Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a column we wish all the members of the media had to read word-for-word, out loud, before they could log on to their computer systems.
Since that seems unlikely, we're giving you a multi-post thread that reproduces the column in its entirety.
DO NEWSPAPER COLUMNISTS KNOW THAT #DEMOCRACY'S CLOSER TO DEATH THAN #BIDEN?
Will Bunch
One of the first things they teach doctors in medical school is the imperfect but necessary art of triage, the technique used on a battlefield or during some other mass-casualty event to determine who is most gravely wounded and who needs immediate attention during a crisis when the system is overwhelmed, and clear-headed thinking will save lives.
Clearly, this is not something that is taught in journalism school.
Over the course of a remarkable weekend, I saw the best minds of my boomer generation destroyed by madness — newspaper columnists and other big shots convinced they were cosplayers in a real-world episode of The #WestWing...
...saving #America by giving chief of staff Leo McGarry the best words to convince an ailing #President Bartlet that it’s time to step down.
The soft clacking of these keyboard commandos turned into a stampede as the nation’s pundits, its editorial-page poobahs, mega-rich but anonymous donors, & Democratic horse whisperers competed to outdo each other on The Daily Rip or in “the paper of record,” or wherever they thought the actual frail president, Joe #Biden, might be paying attention.
Dropping names — #Whitmer! #Shapiro! #Warnock! — like a groupie backstage at a heavy-metal concert, floating wildly implausible scenarios, stretching so hard for historical analogies that several probably blew out a hamstring, America’s pundit class managed to achieve a level of groupthink that surpassed the brainwashers of The Manchurian Candidate.
All argued that for the good of the country he loves, #Biden — hoarse, barely audible, and visibly confused a few times during Thursday’s Atlanta presidential debate — must immediately end his candidacy.
Meanwhile, in the actual America that less resembles The #WestWing than the disaster flick #DontLookUp, two comets simultaneously bore down on America in the hours leading up to its 248th — and possibly last — birthday as a democratic republic.
First, there is #TFG — desperate to avoid his sentencing for his 34 felony convictions, firing off #racist insults about “#Black jobs” and “bad #Palestinians,” and carrying around a 900-page blueprint for #American#dictatorship called #Project2025 — streaking into the cosmic void of our troubled republic.
In a flurry of body punches over the last several days, the nation’s highest #court gutted the federal government’s ability to regulate fat-cat #corporate polluters or stock swindlers, but said poor folks who sleep outside because there’s nowhere else to go can be arrested.
Then, with a fierce right hook, it issued a 6-3 partisan #ruling that will help #TFG — who appointed three of them — evade #justice while placing all future #presidents above the #law.
Justice Sonia #Sotomayor, one of the three liberal naysayers, read her blistering minority opinion from the bench Monday morning, arguing that the #court’s finding that a #president performing official acts can be immune from criminal prosecution “effectively creates a #law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” She ended with the words, “with fear for our #democracy, I dissent.”
I wish Justice #Sotomayor had the bandwidth and the energy to work a second shift as #editorial page editor at one of our major newspapers.
At #TIME magazine (yes, it still exists), the cover of its new issue contained just one word, “Panic” — not at the prospect of an #American dictator with the seeming power to have the military assassinate his enemies, but at #Biden’s health.
At the New York Times (yes, it still exists), an #editorial board that considered it pointless, or whatever, to call for Trump to leave the race after those 34 #felony convictions — as well as the civil #rape and financial #fraud verdicts and the two #impeachment s and three other pending #indictment s — made its grand pronouncement that it’s #Biden who must go.
Other papers jumped on the bandwagon, including the swing state #Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which in the 1950s and ‘60s won #Pulitzer s for its courage in taking on #Southern#racist s before deciding instead to appeal to their grandchildren.
And look, I’m not going to argue that #Biden’s health is not an issue. His #debate performance was troubling, but I also think those of us determined not to see Donald Trump become #president again should take a deep breath — even if that’s not the #clickbait headline that many are eager to write.
The power of Monday’s dissents by #Jackson and #Sotomayor form quite the contrast with the speculative flights of fancy about a brokered #convention in #Chicago, which, it’s worth noting, have largely come from white male #boomer types. Many #Black and #brown and #female voices, on the other hand, are urging #Biden to stay as the only realistic hope — warts and all — of beating Trump in #November.
Maybe people who in one way or another know the horror of being treated as a second-class citizen understand the risk of #dictatorship in a way that #white dudes who’ve always been OK do not.
Most #journalists want to be seen as savvy (or not naïve, essentially the same thing) and influential. Many #editorial#writers and #columnists are still hurting from the fact that Trump was elected in 2016 with zero major #print endorsements.
They think calling for Trump to drop out would make them look foolish now that the #Republican Party has devolved into a dangerous #cult. But a demand for #Biden to drop out might actually happen — so that’s savvy, right?
Except maybe the dangerous cult is the more important crisis, especially when it carries a printed guide to #dictatorship and holds six #justices in its back pocket.
To focus on the actual threat we are facing, I wish #America’s top #pundits would spend less time watching reruns of The #WestWing and maybe pick up a copy of The Rise and Fall of the #ThirdReich.
The reality of what’s happening in July 2024 — that an #authoritarian-minded president, with help from a politicized and unethical #SupremeCourt, is on track to lead a nation where all power is being vested in him, his #MAGA movement, and the #corporate#polluters — is THE story, and #Biden’s health is a subplot in that drama.
The current president is walking slowly, but it’s the #American Experiment that’s on a ventilator. #Journalists aren’t doing their job: performing basic triage and focusing on the sickest patient in the room.
Here is the link to Will Bunch's must-read wake-up call to complacent #journalists, DO NEWSPAPER COLUMNISTS KNOW THAT #DEMOCRACY IS CLOSER TO DEATH THAN #BIDEN?