That Which is Left Unspoken Often Shouts The Loudest: Another David Brooks Adventure

The blatant asymmetry with which legacy media companies like The New York Times are treating this election to try and make it into a horse race by sheer force of will is in evidence everywhere.  Big-name media contributors, former big city newspaper editors, and even the Times' own former public editor are to be found all over social media almost every day, all in a vast chorus of "WTF is going on?!?!" with their chosen profession.  

And, as always, the reply from the legacy media is a deafening silence, and a "fuck you all" doubling down of their daily fascist enabling.  

Hell, it's gotten so bad that even the PBS NewsHour noticed it.  Do you know how bad the endemic Big Media Fail had to get to force milquetoast, OK-team!-Let's-get-out-there-and-not-offend-anyone! PBS to start asking questions about it?  Yes.  That bad.

But the real story is how they covered it.  And to understand what was so very, very striking about their timid coverage, you need to first understand how PBS conducts their weekly {also "weakly") "conversation" between an inoffensive leftish person and an inoffensive rightish person.  

For decades, the inoffensive rightish person.has almost always been David Fucking Brooks of The New York Times, and, until he passed away, the inoffensive leftish person used to be Mark Shields.  Now it's a rotating groups of semi-regulars including the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart and, as was the case this last Friday, the Boston Globe's Kimberly Atkins Stohr.  

 And the ritual is virtually always the same.

After a few welcoming remarks, the host will ask series of questions -- usually using the passive Voice from Nowhere -- and then Brooks and whomever will take turns answering it.   This order of things is as as cadenced and routinized as a promenade or an Allemande left in square dancing: the host is the Caller, the two guests are the Couple, and everyone knows how the dance is done.

So, after 83,921 episodes, when they suddenly break protocol -- when the dog does not bark in the night -- well that caught my attention.  It made me wonder what happened and why they did it happen and all kindsa itchy, journalistic-y questions like that? 

First came PBS NewsHour host Geoff Bennett.  I will highlight for you where the passive voice is being used to make sure no specific media persons or institutions were in danger of being brought to book. 

Bennett:  And, Kimberly, back to your point about the asymmetry in this race, the double standard, where President Biden can mistakenly refer to the president of Egypt as he meant to say the president of Mexico, and that adds to this narrative that ultimately drove him from the race.

Donald Trump can rant at a rally or ramble through a statement like that, and it's largely ignored. What do you see as the practical effect of that?

Gosh, Geoff, largely ignored by whom?  It's not being ignored by me.  Or any other Liberal blogger or podcaster.  Or the aforementioned big-name media contributors, former big city newspaper editors, and the Times' own former public editor.  If the public is ignoring it, then perhaps it's because some very large and influential legacy media companies are, y'know, failing to inform the public about it.  And what would the name of those very large and influential legacy media companies be?

Kimberly Atkins Stohr reponds::

Atkins Stohr: Well, I think if — as people see it more and more, especially juxtapose Kamala Harris, which, whether you like her policies or not, she is laying out policies. She is speaking in complete sentences and paragraphs about her vision for the American future.

And you see Donald Trump asked a question, again, about childcare, something that impacts all of us, and he cannot seem to stay on track about that, thinking about leading a nation at a time, at this current time when we do want to keep the economy on track, when there are threats, both domestically and foreign

I think seeing this again — people sort of forgot about Trump for a while. I think seeing this again is a stark reminder that there is a clear, clear division, a clear difference in this area.

Not a great response.  No mention of where or how "people" are going to see any of this.  No mention of when exactly the supine legacy media organizations like The New York Times are actually going to ask Trump these sorts of questions.  Or if those supine legacy media organizations like The New York Times have any plans to stop propping Trump up by "sanewashing" his incoherent gibbering into what sounds like a coherent response.

Not a great response, but it was a response.

Next up, Mr. David Brooks who works for -- hey lookit that!  Brooks works for that very same New York Times I was referring to just forty words ago!. In fact, Brooks has been working for the New York Times for 22 years.    He is their senior Conservative op-ed writer on matters political and cultural. 

So, let us all hold our collective breath in anticipation of Mr. Brooks' sure-to-be-sublime answer to the question of legacy media's wildly asymmetrical coverage of this election.

Then let us all slowly let out our collective breath, because this is PBS people!  And Geoff Bennett is not about to embarrass Mr. David Brooks of  The New York Times by posing any question to him that might implicate The New York Times.  So good ol' Geoff breaks PBS protocol and saves the day -- yay! -- by instead asking Brooks a question about...

Can you guess?

Go ahead and guess.    

Bennett:   Well, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney this week said that she's voting for Kamala Harris, that, in her words, there's never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is.

Instead a question for Brooks about the grotesque, ongoing perversion of the legacy media in service of their Both Sides Do It fetish, what you are hearing hat is the sound of Bennett putting a large softball labeled "Say Nice Things About The Cheneys" on a tee and asking the Pope of the Both Sides Do It cult to take  swing at it.  

Bennett:   And then, today, speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival, she said that her father, the former Vice President Dick Cheney, is voting for Kamala Harris too. Take a listen.

They all listen.

Bennett:  So, Dick Cheney, stalwart conservative, no one can accuse him of being a RINO Republican in name only. He served, I think, four Republican presidents, if memory serves me correctly.  What do you see as the significance of their dual support for Kamala Harris?

Brooks:  Who knows. Maybe he's swinging left. He's going to move to Park Slope. He's going to come in hippie.

They all laugh, because it's all such jolly fun!

Brooks:  No.

Bennett:  That, I'd like to see.

They all laugh again.  Because it's still such jolly fun!

Then here come the lies.  Care to count them with me?

Brooks:  For a lot of Republicans, character comes before policy.

Bullshit.

Brooks: And I think the Cheneys are among those Republicans...

100%, unalloyed revisionist bullshit.

Brooks: ...and there were a lot of Bush Republicans for whom that was just an article of faith. 

If the "Republicans" he was referring to were "Eisenhower Republicans", I might allow it.  But those Republicans are all dead, so bullshit.  

Brooks: The other interesting thing is about how interesting a decade the 2010s was, when the Republicans had a total hostile takeover from outsiders, Trump and MAGA.

This is so far beyond mere bullshit that I am challenged to find the exact words to describe how bluntly Brooks is lying here.  

This is David Brooks unable to face the reality of his party being revealed as the hollow, amoral ghouls and grifters we crackpot alarmists on the Left have always said they were. 

This is David Brooks, formerly of the inner circle of smug, sanctimonious Conservative aristocracy trapped forever 2016 amber.  Trapped in the moment after he had sworn that everything was finejustfinerealgoodokgreatexcellent with his Republicans party... watching his party gratefully delivering  themselves into the flabby, fascist embrace of Donald Trump.  while he impotently declares "It's going to be Rubio!  I'm telling you, it's going to be Rubio!"

Forever.

This is not merely skirting the truth by an inch or two.  Not just shaving facts or transposing numbers.  

This is the profound, dissociative denialism of a broken man manifesting itself in pure anti-truth. 

And this is PBS enabling it.

I Am The Liberal Media