.

The candidate who staged yesterday's mess may get elected next week! At some point, those of us in Blue America might want to ponder an extremely basic question.

Many people have been asking this question of late; in our experience, few people have tried to address it. This very morning, Mika Brzezinski asked the question on Morning Joe after describing the Garden Party:

BRZEZINSKI (10/28/24): It's discouraging that so many people would rally to hate. Oh my God, how did we get here? How did we get here?

How did we get here, Mika asked. She was asking a very good question. 

In our view, the answer takes us back perhaps sixty years. In our view, it does involve unattractive and unintelligent behavior by us in Blue America. 

Some of that Blue American behavior takes us back in time. On the other hand, we also think of this unanswered, highly significant question from just the past four years:

Key unanswered question:
Why did President Biden (not Vice President Harris) do what he did, for three-plus years, with respect to the southern border? Why did the president do that?

As we've noted, Candidate Harris has been asked that question again and again. Again and again, she has refused to answer—and that unexplained conduct by President Biden may send Donald Trump to the White House! 

How did we ever get to this place? We'll discuss the border, and other topics, over the course of this week.

Warning! Some of the answers lurk in the comments which got edited out of Acyn's posts about yesterday's Garden Party. We even refer to the fuller remarks by Tucker Calson—to the fuller remarks he offered after mocking Candidate Harris on an angry "racial"/ethnic basis.

Acyn gives us what we want. Does he give us what we need?

Tomorrow: Stephens and Kristof and Bouie and Klein! A tale of four New York Times columnists

SUNDAY: Is it about to happen here?

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2024

We can't quite answer that question: "It can't happen here," Sinclar Lewis once said. 

He didn't exactly mean it! Actually, that was the title of a famous book:

It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator (in allusion to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany), and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic. The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.

The novel was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, which was reported on by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife.

[..]

Since its publication, It Can't Happen Here has been seen as a cautionary tale, starting with the 1936 presidential election and potential candidate Huey Long.

And so on from there.

Can (something resembling) it happen here? We'll suppose that the answer is yes.

For ourselves, we'll guess that liberal / progressive name-calling has long since run its course as an antidote to that possibility—as an effective electoral tool. That includes the more simple-minded attempts to say whether one of the current candidates actually is, or actually isn't, "a fascist."

By now, it's way too late for any of this to matter. But for the record, this:

Yesterday, one candidate was, once again, extending his talk about our nation's various "enemies of the people"—a group which is sometimes known as "the enemy from withjn."

He did this yesterday during a boisterous rally in Novi, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. You can see him doing so on the C-Span videotape, starting at minute 38. 

What will you see at that point? This is what you'll witness:

You'll see the candidate talking about the reporters who were present to report on his rally, but also to videotape and televise it. This is part of what you'll see this particular candidate say:

UNNAMED CANDIDATE (10/26/24): See now—the camera didn't show that. For all of you at home, you're going to have to come in and watch in person.

Can you imagine? It's so nasty. They're so nasty. They're so evil. They are actually the enemy of the people, they really are. It's so evil. 

This time, the candidate was saying that the members of the mainstream press were the people who are "so evil"—who are "the enemy of the people." He was complaining because a (presumably) stationary camera positioned to broadcast his rally hadn't been shifted to show the material on a video screen to which he'd been referring.

You can see him offering the background for this declaration starting at the 23-minute mark of the C-Span videotape. At that point, he shades his eyes as he looks to the back of the room, saying this, as he endlessly does, about the journalists huddled there:

UNNAMED CANDIDATE: You didn't know that because the fake news [shades eyes]—

Whoooaaa! You got a lot of fake news! You got a lot of bad ones back there! Whoa! That's a lot of fakers! 

You know, you'd think they'd want their credibility back...

This continues for a while after that. At this point in the day's presentation, the journalists were simply "a lot of bad ones." At the 38-minute mark, it became official again:

The reporters were now described as "the enemy of the people," a bit like Lewis once said.

All across the face of the globe, it's part of the way our imperfect species is wired. We've always been wired to respond, not just to kings and queens, but also to the allure of "the strongman."

Sometimes those strongmen even turn out to be madmen. It has happened all over the globe, and of course it could happen here.

In this case, the enemy of the people in the back of the venue are working for owners who have agreed, in the immediate American context, that this possibility mustn't be discussed.

So it has gone in the current circumstance—including now, as Election Day draws near. Over here in Blue America, we have responded with our unimpressive journalistic leadership and with their pathetic pop guns.

We'll guess that this candidate is going to win, though there's no way to know at this point. With that in mind, a question arises:

How did we ever get to this place? How did we Blues ever get here? 

Through what lack of skill—through what lack of self-awareness—have we finally reached this place? How have we finally reached the place where this outcome is thoroughly possible?

We'll be exploring that question in the coming week. For now, let's return to yesterday's question:

Did Marc Thiessen perhaps or possibly get it partially right?

Did he get it right in his column for the Washington Post? We apologize for the aggressive headline atop his piece. But concerning Blue America's latest pop gun, here's what the columnist Thiessen has said:

Harris’s closing argument is dishonest, desperate and hypocritical

[...]

Trump also did not say, as Harris claims, that he would use the American military to go after his political opponents. At her rallies, Harris plays a selectively edited clip of Trump saying in an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo: “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics, and I think they’re the—and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military.” She then tells voters: “So, you heard his words. … He’s talking about that he considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country. … He is saying that he would use the military to go after them.”

No, he’s not. The words “in terms of Election Day” are omitted from the clip she plays, to mask the fact that Trump was answering a question about possible Election Day unrest—which he said could be “easily handled” by National Guard. She takes his quote out of context to make it seem he is saying something different than he is.

That’s not just dishonest, it’s hypocritical. As I recall, it was Democrats who accused Trump of violating his oath of office for failing to deploy the National Guard to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Let’s be clear: I’d prefer Trump didn’t talk this way. In addition to being bad for the country, it’s bad politics: Such rhetoric is like fingernails on the chalk board to swing voters. But misrepresenting his words to suggest Trump would use the military to target ordinary Americans who oppose him is far more offensive.

That's how the column ended.

Question! Has Donald J. Trump ever actually said "that he would use the American military to go after his political opponents?" (We're quoting Thiessen's paraphrase.)

We will guess that he probably has! By now, there are very few things this badly disordered person hasn't said. We'll guess that there are things he has said which can be correctly paraphrased that way.

We'll assume he has said such things! But is that what he said to Bartiromo in the interview in question? As readers surely know, this interview has been widely cited all through our Blue American warrens, as our flailing corporate tribunes have fired their pop guns in the latest way.

Is that what he said to Bartiromo? In all honesty, no it isn't! Quite explicitly, he was asked a question about possible "chaos" on Election Day. Quite explicitly, he referred to "Election Day" as he replied to the question.

In that exchange with Bartiromo, he neither said nor suggested that he would "use the military to go after anyone who doesn't support him." In that exchange with Bartiromo, he neither said nor suggested that he would use the military to go after Adam Schiff or Nancy Pelosi.

In fact, he didn't name any political opponents at all. All in all, it was a nothingburger Q-and-A—a Q-and-A which has been transformed into the latest ineffective attack.

Tina Turner always said she liked it nice and rough. Our corporate multimillionaire tribunes—people like Joe and Mika, but even now Jake Tapper—tend to like it nice and easy. 

In the matter of this Q-and-A, they pulled out their pop guns and began to embellish—began to engage in the time-honored practice of creative paraphrase.

Warning! By now, corporate tribunes in Red America are fully aware of this practice! When our tribunes behave this way, the tribunes at the Fox News Channel will in fact swing into action.

They've reported this sort of thing a million times by now. Also, the never tell viewers about the million-and-one disordered things this candidate really has said. 

In this way, Red America's minds remain spotless, a little bit like ours.

No one is going to tell you what this candidate said in Novi. No one is going to tell you that he extended his "enemy from within" demonology in the way he did.

The children are lazing around today, happily spending their very large salaries. For ourselves, we'll guess that the Novi nutcase is going to win this year's election, though it's entirely possible that he won't.

How did we ever get to this place? We'll start with that tomorrow. For today, we'll close with embarrassment concerning a point about that one particular Q-and-A which we ourselves haven't cited:

Bartiromo asked the candidate about possible "chaos" on Election Day. The candidate said that, if necessary in the event of such chaos, the National Guard, or even the military, could respond.

This has been presented as a threat about what the candidate might do. That said, he won't be in office on Election Day! If someone decides to call out the military, it of course won't be him!

Is it about to happen here? We can't answer that question.

We can tell you what he said in Novi. As part of the way we've earned our way out, you'll hear it nowhere else!

Starting tomorrow: How we Blues managed to get here

SATURDAY: Does the American project "belong to the ages?"

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2024

On balance, is Marc Thiessen right? This very morning, at 6 o'clock, there we sat, watching the first hour of the "cable news" program, Fox & Friends Weekend.

The three regular friends were all present. We'd say that two are "true believers." On balance, we wouldn't grant Cain that excuse.

Fox & Friends Weekend, regular co-hosts
Rachel Campos-Duffy: At age 52, true believer by way of a form of conservative Catholicism. 
Pete Hegseth: At age 44, true believer by way of a meritorious Army National Guard career.
Will Cain: At age 49, too smart to be fully sincere about the various presentations with which he plays along. Or at least, so it seems here.

Those would be our assessments of the personnel. 

Concerning the program itself, it's a fairly obvious propaganda program. It seems to have been designed to advance corporate messaging and to enhance corporate profits by dint of the way it panders to the preconceptions of a tribal audience.

In yesterday morning's report, we showed you some of the pseudo-journalism which emanates from this Potemkin news program. This morning, as we watched the friends, a famous statement kept coming to mind:

Now he belongs to the ages.

Apparently, so said Secretary Stanton as he stood at the deathbed of President Lincoln. In the contemporary context, is the American experiment on the verge of "belonging to the ages?" It is possible that we've moved down a long, winding road to a location "now too much for us"--to a place from which there will be no coming back?

In the coming week, we'll explore some of the ways our own nation, such as it was, has been transformed into two warring tribes. Along the way in the past dozen years, we're quoted statements by three major anthropologists describing the muddle we're in.

More than a decade ago, we started with Norman O. Brown, who made this opaque statement as part of a Phi Beta Kappa Address way back in May 1960. As the great professor spoke, Candidates Kennedy and Nixon were out there on the trail:

BROWN (5/31/60): I sometimes think I see that societies originate in the discovery of some secret, some mystery; and expand with the progressive publication of their secret; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any secret, when the mystery has been divulged, that is to say profaned...

And so there comes a time—I believe we are in such a time—when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of some new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of all mankind, the power which makes all things new.

We have no idea what he was talking about, and neither did anyone else. That said, Brown seemed to think, even then, that some essential "secret" at the heart of the American experiment was being profaned in such a way that our society was destined to end in exhaustion.

As can be seen in this lengthy New York Times obituary, Brown was very hot at the time. He's almost never mentioned today. At roughly that same time, Professor Brabender was describing another part of the process to which we the American humans have succumbed in this day:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

We only talk so long! That was Professor Brabender's telling observation about the highly imperfect wiring with which us the humans are saddled. 

Decades earlier, Edward Cummings, in a bitterly caustic poem, had described key parts of the process out of which our contemporary propaganda programming has emerged. We often think of these scientific observations when we watch today' "cable news" shows:

Humanity I Love You

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it

The professor's observations were offered in the form of a caustic anti-war poem, which continues on briefly from there. 

Small world! At the time, our own father was already working at the Old Howard, the vaudeville house where Cummings later said he heard the favorite joke which inspired his unconventional approach to poetry.

(John Wilkes Booth had played an earlier version of the Howard, though that was well before our father's time. In his autobiography, Harpo Speaks, Harpo Marx said he got his first unintentional laugh while on stage at the Howard, during our father's tenure.)

Professor Cummings was angry. In this analysis, he prophetically described some of the human behaviors which have brought us to the present state of affairs. Most notably, the great observer of us the humans said this about the basic wiring with which we seem to be saddled:

you would rather black the boots of success than enquire whose soul dangles from his watch-chain 

To some extent, so it seems to go on programs like Fox & Friends Weekend. So too on the weekday properties of that propaganda franchise, Fox & Friends First and Fox & Friends, whose performers have been churning the agitprop since 1998

Meanwhile, how about this observation?

you are perpetually putting the secret of life in your pants and forgetting it’s there

That may explain why high-end news orgs like the New York Times agree that this destructive pseudo-journalistic behavior must never be reported or discussed.

On those Fox News Channel programs, the various collections of friends churn the mandated propaganda. The fuller secrets of life are routinely "placed in their pants."

Red America's TV viewers are asked to hear only a carefully culled selection of the world's basic facts. In fairness, similar conduct can often be observed within the "cable news" TV shows aimed at our own Blue America.

As November 5 approaches, a basic question exists. Few of us in Blue America ever ask questions like this in a serious way:

How in the world did we get to this place? Is it possible that there's something different we could have done—those of us over here in our tribe?

In our view, Blue America's role in the present decline began in the mid-1960s. For today, we'll restrict ourselves to a tease concerning a recent dispute. 

For the record, Candidate Trump has made a million disordered remarks. Yesterday afternoon, we showed you his latest Truth Social post, in which he erupted again.

That said, we the humans seem to be wired in a fairly obvious way:

We prefer to tell the simplest possible story as we drive our tribal narratives forward. With that in mind, we're going to suggest that Marc Thiessen may have a basic point pretty much right in his new column for the Washington Post.

(On balance, he may also have it pretty much wrong.)

Tomorrow, we'll show you what we mean. When we do, we'll include a new, basic point about What Candidate Trump Is Widely Said To Have Said. 

This point had never occurred to us until the past few days. Also, we've seen no evidence that it ever occurred to anyone else.

Donald J. Trump gets it wrong all the time. At this site, we've long assumed that he's (clinically) disordered in a destructive way.

That said, does our side ever get anything wrong? Are we mere humans too?

In the larger sense, is the American project on the verge of "belonging to the ages?" How did we ever get to this place? Was there anything we could have done?

Three anthropologists tried to inform us.  We'll suggest that it didn't quite work.

Tomorrow: Thiessen speaks

Is "something wrong" with Candidate Trump?

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024

The candidate sounds off:  In a move that has deeply surprised the experts, Candidate Donald J. Trump has sounded off again.

For Alex Griffing's report at Mediaite, you can just click here. Meanwhile, gaze on his works and despair:

Donald J. Trump: Truth Social, 4/25/24

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.

At Mediaite, Griffing also links to a new report about this nutcase from Tuesday's Morning Edition. 

NPR's Tom Dreisbach was interviewed by Leila Fadel about an investigation he conducted. Headline included, the summary reads like this:

Trump makes more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish perceived enemies

With just two weeks until Election Day, former President Donald Trump has been escalating his attacks on his political rivals and what he calls, quote, "the enemy within," unquote.

Now an NPR investigation has found that Trump has made more than a hundred threats to investigate, prosecute, jail or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, including private citizens.

At this point, someone else will have to fact-check Dreisbach's voluminous work. That said, the candidate's latest post at the ironically named Truth Social site pretty much speaks for itself.

Is something wrong what Candidate Trump? Is he some type of nutcase?

At this site, we stated our basic view long ago. Last night, to our surprise, The PBS News Hour took an extremely tiny first step with respect to an attempt to come to terms with that widely disappeared question.

Is something wrong with Candidate Trump? At this site, we've long assumed that he suffers from some diagnosable form of "mental illness." The mainstream press corps has fought to the end for the right to disappear any such thoughts from a great nation's spotless minds. 

Last night, the News Hour devoted nine minutes to a segment hosted by Amna Nawaz. The segment in question started like this, transcript headline included:

Trump’s rambling speeches raise questions about mental decline

NAWAZ: If he is reelected, former President Donald Trump, now 78 years old, would be the oldest president ever elected. After a number of appearances where his remarks were rambling or incoherent, and one event in which he swayed silently to music on stage for close to 40 minutes, questions are being raised about possible cognitive decline.

For the record, this segment dealt with possible "cognitive decline," not with possible mental illness. No PBS viewer would have to hear about (former) Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee, or about the 37 medical specialists who contributed essays to her best-selling 2017 book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.

Dr. Lee's book has been almost wholly disappeared by our nation's major news orgs. At present, the candidate seems to be getting worse, as Dr. Lee predicted.

The News Hour wasn't willing to take things quite that far last night. Here's the way Nawaz introduced her principal guest:

NAWAZ: Mr. Trump has dismissed any speculation about mental decline, describing his rambling rhetoric as him weaving together different topics and saying his supporters get it.

Let's take a look at some of these questions with an author and clinical psychologist who's raised some of them. That's Dr. Ben Michaelis.

Doctor, welcome to the News Hour. Thanks for joining us.

The discussion continued from there. The clinical psychologist was asked about possible cognitive issues, not about any possible "personality disorders." In theory, there will be plenty of time to talk about that once the again-elected President Trump has dismantled the world. 

(You can see the News Hour's transcript, or the videotape of the segment, at the proffered link.

Everyone in the guild agreed—it mustn't be discussed. Last evening, the News Hour took a tiny first step.

Today, he sounded off.

One last point: The New York Times has never managed to find a way to build a recognizable front-page "news hook" around this endless disordered behavior.  

In fairness, there has never been any such candidate in modern presidential elections. For that reason, there is no pre-existing journalistic formula for handling disorder on this remarkable scale.

In fairness, it wasn't just the New York Times. More on this journalistic failure to come.

CHAOS: Thieves will steal your goods, Thoreau said!

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024

Levin, Campos-Duffy are worse:  Way back when—last Saturday night!—The Man Who Screams was letting off steam concerning Candidate Harris.

On our meters, he was already shouting by 8:03 p.m., just three minutes into his Fox News Channel program. 

The program is called Life, Liberty and Levin. At 8:14 p.m., the agitated host said this:

LEVIN (10/19/24): I want to get to this! Look at the Harris-Biden war on pro-lifers. It's grotesque. You don't even have to be in support of the pro-life movement to see it.

Pro-life activist and mother of small daughter Beverly [sic] Beatty Williams announced this past Tuesday that her state of appeal request has been denied. 

What did she do? She protested in front of a Planned Parenthood Clinic. And so they used this FACE Act—Freedom of Access to Clinic Access Act—more aggressively than any administration since this law was passed to do what? To put these people—mothers! grandmothers! just people, activists, who are protesting!—in prison for years! 

For the record, the woman's name is actually Bevelyn Williams. You'll note that Levin is transforming the Biden Administration into the "Harris-Biden" Administration, the better to play you with.

At this point, Levin played tape of Bevelyn Williams' husband. Along the way, he said this:

Obama—(snorts)—has the audacity to speak to black men and tell black men they need to vote for Kamala Harris when the Kamala Harris Administration separated me from my wife, and my wife from her daughter at two years old, for unlawful assembly...I want people to know in this country—mothers, fathers, single mothers—that this cannot be tolerated, and you should not vote for Kamala because voting for Kamala would do things like this.

By now, viewers were being told that Bevelyn Williams had been sent to prison by something called "the Kamala Harris Administration." The Harris Administration had sent her to prison "for unlawful assembly," Fox News Channel viewers were told.

That's what was said on Saturday night. The very next morning, on Fox & Friends Weekend, we saw the egregious Rachel Campos-Duffy tell her channel's misused viewers this:

CAMPOS-DUFFY (10/20/24): She sent [Williams] to prison this week this week for three years...It's kind of her deplorable moment, really...She sentenced a pro-lifer who was standing in front of an abortion clinic praying to three years in prison.

(With the Internet Archive down, we're working from the notes we took in real time.)

The "she," of course, was Candidate Harris. According to this disordered chaos agent, Harris had sent William to prison for the act of "standing in front of an abortion clinic praying." 

Apparently, Harris had taken time from her presidential campaign to engage in this prosecution on a personal basis. Or at least, so Campos-Duffy now said.

As we've noted in the past, we're not sure we've ever been happy to hear that someone is going to prison. We feel the same way here.

That said, we felt that we should possibly fact-check the things we'd been told by these corporate tools on the Fox News Channel. The basic question was this:

Had Bevelyn (not Beverly) Williams really been sent to prison for the act of praying? Had she been sent to prison for the act of praying by the heinous Candidate Harris, who was demonized in the most ludicrous. soul-destroying ways all through the course of this Fox & Friends Weekend "news" program?

We decided to check it out! As it happened, a news report in the New York Times had reported this matter in July of this year. The news report started in the manner shown, principal headline included:

Woman Sentenced to 41 Months for Blocking Entrance to Planned Parenthood

A Tennessee anti-abortion activist was sentenced to over three years in prison on Tuesday after she tried to block patients from entering a Planned Parenthood clinic in Lower Manhattan in June 2020.

A New York jury found in February that the activist, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, had violated a federal law protecting access to reproductive health clinics when she threatened patients, and in some cases physically confronted them, as they tried to enter Planned Parenthood’s Manhattan Health Center. Ms. Beatty Williams, who is originally from Staten Island, cited her Catholic faith in defense of her actions, according to court documents.

On Tuesday, a judge sentenced Ms. Beatty Williams to 41 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release. The judge recommended that Ms. Beatty Williams be transferred to a prison in Tennessee with mental health facilities.

According to the news report, the judge felt that Williams should have access to "mental health facilities." But what exactly had Williams done? Had she simply engaged in prayer, as Campos-Duffy had been willing to tell the Fox News Channel's viewers?

So far, Harris hadn't been mentioned at all—but what had Williams done? Eventually, the news report offered more detail:

“Bevelyn Beatty Williams repeatedly intimidated and interfered with individuals seeking and providing critical reproductive health services,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “She did so by physically blocking access to clinics, threatening staff and by force.”

On June 19 and June 20, 2020, prosecutors said, Ms. Beatty Williams “participated in an organized protest” outside the Manhattan Planned Parenthood. The clinic sees up to 100 patients each day and provides a variety of services, including abortion, birth control, pregnancy testing and cancer screening. Ms. Beatty Williams livestreamed and boasted about her actions on her Instagram page, according to court documents.

Ms. Beatty Williams stood in front of entrances to the facility and directed her fellow protesters to help her obstruct them, prosecutors said. She bragged on June 19 that “out of all the appointments today, only one couple came in,” according to prosecutors. She also threatened employees as they tried to enter the building, telling them that she was going to “terrorize this place” and “we’re going to terrorize you so good, your business is going to be over, mama,” according to court documents.

On the second day, Ms. Beatty Williams’s behavior turned physical, prosecutors said, as she shoved police officers and Planned Parenthood employees outside the clinic. At one point, Ms. Beatty Williams leaned on the front door of the facility to prevent a staff member from escorting a patient inside. The employee’s hand was injured after it became caught in the door, prosecutors said.

Ms. Beatty Williams similarly tried to block access to Planned Parenthood clinics in Florida, Tennessee, Georgia and Brooklyn between 2019 and 2022, prosecutors said. After her arrest outside a Planned Parenthood in Nashville in 2022, Ms. Beatty Williams was charged with criminal trespass and sentenced to 30 days in jail, according to court documents. Her lawyer, Calvin Scholar, did not respond to a request for comment.

Should the person in question be going to prison? That's a matter of judgment. With respect to the egregious behavior of Levin and Campos-Duffy, we'll offer two basic points:

First, we know of no reason to think that Candidate Harris had anything to do with this prosecution—anything whatsoever.  Presumably, the egregious pair of Fox News "journalists" had framed this matter in the way they did for the obvious reason. 

Also this:

Fox viewers were told that Williams had "protested" and "prayed" in front of an abortion clinic, full and complete total stop. According to the news report, her actual conduct had gone perhaps a bit beyond that. 

It's hard to know why an actual news organization would allow people like Levin and Campos-Duffy to ever appear on its air. Fuller disclosure:

Even by its own ludicrous standards, the Fox & Friends Weekend program was especially demented that day. Most absurdly, the three friends who were present that morning conducted a braindead interview with the two college students who had interrupted a Harris rally in Wisconsin a few days before, apparently with shouts of "Jesus is Lord" and "Christ is King."

This may have been the dumbest "interview" ever conducted on TV. Among other highlights, the pair of pro-life college juniors said no one had explained to them why they were made to leave the event which they'd been loudly disrupting. 

One of these fervent young men even complained to the trio of friends that he'd been "pushed by an elderly woman" as he was made to leave! He said that Candidate Harris "kind of gave me an evil smirk" as he was being led out.

Eventually, the coup de grace, stated several times:

The unbelievably dumb Charlie Hurt said that, because their parents had paid tuition to the college where the event had taken place (Wisconsin-LaCrosse), the pair of boys should have been allowed to "state their opinion." 

It would be hard to get much dumber than that, but Hurt will surely try.

Journalistic and intellectual chaos has long since swallowed our nation's discourse, such as it ever was. This process has been underway for decades, a point we'll be discussing next week.

We wish we could transcribe that Fox & Friends Weekend show in more detail, but with the Internet Archive still partially down, we aren't able to do so. Still and all, it's much as sacred Thoreau once said.

In this famous passage from Walden, Thoreau was speaking about the acquisition of material goods, not about the acquisition of reliable information. Still, a basic point remains:

Men [sic] labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.

Thieves will break through and steal material treasures, Thoreau warned in that passage. In the modern setting, hackers will destroy the Internet Archive's ability to record the way other thieves—corporate thieves like Levin and Campos-Duffy—have stolen their viewers' access to a clear-eyed view of the world.

Under the stressors brought upon us by "the democratization of media," has our nation's project, imperfect though it always has been, begun to grind to a halt? Everything is possible, some other old book must have said.

In the current circumstance, one major "news org"—the Fox News Channel—is busy playing the ancient role of the thief. At another major org, the finer people have agreed to avert their gaze from this remarkable corporate misconduct.

Under the corporate direction of Suzanne Scott, the Fox News Channel behaves this way all through the course of the week. The New Yok Times won't report or discuss this fact. 

A type of thievery is involved there too as our nation's discourse fails.

Final question: Did Candidate Harris have anything to do with that prosecution? Did she even know about it?

We're going to guess that the answer is obvious. Levin struck like a thief in the night. Campos-Duffy also struck, early the next morning.