And Then, When No One Was Watching, Came This Remarkable Exchange

While everyone else (including me) was watching the Artemis II crew's bull's-eye splashdown, safely and successfully ending their historic mission, over in the pocket universe of PBS three relics of a bygone media age sat around a table asking, "What the fuck happened to our profession?"

 Geoff Bennett:

And, Jonathan, 61 percent of Americans, including 30 percent of Republicans, now say that President Trump has become erratic with age. That's according to a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll.

The press corps -- I guess we should hold up a mirror to ourselves. The press corps spent two years making President Biden's mental fitness, his acuity the story. Why isn't that same scrutiny now being applied to President Trump broadly?

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes. Yes, exactly.

That has been my question since -- excuse me -- since January 20 of last year. We, the press, spent a lot of time talking about President Biden and his age because he looked old. He moved slowly. He wasn't as vigorous and agile, supposedly, as the guy he pushed out of office and then the guy who was running against him.

And even little slips of the tongue were used to show, see, aha, he's not all there. He's losing his mind.

How does that compare to what we're going through right now? I wish people who have written books -- people who have gone on air talking about President Biden nonstop, where are they now? Where are those books now that we have a president who has given ample evidence, ample evidence that something is not right?

Where are the people who are standing up and saying, you know what, something needs to be done? And that goes back to some -- you were talking about the founders. They were prepared for something like this. What they weren't prepared for was the Article I branch just ceding all authority.

What they weren't prepared for were people from the president's own party willing to either turn a blind eye or enable him to run roughshod over the Constitution. Even when you have got him out there threatening annihilation of a civilization, even when he's started a war for no reason and the enemy is in a stronger position now than it was before he started this war of his own choosing?

At some point, Republicans writ large and those on Capitol Hill have to start standing up for the Article I prerogatives, but also start standing up for the country. I don't know how much longer we as a nation can withstand this. And I know the world is beyond done with us, but I think they're also frightened of us.

David Brooks:

I wouldn't say that we in the mainstream media have been exactly pro-Trump Cheering section. I mean, our business model is bashing Trump. We know we can get clicks and ratings if we bash Trump enough. So we do it over and over and over and again, without having anything interesting to say half the time.

And, by the way, if we did do everything we could, it wouldn't -- it wouldn't make a difference. The people who need to be persuaded are not persuaded by us. We have been doing this since 2015. And so I'm not totally persuaded it would make a huge difference if we challenged his age and mental acuity, because we have been doing it morally for 10 years.

So, to summarize, in this creaky, ancient ritual, as the moderator, Bennet, is constrained to never state an opinion about anything.  If a meteor smacked into the studio during taping, his contractually obligated response would be, "Some people say that a meteor has just crashed through our ceiling.  What, if any, are the political implications?"  

The other participants, one supposedly "Right" and the other putatively "Left" then engage in a civil exchange in which David Brooks says something absurd or ridiculous or false on its face, and the other party is required by the rules of this kabuki to never raise their voice or call into question Mr. Brooks' honesty or integrity.   

Thus the illusion of a free press operating in an open marketplace of ideas is maintained for the eleven people who still watch this routinized diorama.

However, on any given Friday there are theoretically an unlimited number of questions that could be posed by the moderator.  And usually those questions are designed to be very...beige. Tepid.  Bland, poorly seasoned potato salad at the barbecue, served up so as not to raise the blood pressure of the eleven senior citizens for whom this is Friday evening must-see teevee.  But this time the question was about the media itself.  Specifically -- and swaddled in carefully neutral tones -- about how the media has catastrophically failed us all.  

To be clear, according to the arcane rules under which this ritual operates, Mr. Capehart could not come right out and say, "Fuck you Jake Tapper."  But he might as well have.  Also taking pains to specify that the Republican party is the problem is always appreciated.

Of course, finishing with "At some point, Republicans writ large and those on Capitol Hill have to start standing up for..." yadda yadda is just sheer wish-casting nonsense.  The GOP Capehart dreams of is long dead and its zombie corpse is trying to drag the rest of us into the grave with it.

But the real prize here is the bitter, post-facto nihilism of David Brooks.  

As Judd Legum amply documents here...

Manufacturing a political crisis
...

But while Hur's views about Biden's memory were worth mentioning, the media instead treated Hur's amateur medical judgments as a political crisis for Biden and an existential threat to his reelection campaign. But the actual threat to Biden's political prospects is the deluge of negative media coverage based on Hur's conjecture. A Popular Information analysis found that just three major papers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal — collectively published 81 articles about Hur's assessment of Biden's memory in the four days following the release of Hur's report. Incidents that raised questions about former President Trump's mental state received far less coverage by the same outlets.

Overall, The New York Times published 30 stories about Biden's alleged memory issues between February 7 and February 10. Over those four days, the story was covered by 24 reporters (some of whom filed multiple stories), four opinion columnists, and the New York Times Editorial Board.

Hur's report legally clearing Biden was described in the New York Times as "a political disaster," "a political nightmare," "a new political crisis," and "a political mess." The paper said the report inflicted "searing political damage," placed "Mr. Biden’s advanced age… back at the center of America’s political conversation," and constituted "a gift" to Republicans. And that's just what was included in purportedly objective "news" reports. After Hur's report, New York Times opinion columnists with no medical credentials said Biden showed "signs of senescence" and suggested he was sliding "into dementia." Another said Hur's report proved "Biden should not be running for re-election" and blamed Biden's mental state for "the emboldenment of America’s rivals." The New York Times Editorial Board described the report ominously as "a dark moment for Mr. Biden’s presidency."

Only one of those stories mentioned a key fact: Hur is completely unqualified to render a judgment on Biden's mental capacity.

...and Margaret Sullivan documents here...

The media's circular logic and destructive obsession with Biden's age

Yes, it's fast becoming the 2024 version of the media's obsession with Hillary's emails

The New York Times was, of course, just asking questions.

Why, oh why, do Joe Biden’s age, memory failures and gaffes seem to hurt him so much more than Donald Trump’s age, memory failures and gaffes hurt him?

These questions were being pondered in the most influential real estate in all of media: a front-page news article, above the fold, on Sunday. (Even in this digital age, that print front page, especially on Sunday, packs a punch.)

The sub-headline summarized the issue: “Biden Is Hurt by Flubs More Than Trump Is.”

And the article stated: “While Mr. Biden, 81, has been dogged by doubts and concerns about his advancing years from voters, Mr. Trump, who is 77, has not felt the same blowback.”

“Dogged by,” you say? Who, exactly, is doing the dogging?

Maybe the Times and other major media outlets ought to look in the mirror.

CNN, meanwhile, was running this chyron: “Is Biden’s Age Now a Bigger Problem Than Trump’s Indictments?” A panel gave this question every due consideration, and then some.

And then there was the rundown of Times opinion offerings — one piece after another, all in a neat row, about Biden’s age and memory.

...The New York Times led the pack of "Biden is old" legacy media jackals trying to kneecap the 2024 Biden campaign, at a time when Mr. Brooks was the apex op-ed writer at that publication.

Also Margaret Sullivan's comparison was spot-on: "Biden is old" did become the 2024 version of the media's obsession with Hillary's emails.

And, as long-time readers may recall, Mr. Brooks was also the apex op-ed writer at The New York Times as it led the pack of "But her emails" legacy media jackals trying to kneecap the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign.  First, when it looked like Bernie Sanders might win the Democratic nomination, Brooks cranked out 700 words of drivel "Both Sidesing" Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.  And when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, Brooks immediately pivoted, cranking out 700 words of drivel "Both Sidesing" Hillary and Trump (see "David Brooks: Both Siderism Is a Farce that Gives Us Meaning").

And this was not a one-off.   After the Bush regime collapsed and all of Brooks' Neocon National Greatness dreams died with it, Brooks spent the rest of his career literally doing nothing but vomiting out one column of Both Sides garbage after another on the op-ed page of The New York Times.

And now that the mask has dropped and the beating heart of Brooks' former party has shown itself to be the fascist monster Liberals warned that it was?  

Now that it is unequivocally clear that the media's "Both Sides" fetish is what helped keep MAGA bigots and imbeciles on-side, and lowered the bar far enough for America's feckless, clueless "Undecides" and "Independents" to vote to put the worst person in the world back in the White House?

After all that, where does Mr. Brooks land?

First, he renders his profession down to what clowns like Brooks have made of it: the crass pursuit of "clicks and ratings".

Second, and most pathetically of all, he reduces his entire, toxic career to a giant shrug emoji.  Claiming as his alibi for his poisonous career choices that none of it made any difference.  That even if clowns like Brooks had actually tried harder, it wouldn't have matter.

And, by the way, if we did do everything we could, it wouldn't -- it wouldn't make a difference. The people who need to be persuaded are not persuaded by us. 

This is a lie so immense that it's genuinely hard to quantify.  

Sure, the MAGA zombies are unpersuadable, but that's because they're wired that way.  Their impregnable ignorance?  Their impervious bigotry.  Son, those were features, not bugs.  These MAGA zombies were drawn into the party precisely because they found a welcome home there.  Their ignorance was flattered.  Their intolerance was praised as patriotism.  They became the GOP's reliably reprogrammable meatbags, in a process that unfolded over decades right in front of David Brooks -- America's most ubiquitous public "intellectual" -- who went right on pretending that everything was fine and/or that Both Sides were equally awful.  

But as for the "Both Sides Do It" media cult that Brooks piloted?  Take it from someone who has been documenting its deleterious effects on our politics for 21 years, that has been wildly successful.  

We may never know how many millions of wobbly Republicans who were having doubts about the GOP were persuaded to stay on Team Evil because they believed the Both Sides lie.  And we may never know how many additional millions of those feckless, clueless "Undecide" and "Independent" voters -- people who actually watch things like PBS and Meet the Press and read publications like The New York Times and believe what they see and read -- cast their ballot for the worst people in the world or pissed their vote away on doomed third-party candidates because scum like Brooks spent a professional lifetime telling them that it didn't matter because speech codes at Cornell University were somehow as bad and dangerous as an armed insurrection waged against the United States government.   

But we can say with confidence that the Both Sides lie has been incredibly persuasive.  That it has helped determine the outcome of critical elections.  And that it has done real and permanent damage to this country.

And for his sins, Mr. David Brooks has been lured away from the Times by The Atlantic, where he will spend his declining years cranking out the same drivel as always, but instead of being paid a princely sum to perform his little dance twice a week,  The Atlantic appears to be happy paying him a princely sum to do his thing once every few months.

Funny old world.

I Am The Liberal Media

The Gospel According to Saint David

Sitting in a dark room, blindfolded, using only my fingertips while wearing goatskin insulated electrician's gloves, I can still find the "But the Democrats...",  "But the Liberals...",  "But the speech codes at Swarthmore..." razor in the apple of every Brooks column critiquing Trump/Republicans. 

Or, for that matter, any column of any kind on any subject dating back to good old days of George Allen and Tom Delay.

Mr. David Brooks was raised in academic privilege, loitered at the University of Chicago long enough to score a BA in history (which, based on how routinely he molests and whitewashes the past in order to advance his political agenda, should have been revoked decades ago), after which he latched onto the wingnut welfare teat like a lamprey and has been nursing at its ample bosom ever since.

Since his days misreading history at the Wall Street Journal, Brooks has been America's most ubiquitous cheerleader for the myopically wealthy, the cluelessly privileged and politically inbred, and has made his career out of telling the rich and powerful the silky lies they desperately wish to be true.

Yes, truly it can be said that in all this wide, bountiful, fatally-conflicted nation—from the mountains to the prairies and the whole rest of that song—there is no one who can speak with less forged-in-the-crucible-of-hardship authority about what hard times have to teach us than David Brooks.

I've been writing about David Brooks for over two decades now, and I didn't do all that readin' and spill all those pixels because I find anything meritorious about Mr. Brooks. Quite the opposite: I lost count of the sheer tonnage of indefensible, toxic codswallop that sharts out of this man's pen more than a decade ago.

Mr. David Brooks has made a very good living hauling water for the worst political party in modern American history. He has done it by lying about the history and direction of his Republican party. By pretending that any outward evidence of the depravity of his Republican party is merely a transient, surface nuisance. By deflecting any honest discussion of the unique, toxic madness and malice of his Republican party by relentlessly playing Both Siderist games.

Week after week, month after month, year after year, Mr. Brooks has plied his deeply dishonest and very profitable craft. Along with the rest of the conservative brain caste, he spent most of the 1990s and the early 2000s railing against us vile liberals  As long as it was popular to treat liberals like fifth columnists, David Brooks was first in line for the hippie bashing. But when it finally became impossible to ignore that the Iraq War he had cheerled was a complete disaster, that the Bush administration was staffed by morons, charlatans and zealots, and that—surprise, surprise—the liberals had been right all along, what did Brooks do?

Apologize for his journalistic malpractice?  Heaven forefend!

No, he simply became the newest and loudest cheerleader of the "Both Sides Do It" cult, claiming that the liberals were just as much to blame for the current situation as the war criminals in the White House. Thus was launched Brooks' second career as the chief evangelist of that poisonous cult of privilege and pretense.  There followed hundreds of sermons about the Sensible Center wherein resided a whole colony of sensible Republican candidates and noble Republican voters who spent their days making America with their own two hands, and their evenings reading "An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs" to their towheaded children. Mythical creatures that have never existed and never will.

Now that Mr. David Brooks has successfully scammed the New York Times and PBS and NPR and Yale and NBC and The Aspen Institute and Oprah into underwriting his midlife crisis, various paeans are being written about his heroic moral journey from unrepentant Beltway Republican hack to unrepentant Beltway Both Siderist hack.

The Right's now openly insane, which means the Both Sides Did It lie must be spun even harder and the Temple of Centrism even better attended. That's the Brooks patter, and he's been running it for so long that it's worn grooves in the public discourse. The only honorable way to alter the course of the storm of Republicans' madness and violence bearing down on us would be to invent a time machine and go back to when the madness began to grow and metastasize and thoroughly and publicly discredit those elite media influencers like Brooks who were swearing up, down and sideways that there was nothing to worry about.

That George W. Bush was a military genius. 

That the Iraq War was an unalloyed success. 

That tax cuts fix everything. 

That we would never have deficits again. 

That the Tea Party wasn't racist. 

That Obama was to blame for GOP intransigence. 

That everything was fine: that the GOP had gotten over being weird and was now back to being awesome. 

That Liberals are crackpot alarmists for fretting over the trajectory of the GOP. 

That Both Sides are to blame. 

That Bernie was just as bad as Trump. 

That we needn't worry about Trump because it was definitely gonna be Rubio. 

That Hillary was just as bad as Trump. 

That we needn't worry about Trump because the Wise Men of the GOP would definitely keep him in line. 

That the base of the GOP weren't racist meatheads drunk on Hate Radio and Fox News rotgut.

At at no point on this long, ugly trek did the Sulzberger family decide that David Brooks, their doddering, ideologically-incontinent housepet, has finally shit on one too many of the family's hand-knotted Bokhara rugs to be kept around any longer.  At no point did they think it was finally time to dispatch him to an Elite Pundit Farm upstate where he could frolic and opine all day long in the warm sunshine with the ghosts of fellow pundits like David Broder and William Safire?

Instead, Brooks finally packed up his medicine show and hopped the Acela corridor train for a quick ride southwest to his new digs at The Atlantic.  

Because David Brooks is never going to change, and because he's already been guest-writing at The Atlantic for years, we can safely assume that they know exactly what they're buying.  

During his tenure at the Times, Brooks job has been to provide institutional cover for the GOP's descent into madness by insisting, over and over again, that Both Sides are equally to blame for the catastrophe which one side -- and only one side -- has deliberately engineered.

That's his job. That's his racket. He's been very good at it. And now he'll be plying that same old snake under a new label.

Old whine in new skins, if you'll pardon the pun.  

I Am The Liberal Media