I’ve stopped reading the New York Times, as it has turned to clickbait garbage, but I still crack the Washington Post every day to scan the news and gauge the state of the “liberal-biased media.” While far better than the Grey Old Lady, it can be nearly as frustrating a process. Check out the headlines and framing for four of the five above-the-fold stories today in America’s last half-decent broadsheet.

1. Biden faces pressure to deliver a strong message to DISSATISFIED VOTERS.

2. Bernie Sanders made private WARNING to Biden about 2024 campaign.

3. Biden has canceled $138 billion in student loans. Some say it’s NOT ENOUGH.

4. Of Biden’s proposals in his address last year, here’s what FLOPPED and what succeeded.

These choices represent a lot of editorial intention, but they sure as hell aren’t guided by a “liberal bias.”

Yesterday, while puttering around in the kitchen, I thought about what a great exercise it would be to aggregate all economic stories in the major media over the past year to compare the framings. By the numbers, it’s been an extraordinarily great year by nearly every metric of growth. Inflation is down, employment is up, GDP growth is strong, manufacturing jobs are soaring, unions had a great year, and so did the stock market. Building projects are engaged across the country through the Inflation Reduction Act, the crush of debt from student loans for young earners is being addressed through forgiveness and remediation, and pharmaceutical companies are being forced to rationalize the prices of at least some lifesaving medicine. All that is empirically true, but what I’d like to know is the percentage breakdown between stories that SIMPLY REPORTED THOSE NUMBERS vs. stories that reported the numbers inside articles leading with the message “economy strong, BUT NO ONE BELIEVES IT.”

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Soon, the Supreme Court will take up the Colorado case to determine if, after trying to overthrow a legitimate election to maintain power, Donald Trump is eligible to hold the office of the Presidency of the United States.

They will almost certainly make an embarrassing hash of that ruling.

I’ve not been posting much political content for the past months for a few reasons. First, the issue most central to the global debate is uniquely ill-suited to social media. In October, the day after Hamas murdered over 1000 Israelis, I hazarded this excerpt from the poem September 1, 1939, by W.H. Auden:

“I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.”

Like Auden’s complete poem, written just hours after Hitler invaded Poland, setting the stage for World War II, I offered that stanza as a lament for the hell that would flow from that newly minted and atrocious history of violent action.

It was not taken as such.

CJR - the Columbia Journalism Review - posted an important story this morning, linked below in the first comment. It's about a 5-minute read that breaks down the failures of the New York Times and the Washington Post regarding political reporting. Consumers of both broadsheets will note that CJR correctly tars the Times as significantly worse at their job, though both papers of record are shitting the bed when it comes to maintaining a properly informed public.

For all the talk about the polarization of news, the siloing of information, or even the bizarre and mindless assertion of a liberal-biased media, the real problem is capitalism - though CJR doesn't come right out and say that, so I'm saying it here.

Before anything noble or enlightened about informing the public and the virtues of independent journalism, newspapers want to keep their readers' attention. So, when it comes to politics, the absolute imperative is to sell the horserace. If, by the very nature of the horses involved, that race is a thoroughbred vs. an old nag, then the media needs to boost the slowpoke, hobble the speedster, or both.

Knowing a little history, I don’t carry illusions about the 1970s being an idyllic time. Even back then, while I didn’t know the context or the interconnections, I knew about the Vietnam War, Watergate, ICBMs, the Cold War, and the murders of JFK, RFK, and Dr. King. I knew about Bobby Sands and the IRA, Yasir Arafat and the PLO, Patty Hearst and the SLO, Charlie Manson and Helter Skelter. I was aware that “out there” things were scary. Still, around my neighborhood, it was mostly manhunt games, Pinewood Derbies, kickball, bicycle jumps, Big-Buddy Bubble Gum, and an Evil Knievel motorcycle toy that, if you really spun it up, could jump damn near all the way across Orton Ave.

Is it weird that, while I know life back then wasn’t idyllic, while I know there were so many problems in the world, it still seems like it was so . . . good?

That’s weird, right?

When I think about the goodness of being a kid in the 1970s – a kid in a blue-collar/middle-class mixed neighborhood that wasn’t very economically diverse and not racially diverse at all – I think about a few things. I think about my grandmother first. Her name was Peggy Parker, and she just radiated fairness, kindness, and love. Whenever I felt hurt, the first person I thought about was Grandma and how I knew – above all other things, that she loved me without reserve, and if that remained true, everything would be okay in the end.

Emmett Till would, and should, be celebrating his eighty-second birthday today - just a little older than my mom and dad, whom I'll be traveling to see very soon.

Till, visiting family from his home in Chicago, was murdered in the small town of Money, Mississippi, by folks who "take care of their own."

The purpose of the murder was vengeance against Till for having the temerity to exist and to breathe the same air as the very white, very upstanding, very small-town people of Money. It was also a warning to anyone else who looked like Till that they'd better not try that in a small town where people "take care of their own" and define "their own" in the most appalling of ways.

The Jason Aldean shit got stuck in my craw again today, and I was going to write something long and critical about how he DIDN’T grow up in a small town. He grew up in a majority Black city, Macon, Georgia, but CHOSE to attend a Christian school where the student body is STILL over 90% white in 2023. I was gonna write about how the town where he filmed his video, Columbia, Tennessee, is no longer a small town, but it WAS one in 1927 when Henry Choate was tied to the back of a car and dragged through the streets of that small town before being hanged right where Aldean CHOSE to stage his video.

I was gonna write about how the whole point of Sundown Towns across America was never having to SAY the words, “Get out by dark, N*****,” because that shit is IMPLIED by the militancy of statements like, “We protect our own round here,” when “our own,” are all fish-belly white and hair-trigger angry about them “outsiders from the city coming 'round here to do no good."

Just ask Ahmaud Arbery's people about that.

The butt of the scuttle suggests that Trump is looking at charges on three counts in the Jan 6 case:

- 18 U.S.C. § 371 - Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. - When two or more people conspire either to commit any offense against the United States or to defraud the United States or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose.

- 18 U.S. Code § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law - makes it a crime for a person acting under color of any law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.

- 18 U.S. Code § 1512 - Tampering with a witness - prohibits tampering with witnesses, victims, or informants in a legal case, with the intent to obstruct justice. It makes it a crime to engage in actions such as intimidation, retaliation, or bribery to hinder the communication of information or cooperation with law enforcement or the judicial system.

On May 19, I wrote this about Ron DeSantis when much of the punditocracy was still hyping him as the next big thing. “What a fucking idiot. What a cruel, cowardly, bullying idiot. If you’re getting into the DeSantis market, short the fuck out of your position. He’s a political tragedy just beginning to implode.”

As has become painfully obvious, that assessment was on the money, and tonight, I’d like to do two things: First, I’d like to take a bit of a victory lap at spotting this also-ran for what he was before the herd caught up. Second, I’d like to draft the first (of thousands) of autopsies concerning the DeSantis campaign that will be written when he officially drops from the race after Iowa. The fact that he’s still technically alive, politically, makes it that much more fun.

Call it a premortem.