Stories like the second Trump assassination attempt allow us to view the various media strategies of the Left unfolding in real-time. I alternate between horror and fascination, watching how the media tries to grapple with impossible stories and tries to gaslight us yet again. L’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.
We need to understand the framework in which the media operates. As a longtime mentor once said to me, the media reports stories, they don’t report events. Events are data, stories sell papers/ads/impressions. It seems at times most stories in the media fall into one of the two masterplots, stranger comes to town or hero goes on a journey.
Of course there is the (false) assumption that the story being told is an accurate portrayal of events. Forget bias and sleaziness, that assumption just fails as a matter of epistemology.
The story paradigm has two other aspects that are important. The first is that stories have a limited life span. Not only do stories get stale over time and fall out of the public’s consciousness, but stories can be replaced in that consciousness by newer stories. The second is that media stories for the Left are never about the story as much as they are about the story ending and its lessons for society as a whole: gun control, misogyny, Orange Man Bad. The media writes every story not just about the present, but based on the story’s past, for its future.
The media typically knows the story they want to write and they will then find the facts to back it up. A reporter or editor knows the right name in their Rolodex that will provide them with the pull quote they are looking for to justify their actions.
The second assassination attempt comes at an awkward time for the Left, so, clearly, they want it squelched. Going back to what I wrote about Audrey Hale, a smart media outlet which doesn’t mind acting as the PR firm for the Left can roll even with the worst of stories, if it understands that you don’t have to “defeat” a story on its merits if you understand how to manipulate its arc.
So we can expect the media to use two strategies.
The first is suppression. Unlike with the Audrey Hale story, with the second Trump assassination attempt there is no manifesto to suppress. And unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks the second shooter is alive. However, the media uses an important trick in how it gathers information. If it wants to speed up a story’s arc and keep the story alive with new revelations, it will deploy assets into the field and keep digging up new information — new, exciting stuff to write every day. It will then juice the story with the appropriate pull quote from an “expert” from the media Rolodex.
If the media wants to slow down a story it will rely on news releases, such as they are, from investigators or authorities. It’s that relationship with authority which determines where the story is going to go, and who is going to define the story — the media or the investigating authority?
A good example of this is a headline from last night’s Washington Post:
“Investigating” “Potential” “Attempt” “FBI”? This is the type of damage control verbiage a press agent would use for a client who got caught on the 2024 equivalent of Epstein Island (not that we would ever know). How much actual digging is the WPost going to do on this story — or are they just getting their pull quotes so that they can consider it case closed? Something to watch for, going forward.
Another example of this phenomenon was the “Cats of Springfield” story, which the media claimed had been debunked on the basis of a phone call to an official in Springfield. The right quote from the right authority and case closed. No media outlet actually went to Springfield and conducted an investigation. If anybody does get around to conducting an investigation, the results will come, much like the eventual revelation of Hale’s writings, too late.
It’s good DeSantis is going to launch his own investigation regarding the assassination attempt, because otherwise we would probably start getting results by next Christmas.
The second strategy is diversion to another story line, through the use of stray voltage or simply by putting up other dust to cloud the immediate picture and slow down the clean narrative of someone trying to kill the Republican nominee (again). In less than 12 hours after the aborted assassination attempt we had the following:
-There is the “Trump had it coming due to his rhetoric” narrative, which is the equivalent of the “short skirt” argument in a rape case. No word yet if the media will investigate itself for its own rhetoric calling Trump Hitler or a Caesar who would destroy the American Republic.
-There is the attempt to draw an equivalence between the assassination attempts and Vance’s rhetoric regarding Springfield narrative. You know where this is going, the “tomato” “tomahto” argument — so let’s just call the thing off.
-Then there is the pure stray voltage angle of this is an election campaign stories that are always just around the corner. I’m sure there will be a story coming soon, breathlessly reporting Kamala buying a bag of Doritos.
The over/under of this story disappearing without a trace, unless DeSantis or someone else can grab control, is this Thursday.
Media
Visible Signs
My daughter and I have done a handful of long road trips over the last few years, especially after Texas sensibly lifted the most onerous COVID restrictions. For many of these trips we preferred to take country roads; various two or four-lane routes which meandered through miles of Texas back country, hopscotching past small ranches and passing through small towns of varying degrees of prosperity. One thing we often noticed in passing was a scattering of Trump banners, many of them weathered and obviously left over from the 2020 campaign. It was a hard-fought campaign; obviously many Trump supporters out here in flyover country remained sore about the steal. Also rather obviously, residents in rural Texas aren’t worried about random retaliatory vandalism to their property or vehicles by displaying such political partisanship.
Interior View
We decided to take a break from watching the interminable (and at this point, rather depressing) Midsomer Murders. From a starkly realistic point of view, the mythical English Midsomer must be about as dangerous as Cabot Cove, with regular citizens regularly dropping off their various perches, to the tune of lashings of blackmail, family grudges, illicit relationships, financial fraud, and outright criminality among the lush gardens and even lusher cozy cottages. It got to the point where we were playing “spot the actor” or “what had we seen this guest star in before?” Anyway, we needed a break, and the choice fell on the latest TV series adaptation of Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn & Chee mystery novels, Dark Winds … which turns out to be surprisingly good, although some elements from the books have been combined, and the lead characters various backgrounds tweaked a little.
Some Observations from the DNC
I don’t spend alot of time following political conventions, but I did catch some of the DNC this week and some things stuck with me.
First, what happened to the protests?
They were expecting massive protests with 100,000 people coming to town. “Make it Great like ’68!” Chicago prepared for the impending riotpocalypse with boarded-up buildings and a scheme that left the United Center, with its perimeter fencing and ID requirements, better defended than either our border or electoral system.
It sounded about right given the pro-Hamas heat over the past ten months. So what happened?
Monday’s protest at Union Park? Organizers were expecting 30,000 to 40,000 and maybe got 10% of that number. There were pictures of hundreds of unused protest signs littering the park grass (only Tea Parties clean up after themselves).
Tuesday? Even fewer protesters marched on the Israeli consulate and when they became violent the police squashed it with 55 arrests made. However even that in reality was a bit anti-climactic. Wednesday? 2,000. Thursday? The last and biggest night of the DNC? About the same.
So again, what happened? Few protesters and those who showed up were from the fringe Trotskyite microsects. I know it was midweek but couldn’t they get some buses down from Dearborn? I mean even the WNBA draws better than this.
The scuttlebutt is that since the Spring protest encampments, the Dems have been desperate to avoid similar optics for the DNC and have been making calls to that effect. I’m guessing somebody (finally) picked up the phone on the other side and the parties cut a deal for a nice, quiet convention. So what was in the deal? I think we have to wait until the day after the election to find out.
Second, don’t ever doubt the power of the corporate media.
There’s a lot of schadenfreude on the Right about both the cratering level of public trust in the media and its declining business model, but that misses the point. The power of the media is in that it sets the Overton window for can and cannot be discussed and inserting and withdrawing issues from public discussion. You may not believe what they say, but good luck in getting opposing views to be aired
Over the past two months, the media has gone from Biden’s Praetorian Guard, to pushing him to leave the race, to calling for a mini-primary, to then just appointing Kamala (who for the past 3 ½ years no one thought was a viable presidential candidate). All of those about-faces were done with a precision that would have made a parade ground gunnery sergeant proud.
The Democrats have (so far) pulled a minor miracle in jettisoning Biden, avoiding a party collapse in finding a successor, and leaving the DNC roughly tied with Trump. They never could have pulled this off without having the media act as their PR auxiliary. Can the Democrats and the media keep this whole phantasm going until November? I doubt it but I’m impressed (and horrified) by what they have accomplished so far.
I have a question. How does the actual coordination with the media happen? What’s the 2024 equivalent of JournoList? Is it Zoom, Slack channel, volcano lair?
Third, the arrogance of the Obamas.
The Democrats are still Obama’s party and he makes no bones about it. The tradition used to be that immediately upon leaving office, the departing president would then leave town. The now ex-president left his successor’s inaugural and proceeded directly to Union Station and took the next train. Now of course they get a final ride on Air Force One. Not Barry, he just moved a few miles up the street to the Kalorama neighborhood and continued to pull strings. That’s arrogance.
It’s also arrogant for his wife to get up and make a speech at the DNC stating that she was taught by her parents to be “…suspicious of those who took more than they needed.” Of course, her family owns four mansions and is worth nearly $100 million, all based on leveraging their time in politics. I’m surprised she didn’t quote in her speech a famous community organizer who once said “I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
Btw… she looked fabulous in that $3,000 pantsuit. Wonder how long that $3,000 would feed a family of four. I couldn’t find a word in the media about the stunning hypocrisy; however, I did find a lot of stories praising her fashion sense.
Fourth, I have a real sense of dread.
Just watching the video from the DNC and feeling the vibes, and all that joy I smell hysteria and desperation. Desperate people do desperate things, desperate people with power do catastrophic things.
Best Eaten Cold
Revenge, as the old saying has it, is a dish best served cold. And revenge may not be the only – or the most dangerous – platter best dished up chilled. That would be the dish of anger – that ice-cold, sullen reservoir of fury in the hearts of every right-of-center, non-elite, law-abiding flyover-country middle American with Tea Partyish inclinations … a dish of anger ready to serve up in the wake of a just-barely unsuccessful political assassination attempt this last weekend.
You see, there is a considerable difference between hot fury and cold. Hot fury is impulsive, immediately violent, reactive and more often misplaced. It’s the unthinking destructive fury of the mob, lashing out indiscriminately. Cold fury, on the other hand, does not manifest itself in such spectacular fashion. Cold fury is focused, calculated, unspectacular; it takes its time, waiting for the optimum moment. Cold fury usually can’t be appeased, once unleashed. As I wrote some time ago, regarding the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance –
“The image of a “vigilante” most usually implies a disorganized mob; lawless, mindlessly violent, easily steered but ultimately uncontrollable. The Vigilance Committee was something much, much worse than that. They were organized, they were in earnest, they would not compromise – and they would not back down.”