"... let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys...."
Writes Rebecca Traister, in "RFK Jr.’s Inside Job How a conspiracy-spewing literal Kennedy posing as a populist outsider jolted the Democratic Party" (NY Magazine).Unlike his uncles and his father, RFK Jr. doesn't have a "brain trust" — doesn't have "protective support from the journalists and politically powerful friends who shined him up, in many cases literally editing his words." He used to, but...
Now his brain trust appears to be the hyperonline, hard-right masculinity influencers who give him the approval he craves and encourage him to do things like post videos of himself shirtless, his chest and arms improbably pumped, doing nine janky push-ups.
Traister — who just revealed she knows her "empathy for the female candidates" is regarded by others as "probably overemotional and built too strongly on personal identification" — now openly displays her distaste for men who seem afflicted by overemotional attraction to the masculinity of a male candidate.
Not so distant from this performance of retro white machismo...
See what I mean?!
... is the fact that at least some of the blame for this wretched state of affairs lies with Biden and the Democratic Party. When elected, Biden promised to be a bridge president: to formulate, alongside the equally senescent leadership of his party, a succession plan of some sort. But these aging leaders have not done that, so here we are with some of the anti-Biden energies among Democratic voters getting directed toward a man who looks like the saviors of old, a glitchy hologram of fabled politicians who once represented youth and hope. He never, ever, ever should have been here....
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41 comments:
When elected, Biden promised to [blah blah blah blah…]
Oh my goodness, a politician who said things on the campaign trail and then didn’t do them in office!
Meanwhile, RFK gets the Republican treatment. Who are these right-wing cabalists encouraging him to get famous by posting pics of him doing pushups? Yeah, I’ve seen one or two, but they’re hardly why he’s getting noticed. But I can see why she’d want us to think that and that’s what her column’s all about, isn’t it? What she wants us to think.
Democrat Party bootlickers are starting to panic. Even they see that neither Biden nor Harris is likely to be electable. And until who they see as a real candidate enters the race to challenge their sitting-President, they're left with this icky Kennedy guy.
"He never, ever, ever should have been here...." Pretty funny if you ask me.
I am literally e-mailing back and forth with my son about specific vaccines, including chicken pox, and I'm sure it's only because of Bobby Jr. Before Covid I was staunchly anti-anti-vaxx. I read a bit about how that corrupt idiot Wakefield got papers published in top journals about the dangers of the MMR vaccine, and after ten years the papers were retracted. I was sure Wakefield was wrong, and the "mainstream" vaccines were all fine. Bobby has made an intelligent case to question some of this.
Likewise the assassination of JFK and I guess of RFK. I still don't want to spend my life going down this rabbit hole, but Bobby may have more rational suggestions about these events than say Oliver Stone. Trump time has certainly made me question the CIA (Clapper and Brennan frothing at the mouth about Trump on TV) along with the public health authorities. Bobby keeps alive the question whether there is always a Swamp, and whether it can ever be trusted.
I have studied Rachel Carson a bit, and I grew up with 70s environmentalism, which now makes me impatient. Even if it is true that corporations function like psychopaths, thinking only of means and ends, using and manipulating people while trying to keep quite a few of them alive to be future customers, the old-fashioned environmental issues are somewhat self-correcting. The poor accept pollution in order to get jobs; richer people demand cleaner air and water. Climate change I would think is to a great extent a way for the Swamp to manipulate fear, including the fears of 70s environmentalists, to build their power and promote somewhat evidence-free policies--not for themselves, but for most of us.
I miss Elizabeth Drew. And Janet Malcolm. This broad couldn't hold their pencil sharpeners.
Shorter version: the coordinated effort to label him an “anti-vaxer” for the last month hasn’t killed his support.
First Trump and now RFK jr. — the media must be feeling quite impotent of late.
Tl;dr: "Joe Biden lied to us..."
Ha ha ha. it's simply accepted that any given journalist is going to be simping for one Democrat or another, because they see their actual jobs as publicists for their favored Democratic candidates and suppression of any news unfavorable to their choice. They all have a dog in the fight.
Seriously?
Historically who has been more interested in, and supportive of, the cult of Kennedy? Men or women?
If he does end up running for president who will vote more for him, men or women?
Would she have ever made comments like this if JFK JR had lived and run for office?
You would think at some level that a New Yorker reader would be sophisticated enough to tire of these shallow hit pieces on the enemy du jour.
I frequently wonder what this mag's marketing department knows about its readership that I cannot see.
I wouldn't lump the known dangers of vaccines with "9/11 conspiracies" and "the moon landings never happened".
Doing that, dismissing RFK Jr that way, lends more credence to what he says, at least to my mind.
After decades of hearing "Reagan (perot, Cheney, Bush, trump etc) are literally Hitler" I found the statement that rfk is a "literal kennedy" laugh out loud funny.
It sounds off somehow. It sounds like it is damning all Kennedy's especially St. John of Camelot.
John Henry
Nobody really wants to be a "bridge" President, especially vain Democrats like Biden.
"now openly displays her distaste for men who seem afflicted by overemotional attraction to the masculinity of a male candidate.
Not so distant from this performance of retro white machismo...
See what I mean?!"
There's a Bud Light, Alissa Heinerscheid "fratty male culture" joke in here somewhere for Mz. Traister I just know it....just give me more time.
From the post:
"Unlike his uncles and his father, RFK Jr. doesn't have a "brain trust" — doesn't have "protective support from the journalists and politically powerful friends who shined him up, in many cases literally editing his words."
The author, as summarized, says that 'protective support' is a good thing. Of course.
"... let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys...."
It's a great line. And true.
Journalistic Integrity. Journalism is dead. Present company excepted. I may not always like or even agree with your topic choices or outlooks but will continue to read because there is value in good journalism.
For some we are in the "It's my truth so it is true era". Some of these screeds are so thinly vailed and poorly constructed that in addition to being obvious promotion it is a window into the low IQ and lack of writting skills of the author.
She counted the push-ups?
Oh, sweetie.
"... openly displays her distaste for men...".
Could have placed a period right there.
But the article was an interesting tale of political privilege.
Will RFK Jr be the first Democratic candidate to earn the coveted Hitler label from the media?
"But these aging leaders have not done that, so here we are with some of the anti-Biden energies among Democratic voters getting directed toward a man who looks like the saviors of old, a glitchy hologram of fabled politicians who once represented youth and hope."
True, Democrats do seem to be very afraid of anyone under 70. The same group of people who 50 years ago were telling everyone not to trust anyone of 30. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the Democratic party once the 1960s generation loses its hold on power. Sure, there's been some token blacks and other minorities, but the power in the legacy party of slavery, segregation and the KKK has always been held by old white people.
"now openly displays her distaste for men who seem afflicted by overemotional attraction to the masculinity of a male candidate"
Corollary to the old Althouse theorem: any difference distinctive to men must be portrayed negatively.
Anyway, the striking not-striking thing here is that this journalist only emotes--all feelz, no argument.
I agree that there was something bizarre about video, "with his chest and arms improbably pumped, doing nine janky push-ups." There seems to be a major disconnect between his physical appearance and his physical performance.
"Will RFK Jr be the first Democratic candidate to earn the coveted Hitler label from the media?"
Lol. Take it from DeSantis, you haven't made it in politics until you get labeled Hitler. You're almost there Bobby...so close...just use the phrase "deep state" and you'll hit the big time!
Biden. Kennedy. Bridge president. Bahaha.
Those pushups and bench presses really screwed some people up for some reason. I don't like the guy at all but I thought that was impressive and, well, enjoyed seeing it. I also thought that RFKJ's pointedly contrasting his fitness with that of his pathetically decrepit primary opponent was a smart and obvious thing to do.
I have studied Rachel Carson a bit …
So you’re aware that she creatively manipulated her data (and made it up as necessary).
Seriously? Historically who has been more interested in, and supportive of, the cult of Kennedy? Men or women?
Yah, RFK Jr used to make the Boston ladies swoon when he'd show up at the Roche Bros or something. Recently you'd have to duck and cover when the panties would start snapping off because that red headed Kennedy would show up in line at the Boylston Street Starbucks.
Is the New Yorker trying to convince me that all life is just petty high school shit talking with this piece? I already knew that, but thanks I guess.
The bottom line of her "argument", the Right is trying to do to the Democratic Party what the Left did to the Republican Party in 2016: get their opponents to nominate an absurd, easily defeatable candidate.
Traister . . . now openly displays her distaste for men . . .
Five years ago Traister wrote a book called Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, which according to Atlantic Magazine (!) offers “what might be called a divorce-court view of the gender situation in America: Men and women are on opposing sides, and women will succeed only by quashing men and seizing the spoils . . . “
The Democrats are really worried about RFK Jr. I don't blame them. Look what they have, dumb and dumber.
Look, I appreciate Robert kennedy speaking up on certain issues like Ukraine but his candidacy is just a distraction. THe Democrat Establishment is 100 percent behind Biden. And if Biden fo whatever reason doesn't make it to the Democrat Conventions due to health reasons, they'll be 100 percent behind Kamala.
The fix is in. There will be no debates, and polls show Biden is way, way, ahead. Democrats have great party discipline. They hate those Goddamn Reupblicans and the only thing that matters is keeping the R's from power. that's the Democrats No. 1 Priority. From top to bottom. Period.
France is now suffering from a Neo-Con, Neo-liberal, Big Business Government. Just raised the retirement age to 64. The Left is unhappy. THe Unions are unhappy. But their number priority was NOT helping the workers. Their Number 1 priority was keeping Marine Le Pen from being President. Its the same all over the world, Leftist will suffer and let elites oppress them, as long as their percieved REAL enemies are kept out of power.
Oh, look, another leftist journalist has crafted an article on how unpleasant and inappropriate RFKJr is, as a candidate. She probably would call this a 'think piece', and congratulate her abilities at being nuanced.
They keep calling RFKJr a crank, and an anti-vaxxer. I don't think much of him as a candidate, don't like many of his ideas, but even I must wonder why it's wrong to demand that all medicines be safe, be proven by controlled trials before being put into use, including vaccines, and even I am highly skeptical that the pharmaceutical companies are indemnified to prosecution by any kind of lawsuit, no matter how egregious the offense. Isn't that a little illogical, to grant those kinds of golden tickets to things that are known to have problems, even in spite of flawed and compromised reporting schemes?
But I notice that these journalists never take on those specific points of his, never address his policy ideas, never refute his direct assertions or claims. It's just ad hominem, all the way down. He may be a good candidate or a bad one, but he's getting the Trump Treatment from the press, and consequently we may never find out.
"I wouldn't lump the known dangers of vaccines with "9/11 conspiracies" and "the moon landings never happened".
That's because you don't know about WTC 7 and the Van Allen belts.
The hit piece parade has started up and is firing broadsides at RLKjr to destroy him before he destroys them. But no one believes them anymore, thanks to the truths told by Trump.
Nice cover photo. Add some fangs and blood drippings and it would be positively Bushian.
""... let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys....""
Or a white female blogger over the age of 70.
"Not so distant from this performance of retro white machismo..."
Why is she injecting race into it? Would she be good with it if it was too black or Hispanic machismo? Maybe she would be, because it would feel dangerous and exotic to her.
"Even if it is true that corporations function like psychopaths, thinking only of means and ends, using and manipulating people while trying to keep quite a few of them alive to be future customers"
Rest assured, they are not.
Over the course of 30+ years, I worked for more than a half-dozen chairman of Fortune 200 companies, and was privy to everything. Everything.
The people running multi-billion dollar, publicly held corporations are no different than everyone else. And you can thank politicians and the entertainment industry for convincing the masses that they're all Old Man Potter, sitting around spinning they're little webs thinking the whole world revolves around them and their money.
They are not. But hey, the idea that they are makes for great plot-lines and propaganda.
The shirtless stuff is preemptive so Biden will be reluctant to challenge him to a fight, as Joe is wont to do. Not that would really help with the poop brain.
The Dimocrats are certainly in a panic. Orville Redenbacher… times like these must leave you smiling in your grave.
It will be a slow-roasted-on-a-spit kind of future for these Journolisters.
“Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain,”
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