Joe Biden and the DC press corps: A love story
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?
Written by Paddy Chayefsky for the Sidney Lumet masterpiece "Network", it encapsulates the war between the Biden Administration and the DC press corps.
This tweet drives the point home:
In his first two months in office, President Joe Biden has passed the most consequential legislation aimed at reducing inequality since the 1960s, has blown past his goal of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days, and has brought the country back to a sort of stasis. Yet for the past week or so, the media has been obsessed with a "border crisis" which has been one for decades, and with fripperies such as Ms, Kim's. Of course, the reason for this is simple: Pres. Biden is ignoring them.
As I wrote just last week, the tension between the former guy's regime and the political press was a bit of a pantomime. The fact of the matter is that the DC press was fine with Trump. He abused them to their faces, put their lives in danger, but at least he paid them attention. What Pres. Biden is doing is a dagger to their heart. He's a veteran not only of the Senate, but of the Obama Administration, and how former President Obama was held to a standard by the political press which was impossible to meet. Tan Suit Gate. Mustardgate. Henry Louis Gates-Gate. However, Pres. Biden, sadly, has an advantage Pres. Obama didn't: his skin color. Pres. Obama studiously avoided being what the press yearned for him to be: Angry Black Man. Pres. Biden has no such limitations. And he's not flying off the handle, unlike the former guy. He's simply ignoring their noise and getting about his job. By ignoring them, he reminds the press of the real power dynamic, and they're losing their minds.
But there's something different going on this time. This is not 2009 or 2010. Pres. Obama was operating in a time before the Age of Trump upended everything. The majority of American voters apres-Trump are just unconcerned with the inside baseball which obsesses the White House press corps. Voters simply don't care. They care about their stimulus checks. They care about the explosion of COVID vaccinations. They care about being able to have friends and family over for July 4th without risking death. They put press whining into that perspective, and can be forgiven for being unimpressed.
Also, it was easy to gin up fake "scandals" against Barack Obama because of, again, his skin color. Joe Biden—married to one woman for decades, father, grandfather, seemingly boring white guy—simply isn't good soil for manufactured controversy to germinate and grow. As others have said, being white is a superpower, and Pres. Biden is using it to his and the country's benefit, and to the consternation of the DC press, which is being sidelined as the reality show entertainers they are. Boring policy doesn't generate clicks. Pres. Biden isn't flashy, and doesn't give scabrous soundbites like the former guy. Ratings for TV news and copies of newspapers sold are both sinking, as people can finally breathe and attend to their own lives, without fear that the person in the White House will destroy everything on a whim. We were glued to our televisions and newspapers out of fear and dread, not because we thought the political press were our tribunes. Remove that fear, and the DC press is being reacquainted with its true stature in American society.
As long as the political press insists on treating a seditionist party as equally valid as the party trying to prevent it from destroying the Republic, it will keep meeting derision and disbelief. It's not only bad for the country; it's bad for its bottom line. But I doubt it'll learn the lesson.