OUR DEMOCRACY'S NEW CLOTHES: Theodore White was very bright!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Could he have imagined these clothes? Could "our democracy" possibly die in disorder? 

As we float that question today, forgive us if we ask you to think about Theodore White again.

Quite literally, White wrote the book about the presidential campaign which inaugurated the modern political era. Even today, his famous book bears a famous title:

The Making of The President 1960

White was 46 years old when he wrote his famous book. That said, who was Theodore White? The leading authority on his life offers this instant thumbnail:

Theodore H. White 

Theodore Harold White (May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist and historian, known for his reporting from China during World War II and the Making of the President series.

White started his career reporting for Time magazine from wartime China in the 1940s. He was the first foreigner to report on the Chinese famine of 1942–43 and helped to draw international attention to the shortcomings of the Nationalist government.

After leaving Time, he reported on post-war Europe for popular magazines in the early 1950s, but lost these assignments because of his association with the "Loss of China." He regained national recognition with The Making of the President 1960...

So goes the initial thumbnail. As the profile continues, additional background appears. We apologize for offering all this info. But this is part of "the way it was" at the dawn of this failing era:

White was born May 6, 1915, in Dorchester, [a part of] Boston. His parents were David White (born David Vladefsky, a Russian immigrant) and Mary Winkeller White. His father was a lawyer. He was raised Jewish, and as a teenager was a member of the socialist-Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. 

He was a student at Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1932; from there, he went on to Harvard College, from which he graduated [summa cum laude] with a B.A. in history as a student of John K. Fairbank, who went on to become a leading China scholar and White's longtime friend...

Awarded a Harvard traveling fellowship for a round-the-world journey, White ended up in Chungking, China's wartime capital. The only job he could find was with China's Ministry of Information. When Henry R. Luce, the China-born founder and publisher of Time magazine, came to China, he learned of White's expertise, the two bonded, and White became the China correspondent for Time during the war. He was the first foreign journalist to report the widespread Henan Famine and he filed stories on the strength of the Chinese Communists.

White chafed at the restrictions put on his reporting by the Chinese government censorship, but he also chafed at the spiking or rewriting of his stories by the editors at Time...

Although he maintained respect for Luce, White resigned and returned home to write freely, along with Annalee Jacoby, widow of fellow China reporter, Mel Jacoby. Their book about China at war and in crisis was the best-selling Thunder Out of China.

And so on from there, including a couple of best-selling novels in the 1950s.

White was 46 years old when he wrote the book which described the start of the modern political era. Some of his claims in the book strike us as perhaps a bit eccentric. That said, he was a summa cum laude Harvard grad who had seen large chunks of the world.

At the dawn of the modern era, White complained about the shriveled political discourse of the 1960 presidential campaign. Our question today will be this:

Smart and experienced though he may have been, could White have imagined what happened at last week's debate between Candidate Harris and Candidate Trump? Even at 46 years of age, could Theodore White have imagined the shape of our society's new suit of clothes?

More specifically, could White have imagined a major party nominee like one of the two in last week's debate? Could he have imagined a nominee who advanced the sorts of claims one candidate chose to advance during last Tuesday's event?

In our view, Candidate Harris was less than perfect during last Tuesday's debate. So were David Muir and Linsey Davis (ABC News), the moderators of that debate. Perfection is rarely achieved.

That said, our floundering nation's flailing discourse groans under the weight of the ongoing behaviors of the other candidate at the debate. We refer to behaviors our major news orgs don't seem to know how to describe—or may not want to confront.

We'll take a guess! The candidate made an array of claims which White could not have imagined. According to the ABC transcript, one of the most disordered of those claims started off like this:

TRUMP (9/10/24): Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War III, just to go into another subject. 

What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country—and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States! And a lot of towns don't want to talk—not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. 

In Springfield, they're eating the dogs! The people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating—they're eating the pets of the people that live there! And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame...

In Springfield—he seemed to mean in Springfield, Ohio—"the people that came in" are eating the cats and the dogs! According to the candidate, "the people that came in" are "eating the pets" of the people who live there! 

Within the context of "our democracy," the candidate almost seemed to be wearing a new suit of clothes. But so the candidate angrily said—and a large amount of public disorder has followed along from there.

Could Theodore White have imagined a major party nominee making such a presentation—it was only one of many—during a presidential debate?  We're willing to guess that the answer is no. We'll guess that he couldn't have done that.

Now for the rest of the story:

In a judgment for which he's been aggressively trashed, one of the moderators decided to "fact-check" what the candidate said about the eating of the dogs and the cats.

Rightly or wrongly—we have a mixed view—he didn't just let it go. This is what happened when David Muir, wisely or otherwise, decided to "clarify" the strange thing the hopeful had said:

MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community—

TRUMP: Well, I've seen people on television—

MUIR: Let me just say here, this is—

TRUMP: The people on television say, "My dog was taken and used for food." So maybe he said that, and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that—

TRUMP: We'll find out.

MUIR: Vice President Harris, I'll let you respond to the rest of what you heard.

"We'll find out," the candidate said. In the meantime, he was willing to broadcast the claim, which had already been widely disputed, to 67.1 million American citizens.

He was willing to broadcast the claim to the 67 million. Also, to the additional tens of millions of people who would see his claim amplified all across the programs of the Fox News Channel.

Should Muir have stepped in to "clarify" this point? By now, he and Davis have been savaged all through the halls of Red America for having engaged in such conduct during last Tuesday's debate.

As the week proceeds, we'll show you text from the several other times they fact-checked or sought to clarify statements by Candidate Trump. 

In our view, their approach to such matters wasn't always perfect. But in fairness, they were struggling with highly unusual statements.

Putting it a different way: 

They were trying to deal with this candidate's peculiar new suit of clothes.

To be clear, it wasn't just the eating of Springfield's pets. The candidate made other highly unusual claims in the course of the evening.

Candidate Harris also made statements which we would regard as inaccurate. In our view, it's hard to say that she made statements as disordered and "new" as those which emerged, with some regularity, from the other candidate in this year's White House campaign.

Candidate Trump was willing to say that some unspecified group of people have been eating the cats and dogs of some under-identified town. 

He said he'd seen someone say that on TV.  "We'll find out," he eventually said.

Starting with the Kennedy-Nixon debates, have moderators ever been forced to deal with such behavior? In support of Muir and Davis, we're prepared to suggest the possibility that this was a new suit of clothes.

The candidate emitted his statement about the eating of pets on Tuesday night. Yesterday morning, the New York Times was reporting on some of the effects of his behavior.

In Springfield—and yes, that would be Springfield, Ohio—there have been bomb threats since last Tuesday night. The FBI has been forced to step in. More than once, children have been evacuated from some of the city's public schools. 

In yesterday's print editions, the Times pushed its report about this state of affairs all the way back to page A21. Rightly or wrongly, they didn't think this remarkable state of affairs deserved a spot on the famous newspaper's front page.

It seems to us that the highly educated players at that famous newspaper didn't exercise perfect judgment about this matter. About the way to respond to behaviors like these—to this candidate's new suit of clothes.

We're prepared to cut the moderators some slack concerning the way they responded, in real time, to some of this candidate's statements. We'll even cut the New York Times some slack—for that newspaper's ongoing failure to come to terms with our society's new suit of clothes.

In fact, very few people have had to deal with this sort of disorder before. We'll guess that Theodore White—he of the summa cum laude degree—couldn't have imagined such disordered conduct during a presidential debate.

Long ago and far away, a famous emperor was striding about in a new suit of clothes. Citizens of the empire in question had a famously difficult time seeing the truth of the matter—had a hard time coming to terms with what was right there before them.

The New York Times has refused and refused, and refused and refused, to come to terms with our own society's new suit of clothes. People wear that raiment on the Fox News Channel, and that raiment was recently worn by one of the candidates in a presidential debate.

Final question for today:

Could "our democracy" die in this way? Imperfect though it always has been, could our democracy die in disorder as a gaggle of under-performing journalists insist on averting their gaze?

Could Teddy White have pictured this? Despite his summa cum laude degree, we'll guess that the answer is no!

Tomorrow: And on and on from there

SUNDAY: As the Times adopts a jocular tone...

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

...it's Pacific-10 greatness again: We could imagine a different tone shaping the New York Times news report.

We could imagine placing the news report on the Times' front page. (In this morning's print editions, the report in question appears on page A21.)

To our ear, the report starts with a somewhat jocular tone. Print edition headline included, the news report starts like this:

Threats Unnerve Ohio City After Trump’s False Claims

The dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio, appear to be perfectly safe, but many of its people are finding their lives upended this week by political rumormongering that has resulted in multiple bomb threats, school closures and a decision to dispatch the F.B.I.

Ever since former President Donald J. Trump claimed on national television that undocumented migrants were stealing and devouring the household pets of Springfield—“they’re eating the dogs,” he practically shouted, “they’re eating the cats”—the rhythms and routines in the city have not been the same.

Never mind that city authorities have refuted the story and that many residents called it ridiculous. The furor created by Mr. Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate has put Springfield in the cross-hairs of the nation’s political wars. For the past two days, bomb threats have proliferated, closing City Hall, schools and a motor vehicles office. F.B.I. agents have descended on the community to guard against danger not to animals but to humans.

The unexpected and unwanted attention generated by Mr. Trump’s false stories led to real-life confusion and anxiety for some residents. Schools have been evacuated, children sheltered at home and parents forced to make other plans during the workday. Gethro Jean, a Haitian pastor, said that he had been fielding questions from congregants who were concerned about attending church on Sunday.

Let's be fair! By paragraph 4, readers have been told, more than once, that there have been bomb threats and evacuations of schools. 

On the other hand, the 33-paragraph news report begins with a somewhat jocular tone. The dogs and cats of the city appear to be safe, readers are told in a somewhat whimsical manner.

Stating the obvious, there's no perfect way to report a news event. That said:

At least as a theoretical manner, we could imagine seeing a report about these events on the front page of this major newspaper, not on page A21. Also, we could imagine a different tone, and a somewhat different focus, as this lengthy report begins.

We plan to start with this topic tomorrow. We'll spend the week examining some of the problems facing the Democratic Party's nominee as the fall campaign, post-debate, finally goes full bore. 

That nominee says she's the underdog in the race. To the extent that we could even make a guess, we'd be inclined to agree with that assessment. 

Also, we don't know. At any rate:

Starting tomorrow, we plan to explore some of the problems confronting that nominee. For today, though, it's more of the same:

It's enduring Pacific-10 greatness.

Yesterday, it happened again! One of our dominant Pacific-10 teams vanquished a higher-rated team from the Midwest:

College football / September 14, 2024
Washington State: 24
Washington: 19

The outcome evoked a thousand Rose Bowl wins. Big-10 football went down once again. Regional greatness prevailed.

"There is never any ending to Paris," Hemingway wrote at the end of A Moveable Feast (original 1964 edition). Let's present the start of his final paragraph at slightly greater length:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it...

There's one more sentence after that. At that point, the memoir ends.

There's never an ending to Paris, Hemingway said, no matter how it has changed. Very frankly, it's a bit like that with the ongoing greatness of the Pacific-10. 

DEBATES: Brzezinski lacks the words to speak about Trump!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2024

From Harris, a hint of "the dark encroachment:" According to Theodore White, televised debates arrived on the scene as part of "a revolution in American Presidential politics.". 

This revolution was technological in nature. "It was a revolution born of the ceaseless American genius in technology," he wrote in The Making of The President 1960, a very famous book.

A "political revolution" had occurred. It involved the arrival, in American homes, of the TV set.

Plainly enough, you couldn't have four TV debates without those TV sets! Between 1950 and 1960, Americans had purchased roughly 40 million such devices, White noted in his book.

In White's somewhat eccentric view, the invention of the TV debates contributed to a massive dumbing down of American discourse. In part because of the demands of the new medium, "rarely in America history has there been a campaign which discussed issues less or clarified them less."

As of 1961, that's how it looked to Theodore White. All in all, we find it hard to believe that his gloomy assessment was accurate. 

That said, television did burst on the scene during the 1960 campaign. This year's campaign has also unfolded in the wake of a technological revolution. 

On yesterday morning's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski tried to describe her view of Candidate Donald J. Trump. When she did, she was discussing a political campaign which has come to us in the aftermath of the technological revolution known as "the democratization of media."

The TV set was on the scene as of 1960. As of the year 2024, so was a wide array of additional powerful media:

"Talk radio" had long since gone national. "Cable news" had long since arrived on the scene as a major player.

The Internet had come into being, with its many partisan sites. That had led on to "social media"—to a world in which every citizen is a king, as long as he or she can attract millions of eyeballs to whatever proclamation, however crazy, he or she may choose to emit.

It was within that context that Mika Brzezinski tried to state her view of Candidate Trump. 

Her view of the candidate might be right, or it might be wrong. But as she spoke, that candidate's latest claims were rocketing around the meme-o-sphere, including his proclamations about the eating of cats and dogs.

She tried to speak on Morning Joe. All in all, the mandates of an older order deprived her of her words.

Brzezinski had seen people asking if "Americans are ready for a woman" or for "a woman of color." She was gobsmacked by the question—and she was soon saying this:

BRZEZINSKI (9/13/24): I immediately think [sarcastically],"Are they ready?"

Well, what? Are they ready for a psychopath? Are they ready for someone who wants to use the government to commit retribution against all of his opponents for no reason at all? Who wants to destroy our democracy?

That's not an exaggeration. That's not rhetoric. That's what he said. That's what he has been doing....

Had she just called Candidate Trump "a psychopath?" Plainly, that's the way it seemed. 

She seemed to have voiced that assessment. Moments later, though, she faltered, then apologized, then turned to fuzzier words:

BRZEZINSKI: Are we ready for a woman? That's not the question, I think, we should be asking, Gene Robinson. It's like, are we ready to have a psy— 

I'm sorry. I— I'm just—

Having spoken to experts, someone who seems to have psychotic tendencies running our government, who has plans to do things that are very counter to our democracy and has already hurt women terribly, monstrously—already, happening now, in this country.

ROBINSON: Absolutely.

BRZEZINSKI: Are we ready for that? That's the question! I don't want to hear. "Are we ready for a woman?" That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

First, she stopped herself from using a certain term again. Then, she apologized. Then she dialed her language back. 

Rightly or wrongly, she now seemed to say that Candidate Trump is "someone who seems to have psychotic tendencies." Also, she seemed to say that she has spoken to "experts" about this matter. 

She didn't identify the types of experts with whom she has consulted. Robinson agreed with her, "absolutely," but he made no attempt to examine what she seemed to have said.

Our question today is this:

Absent the "democratization of media"—before the age in which every man and every woman could boot the Cronkites to the curb and exercise the rights of kings—before that latest technological revolution, could Candidate Trump have emerged as the three-time nominee of one of our two major parties?

Could he have maintained his sway to such an extent that 74 million people voted to give him a second term in the last presidential election? To such an extent that he plainly might reach the Oval again?

In 2016, "cable news" broadcast his every word, some of which did make sense. In recent years, his statements have rocketed around the world through the revolutionary auspices of "social media." 

Most recently, that has included his thoughtful remarks about the eating of cats and dogs. Those remarks get discussed on CNN and MSNBC, get disappeared over on Fox. 

Could this candidate have become the Republican nominee three times in the absence of this latest "political revolution"—in the absence of this "democratization of media?"

We'll guess that the answer is no. That said, he has tens of millions of strong supporters. Also, he has opponents like Brzezinski and Robinson—fervent opponents who seem to lack permission to use their words.

Is Donald J. Trump a "psychopath?" Plainly, that seems to be what Brzezinski believes, though we're not entirely sure what that claim is supposed to means.

Clearly, that's what Brzezinski wanted to say. Presumably the "experts" with whom she says she has consulted were drawn from the world of medical science. But there exists a powerful rule—a rule which comes from an earlier era—which won't let Brzezinski say the things she believes and wants to say.

Trump can say that Haitians are eating our dogs—but under prevailing rules of her guild, Brzezinski can't say the things she believes. Kathleen Kingsbury won't say those things. In Bue America, the leading careerists have all surrendered their words.

Brzezinski can't name the experts with whom she has spoken. She can't bring such experts on the air and interview them about this candidate's behaviors and claims.

This is the world in which we all live, in the wake of this latest technological burst. 

According to White, the TV set produced a political revolution. Plainly, the rise of cable news and social media has produced another.

Is there some sort of merit to the view Brzezinski knew she mustn't express? Under prevailing rules of the game, we aren't allowed to hear such thoughts—not even within the frequently disordered realm referred to as "cable news!"

Trump can discuss the eating of pets. Brzezinski can't discuss the nature of (clinically diagnosable) "personality disorders." 

A revolution opened a lane for Candidate Trump. The route to an entire class of "experts" is still almost wholly closed off. 

The New York Times won't discuss this matter. Neither will Mika Brzezinski, except in tiny bursts.

We've long stated our own impressions regarding such questions about Candidate Trump. Today, we only note the echo we hear—the echo from Theodore White's assessments of that earlier revolution.

For good or for ill, Candidate Trump has caught a wave—a powerful wave created by a wide array of new media. 

We'll be voting for Candidate Harris. Yesterday, her interview with Brian Taff sent out a very bad sign.

You can watch the eleven minutes here. For people hoping that Harris will win, it was a troubling performance.

Candidate Trump can talk all day. He's able to speak with great fluency about the eating of cats and dogs, with goldfish perhaps thrown in.

The one candidate can talk all day!  It begins to look, once again, like his opponent perhaps cannot.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder," the observer Paul Simon once said. The year was 1986. The name of the album was Graceland. 

Those were the days of miracle and wonder! Technology was opening a wider world, the gentleman hopefully said.

DEBATES: As CNN tries to figure it out...

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

...a cancer grows on the world:  Did somebody "win" last Tuesday's debate? If so, by how much?

Let's make our question a bit more precise:

Will one of the candidates end up receiving additional votes based on what happened on Tuesday night?

Especially in the short run, there's no real way to answer that question. Even in the longer run, there will likely never be any real way to do so.

Still, our nation's various "news orgs" are inclined to pretend to try. Before we review an attempt by CNN, let's review a sacred event on the Fox News Channel last night.

Last night, one of the channel's biggest stars had reached his sixtieth birthday.

(Full disclosure! We each attended high schools along the Alameda. He's a graduate of Catholic Serra High. We went to public school Aragon.)

At any rate, the birthday boy celebrated this latest accomplishment in some of the standard ways:

His owners had cherry-picked a handful of incidents—incidents in which a handful of undecided voters said the debate had led them to favor Candidate Trump. 

His owners had carefully picked and chosen the examples he would offer. Also, and inevitably, the fellow was soon saying this about the undecideds who say they've now broken for Trump:

GUTFELD (9/12/24): They're worried about affording gas and groceries, and she said nothing to allay those fears. 

And you'd think she'd be good at a laying, at least according to Willie Brown.

[PHOTO OF BROWN APPEARS. MIXED REACTION FROM AUDIENCE]

I know! That was in bad taste.

Candidate Harris would be good at "a laying!" Ha ha ha ha ha!

For the record, this was part of the birthday boy's imitation of an issues discussion. It wasn't part of his nightly handful of opening jokes. 

Inevitably, the fellow had gone straight to the sexual insult. When he did, Dana Perino sat there and took it, just like nothing has happened. 

This is standard fare on this "cable news" program. Thirty seconds earlier, the birthday boy had offered this bit of analysis:

GUTFELD: When the [New York] Times says voters are not so sure, it means we're [BLEEP]ing our pants like Biden after judging a chili cookoff.

[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]

That statement didn't even exactly seem to make sense. But in the end, this is (almost) all this fellow actually has. 

In fairness, he had seemed a bit unsure in the wake of Tuesday evening's debate when his primetime "cable news" program went back on the air Wednesday night.

For once, the fellow almost seemed to have it on mute. But even then, two of his D-list comedian guests had offered these thoughtful analyses:

LOFTUS (9/11/24): I thought Trump had an amazing night. I mean, he signed up for a debate and got fight club—and did that, against like three different people. I would have left the room.

Because you look at the moderators, who look like they just came off the set of Dick Tracy, right?...And then Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong strolls in, looking like Count Chocula.

According to this cable news analyst, "Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong" had strolled onto the set of the debate, "looking like Count Chocula!" 

Was this manifest flyweight inserting some racial plays here? You'll have to judge that for yourself. One minute later, D-List Comedian 2 was thoughtfully offering this:

TIMPF: I also think—look I think Republicans might have done a disservice by setting the bar so low for Kamala that she formed complete sentences and people were like, "Wow!" right?

GUTFELD: Yeah.

According to D-List Comedian 2, Kamala-La-La-Ding-Dong had somehow managed to form complete sentences at Tuesday night's debate.

All in all, this seems to be (almost) the best these people can do. For the record, at 10:05 that night, the host of the program, still just 59 years old, had offered this bit of analysis:

GUTFELD: It was clear that Linsey Davis and David Muir gave Kamala the easiest night she's had since Willie Brown ran out of Viagra.

[PHOTO OF BROWN. LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]

Terrible! I apologize.

In the end, it's (almost) all this idiot has. But for the record, this can is opened every night, in prime time, in the guise of "cable news."

In our view, a cancer is growing on the society as this garbage can spills every night. Also, a cancer is growing on the society as high-order beings at our finer news orgs pretend that there's nothing to see here.

Kathleen Kingsbury is chair of the New York Times editorial board. In our view, a cancer is growing on the society as she refuses to comment on Donald J. Trump's disordered behavior, or on the nightly performances which are presented on the garbage can currently under review.

Back to our original question! Who may end up gaining votes because of Tuesday's debate?

Last evening, in a parody of journalism, the birthday boy pretended to examine that question. Consider the way he handled CNN's post-debate interviews with 13 "undecided" voters in Erie County, Pa.

For the record, some of these undecided voters may not have been fully undecided as Tuesday's debate began:

Phil Mattingly handled the session for CNN. Here's what happened when he spoke with one of the undecideds—with an undecided voter who has now decided in favor of Candidate Trump, as is her perfect right:

MATTINGLY (9/10/24): Were you leaning towards the former president coming in tonight?

UNDECIDED VOTER #1: Probably.

MATTINGLY: And did you vote for him in 2016 or 2020?

UNDECIDED VOTER #1: I did.

MATTINGLY: So, a decision made there. 

She has decided that she'll be voting for Candidate Trump. That said, is it possible that CNN could have found someone in Erie County who was perhaps more undecided coming in?

Surely, someone had been more undecided! At any rate, here's what the thirteen Undecideds said during the CNN session:

Of the thirteen Undecideds in Erie County, nine said that Harris had won the debate. Four said Trump had won. 

During a pair of segments, Mattingly interviewed five of the voters. Of those five, three said they had now decided for to vote Harris, two said they'd be voting for Trump.

Stating the obvious, those voters can vote any way they like! That said, the birthday boy played the tape from Undecided Voter #1 and from nobody else. He didn't mention the larger breakdown in the reactions of the Erie County 13.

This is the way the news gets sifted, all through the bulk of the day, at this particular "news channel." The sifting starts at 5 a.m. and continues all through the night. 

Undecided voters are deciding for Trump, viewers were told last night. The birthday boy picked and chose the footage he showed to his laughing, applauding audience.

Also, the fellow engaged in his standard sexual insults. As he did, Perino acted like nothing had happened. Kingsbury plays it the same.

For better or worse, this is us the American people as we actually are. Rather, this is some of us the people, perhaps as we are at our worst.

The people who own the birthday boy are paying him millions of dollars to do this. You aren't allowed to know how many millions he's getting paid, and the New York Times isn't going to ask.

Last night, a Californian who's now 60 years old served his usual platter of sexual insults. Inevitably, he also talked about President Biden [BLEEP]ing his pants. 

From our former perch, one mile up the Alameda, we can't tell you how this furious fellow ever got to be this way.

(So you'll know: The birthday boy's owners BLEEP the word "sh*t." They allow the word "poop" to sail through.)

That's what happened in last evening's sacking of journalism. Saturday night, Brian Kilmeade even brought Judge Joe Brown out on the air.

Brown had called Harris "a piece of shit." He'd also called her a "humping hyena."

This made him perfect for a fellow like Kilmeade and also for the Fox News Channel. At the Times, Kingsbury (and others) know that they must never report or discuss such facts.

Final note:

There's little we can reliably learn from thirteen Undecideds. 

As Ed McMahon might have said, How undecided were they? Also, their statements were anecdotal all the way down, even as nine of the thirteen said that Harris had won.

That's what nine of the thirteen said! On Fox, the birthday boy emitted his standard slime, after which he wagged his tail and completely forgot to say that.

A cancer is growing on the world as these gong-show behaviors continue. Next week, we're going to call attention to an attendant point:

Candidate Harris may win in November! (She's going to get our vote.) But in a thousand different ways, we denizens of Blue America have conspired to earn our way out.

Links to the Mattingly files: In the aftermath of the debate, Mattingly spoke with the Erie County 13 in two different segments—first at the end of Tuesday's 11 p.m. hour, then again after midnight.

For the transcript of the first segment, you can just click here. CNN failed to create a transcript of the following hour.

For videotape of that first segment, you can just click this. To see what was said in the second segment, you can start by clicking here.

Nine of the 13 said Harris had won! As long as you're watching the Fox News Channel, you won't be permitted to hear that.

It was 67 million all over again!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

In a much larger nation: Viewership figures are in for Tuesday night's debate. 

How many people watched the event? According to NBC News (and everyone else), the very fine people at Nielsen have announced a familiar figure:

Harris-Trump debate nabs more than 67 million viewers, Nielsen says

The debate stage clash between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump drew an estimated 67.1 million viewers, according to the media analytics company Nielsen.

The estimated viewership improved on the ratings for the match-up between Trump and President Joe Biden in late June, which attracted roughly 51.3 million viewers—and effectively derailed Biden's re-election bid.

ABC hosted and aired the Harris-Trump faceoff, which was simulcast on 17 networks, including NBC and MSNBC, according to Nielsen.

[...]

Nielsen earlier reported that 57.5 million people watched Harris and Trump, adding that final numbers would be released later. The data did not include the number of people who followed the debate via social media, news websites or streaming platforms.

Sure enough! Once they included the streamers, the figure came to 67.1 million people. 

As we noted yesterday, this wasn't exactly a first. Way back at the dawn of time, Theodore White reported these viewership numbers for the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates:

WHITE (page 283): By mid-September all had been arranged. There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York.

In the event, when all was over, the audience exceeded the wildest fancies and claims of the television networks. Each individual broadcast averaged an audience set at a low of 65,000,000 and a high of 70,000,000. The greatest previous audience in television history had been for the climactic game of the 1959 World Series, when an estimated 90,000,000 Americans had tuned in to watch...

It looks like each of those debates was viewed by roughly 67 million people, even way back then! You can begin to spot a fairly large difference here:

United States population:
1960 census: 179.3 million
2024 estimate: 345.4 million 

Say what? With almost twice as many people, the same old number tuned in?

In fairness, there was nothing else you could watch back then. There was no History Channel, tempting eggheads with such scholarly fare as Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People. 

There was no fine arts channel like Bravo, prying eyeballs away from the hopefuls with The Real Housewives of Wherever We're Able to Find Them.

On Tuesday, we quoted Harper Lee in a second well-known book from that same era, a book in which she looked back to an even earlier period:

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with.

Even as late as 1960, is that why so many people tuned in? Was there just nowhere else to go? Were we just less distracted back then?

At any rate, 67.1 million people may have seen Candidate Trump say this at a key point in Tuesday night's debate:

TRUMP (9/10/24): People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. 

Apparently, that statement made a lot of sense to a whole lot of people. According to one widely ballyhooed survey, viewers believed that Candidate Trump outperformed his hapless opponent by a Putin-adjacent margin—by 86 percent to just 3!

No one ever saw anything like it! On that we call all agree!

DEBATES: Harris prevailed, CNN survey said!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Donald Trump's numbers were different: It's never completely clear what we mean when we ask who "won" a presidential debate. 

It's never quite clear what that means! But by most assessments, Candidate Harris prevailed this past Tuesday night. 

What was the candidate's victory margin? Overnight, at 2:37 on Wednesday morning, CNN offered this report about its instant survey of people who watched the debate:

CNN Flash Poll: Majority of debate watchers say Harris outperformed Trump onstage

Registered voters who watched Tuesday’s presidential debate broadly agree that Kamala Harris outperformed Donald Trump, according to a CNN poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS. The vice president also outpaced both debate watchers’ expectations for her and Joe Biden’s onstage performance against the former president earlier this year, the poll found.

Debate watchers said, 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia. Prior to the debate, the same voters were evenly split on which candidate would perform more strongly, with 50% saying Harris would do so and 50% that Trump would. 

For better or worse, that's what the survey said. 

That said, a citizen can never be sure! Within an hour of the debate, Candidate Trump was in the "spin room"—and he was reporting a vastly different set of numbers about who had won the debate.

Below, you see some of the survey results the candidate reported. To see him do so, click here:

HANNITY (late Tuesday night): What made you come to the spin room?

TRUMP: I just felt I wanted to. I was very happy with the result. 

So the candidate said to Hannity, right there in the spin room. A bit earlier, also in the spin room, he had made this array of claims:

TRUMP (9/10/24): When you're looking at polls, the worst—the worst poll that we've had was 71 that I see...

We had a 92% rating in one poll...

We had an 86% rating in another. We had 77%...

One poll is 92% to 6...

92 to 7. 92 to 6; 88 to 11...

REPORTER: Mr. President, speak louder.

TRUMP: All of the polls are 60, 70 and 80. 86 to 3!

 The polls are indicating that we got 90%, 60%, 72%, 71% and 89%.

REPORTER: Where are you getting those numbers from?

SECOND REPORTER: Yes, where are you getting those numbers from?

"Where are you getting those numbers from?" Someone had asked a good question!

For the record, it was obvious where the candidate was "getting those numbers from." The candidate was pulling those numbers right straight out of his asp.

Plainly, this was a form of public madness—something resembling insanity. 

The candidate's conduct in the spin room recalls the scene from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) in which Senator Iselin—a Joe McCarthy doppelganger—keeps changing his account of the number of card-carrying Communists within the Defense Department.

As presented in that iconic film, Senator Iselin is a simple-minded buffoon with a diabolical wife. You can watch the scene in question simply by clicking here:

SENATOR ISELIN (pompously): I am United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin, and I have here a list of the names of 207 persons who are known by the Secretary of Defense as being members of the Communist Party who are still nevertheless working at shaping the policy of the Defense Department.

[...]

MAJOR MARCO: I'd like to verify that number, sir. How many Communists did you say?

ISELIN: Oh, uh— I said there are exactly—I have absolutely proof there are 104 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department at this time.

MAJOR MARCO (puzzled): How many, sir?

ISELIN: Uh—275, and that's absolutely all I have to say on that subject at this time.

REPORTER: Major, how many did he say?

The senator had been pulling his numbers out of his keister too. Later, he begs his wife to let him settle on just one number of card-carrying Communists—on a number he'll find it easy to remember.

In that scene, director John Frankenheimer took his film to the level of high parody. A living, breathing nominee was loudly performing a similar scene this past Tuesday night.

That said, this was not some form of crazy parody. We'd be inclined to call it what it is—a form of public madness.

When a nominee behaves that way, we'd call it front-page news. Instead, a card-carrying careerist at the New York Times—the head of the editorial board—sucked her thumb in the wake of Tuesday's debate, in the way we described yesterday afternoon:

The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

[...]

Over the weekend, a survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60 percent of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction, and many reported that they didn’t know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues. Any poll is just a snapshot in time, and it is admittedly hard to interpret exactly what those respondents are looking for from her. Do they want a better understanding of how she plans to govern from the Oval Office in terms of policy? Or are they more interested in her character and what type of leader she would be?

For those voters looking for answers on policy, the debate is unlikely to have left them feeling better informed. According to the Times tracker, the vice president spent nearly half of her speaking time attacking Trump. She rightfully called out his lies and his dangerous embrace of dictators. She was also strong in defending reproductive rights, as well as President Biden’s record on foreign and domestic policy. And she mentioned a handful of plans she’d pursue if she won the White House.

Yet we learned very few new details about those plans...

That was the chairperson's takeaway. Trump was briefly mentioned in passing, and so on, then on and on.

As far as we know, Kathleen Kingsbury is a thoroughly good, decent person. Also, plenty of questions should still be asked of the Democratic nominee, who was in fact a bit evasive at various times Tuesday night. 

That said, Kingsbury's newspaper keeps normalizing the transparent madness of the other nominee. Some are now describing this sort of thing as "sane-washing." 

In our view, this behavior by our major news orgs is its own form of public madness. It represents a type of dumbness which seems to know no bounds.

Many questions remain to be asked of the two nominees. That said, one of the nominees routinely engages in acts of transparent madness. The people who sit at the top of the press corps refuse to address this fact.

The New York Times continues to normalize the apparent madness of Candidate Trump. As it does, the Fox News Channel continues along in its own brand of public misconduct.

Tuesday's presidential debate took place in the shadow of those influential orgs. Our pledge to you today will be this:

Tomorrow morning, we're going to show you what former "TV judge" Joe Brown said on the Fox News Channel this past Saturday night. As we've noted, he had recently referred to Candidate Harris as "a piece of sh*t" and a "humping hyena"—and that made him perfect for Fox.

It's depressing and painful to transcribe such garbage-can behavior. Tomorrow, we'll force ourselves to do it.

That said, you won't read about any of this in the New York Times. The Times is normalizing the madness of Candidate Trump, but it's also normalizing the (highly influential) moral squalor of Fox.

Survey said 86-3! At the cowardly lion known as the Times, this sort of thing seems to make perfect sense!

Tomorrow: We promise we're going to do it

Undecided voters try to decide!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Plus, the latest cognitive shortfall: What did the nation's Undecideds think about last night's debate?

Frankly, it's hard to decide! According to this report, the Washington Post assembled a panel of 25 "uncommitted, swing-state voters," then asked them "in real time about their reactions to Tuesday’s debate."

According to the Post's report, twenty-three said that Harris "performed better" last night; two said the same thing about Trump. By the end of the evening, fifteen were definitely or probably voting for Candidate Harris. According to the Post's report, Candidate Trump had the support of six.

That's what occurred in the realm of the Post. Over at the New York Times, Undecideds seemed to remain vastly more pre-decided:

Pundits Said Harris Won the Debate. Undecided Voters Weren’t So Sure.

For weeks, undecided voters have been asking for more substance.

So it was perhaps no accident that Vice President Kamala Harris’s first words during the presidential debate on Tuesday were, “I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan.”

Some Americans might need more convincing.

Bob and Sharon Reed, both 77-year-old retired teachers who live on a farm in central Pennsylvania, had high hopes for the debate between Ms. Harris and former President Donald Trump. They thought that they would come away with a candidate to support in November.

But, Ms. Reed said, “It was all disappointing.”

The couple ended the night wondering how the costly programs each candidate supported—Mr. Trump’s tariffs and Ms. Harris’s aid to young families and small businesses—would help a couple like them, living on a fixed income that has not kept pace with inflation. They said they didn’t hear detailed answers on immigration or foreign policy, either.

Fairly often, Undecideds are inclined to find it all disappointing. In this case, Candidate Harris's late entry into the race may tend to make this year's contest especially hard to parse. In our view, that suggests, among other things, the desirability of saddling the hopefuls up for another debate.

Meanwhile, the all-knowing Kathleen Kingsbury is the all-knowing "Opinion editor of The New York Times, overseeing the editorial board and the Opinion section." She focused on what Harris failed to do, tended to brush past Trump's corresponding failures:

The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

[...]

Over the weekend, a survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60 percent of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction, and many reported that they didn’t know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues. Any poll is just a snapshot in time, and it is admittedly hard to interpret exactly what those respondents are looking for from her. Do they want a better understanding of how she plans to govern from the Oval Office in terms of policy? Or are they more interested in her character and what type of leader she would be?

For those voters looking for answers on policy, the debate is unlikely to have left them feeling better informed. According to the Times tracker, the vice president spent nearly half of her speaking time attacking Trump. She rightfully called out his lies and his dangerous embrace of dictators. She was also strong in defending reproductive rights, as well as President Biden’s record on foreign and domestic policy. And she mentioned a handful of plans she’d pursue if she won the White House.

Yet we learned very few new details about those plans. On the economy, which voters often rank as the issue of most importance to them, she only scratched the surface in discussing how she’d enact tax cuts, build more affordable housing and help parents of young children. On foreign policy, she committed herself to a two-state solution in the Middle East and to supporting Ukraine in victory over Russia, but she didn’t expand on how she’d seek to achieve either goal. She pledged not to ban fracking but said little on how she would plan to invest in climate solutions. She also continued to dodge questions about why she recently distanced herself from positions that she took in her quest to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.

Most important, she did very little to distinguish her plans from Biden’s in an election in which the electorate seems hungry for change.

Bad Harris! Bad Harris—no!

It isn't that any of this is "wrong"—and Harris did avoid giving direct answers to several direct questions. That said, does anyone have the slightest idea how Candidate Trump is going to accomplish the various goals he laid out as he meandered through last evening's event?

For example, does anyone know how Candidate Trump plans to accomplish the world-saving miracle described in the passage below? On the stump, he makes this promise all the time. But is he even describing behavior which would be legal?

TRUMP (9/10/24): ...She hates Israel. At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up, Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone. It would have never happened. Iran was broke under Donald Trump. Now Iran has $300 billion because they took off all the sanctions that I had. Iran had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different spheres of terror. And they are spheres of terror. Horrible terror. They had no money. It was a big story, and you know it. You covered it. Very well, actually. They had no money for terror. They were broke. Now they're a rich nation. And now what they're doing is spreading that money around. Look at what's happening with the Houthis and Yemen. Look at what's going on in the Middle East. This would have never happened. 

I will get that settled and fast. And I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I'm President-Elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president.

He'll get that settled before taking office? Is he even describing something that's legal? 

We don't know the answer to that question. But what ever happened to the old bromide according to which "we only have no president at a time?"

No one seems to ask. That said, it was interesting to learn about Harris's consistency! Candidate Harris hates Israel, but she hates the Arab population too, though only in her own way.

We can think of a lot of questions which could be directed to each of these candidates. Some Undecideds just never decide, but judged by traditional norms, it would make a lot of sense to have two more debates.

That said, some statements pretty much speak for themselves. From last night's event, we'd probably start with this:

TRUMP: First, let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. 

So she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics...

Harris is busing people into her rallies and paying them to be there! At least as a matter of theory, this may be an improvement over Trump's previous claim that no people were actually present at one of Harris's crowded events.

As far back as 2017, something on the order of three dozen medical specialists were willing to say that this particular candidate had a clinical "personality disorder" which creates an element of danger. For better or worse, our high-end journalists have always agreed that we must never report or discuss that apparent possibility.

On balance, we aren't even saying that journalistic decision is wrong. It does say something about the immaturity of our public discourse.

At any rate, this:

First, the rally attendees weren't there. Now the attendees are being bused in and they're being paid for their services.

People like Kingbury normalize this! According to experts, cognitive shortfalls will sometimes pop up in the place where you least expect them.

Remarkably full disclosure: With respect to the possible clinical affliction of the one candidate, we've always counseled empathy / sympathy for anyone so afflicted.

"I pity the poor immigrant," Bob Dylan (metaphorically) said.

DEBATES: Fox News loomed over last night's debate!

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

But so did the New York Times: Last evening, after the ball was over, the Harris campaign said they wanted more debates.

At 6:35 this morning, speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign, Jason Miller said his candidate has already agreed to another debate—to a debate to be run by NBC News on September 25.

Later, on Fox & Friends, the candidate himself may have walked Miller's promise back. But so the chaos routinely goes in a society which has largely lost the ability to conduct a serious discourse.

The behavior of the Fox News Channel loomed over last evening's debate. So did the increasingly strange New York Times—a major news org whose puzzling behavior is finally becoming a bit more visible within Blue America.

More on that to come. For now, ever so briefly, let's consider why it would be a good idea to have additional debates this very year, involving those very same candidates.

Evert so briefly, we take you back to the dawn of these TV debates, as described by Theodore White "in a very old book." The year was 1960. A whole new era came into being in the following way:

Initially, Candidate Kennedy had wanted five (5) debates. The candidates finally settled on four.

 Below, you see the way White outlined the nature of those famous first four sessions:

WHITE (page 283): By mid-September all had been arranged. There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York.

[...]

(page 287): This, the first of the debates, was committed to a discussion of domestic issues—an area in which the Democrats, by their philosophy and record, make larger promises and offer a more aggressive attitude to the future than the Republicans. Kennedy, opening, declared that the world could not endure half-slave and half-free, and that the posture of America in the world rested fundamentally on its posture at home—how we behaved to each other, what we did to move American society forward...

[...]

(page 290): The second |debate concerned itself with foreign policy and ranged from Cuba’s Castro through the U-2 and espionage to the matter of America’s declining prestige, and closed on the first sharp clash of the series—the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. 

The third debate resumed, like a needle stuck in a phonograph groove, with the subject of Quemoy and Matsu, hung there almost indefinitely, then broke away with Nixon’s stern disapproval of President Truman’s bad language, and went on to other matters such as bigotry, labor unions and gold outflow. This, according to all sample surveys, was Nixon’s best performance in terms of its impact on the audience. This was the debate in which Nixon spoke from Los Angeles while Kennedy spoke from New York, and it was as if, separated by a continent from the personal presence of his adversary, Nixon were more at ease and could speak directly to the nation that lay between them.

The fourth debate was the dreariest—both candidates had by now almost nothing new left to say, and they repeated themselves on all the matters they had covered in the three previous debates. Curiously enough, the audience which had been highest for the first debate and dropped off slightly for the second and third, returned on the last debate to almost match the total of the first.

Who knows? Perhaps the hopefuls had only needed three television debates! That had become the standard number until forms of madness in recent years created the current situation.

"The fourth debate was the dreariest," White said in his iconic book. By the time of that fourth debate, the candidates had "almost nothing new left to say."

But as those four debates took place, American voters were able to see the candidate discuss a range of issues, encompassing foreign and domestic policy in several targeted sessions.

The first debate had been moderated by a fully serious person—by a former Rhodes scholar who had actually interviewed Hitler and had become one of "the Murrow Boys." 

There were no crazy discussions in those four debates—and White reported the very large numbers of people who were said to have tuned in:

WHITE (page 283): In the event, when all was over, the audience exceeded the wildest fancies and claims of the television networks. Each individual broadcast averaged an audience set at a low of 65,000,000 and a high of 70,000,000. The greatest previous audience in television history had been for the climactic game of the 1959 World Series, when an estimated 90,000,000 Americans had tuned in to watch the White Sox play the Dodgers. When, finally, figures were assembled for all four debates, the total audience for the television debates on the Presidency exceeded even this figure.

[...] 

(page 293): There are many measures of the numbers of Americans who viewed the debates. The low measure is that of Dr. George Gallup, America’s most experienced pollster, who sets the figure of Americans who viewed one or all of the debates at 85,000,000. The two most extensive surveys of audience were those made by NBC and CBS, the two great television networks. Their independent measures of the audience are so close that they must be taken seriously: NBC has estimated from its surveys that 115,000,000 Americans viewed one or all of the great debates; CBS has estimated the number at 120,000,000. With or without issues, no larger assembly of human beings, their minds focused on one problem, has ever happened in history.

To the extent that those figures can be trusted, 65-70 million people watched each of these four events. More than 100 million people may have watched at least one of these sessions.

At that time, the nation's population stood at 180 million—just a bit more than half what it is today.

Inaccurate statements were surely made, but no one mentioned the eating of pets. There was no "cable news" at that time, and the odd behavior of today's New York Times still lay off in the distance.

Will Candidates Harris and Trump meet for another debate? In our view, the moderators did about as good a job as could be expected last night. But there's no possible way to cover the waterfront in a single 90-minute session.

Imaginably, additional televised discourse could favor Candidate Trump in some imaginable ways. For example, what explains President Biden's border policy over the past (almost) four years? 

As Candidate Harris was able to explain last night, it turns out that Candidate Harris isn't President Biden!  But how would Candidate Harris explain past border policy? Imaginably, a further discussion could provide Candidate Trump with the chance to make statements which aren't overtly crazy about these past four years.

Imaginably, that could happen. That said, also this:

Imaginably, Candidate Trump could be asked to explain additional crazy claims he routinely advances if further debates take place. His very strange statements are many in number. Imaginably, those very strange, ridiculous statements could, at last, be explored. 

For example, this:

Mommy, where do tariffs come from? Also, who would be on the hook for paying the trillions of dollars involved in the expansive tariffs Candidate Trump is proposing and is describing in a delusional manner?

At present, very few voters could answer those questions—and as Kevin Drum explains in this latest post, the increasingly bizarre New York Times is very much as it again regarding tariffs.

There they go again, above the fold on the front page of this morning's print editions.

(For the record, Ana Swanson's previous front-page report about tariffs was one of the strangest front-page reports we have ever read. But so it goes at the New York Times as its product gets stranger and stranger and stranger.)

Sadly, the Times has been like this for decades, dating back to the way it conducted its "forever war" against Clinton and Clinton, but also against Candidate Gore.  In large part, we decided to start this site, at the dawn of the Internet, in the face of that strange journalistic behavior. 

Because we currently live in a world in which there's virtually no such thing as "information flow"—because what happens in the mainstream press corps very much stays in the mainstream press corps—we live in a world where this broadly strange journalistic behavior has only recently, and only slightly, begin to be challenged, explored.

For the record, Candidate Harris did emit a howler last night. On the Fox News Channel, that howler is suddenly being cited, by one and all, as "the fine people hoax." 

Today, they'll be discussing what the candidate said. For the record, those of us in Blue America can be wed to our groaners too.

That said, last night's debate took place in the shadow of Judge Joe Brown, who recently called Candidate Harris "a piece of shit," but also a "humping hyena."

The debate took place in the shadow of those deranged remarks. Also, it took place in the shadow of the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld, who has asked, on at least three separate occasions, whether Hunter Biden has started "f*cking" (or "banging") first lady Jill Biden, now that President Biden has dropped out of the race.

The Fox News Channel opens that garbage can every night of the week. A cancer has been growing on the society and that cancer has several names.

The Fox News Channel is one of its names. But the New York Times, in its vast silence concerning such conduct, is spreading that cancer too.

Howard K. Smith had been a Rhodes scholar. He had interviewed Hitler himself, then had gone to school as one of "the Murrow Boys."

Way back then, our deeply challenged American nation was somehow able to stage four (4) TV debates between a pair of well-informed, fully coherent presidential candidates. No one mentioned the eating of pets—and tens of millions of citizens watched.

None of this was perfect back then. But there was no such thing as the Fox News Channel, and no one did what Brian Kilmeade did last Saturday night:

No one opened the garbage can and spoke to a person like Judge Joe Brown. No one was forced to avert its gaze from such gruesome "journalistic" behavior, in the way the almost-as-gruesome New York Times now defiantly does.

Still coming: Kilmeade opens the can

This whole discourse is out of order!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Peter Baker, front page of the Times: Full disclosure:

We hadn't watched last evening's Last Word when we scanned today's New York Times.

We still hadn't seen the opening segment of Lawrence O'Donnell's program. That said, and for obvious reasons, we read a certain front-page "News Analysis" first.

The piece was written by Peter Baker, who's the farthest thing from dumb. It sat above the fold on the front page of today's print editions—and it helps establish a basic fact about this broken press corps.

Baker's the farthest thing from dumb!  Despite that fact, his essay started like this:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Too Old? The Focus Is Now on Trump

The last time the nation held a debate with the presidency on the line, a candidate with about eight decades of life behind him faced the challenge of proving that he was still up to the job of running the country. He failed.

Two and a half months later, the cast of characters has shifted and another candidate heading toward the octogenarian club confronts his own test to demonstrate that he has not diminished with age. Whether he passes that test may influence who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office.

At 78, former President Donald J. Trump exhibits more energy and speaks with more volume than President Biden does at 81, but he, too, has mixed up names, confused facts and stumbled over his points. Mr. Trump’s rambling speeches, sometimes incoherent statements and extreme outbursts have raised questions about his own cognitive health and, according to polls, stimulated doubts among a majority of voters.

With Mr. Biden now out of the race, the politics of age have been turned on their head. Mr. Trump is now the oldest person ever to run for president on a major party ticket and, if he wins, would become the oldest president in history by the end of his term, when he would be 82. While he managed to sidestep questions about his own capacity while Mr. Biden was his opponent, the rival he will square off against at Tuesday’s prime-time debate in Philadelphia will be Vice President Kamala Harris, who at 59 is nearly two decades younger.

Donald J. Trump "has mixed up names?" The problem, of course, goes well beyond that, and it may have nothing to do with age. But as of today, it's finally clear:

It isn't possible to get the Times to come to terms with that fact.

The presidential candidate in question says crazy thigs every day. For the record, he began saying crazy things about Barack Obama's place of birth back in 2011, when he was 65—just six years older than Candidate Harris is today.

Today, he says crazy things pretty much every day. 

Some of the crazy things he says fly in the face of the basic functioning of the American system. Some of the crazy things he says seem to suggest that he has no idea how certain basic policy questions work.

We've been urging the Times (and other such orgs) to come to terms with a basic fact of life:

When a nominee says crazy things, the fact that he did so is front-page news. If the nominee says crazy things every day, it's front-page news every time.

Peter Baker isn't dumb; his analysis piece plainly is. Last evening, O'Donnell thundered about the way Baker focuses on the candidate's recent statement, at The Economic Club of New York, about the possibility of addressing the current high costs of child care.

For the record, Trump's long address was full of crazy remarks. In its usual simple-minded way, the high-end press corps widely decided to focus on what he said in response to a question from an audience member about those child care costs.

In fairness, Trump's jumbled response was easy to mock, and our journalists tend to love anything that's simple-minded and easy. Along the way, news orgs avoided the larger problem with what the candidate said in response to that question, just as Baker does today.

At this point, let's be fair! We agree with this part of what Baker says in his piece:

BAKER (9/10/24): What he seemed to be saying was that he would raise so much money by imposing tariffs on imported goods that the country could use the proceeds to pay for child care. 

We agree! That did seem to be what the hopeful was saying as he meandered along. As he wandered the countryside, vaguely conveying that impression, an underlying fact also seemed to be clear:

The candidate doesn't have a proposal for reducing the cost of child care, and he didn't want to say so.

Fair enough! Candidate Trump has no proposal concerning the costs of child care. He seemed to say that his brilliant plan for using "smart tariffs" will bring in so much money that it will be easy to finance some future plan, if he ever has one.

That seemed to be what he was saying! But as we read the Baker piece, we were struck by the groaning fact O'Donnell cited last night. Possibly at the insistence of editors, Baker had chosen not to say something he surely knows to be true.

For perhaps the ten millionth time, Trump had offered a crazy account of the way tariffs work.

Needless to say, Lawrence immediately began to say Trump had been "lying" again. This implies that Donald J. Trump actually understands the way tariffs actually work.

We're sorry, but we know of no reason to assume that that is true.

Does Candidate Trump actually understand the way tariffs actually work? We don't have the slightest idea—but among the various crazy things he said at The Economic Club of New York, he scattered this manifest nonsense of this type through major parts of his endless address:

TRUMP (9/5/24): Under my leadership, America will encourage domestic production instead of punishing it. As you know, our country’s vast manufacturing wealth was created at a time with very little domestic taxation, few regulations, and most revenue came from tariffs from other countries. That was when we were at the wealthiest ever, proportionately. We were the wealthiest country ever during those days. That was before income tax came along.

Now we foolishly do the opposite. We impose lower tariffs, and no tariffs, on foreign producers. We have the lowest tariffs of any nation in the world, and we relentlessly punish our own companies for doing business in America. You do business in America, you’re punished tremendously.

I had many, many companies come to me, "Sir, I can’t compete. They’re sending kitchen cabinets, washers and dryers, everything. I can tell you, every--motorcycles. They’re sending them here, sir. We can’t compete."

And I made it so they could compete and thrive. Every one of those people, we should get them up and talk to you one day, because every one of those people comes up to me, and every time I see them, they hug me, they kiss me, they love me, because I saved their businesses.

Yes, he actually said that! Every time those business leaders see him, they call him "Sir." After that, they hug and kiss him, they love the hopeful so much.

As you can see in that brief excerpt, these business leaders hug him and kiss him because of what he accomplished when he was president, through his use of tariffs. But does he know how tariffs work? 

Does he know what a tariff is? Again and again and again and again, it pretty much seems that he doesn't:

TRUMP (continuing directly): I intend to reverse this model and once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world. We can do that, just with being intelligent. The key to this effort will be a pro-American trade policy that uses tariffs to encourage production here and bring trillions and trillions of dollars back home. And you know what? We deserve it.

Candidate Trump says he'll use tariffs to "bring trillions and trillions of dollars back home." 

But how exactly do tariffs work? How is that going to happen? For perhaps the ten millionth time, Candidate Trump seemed to say that tariffs work like this:

TRUMP: In the words of a great but highly underrated president, William McKinley, highly underrated, the protective tariff policy of the Republicans has been made, and made the lives of our countrymen sweeter and brighter. It’s the best for our citizenship and our civilization, and it opens up a higher and better destiny for our people. We have to take care of our own nation and our industries first.

In other words, take care of our country first. This is when we had our greatest wealth. He was assassinated, and he left his group of people that followed him. Teddy Roosevelt became a great president, spending the money that was made by McKinley.

So McKinley got a bad deal on that one. He built tremendous wealth. They had the Tariff Act of 1887, and they had a committee that studied, what are we going to do? They had a big problem, a problem like I hope to have with this country someday. So much money was coming in from foreign countries that they didn’t know how to spend it. They had no idea, so they set up a committee—we’ll set one up with the people in this room—"How do we distribute the wealth that we have?"

And Roosevelt built dams and built railroads and did national parks, but he did it with the money that was made with tariffs from McKinley. So you have to remember that. Very highly underrated, a very underrated president.

Let’s give them both credit. Smart tariffs will not create inflation. They will combat inflation. I had almost no inflation, and I had the highest tariffs that anyone’s seen, and they were going a lot higher. Foreign nations will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, reducing the deficit and driving inflation down. It will largely reduce our deficit.

In my first term, we imposed historic tariffs with no effect on consumer prices or inflation. The anti-tariff people, many of them, I believe, honestly work for these other countries in some form, get tremendous amounts of lobbying money and other money because it doesn’t make sense what they’re saying. But we had no inflation, and we had protection, and I saved so many industries. I saved the steel industry.

But Biden and Harris are letting it go. They’re letting it go. It’s so easy to keep. A combination of fair trade tax cuts, regulatory cuts, and energy abundance will allow us to produce more goods, better and cheaper, right here in the USA than we’ve ever done before. And foreign nations will respect us again. I got along great with foreign nations, and I taxed the hell out of them. And they liked me. Maybe they respected me.

Again and again, for perhaps the ten millionth time, the candidate seemed to say that a tariff is like a tax imposed on a foreign country. 

He "taxed the hell out of" foreign nations, the former president said. Under his new plans for more far-reaching tariffs, "foreign nations will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, reducing the deficit and driving inflation down," the former president added.

"I got along great with foreign nations, and I taxed the hell out of them," the former president puzzlingly said. "Maybe they respected me," he modestly mused—and from there, he immediately turned to quoting Viktor Orban's praise for his brilliant global leadership.

As Lawrence explained last night, the president of the United States can't tax a foreign nation. That isn't the way a tariff works. That isn't where the money comes from—and there's absolutely zero chance that Baker doesn't know that.

Peter Baker knows that these representations don't seem to make actual sense. He also knows that Candidate Trump says these things day after day after day as he whips up rally crowds by telling them that the last election was stolen, another repetitive claim the Times agrees to ignore.

If a candidate says these things every day, it's front-page news each time! In this case, Baker made fun of the verbal jumble Trump created in failing to answer the child care question, but he just let it go after that.

He didn't mention the apparent lunacy of Trump's proposal for vastly expanded tariffs. We'll take a guess as to why Baker's editors made him do that:

Talk about tariffs is very hard—and they like their front page to be easy.

Please don't make us try to explain this lunacy any further. But on the morning of the debate, this whole Potemkin "national discourse" is vastly out of order.

In the past few days, we've been trying to draw a contrast between the present and the past. Were we the people more serious once? How about our high-end journalists?

Are we now a confederacy of clowns, Fox News and the Times together?

For extra credit only: For Lawrence's opening segment last night, you can just click here. For the record, we don't know why he seems to feel so sure that Candidate Trump is lying.

Regarding the Times, we also note this:

In the paper's September 7 print editions, Jonathan Weisman offered this "Political Memo" about Trump's speech to The Economic Club. 

Weisman focused on the candidate's remarks about tariffs too. Seeming to chuckle a bit, he restricted himself to the politics of the tariff proposals. 

Policy can be hard! As you can see, Weisman didn't bother explaining the policy problems with what Candidate Trump says and says, and says and says and says and says, about this miracle cure. Presumably, that would simply be too hard for readers of the Times.

Our public discourse is highly Potemkin. It's given the look of a public discourse, but it's Marshmallow Fluff inside, then pretty much all the way down.

For the C-Span tape of the candidate's speech, you can just click here. No one at The Economic Club piped up about the tariffs!

DEBATES: Candidate Kennedy rose from his nap!

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

Kilmeade brought in the trash: "By mid-September all had been arranged."

So wrote Theodore White, describing the process by which the first presidential debates came into being. As White explained in a famous book, the debates would be presented to the public through the auspices of a new electronic medium—through the public's purchase of 40 million brand new TV sets.

The year was 1960. There were no "cable news" channels in the Big Woods. There were no national "talk radio" programs of any major consequence.

All we had were the three major networks. The schedule agreed to was this:

WHITE (page 283): There would be four debates—on September 26th, October 7th, October 13th and October 21st. The first would be produced by CBS out of Chicago, the second by NBC out of Washington, the third by ABC out of New York and Los Angeles and the fourth, again by ABC, out of New York. 

According to White, Candidate Kennedy initially wanted five debates. Eventually, the candidates agreed to hold four—and the four debates were parceled out among the three major networks.

To judge from White's reporting, "debate prep" may have been a bit more casual in those early days. According to White, Candidate Kennedy arrived in Chicago on Sunday, September 25, accompanied by a three-man "Brain Trust"—an entourage composed of three men who were strikingly young.

Theodore Sorenson was 31; Richard Goodwin was just 28. At 43, Mike Feldman was the graybeard of the group. According to White, the candidate's debate prep, such as it was, proceeded as described:

WHITE (page 284): Early on Monday they met the candidate in his suite for a morning session of questions and answers. The candidate read their suggestions for his opening eight-minute statement, disagreed, tossed their suggestions out, called his secretary, dictated another of his own; and then for four hours Kennedy and the Brain Trust considered together the Nixon position and the Kennedy position, with the accent constantly on fact: What was the latest rate of unemployment? What was steel production rate? What was the Nixon stand on this or that particular? The conversation, according to those present, was not only easy but rather comic and rambling, covering a vast number of issues entirely irrelevant to the debate. Shortly before one o’clock Goodwin and Feldman disappeared to a basement office in the Ambassador East to answer new questions the candidate had raised, and the candidate then had a gay lunch with Ted Sorensen, his brother Robert and public-opinion analyst Louis Harris. The candidate left shortly thereafter for a quick address to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (which Nixon had addressed in the morning) and came back to his room for a nap. About five o’clock he rose from his nap, quite refreshed, and assembled brother Robert, Sorensen, Harris, Goodwin and Feldman for another Harvard tutorial skull session.

Several who were present remember the performance [quite] vividly...The candidate lay on his bed in a white, open-necked T shirt and army suntan pants, and fired questions at his intimates. He held in his hand the fact cards that Goodwin and Feldman had prepared for him during the afternoon, and as he finished each, he sent it spinning off the bed to the floor. Finally, at about 6:30, he rose from his bed and decided to have dinner. He ate what is called “a splendid dinner” all by himself in his room, then emerged in a white shirt and dark-gray suit, called for a stop watch and proceeded to the old converted sports arena that is now CBS Station WBBM at McClurg Court in Chicago, to face his rival for the Presidency of the United States.

So the hopeful's debate prep went, with shards of comic, rambling banter and index cards flipped to the ground.

Meanwhile, Candidate Nixon "had spent the day in solitude, with no other companion but Mrs. Nixon, in his room at the Pick-Congress [Hotel]." It seems that his debate prep was even more casual than that of the candidate he opposed.

Mythologies have emerged about this first debate, one of which seems to trace directly to White's famous book. White's greatest concern—his belief that these debates had failed to inform the public—have largely been forgotten in this less rigorous time.

It was, in effect, a simpler time—a time which boasted far fewer means of mass communication. Tonight, Candidates Harris and Trump will stage their first and possibly their only debate—but they'll be operating in a vastly different cultural and journalistic context. 

For better or worse, we've come a long way, baby! Consider what happened last Saturday night when Judge Joe Brown was invited by the Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade to please bring in the trash.

TV was new in 1960, and we had only three networks. That first debate was moderated by Howard K. Smith of CBS News. He was only 46 at the time, but according to the leading authority on his career, he had a substantial background:

Howard K. Smith

Howard Kingsbury Smith (May 12, 1914 – February 15, 2002) was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.

Upon graduating [from Tulane in 1936], Smith worked for the New Orleans Item, with United Press in London, and with The New York Times. In January 1940, Smith was sent to Berlin, where he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System under Edward R. Murrow. He visited Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, Schutzstaffel or "SS" leader Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

He had interviewed Hitler himself! The overview continues:

He was one of the last American reporters to leave Berlin before Germany and the United States went to war. His 1942 book, Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War describes his observations from Berlin in the year after the departure of Berlin Diary author William L. Shirer. Last Train from Berlin became an American best-seller and was reprinted in 2001, shortly before Smith's death.

Smith became a significant member of the "Murrow Boys" that made CBS the dominant broadcast news organization of the era. In May 1945, he returned to Berlin to recap the German surrender.

Like the not-yet famous Walter Cronkite, Smith had been one of the "Murrow Boys." The background continues:

In 1946, Smith went to London for CBS with the title of chief European correspondent. In 1947, he made a long broadcasting tour of most of the nations of Europe, including behind the Iron Curtain. In 1949, Knopf published his The State of Europe, a 408-page country-by-country survey of Europe that drew on these experiences and that argued "both the American and the Russian policies are mistaken"; he advocated more "social reform" for Western Europe and more "political liberty" for Eastern Europe.

Despite these criticisms of Soviet policies, Smith was one of 151 alleged Communist sympathizers named in the Red Channels report issued in June 1950 at the beginning of the Red Scare, effectively placing him on the Hollywood blacklist.

Beginning on January 11, 1959, Smith moderated Behind the News with Howard K. Smith, a CBS-TV program "analyzing news events and the significance of issues in the news". The sustaining program was broadcast on Sundays from 6 to 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

So matters stood on the night of that first debate. In effect, Smith was a member of an American generation a new president would describe at an early point in his inaugural address:

KENNEDY (1/20/61): Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The new president was principally speaking of himself and of his administration. But so it also seems to have been with (some of) the journalists of the day, including Cronkite and Smith. 

That said, Smith's days at CBS would soon come to an end. As its thumbnail of Smith's career continues, the leading authority explains:

Reporting on civil-rights riots in Birmingham in the early 1960s, Smith revealed the conspiracy that existed between police commissioner Bull Connor and the KKK to beat up black people and Freedom Riders. He planned to end his report "Who Speaks for Birmingham?" (broadcast date: May 18, 1961 with a quote from Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," but the CBS lawyers intervened. Nonetheless, the documentary caused a stir (leading CBS to be sued and its Birmingham TV station to disaffiliate), and because his contract with CBS forbade editorializing, Smith was suspended and subsequently fired by CBS President William S. Paley.

Smith was out at CBS; he moved on to the less prominent ABC. In April 1996, reviewing one of Smith's books, the Washington Post's Herbert Mitgang puckishly described the ouster from CBS:

HOWARD K. SMITH: TV HISTORY

EVENTS LEADING UP TO MY DEATH The Life of a Twentieth-Century Reporter, by Howard K. Smith St. Martin's Press/A Thomas Dunne Book. 419 pp. $24.95.

In the history of American television, Howard K. Smith deserves a place of honor for being the only correspondent ever fired by a network for daring to quote Edmund Burke, the 18th-century British statesman.

Smith, a CBS News correspondent who had risked his neck reporting from prewar Berlin through the Battle of the Bulge, was covering the riots in Birmingham during the civil rights revolution in the early 1960s. Klansmen, encouraged by Bull Connor, the police commissioner, began to beat up blacks and Freedom Riders with bicycle chains and baseball bats. After giving an account of blood flowing in the streets, Smith, a former Rhodes scholar, ended his planned documentary with a quotation from Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

The network powers summoned Smith to New York. He was told that his commentary violated "standards of objectivity." A CBS lawyer who vetted his broadcasts said, "Smith's quotation from Burke is straight editorial; it's out." He was asked to write a memo explaining the meaning of fairness and balance. At a showdown lunch in the office of William S. Paley, the CBS chairman reached into his pocket and drew out Smith's memo, which emphasized the need to enlighten the public. Paley threw the document across the lunch table at Smith. "I have heard all this junk before," the chairman said. "If that is what you believe, you had better go somewhere else." Goodbye, Burke. Goodbye, Smith.

"Witnessing the savage beatings in Birmingham was my worst experience since the opening of the concentration camps at the end of World War II," Smith writes.

If we choose to take Chairman Paley at his word, there was zero room for "editorializing" at that point in time. At any rate, with respect to the moderator of that first debate, "That's the way it was" at the CBS News of that time.

Is it possible that we the people—we the American people—were, at least in certain respects, a bit less frivolous then? Is it possible that we were dogged by fewer inanities at that time—perhaps by fewer distractions?

To borrow from Harper Lee, is it possible that something like this was true?

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with,

Is it possible that (some of) our journalists were (perhaps) more serious then? We know of no way to answer that question, but there were no "cable news" channels in the Big Woods, and there was no Fox News.

All we had was the three major networks! Within the communication landscape, there were no garbage cans out of which a figure like Judge Joe Brown might be invited to crawl.

Tonight, two candidates will take the stage for their first, and perhaps for their only, debate. 

One candidate was unexpectedly thrust onto the scene when President Biden withdrew from the race. Whatever her actual merits and demerits might be, she has struggled to assemble a campaign as various flyweights fill the airwaves, asking why it has taken her so long.

The other candidate arrived on the scene in 2015 after four years of pretending that President Barack Obama had been born in Kenya. He had sent his agents to Hawaii to figure the whole thing out!

The Fox News Channel had provided the platform for that long-running con. Last Saturday night, with tonight's debate approaching, that channel sent Brian Kilmeade onto the air to introduce Judge Joe Brown.

Brown is a once-famous "TV judge." He crawled out of the garbage can last Saturday night in a type of performance which couldn't have occurred in the days when Theodore White worried about the failure of the television debates to fully inform us the people.

The year was 2024, and we now had "podcasts."  On one such recent broadcast, Judge Joe had called Candidate Harris "a piece of shit." Also, he had referred to her as a "humping hyena."

That performance made him a perfect fit for a "journalist" like Kilmeade. 

This morning, as the debate draws near, the New York Times fills its pages with an assortment of thumb-sucking drivel—with imitations of journalism. Also, the Times insists on ignoring the gruesome "journalistic" culture which now surrounds our election campaigns and our ersatz debates.

We've come a long way, citizens! Candidate Kennedy rose from his nap. Decades later, Brian Kilmeade was eager to bring in the trash.

Kilmeade opened the garbage can. When he did, the major news orgs of Blue America politely averted their gaze. 

Tomorrow: Kilmeade opens the can