Funny things can happen in that political vacuum after a party-changing presidential election, known as the Lame-Duck Session. Joe Biden has been kiting around on trans-continental trips, including one odd visit to the rainforest. He’s dropping checks like they are soiled Kleenex tissues: $10 billion for Iran here, another billion for African recovery there… (Sorry, displaced North Carolina residents, maybe next holiday.) And, of course, there is the tradition of the presidential pardons, but with Joe freeing almost as many people as Castro flushing out his jails during the Mariel boatlift.
There is another curiosity being witnessed these days, and this one involves the press. Seemingly overnight, we have been witnessing an odd outbreak in journalism. (Okay, sure — it has been weeks in the process since the election, but still, the feeling is there.) Today, with the need to prop up Biden no longer in place and the desire to sell him as the next head to be blasted upon Mt. Rushmore a now-forgotten punchline, we are getting a rash of news stories that are – dare we say it – bordering on the side of accuracy!
Most revealing was what we were delivered from the New York Times. Thinking back to all of the denials that have been served about the Tex-Mex border over the years, this is rather aggravating. We have been sold everything from the crossings being normal, there is no crisis, all the way to Kamala campaigning that the border is now closed. The press has not only played along but lashed out at those revealing the facts. Now the Times comes out to actually declare that record amounts of illegal arrivals have been experienced. Isn’t that convenient?
Another lengthy narrative in the press has been the smokescreen regarding the economy. Find the adverse fiscal condition during the Biden years, and journalists found ways to spin things as either fiscally beneficial or a misreading of the data. When inflation spiked, it was spun as a probable positive, and anytime the rate was lower than previous reports that was trumpeted; just ignore how lower inflation growth was against already inflated prices. But now that President Silveralert is in his twilight days, outlets like CNN just toss up their arms and report inflation is rising, in resignation.
The next example is less journalism-related but no less revealing. On “Saturday Night Live,” they actually were seen addressing the target-rich subject of Hunter Biden. If you wanted a prototype of a political character ripe for the type of comedic roasting the show is allegedly known for, Hunter typifies that role. Yet the show has laid off of scorching the recidivist son of the president for over four years, only now using him for comedic fodder after he has been fully pardoned, and Dad has his hand on the EXIT door handle.
On that topic of pardons, Biden has been receiving a surprising amount of criticism, not just for the decisions but the scope as well. Yes, he pardoned his kid, as expected, but the decade-long erasure was what raised eyebrows and saw pushback in print and from a number of outlets. Then, this week, Joe basically pardoned anyone who has a (D) in front of their name, and in the process a controversial judge was included, and the press has noticed this was probably a poor decision.
There was even a bit of a surprise that an Investigator General report about January 6 came out to conclude that there were “more than two dozen” FBI confidential sources among the crowd that day. A number of these fed-attached persons either entered the Capitol or had moved into restricted areas.
Yes, there are still the holdout outlets deflecting and denying this report — after all, the J6 controversy is sacrosanct in the press — but the very fact that it came out and we are hearing about it at all is itself an indicator of so many in the news industry just giving up.
