If it’s a day ending in the letter “y,” the US political media almost certainly is failing us. Badly. For instance, yesterday Glenn Youngkin was campaigning in suburban Atlanta for Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp, who is facing Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch from four years ago. Now, if you were a reporter watching Youngkin’s stump speech, and if you were even semi-competent and/or paying any attention whatsoever, you should have noticed – and informed your readers accordingly – that almost every word Youngkin said (see video, below) was either a flat-out lie, a distortion, or just bullsh*t. For instance:
- Youngkin claimed, FALSELY, that Democrats supposedly were salivating to shut down schools during the COVID pandemic and keep them shut. Of course, the reality is that – wait for it – we were facing a deadly pandemic! And the choices were horrible – either keep the schools open and watch a lot of teachers, staff, and the families of students get sick and die, or switch to virtual learning until effective vaccines were available. The only responsible choice, of course, was to not put people at serious risk of illness/death, and then once vaccines were readily available, to move towards returning kids/teachers/etc. to the physical classroom. This really isn’t rocket science, nor should it be politicized. But that’s exactly what Youngkin does – politicize it, falsely smear Democrats as supposedly WANTING to keep kids out of classrooms and hurt their educations, etc. So does the media call any of this shit out? God forbid. Of course not.
- Youngkin claimed, FALSELY, that Biden CAUSED inflation, dontcha know? In fact, inflation is a global phenomenon, happening in every country, and is the result largely of the economy recovering rapidly from the COVID pandemic, “supply chain” issues caused by the COVID pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which contributed to higher oil and grain prices), etc. None of which has anything to do with Biden.
- Youngkin keeps FALSELY implying that Democrats want to indoctrinate kids, keep parents out of their own kids’ lives, while Republicans are all about freedom, opportunity, low taxes, low regulation, parents, etc. All of that is either untrue, of course, or at best a serious distortion of reality. Again, has the media called this out? Uhhhh…
- Youngkin FALSELY claimed we’re now weak on the world stage, letting China win, etc. Huh? The situation, in fact, is literally the OPPOSITE of that, with the U.S. helping Ukraine win its war against Russia, with NATO strengthened, with China’s ally losing badly and with the US standing up strongly for Taiwan, etc. Again, has the media noted any of this? Nope.
On and on it went. So that brings us to the CNN and WaPo pieces on Youngkin that I mentioned in the headline. I’m not going to even link to this trash, but suffice it to say that the headlines of these puff pieces/whitewash jobs are: “Youngkin is ‘hugging everyone’ as he tries to build a brand as the GOP’s great unifier” (CNN) and “Glenn Youngkin hosts donor retreat amid presidential speculation” (WaPo), and they both treat Youngkin as a “national star with a great future” (quoting, of all people, fascist Newt Gingrich) who “has become a conservative-movement hero in the fights over the teaching of racial and gender identity concepts in Virginia’s public school” (WTF???), and who very well could be of “presidential timber” (again – WTF???). Minimal if any skepticism, let alone substantive reporting, is apparent in either of these sorry excuses for “journalism.”
And we wonder why we’re in trouble in this country? One of the main reasons is that the political media – in this case, CNN (under new, Republican-friendly leadership) and the WaPo (owned by Jeff Bezos) is massively failing to do its job.
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