TUESDAY: What the Times didn't seem to see!

TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2026

The normalization of everything: Continuing yesterday afternoon's report, today we record one part of the tragic, disordered behavior the New York Times couldn't quite see in the report they published about the sitting president's furious insults directed at Kristen Welker.   

We'd call it "the normalization of everything"—the normalization of cognitive decline and/or of serious illness. Here you see the first four of the president's thirteen uses of "crooked:"

The famous newspaper was somehow unable to see the president do this:

TRUMP (6/7/26): You have to understand, people have been destroyed by crooked politicians, and they should be reimbursed for that.

WELKER: Do you think anyone who attacked police officers on January 6th should get taxpayer money?

TRUMP: I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it. I can tell you this: 97% of those people, you look at them, the FBI or whoever it was, because you had a lot of crooked cops, you had dirty cops. Comey was a dirty cop.

WELKER: Well, there is no evidence to –

TRUMP: A guy like Bolton was a dirty cop. A bunch of crooked politicians were helped by a bunch pf crooked cops. Also, by a bunch of dirty cops. 

The president seemed to be talking about January 6, 2021. For the record, Director Comey had been removed from the FBI by Trump almost four years earlier, in cccc ot 2017.  

That was just the appetizer. A bit later, tragically, the nation was asked to undergo these additional uses of "crooked," along with the standard uses of "fake" and "dirty" and "rigged."

Before long, he was directly insulting Welker herself:

TRUMP: Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea, because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he’s not smart enough to know what’s going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.

 WELKER: All right, this is— Just to be very clear, there’s no evidence of what you’re saying But let me ask about Todd Blanche.

TRUMP: There’s a lot of evidence.

WELKER: Let me ask about Todd Blanche.

TRUMP: Listen — listen to me — listen to me. There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.

WELKER: Let’s talk about Todd Blanche. Well, it’s not been presented in a court of a law.

TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.

WELKER: Mr. President, you’ve never presented evidence that the 2020 election was rigged.

TRUMP: And it’s happening again right now in California. It’s happening right now in CaliforniA. Right now, it’s look at what’s happening in California. It’s four days–

 WELKER: Where’s the evidence to that? The Republicans are doing well in California.

TRUMP: In California, it’s— No they’re not. They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election. Let me tell you, it’s four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with the–

 WELKER: That’s how they count the votes in California.

TRUMP: Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.

 WELKER: There’s— What? Do you have evidence to support that?

TRUMP: All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

 WELKER: But that’s not evidence.

TRUMP: And I listen. And I listen to people. And let’s see what happens.

WELKER: But sir, that’s not evidence, and that’s how they count the votes in California—

TRUMP: Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?

WELKER: State and local officials acknowledge they are slow. They’re urging—

TRUMP: No, they’re crooked.

WELKER: – they’re urging the votes to be counted quickly. That’s how they vote in California.

TRUMP: They’re crooked just like you’re crooked. Your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.

WELKER: To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.

 TRUMP: Really? Well, you play right into their hands then. You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.

WELKER: Let’s continue. Let’s continue.

TRUMP: You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide [sic] and I got 94% bad press?

WELKER: But Mr. President you’ve never presented evidence–

TRUMP: You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.

WELKER: But you’ve never presented evidence it was rigged. Let’s keep talking about, I want to talk about Todd Blanche.

TRUMP: You have more evidence, there’s more evidence than ever presented. Your elections in this country–

 WELKER: Let’s talk about—you went to court.

 TRUMP: We’re like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

WELKER: But sir–But Mr. President–

TRUMP: You’re a one-sided crooked network. 

Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

Biding his darling adieu, he struggled to his feet and walked off the set. The origins of this tragic but dangerous conduct are described in Mary Trump's best-selling 2020 book.  

The disorder went on and on and on. The New York Times just couldn't see it. They've behaved this way for years.

WHITE AND BLACK: Alabama moved to the GOP!

TUESDAY, JUNE 9, 2026

Except in that one district: These Alabama voters today! 

As is the perfect right of such citizens, the state's voters haven't sent a white Democrat to the House of Representatives since they elected two (2) such candidates in the congressional elections of November 2008.  

It was a bad year for the GOP nationwide, with President George W. Bush flagging in popularity and Candidate Obama winning the White House. In Alabama, this miracle alignment emerged from the state's seven congressional districts—or at least, so it seemed at the time:   

Alabama House delegation, January 2009
District 1: Jo Bonner (R)
District 2: Bobby Bright (D)
District 3: Mike Rogers (R)
District 4: Robert Aderholt (R)
District 5: Parker Griffith (D)
District 6: Spencer Bachus (R)
District 7: Artur Davis (D)  

Reps. Bright and Griffith had squeaked out narrow wins, each in his first run for the House. In a major outlier, each was a white Democrat! 

Alabama sent two such Democrats to the House in January 2009, though only one would return!

Each man served only one term in the House before being replaced by a Republican. In fact, there those Alabama white Democrats went again, with their incessant party-switching:

Sure enough! Rep. Grittith switched his party alignment from D to R in December 2009. Despite his party switch, he was defeated the next year in the Republican primary by someone who was even more Republican.  

Rep. Griffith party-switched, like Senator Shelby before him (see yesterday's report). By way of contrast, Rep. Bright managed to make it through his entire two-year term as a Democrat. 

Needless to say, he was a conservative Democrat (as was his perfect right). Indeed, according to the leading authority, "his voting record indicated that he was the most conservative member of the House Democratic Caucus" during his one term in the House. 

Given the way the partisan alignment was hardening, even that wasn't good enough! He was defeated when he sought re-election, and he eventually tried a bit of party-switching himself!   

Bobby Bright   

Bobby Neal Bright Sr. (born July 21, 1952) is an American retired lawyer, farmer, and former politician who served as a U.S. representative and was previously the three-term mayor of Montgomery, Alabama. He served from 2009 to 2011 as the Representative from Alabama's 2nd congressional district. His 2008 campaign ran on the message of "America First," and his voting record indicated that he was the most conservative member of the House Democratic Caucus in the 111th Congress...

... In November 2010, he was defeated for a second term in the House of Representatives by Republican nominee Martha Roby, a then-Montgomery City Council member. In 2018, Bright attempted to run for his old House seat as a Republican, but was defeated by Roby in a runoff.  

As of now, Bright stands as the last white Democrat from Alabama to be elected to serve in the House. Eventually, he tried a party switch too. This is all part of the way "the solid South," across various states, switched from solid D over to solid R—though we're speaking here of the white solid South, and of white Alabama.

There are, of course, white Democrats in Alabama, but Democrats are significantly outnumbered in the state. To cite just one example:

In that aforementioned bad year for Republicans nationwide, Candidate McCain defeated Candidate Obama in Alabama by more than 21 points, 60.3% to 38.7%. 

In 2020, Candidate Biden lost the state by more than 25 points (62.0% - 36.6%). In 2024, Candidate Trump won Alabama by a bit more than thirty points!

This is no state for Democratic candidates on a statewide basis. That said, the state has continued to send one Democrat to the House of Representatives and, since 2011, that lone Democrat has been Rep. Terri Sewell.   

As we noted yesterday, Sewell is thoroughly sharp. That said, could she get elected to the Senate from her home state? Barring the nomination of a stunningly flawed Republican candidate, she almost surely could not.  

(Barring the nomination of some such Republican candidate, neither could a white Democrat.)

Now for the rest of the story:   

Alabama's population is roughly one third Black. While white Alabama is heavily (though not wholly) Republican, Black Alabama is heavily (though not wholly) Democratic.   

Rep. Sewell represents Alabama's 7th congressional district. The district is majority Black and, largely for that reason, is scored as D+13 by the Cook Political Report.  

Rep. Sewell's district has been in the news of late as our struggling nation tries to decide how to deal with the continuing aftermath of the brutal racial history our ancestors unwisely created. The district was created to be majority Black in the congressional redistricting which followed the 1990 census.

Why did the Republican Party agree to create such districts at that point in time? What was the legal rationale behind the creation of these "opportunity districts?"

(We're employing the language of Justice Sotomayor.)

Questions have arisen in the aftermath of recent Supreme Court decisions:

What should Black voters do in the wake of those decisions—decisions which have allowed the dismantling of some or all of these majority Black districts? What should the full sweep of Blue America do? 

What should Blue Americans think and say about those recent decisions? What's the next step in the redistricting wars for the endangered Democratic Party?

The political and judicial histories here are complicated, complex. This is all part of the tragic backwash of the horrific racial history which somehow unfolded across the centuries despite our exceptionalism.

What should decent people decide to do at this point in time? Decent people Black and white, but also Red and Blue?

Last Wednesday, Rep. Sewell was shown on tape at the start of a segment of Deadline: White House. To watch the entire segment, you can start by clicking here.

Rep. Sewell is as sharp as anyone ever needs to be. We strongly agree with one thing she said. Another thing, perhaps not so much.

Tomorrow: What she said

MONDAY: Is the New York Times still based on this planet?

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2026

Yesterday's Meet the Press: Is the newspaper known as the New York Times still headquartered here on this planet? 

We ask because of the way the paper reported the events which transpired on yesterday's Meet the Press.   

The sitting president appeared on the show for an extensive interview. Only a newspaper based on an asteroid could have produced this report. 

Dual headline included:

Trump Says He Never Promised No New Wars, and Defends Compensation Fund
In a lengthy interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the president again vowed that gas prices would go down when the war in Iran ends. 

President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.

“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Mr. Trump said in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” taped during his trip to Wisconsin on Friday. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”

Speaking about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, he continued: “So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”

He did promise. As a candidate in 2024, Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged not to involve the United States in war, including on the night he won the election. “They said, ‘He will start a war,’” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech. “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” 

On what meet doth this our Caesar feed?  More precisely, in what solar system does this our one-time world-famous newspaper currently dwell? 

It isn't that any of that is "wrong." It's just that the Washington Post saw what happened more clearly. 

The Post saw something which much closely resembled the session which actually occurred. Here's what the Bezos broadsheet says it saw, dual headline included: 

Trump walks out of ‘Meet the Press’ interview when challenged over false claims  
When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were “rigged.”

President Donald Trump broke off an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday after host Kristen Welker challenged his false claims about elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” he said after a tense exchange lasting about four minutes. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

He then stood up and walked off the set in a barn in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, taped before an event focused on farmers that Trump held there Friday.

An NBC spokesperson declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Post saw the furious behavior of a disordered president. And not only that! The sitting president kept making false claims, those dual headline said. 

Here's the main thing the WashPo somehow managed to see:

Even after all these years, the sitting president kept making (the same "false claims" he's made these many years. When his interlocutor challenged his claims—when she challenged the claims which were false—the sitting president stood up, walked off the set in the barn, and left his "darling" alone, right there on the set.

That said, it wasn't until today's Morning Joe that we saw a news org center down on what actually happened. Joe himself was absent today, but Mika centered down on the insults aimed at Kisten Welker, and at the endless stream of "lies" which kept emerging from the mouth of the man who is—tragically but dangerously—severely mentally ill.

We wouldn't use the term "lies" ourselves; we might use the term "delusions." It isn't clear to us that he doesn't believe the false and unfounded claims he never, in his apparent mania, is willing to stop making.

(Full disclosure! According to medical science, some people are "delusional.")

The New York Times wiped all that away. There are few words to capture the "companion craziness" of what this big money "newspaper" currently does in this, the most compliant of all corporate worlds.

For a hint of Mika's presentation, you can just click here. See "Mika furious over Trump's false claims and media coverage." For the record, we don't agree with much of what Tomasky and Lemire said.

We'll offer more detail tomorrow afternoon, unless something worse occurs. But the Times is huddled on a distant rock, or in a more distant locale.

BLACK, PLUS BLUE: Terri Sewell is plenty sharp!

MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2026

The year when our politics flipped: Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Alabama) is a high achiever.   

Also, Rep. Sewell is plenty sharp. The leading authority on this topic offers this overview:  

Terri Sewell

Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (born January 1, 1965) is an American politician and lawyer serving as the U.S. representative for Alabama's 7th congressional district as member of the Democratic Party since 2011. The district includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly African American portions of Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.

A native of Huntsville, Sewell studied at Princeton University for a bachelor's, Harvard Law School for a Juris Doctor degree, and St Hilda's College, Oxford for a second bachelor's that was promoted by tradition to an MA. Before entering politics, she was a securities lawyer for Davis Polk & Wardwell and a public finance lawyer for Maynard, Cooper & Gale, where she was the first Black woman to make partner. She is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Alabama and, along with Republican Martha Roby, was one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in a regular election. 

Sewell is plenty sharp. In our view, a bit of humor lurks at the end of this additional texr: 

Early life and education

...She was the first Black valedictorian of Selma High School.

After graduating from high school, Sewell went to Princeton University...Sewell completed a 158-page long senior thesis, "Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come." During her time at Princeton, she interned with Richard Shelby (then a Democrat) and Howell Heflin.  

It's true! The chronology establishes the fact that the future Senator Shelby actually was "then a Democrat," just as the overview says. 

For the record, Senator Heflin was a Democrat all through his 18-year Senate career (1979-1997). But this was back in the time when (conservative) white Democrats still dominated the electoral politics of the states of the Deep South. 

Rep. Sewell graduated from Princeton in 1986. That November, the Alabama electorate sent five (conservative) Democrats to the House of Representatives, and only two Republicans. 

That same year, the former Rep. Shelby was elected to the Senate. He was still a (conservative) Democrat at that point, but that party affiliation was eventually going to change.   

In November 1994, the dam burst across the South, but also around the nation. Republicans gained 54 seats in that year's congressional elections, winning control of the House for the first time in forty years.  

As part of that shocking partisan change, a slow-rolling party switch across "the solid South" achieved a milestone that year: 

"In a significant political realignment, the South underwent a dramatic transformation," the leading authority states. "Before the election, House Democrats outnumbered House Republicans in the South. Afterwards, with the Republicans having picked up a total of 19 Southern seats, they were able to outnumber Democrats in the South for the first time since Reconstruction."

The "Republican / Gingrich Revolution" had arrived on the national and regional scene! In Alabama, all seven House incumbents were re-elected in 1994, including those five Democrats. But here's where the humor comes in:  

The very next day, right around noon, Senator Shelby switched! We've always seen this as a source of humor, though it also serves as a marker of a major political realignment in a challenging political age. 

The leading authority nails down the basic fact of the matter:  

Richard Shelby  

Richard Craig Shelby (born May 6, 1934) is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Alabama from 1987 to 2023. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 as a Democrat, Shelby switched to the Republican Party in 1994. Shelby is the longest-serving U.S. senator from Alabama, holding office for exactly 36 years.   

...Shelby served in the Alabama State Senate from 1970 to 1978, when he was elected from the 7th district to the United States House of Representatives. He served in the House until 1987; during his House tenure, he was among a group of conservative Democrats known as the boll weevils.

In 1986, Shelby was elected to the U.S. Senate in a tight race. In 1994, the day after the Republican Revolution in which the GOP gained the majority in Congress midway through President Bill Clinton's first term, Shelby switched parties and became a Republican. He was reelected by a large margin in 1998, facing no significant electoral opposition thereafter.   

Senator Shelby switched the very next day! And yes, that's what he did!

On Election Day, he had been Senator Shelby (D-Alabama). From the next day on, he was Senator Shelby (R-Alabama)—or, as we have always scored it, he had seemed to become Senator Shelby (Permanent majority).   

For the record, Senator Shelby had every right to switch! Also, none of this, in any way, reflects poorly on Rep. Sewell, who interned with Rep. Shelby three times when he was still a Democrat.  

We're also prepared to say this: 

Rep. Sewell continued to speak well of Senator Shelby, long after he had switched.  In our view, this news report speaks well of Rep. Sewell's personal decency, and of her all-around smarts.

In our view, this matter joins other aspects of the careers of Sewell, Shelby and Heflin which may shed light on the efforts made, within our struggling nation, to find our way out of the brutal racial history created for us by our ancestors.

That said, the senator's morning-after switch has always struck us as wonderfully comical. It also stands as a marker of the slow-rolling political switch in which "the solid South" remained largely solid, but switched from being solidly Democratic to being solidly GOP.   

We'll also tell you this:   

As you probably know, Rep. Sewell's congressional district—Alabama's 7th congressional district—has been very much in the news of late as the current mid-census redistricting war piledrives across the South.  

Last Wednesday, Nicolle Wallace devoted a segment on Deadline: White House to the recent Supreme Court decision in which Alabama has been allowed to proceed this fall with one majority-Black congressional district—with one such district, not two. 

Wallace started her segment with several chunks of a videotaped statement by Rep. Sewell. If you want to watch the segment, you can start by clicking here.

Terri Sewell is very sharp. She's a major high achiever. 

We strongly agree with one of the things she said on that tape. Then again, maybe and possibly not with another thing she said.   

How should Black voters in Alabama regard that recent decision? How should Democrats—in general, how should Blue America—regard the current turmoil regarding the deliberate construction of congressional districts which are majority Black? 

Those are very important questions, and the topic is highly complex. We won't be able to hit all the stops in the course of this one little week.

Tomorrow: Two of the things she said.

SATURDAY: The Atlantic joins the human race!

SATURDAY, JUNE 6, 2026

Helen Lewis, superb again: As you may recall, it's the cover report in the June edition of The Atlantic. On the magazine's somewhat bluer than pale blue cover, the essay is described this way:

THE MEN WHO FEAR WOMEN
By HELEN LEWIS

We wrote about Lewis' essay last week. Online, it appears beneath this dual headline, and begins in the manner shown:

THE MEN WHO WANT WOMEN TO BE QUIET
A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right.

By Helen Lewis

Douglas Wilson has a modest proposal to improve American life: He wants to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote. In his ideal system, “we would do it in our politics the same way we do it in our church structure,” he told me recently. “And that is, we vote by household.”

Wilson is a co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, based in Moscow, Idaho. Over the past five decades, he has built a small empire there, dedicated to disseminating his theocratic vision for the United States: a publishing house, a school, a liberal-arts college, and a video-streaming service. His denomination, which has about 170 affiliated churches, counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a member, and Wilson was invited to lead a prayer service at the Pentagon in February. So when the pastor casually suggests disenfranchising half of America, people listen.

That's the way the essay begins.

People have written about Pastor Wilson before—about the pastor whose denomination includes the perpetually furious Secretary Hegseth as a member. In her essay, Lewis goes into substantial detail, first about Pastor Wilson, but then about an array of pastors, podcasters and streamers, not excluding "a loose collection of trolls known as Groypers," all of whom are part of a burgeoning gender-based movement.

As you may recalls, Lewis is writing about a loose affiliation of millionaires and other furious men. They're sometimes said to belong to the movement she starts to describe in this passage:

Wilson is a prominent voice in what is sometimes called “masculinism”: a movement to fight back against the advances of feminism and reassert the primacy of men. His version is religious, influenced by the notion of male “headship” of the family and Saint Paul’s belief that godly women should “be quiet.” There are also plenty of secular masculinists, as well as nominally Muslim ones, such as the streamer Sneako, the self-proclaimed pimp Andrew Tate, and the podcaster Myron Gaines. Woman-bashing plays well on social media and sells lots of ads for crypto, sports betting, and supplements. You can make good money telling men that they’re the truly oppressed sex.

Masculinism! For ourselves, we'll go ahead and take a guess—the attitudes which Lewis goes on to describe are deeply bred in the bone. Some men are condemned to have a bit too much of the neural wiring which inspires them to loathe women in a significant way.  

The chemicals float around in their brains, perhaps in slightly excessive volume. Such men are thereby inspired to a dimwitted loathing they may find it hard to quit.

The invention of podcasts and similar technologies have helped these afflicted parties find each other and become angrier still. They may end up going on the Fox News Channel and offering ugly insults posing as jokes—such self-revelations as this:

And finally, the New World screwworm, which eats animals from the inside out, has been finally found in America, inside a cow. 

Scientists say this is just the latest of many reasons to avoid sex with Joy Behar. 

[PHOTO of Joy Behar]

AUDIENCE: Cheering, applause

The manifest nutcase who offered that musing never tires of the joy of comparing Behar to cows—or, perhaps, to horses, cattle, pigs and dogs, or once in a while to "livestock." He himself would never have sex with such an animal! 

(For the record, there would be a substantial age difference. Believe it or not, the pitiful boy who offered that quip is 61 years old! Behar, with whom he would never have sex, is 83 as we speak. Adjusting for age, and considering the norms of the culture, she looks amazingly good.)

At any rate, he would never have sex with that cow! Moments earlier, he had pleasured viewers with a joke in which (brace for punchline) he said that Ted Danson "will continue to apologize to his penis for ever having sex with Whoopi Goldberg"—and yes, that's what he said.

This is pretty much all he has. In fairness, he didn't invent the brain chemistry, the chemical torrent, which leads some men, even today, to succumb to such acts of loathing—such acts of self-portrayal.

The pitiful fellow who offered those "jokes" is part of the Fox News Channel's dimwitted duo—the pitiful pair who seem to be pushing the wonders of masculinism for that corporate "cable news" outfit.

The woman who runs that "cable news" messaging enterprise pays him $9 million per year to do this every night. As he does, the women who are paid by the Fox News Channel to serve as his co-hosts or as his panelists stare politely off into air, or in some cases choose to join in.

When Lewis' cover essay appeared, we were disappointed by its failure to cite the pair of "cable news" stars who work this beat at Fox. As of yesterday, Lewis is back with a related report from the world of this gender-based societal backlash.  

Lewis' work has long been superb. Within the boundaries of American journalism, her work is as good as it gets—and then some.

Finally, it was Lewis unbound! Dual headline included, her new report starts as shown:

The Republicans Who Impugn Talarico’s Manhood

Attacks on the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas show the GOP’s narrow, anxious definition of masculinity.

By Helen Lewis

The attacks on James Talarico have not been subtle. In the weeks since the 37-year-old state representative won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Texas, Republicans have been describing him as “Low-T Talarico,” “James Talafreako,” and “Six-Gender Jimmy.” On May 28, the White House immigration czar Stephen Miller said on Fox News that it was “brave, courageous, that the Democratic Party would choose Texas, of all places, to nominate their first transgender Senate candidate.”

The Republicans have long marketed themselves as the manlier party, but the anti-Talarico blitzkrieg is both obviously coordinated and unusually overt. The overarching strategy here, as the Democratic presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel has previously pointed out, is to associate the entire left with being “weak and woke.” Not manly, in other words. Talarico’s aw-shucks niceness and youthful looks are reframed as the result of low testosterone, and his (admittedly mawkish and over-egged) statements of concern for gender-nonconforming children make him a “freak.” Worst of all, according to the Florida Republican Dan Weldon, Talarico looks as though he “couldn’t name a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s.” Supporters of the Republican candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, portray Democrats as wusses, cucks, soy boys who don’t follow sports. One commentator mused about whether Talarico wears “frilly underwear.”

So it goes with this continuing backlash. But good grief! Is that a reference to the Fox News Channel, right there in that opening paragraph?

Yes, it actually is! And with that, at long last, the Atlantic has chosen or has dared to join the human race. The magazine has even dared to let Lewis offer this:

Mostly, the attacks on Talarico have taken the form of 99,999 dog whistles implying that he is gay. On Fox News, Jesse Watters laughingly observed that the Democrats had rebuffed rumors that Talarico is vegan by posting photos of him “swallowing large sticks of meat.” He added: “He’s also 37 and not married.” When the New York Post confirmed that Talarico’s girlfriend exists by revealing her identity, the attack line mutated—did you know that she’s vegan? Pretty gay.   

By the way, I recommend watching the clip of Watters and [Stephen] Miller in full, because Miller has the kind of natural comic gifts that usually persuade people to forsake a career in stand-up and become a funeral director instead. Watters underlines the pathos by providing what I can describe only as live-action canned laughter. And yet, Miller must have some sense of humor, because his (vegan) roast of Talarico concluded with the assertion that the people of Texas, “some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women” in America, would never vote for “somebody with that much soy to be a U.S. senator, compared to a real conservative, patriotic, God-fearing, and truly beloved statewide figure in Ken Paxton.”

Ken Paxton? Truly beloved? Now, that’s comedy. Ken Paxton is not even truly beloved in Ken Paxton’s own party...

Astounding! The Atlantic has finally let one of its writers describe the type of braindead garbage which crowds the air at the Fox News Channel. For the clip of Watters and Miller to which she refers, Lewis links you here.

The Atlantic has thereby decided to bite the bullet and join the human race! That said, the New York Times still seems to cower in fear. So do the silent stars at MS NOW, from Rachel and Lawrence on down.

Lewis' work has long been superb. That said, our own Blue America, as a group, has never had a sexual politics. Also, our stars seem to be afraid of Fox, and they don't really seem to care. 

Gutfeld and Watters proceed in the knowledge that they can do and say whatever is pleasing. The loathing of women is undisguised, as is the baiting of those who lack the excessive volume of T which can make men so ugly, so stupid.

The Times will not report what they do. So too with our own cable stars!