Can you imagine if The New York Times had covered the Biden White House as closely as it covered Justice Samuel Alito's wife's collection of novelty flags?
The media's playing Praetorian Guard for one party isn't good for democracy, but oddly, it's not even good for the Democrats. Biden's open-mouthed, faraway stare at a nationally televised debate isn't the first shock revelation to rock a Democratic candidate in the middle of a presidential campaign.
Al Gore spent 20 years boasting about his service in Vietnam. "I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we'd fire first and ask questions later," he told Vanity Fair, among other macho quotes. And then he decided to run for president, and we found out Gore had a personal bodyguard in Vietnam, the most dangerous weapon he carried was a typewriter, and he left after three months.
John Kerry claimed to be a valiant, Purple Heart-deserving Vietnam veteran who spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia "despite President Nixon's assurances that there was no combat action in this neutral territory" -- all dutifully reported in the press. Then he ran for president, and it was suddenly discovered that more than 280 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called Kerry a liar, his Purple Heart was based on a self-inflicted wound that required the life-saving application of a Band-Aid, his boat was never in Cambodia, and Nixon wasn't president in 1968.
Right up until last Thursday, we've been assured by the entire media conglomerate that Joe Biden is the sharpest he's ever been, "intellectually, analytically" -- the words of MSNBC's Joe Scarborough just last month.
Then 50 million people watching the first presidential debate found out the leader of the free world barely knows his shapes and colors. About halfway through the debate, the stenographer typing the closed-captioning committed suicide.
Typical Biden sentence: "We're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if. We finally beat Medicare."
Cut to senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates: "President Biden takes round-the-world trips that reporters publicly call exhausting and has gone to two active war zones. [He] works around the clock and does many evening events." Right. The only clock Biden works around is the one that tells him it's time to take his meds.
Reporters' suck-uppery to Democrats is the mirror opposite of what I describe in "Resistance Is Futile!": The media's hate-fueled attacks on Trump -- He's Hitler! He's a rapist! He's a Russian collaborator! -- not only fall apart upon the slightest examination, but they keep helping him. At this point, Trump's about one mug shot away from a landslide this November. Maybe journalists should try working through their rage with psychiatrists instead of in their reporting.
Has the debate fiasco finally led them to learn their lesson?
Nope!
In the least surprising opinion of the term, this week the Supreme Court found that the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts that are exclusively committed to him by the Constitution; presumptive immunity over all other official acts; and zero immunity for unofficial acts. Courts are to determine what is or isn't an official act based on precedent, context, etc.
In a dissent that sounds like it came from someone with the Twitter bio "mom.artist.loves birds," Justice Sonia Sotomayor alleged that the court's ruling permits a president to do the following:
"Orders the Navy's SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune."
This demented interpretation was wholeheartedly endorsed by The New York Times and fanboyed by the rest of the media. Twitter and MSNBC have been chockablock with hysterical women claiming the opinion gives the president the right to be a dictator and assassinate rivals.
Try to grasp what they are saying. Their argument is: OMG! The courts are going to find that assassinating political rivals is within the president's exclusive constitutional duties! Therefore, our only protection is to submit a president's acts to the courts -- the same courts that we expect to find a "The president shall assassinate political rivals" clause in the Constitution.
Liberals are incapable of thinking in abstract terms. They can't conceive of life beyond the next election or the possibility that a rule of general applicability will also apply to one of their guys someday. (Anybody remember Bill Clinton?) Every court opinion is evaluated on a single metric: Will this help or hurt Trump right now?
Thus, for example, the Times editorial denounced the immunity ruling solely because the decision would allow presidents to "encourag[e] an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol."
No mention of presidents interning Japanese (FDR); expropriating gold from U.S. citizens (FDR); seizing the steel mills (Truman); using the CIA to spy on a rival's political campaign, and the FBI to bug an opponent's campaign plane (LBJ); bombing a foreign country on the eve of his scheduled impeachment (Clinton); or flinging open the border in direct violation of federal law (Obama, Biden).
But that's not even the Times' most ridiculous response to the immunity ruling. Moments after the (mundane) decision came out, the Times slapped this headline on its homepage:
"Thomas and Alito took part in the case, despite calls for their recusal."
Yes, despite demands by utter imbeciles at the Times that Alito recuse himself because his wife collects novelty flags, and Thomas because the Democratic Party has never hated anyone so much ... they declined.
It's a wonder these media bloodhounds had no idea that the sitting president of the United States is a vegetable.