by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’ve all but given up talking to my Traditionalist relatives about politics. They are really, really upset about the evils of the “media narrative” and anything that doesn’t fit THEIR media narrative is dismissed as “bogus.” One thing that they often raise is what they feel is the lack of objectivity on the part of the mainstream media.
This really upsets them a whole lot.
And I honestly don’t understand why they’re so upset or what, specifically, they want to change. If you give a lie (MAGA) equal value to reality (everything else) then you’re pretty much lying to the audience. Of course, they like the lie and they get really angry when anyone calls a spade a spade and a lie a lie.
Which brings us to The New York Times. I love The New York Times and all my occasional interactions with them have been pretty cool — other than Maggie Haberman who was really mean to me on Twitter. Anyway, the Times on an institutional level, despite being liberal leaning, always tries to square the circle by going out of its way to give some validity to the MAGA lie.
Given that our democracy is in something of a long term, structural crisis, such behavior does not help anyone — especially not the Old Gray Lady. Conservatives already want to burn the paper to the ground and they totally ignore the fact the paper struggles with being objective, to the point of doing a disservice to its readers.
This is yet another example of how totally fucked the United States is on a macro basis. We’re careening towards a very, very dark future of either autocracy or civil war.
