A Gale of Lies in the Windy City

‘Bittersweet’, God help us but enough of that already! All day on Monday, everywhere as the Democrats’ convention began to roll, it was all you heard about the coming night’s big farewell to Joe Biden in Chicago. Bittersweet, like a tab of acid in a chocolate bonbon, it was on every TV reporters’ lips, on the radio endlessly, over and over, the fawning coverage an invitation to shout one last round of ‘hurrahs’ and ‘We love Joe’ for the man both he and the party faithful knew didn’t deserve them. Poor, noble, expendable Joe was to be rewarded for his “50 years of service” with a few final minutes of lingering in that bittersweet limelight. It was the moment for whipping out the cheap gold watch and sending the old fellow on his way.

Well it went as planned, bittersweet and all. In what played out as the essence in miniature of Biden’s half century at the public trough, he peddled all the required fictions. Once, in his younger days, he opposed busing and racially integrated schools; more recently he has claimed to have marched with Martin Luther King and the other greats of the civil rights movement. Variously, he insisted he grew up attending his own faith’s Catholic services, plus synagogues and black churches too. If he hasn’t at some point claimed to have found spiritual sustenance in a mosque, it can only have been an oversight. Lies have always come easily to the man, stealing too, as his plagiarist’s theft of Neil Kinnock’s life and speech demonstrated. Last night the lie was that he was standing down in the interests of the party, of America and, of course “our democracy”, which he insists will be in dire peril if any party but his Democrats control Congress and the White House.

The convention crowd knew the rules, knew what was expected, and pretended to believe and respect him, the same delegates having cheered with the pretense of sincerity every word from the parade of hacks and luminaries who preceded Biden’s swansong. Nancy Pelosi, who is one hell of a piece of work, said earlier how she wants Biden’s face added to Mt Rushmore, presumably minus his scalp, which is hanging on her office wall. Steven Spielberg, who is Hollywood-style directing the convention, cranked up the music after slide shows of the departing President’s greatest hits jumbotronned across a giant screen. Before it, diminished amid the gale of stage-managed adulation, a shrinking and fading Biden snarled from the podium and told more lies.

Oh, but they all loved Joe, don’t you know — loved that they were to be soon rid of him, and loved the backroom machinations that overturned the will and intent of his 13.4 million primary voters to replace him with a woman who, only months earlier, had been the target of opinion-page punditry urging she be shunted from Blair House, where vice-presidents roost while waiting the call to fulfill their only two constitutional duties — casting deadlock-breaking votes in the Senate and standing ready to move up should the president drop dead (with or without assistance). “While Republicans, most notably Donald Trump, have leveled, and will continue to level, ad hominem attacks and unsubstantiated charges against Harris, they will be amply justified in making her presence on the ticket a major campaign issue,” Time magazine editorialised in January, adding that “Joe Biden owes it to the nation to make such a switch in 2024.” In March, Washington Post opinionista Kathleen Parker echoed a view then popular with the chin-strokers, writing that Harris added nothing to the Democratic ticket and advising she should make herself scarce “for the good of your country”.

And yet here we are, with Joe’s replacement anointed and Time obediently switching to rah-rah-Kamala mode, as evidenced by the recent cover images above.

No longer a cackling negative of no known achievement or competence, the revamped Kamala has her eyes on the stars while felon Trump is justly hammered for his sins. They are images as two-dimensional as the editors who commission them and hardly the most egregious examples of the services the press is providing at the expense of its own good name. Democrats are ‘full of joy’ to have such a wonderful woman as their candidate, the legacy media assures its readers and viewers. Actually, it has been more bludgeon than persuasion. The naked bias in covering the rival campaigns is so brazen it would be jaw-dropping had not the NYT, WashPo, free-to-airs and cables (with the exception of Fox) long since sacrificed any claims to objectivity. According to the Media Research Council, a centre-right monitoring group,

Not only has Harris received 66% more airtime than former President Donald Trump, but the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84%) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89% negative).

Thus does the tame media spawn its myths and build upon them. The media gives Trump less coverage and then only of the negative variety, which in turn leads to stories asserting his campaign is faltering. The logic is circular and self-fulfilling and not to be taken seriously. How could it be when Harris has yet to post a single position statement on her campaign’s website, nor has she convened a single free-ranging interview session.

The hacks don’t seem at all fussed, let alone curious. It has been widely reported, for example, that Harris no longer supports a blanket ban on fracking, which is a key issue involving jobs and prosperity in the key swing state of Pennsylvania. Thing is, she has never actually said that. Faith in her alleged about-face hangs entirely on the off-the-record assurances of an anonymous campaign aide, yet for newsrooms eager to be convinced, that thin gruel is enough. Listen up, Pennsylvania, the Vice-President really does want you working! It is such a transparent tactic one easily imagines Harris staffers trading high-fives as newsroom suckers swallow whole that lie and so many others.

The mention above of LSD was, of course, a metaphor, but there is no denying this election year is one strange trip. Consider, for example, the Democratic National Committee Platform, which was released to mark the convention’s first day, then recalled, then again proclaimed as the confirmed and official document. The problem was the mention, 19 times no less, of the wonderful things — secure borders, cheap rents, Big Rock Candy Mountain visions of peace and plenty — “President Biden’s second term” would bring. Terrified by what the pollsters were reporting, the Democrats switched their candidate so fast there just wasn’t time to reconvene the platform committee and erase mentions of the man who has been so ruthlessly rubbed out.

And very nearly shut out too. It was past 11.30pm on America’s east coast when the condemned man walked with that familiar geriatric shuffle to the microphone, and the ratings by then were dismal. One can only assume director Spielberg arranged the timing of the speech, which didn’t end until after midnight, just as the party’s powerbrokers demanded, with the intention of keeping the First Embarrassment’s farewell as little viewed as possible. Then the for-the-moment President was off to California for a weeklong holiday, departing on Air Force One immediately after concluding his 50-minute address.

Bittersweet indeed.