Never mind the currently-fashionable bit of wokery in the link explaining this reference, bolting on a vague accusation of racism (or raaaaacism) onto anything that a person of pallor says, does, or references – the metaphor of something nasty sticking harder and more firmly no matter how one tries to fight it off and disengage is curiously valid in the case of Joe Biden and the National Establishment Press.
The realization that Mr. Biden is a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic comes as a horrible shocker … to practically no sane, non-partisan observer of the political scene for the past … I don’t know, decade? Two decades or more? But everyone else is shocked, horrified, discomfited! Until two weeks ago, he was almost universally painted by the National Establishment Press as the Sage of Scranton, honored and revered solon of the Senate, the experienced and steadying VP in the Obama Administration, a kindly and revered family man, beloved by all! (Or at least, somewhat better than that awful, bad, Orange Man!) Unthinkable, asking a blunt and unscreened question of the Incredible Talking Mop, Karine Jean-Pierre, at a White House press conference about Mr. Biden’s disintegrating mental facilities! The very notion – so rude, unprofessional, so very, very Deplorable!
In the wake of the disastrous debate two weeks ago, now we are entertained by the spectacle of well-established members of the professional National Establishment Press, or NEP, squirming and twisting in the wind, reduced to protesting, “What … what? We didn’t know… No one told us!” while desperately trying to disengage themselves from the tar-baby, the tar-baby of all that previous coverage poo-pooing concerns! All those past news features and editorials, insisting on Joe Biden’s peerless command of his mental functions and his administration are on the record, years’ worth of them and there for anyone to review, unless and until they are all firmly escorted to the memory hole and pitched in. Where they likely will be consigned, once those members of the NEP recover their composure and receive new marching orders! How large a segment of the general public who were formerly unaware are now wondering what we have been paying these people for, all these years with our dollars and attention, when all they have been is the Democrat Party public affairs branch. Those who have been paying close attention might just as well say, like John McCain in Die Hard – “Welcome to the party, pal!” Alas, like Winston Churchill’s comment about a political rival occasionally stumbling over an inconvenient truth – likely, they will pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing ever happened. In the meantime, we can all point and laugh.
Will the NEP be able to carry on, likewise? For the last ten years or more, they played along with the charade, and indignantly told us not to credit what we could see with our own lying eyes, because it was a Russian plot, or a MAGA exaggeration, or raaaaacist, or something or other. But for this election season, at least, the tar-baby of Biden’s incapacity and their complicity in concealing it, is firmly attached – like the legendary tar-baby. For now, there appears to be little hope to dislodge it. No handy briar patch, or memory hole, for the moment; trust in the major news organs by the general public is dropping as fast as the cost of groceries is rising.
Comment as you wish. How much longer will the NEP remain stuck to the tar-baby? Another week? Until the Dem party convention? Election day?
That’s Hedley, Hedley Lamar. And it’s McClane, John McClane.
As for the media, I hope that Republicans remind them of their complicity every chance they get, but they probably won’t.
Watch and see if the next spin cycle doesn’t go like this. The White House will reluctantly announce that Biden has been diagnosed with “early” Parkinson’s. The next breath will be to the effect that Parkinson’s does not produce cognitive impairment and that it is treatable. Both true. Anyone even hinting that a Parkinson’s diagnosis doesn’t in any way preclude concurrent other conditions that do cause cognitive impairment will be attacked as anti-science and as a generally ageist and nasty person.
Note that Michael J. Fox, dealing with Parkinson’s these many years clearly has increasing difficulty forming and saying words but no apparent trouble forming the underlying thoughts, pretty much the opposite of Biden’s problem. For the same reason, I don’t think Biden’s problem is Alzheimer’s. My limited experience is that Alzheimer’s patients can generally speak coherently but that they tend to become unmoored in time, confusing past and present.
Via Rand Simberg at http://www.transterrestrial.com/:
https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/06/democrats-have-gone-full-soviet/
Since J School students tend to be from the lowest percentile intellectually, I suspect the press will continue to be Leftists, until the day they die.
To add to Scott’s mention of incompetence I’ll add Ben Rhodes’ (in)famous quote from 2016 “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
I’ll add that journalists’ self-conception changed back in the 1970s with Watergate and the elevation of Woodward and Bernstein as heroic modern-day muckrakers (despite their being used as tools by Washington insiders like Mark Felt)
That trend has been matched by their willingness to associate the use of political and societal power to achieve desired social ends. Last year former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and CBS News president Andrew Heyward published the report “Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms ” which justified changing the notion of “objectivity” to “protect democracy.” Note the paper was reporting the results of a survey of 75 leading members of the media so it reflects the profession, not just their own opinion.
This trend is accelerating with a newer generation entering the field. It’s part of the old adage “it’s not that the power corrupts so much as that power attracts the corrupt.” What we’re seeing over the past 2 weeks with the media suddenly turning en bloc on Biden is what happens when a profession gives up the pretense of speaking truth to power and instead sees themselves as part of the power structure itself.
I’ll admit my expectation of journalism was shaped early in my career by a mentor who advised me to approach my social interactions with the edge of a(n ideal) journalist. Be curious, ask questions, be empathetic, look for what you don’t know.
I have learned a lot with that approach, not just professionally, and it’s enhanced my life. I have managed what would have been otherwise boring social functions by asking questions of equally bored attendees and learning what they do; the other week I learned a lot about the complex business of trash hauling. The other day I came across a guy from the utility company whose sole job was traveling around the county, salvaging light poles damaged by motorists running into them. His perspective on humanity was interesting.
I just came across this and it meshes well with earlier observation regarding the corruption of journalists and power. Richard Fernandez wrote:
It’s a little disconcerting to realize that Washington can be as opaque as the Kremlin. A power struggle is going on, at least inside the Democratic party glimpsed only indirectly, and we must await the official account from the NYT or WaPo to get the “inside story”.
For the past 8 years, we’ve had one revelation after another that once was dismissed as conspiracy theories by the media actually turns out to be true: Russian Collusion hoax to the Hunter lab leak to the lab leak to the “cheap fakes.: The problem is not just the exposure of the media as cra*p-weasels, but that it has polluted, perhaps irretrievably, the information environment. Given that yesterday’s “conspiracy theory” have become tomorrow’s revealed truth, we’ve lost confidence in our intuition to discern real conspiracy theories (and there are a lot of them); that way doesn’t lead to skeptical wisdom but rather opens the door to Hell. You have an idea of what is not true, but little idea of what could be.
The media is in disarray:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13621789/ABC-ultimatum-George-Stephanopoulos-Joe-Biden-crisis.html
This is the most priceless line in the story:
“ABC bosses were reportedly concerned the veteran broadcaster had expressed a private opinion that would fatally undermine his appearance of objectivity.”
For the 0.001% of the audience, stupid enough to believe this hack was ever objective.
“How much longer will the NEP remain stuck to the tar-baby? Another week? Until the Dem party convention? Election day?”
Until Hell’s a hockey rink.
Well-written. I have nothing to add except I approve of the use of “tar-baby.”
Excellent as always, SgtMom. Only problem is that anyone younger than 30 won’t know the story of the Tar Baby, as it — and all the Uncle Remus stories — have been declared “raacist” and are not well known beyond us “old f###s”. So much wisdom discarded by so many shallow minds.
SCOTTtheBADGER
Mike quotes Ben Rhodes
It wasn’t always that way for journalists. There are four examples of journalists from my high school who were peers of either me or my brother. They got into journalism either before Watergate or soon after Watergate. They were not stupid. I know of three who were Merit Finalists (top 0.5 percent). I don’t know about the fourth, but hometown anecdotes and his subsequent publishing record indicate he was of a similar intellectual level. Of the four, two won Pulitzer Prizes for journalism.
Their political views? We were from a “true-blue” area. One retained his radical views all his life- of the Bourbon neither learn nor forget variety, one might say. One became a libertarian, perhaps because he had experience as an entrepreneur with a failed newspaper. The two who won Pulitzer Prizes remained liberals, but of the more reasonable variety. (At least yellow-dog Republican me has had high opinions of their articles. )
Instead of of NEP for National Establishment Press, I prefer David Codrea’s formulation of DSM for Duranty Streicher Media.
“How much longer will the NEP remain stuck to the tar-baby?”
Right book, wrong allusion. They’re not stuck to the tar-baby, they’re in the briar patch.
The unending rehash of this is so boring. Did Richard Fernandez write that during the Kennedy administration? If not, it’s hardly news. ZOMG! The media is lying. If it’s printed (even virtually), it’s a lie.
Including this, which isn’t exactly a “lie”, but it’s breaking news from decades ago. So what? Six people of 330 million will change their mind – either about Biden or about the press. The rest will either ignore it or Murray-Gellman themselves.
Wake me up when something new happens.
State run media as rush used to call it was there any critical reporting of jfk in that era either his personal issues or his foreign policy flops not really
Like the diem coup which was a great disaster fostered by the times halberstam
<i? The unending rehash of this is so boring. Did Richard Fernandez write that during the Kennedy administration? If not, it’s hardly news.
Actually it is news. You could excuse it back in the Kennedy-era because of the backroom-machinations pivoted around the conventions. We’re talking about somebody, let alone a president, being whacked after going through the primary season.
However I will grant one flaw in Fernandez’s tweet. It’s not so much as a Kremlin power-struggle as a public purge akin to the very public removal of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, at the 20th National Party Congress in 2022.
The other model that was suggested during a conference call yesterday was that this is a coup. We have a series of remarkable coincidences. There is the date of the presidential debate which is not only the earliest one ever, but the only one I can remember before either of the party’s conventions. You had the shocking performance of Biden. I say shocking because I expected him to be incoherent but at least juiced up like he was at the State of the Union.
The other coincidence was the curious way the press turned on him. The reason given for the turn-about was that they (the media) were now exposed in covering-up Biden’s frailties and they needed to cover their tracks. However the way they did it, so quickly and in unison, leads me to believe that there was a pre-planned narrative and as with everything else connected to the debate the fix was in. Even if you explain the way the media so quickly turned as a preference cascade, you would expect that phenomena to take several days longer. There was a lot of public pearl clutching by the media but there was very little hesitancy in their actions and that makes it suspicious
Maybe not all the parts of the media were on board in the first day, but if you can get a few of the key players and personalities to quickly come out and break that psychological barrier of asking a sitting president to stand down then the rest will follow.
A key part of the Democrats saw over the past few months with Biden’s very public decline that they were not going to get him over the Election Day finish line and they set up this extraordinary debate to whack him. A singular event to create the necessary video and impressions and it’s no longer asking Biden to step down but rather Biden having to justify why he should stay.
A man who got 98.9% of all delegates and is the only legitimate contender for the nomination and just 3 weeks after the last primary they’re pushing him out, this is amazing, There are other explanations, but as crazy as it sounds I’m going with a coup, it is the simplest explanation… and the media is in it up to their eyeballs. Most likely outcome? Biden takes a buy-out and leaves, not only the race, but the presidency. However almost as likely he rides the bomb all the way down just like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove
The Democrats are a ruthless bunch. Wonder what else they got cooked up
Back in 2020 it was completely obvious to me from 1500 miles away why Biden was campaigning from his basement. He couldn’t string together more than three words that made any sense and was attracting “crowds” at his “rallies” in the low double digits with energy levels akin to a child’s funeral.
Maybe the media was stupid enough to believe the BS they were spouting but surely “Never underestimate Joe’s ability to F things up” Obama must have been in on the con. Apparently, I greatly overestimated Obama’s intelligence. Ever since the 2008 Vanity Fair article, I knew he was a man of no discernible accomplishments, a pure affirmative action pick for every position he ever held. I never expected him to lose track of how feeble Biden was in 2020 to the extent that his debate performance was a surprise in 2024. The same goes for all the sycophants and hacks that are now running around with their pants on fire. Did they all mistake their collective spin for reality? I didn’t and neither did anyone here as far as I know with maybe one or two exceptions.
Where the campaign finance laws come into play is that the great bulk of the money raised so far is for the Biden Harris campaign and isn’t transferable to another candidate. If Biden drops out, Kamala can take over but any other candidate would have to start from scratch. Just how did the super geniuses of the Demorats get themselves in this fix.
“… the great bulk of the money raised so far is for the Biden Harris campaign and isn’t transferable to another candidate.”
Come on! We are talking about the Democrats here. That law applies only to Republicrats. There will be no effective legal resistance to Democrats redirecting that campaign money any way they wish. Demoncrat judges across the country will be lining up to pronounce whatever the Party wants as within the law and required by the Constitution.
I think preference cascade is the simplest and best explanation. The Dems chose Faustian expediency in going with Biden and Harris. Joe, of all the Dem possibles, was the candidate most saleable to the naïve as an old-fashioned moderate. Kamala was a concession to the Democrats’ hard-Left and identity-politics constituencies but otherwise unqualified. Since Biden was obviously deteriorating, the possibility that he would fall apart in office and either make the incompetent Kamala president or blow his re-election, has long been apparent to anyone who paid attention. In 2020 the Dems didn’t have a willing candidate more electable than Biden to go up against Trump, and they got lucky. In hindsight it’s not clear that they could have gotten better short-term results with any another candidate than Biden.
What sunk Biden was that 100 million people saw the debate. But if it hadn’t been the debate it would have been something else — a bad fall in public, a bad speaking performance that couldn’t be explained away, something. It was inevitable, sooner or later, and then it stopped being possible to pretend Biden was competent. The media had no choice but to change course instantly. To do otherwise would have been even worse for them and for the Democrats. What’s amazing is how long the Democrats were able to get away with it.
The Democrats were clever in all of this but they weren’t smart. In going with Biden they opted for a quick fix at the expense of analyzing their deficiencies, changing their positions, and finding better candidates to make themselves more electable. Now it’s blown up on them and on the rest of us.
I’ll admit that I spend time on a regular basis reading a representative sample of the NEP; NY Times, CNN, Vox, Slate. Not a lot of time, but enough to get a general feel for what the other side is thinking. One of the advantages of their going all in for one side is that you can get a framework, a window, into how parts of the Left thinks.
One thing I have gathered form this is that the Democrats/Left is close to a worst-case scenario for the Election. They have been very clear that they see Trump as an existential threat to them and the country (as they wish it to be) The fact that Trump has a deceive lead in the polls less than 4 months out from the election would have been inconceivable after the 2020 election. Even more so given all they have thrown at him lawfare and convictions, Jan. 6, the public denunciation of him as the second coming of Caesar/Hitler/Emmanuel Goldstein. And yet the man lives. As Vizzini would have said, inconceivable.
The Democrats’ far left flank has spun out-of-control over Gaza. With Biden they have the worst of all worlds, the man has not only collapsed but done so publicly and the efforts to jettison him have not only failed but have undermined him even further. A Malian colonel could have launched a more effective coup.
Maybe given all of this and the natural centripetal forces in the Left, the Democrats collapse but I doubt it. They will come out of their convention with a candidate, and they will unite behind her (I’m guessing it will be Kamala.) The NEP will return to its previous role as the Left’s communications auxiliary and then they will look for a way to win.
The problem is the path forward after that. Predict the future by what they have done in the past and how they see the future. They have already declared Trump an existential threat. Electoral fraud, lawfare, civic unrest, use of the security services… that’s already been done so it’s a given for 2024. How do you turn it up to “11”?
I came across this regarding Transition Integrity, 2024 which pretty much nails what I have been saying for the past year, the Left will not allow Trump to re-take office, election or not. It sounds crazy but it’s not only very plausible given the various pieces of the puzzle, but I think the most likely. Well-organized and determined groups have tremendous power in a political environment and the Left and the media made their psychological/emotional break with traditional norms a long time ago. The past 2 weeks is just one more episode
The media is going to snap back, Biden or not, and be all in. There’s nowhere else for them to go
I believe it was Rush Limbaugh who said “politics is Hollywood for ugly people;” along the same lines, journalism is Hollywood for the incapable and unimportant.
No one in media wants to be an anonymous keyboard operator filing reports on everyday hum-drum stuff; they all want stardom, not just a byline, because, after all, no one reads, nor cares, about bylines. The messenger who braves shot and shell to bring the general a critical missive is forever unknown, but we all know the general’s name and how the battle turned out.
“This is important information, damn it, everyone should hear it” is the cry, and the messenger bringing it should be highly regarded, feted far and wide for his ability to bludgeon the alphabet into submission to produce important words about important things, except that the content of the message is less important than the impression it makes and the effect it produces, so the emphasis shifts from “this is important information” to mode, timing and perceived quality of delivery. That’s why an NBC reporter was ensconsed in a canoe reporting on a storm, barely floating in six inches of water while delivering the daily tear-jerker report, just ignore the two guys strolling past her in the background.
It’s technique and result, not content, that’s “damn it” important, and the personal elevation it offers that has overpowered everything else in media, integrity be damned. Lord Acton, aka John Emerich Edward Dalberg, gave us the famous quote “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” but left unsaid was how strongly the perception of power attracts the easily corruptible, of which the modern media has an overwhelming surplus.
I envision a solemn group of Democrat Elderstatesmen approaching VP Harris. Led by Bill Clinton who says: “Kamala, got a big job for you….”
Followed shortly thereafter by horrified shouts of “No! No! That’s not what we meant at all!”
I promise to be better behaved once she’s the nominee, but this is not an unrealistic view of her political career to date……
At this point, I am relishing the spectacle of the National Establishment Press, trying to reconcile two opposing concepts – that of retaining what little credibility they have with a large segment of the public, AND maintaining their cozy relationship as the Dem Party public affairs division.
For another additional giggle, courtesy of Bayou Renaissance Man – the Marine Corps band who had to come up with a musical entrance fanfare for Dr. Jill, came up with something that sounds suspiciously like a classical-music rendering of the theme from the old TV comedy series F-Troop. (Link here, with comparison clips.) I’ve been snickering all morning.
“I envision a solemn group of Democrat Elderstatesmen approaching VP Harris. Led by Bill Clinton who says: “Kamala, got a big job for you….”
Followed shortly thereafter by horrified shouts of “No! No! That’s not what we meant at all!””
Now, THAT’S funny!
Yes, we can laugh at them, mock everything about them, poke fun, repeat scandalous stories, make up rude limericks and paint scornful pictures like Sabo. They haven’t managed to take that away from us, although I’ll bet they may try, eventually.
The devil, that proud spirit, cannot abide mockery.
Some time ago, Bari Weiss wrote something I thought at the same time obvious and yet unseen: That most of the media today reports (and doesn’t report) to please their audience and advertisers.
To this day Fox News won’t say why they fired Tucker Carlson – were the advertisers getting angry?
Bari Weiss was at one time a reporter for the NYT and considering herself a political centrist, endured a lot of internal harassment from her NYT peers. Her open letter to the Times should be read by everyone,.
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
It is easy to paint all of the media as left wingers marching in lockstep. But years ago when I was in Manhattan, I discovered the Post.
I think it was they who uncovered the story of Hunter’s laptop, only to be subject to ridicule by the Times and others.
As to the left’s dilemma I suspect the media will simply carry on and instead of doing some necessary self-reflection, act as if nothing happened.
All the while losing more credibility.
I remember seeing a news video of a Biden White House Party with all of these “Journalists” invited – like a whose who of the Beltway media.
And yet they would have you believe that they are “objective”.
I was trying to find a wonderful op-ed Post writer Michael Goodwin wrote about objective journalism – at one time former Times Editor Abe Rosenthal fired a reporter for having an affair with a politician while at the same time reporting on him.
I couldn’t readily find it but here is another
https://nypost.com/2019/08/11/the-new-york-times-modifies-its-motto-to-fit-leftist-agenda/
To think that our Founders gave so much power to the press thinking it would be a bulwark against govt tyranny – and they have become enablers and defenders. Well, a majority.
Bill…”To think that our Founders gave so much power to the press thinking it would be a bulwark against govt tyranny – and they have become enablers and defenders. Well, a majority.”
The First Amendment did *not* establish a set of ‘professional journalists’ with special privileges…’freedom of the press’ meant freedom of the *printing* press…there weren’t any huge media organizations back in those days. There are some state laws that give ‘professional journalists’ special benefits in terms of source protection, etc…but as far as the Constitution goes, it applies to all of us equally.
@David – and thank goodness there are still some that try to report objectively. My idea of a perfect media organization would be at times to have both the left and the right mad at you –
I see that Quillette has been banned by Wikipedia, while TeenVogue is still characterized as ‘solid’.
SGT MOM:
re: “For another additional giggle, courtesy of Bayou Renaissance Man”
Just in passing, in my younger days [which was a long time ago] I did living history presentations as a member of Co. I, First US Regiment of Dragoons, which became the First US Regiment of Cavalry during the Civil War. The Dragoons operated in what was then the far West, including here in Colorado. We turned up occasionally at Bent’s Old Fort for presentations, and I have done demos of my specialty, Dragoon Artillery with our 12 lb. Mountain Howitzer there.
Which will explain why I cracked up completely when I heard her fanfare, and had to explain to my family what had happened. Given the state of our national polity, however, there may be a change in the opening lyrics . . .
The start of the Civil War was near . . .
Subotai Bahadur
I agree with Bill, I have been more than uncomfortable with the upper-level media’s willingness to associate itself with power. The White House Correspondents Dinner is a prime example. I think Trump did them a favor by not attending since it simply sharpened the point that the media and the people they cover aren’t supposed to be chummy.
I have a small degree of sympathy for journalists. It’s tough to be able to take a situation, quickly determine what’s going on, and punch out copy day after day. The problem is exacerbated is that the demands of the job require you to have inside sources which over time become compromising; as Nietzsche said the abyss stares back or more prosaically nothing is free.
It’s also difficult because as media outlets shrink both in terms of market share and absolute numbers of customers their audience becomes… more selective.
Journalism has always been a hack profession. The problem is that since Woodward & Bernstein, journalists see themselves not only as highly trained and credentialed professionals (like K-12 teachers!) but as heroes forgetting the fact that a disgruntled FBI insider (Mark Felt) played those two like a banjo for his own political purposes. a
A friend remarked that it seems to be a hallmark of today’s Left to take a somewhat respected institution and use it for its own purposes. Think K-12 education, DEI preying on American sensitivities regarding discrimination, and then there is the idea of the media serving as a check for those in power
David Burge said it best regarding the Left: 1. Identify a respected institution. 2. kill it. 3. gut it. 4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
To this day Fox News won’t say why they fired Tucker Carlson – were the advertisers getting angry?
I think they fired him (Took him off the air while insisting he was still under contract) as part of the Dominion settlement, which was to avoid a subpoena for Rupert who is senile.
KJP, the mop, is probably surprised to be learning a lesson.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13621023/white-house-joe-biden-health-karine-jean-pierre.html
In this case, it’s that while the hack media is perfectly willing to lie to us, they take violent exception to being lied to themselves. In this case, that the confab between Biden’s personal physician and a Parkinson’s specialist had nothing to do with Biden when it was allegedly part of his annual physical instead.
Administrations generally take as much care what they tell their own press staff as any state secret to avoid compromising them with their clients in the media. In fact, politicians in general used to take great pains to avoid telling an actual lie to the media.
re Bari Weis….this is at X:
“.@NellieBowles
remembers the moment when her New York Times editor—in a room full of their colleagues—criticized her for dating @BariWeiss “She’s a fucking Nazi.””
https://x.com/thehonestlypod/status/1790478587717403039
Wby isn’t this defamation? Neither Nellies not Bari would have been considered a Public Figure at that point, I would think. I would also think there might be employment law consequences for such a statement by someone in a supervisory position.