driftglass

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Professional Left Podcast Episode 855: You Are Not Alone

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." -- Mark Twain

Links:

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

At The David Brooks Navel Observatory

Remember how I've mentioned 3,000 or 4,000 times that Upscale Wingnut Welfare Queen #1 -- Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times -- is one of the worst people in the world?

Well, he still is.

But first this, from John Pavlovitz, who is a "former youth pastor and author, known for his social and political writings from a liberal Christian perspective" and who many of you probably know from his blog and his @johnpavlovitz social media posts.

I turn to John today because he frames the crisis we are facing exactly right:

This election result isn't about Dem messaging.

Their messaging during the campaign was about helping the middle class, continuing with sound economic policies, affordable healthcare and education, the rights of women, strengthening the border, unity.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz formed a balanced ticket filled with character, intellect, and genuine love for this country, and they eloquently delivered their vision better beautifully.

This election result is about racism, misogyny, lack of education—and an irresponsible media that caters to those realities.

There is no messaging that can overcome prejudice and ignorance, and those two factors are the only explanation for Trump even being the nominee and getting 75 million votes.

We need to stop pretending there is some perfect Democratic candidate or magic messaging to reach people who have abandoned objective reality and chosen to embrace their fears and phobias, while failing to do the slightest bit of work to know what candidates' policies and plans are.

The Dems didn't fail America, they just exist in a nation where far too many people don't pay attention or care to understand what's actually happening. Maybe they will now.

Brother Charlie Pierce also sums the crisis up neatly.

The problem is neither the medium nor the message. The problem lies with the people to whom the message is directed—an electorate that swings between vengeance and apathy with an occasional side trip to weaponized ignorance. And that is a problem that no politician can solve.

And three cheers for the inimitable Athenae at Dame magazine:

Democracy Is Dying in Broad Daylight

The media didn’t have to normalize and sanewash a cognitively diminished felon who ran on retribution and destruction. Or memory-hole his disastrous first term. But because they did, we are facing the most terrifying chapter in U.S. history.

Longtime readers know that, here on this little blog in the middle of Middle America, I've been writing about this crisis in all of its aspects for going on 20 years now. Writing about the crisis, and the increasingly aggressive legacy media campaign to pretend that the crisis is not what it manifestly is.

And these two trends -- the accelerating derangement of the Republican base and the accelerating legacy media denialism -- run exactly parallel to each.

They are co-dependent diseases: a sick and broken legacy media that should have been our nation's first line of defense against incipient fascism but which has been compromised by Conservatism just as a human immune system can be destroyed by a retrovirus...and the dozen, aggressive, mutating strains of Republican madness, rage and racism which swarmed in through our collapsed defenses and which stand a better than even chance of killing our democracy.

And in case all of this sounds familiar, it might be because I've been writing about it since long before Trump arrived.

American Conservatism is Democracy's Retrovirus

Back in 2008 I wrote,

It is Now 28 Years Later

and the Conservative Hate Virus that hijacked
a political party,
a religion,
and the national media
and turned them into disease vectors
still rages merrily along.

The Conservative Hate Virus that was cultivated by Nixon and went pneumonic under Reagan destroyed Conservatism decades ago and replaced it with a slowly-rotting corpse. A shambling, gibbering, mindless thing that, for a time, served both the RNC's electoral interests and Rupert Murdoch's business interests. It put every bitter clinger, crackpot, bigot, gun-nut, Christopath, homophobe, Klansman, brownshirt and anti-woman douchbag and anti-science glibertarian in-harness together to pull the GOP to victory and to make thugs like Rush Limbaugh very, very rich.

And the formula for turning hate into a profit-center is so damn easy! Just wave a flag in front of their big, vacant eyes, poke 'em with a stick (ACORN! Commies! Sluts! Kenyan Usurper!) every few minutes, call 'em super-patriots for jerking off to Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, and point them where you want them to go.

The Conservatism Retrovirus left us open to infection from a whole suite of opportunistic wingnut disease, and from Falwell to Limbaugh to Beck, Conservatism has permitted each of them and all of their mutant imitators to breeze past democracy's natural antibodies -- an educated electorate, an honest press, a respectful politics -- and settle in for a nice, long parasite feast...

So, now that the calamity is here -- the calamity Liberals have been warning about for decades and the legacy media has been pretending does not exist -- what tools and tricks remain in the legacy media's bag to continue deflecting attention away from the real issue which they definitely do not want to talk about...

This election result is about racism, misogyny, lack of education—and an irresponsible media that caters to those realities.

...and onto literally anything else.

Well, way back when I was but a wee driftglass, my sainted mother imparted this bit of wisdom to me:

"Son," she said, "the best way to blunt any discussion of practical solutions to a real-life, here-and-now crisis that you helped to create, is to use your dominant media presence to deflect everyone's attention the hell away from that clear and obvious problem and onto a debate over some sweeping, unfalsifiable sociological subject -- one which has been extant for generations, which you can claim subsumes all discussion of all human problems, which conveniently holds no one responsible for anything (society is to blame!) and which offers no solutions of any kind to the real-life, here-and-now crisis which threatens you all."

Very wise woman, my late mother was.

But how does one go about finding someone morally untenanted enough to not just fabricate a decoy issue big enough to shift attention away from the catastrophe unfolding right in front of us, but someone who also has enough legacy media clout to disperse his chicanery everywhere all at once?

Who can be called upon in the legacy medi's hour of need to concoct and deliver a vile evangel potent enough to let the legacy media remain mercifully blind drunk on it, at least for a little while?

Ubermensch where are you now?

Turns out he was right here all along. It's Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times.

Except, as you know, he's no longer just "Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times." For years he has also been Mr. David Brooks of NPR and PBS, and now that he has taken up the task of changing the legacy media conversation --

-- in the last week Brooks could be found preaching the gospel of "Blame to Ivies" on the December cover of The Atlantic.

On Morning Joe.

He is everywhere.

Even on The Effing Bulwark, where once again we find host Tim Miller sitting as quiet and passive as a field of Martian regolith as Brooks trowels out his bullshit.

Here's a sample of Brooks lying:

Brooks: In my experience just covering the campaign, the kind of Trump voters who go to Trump rallies are quite different than the kind of voters -- Trump voters -- who don't go to Trump rallies. Which is to say the Trump rally goers are into MAGA full-bore. They want the deportations. They want, y'know, they want the whole package. A lot of people who voted for Trump just want to return to the economy of 2019 and they do not buy into the broader agenda...

Any statement by Brooks that includes the phrase "In my experience..." should be handled with 11-foot long hazmat tongs, dropped into a burn bag, incinerated and it's ashes compacted into a tiny statue of P.T. Barnum which you can keep on your shelf as a permanent reminder that there is, indeed, a sucker born every minute. Because Mr. David Brooks has a long, long history of draw colossal and wildly wrong extrapolations like this one based on literally jogging past some people in a park or some nameless working class friend who is afraid of fancy Italian meats or his third glass of overpriced, expense-account airport whiskey whispering to him that this is why the working man hates Liberals.

In 2017, this was one of Brooks' Big Predictions:

Some on the left worry that we are seeing the rise of fascism, a new authoritarian age. That gets things exactly backward. The real fear in the Trump era should be that everything will become disorganized, chaotic, degenerate, clownish and incompetent.

Or sometimes, when there isn't even a hint of a weak reed available from which he can hang his toxic opinions, Mr. Brooks will simply invent a completely fictional character into whose mouth Brooks can shove his own notions of what reality should be. Or did Joey Tabula Rasa die for nothing?

You want more? Because I've got a million of 'em. Going back 20 years.

You wanna know why I have always kept my eye on Brooks?

This is why.

Because David Brooks, this unremarkable grey slab of mediocrity, is the avatar for all the worst vices and mendacities of the legacy media, all wrapped up in layer after layer of unearned deference and respectability. And because of this, he is now just about the only Conservative pundit with enough clout across all legacy media platforms to lift an entire field of extremely uncomfortable inquiry --

This election result is about racism, misogyny, lack of education—and an irresponsible media that caters to those realities.

-- and turn it 90 degrees orthogonal to that reality (from Brooks' navel-gazing in The Atlantic):

As a social ideal to guide our new meritocracy, we could do worse than opportunity pluralism. It aspires to generate not equal opportunity but maximum opportunity, a wide-enough array of pathways to suit every living soul.

Achieving that ideal will require a multifaceted strategy, starting with the basic redefinition of merit itself...

All for the sake of sparing the delicate fee-fees of the wealthy, willfully-blind shut-ins who have always underwritten his career.

Burn The Lifeboats

Make S'Mores On The Coals

Monday, November 18, 2024

The Enemy of my Enemy is...

... bending the knee at Mar-a-Lago.

Making nice with the incoming fascist regime.

"What we did agree on was to restart communications" -- Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski announced this morning that they traveled to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to meet with Trump

[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 18, 2024 at 11:29 AM

This will have come as no surprise to anyone who noted (as we did) "Morning Joe"'s lightening-fast pivot from praising Kamala Harris for running a nearly-perfect campaign (pre-election), to dumping on her for blowing it (pre-election).

Never Trumpers like Squint Scarborough and his Meat Puppet Mika are the walking, talking embodiment of Groucho Marx's famous, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

As a dog returns to its vomit... because Joe has always been at war with Eastasia, and he always will be.

Elsewhere, Brian Stelter has described loyal "Morning Joe" viewers as "furious about the Trump meeting."

And I've gotta say, "loyal Morning Joe viewers" sure is a funny way of spelling "credulous chumps".

This Is Why We Burn The Lifeboats

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Never Trumpers Giving Shitty Advice: Amanda Carpenter Edition

If you just woke up yesterday from a long sleep you might only know Amanda Carpenter as Hero of the Resistance #17. A constant presence on MSNBC. A constant presence on The Bulwark. As a writer/editor for Protect Democracy: a "nonpartisan, nonprofit group working to prevent authoritarianism." As the author of the 2018 book "Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us" published by Harper/Collins.

But if you haven't been asleep for the bulk of the 21st century, you may also know that the book she was paid to produce before "Gaslighting Murrica: Yadda Yadda..." was not published by Harper/Collins.

It was published by Regnery Press, and it was a work of Swiftboating-style filth entitled "The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's Dossier on Hillary Rodham Clinton."

You see, before Amanda Carpenter was a regular on MSNBC, she was a regular on Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, Hannity & Colmes and The Big Story, and a regular contributor to right wing whorehouses like Townhall and the Moonie Times.

Before Amanda Carpenter was Resistance Hero #17 she was right wing scumbag Jim DeMint's senior communications advisor and speechwriter, and was then promoted upward to the position senior communications advisor and speechwriter for super right wing scumbag Ted Cruz.

Because Amanda Carpenter is not a decent person.

How do we know this?

Because no decent human being with five functional senses, a working brain and a conscience would make a career out of putting themselves in the service of Fox News and Regnery Press and Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz and slagging Hillary Clinton by accident. Instead, Amanda Carpenter is one of that small army of amoral Republican opportunists who saw their mild criticisms of Donald Trump slamming the doors shut on their professional opportunities on the Right. So they called upon their many, many legacy media pals who run the media's Reputation Rehabilitation Laundromat. And quick like a bunny this small army of dispossessed professional Republican hatchet-men looking for a nip and a tuck and a book contract, were immediately whisked to the front of the line past the hundreds and hundreds of Liberal writers and critics who have gone gray in the service of opposing poison factories like and Townhall and the Moonie Times instead of being their paid instrument. People who have exhausted themselves trying to end the influence of filth like DeMint and Cruz instead of being their paid creature.

But, alas, this is the media environment we have, not the media environment we want or deserve. This being so, we few OG bloggers out here on the rim of the political galaxy still retain the ability to see what others do not, then laugh ourselves stupid about it, then write about it, then toss it into the face of a legacy media which continues to insist we do not exist.

So today's subject is Amanda Carpenter. Specifically, the Townhall/Fox News/Ted Cruz hardwiring in her head that is all still live and sparking even as her friends in the legacy media successfully rebrand her as Hero of the Resistance #17.

Today, Ms. Carpenter was on a mission to sell credulous Democrats on the idea that the cure for what ails us is some of that "Tea Party spirit". She does this by

Lying about what the Tea Party was all about and,
Lying about why it was successful.

Very "Ted Cruz" of her. I should also note that she blathered all this drivel while The Bulwark's Tim Miller sat there as passively and quietly as a field of Martian regolith.

Here is Ms. Carpenter. And if you were inclined to watch the video, you will notice her eyes darting here, there and everywhere as she rolls out this line of bullshit:

Carpenter: ...because if you look at the origins of the Tea Party, that was when Obama was on the rise, right? There was a bailout... a bunch of energy... but because there was so much anger about spending and the potential government takeover that we knew that was coming with health care. People started organizing early. And so Obama took office, y'know, the height all the excitement... and people were on the ground taking the streets and um doing organizing and meetups that Spring, right?

Nope. Nope. Nope. And as to the notion that Carpenter is still trying to sell the idea that this mob of bigots, imbeciles and grifters cared one good god damn about "spending"? Or that their freakout over President Obama trying to improve the broken American health care system by proposing a Republican plan was anything other than fury that an uppity Negro was in their White House?

All that shows is how deeply conditioned these "allies" of our are to revert to their factory default settings at the slightest prompting.

Because s we have discussed and documented to a fair-the-well on this blog, the Tea Party assholes did not precipitate out of thin air, or leap intact and politically virginal --

-- from the forehead or Ronald Reagan. As every survey has shown and everyone with an ounce of common sense who doesn't have a political axe to grind knew from the beginning, the "Tea Party" was a fraud. Nothing more or less than the most heavily funded and carefully coordinated political re-branding effort in recent American history -- the latest layer of Koch-funded, Fox News promoted whitewash splashed over the same goddamn whelping box full of bigots and Bible-thumpers who have made up the base of the Republican Party for most of my adult life.

Ms. Carpenter again: And so there was an outside-in strategy that was movement based -- not organized around a particular politician and what have you, um, to try to influence the people who were in Washington who could potentially do something with their limited tools.

Here is how Politico reported on the grass-roots organizing of this plucky group of outsiders on April 15, 2009:

On “America’s Newsroom” Wednesday morning, Fox News host Megyn Kelly declared that “it’s tea party time, from sea to shining sea.” A short while later, “anti-tax tea parties” rose to the top of the network’s Hot List.
In between, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins — who earlier this week donned colonial garb as he traced the history of the tea party movement — reported on a tea party protest in Washington’s Lafayette Park. Meanwhile, Fox hosts Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren were all preparing for their own on-the-scene reports from tea parties around the country.
“Can’t get to a tea party?” Fox’s Bill Hemmer asked viewers the other day. “Fox Nation hosts a virtual tea party — you can check it out on the site, a location of a tea party in your area...
“Fox appears to be promoting these events at the same time it is presenting them in a way that looks like reporting,” said Stephen Burgard, director of Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.
Burgard called the practice “pseudo-journalism,” adding: “We have seen this before from Fox News Channel, but its role as galvanizer of opposition to President Obama’s policies and leadership posture appears to be emerging.”

Ms. Carpenter again: And so people will think about the filibuster that we staged, um, over health care, and it was not successful, but as an organizing effort it was hugely important hugely important. Um, y'know, we did a little hashtag "Make DC listen". We made it about inviting people in. And we were stopping a process that was very nerdy but people came to understand that there was someone in Washington who would actually fight for you on these things. Because they were begging to have someone that wouldn't just roll over and take it and rubber stamp it and let these things happen.

As Ms. Carpenter knows damn good and well, this is not what happened at all. Starting on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated there was a conspiracy hatched by a cabal of powerful Republican lawmakers, media goons and assorted other henchmen to sabotage the Obama administration starting on Day One.

From "The Conspiracy to Commit Legislative Constipation" by James Wolcott, Vanity Fair, April 27, 2012:

In a scene reminiscent of the summit meeting of mob bosses in The Godfather, Republican House leaders were summoned by evil marshmallow and message-crafter Frank Luntz to hash out a strategy to cope with the defeat of their party in 2008 and the election of the newly inaugurated President Obama, according to Robert Draper's just published book Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.
From a report on Draper's revelation by Ewen MacAskill in the Guardian UK (bolding mine)
During a lengthy discussion, the senior GOP members worked out a plan to repeatedly block Obama over the coming four years to try to ensure he would not be re-elected.
In his book, Draper opens with the heady atmosphere in Washington on the days running up to the inauguration and the day itself, which attracted 1.8 million to the mall to witness Obama being sworn in as America's first black president.
Those numbers contributed to a growing sense of unease among Republicans as much the defeat in the White House race the previous November. The 15 Republicans were in a sombre mood as they gathered at the Caucus Room in Washington, an upscale restaurant where a New York strip steak costs $51.
Attending the dinner were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Others present were former House Speaker and future – and failed – presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and the Republican strategist Frank Luntz, who organized the dinner and sent out the invitations.
The dinner table was set in a square at Luntz's request so everyone could see one another and talk freely. The session lasted four hours and by the end the sombre mood had lifted: they had conceived a plan. They would take back the House in November 2010, which they did, and use it as a spear to mortally wound Obama in 2011 and take back the Senate and White House in 2012, Draper writes.
"If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," said Kevin McCarthy, quoted by Draper. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."
The Republicans have done that, bringing Washington to a near standstill several times during Obama's first term over debt and other issues...

Democrats have no billionaire backers willing to fund either a real grassroots movement, or an AstroTurf simulacrum of a grassroots movement.

Democrats also have no lavishly-funded, million-decibel media empire megaphone capable of relentlessly marketing any such movement while out-shouting any naysayers.

And, finally, Democrat simply do not enjoy the same simpering deference and credulity on such matters from the legacy media as Republicans. When the Koch Brother and Fox News cooked up the Fake Tea Party rebranding scam, the entire legacy media rolled over for it immediately, giving it cache it never deserved as a genuine, spontaneous protest movement over Gummint Spending.

If Dems tried any such thing, grassroots or not, the Right's million-decibel media empire megaphone would begin scream about it 24/7. The legacy would then immediately fold and dutifully begin taking their talking points from Jesse Watters.

Because, alas, this is the media environment we have, not the media environment we want or deserve.

This has been another edition of Never Trumpers Giving Shitty Advice, respectfully submitted, this date, November 16, 2024.

I Am The Liberal Media

Friday, November 15, 2024

Hey Fellow Kidz, Here’s a Cool New Idea That No One Has Ever Thought of Before!

We'll put on our own show!

Minus the blackface of course.

'Cause all we need is pluck, and spunk, and a little elbow grease and we can put on a show that'll blow the socks of these rubes! Then we'll have enough money to save all parent's houses from foreclosure, and won't that be a fine thing!

In case you are unfamiliar, this plot was a Depression-era staple, usually starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. And during the Depression, I imagine it was a balm to the despairing masses -- to being able to get away from the desperation of real life for an hour and a half and imagine that putting on a show with some old costumes found in a steamer truck, staged in somebody's uncle's barn with a few song-and-dance numbers written for the occasion would save the day.

With that in mind, we will now go to Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post, mere days ago in an exercise which, in my previous life, I have referred to in many, many meetings as the "All quarterbacks/ No wide receivers" school of management. In this scenario, senior management sits around a large table at their weekly, well-catered meeting and spitball about stuff they want. Stuff they'd like to see happen, or outcomes they'd like to see achieved. It's all just wishcasting, with everyone trying to outbid everyone else with the awesomeness of their Wish List: a Wish List which some unspecified person or persons is/are excepted to take up and complete at some point .

Eventually, with all the wishing done (and the ritual complaints about the availability of parking and state of the break room are completed) the meeting adjourns and everyone (except me) leaves feeling a warm glow of accomplishment. That something had definitely been decided upon (it hadn't.) That plans had been laid (they weren't.) And that this plan had been delegated to ... someone (Nope.)

A few weeks later, some member of this brain trust remembers one of the wishes which had been spoken aloud to the cosmos and the boss asks the group where that thing stood. Eyes flash around the room, and even though everyone is seated, everyone manages to slowly take a step backwards. This is followed by a lot of ponderous or grouchy harrumphing, but the issue gradually dissipates into a welter of disappointed and "Why does nothing every get done around here?" harrumphs, and the cycle repeats itself.

From the WaPo:

Democrats need to reclaim reality from the right-wing disinformation machine

Disinformation has taken hold over democracy.

Whether you believe that Americans embraced President-elect Donald Trump’s misogynistic, racist and bullying persona because they misunderstood what he stood for or because they liked what he stood for; or because they believed (falsely) that the economy was in a recession or because they could not afford to buy their own home; or because of some combination of all of these, we cannot ignore the success of the right-wing media’s disinformation network in shaping how millions of Americans view the country.

Yes, Jen. Thank you for joining the chat that the rest of us have been engaged in for +20 years.

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer put it succinctly:

The things that pundits have been talking about since Tuesday ... all factored into this election. But nothing mattered more than this: Donald Trump was returned to power by the most badly informed electorate in modern American history.

Yes, Jen. We know. We get it. We, too, have been putting this succinctly, and angrily, and despairingly, and TL:DR-ingly on our blogs and podcasts and Tweets and newsletters and TikToks and YouTubes and screaming it across the table at family gatherings.

A now much-discussed Reuters-Ipsos poll found that...

Lemme guess. Reuters-Ipsos poll confirms what we have been saying for decades. We know. We get it.

The media preferences of millions of fellow Americans...

...are fucked-in-the-head because they are soaking in Conservative propaganda 24/7. We know. We get it. Are we going to get around to proposing a practical, viable solution anytime soon?

On views about inflation and the overall economy, people in 2024 consistently reported very negative opinions compared to actual inflation, unemployment, and GDP figures...

So no. I guess we're just going to keep padding out this column with stuff everyone already knows.

Europeans have been especially perplexed by American’s sour views of the economy...

More padding..

On the eve of the general election, the Economist magazine even had a cover story saying the U.S. economy was the envy of the world. Yet voters...

Well golly, Jen, you've finally convinced me. This all sounds bad. So...whatever exactly are we supposed to do about it.

The answer to combating the avalanche of disinformation...

Hurrah! The word "answer" has finally appeared on the horizon! How exciting! So go ahead. Dazzle me.

Oopsie. Spoke too soon. Still more Jensplaining to us things we already know about and have spilled a million pixels writing about since the dawn of blogging.

The answer to combating the avalanche of disinformation, sadly, does not reside primarily in legacy media, which millions upon millions of Americans never see or read. (It certainly does not reside in outlets that offered false equivalence, failed to oppose a fascist candidate, or ignored voters’ lack of interest in democracy and underlying resentment over the loss of White power.)

Touchingly honest: a WaPo editorial writer telling us her platform and her profession are a dead loss, but still, nothing we did not already know.

Then more yadda yadda yadda.

Then comes two sentences, written in the passive voice, explaining to us rubes what must be done to solve our fatal national journalism problem.

Are you ready?

Are you ready?

Ok, here we go:

Rather, the solution lies largely in fostering new forms of media to counteract the gusher of right-wing disinformation that fills the brains and shapes the attitudes of many Americans.

And

A new crop of relevant opinion makers, local media and investigative journalists is required to get basic information to voters and combat the right’s conspiracy-laden hysteria. Then democracy and good governance stand a fighting chance...

Hey look kids! Big Time WaPo opinion-haver Jennifer Rubin is of the opinion that we need a Liberal media.

Huzza!

And what she is very carefully not saying is that the Left was right all along.

Not a word about the who, what, when, where or how -- and who's gonna pay for -- this "new crop of relevant opinion makers". Not a word about all the Liberal bloggers and podcasts and Utne Reader and The New Republic writers and Air America veterans who have gone gray in the service of trying to build just such a Liberal media from scratch without the billions that right wing billionaires were willing to lavish on Conservative media to build the vast propaganda machine that produced the likes of [checks notes] Jennifer Rubin.

Not a word about the coordinated mockery, dismissal and attacks from legacy media and Conservative against any hint of Liberalism that might threaten to break into the mainstream.

Instead Rubin advises that someone, somewhere should manifest such a thing somehow.

Should, y'know, make it so.

Honestly, if I had a dollar for every time a Liberal has cried out for a genuinely Liberal media over the past 20 years...I'd have nearly enough cabbage to fund a genuinely Liberal media.

But now, last last, Jennifer Rubin has arrived to explain this to us as if 'twere something fresh and new.