Preview

This past week saw our three most influential newspapers—The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times—publish lengthy thumb-suckers asking roughly the same question: If the items on President Biden’s agenda are all so popular, why are his popularity ratings underwater and the Democrats preparing for doom in 2022?

Each of these analyses fails its readers, however. Because, typical of virtually all mainstream media, they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that the Republican Party is in thrall to a group of dangerously deluded, pro-fascistic lunatics.

And the reason that so many regular people are unaware of this, as they are also unaware of the content of Biden’s and his party’s big bills, is because
(a) so many in the right-wing media consistently lie about them, and yet manage to set the agenda for their alleged colleagues in the traditional media, and

(b) so many members of the MSM focus exclusively on the “he said/she said” minutiae rather than the content of the legislation in question and the ways it might affect the lives of actual people.

Gerald Seib’s Journal piece argues that “the virus has scrambled the two parties’ traditional positions. Right now, for example, Democrats, even as they push for higher taxes and more regulation on big business, are also arguing for the right of corporations to impose vaccination and mask mandates on their workforces.” He notes that, ironically, “Republicans … are making what is, for them, the unusual argument that government enforcers should step in and stop private companies from making their own policies.”

Seib’s analysis would benefit from pointing out that the Republican argument is insane, and has consistently led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. The closest he comes is to quote Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who admits that “some politicians in his party have ‘created a box for themselves’ by arguing that the coronavirus vaccine should be voluntary, not mandatory, for everyone. ‘Does that mean they are going to be opposed to mandatory vaccinations for school children that have been required for decades … It’s a real stretch to argue that vaccinations against a world-wide pandemic that has killed more than three-quarters-of-a-million Americans should be voluntary, and vaccines for mumps and measles should be mandatory.’” A “stretch,” perhaps, but one that virtually every Republican politician has felt compelled to endorse (and one wonders how long Mr. Ayres can remain a “Republican pollster” so long as he says things to reporters that are not sufficiently insane to satisfy Trump and company).

Dan Balz’s Washington Post article notes that Biden has so far failed “to tame the coronavirus pandemic and deal with its effects on the economy,” as well as “to persuade Congress to enact the most sweeping domestic policy initiatives in generations,” and finally to “unify the country the best he could.” He admits that the latter goal was “a long shot” given what he describes as a “recalcitrant Republican Party.” Of course, this polite euphemism does not begin to do justice to the party of Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert. A better description than “recalcitrant” would be “crazy, conspiratorial, and eager to incite even more violence on the part of followers should they fail in their plot to steal future elections.” As for his observation that “[t]he programs are popular, but perceptions of his leadership nonetheless have taken a hit,” one need only examine the personality-driven reporting of almost all full-time mainstream political reporters, together with the contempt they demonstrate for what they consider to be the boring work of explaining complex policy trade-offs. That should dispel any mystery about the gap between programs and public perceptions.

And yes, Mr. Balz, it is true that “Biden and his advisers have not found the best ways to explain and sell what they are doing.” This is hardly surprising when cable news coverage is driven by the purposeful lying—up to and including the doctored editing of Biden’s speeches at Fox—coupled with the “Who’s up? Who’s down?” and “What will it mean for the next five minutes?” style of coverage pioneered by Politico and now imitated by so many.

The Times’ Nate Cohn has complained on Twitter about the reaction to his piece by noting that “A really staggering share of the replies (*on twitter*, though conspicuously not on any other channel) essentially just assert that the media is singularly responsible for Biden’s low approval rating.” I read through many of these tweets, and not surprisingly, the fellow from The New York Times doth protest rather too much about having to endure the indignity of seeing his work legitimately criticized. There is quite a distance between saying the media are “singularly responsible” for Biden’s troubles and the MSM (and Cohn’s) position that the coverage is not even worth mentioning as a cause of Biden’s difficulties. Paying more attention to Kyrsten Sinema’s wardrobe or Joe Manchin’s dinner dates than to the expansion of Medicare or the reduction of the price of prescription drugs is naturally going to interfere with people’s understanding of what is at stake in Biden’s success. Contrary to Cohn, nobody is saying that the coverage is everything in explaining Biden’s falling polls. Cohn and colleagues, however, pretend that it’s nothing.

How is it possible, for instance, that in a recent CNN poll, of those Americans who put the economy as our most pressing problem, fully 72 percent of those same people say that Biden isn’t paying attention to the right issues, when shaping a more functional economy is pretty much all Biden is doing? Yes, lots of people are dummies and many are not paying attention, but can the members of the MSM honestly evade responsibility for this pathetic state of affairs? Can they do so when their desperate attempt to cling to outmoded beliefs both about themselves and their role in democracy and the threat the Republicans present could help engender the complete collapse of American democracy should Trump and company be allowed to lie their way back into power?

Alas, yes.

Three Short Follow-Ups

There are now 200 U.S. counties without any newspaper, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina, and more than 2,100 papers have shut down since 2004. Two studies of phony right-wing propaganda sites preying on readers looking for local news can be found here and here.

You’d think people would have learned by now, but here’s Martin Indyk compounding his mistakes vis-à-vis the love letter he wrote to Henry Kissinger, by agreeing to talk to Isaac Chotiner.

And if you’ve written any book at all, you almost certainly sold more copies than Chris Christie.

Altercation Gift-Giving Guide, Continued

My good friend Johnny Freedland at The Guardian is, I think, the best political pundit to be found anywhere. I recently learned, however, that in addition to his career as a podcaster, a BBC reporter, an expert on Israel and the Jews, and an author of a series of pseudonymous thrillers, the SOB apparently also writes beautifully about the Beatles. A great deal has already been published about Get Back. And if you are going to read only one piece about it, read Johnny’s piece on what he nicely calls our beloved “aliens from the future.” (Fortunately for you, dear reader, I won’t go into the disappointment I originally experienced viewing the original Let It Be after I won tickets, at age ten, to a premiere sponsored by WABC-AM with a brilliantly conceived essay.) But since this is a gift-giving guide, I am here to tell you that no one you love will be disappointed in receiving the “super deluxe” (and expensive) “Let It Be” box set. Remixed by Giles “son of George” Martin and Sam Okell, it’s full of the outtakes, rehearsals, and jams that we’ve come to expect from these releases, many of which ended up either on Abbey Road or on George’s, Paul’s, or John’s early solo albums. We also get the Let It Be EP and the first release of the 1969 Glyn Johns mix of the Get Back album that became Let It Be when it was finally Phil Spector-ized and released and then turned “naked” by Mr. McCartney. I like Glyn Johns’s version best.

P.S. Yoko did not break up the Beatles. They broke up because with George’s blossoming as a songwriter, there was just too much damn talent to be contained in one group. Imagine not being able to find room for “All Things Must Pass” on two albums in a row!

P.P.S. Here is Paul working out “Get Back” in the film; caution: “Genius at Work!”

I saw Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theatre last week, and I am so happy for Bob that Sylvester Stallone is finally getting the due that Zimmy is so certain he deserves. It was great to hear him play virtually the entire Rough and Rowdy Ways (minus, thank goodness, the 17-minute “Murder Most Foul”). It was no surprise that the bard did not turn to any of the songs on Volume 16 of the “Bootleg Series” box set, the five-CD “Springtime in New York,” covering 1980–1985. This was when Hibbing’s favorite son wrapped up that Christian interlude—the less said about, the better—and moved on to the appropriately respected Infidels and the much underappreciated Empire Burlesque. OK, that last one was overproduced with lots of ’80s crap on it, but listen to these songs “naked”—to coin a phrase—and one is once again, as one so often is, awed to the point of speechlessness at the depth and breadth of this man’s genius even when operating on fewer cylinders than usual. All five discs are really good Dylan albums; not great—at least not great for Dylan—but more than good enough to make anyone on whom you want to spend quite a bit of money quite happy. (Here’s a really long review of the set, as the “length” police are already on my back, and here’s a new video for “Jokerman,” the new/old version of which is better than the old/old one.)