Following an assignment as Roman ambassador to Carthage following the Second Punic War, Cato the Elder returned to Rome convinced that Rome’s most serious enemy had to be Dealt With. Cato would end every speech he gave in the Roman Senate by calling “Carthago delenda est!” (“Carthage must be destroyed!”) Rome finally declared war on Carthage in 149 BC. In the Third Punic War, Rome defeated Carthage and razed it to the ground. The ruins of Carthage can be seen today.
The New York Times, earlier this week, reported on Donald Trump’s appearand on Hugh Hewitt’s podcast, during which he claimed immigrants have “bad genes.”
It’s impossible to overstate how dangerous this kind of fascistic rhetoric is, but here’s how it was reported in the NYT:
Headline: “Trump’s Remarks on Migrants Illustrate His Obsession With Genes”
Subhed: “In discussing migrants and genes, the former president used language that reflected his decades-long belief that bloodlines determine a person’s capacity for success or violence.”
And here’s a headline from The New York Times on January 31, 1933, reporting Hitler’s electoral victory:
HITLER PUTS ASIDE AIM TO BE DICTATOR; German Cabinet Also Reveals Shift by Conservatives Who Once Barred Him. NAZI’S RISE WAS RAPID Imprisoned for Munich Revolt in 1923, He Later Led 6,000,000 in National Election. LONG AN ALIEN IN REICH Industrialists of Rhineland and the Ruhr Are Believed to Have Forced Coalition Rule.
So now we know the New York Times has had its head up its ass before.
At least with Hitler, they finally got it right.
With Trump? Not so much.
Joe Klein wrote in his Substack yesterday:
“I am boggled by the idiot credulity of my fellow citizens, but then democracy always was a close-run thing and the founders never imagined the radically untrammeled democracy we have now; indeed, Madison feared it. They chose a representative republic—if we could keep it—with limitations on who could vote: property owners, men, white people. We have bent the arc of freedom toward a more just democracy since then—but I wouldn’t be upset if you had to pass a certified national civics test (once) in order to vote.
“Certainly, the failure of a near-majority of our electorate to know a charlatan showboat hater when they see one—or worse, to like Trump’s viciousness—speaks to a certain moral retardation among the people. The least incredible, but still ridiculous, rationale for people to vote for Trump is that they’ve “seen” him run “his business” decisively on The Apprentice, but that was just make-believe. Given the lax, waning state of American education, this shouldn’t be all that surprising.”
In 2024, Democrats are far more likely than they were in past campaigns to attack the elite and mainstream media for their anti-democratic bullshit. When they deign to hear the criticism, the response from the media is usually either “Well, if I’m being criticized by both sides I must be doing something right” or something more revealing: “You say you’re on the side of democracy and a free press, but you’re just doing what Trump does.”
According to the DC Press Corpse, Democrats must not only submit to whatever scrutiny comes their way, but must also prop up that “critical” media, sing its praises, and end any criticism of that media if they really mean to support civic democracy.
That’s perverse and impossible.
If you support a free press, that means you recognize its crucial role in a free society and support the First Amendment that makes it possible. It doesn’t mean you give bad journalism a pass or fail to denounce the “journalists” who create that bad journalism.
What we have now is a mainstream media that has failed to understand the nature of the 2024 election - that one side supports the democracy that allows the press to work and those who work in it to avoid being jailed for their work, and one man who denounces democracy and promises to destroy the institutions and rules that allow the press to do its work.
A.G. Sulzberger has directed his reporters to cast everything they write about Democrats in a negatived light because he is pissed off and affronted that both Biden and Harris have failed to hear his command that they sit down with him for the “serious interview” he believes is the birthright of both himself as a Sulzberger and the paper he owns for being the New York Times.
It’s that simple.
And the rest of the press follows the Times’ lead.
Thirty years ago, when Bill and Hillary Clinton were in the White House, the DC Press Corpse had an unwritten law called “The Clinton Rules.” Whenever Bill or Hillary did something every other politician in the entire history of the world does - anything from holding a fundraiser to giving a speech - the DC Press Corpse reported the event in hushed tones and described it as some new kind of dastardly scandal.
Now we have The Kamala Rules.
Here’s how they work:
Every candidate for office, when asked a question, will answer the question they wanted to be asked, one that promotes their agenda. Ask what they had for breakfast and they’ll answer that the American people understand we have to do this or that to bring down inflation.
It’s called Staying On Message. Every good candidate does this.
With every candidate not named Kamala Harris, the press expects this and they play along.
But not with Kamala.
When she does Answer My Own Question, the DC Press Corpse dogpiles her.
She’s being evasive! She’s bobbing and weaving!
When she does what every other politician does and goes to speak with people the public she’s trying to reach pays attention to (Hint: that ain’t the fucking New York Times, the Washington Post or any of he rest of the failing “legacy media,” which is why the intergalactic widgetmakers who own them are desperate to make them profitable and sell them.)
That they do this shows they are working to an utterly shameless double-standard.
How many of them will ask a Republican this question: Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?
When the few of them who will ask do, they get this:
Stephanopoulos: “Can you say unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Trump lost?”
Mike Johnson: “see, this is the game that is always played by mainstream media with mainstream Republicans. it’s a gotcha game.”
Stephanopoulos: “So like Vance, you can’t say unequivocally that Biden won the election and Trump lost?”
MAGA Mike didn’t answer the question because election denial is now GOP dogma.
If the DC Press Corpse was doing its job, every interviewer would be forcing every Republican to answer the question, which should be the very first question they ask during every interview, and at every press appearance. If they bob and weave, call them “the election-denying whoever.”
That won’t happen, because the DC Press Corpse has heard Their Master’s Voice, and they remember that “controversy brings attention,” and “attention” means viewers-readers-ratings-subscriptions. And ratings-subscriptions means Profits.
And of course, in their pursuit of “controversy” and readers-viewers-ratings-subscriptions, there’s one Very Special Boy who’s never held to any standards whatsoever. He says whatever he wants, with no pushback or consequence. Because it “promotes controversy.”
Donald Trump.
This week, doing an interview with far right propagandist Hugh Hewitt, Trump went Full Hitler with a claim that migrants commit crimes because they have “bad genes.” “How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person and they’re now happily living in the United States?”
This is “outrageously false,” in the wording of The Washington Post Fact Checker, but Hewitt - who is published in the Post as a “conservative voice” - said nothing and allowed Trump to continue: “You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
Once again, in what the Times defined as Trump’s “fourth-grade vocabulary” when they accidentally Committed Journalism last Tuesday and published an article about his cognitive decline, he was allowed to go Full Hitler with “Migrants are poisoning the blood of our country because they have bad genes.”
And nobody said a damn thing about this because all the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable white male fuckheads with Ivy League Degrees are busy bitching and moaning about how Kamala won’t sit down for a “serious interview” - with them.
Tiger Beat on the Potomac’s “well respected”Jonathan Martin decided to mansplain why it is that the over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable White Boys of the DC Press Corpse haven’t got the brains to pour piss out of their boots when he decided to tell Harris what the Road to Success in 2024 involves:
“This is an extraordinarily close race and Harris must do more to signal that she’ll govern from the political center.”
Here’s more of what this drooling moron knows is the solution for how Vice President Harris can “do more to signal that she’ll govern from the political center”:
“She needs to go further, though, and in ways that could irritate the left and even some of her former Senate Democratic colleagues.
“Harris should say she’ll work with Republicans on behalf of all Americans and stand up to the extremes in both parties because, America, she knows the dirty little secret is many GOP lawmakers she served with are as exhausted with extremism and extremists like Donald Trump as she is.
“It’s not just she who wants to ‘turn the page’ and find ‘a new way forward,’ to borrow two of her slogans, but many Republicans, too. Some of them are also tired of families being torn apart over Facebook comment threads, the incessant bickering that’s overtaken Washington and being held hostage to a party leader whose lies and demagoguery they must own as long as he’s a threat to return to power and exact retribution.
“She could say that while she hopes Democrats will retain the Senate, she will work with a GOP majority, too, and find a compromise with them on the looming must-do next year - avoiding an across-the-board tax hike when the Trump tax cuts expire.
“Which leads to me suggesting an even more daring gambit: Harris ought to consider preemptively naming Mitt Romney as her secretary of State.”
Pardon me while I pick myself up off the floor.
Now you know why I am constantly embarrassed by the fucking idiot white male morons who don’t had the brains to find their ass with both hands on a clear day with a three hour advance notice. Their test scores and family connections may have gotten them into the Ivy League, but it’s clear they failed to get an education while there.
To Jonathan Martin and the rest of the white boys who are so well beyond their sell-by dates in the DC Press Corpse: boo fucking hoo.
Kamala isn’t talking to you because she doesn’t fucking need you, that’s why. Go jump off the Gpoerge Washington Bridge and Make America Truly Great Again.
New York Times Delenda Est!
And all the rest of the fuckwits, too.
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Fewer and fewer people are getting their news from the legacy outfits, which explains their standing in the middle of the road all the time in hopes of staying alive for a few more news cycles. There are now many news options, many of them admittedly lousy but more readily available. Most people are interested in the daily news in their area and will check it out on TV and/or radio and that's about it. The most inspired reports, opinions, and analyses are here at Substack. (Remember when McLuhan said the medium is the message?)
On the other hand, if one is a print junkie, as I am, there is good news. The Atlantic is going to expand its print publication to monthly and remain something a gal can not only read during an extended power outage, but also roll up to smack a fly with when necessary.
My idea of a free press is that Kamala is free to ignore them. Someone should poll journalists to see how many of them ever took a class in American civics, and if so, did they pass it with even a D-?