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.