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.
Trump
Mwen Rekòmande Panik Imedyat
Having sensed that my public is calling: “In fair Springfield, where we lay our scene …”
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.
Janice Fiamengo on Kamala Harris
From Yes, Kamala Harris Slept with a Powerful Man for Political Advancement:
Such is a common mode of operation for ambitious young women looking to jump the queue to career gain and influence. It deserves to be seen as the feminine side of sexual harassment and as an equally toxic, if more insidious, form of sexual discrimination.
It is almost inconceivable that Harris would have been appointed to the two board positions on her own merits. She moved ahead of better qualified and more worthy candidates, male and female, because she was involved with Brown. It’s also likely that her successful bid to become district attorney of San Francisco was in large part due to Brown’s influence in the city.
Unlike in instances of sexual harassment, there is not usually a complainant in cases of sexual exploitation. It is possible that both Harris and Brown look back on their affair with satisfaction.
But that doesn’t mean that their conduct was victimless. It was an abuse of power, and it should concern those who value merit and common fairness. Less attractive and more scrupulous people, those with integrity who might have earned the positions Harris bagged, never had a chance to compete for them on anything like a level playing field.
Furthermore, the incidents speak to Harris’s ruthlessness, lack of genuine ability, and moral corruptibility. Unlike in the case of Trump, whose “grab them by the pussy” comment never indicated sexual assault of women (quite the opposite—he was making the point that an extraordinary number of women are willingly bedazzled by powerful men), Harris spent years choosing to trade her body for political profit.
If men are to be harshly condemned for exploiting their power for sexual access—supposedly because it hurts all women and warps public culture—then why are women held guiltless when they exploit their sexual power for political and other access? Do their actions not also corrupt public culture, breeding favoritism, resentment, mistrust, apathy, and rancor?
She’s got a point.
Differences Between Left and Right Political Viewpoints
A friend of mine writes with the following thoughts, which I’ve edited for readability:
This election is highlighting a lot of the distinction between the way people on the Left and people on the Right think and feel. For the people on the Right, this election is about whether there will be a world war, whether the economy will be ruined, whether the southern border will be secured, what material steps need to be taken so that bad things will be prevented and some positive things happen. It’s about policy being implemented and government power being used in positive ways and not being used in damaging ways.
The Left is much more about personality and feelings. Identifying with Harris because she’s black and a woman, and feeling that she in some ambiguous but nonetheless important way represents some vague ideal that people care about. I have a friend whose daughter is voting for Harris, and he asked her why, and she said: Because she’s black and a woman and she’s not Trump; I don’t need to know what her policy views are.
It’s a completely different way of looking at the world. Frankly, it’s female, and I don’t like it, and it’s destructive if it’s given political power. The idea of this type of female mindset operating a system where people are arrested or people with guns show up at the door is terrifying. Such a system would be based on arbitrary female sentiments, and gestures of submission, rather than some agreed-on set of rules.