"Think of the other narratives the MSM pushed in recent years that have collapsed. They viciously defamed the Covington boys."

"They authoritatively told us that bounties had been placed on US soldiers in Afghanistan by Putin—and Trump’s denials only made them more certain. They told us that the lab-leak theory of Covid was a conspiracy theory with no evidence behind it at all. (The NYT actually had the story of the leak theory, by Donald McNeil, killed it, and then fired McNeil, their best Covid reporter, after some schoolgirls complained he wasn’t woke.) Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The MSM took the ludicrous story of Jussie Smollett seriously because it fit their nutty 'white supremacy' narrative. They told us that a woman was brutally gang-raped at UVA (invented), that the Pulse mass shooting was driven by homophobia (untrue) and that the Atlanta spa shooter was motivated by anti-Asian bias (no known evidence for that at all). For good measure, they followed up with story after story about white supremacists targeting Asian-Americans, in a new wave of 'hate,' even as the assaults were disproportionately by African Americans and the mentally ill."

So wrote Andrew Sullivan (Substack) in a passage quoted by Jonathan V. Last in "Andrew Sullivan and the Narrative of the 'MSM Narrative'/The narrative on MSM narratives is false" (Bulwark).

Last calls Sullivan's attack "nonsense," his point being that "the MSM universe is so large that you’re always going to be able to cherry-pick examples to support the notion that 'they' are feeding 'us' false narratives." 

And it's easy for Last to dish up the false narratives Sullivan himself has served up: He called "people skeptical of the Iraq War as the 'Hate-America-First crowd,' he asserted "that Barack Obama would put an end to America’s culture wars," he pushed the notion "that Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and that 'the media' was complicit in this coverup."

Last writes:

The MSM is like a giant peer-review system, but where the peer-reviewing takes place after publication. Jonathan Rauch talks about this at length in The Constitution of Knowledge—that the scientific enterprise and the journalistic enterprise have similar modes of operation. Is the journalistic mode great? No. Like democracy, it is the worst system there is—except for all the others.

"Great analogy" says the top-rated comment on a WaPo column that makes a terrible analogy.

I hesitate to link to it because I don't think this writer should be encouraged, but I'll give you the link with the headline and tell you that the piece is intended to be a satire about Kyle Rittenhouse so you can understand my point without actually clicking. The piece is "Teen who showed up in operating room with scalpel had idolized doctors all his life." The author's name is in the tags.

"Americans say by a roughly 2-to-1 margin that the Supreme Court should uphold its landmark abortion decision in Roe v. Wade..."

"... and by a similar margin the public opposes a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The lopsided support for maintaining abortion rights protections comes as the court considers cases challenging its long-term precedents, including Dec. 1 arguments over a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The Post-ABC poll finds 27 percent of Americans say the court should overturn Roe, while 60 percent say it should be upheld, attitudes that are consistent in polls dating to 2005. More broadly, three-quarters of Americans say abortion access should be left to women and their doctors, while 20 percent say they should be regulated by law."

From "Americans broadly support Supreme Court upholding Roe v. Wade and oppose Texas abortion law, Post-ABC poll finds" (WaPo).

The good news for supporters of access to abortion is that if the Supreme Court happens to nullify the longstanding right to have an abortion, the strong support from the public ought to lead quickly to statutory law guaranteeing that right. That process of getting back to the right we'll have lost will radically affect American politics, but who has the inclination now or the skill to accurate predict how that will work out? If I say it will help the Democratic Party, who will believe me?

"I want socialism to win, and to do that, socialists must be ruthless with ourselves. The idea that most Americans quietly agree with our positions is dangerous..."

"... because it leads to the kind of complacency that has dogged Democrats since the 'emerging Democratic majority' myth became mainstream. Socialists can take some heart in public polling that shows Americans warming to the abstract idea of socialism. But 'socialism' is an abstraction that means little without a winning candidate. And too much of this energy seems to stem from the echo-chamber quality of social media, as young socialists look at the world through Twitter and TikTok and see only the smiling faces of their own beliefs reflected back at them. Socialist victory will require taking a long, hard road to spread our message, to convince a skeptical public that socialist policies and values are good for them and the country. Which is to say, it will take decades. Americans have lived in a capitalist system for generations; that will not be an easy obstacle for socialists to overcome." 

From "Democratic Socialists Need to Take a Hard Look in the Mirror" by Fredrik deBoer in the NYT. He's the author of "The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice." Nice illustration, by Gary Ellis, at the link.

Sunrise — 6:45, 7:00, 7:01.

Mid-November foliage — 7:04 a.m.

My hypothesis: The Bidens deliberately froze Kamala Harris's political career.

I'm reading this CNN article — "Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris' frustrating start as vice president" — and reading between the lines.

Read it yourself. It's very long. Too long to excerpt adequately. But let me know what you think. My hypothesis is based, first, on a belief that Jill Biden hated the way Harris treated her husband in that first debate. Let me cherry pick from the CNN article and quote just the things that reinforce my suspicion that the Bidens want to disable Harris:

Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden's team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president....

She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he's pledged to do publicly and privately....

 She can't start running unless and until he says he won't run. She can't compete with him. 

If you read the previous post without thinking of the mask mandate...

 ... explain yourself.

Hugh Hewitt writes "'Roe' will be overturned. The federal courts will go back to normal" in The Washington Post.

Okay, I'll bite. Let's read it. I'm reacting in real time ("live-blogging" my reading):

One of [the weight-bearing walls of constitutionalism] is a federal judiciary confined to its proper role, which is most definitely not that of reviewing state statutes having to do with the regulation of abortion.

I'll just have to guess that he's positing this because he thinks abortion isn't a constitutional right, but he might be saying he doesn't think courts should protect individual rights from the choices of the majority or because he thinks only state courts should protect individuals from rights-invading choices made by state and local government authorities. 

The high court has been doing it steadily since Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, but with its consideration next month of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the pattern is likely ending.

Is that "likely"? I'd place my bet on the side of preserving the longstanding precedent, but we shall see. 

“Out, out damn spot” is the perfect summary of the thinking of serious conservatives toward Roe, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 case that narrowed Roe.

Out, out damn spot?!! That's what Lady Macbeth says — it's "damned" though, not "damn" — when she hallucinates blood on her hands after committing murder. How going insane perfectly summarizes the thinking of "serious" conservatives I don't know.

And spare me the claim that your people's thinking is "serious." My son John recently asked on Facebook "What word do you think is overused?" and I said: "I have 3: serious, deeply, and garner." Watch out for it and you'll see the idiotic effectiveness attributed to the word "serious." If you're serious, demonstrate seriousness. Don't just tell me you're serious. And don't use "serious" in the "true Scotsman" sense, which is what Hewitt is doing with "serious conservatives." The serious conservatives are the ones who see Roe as a bloodstain that's driving them crazy (or whatever HH thinks "Out, out damn spot" perfectly summarizes). 

"During the interview, Winfrey said she thinks women are going to feel 'liberated' by Adele choosing to leave a marriage that wasn’t working, rather than stick it out only for her child."

"'I’ve read where you said you weren’t miserable, but you also knew you weren’t happy,' Winfrey said. 'And so you wanted to bring a happy version of yourself to your son. Which I think is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.'"

 
From "The four most-personal revelations from Oprah’s interview with Adele, from her divorce to weight loss to new boyfriend" (WaPo).

Make yourself happy, because a happy version of yourself is about the best gift anybody can give to their children.

True

False

It's not that simple!

 

pollcode.com free polls

"In the 1860s, New England was in the grip of a 'pear mania,' an enthusiasm for amateur horticulture which irked Henry David Thoreau, who felt pears were..."

"... a finicky and 'aristocratic' fruit compared to the apples he loved. 'The hired man gathers the apples and barrels them. The proprietor plucks the pears at odd hours for a pastime, and his daughter wraps them each in its paper,' he wrote. 'Judges & ex-judges & honorables are connoisseurs of pears & discourse of them at length between sessions.'… In his 1862 essay 'Wild Apples,' Thoreau describes an apple-picking walk through the Massachusetts countryside in November as a full sensory experience, in which the fruit can only be appreciated as part of the environment that produced it—as a way to taste late autumn. 'These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their spirit. They must be eaten in season, accordingly,—that is, out-of-doors.' Wild apples, randomly cross-pollinated by bees, have a wide range of flavors, sometimes even when grown from the same tree, and a love for them requires a palate that can tolerate the occasionally sour, gnarled, irregular, intense. This is a kind of novelty that has been eradicated in our quest for endless choice. Thoreau himself predicted that 'The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past… I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!'"

From "Fruits of Empire/The plant explorers of the USDA succeeded in bringing the world’s fruits to American supermarkets. But at what human, ecological, and gustatory cost?" by Willa Glickman (NY Review of Books).

(The illustration, from the NYRB article, is of a Belle Angevine pear from Fleury-sous-Meudon, Île-de-France, France, 1900.)

"My life is completely different now. I can’t imagine myself living 100 percent back in Tokyo anymore. I love how I’m surrounded by nature here, and I feel healthier and emotionally full."

Said Kana Hashimoto, 25, quoted in "Goodbye, city life. Green acres in Japan beckon as pandemic shifts priorities" (WaPo).

In April, she moved to Minami-Aso, a village of about 11,000 people in southern Japan, and now balances many jobs she loves: farming, helping distribute local ingredients to nearby restaurants, working at a miso soup shop and a hot-spring spa.... 

[Y]oung workers are seeking alternatives to Tokyo’s corporate grind, marked by long hours, cramped subway commutes, meetings with bosses over after-work drinks and strict corporate hierarchies. About one-third of the people in their 20s and 30s living in greater Tokyo said they had taken steps in the past six months to move to rural Japan, according to [a] survey. Among 20-somethings alone, 44.9 percent said they were interested in moving to rural Japan.... 

ADDED: Here's the top-rated comment at WaPo, from ZanHax:

Stories like this are so inspirational to me. In America, however, I don’t think it would be so easy for all people. I would love the opportunity to move to a rural community and work the land. The reality, for many Black and minority people, is that policies and rural communities themselves, may not be supportive, safe and welcoming to people like me. There are communities here that I fear driving through when traveling. I think it is simpler to do something like this when a society is more homogeneous. I do wish these young people success, because this grind? It isn’t all life is about.

Rural Americans "may not be supportive, safe and welcoming." You "fear driving" when you pass through their territory. But do you know any of these people or are you just prejudiced against them? Where did you learn that prejudice? In the city? And here you are wishing for a more homogeneous society. This is a prime example of how much racism is woven into anti-racism.

"Overcharging may please the public, but it can demolish a case. While jurors can convict on 'lesser included' offenses..."

"... the credibility of the prosecution is established by the lead charge. Jurors tend to start at the top and work their way down on the charges. If the first-degree charge is wildly out of reach, they are more likely to doubt the lesser charges, too. Even with some lesser included offenses, it will be hard for prosecutors in the Rittenhouse case to make this cat walk backward. They promised the jury that it would see a vigilante rampaging in utter disregard of human life. Instead, the jury saw a much more confusing, chaotic scene in which Rittenhouse was threatened with a gun, hit repeatedly and chased down a street."

Writes Jonathan Turley in "Rittenhouse trial: Perils of weighing public opinion over evidence" (The Hill).

Is "make this cat walk backward" an idiomatic expression? Google returns only 4 results on this search, one of which is the article I've quoted above. The other 3 — 1, 2, 3 — are all from July 2014, and they are all reports of a quote — on the topic of whether members of Congress can sue the President for violating separation of powers — that came from Jonathan Turley.

"Make this cat walk backward" seems related to the expression that it's hard/impossible to "herd cats." I guess it's hard to make a cat do anything, so make up your own cat expression and try — like Jonathan Turley — to get your idea to go viral. 

What can the prosecution do to make the metaphorical cat walk backward? Find a metaphorical Roomba:

ADDED: As many commenters here are saying, you will find non-Turley examples of the phrase "walk the cat back." To walk back isn't the same as to walk backward. When you go out for a walk, in the end, you walk back home. That doesn't mean backward! 

Here are the Everly Brothers, and I assure you that they are not imploring the woman to walk backwards, just to walk — in a frontward-facing position — back to them:

Here's a Phrase Finder piece on "Walk the cat back." It begins with a usage by Maureen Dowd (in 2010) that seems to be a misunderstanding of the phrase "walk back the cat." If you think there's no significant difference between those 2 phrases, read that piece. "Walking Back the Cat" was the title of a 1997 spy thriller by Robert Littell who explained it as an expression used by spies to mean "attempting to retrace a process to its origin, when that process had been tentative and indirect in the first place." 

"The Post-ABC poll finds that, if elections were held today, 46 percent of adults overall would back the Republican candidate for Congress and 43 percent would support the Democratic candidate."

"Among registered voters, the GOP advantage goes to 51 percent vs. 41 percent for Democrats, a historically strong result for Republicans on this measure.... [Biden's] overall approval rating now stands at 41 percent, with 53 percent saying they disapprove.... Biden’s overall approval rating is down from 50 percent in June and 44 percent in September, although his current standing is not statistically different from two months ago. Biden’s popularity also has slumped among his own base. In June, 94 percent of Democrats approved of the way he was handling his job compared with 3 percent who disapproved. Today, 80 percent of Democrats are positive and 16 percent are negative. Barely 4 in 10 Democrats strongly approve of Biden today, down from about 7 in 10 who did so in June. Biden’s approval rating on the economy has also tumbled and now stands at 39 percent positive and 55 percent negative.... Today, just over one-third of Americans say Biden has accomplished a great deal or a good amount during his time in office, with more than 6 in 10 saying he has accomplished 'not much' or 'little or nothing.'... Still, that means nearly one-third of Democrats say Biden has not accomplished much or anything during his first 10 months...." 

From "Biden approval hits new low as economic discontent rises, Post-ABC poll finds" (WaPo).

"Spears is still in a profoundly difficult position, despite, and perhaps because of, her new control of her life."

"If Spears acts in any way that could be construed as irresponsible, it could be taken, in legal battles to come, as proof that she can’t handle her own life. In August, police records show, she placed three calls to police that she subsequently cancelled, and police were also dispatched to her home after she was accused of damaging a housekeeper’s phone. (The matter was referred to the district attorney’s office, which did not pursue charges.) In mid-October, Spears wrote on Instagram, 'I’ll just be honest and say I’ve waited so long to be free from the situation I’m in . . . and now that it’s here I’m scared to do anything because I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake !!!' She had just regained the freedom to drive, for the first time in thirteen years, and the paparazzi were chasing her, 'like they want me to do something crazy.'"

"How Britney Spears Got Free, and What Comes Next/Spears fought for years to end the conservatorship she was under, and finally won. But the legal battles aren’t over" by Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino.

This NYT headline displays an unabashed belief that censorship is desirable and expected, as if the tradition of freedom of speech has evaporated.

With dismay, I am reading "On Podcasts and Radio, Misleading Covid-19 Talk Goes Unchecked/False statements about vaccines have spread on the 'Wild West' of media, even as some hosts die of virus complications."

Talk goes unchecked! 

Freedom of speech is an artifact of the "Wild West," not the foundation of our republic!

Well, the New York Times is free to print such things, misleading though they are. The NYT is trying to induce private companies to undertake censorship.

[One] podcast is available through iHeart Media... Spotify and Apple are other major companies that provide significant audio platforms for hosts who have shared similar views with their listeners about Covid-19 and vaccination efforts, or have had guests on their shows who promoted such notions.

“There’s really no curb on it,” said Jason Loviglio, an associate professor of media and communication studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “There’s no real mechanism to push back, other than advertisers boycotting and corporate executives saying we need a culture change.”...

That would be a culture change in favor of censorship, and the NYT is doing what it can to instigate demand for that change.

“People develop really close relationships with podcasts,” said Evelyn Douek, a senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “It’s a parasocial medium. There’s something about voice that humans really relate to.”

There’s something about voice that humans really relate to. Yes, the spoken word feels more like a real relationship than the written word, but that makes it more dangerous, it seems. More "parasocial." 

I know I like to stick with the written word. It feels more rational. It's easier to pull apart and critique, at least as long as the private company known as Google allows me to continue — continue my parasocial life — and doesn't virtual-murder me.