Sunday, November 08, 2020

We Don't Have To Talk About Whatever Republicans Want Us To Talk About Every Day

No that anyone listens to me anymore, if they ever did, but that's my take on the broad problem with media coverage over the past 20 years. Republicans are the always the protagonists. Perhaps they should be when a Republican is president, but they were the protagonists when B. Barry Bamz was president and Dems controlled Congress. Oh, excuse me, "Republicans" weren't the protagonists, but a mysterious new political party that wasn't actually a political party and had no actual representatives in Congress.

Watched a lot of CNN yesterday, and it seemed like they snapped out of it, but their first impulse was WHAT ABOUT THE REPUBLICANS AND TALK TO US JOHN KASICH AND OVER TO YOU RICK SANTORUM. Eventually they covered the actual story of the day, which was that Joe Biden won and there was much rejoicing throughout the land. For one day, Democrats were the protagonists.

That kind of coverage is jarring, because it's so rare.

I know Tapper broke awhile ago over Covid, but this was pretty good:

TAPPER: He's not a seven-year-old kid who lost an ice skating competition and we all need to understand that feelings have been hurt and, you know, that there's some maturation that we shouldn't expect. He is a 74-year-old president of the United States and he lost re- election. And you know what? That's okay. That happens. It happened to George H.W. Bush, it happened to Jimmy Carter. It's happened to nine other or eight other previous presidents and he's the 11th to not be reelected. His emotional needs, frankly, are irrelevant. And I don't think that we should -- I mean, I think we should note it because it's historical, but I don't think we need to bend over backwards and pretend that the country moving on and MAGA nation moving on depends upon what Joe Biden does. Like Joe Biden is going to do what he can. And if a chunk of the leaders of the Republican Party want to drag the nation down with them, that's up to them.