Biden leads Trump, Quinnipiac says!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Also, NATO spending numbers: On the one hand, hallelujah! Then again, not so fast!

A brand-new Quinnipiac poll has Biden ahead of Trump by four points nationwide. On the other hand, a brand-new poll by Morning Consult has Trump ahead by four.

Just this once, we'll let you exult. Headline included, here's the start of the Quinnipiac report:

2024 Election: Biden Holds On To Slight Lead Over Trump, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds

In a hypothetical 2024 general election presidential matchup, President Joe Biden holds a small lead over former President Donald Trump with 49 percent of registered voters supporting Biden and 45 percent supporting Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released today.

This compares to Quinnipiac University's January 31 poll when Biden had 50 percent support and Trump had 44 percent support.

In today's poll, Democrats support Biden (93 - 4 percent), while Republicans support Trump (91 - 7 percent). Independents are divided, with 44 percent supporting Biden and 42 percent supporting Trump.

The report proceeds from there. Recent impressions:

On Tuesday night, we watched a chunk of Donald J. Trump's town hall event with Laura Ingraham. We were surprised, as we were in his last town hall event, by how cool, calm and collected the candidate managed to be.

The man who sends those all-caps tweets at 2 a.m. doesn't seem to show up for these events. He makes all the ridiculous claims and adopts all the ridiculous stances, but his demeanor is that of a fairly normal candidate.

With respect to those ridiculous stances, let's review the recent hubbub concerning NATO members. Trump continues to say or suggest that there's some such thing as "NATO dues"—and that he may turn Vladimir loose on countries which are in arrears.

As usual, the factual claims are a jumble. Headline included, here's the start of a February 12 report in the Washington Post:

See which NATO countries spend less than 2% of their GDP on defense

Donald Trump said over the weekend that he would encourage Russia to attack “delinquent” NATO allies that, in his judgment, spend too little on defense.

His remarks shocked leaders on both sides of the Atlantic—and mischaracterized how the 31-member alliance works.

NATO member nations all make payments to cover the operating expenses of the organization, which was founded in the aftermath of World War II to help Western Europe counter the Soviet Union with help from Canada and the United States. But they don’t pay membership fees to remain in the alliance, so there’s no delinquency to speak of.

Countries do, however, commit to spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense each year, with the goal of ensuring the alliance’s military readiness and deterring any potential attacks. The commitment is a guideline, not a requirement, that has been in place for nearly two decades.

That's the way the report started. Member nations "commit to spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense each year." As he continued, Derek Hawkins offered this overview of who's been keeping up:

Last year, 11 countries met or exceeded that target, according to NATO statistics. The rest spent smaller portions of their GDP on defense. (Iceland, the only member state with no armed forces, is omitted from the data set.)

Most of the countries that spent beyond the 2 percent mark either share a border with Russia or sit near the front lines of the Ukraine war. Trump’s insinuation that they’re not paying their share is false.

Two percent of GDP is the target, goal or commitment. Here are the percentages from 2023 for some of the larger NATO members:

Defense spending in 2023 (as a percentage of GDP):
Poland: 3.9%
United States: 3.49%
United Kingdom: 2.07%
France: 1.90%
Germany: 1.57%
Italy: 1.46%
Canada: 1.38%
Spain: 1.26%

The U.K. is slightly over the two percent target. France is slightly below it. 

Some other countries aren't all that close. This report from Forces.net offers an upbeat projection:

Nato: Which countries are paying their fair share on defence?

A record number of Nato nations are set to meet or exceed the alliance's spending target, but other members are still falling short.

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said 18 nations were expected to spend 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense in 2024—up from 11 in 2023 and a six-fold increase from 2014 when only three Nato allies hit the spending target.

The expected increase in defense spending also means European Nato allies as a whole will collectively spend 2% of their combined GDP—worth $380bn—on defense for the first time.

[...]

The latest increases follow a trend of gradual increases in defense spending across the alliance over the last decade—Nato allies in Europe invested only 1.47% of their collective GDP in defense in 2014.

We don't know who will spend how much. Later, we'll try to get with Calchas.

Blue tribe viewers are told that Donald J. Trump is nuts. Red tribe viewers are told that his tough talk about turning Vladimir loose is the perfect way to get recalcitrant NATO members to build their capacities up.

Quinnipiac says that Biden's ahead (though certainly not by enough). We're still focused on this question:

How vigorously will he campaign?

SEPARATION: Agamemnon, Achilles, Elon Musk!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2024

Also though, Brian Kilmeade's $950: For today, we'll only briefly discuss Brian Kilmeade's play, last Saturday night, with that unexplained $950.

In yesterday's report, we posted the transcript of what Kilmeade said. He's been at this for twenty-five years at this point. There's no sign that he'll ever stop.

Viewers of Klmeade's shows on the Fox News Channel don't know that they're getting misled when he behaves in this manner. For the fuller transcript of his remarks, click here to return to yesterday's offering. 

Here's the shortened version of what Kilmeade said:

Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

[...]

See, he slipped that in! He allows you to take $950, the tenth toughest. 

Kilmeade was talking about shoplifters at a Sacramento Target store. 

In a familiar if fuzzy statement, he explicitly said that Governor Newsom allows such people to walk away with $950 of merchandise! He seemed to say that Governor Newsom thinks that's A-OK!

The thrilling claim, and the dollar amount, are familiar to Fox News viewers. Tomorrow, we'll link you to a recent episode of The Five where the jugglers and clowns juggled and clowned with this specific topic and with that dollar amount.

For today, we'll only tell you this. Kilmeade was referring to the amount a shoplifter has to steal before he's likely to be charged with a felony in the state of California.

It sounds crazy when viewers are told that a shoplifter who steals less than that amount will only be charged with a misdemeanor. Because of Governor Newsom's role in the current Democratic Party hierarchy, Fox spear-checkers like Kilmeade have been chucking this spear of late. 

That dollar figure is constantly cited, as if it's the craziest thing in the world. Tomorrow, we'll visit The Five as that assembly of jugglers and clowns chucked this spear a few weeks back, deceiving viewers in the process. 

For today, we'll only show you this—this list of the threshold amount for a felony charge in a selected array of states:

Threshold amount for a felony charge:
Texas: $2500
South Carolina: $2000
Alabama: $1500
Georgia: $1500
California: $950 
Florida: $750

That's a selective listing of states. Let it be said that forty (40) of the fifty states require a higher threshold amount for a felony charge than California currently does, with Texas (and Wisconsin) topping the list. 

In fact, as Newsom said—and as Kilmeade glossed—California has one of the ten lowest cut-off points for a felony charge among the fifty states. The threshold amount is higher in forty states than in California!

Florida's threshold amount is $750. On the basis of that minor difference, Governor DeSantis was portrayed by Kilmeade last Saturday night as the great heroic avenger, while Newsom was spun as a clown.

So it goes as red tribe viewers get conned on the Fox News Channel by trusted spear-chuckers like Kilmeade. (For the record, the viewers in question don't know that they're getting conned.)

For the record, it's the great god known as Separation who makes such conduct possible. We'll offer more on the complexities of this ongoing matter tomorrow. 

For today, we thought we needed to show you the source of "The Rage of Achilles." That's the title which sits atop Book One in the Robert Fagles translation of the western world's first great poem of war, the war poem known as the Iliad.

In Tuesday's report, we showed you the way Agamemnon lord of men exploded in anger at the vaunted seer, Calchas.  In Book One of the great war poem, Calchas successfully reads the flight of birds—and Agamemnon explodes in a rage:  

So he declared and sat down. But among them rose
the fighting son of Atreus, lord of the far-flung kingdoms,
Agamemnon—furious, his dark heart filled to the brim,
blazing with anger now, his eyes like searing fire.
With a sudden, killing look he wheeled on Calchas first:
"Seer of misery! Never a word that works to my advantage!
Always misery warms your heart, your prophecies—
never a word of profit said or brought to pass."

Why is Agamemnon so angry? Because Calchas has correctly divined the cause of the plague afflicting the Achaeans' camp. The god Apollo is enraged because Agamemnon has stolen the daughter of a priest to serve as his sexual slave—and when the elderly priest came to offer a priceless ransom, the lord of men refused to give the young woman back.

The young woman's name was Chryseis. This is the ugly sexual politics which lies at the heart of this ancient poem. 

Today, no one would explicitly defend such conduct. In the pages of the Iliad, we know of no sign that anyone thinks that such behavior is, as a general matter, in any way morally wrong.

How different were the mores then? Here's Agamemnon's fuller speech, continued from above:

With a sudden, killing look he wheeled on Calchas first:
"Seer of misery! Never a word that works to my advantage!
Always misery warms your heart, your prophecies—
never a word of profit said or brought to pass.
Now, again, you divine god's will for the armies,
bruit it about, as fact, why the deadly Archer
multiplies our pains: because I, I refused
that glittering price for the young girl Chryseis. 
Indeed, I prefer her by far, the girl herself.
I want her mine in my own house! I rank her higher
than Clytemnestra, my wedded wife—she's nothing less
in build or breeding, in mind or works of hand.
But I am willing to give her back, even so,
if that is best for all. What I really want
is to keep my people safe, not see them dying.
But fetch me another prize, and straight off too,
else I alone of the Argives go without my honor.
That would be a disgrace."

Agamemnon says that he prefers "the young girl" even to Clytemnestra. Honor demands that he receive some other prize if Chryseis is taken away.

So it went in the days when the Achaeans fought on the plains outside Troy. Yesterday afternoon, we showed you the way this component of human nature survives today, in muted if deeply pitiful form, in one of the gruesome primetime programs aired on the Fox News Channel.

This conduct goes on and on and on, as we'll continue to show you. We still have to show you Greg Gutfeld's take on Elon Musk's wonderful sense of humor, though that will require us to go somewhere we don't want to go.

This garbage can conduct continues apace, in primetime, on the Fox News Channel. At our finer blue tribe organs, no one says a word.

Brian Kilmeade cons his red tribe viewers. Failla and Gutfeld bring in the misogyny-adjacent smut.

So it goes on this gruesome "news channel." Within our more refined blue camp, the great god Silence prevails.

Tomorrow: The wages of Separation 

Governor Botox, come on down!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The soul of a certain news channel: At the risk of beating a dead horse, we thought you might want to see the type of primetime news analysis offered on the Fox News Channel this past Monday night.

We're speaking about the Gutfeld! show which aired that night at 10 p.m., 7 p.m. out on the coast. 

Producers had assembled the usual panel of expert analysts. This being Presidents Day, Greg Gutfeld opened the show by defining the evening's first topic in the manner shown:

GUTFELD (2/19/24): Tonight, we honor all those who have held the nation's highest office. Well, unless you don't like them. Then you destroy them.

Judge Arthur Engeron just handed down a $350 million first-of-its-kind settlement against Donald Trump, after finding that Trump inflated the value of his real estate when applying for loans. 

The judge released his opinion six days before the trial began, which makes it a show trial except instead of Judge Judy, we get someone that no one wants to have sex with.

[PHOTO OF JUDGE ENGORON APPEARS]

No one wants to have sex with the judge! At 10:01, the program was off to its standard high-minded start. 

Moments later, Gutfeld was describing the judge as "this proud legal eagle whose drooling grin has the look of the forcibly medicated." Water was finding its level at this point in time. 

For various reasons, this particular legal case offers plenty of opportunity for serious debate and discussion among people who may actually know what they're talking about. Panelists of that type are rarely booked to appear on the primetime Gutfeld! show.

In this case, the program's host quoted a financial observer who said this verdict will drive big investors out of New York. As the clock was reading 10:05, this inspired the program's host to break out the evening's first nickname:

GUTFELD: But not to fear, Governor Botox is here! 

Kathy Hochul assures the business community that everything is fine. Law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are businesspeople have nothing to worry about.

That's what Governor Botox had said! This seems to be who and what—and apparently all—this 59-year-old Fox News star is really capable of.

The Fox News star is 59! This seems to be about as far as he has managed to get. 

In fairness, even Gutfeld may have been mildly taken aback by what occurred when he threw to comedian Jimmy Failla during this first discussion. 

Failla now hosts his own primetime Fox News show on Saturday and Sunday nights. He started his analysis of the Engoron verdict with these observations:

FAILLA: There's a lot of people out there, OK. who hate Trump so they don't have to look inward at the things they hate about themselves. 

Like if you grew up here in New York, you knew Trump was a part of New York. He had a show on NBC for fifteen years. He wasn't a fringe loony in a shed.  He was Trump.

So I think two pieces of advice. One, he can get out of this mess in like ten seconds if he just starts selling pictures of Melania's feet on OnlyFans. OK?

I'm good for like five grand right now, OK? Melania, if you're watching, and I know you are.

That's where his analysis started. (For the record, OnlyFans is said to be "an internet content subscription service...used primarily by sex workers who produce pornography.")

That's where the primetime analysis started. Just a guess, based on long experience:

To our ear, the audience didn't seem to understand the reference to OnlyFans. Now Failla turned to this second observation, generating a strong reaction:

FAILLA (continuing directly): The only person I'll give any credence to is Kathy Hochul, if only because— 

I don't agree with her politically. But if you're ever in a pinch, and you need to lose a boner immediately—

[BURST OF AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

—she's undefeated. She is undefeated!

That's what you do if you're in a pinch! After pausing for audience laughter, Failla continued his thought:

FAILLA (continuing directly): Like you're going to an important meeting, like parent teacher conferences, and you got a woody, you bust out the Hochul! Smooth sailing!

[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]

GUTFELD: I didn't see that, uh, coming, so to speak.

FAILLA: Think about it. That is her claim to fame. She's the one chick Cuomo didn't try to bang!

So it went as this garbage-can "cable news" aggregation struggled to find its level.

Sad! The mental world of this program's host is populated by people like President Poopy Pants and Governor Botox. On this occasion, along came the new star Failla to take his sour and angry host down several more levels of the world.

This is who and what these panelists frequently seem to be. This goes on, night after night, and seldom is heard a discouraging word about this squalid primetime conduct from within our struggling nation's finer and higher news orgs.

At any rate, a bit of credit to the 59-year-old Gutfeld himself. Though he seemed to be caught by surprise, he managed to include an instant double entendre in the rejoinder we've posted above.

For the record, there's nothing especially new about any this. Within the realm of cable news, we'd date it to Chris Matthews' peculiar frisking of liberal women on the Hardball shows of the late 1990s.

There's nothing new about the pitiful gender politics, or about the press corps' attendant silence. The stupidity is simply getting deeper, and the silence is getting more vast.

To watch Failla's disquisition, you should start by clicking here.

SEPARATION: Calchas faded from the scene!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Kilmeade is forever: In Book One of the western canon's first extant poem of war, Calchas, who reads the flight of birds, offers a sound assessment.

As we recorded yesterday, Agamemnon lord of men explodes in anger at the seer. With no explanation offered, Calchas largely disappears from the Iliad after that.

In Book Two, Calchas does return to the text, but only in a recollection offered by Odysseus, raider of cities. Speaking to a panicky council, Odysseus recalls the prophecy Calchas had offered nine years before, even before the siege of Troy had started.

This is Odysseus, in real time before the council, quoting what Calchas once said:

[W]hen those terrible, monstrous omens burst in
On the victims we were offering to the gods,
Calchas swiftly revealed the will of Zeus:
"Why struck dumb now, my long-hatred Achaeans?
Zeus who rules the world has shown us an awesome sign.

[...] 

As the snake devoured the sparrow with her brood,
eight and the mother made the ninth, she'd borne them all,
so we will fight in Troy that many years and then,
then in the tenth we'll take her broad streets." 

So that day the prophet revealed the future—
and now, look, by god, it all comes to pass!

A snake had devoured a brood of sparrows. Nine years later, Odysseus recalled the heartening assessment Calchas had offered in real time.

Odysseus rallied the troops with that speech, but it was a recollection. After Calchas is threatened by the furious Agamemnon, he never appears in the poem to report his assessments again.

So it went for the best of all the seers. Within our own modern-day "journalistic" context, practices at the Fox News Channel have been substantially different. 

Consider the history of Brian Kilmeade, one of the "cable news" channel's longest-serving "presenters" and stars.

Tomorrow and Friday, we'll return to some of Kilmeade's recent presentations. For today, who in the world is Brian Kilmeade? 

According to the leading authority, the overview looks like this:

Brian Kilmeade (born May 7, 1964) is an American television and radio presenter and political commentator for Fox News. On weekdays he co-hosts the morning show, Fox & Friends, and he hosts the Fox News Radio program The Brian Kilmeade Show. On weekends, he hosts One Nation with Brian Kilmeade, which premiered January 29, 2022. 

He has authored or co-authored non-fiction and fiction books.

Kilmeade is a TV "presenter." On weekday mornings, he co-hosts the three-hour show, Fox & Friends. On Saturday nights, he hosts his own primetime show, One Nation with Brian Kilmeade.

He also hosts a daily Fox News Radio program, The Brian Kilmeade Show. It runs from 9 o'clock each weekday morning right on up to noon.

There's nothing wrong with such employment, until such time as there is.  The leading authority offers this more detailed account of the talker's career after graduation from college in 1986:

He began his career as a correspondent on Channel One News, a daily national high school television news program. He later served as an anchor and host for KHSL-TV in Chico, California. He co-hosted The Jim Brown Show on KLSD, an all-sports radio network. In 1993, Kilmeade joined Jim Brown as part of the announcing team for the inaugural Ultimate Fighting Championship event, conducting post-fight interviews. He moved into the play-by-play role for UFC 2 and UFC 3 in 1994.

Kilmeade was a freelance sports anchor for WVIT (NBC) in Hartford, Connecticut, beginning in 1997. He was a sideline reporter for MSG's coverage of Major League Soccer, specifically for the MetroStars.

Later, he worked as a feature reporter and anchor for NewSport where he hosted NewSport Journal, a daily magazine show for the national sports network. He also anchored Scoreboard Central, a live half-hour general sports program. According to his website biography, he has 10 years' experience as a stand-up comedian.

Since 1998 he has co-hosted Fox's cable morning television show, Fox and Friends...He is a frequent panelist on The Five airing nightly at 5 p.m. eastern on FNC. He also hosts the Fox News Radio program The Brian Kilmeade Show and hosts "What Made America Great" on Fox Nation. As of 2022, he also hosts One Nation with Brian Kilmeade, weekends on Fox News.

Kilmeade emerged from the world of "general sports" and Ultimate Fighting Championships. Remarkably, he has been co-host of Fox & Friends for more than twenty-five years, dating back to the program's inception in 1998.

Also this:

According to his website biography, he also has ten years' experience as a stand-up comedian! Of course, that seems to be true of everyone at the new, reinvented Fox.

Full disclosure:

There's no reason why someone with a background in sports couldn't make a successful transition to the world of global news. Also, there's no reason why someone with ten years' experience as a comedian couldn't become a capable commentator, for six hours each weekday morning, on major world affairs.

There's no reason why someone couldn't do that—but how has it turned out in this case? In the next two days, we'll report and let you decide.

At issue will be recent presentations and proclamation concerning the runaway state of urban crime. As we showed you yesterday, Kilmeade introduced a segment last Saturday night by saying this:

KILMEADE (2/17/24): Major cities, liberal cities, are overrun with crime. Everywhere you look. Think about it. You've got carjackings, robberies, thefts, smash-and-grabs. Every city! You don't even know where it is, you just recognize the criminals...

You've got places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

[BEGIN VIDEOTAPE]

NEWSOM: As we're checking out, the woman says, "Oh, he's just walking out. He didn't pay for that."

I said, "Why didn't you stop him?"

She goes, "The governor lowered the threshold. There's no accountability."

I said, "That's just not true." I said, "We have the tenth toughest—$950, the tenth toughest in America. Go look it up." 

No one gives a damn about that.

[END VIDEOTAPE]

KILMEADE: See, he slipped that in! He allows you to take $950, the tenth toughest. 

Is that OK?  Maybe if it's your store it's not OK! 

So Kilmeade said, while playing some videotape, concerning the Golden State governor. 

According to Kilmeade, people like Newsom think it's OK when shoplifters "take whatever they want." In fact, he allows them to take $950 worth of merchandise! Newsom just slipped that in!

Tomorrow, we'll look at that specific claim—a claim which is transparently bogus, and quite typically so. On Friday, we'll go back and look at the gonzo claims about urban crime Kilmeade offered on his February 3 primetime program, partnering with John Walsh.

The woods are lovely, but also dark and deep—and that is nowhere more true than on the Fox News Channel. On that reinvented "news" channel, a parade of low-grade comedians now offer pleasing arrays of bogus facts and mandated bogus claims.

Kilmeade has labored at this task for the past twenty-five years! Calchas disappears from the first war poem, but Kilmeade and his trademark dissembling seem to be forever.

He's part of a crew of former wrestlers and low-grade comedians who now deliver the "news" at this new version of Fox. The misstatements go on, day after day and night after night, and few people at our finer blue tribe orgs say as much as a single word about it.

Calchas read the flight of birds. Kilmeade works from script.

Pretty much nobody says a word! As current journalistic arrangements show, our current journalistic culture—our culture of massive separation—tends to be very much like that.

Tomorrow: $950, he said

Friday: An unfortunate side of John Walsh

Joe Biden arrested Rep. Comer's star witness!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Jesse Watters in action: Unexpectedly, we lost a large chunk of time today. For that reason, we're going to hand this first part off to the folks at Mediaite.

Below, you see the headline on the Mediate report. Reporter Jennifer Bowers Bahney is discussing a situation on the Fox News Channel program, The Five, which we've discussed before:

Gutfeld and Pirro Shout Down Co-Host Who Brings Up Trump’s Criminal Charges: ‘No, No No!’

The incident in question occurred on yesterday's broadcast of The Five. Here's the way it works:

The Five is the Fox News Channel 5 p.m. weekday program. It features a five-member panel, evenly divided between four (4) Fox News types and one (1) lonely liberal.

Yesterday, Jessica Tarlov sat in the liberal chair. At one point, the 4-to-1 advantage wasn't enough for the panel's four (4) Fox types. As often happens when Tarlov starts making strong pundits, several of the Fox News types decided it was time to start interrupting in unison.

When they all decide to interrupt at once, we think of a famous scene from Hitchcock's film, Notorious. (It's the scene where the Ingrid Bergman character comes to see that she's being poisoned.)

That said, it's a pitiful thing to see when they all interrupt on The Five. For Bahney's report on yesterday's scrum, you can just click here.

With that, we move on to the work of Jesse Watters, starting yesterday on that very same program. When Tarlov mentioned the arrest of Rep. Comer's star witness, Watters gave the world a hint of where he'd be going later.

We join the nonsense in progress:

WATTERS (2/19/24): The Bidens are ripping people off, and then they're getting away with it.

TARLOV: Can we talk about the FBI informant that was a total con?

WATTERS: It's not a con! [CONDESCENDINGLY] He's arresting the guy that blew the whistle on him, Jessica.

Say what? Could that be where Watters was planning to go with this developing topic?

Sure enough! During last evening's 8 p.m. hour, on the eponymous program Jesse Watters Primetime, the slippery fellow made his meaning A BIT more clear:

WATTERS (2/19/24): Fox News Alert! The FBI informant who Biden arrested for fingering him in the Ukraine scheme has hired two high-powered attorneys to represent him...

This guy is not playing around. They have a hearing tomorrow where they will try to get the FBI informant released from custody.

There you see it—the official story! To wit:

Joe Biden arrested Rep. Comer's star witness! Biden arrested Comer's star witness because the star witness had fingered him in the Ukraine scheme!

That account of what occurred will go forth to voters across Red Nation. It neatly fits with the developing theory according to which Biden is just like Putin and Donald J. Trump is like the late Alexei Navalny.

At this point, a bit of disclosure:

Watters is a much more fully developed character than his angry, sour partner in bro, Greg Gutfeld. He traffics behind a slippery mask.

More on each fellow to come.

SEPARATION: It didn't go well for Calchas the seer!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Brian Kilmeade had it much better: It doesn't go well for Calchas the seer right at the start of the Iliad.

As we noted yesterday, of all the seers who could read the flight of birds, Calchas was clearest, most knowing, by far.

Within the war poem's first hundred lines, Calchas is asked to tell the Achaean council why Apollo has visited a plague upon their camp. Assured by Achilles that he'll be protected, he rises in council and delivers this (accurate) assessment:

The seer took heart
and this time he spoke out, bravely: "Beware—
he casts no blame for a vow we failed, a sacrifice.
The god's enraged because Agamemnon spurned his priest,
he refused to free his daughter, he refused the ransom.
That's why the Archer sends us pains and he will send us more
and never drive this shameful destruction from the Argives,
not till we give back the girl with sparkling eyes
to her loving father—no price, no ransom paid—
and carry a sacred hundred bulls to Chryse town.
Then we can calm the god, and only then appease him."

For the record, Calchas had divined the cause of the plague correctly. 

Agamemnon lord of men had insulted the aged priest to Apollo whose daughter he had enslaved. That was the offense which had occasioned the plague. 

As usual, Calchas had spoken correctly. But things did not go well for him. The lord of men was enraged:

So he declared and sat down. But among them rose
the fighting son of Atreus, lord of the far-flung kingdoms,
Agamemnon—furious, his dark heart filled to the brim,
blazing with anger now, his eyes like searing fire.
With a sudden, killing look he wheeled on Calchas first:
"Seer of misery! Never a word that works to my advantage!
Always misery warms your heart, your prophecies—
never a word of profit said or brought to pass."

With no Deep State or mainstream press to blame, the lord of men blamed the seer. As he continued, he offered to give "the young girl" back, but only at a price which triggered Achilles' great rage.

So it went among the Argives in this, the tenth year of their siege of Troy. When Calchas rose and correctly divined the will of Apollo, he was met with "a sudden, killing look" from Agamemnon, lord of men.

Last Saturday night, things went better for Brian Kilmeade on his eponymous, primetime TV show on the Fox News Channel. 

In yesterday's report, we transcribed the way he introduced a segment in which he interviewed Florida's infallible governor, Governor Ron DeSantis. The chyron below him said this:

LAWLESSNESS IN LIBERAL CITIES

It's a favorite theme on the Fox News Channel. Handled in a journalistically respectable way, it qualifies as an actual serious topic.

Needless to say, the topic wouldn't be handled that way on this primetime "cable news" program. Just to refresh you, here's what the Fox star said as the segment began:

KILMEADE (2/17/24): Major cities, liberal cities, are overrun with crime. Everywhere you look. Think about it. You've got carjackings, robberies, thefts, smash-and-grabs. Every city! You don't even know where it is, you just recognize the criminals...

You've got places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

Say what?  In these liberal cities, thieves "take whatever they want" from big box store—and people like California governor Gavin Newsom actually think that's OK?

The insinuation was clear. As a more general matter, this is a favorite theme on the Fox News Channel, with standard journalistic practice frequently honored in the breach.

So it would go this night. Kilmeade now played a piece of videotape—videotape which was apparently supposed to support what the Fox star had just insinuated or said.

The videotape did no such thing. Here's the background on this piece of videotape:

On some unspecified occasion, Newsom had been in the checkout line at a Target store in Sacramento when a shoplifting incident occurred. The clerk who was running the checkout line hadn't realized who he was.

In late January of this year, Newsom described what happened on that occasion. The stars on Fox have been toying with the videotape ever since.

Kilmeade now played part of that videotape. That produced this fuller transcript of the way this segment started:

KILMEADE (2/17/24): Major cities, liberal cities, are overrun with crime. Everywhere you look. Think about it. You've got carjackings, robberies, thefts, smash-and-grabs. Every city! You don't even know where it is, you just recognize the criminals...

You've got places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

[BEGIN VIDEOTAPE]

NEWSOM: As we're checking out, the woman says, "Oh, he's just walking out. He didn't pay for that."

I said, "Why didn't you stop him?"

 She goes, "The governor lowered the threshold. There's no accountability."

I said, "That's just not true." I said, "We have the tenth toughest—$950, the tenth toughest in America. Go look it up." 

No one gives a damn about that.

[END VIDEOTAPE]

KILMEADE: See, he slipped that in! He allows you to take $950, the tenth toughest. 

Is that OK?  Maybe if it's your store it's not OK! But Governor Ron DeSantis will not let that happen in Florida. He's cracking down hard on crime with a brand-new bill...

At this point, up popped the segment's hero, Governor DeSantis. But let's go back and think about what Kilmeade had already said.

(To watch this entire segment, you should start by clicking here.)

According to Kilmeade's insinuation, the videotape shows that Governor Newsom thinks it's OK when shoplifters "take whatever they like." It's ginormously clear that the videotape shows precisely the opposite.

In the fuller videotape, Newsom goes on to ask to speak to the clerk's manager about the policy of letting shoplifters walk. Then too, there was that curious statement, in which Newsom makes this somewhat fizzy claim—a claim Kilmeade didn't flesh out:

"We have the tenth toughest—$950, the tenth toughest in America. Go look it up." 

California is the tenth tougher, he says. Kilmeade blows right past the unexplained statement as he delivers his body blow to the feckless Golden State guv.

("No one gives a damn about that," Newsom says. Kilmeade gives enough of a damn about Newsom's statement to leave it unexplained.)

Tomorrow, we're going to show you what Newsom meant by the statement in question. Also, we're going to answer an obvious question:

Who is Brian Kilmeade?

Way back in the Late Bronze Age, Calchas was able to make accurate statements by reading the flight of birds. With all the tools of our own Information Age at his disposal, Kilmeade goes on the air six days of the week and delivers bullsh*t like that.

(Key point: Red tribe viewers are being misled when this bilge is dispensed—and red tribe viewers don't know that.)

Calchas was met by Agamemnon's rage when he made his accurate statement. Kilmeade's keister was kissed by Ron DeSantis as his dissembling continued.

So it goes in this, our so-called Information Age. So it goes thanks to the one great god of our broken journalistic practice, the great god Separation.

Tomorow: The life of Brian

SEPARATION: Calchas could read the flight of birds!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Kilmeade works for Fox: The European world's first poem of war gets off to a blistering start.

With apologies, Agamemnon, lord of men, has stolen the daughter of a priest to Apollo to serve as his sexual servant. Soon thereafter, the elderly priest arrives at the Achaeans' camp and offers an array of gifts—"a priceless ransom." 

The elderly priest was named Chryses. "He begged the whole Achaean army but most of all the two supreme commanders, Atreus' two sons." 

Agamemnon was one of those commanders. Chryses begs him "to set my daughter free, my dear one."

 "All ranks of Achaeans cried out their assent," but Agamemnon explodes in anger, and the "terrified" priest departs.  But as Chryses "trails away in silence down the shore where the breakers crash and drag," he offers a prayer to Apollo, and Apollo visits a plague upon the Achaeans' camp.

Within the Robert Fagles translation, this plague is pictured as a hailstorm of arrows from Apollo's terrible swift sword:

First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves—
and the corpse-fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.

We're barely sixty lines into the text as those corpse-fires burn. The poem is off to a very fast start, at which point Calchas, who's skilled at reading the flight of birds, is introduced in the narrative.

Achilles has risen to speak to a gathering of the troops. He suggests that they "question a holy man" about the plague—"someone to tell us why Apollo rages so."

So the swift runner proposed, and Calchas rose among them:

So he proposed
and down he sat again as Calchas rose among them,
Thestor's son, the clearest by far of all the seers
who scan the flight of birds. He knew all things that are,
all things that are past and all that are to come,
the seer who had led the Argive ships to Troy... 

Of all who scanned the flight of birds, Calchas was the most knowing by far. So it was, in the Late Bronze Age, as warriors outside the walls of Troy sought information and guidance. 

Calchas could read the flight of birds! Here today, within our severely divided nation, our neighbors and friends in Red America may occasionally turn to less reliable sources.

To cite one example, they may turn to Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel, from whom they repeatedly hear such remarks as the ones he authored on his primetime Fox program this weekend.

Somewhat ironically, the program is called One Nation with Brian Kilmeade. The program airs at 9 p.m. Eastern every Saturday night. Below, we show you how one segment began on last Saturday's show. 

Kilmeade interviewed Ron DeSantis during the segment in question. Returning from a commercial break, an excited Kilmeade introduced the segment in the manner shown:

KILMEADE (2/17/24): Major cities, liberal cities, are overrun with crime. Everywhere you look. Think about it. You've got carjackings, robberies, thefts, smash-and-grabs. Every city! You don't even know where it is, you just recognize the criminals...

You've got places like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. Thieves walk right out the front door and take whatever they want. And people like California governor Gavin Newsom think that's OK?

If you want to watch the entire segment, you can start by clicking here.

Every city, the excited star said. In fact, it was every liberal city. His introduction to the segment ran above this chyron:

LAWLESSNESS IN LIBERAL CITIES

Every such city is overrun with crime! And people like Governor Newsom think the whole thing's OK!

(In homes across the fruited plain, red tribe viewers had no idea that they were being misled.)

Kilmeade then played a piece of videotape recording the aftermath of an actual shoplifting incident. By happenstance, Governor Newsom had been present to witness the act of shoplifting—and the immediate problem is this:

Based on the videotape which Kilmeade played, it's clear that Newsom doesn't think it's OK when people "take whatever they want." As such, Kilmeade's use of the videotape was one version of a demagogic practice we mentioned last week, the apparent theory being this:

Once you tell millions of viewers what it is they're going to see, they won't notice when the "evidence" you present actually shows something completely different. 

So it goes on red tribe cable, and sometimes even on blue.

As it turns out, Calchas gives an accurate report to the Achaean council at the start of The Iliad. Again and again, then again and again, the fight of birds is a more reliable source of information than the inaccurate or misleading claims heard on the Fox News Channel.

Red tribe voters are routinely deceived by Fox News—by the likes of Kilmeade.

Over here in the blue tribe's world, we have a set of problems too. But we'll be focused on the Fox News Channel at the start of this week.

That said, our own blue tribe may soon be forced to come to terms with the need for a serious reckoning. Tomorrow, we'll start to show you what was wrong with the various things Kilmeade said—but we'll also be asking, all this week, why the major organs of our own blue tribe have tolerated this type of misconduct down through the many long years.

A key point:

Red tribe viewers watching Fox shows don't know that they're being misled! In fairness, we blue tribe viewers may have a somewhat similar problem at times—and we may be steeped in denial concerning the way our own tribal culture has been.

Can we blue tribe denizens come to see ourselves more clearly through the medium of great literature? Can The Iliad help us see ourselves as we actually are? How about Plato's Seventh Letter? How about I, Claudius?

Tomorrow, we'll continue with the effort by Calchas to develop information based on the flight of birds. The Iliad gets off to a blistering start as Calchas divines the truth of the matter and Agamemnon explodes.

Also, we'll wonder when the tribunes of our own blue world will finally rise in protest against the round the clock dissembling of seers who are less reliable than Calchas was—less reliable by far.

Final point:

We'll be filing this week's reports under the rubric of SEPARATION. What role does "separation" play here? What do we mean by that?

Tomorrow: Almost everything Kilmeade said in that segment was bogus. 

The same is true of the segment he'd staged, two weeks before, with John Walsh of the newly revived America's Most Wanted.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON: Hannity doctors his explanation!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Red tribe viewers get conned: Yesterday afternoon, we offered a report beneath this catchy headline:

Comer's star witness crashes and burns!

In our view, Kevin Drum's post about this matter offered the most succinct synopsis of what had occurred. Headline included, Kevin had offered this:

Yet another Biden crime story goes up in smoke

[...]

The informant in question is Alexander Smirnov, who retailed a preposterous story to the FBI about Burisma paying bribes of $5 million each to Hunter and Joe Biden for "protection." James Comer and Chuck Grassley got wind of this and demanded a copy of the FBI interview so they could investigate whether Smirnov's accusation was being taken seriously. The whole thing took the right-wing noise machine by storm.

Today Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI. The indictment came from David Weiss, the special prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case. Smirnov was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after arriving from overseas.

Smirnov had been regarded as a star witness in the House GOP's attempt to find a reason to impeach President Biden. 

Just like that, Rep. Comer's star witness seemed to have crashed and burned! But in fact, he wasn't just Comer's star witness. As we showed you, Kevin had linked to a tweet by Matthews Gertz of Media Matters, and Gertz had offered this:

GERTZ (2/15/24): Sean Hannity's Fox News show ran with this informant's claims in at least 85 separate segments last year, including 28 monologues. He said they proved Joe Biden engaged in "public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.”

According to Gertz, Smirnov had been Hannity's star witness too! For a fuller report on this matter by Gertz, you can just click here.

Sean Hannity's star witness had also crashed and burned! Along the way in our own report, we issued The Alexander Smirnov Challenge:

We wondered if Fox News viewers would ever be told about this arrest at all.

We wondered if Fox News viewers would ever be told. Today, we can tell you this: 

In a segment which started midway through last evening's program, Hannity did tell his program's viewers about Smirnov's arrest. But as he did, he instantly launched a slippery attempt to justify his past reliance on the things the star witness had said.

Just like that, Hannity doctored a quote by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), making it seem that Raskin had also vouched for Smirnov's claims in the past.  Rather, he had "edited" a videotaped statement by Raskin. Hannity had edited the statement in such a way as to make it seem that Raskin had vouched for Smirnov's claims, just as he himself had done.

We probably shouldn't say that Raskin's quote had been "doctored." We actually saw the sort of abrupt "edit" which made us think that the fuller statement by Raskin would likely show something quite different from the impression Hannity was trying to leave.

Sure enough! This morning, we found the fuller videotape of what Raskin actually said on the day in question. In his fuller statement that day, Raskin made it clear that there was no reason to assume the accuracy of what Smirnov had said.

We also found this written press release by Rep. Raskin on that same day (June 5, 2023). As in his videotaped public statement, the press release includes the reasons for doubting what Smirnov had said. 

We may start next week's report with this a look at this familiar type of deception. For today, we'll tell you this:

At least on the Hannity show, red tribe viewers were told that Rep. Comer's former star witness has now been arrested. 

That said, they were instantly misled about the matter thanks to Hannity's ridiculous "edit" of Raskin's longer statement. So it frequently goes (though not always), in the early morning hours and then again in primetime, when red tribe viewers watch Fox.

For the record, those red tribe viewers don't know that they're being misled. They don't know that some or many of the things they're being told are grossly misleading, or may just be flatly false.

They also don't know about the types of information which are being withheld. For better or worse, similar problems sometimes afflict us blue tribe viewers when we watch programs on MSNBC, the "cable news" channel which has been designed to push preferred blue tribe narratives.

That press release by Rep. Raskin was dated June 5, 2023. That was the very day when Raskin made the videotaped statement which Hannity craftily clipped.

Red tribe viewers get misinformed in such way on a regular basis. Once again, an important point:

They don't know that they're getting conned! Indeed, several such callers showed up on C-Span's Washington Journal this morning, angrily repeating the bogus talking points they had been fed last night.

(We're not sure that we've ever heard so many angry phone calls to C-Span, or phone calls which were so angry.)

This is a problem with current arrangements in the realm of "cable news." We expect to discuss this more next week—and for the record, this isn't simply a red tribe thing.

In certain ways, our own blue tribe is involved in this breakdown too. Is there anyone on MSNBC whose conduct is as bad as Sean's?

We can't rightly say that there is, though that's setting the bar quite low.

If you want to see Sean's pseudo-confession on last night's show, you can start by clicking here. You'll quickly see the videotape of (one tiny part of) what Raskin actually said. 

You'll instantly see that bit of tape. Careful—you're being misled!

SATURDAY: Ezra featured on Fox & Friends!

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2024

His view was correctly reported: We're going to guess that this was Ezra Klein's debut on the Fox News Channel morning show, Fox & Friends Weekend.

For the record, the view he expressed in his latest column was not misstated or misrepresented by the trio of friends.

At this site, we had already pulled that new column, most likely for discussion today. In that column, Ezra calls for President Biden to withdraw from his search for a second term. 

He reads the essay in his own voice. Headline included, here are some relevant passages:

Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden

[...]

I’ve had my own journey on this. I’ve written a number of columns about how Biden keeps proving pundits wrong, about how he’s proved me wrong....I’d grown wary of underestimating him.

We had to wait till this year—till now, really—to see Biden even begin to show what he’d be like on the campaign trail. And what I think we’re seeing is that he is not up for this. He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago. That’s not insider reporting on my part. Go watch a speech he gave in Pennsylvania, kicking off his campaign in 2019. And then go watch the speech he gave last month, in Valley Forge, kicking off his election campaign. No comparison here. Both speeches are on YouTube, and you can see it. The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.

But even given that, I was stunned when his team declined a Super Bowl interview. Biden is not up by 12 points. He can’t coast to victory here. He is losing. He is behind in most polls. He is behind, despite everything people already know about Donald Trump. He needs to make up ground. If he does not make up ground, Trump wins.

The Super Bowl is one of the biggest audiences you will ever have. And you just skip it? You just say no?

[...]

I want to say this clearly: I like Biden. I think he’s been a good president. I think he is a good president. I don’t like having this conversation. And I know a lot of liberals, a lot of Democrats are going to be furious at me for this show.

But to say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age? If you have really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you. In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see. It is right in front of them, and it is also shaping how Biden and his campaign are acting.

On Fox & Friends, they teased the topic at 6:56, discussed it at 7:10. They played the audiotape of Ezra reading his column in his own voice. His views were correctly reported.

There are several parts of the passages we've posted to which we'll return below. First, though, let it be said:

Ezra isn't the only anti-Trump New York Times columnist who has expressed similar views within the past week. In last Sunday's print editions, Ross Douthat called for Biden to step aside. Then too, there's Pamela Paul.

In yesterday's print editions, Pamela Paul seemed to assume that Biden will be the Democratic candidate. She then offered her views as to the manner in which he should campaign.

That said, she followed Klein down one winding road. Headline included, here's part of what she said:

Biden Must Win. But How?

[...]

[T]his isn’t 2020. Biden cannot run the same campaign he did last time, when all he had to do was appear normal. Back then he still had some of the Obama sheen; today, he and his vice president are both unpopular. Little in his first term seems to be serving him well. Though he’s done a good job as president and the economy is thriving, few give him credit. And multiple polls show him running behind Donald Trump.

Most troubling, he’s too old and he looks tired. My brain wants to delete everything it’s heard from people who have spent time in his presence in the last year. (It’s not encouraging.) Only 23 percent of voters, according to a January NBC poll, say Biden is better than Trump on “having the necessary mental and physical health to be president,” a statistic that, no matter which way you bend it, doesn’t mean anything good.

[...]

First, the issues that matter to voters. The border remains Biden’s biggest weak spot—then again, Trump didn’t fix the border, either. But rather than simply blame Republicans for the failed border deal or more of the same dithering and pandering to the progressive wing, Biden needs to take concrete measures, through executive orders, to address the crisis now. He needs to articulate a longer-term plan to put before Congress in his second term. He needs, at long last, to say: Here is what my administration will do to secure the border and prevent uncontrolled migration.

[...]

Early polls are unreliable, and a lot can change in nine months. Once Trump quashes Nikki Haley and secures his party’s nomination, the reality of Trump will set in. With four criminal trials coming up and as Trump’s increasingly batty assertions reach beyond the ears of his disciples, he will surely set off alarms among those voters who favor sanity.

But Biden can’t wait for that to happen. Trump is running like he’s already president. Biden needs to act with similar urgency. He needs to talk about the future. He needs to start making the threat of a second Trump term—in all its unbridled terror—real now. Lord help us, we’re relying on him to prevent that from happening.

We note the use of the phrase "at long last." At long last, Candidate Biden needs to say what he'll do with respect to the border, Paul says.

That formulation reflects a troubling fact. Like our pundits on blue tribe cable, President Biden has dithered the past year away, failing to state, in a forceful way, his position with respect to this very significant topic. 

Instead, our tribunes have focused on the pleasures provided by such topics as this:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail!

Paul says that Biden is too old, and she says that he looks tired. She's tired of hearing people say how great he seems in private, with no cameras around.

From there, we move to Damon Linker, writing for The Atlantic.  For the record, Linker isn't a Donald Trump man:

At the end of his essay, he refers to Trump as "a sociopathic menace who must be defeated in November." For ourselves, we're glad that The Atlantic let Linker use that language.

Linker explicitly calls Donald J. Trump a sociopath. For that reason, he says the Democratic Party needs a stronger candidate this year. 

He even offers a set of names. Dual headlines included, here are some relevant excerpts:

Democrats Should Pick a New Presidential Candidate Now

[...]

The party needs to wake up and stop sleepwalking toward disaster with Biden as its nominee.

The Democratic Party is heading into the 2024 election with a presumptive nominee who may well be incapable of defeating former President Donald Trump. The incumbent on whom the party is relying to run against Trump’s dangerous threat to the country and the world currently rates at an anemic and steady 39 percent approval. Worse, no less than three-quarters of Americans and half of Democrats worry that President Joe Biden lacks “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term.” And those figures come from a survey released before Special Counsel Robert Hur’s damning comments last week about Biden being an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

Yet partisan Democrats, from the president on down, responded with anger and defensiveness to Hur’s report. This is so unfair! How dare he use his office for a partisan hit job! To which I’m inclined to respond: Stop whining! The reason Hur’s comments seemed damaging is that they confirmed what most of the country already believes: Biden is too old and frail for the job he holds right now. So the prospect of his serving another four years is a reasonable source of concern (especially because his vice president is as unpopular as he is).

[...]

Let me be clear: As a former conservative who hasn’t voted for a Republican candidate since 2002, I am going to be voting for the Democratic nominee in November, whether or not it’s Joe Biden. I would be doing that even if the party ran a potted plant in Biden’s place. A potted plant in the Oval Office would be infinitely preferable to a president who embodies a potentially fatal threat to the country’s democratic institutions.

[...]

As for those insisting that Biden would have to treat Vice President Kamala Harris as his heir apparent for fear of alienating the party’s base of Black voters, this is another good example of misplaced risk aversion. The party’s message should be that no one is entitled to a presidential nomination. If Harris wants it, she will have to persuade her party that she’s more likely to defeat Trump than formidable alternatives such as Governors Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, and J. B. Pritzker, and Senator Raphael Warnock. That’s how politics works—or should work.

More generally, I’d like to see the Democratic Party and its defenders spending more time running popular, charismatic candidates and less time desperately trying to work the refs—that is, more time doing whatever is necessary to win and less time trying to prove that Democrats deserve to win.

Trump is a sociopathic menace who must be defeated in November. However well-suited Biden was to the task of dispatching him four years ago, the situation has changed. Biden cannot possibly be the best person for the job today. The time to fix this mess is now—before it really is too late.

At this site, we don't necessarily believe that a Democratic replacement candidate could win November's election. That includes the six or seven possible replacement candidates named in Linker's essay.

That said, we agree with what Klein and Linker have said about the current behavior of many Democratic officials and many blue tribe pundits. These people seem to be sleepwalking along in a state of denial about "what most of the country already believes."

This morning, Ezra's essay was featured on Fox & Friends. The friends didn't misrepresent his views. In fact, they played the audiotape of Ezra reading a key part of his column.

According to Ezra, Joe Biden is no longer capable of running a winning campaign. Meanwhile, this is what the gentleman says about those who are stuck in what he sees as denial:

To say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age? If you have really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you. In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see. It is right in front of them.

It's right in front of us, Ezra says. We're inclined to agree with that view, though we don't see any clear way out of this serious problem. 

As we said in real time, we've been deeply concerned about this matter since we saw President Biden deliver the first of his two public speeches on the island of Maui back in August 2023. At this time, we see no sign that he will be capable of running a vigorous campaign, though we could always turn out to be wrong about that.

In fairness, Candidate Donald J. Trump may yet crash and burn as a result of his many and various trials. This year's election is unfolding in the absence of anything resembling a precedent.

Still and all, the denial seems to be very deep on our blue tribe's side. Some of it comes from our multimillion dollar, "cable news" corporate tribunes. Some of it comes from those who seem inclined to repeat whatever "the semi-anonymous Twitter personality" Acyn Tobari says.

We note one last part of Ezra's essay—the part where he says this:

I know a lot of liberals, a lot of Democrats are going to be furious at me for this [column].

We're sorry that Ezra felt he had to say that. We're glad that he stated his view all the same.

Our personal view would be this:

Here within our challenged blue tribe, we need to understand ourselves better. We need to understand our instincts and our impulses. We need to understand the way we look to other people—to tens of millions of neighbors and friends who do show up to vote.

We badly need to see ourselves with greater clarity. At this site, here's one question we'll be exploring:

Can ventures into the world of literature possibly help with that task?

Comer's star witness crashes and burns!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Will Fox News viewers be told? Hoo boy! Headlines in the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting an arrest:

Ex-F.B.I. Informant Is Charged With Lying Over Bidens’ Role in Ukraine Business

Former FBI informant charged with lying about Biden business

Beneath a somewhat tangier headline, here's Kevin Drum's basic synopsis:

Yet another Biden crime story goes up in smoke

[...]

The informant in question is Alexander Smirnov, who retailed a preposterous story to the FBI about Burisma paying bribes of $5 million each to Hunter and Joe Biden for "protection." James Comer and Chuck Grassley got wind up this and demanded a copy of the FBI interview so they could investigate whether Smirnov's accusation was being taken seriously. The whole thing took the right-wing noise machine by storm.

Today Smirnov was indicted for lying to the FBI. The indictment came from David Weiss, the special prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case. Smirnov was arrested at the Las Vegas airport after arriving from overseas.

Hard to believe, isn't it? It seemed like such a promising lead, something that could put a bow on the whole Biden Crime Family story...

Alexander Smirnov was the latest of Rep. Comer's star witnesses. Now he's been arrested and charged with lying to the FBI. 

Placing this event in a larger media context, Kevin posts a tweet from Media Matters reporter Matthews Gertz. The gentleman's tweet says this:

GERTZ (2/15/24): Sean Hannity's Fox News show ran with this informant's claims in at least 85 separate segments last year, including 28 monologues. He said they proved Joe Biden engaged in "public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.”

In short, Hannity viewers have been fed a steady diet of Smirnov. Our question would be this:

Will Hannity's viewers ever be told that Smirnov has been arrested? Will viewers of other Fox New programs be told?

Thanks to the invaluable services of the Internet Archive, we'll be checking, in the next few days, to see if viewers of Fox News programs are told about this arrest.

Perhaps they will be, perhaps they won't. We'll let you know either way.

Having said that, we'll close with this:

We often assume that red tribe viewers and blue tribe viewers are familiar with the same basic sets of facts. We often assume that red and blue sets of cable news viewer have all seen the same chunks of videotape.

That assumption reflects a failure to grasp the way our modern organization of media works. In fact, many elementary facts are withheld from red tribe viewers. Sad to say, it can sometimes work the same way on MSNBC, our own blue nation's channel.

This is the essence of running major news orgs which are "segregated by viewpoint." In our view, you simply can't expect to run a serious nation this way.

At any rate, we'll be checking the broadcasts of Fox News programs in the next few days. We'll be asking a simple question: 

Rep. Comer's star witness has been arrested. Will Fox News viewers be told?

PEOPLE: The most perfect stories ever told!

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Seeing ourselves in such texts: Today, The Iliad exists as a written text.  It's published in the form of a book. 

In an array of translations, The Iliad can be ordered from any contemporary bookstore. It didn't exactly work that way during the many years when the poem emerged in its modern form. 

This first and greatest western war poem emerged as part of an oral tradition. The leading authority on the poem describes the process in the following way:

Iliad

[...]

The Iliad and the Odyssey were likely written down in Homeric Greek, a literary mixture of Ionic Greek and other dialects, probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC. Homer's authorship was infrequently questioned in antiquity, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently and that the stories formed as part of a long oral tradition. The poem was performed by professional reciters of Homer known as rhapsodes.

[...]

In antiquity, the Greeks applied the Iliad and the Odyssey as the bases of pedagogy. Literature was central to the educational-cultural function of the itinerant rhapsode, who composed consistent epic poems from memory and improvisation, and disseminated them, via song and chant, in his travels and at the Panathenaic Festival of athletics, music, poetics, and sacrifice, celebrating Athena's birthday.

Originally, Classical scholars treated the Iliad and the Odyssey as written poetry, and Homer as a writer. Yet, by the 1920s, Milman Parry (1902–1935) had launched a movement claiming otherwise. His investigation of the oral Homeric style—"stock epithets" and "reiteration" (words, phrases, stanzas)—established that these formulae were artifacts of oral tradition easily applied to a hexametric line.

Clarifying a bit, the poem was developed through centuries of oral tradition. It was first "written down," in Homeric Greek, "probably around the late 8th or early 7th century BC."

The poem's development came from that oral tradition. That tradition tends to produce perfectly crafted stories through endless act of oral reshaping, accidental or deliberate.

Today, The Iliad exists as a book. As Yevtushenko said in People:

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.

Something is gone in the modern context. What is left is a set of perfect stories—the earliest stories which survive in the European literary context.

In effect, these are (among) the first stories ever recorded. For that reason, these stories are also the most direct, the least adorned—the simplest. 

A question arises:

As contemporary people, can we possibly see ourselves in the stories told in The Iliad? For example, in the brilliant bit of story-telling with which the war poem starts?

As we've noted, the poem starts near the end of what has already been a ten-year siege of Troy. As with us Americans in recent years, so too with them:

A plague is visiting the Achaean camp. Ransom is being offered for the safe return of a stolen person. What we would regard as sexual misconduct is rife.

Sexual misconduct is rife, as in our own day. There is one major cultural difference—as a general matter, no one seems to think it's morally wrong to kidnap young women for sexual purposes. 

Putting it a slightly different way, no one seems to feel the need to pretend to care about such things.

At any rate, a plague will soon be sweeping the Achaean camp. Meanwhile, there's one more story element which is highly recognizable. Agamemnon, lord of men, will soon explode in a debilitating fit of rage, a phenomenon which is hardy unknown within our political culture today.

In Robert Fagles' 1990 translation, the poem's Book One bears this title:

The Rage of Achilles

The rage of Achilles will drive this long poem. First, though, we meet the rage of Agamemnon. 

Agamemnon, lord of men, has taken a sexual slave. The story moves with brilliant speed, and it begins as shown:

Yes. Chryses approached the Achaeans' fast ships
to win his daughter back. bringing a priceless ransom
and bearing high in hand, wound on a golden staff,
the wreaths of the god, the distant deadly Archer.
He begged the whole Achaean army but most of all
the two supreme commanders, Atreus' two sons,
"Agamemnon. Menelausall Argives geared for war!
May the gods who hold the halls of Olympus give you 20
Priam's city to plunder, then safe passage home.
Just set my daughter free, my dear one. Here,
accept these gifts, this ransom..."

Chryses is a priest of Apollo. Agamemnon, lord of men, is one of the two supreme commanders of the many Achaean (Greek) armies—the armies which will be introduced through ten pages of text in Book Two.

Chryses has begged for his daughter's return. He has even said that he's willing to see the Argives plunder Troy (King Priam's city).

Chryses has begged for his daughter's return. Quickly, we're told what happens next:

And all ranks of Achaeans cried out their assent:
"Respect the priest, accept the shining ransom!"
But it brought no joy to the heart of Agamemnon.
The king dismissed the priest with a brutal order
ringing in his ears...

Agamemnon drives the old priest from the camp. Where the breakers crash and drag, the priest now prays to Apollo:

The old man was terrified. He obeyed the order,
turning, trailing away in silence down the shore
where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag.
And moving off to a safe distance, over and over
the old priest prayed to the son of sleek-haired Leto,
lord Apollo. 

Apollo visits a plague on the camp. This leads to a furious dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles as the men fight over who will be allowed to retain which sexual slave.

This story moves with lightning speed, the fruit of centuries of recitation. The events it purports to tell would have occurred thousands of years ago, but the basic elements of human behavior are highly recognizable.

The city of Troy was facing a siege. Today, a siege is being directed at the Biden White House.

The ancient war of The Iliad was fought with Bronze Age weapons. Our own siege will be decided through the weapons of information, in a war of the Information Age.

That said, undifferentiated, inchoate rage has been a major part of our national politics over the past nine years. Sexual misconduct by powerful men, or allegations of same, has also been a familiar part of the modern political context. 

To our eye and to our ear, the people we meet in The Iliad behave a great deal like us moderns. A story is unfolding there which is not unlike our own dispiriting modern-day story—and in that modern-day story, our own blue tribe, for all our apparent good intentions, could possibly be on the verge of losing a major fight.

Can we possibly see ourselves in the stories told in this ancient poem? Can literature help us take a step back, in the hope of seeing ourselves a bit more as we actually are?

If we lose November's election, we may even start to face the need to improve our own tribe's political game. Might a flight to a different world help us with some such project?

There are other published texts which might help us take a step back and see ourselves for who and what we actually are. In truth, we aren't the morally infallible people we often take ourselves to be. 

In many ways, we in our blue tribe, like everyone else, are simply people people:

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth’s creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

Yevtushenko again, suggesting that people are faulty! It's our view, here at this site, that our own blue tribe could profitably learn to improve our political game. 

Other texts may help us learn to see ourselves more fully. We think of Plato's Seventh Letter, an account of the death of the Athenian democracy.

We think of Plato's Apology, in which Socrates describes the conduct of average people but also of powerful men. Also, we think of Robert Graves' I, Claudius, an acclaimed 1934 novel which "tells the history of...the early years of the Roman Empire."

In 1976, I, Claudius became a major BBC / PBS television event. I, Claudius was very big at that time. Could it be helpful today?

At any rate, we plan to chronicle the behaviors of the warring armies as the current siege of the White House unspools through the course of the year. 

Also, as our blue tribe's judicial siege of Candidate Trump begins to emerge in its final form, possibly starting as early as March 25.

We currently live in two different worlds, in Red Nation and Blue. Can a large modern nation really function this way? 

In our view, it plainly can't. How can our imperfect blue tribe possibly learn to help?

"No people are uninteresting," Yevtushenko said. What could the Soviet-era poet possibly have meant by that?

That said, also this:

"Something we were withholding made us weak."

We recently quoted that line from Frost. Is there something our blue tribe might be withholding? 

Could it be making us weak?

Next week: Sieges

The squalor of the 59-year-old man!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2024

Along with its normalization: The Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld is 59 years old. That would be 59 years of age going on ten or eleven.

We often wonder how he got to be the way he currently is. We're also struck by the fact that he performs his moral squalor in prime time each weekday night, and no one in the wider blue world seems to notice, comment or care.

Last night, he began his opening monologue with a mandated Fox News bro-insider joke. From there, he moved to a trio of favorite plays dressed in Valentine's raiment.

He started with the bogus claim that Rep. Ilhan Omar is married to her brother. From there, he moved to this transcription on an imagined card for Valentine's Day:

Happy Valentine's! I'd kiss you if my face could move.

Love, Nancy Pelosi

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Links regarding the Omar factual groaner are available below. 

From there, Gutfeld moved to a standard soul-destroying joke about President Biden's Valentine's card. Please don't make us attempt to describe it.

This is who and what and all this overgrown child will ever be until he somehow finds a way to improve himself. From there, it was on to more typical Biden fare, including such groaners as this:

GUTFELD (2/14/24): So on this Valentine's Day, I'm afraid I have to break some bad news about our president.

America, he's just not that into you! Because as Joe continues to neglect this relationship of ours, we're seeing the results of his terrible presidency:

Unchecked illegal migration. Crime running rampant. Inflation off the hook. The chances of World War III are growing faster than a stain on Joe's pants.

(TINY HINTS OF AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)

We'd call that one a typical twofer, as it mixes a vastly misleading factual claim with a squalid (and humor-free) naughty personal insult. 

Regarding the fellow's factual claim, is crime actually "running rampant?" It seems to be on the Fox News Channel, whose tabloid-adjacent TV stars air cellphone videotape of every criminal act they can get their hands on.

Meanwhile, in the real world, official crime rates have been falling. There's always a way to claim that such statistics are wrong, but just for the record, here's the start of Ken Dilanian's recent report for NBC News:

Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong.

Crime in the United States has declined significantly over the last year, according to new FBI data that contradicts a widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise.

A Gallup poll released this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken, the new FBI data and other statistics show.

The FBI data, which compares crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed the FBI numbers.

Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023 at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded, Asher found, and every category of major crime except auto theft declined.

In short, crime is running rampant on Fox, but it seems to be on the decline in most other locales. Compared to peer nations, our crime rates tend to be very high, but Fox viewers will never be asked to hear that our crime rates been dropping under the current chief executive.

On Fox, such things aren't done! More crime tape at 11!

Regarding the stain the wonderful Gutfeld pictured on the president's pants, this is one of this stunted fellow's evergreen allusions. Below, you see the next bit of comedic wizardry from last evening's opening log:

GUTFELD: The House voted to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the migrant crisis...It's the first time they've impeached a cabinet secretary since 1876. 

That was back when Joe was in diapers. Or rather, when he started wearing diapers.

The broken boy produces this sort of "President Poopy Pants" commentary pretty much every night of the week. Diapers are a favorite.

Gutfeld is also frequently reminded of Hunter Biden's penis, and he seems to love kicking down at every demographic group which ever put him here.

(Which ever complained, in whatever way, about any sort of mistreatment.)

The moral squalor of this idiot's show is compounded by the blinding stupidity of the program's pseudo-discussions. And yet, the broadcast goes out in prime time each and every weekday night, normalized by the fact that no one in the upper-end press corps seems to notice or comment or care about any part of this.

To watch last evening's monologue, you can start by clicking here. This brings us to the recent show during which Gutfeld was mightily pleased,

"I pity the poor immigrant when his gladness comes to pass?" So it was when Gutfeld discussed a recent soul-draining post by Elon Musk, a brilliant industrialist on the one hand and the possessor of soul-draining, astoundingly childish sexual politics on the other.

Musk may be the dumbest person on earth. That's why Gutfeld loves him!

Eventually, we'll probably show you the uber-childishness which pleased Gutfeld so. But that would require us to traffic in a word we've never used before—a word we very much don't want to start typing now.

"I pity the poor immigrant when his gladness comes to pass?" That was Bob Dylan in 1968, penning an uncanny description of a future American president.

We have only ever said that Donald J. Trump seems to fit the portrait Dylan (metaphorically) painted at that time. We don't think Gutfeld is quite that far gone, but he's angrily trying, very hard, to make the J.V. team.

Adult women—think Dana Perino—sit and stare as Gutfeld drops his smutty misogynist insults on a regular basis. People are willing to do and say anything for the money and fame this life brings.

That said, our journalists also sit and stare all through the upper-end press corps. No one wants to tangle with Fox, and so our blue tribe journalist stars are once again resorting to the familiar old culture of silence.

In fairness, it's hard to find the words for moral squalor of this type. We hope Greg Gutfeld gets better.

Regarding the mandated Omar howler: For a debunking by Business Insider, you can just click this. For an earlier report by the New York Times, you can click right here.

Please note what we've told you in the past. Squalid jokes are an excellent medium for the messaging of preferred tribal propaganda:

Crime is rampant under Biden! Cellphone clips to follow!

PEOPLE: Seeing ourselves in a very old text!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2024

In search of historic Troy: Was there ever some such city as the ancient walled fortress memorialized in The Iliad and remembered today as Troy?

Inquiring minds decided that they wanted to know. We assigned the youthful analysts this task.

They could have consulted the flight of birds, as people frequently do. Instead they conducted hours of dogged research. 

Eventually, they gifted us with this compilation of their findings:

Troy

Troy or Ilion was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destination, and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.

Troy was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt during its 4000 years of occupation. As a result, the site is divided into nine archaeological layers, each corresponding to a city built on the ruins of the previous. Archaeologists refer to these layers using Roman numerals, Troy I being the earliest and Troy IX being the latest.

Troy was first settled around 3600 BC and grew into a small fortified city around 3000 BC (Troy I). Among the early layers, Troy II is notable for its wealth and imposing architecture. During the Late Bronze Age, Troy was called Wilusa and was a vassal of the Hittite Empire. The final layers (Troy VIII-IX) were Greek and Roman cities which served as tourist attractions and religious centers because of their link to mythic tradition.

The site was excavated by Heinrich Schliemann and Frank Calvert starting in 1871. Under the ruins of the classical city, they found the remains of numerous earlier settlements. Several of these layers resemble literary depictions of Troy, leading some scholars to conclude that there is a kernel of truth underlying the legends. Subsequent excavations by others have added to the modern understanding of the site, though the exact relationship between myth and reality remains unclear and there is no definitive evidence for a Greek attack on the city.

Four thousand years of human occupation! At times like these, we're visited by the soul of Carlotta Valdes. In Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, she seizes the soul of the Kim Novak character as that character and Scottie stand beneath a grove of California's redwood trees.

The trees are the world's oldest living things, she is told. As you can see in the screenplay, she's told that the trees have stood for two thousand years or more.

"What are you thinking?" she is then asked. 

"Of all the people who have been born, and have died, while the trees went on living," she says.

At any rate, there were nine successive versions of prehistoric and historical Troy, or so the analysts tell us. The Iliad would have recorded a siege of something like the seventh iteration. 

That Troy is portrayed in the following way in that ancient war poem:

Troy

[...]

The Iliad portrays Troy as the capital of a rich and powerful kingdom. In the poem, the city appears to be a major regional power capable of summoning numerous allies to defend it. 

The city itself is described as sitting on a steep hill, protected by enormous sloping stone walls, rectangular towers, and massive gates whose wooden doors can be bolted shut. According to Dares Phrygius, there were six such gates ...The city's streets are broad and well-planned. At the top of the hill is the Temple of Athena as well as King Priam's palace, an enormous structure with numerous rooms around an inner courtyard.

In the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near the mouth of the Scamander river, where they beached their ships. The city itself stood on a hill across the plain of Scamander, where much of the fighting takes place. 

That was the Troy of the ancient war poem. The poem describes the conclusion of a ten-year siege which, like many contemporary journalistic events, most likely didn't occur.

Our question: Can we possibly see ourselves in that ancient poem? 

The Iliad records a lengthy siege of the city of Troy. Today, the redder portion of our nation is conducting a siege of the Biden White House, even as our own blue tribe is conducting a much more high-minded judicial siege of former president Trump.

For all our struggles, our blue tribe has slipped behind in a series of polls as we stage our own lengthy siege. Can we learn to see ourselves more clearly in the beautifully crafted episodes of the western world's first and greatest war poem?

In our view, we need to see ourselves more clearly! Can the episodes of this ancient poem help us accomplish this task?

Tomorrow, we'll explore that basic question in a bit more detail, For today, we'll only add this:

At least in the Robert Fagles translation, many of the Iliad's characters are extremely hard to distinguish from people like us who are living today—from contemporary people like us. 

Their concerns are our concerns, as the Mariel Hemingway character tells the Woody Allen character in the slightly peculiar 1970 film, Manhattan. 

In the end, are we all just a bunch of people? When we observe the characters in The Iliad, do their impulses and their reactions possibly seem to be a great deal like ours?

Tomorrow, we'll look at the headstrong conduct of Agamemnon, lord of men—the angry conduct which kickstarts the story of this poem right in its opening lines. Today, let's consider one small passage which comes from the poem's Book Nine, out of twenty-four books in all.

After ten years of struggle, the Achaeans (the Greeks) are losing ground in their attempt to sack Troy. Agamemnon, lord of men now suffers a virtual nervous breakdown. 

Nestor the seasoned charioteer leaps to his feet to rally the troops—to maintain unity in the ranks.

Nestor's speech to the headstrong young Diomedes is one of our favorite passages in all of literature (though in fairness, we aren't well-read). Two captains are then dispatched to make "the embassy to Achilles"—to the mighty warrior who is sulking in his tents and is refusing to fight.

Achilles is the greatest warrior in any of the armies assembled on either side of this siege. That said, his fury is vast, and it has already lasted through nine books of the lengthy poem. 

We'll focus on Odysseus here. To our eye and ear, we're seeing a contemporary person as Fagles offers these beautiful lines:

So Ajax and Odysseus made their way at once
where the battle lines of breakers crash and drag,
praying hard to the god who moves and shakes the earth
that they might bring the proud heart of Achilles
round with speed and ease.

For the record, several key moments in this poem occur "where the breakers crash and drag." 

In this moment, Odysseus is walking toward a council with Achilles, praying hard to the god who moves and shakes the earth—by inference, possibly trembling a bit—that his embassy to this mightiest warrior might be accomplished "with speed and ease."

We see our own modern selves in those beautifully rendered lines. That may simply reflect the choices of translator Fagles. Consider this question, though:

How many lawyers have walked into a meeting with Donald J. Trump praying hard that they might be able to bring the proud heart of Donald J. Trump around to their views—that they might even be able to win him over with something like speed and ease?

We don't want to trivialize our undertaking by drawing simplistic comparisons. That said, first cousins to many events from our modern political era appear in The Iliad's first few pages, and many behaviors of the poem's characters may seem familiar to those of us who have followed the events of our own political age.

Here within our own blue tribe, can we come to see ourselves somewhere in these beautifully crafted human stories? Within the European tradition, they're the first such stories ever recorded, and as such they can also be numbered among the simplest and most clearly rendered.

Can we blue tribe members see ourselves in such a way as to help us improve our game? Especially if we lose November's election, we'll need to enter a period in which we wonder how that consequential sacking could possibly have occurred.

Can we see ourselves in this ancient war poem? If so, can that act of recognition possibly be of some use?

People needing people, the famous singer said. Can we contemporary people see ourselves in the fictionalized stories of the ancient people who conducted, and who opposed, the eventual sacking of the towering walls of the somewhat historic Troy?

Tomorrow: Agamemnon, lord of men, and his angry rebuke of Achilles