IMPEACH!!
Yesterday, Tiger Beat on the Potomac uncovered the scandal which heads this post. JOE BIDEN DIDN'T WEAR SOCKS! DID HE FORGET THEM BECAUSE OF HIS DEMENTIA?!
Now, my memory ain't what it used to be. But I don't recall our media betters doing this to Donald Trump. Or George W. Bush. Hell, with Bush Jr., they gathered around as he fake-cleared brush on his fake ranch, and gushed at his "real Murican" bona fides.
So today it's Pres. Biden's sockless jaunt. Yesterday it was President Barack Obama's tan suit. (Ronald Reagan also wore a tan suit.) One would be hard pressed to think otherwise that in no-drama administrations like the ones usually run by Democrats, our vaunted Fifth Estate must reach for things to cover.
As our own Cletus often avers, our Liberal Media™ is anything but. And it's not just because the mainstream media is in the hands of a few conglomerates. The hard truth of it is that the people who work in news media are of a certain class, with a certain amount of wealth, and the things which Democrats want to do—taxing the rich, making things more equitable—threaten their own sinecures. To paraphrase: A man can't be made to understand a thing if his income depends on him not understanding it. Journalists are not up-from-the-gutter muckrakers. They're products of professional journalism schools, and have the mindset of the professional classes. They may write about Appalachia, but don't have to live there. There are few, if any, like Jimmy Breslin left in our media landscape. (If you didn't grow up reading his columns in the New York Daily News, I recommend you seek them out.)
The worst thing to happen to journalism in this country is that it was professionalized. This doesn't always turn out badly as far as a concern for social justice goes; but as far as those who work in the political media, it always does. Their concerns aren't our concerns. They don't care about fair outcomes, but about what will sell column inches. And in our social media times? The more clicks, the better. Damn what it does to the country, or the world. I'm sure no one in the White House Press Corps would consider himself or herself a propagandist. But that's exactly what they are. They propagandize for the conservative point of view, fearing unto death being called "liberal". They couch everything in "both sides" because that's what they've been taught "objectivity" is. They have long ago eschewed the dictum that a journalist's job is to see if it's raining for herself, not to simply take the word of the people they interview.
Our media is in a death spiral because it has long ago given up any pretense of reporting the world as it is. It relies on unreliable polling to shape the stories it covers, and covers that snapshot of opinion as objective truth. It favors the right over the left, because it considers itself "the left", and doesn't want to be labeled thus. It is, quite simply, just another mode of entertainment. A journalist shouldn't be concerned with right or left. He should be concerned with fact and truth, and everything else will sort itself out. But that's not where we are now.
Anyway, Joe Biden letting out his inner Sonny Crockett makes this Gen Xer's heart glad. Carry on, Joe.
Post-script
We can all rest easy now.
I am proud to report @POTUS has landed in Britain, wearing socks, dress shoes, and a tie.
— Chris D. Jackson (@ChrisDJackson) July 9, 2023
The NY Times can rest easy now. https://t.co/Afruz9o8qd pic.twitter.com/QS9m70jXmv
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