"[American media] have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away..."

"... at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: 'As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.' They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one. According to one journalist’s tally, the New York Times has run 192 stories on the subject since the debate, including 50 editorials and 142 news stories. The Washington Post, which has also gone for saturation coverage, published a resignation speech they wrote for him. Not to be outdone, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief declared that Biden not going away 'would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment' and had a staff writer suggest that Democrats should use the never-before-deployed 25th amendment. Since this would have to be led by Vice-President Kamala Harris, it would be a sort of insider coup. And so it goes with what appears to be a journalistic competition to outdo each other in the aggressiveness of the attacks and the unreality of the proposals. It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, AKA most of these pundits."

Writes Rebecca Solnit, in "Why is the pundit class so desperate to push Biden out of the race?" (The Guardian).

Solnit is very anti-Trump, as you'll see if you read the rest of the column. She goes on to say — "Speaking of coups" — that Trump "orchestrated a coup attempt to steal an election" and is planning "yet another coup" through the implementation of Project 2025. She even uses the word "coup" to describe what the Supreme Court — with its Trump appointees — did in finding presidential immunity and in "dismantling the regulatory state."

I'm quoting her anyway, because she's questioning the motives and judgment of liberal media. I'd really like to know who decided a stampede was the right approach and unleashed it while the President was still on the debate stage. Immediately after the debate, CNN's John King was cued up to describe a stampede already in motion:

"New York Times' Nikole Hannah-Jones tweets the North didn't fight to end slavery in Civil War."

A Fox News headline from last year, interesting today in light of Nikki Haley's recent comments on the Civil War.

On [May 21, 2022], Hannah-Jones tweeted out a quote from her controversial 1619 Project...

"The management of the nation’s most elite, center-left news organization, which, in its opinion pages, supports unionization at places like Amazon and..."

"... endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president in part because she would 'give workers more ability to bargain collectively,' is now telling its impecunious staff to quit clanking their tin cups. The workers want raises that keep up with inflation, and the company is on track for an annual operating profit of more than $300 million...."

Writes Shawn McCreesh in "Just What Did the [New York] Times Walkout Change?" (NY Magazine).

"Every journalist covering Ukraine should really, really look internally. This is why I say we should stop pretending we have objectivity and... instead acknowledge our biases so that we can report against them. Many of us see the racialized analysis and language."

"'Honestly, these admissions of shock that this is happening in a European country are ahistorical and also serve to justify the lack of sympathy for other invasions, other occupations and other refugee crisis involving peoples not considered white.... To be clear: We should care about Ukraine. But not because it is European, or the people appear white, or they are 'civilized' and not 'impoverished.' All people deserve to be free and to be welcomed when their countries are at war.... Europe is not a continent by definition... [It's a] geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia. So the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us."

Said Nikole Hannah-Jones, quoted in "1619 founder Nikole Hannah-Jones blasts media for 'insidious racism' and claims they only care about 'Europeans with blond hair and blue eyes' after heavy coverage of Ukraine compared to other conflicts" (Daily Mail).

"In the new book version, Nikole Hannah-Jones... cautions that the [1619] project is 'not the only origin story of this country — there must be many.'"

"Then, in the opening chapter, Hannah-Jones repeats the text of her original magazine essay and refers to Black Americans as the country’s 'true "founding fathers,"' as deserving of that designation 'as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital.' Some 400-plus pages later, in a concluding chapter, she writes that the origin story in the 1619 Project is 'truer' than the one we’ve known. What might an assiduous reader conclude from all this? That 1619 is a thought experiment, or a metaphor, or the nation’s true origin, but definitely not its founding, yet possibly its inception, or just one origin story among many — but still the truer one? For all the controversy the project has elicited, this muddle over the starting point is an argument that the 1619 Project is also having with itself. These distinctions matter because, with this subject, framing is everything. History, Hannah-Jones writes in the new book, is not just about learning what happened. 'It is also, just as important, how we think about what happened.'... Reframing America’s start from July 1776 to August 1619 — from the 'wrong' date to the 'truer' story — and placing those landmarks in conversation with each other is what forces you to stop and think, to peer within competing frames...."

Writes Carlos Lozada in "The 1619 Project started as history. Now it’s also a political program. From magazine to book, the authors are rethinking their message" (WaP).

Remember, when you ask who are "The Founders," ask who are The Framers?

"The past year has been very good to Howard University. One of its alumna — Kamala D. Harris — ascended to the vice presidency.... And last week, the university scored a coup..."

"... announcing Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates as new faculty.... Long-standing concerns over the way the school treats survivors of sexual assault were put on display when College of Fine Arts dean and actress Phylicia Rashad — another recent high-profile hire — shared her support for 'The Cosby Show' co-star Bill Cosby after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated his sexual assault conviction.... The backlash — from students and others outside the Howard community — was swift. The issue was personal for Aliya J’mari, a 2016 graduate who said she had trouble getting help from school officials when a professor physically assaulted her during her senior year.... 'I just felt a little sad for the students that are at Howard now that are going to be up under her leadership,' J’mari said...."

Writes Lauren Lumpkin in "Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ta-Nehisi Coates appointments signal new era for Howard University/The recent growth at Howard University comes a few years after students waged a nine-day protest over conditions at the school and called for their president’s resignation" (WaPo). 

The highest-rated comment over there is: "As long as Howard continues to focus on celebrity over intellect, and to foster the concept of racial segregation for its student body, the university is doomed to a destiny of mediocrity. As proof, take a look at the SAT scores of incoming freshman at Howard versus the Ivy League schools — no comparison."

"It’s not my job to heal the University of North Carolina. That’s the job of the people in power who created the situation in the first place."

Says Nikole Hannah-Jones, quoted in "Nikole Hannah-Jones to join Howard faculty after UNC tenure controversy/Author Ta-Nehisi Coates is also set to join the faculty of Howard, a historically Black university in the nation’s capital" (WaPo). 

Hannah-Jones will also found a Center for Journalism and Democracy at Howard. She said it will aim to train journalism students from historically Black schools to “accurately and urgently [cover] the challenges of our democracy with a clarity, skepticism, rigor and historical dexterity that is too often missing from today’s journalism.”

Meanwhile, Coates "will be a writer-in-residence in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences, and hold the Sterling Brown chair in the English department." We're told he "also has plans to finish his bachelor’s degree, which he started at Howard in 1993."