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CNN’s Dana Bash and the Oldest Profession
You can see it. Dana Bash struggled to ask questions she didn’t want to ask, because she knew that even the easiest question would tax the dim-witted woman Bash and her employer were committed to promoting. You could see the discomfort on her face. There may yet be a spark down there, deep inside, screaming at her betrayal of what she imagined her career would be.
Bash: How do you explain your apparent change of position on [name an issue; she’s changed them all]?
Harris: “My position/feelings/values have not changed,” despite her positions having changed completely on essentially everything.
I thought Dana Bash actually looked pained knowing that she was prostituting her professional reputation, whatever is left of it, in service to such a stunning mediocrity. No follow-ups, no “but you said” responses, nothing that would justify one calling oneself a journalist. No evidence at all that she wasn’t on the DNC payroll.
Did Bash think to herself, I am throwing away the dregs of my integrity for you, and I’m so much better than that? Or did she just smile, and think of CNN?
Keeping a woman of Harris’ resounding incompetence afloat must necessarily drown countless others. In some ways, the worst thing about this fraud of a campaign is that it demands so much from those who sacrifice their integrity in order to throw Harris the softballs that are absolutely essential to her survival — softballs that Harris nonetheless whiffs with embarrassing consistency, whiffs with the lack of self-awareness that only truly stupid people can pull off with confidence.
She is a joke of a candidate, a ludicrous mistake. Trump is a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. Harris is stupid.
She could still win: Our press is that bad. But she will win only if the press drags her across the finish line, its collective hand placed firmly over her mouth, whispering, “Just shut up” every step of the way.
Published in Election 2024
Professional Journalism in action.
Whose answers were thought out and thought provoking?
The only known and demonstrated path to also have a reasonable shot at voter/election integrity. Elections are not worth much otherwise.
Apples and Oranges don’t you think? There’s a big difference between what Carlson does and what CNN does even if there is no pretending.
One must assume then that this also means that she still believes in her heart that it’s just fine for young women to serve as mistresses to married men in order to further their careers.
The one whose answers provoked some tough questions from the interviewer?
Not comparable. Kennedy has been banging the drum for interviews on opposition platforms for the better part of a year and doing 7-12 interviews a day with anyone that might give him a little more visibility. And when Kennedy speaks, he shows clarity and depth of understanding in his own positions and in citing the best construction of his opponents positions. And Kennedy admits in the course of the interview that if the skeletons in his closet could vote, he would win in a landslide.
CNN is coaxing Harris away from her liquor cabinet, trying to dry her out, and coaching her through an interview and even then, there own post-interview analysis was dismissive of the Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States. When the Democratic Party goes anti-speech, they go all in.
Any two things are comparable. Humans wouldn’t be humans if they didn’t make distinctions and generalizations. To do that you need to compare things.
And I would be sitting in my irradiated holocaust hellscape, saying, “See, I told you she was an incompetent DEI hire.”
I keep thinking about who the “woman of color” alternative was. I think it was Val Demmings from Florida. Harris makes me so freaking nervous. Harris is going to be a disaster if she wins.
If she’s some kind of “functional drunk” she might be even worse when not drunk.
Some speculation I’ve seen was Susan Rice. Not having any elected office experience could have been a problem.
It’s over thirty years ago that I heard on KQED radio an interview with a professor of journalism who was concerned about why students were entering the field. His students didn’t want to report and inform. The wanted to advocate for their own beliefs. The professor coined the phrase “advocacy journalism” to describe what he thought of as a new trend. As you may have guessed, I’m old enough to remember when there was a reporting section and an opinion/editorial section. You had no doubt which section you were reading. I don’t think that distinction exists anymore.
That was Tim Walz. “Big Mike” is Michelle Obama.
This is the first time I have seen Ms Harris accused of being a drunk. Do you have any citations, or is this innuendo?
Whores are way more honest and respectable.
I hate this is what it has come too.
From the short-lived great show “Action!” starring Jay Mohr as movie producer Peter Dragon.
The hooker that Peter has been spending time with, and offered a job at his production company, arrives at the office, and his assistant is flummoxed that he gave the job to his “whore.”
Peter: “She’s my prostitute. YOU’RE my whore.”
Based entirely on my extensive experience with alcoholics and her conduct on camera over the last few weeks. Take it for what it’s worth.
And you’re far from alone in that evaluation.
In a Rogan/Malice video I posted elsewhere, both are speculating that she is medicated, and offer that as an explanation for some of her more disjoint statements. I suspect that she is just lazy, undisciplined, and not all that bright.
For quite a few years I heard people ask on Twitter and elsewhere if she is drunk after listening to her speak. I’ve wondered it myself but haven’t seen anything attributed to a source.
There are many ways to self-medicate, alcohol is one of the easiest and most common. It’s also probably the easiest to justify as “social drinking” and what-not.
I hope I’m wrong.
I don’t know if being wrong would make the situation better.
The question of Harris’ stand on fracking is typical of her evasiveness and dishonesty.
In 2019 she was very clear that she would ban fracking.
In a 2020 debate she assured us that Biden would not ban fracking.
When Dana Bash (D-CNN) asked Harris if she would ban fracking, Harris said she would not, and cited her 2020 comments as clear evidence that she has long been opposed to banning fracking.
But when Bash asked her why her position had changed, and helpfully offered Harris a few possible answers, Harris said: “… from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking. What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” (She may have cited the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act in her answer, but I’m unwilling to go back and listen.)
So here’s the thing. In 2020, there was nothing that Harris could have seen that would justify her shift in position from 2019. She and Biden hadn’t yet started messing up the economy, hadn’t yet pushed their huge crony-funding Inflation Reduction Act spendapalooza — hadn’t even been in office, since it was still during the campaign.
Harris lied about her purported reversal in 2020, and she lied about the reason for it.
There’s no reason to believe that she will not ban fracking, no reason to believe that she will not stand by the internal combustion car ban she’s championed, no reason to believe that she is in favor of fossil fuels at all.
Dana Bash, of course, remained discreetly silent — as one does in her business once she has accepted the money.
With respect, I think this is a false memory. There is no period of the history of newspapers where the ‘reporting’ has not been in service of a narrative, whether that of the proprietor or the ‘public interest’. No matter what journalism ‘professors’ tell themselves.
Maybe, but I think it is different when there is not even a pretense of objectivity in reporting. It was around the time the professor was getting worried that “Pravda West”, AKA the San Jose Mercury News announced that they were bringing in a man and woman to provide a Latino perspective on the news. What is that other than an admission that impartial reporting is no longer a goal?
I wonder.
A substantial majority of reporters today push a shared narrative, which happens to be left.
I can easily believe that reporters have always had their biases, and that it colored much of their reporting. (I’m not convinced that it was as pronounced as it is today. But it might’ve been.)
I am skeptical that the news industry as a whole was as ideologically monolithic as it is today.
I read about a television reporter dying a while back. He had been retired for decades. In the article, the author said something like, “I watched him read the news for almost twenty years and I had no idea what his politics were.” High praise, I think. Could that be said about anyone today?