Tuesday's postcard, a Respite in the scablands and addressing journalism's Achilles heel

October 1, 2024

Turning aspens at the Ancient Lakes trailhead above Potholes Coulee, south of Quincy, WA

First, just a friendly notice that the gap between this dispatch and the next will be a few days, so I will beg your patience for that interval. I have friends, already arrived from the east coast (one of whom is a mentor, recently retired from the Congressional Research Service) who’ve asked me to be a guide, of sorts, to some of the signature features of the channeled scablands that I showcased in Beautiful Wounds. The rabbitbrush is still blooming. As of yesterday the dragonflies were still flying, and it’s an invitation I eagerly accepted. Of course, I’ll take cameras and, with any luck, come back with new stories and photographs of an elusive Northern Harrier or Sage Thrasher that I can share. Just when I think I’ve seen it all, out there, something new (at least to me) seems to pop up. Last time (with my son Devin, this summer) it was a burrowing owl posing on a fence post, as if we’d made an appointment.

Shake the Press

It was only a few hours after I posted Sunday’s hopeful piece—How the truth about Trumpism is (finally) finding its shoes—that the pillars of American mainstream journalism filed their rebuttals. I don’t mean to douse my optimism (I had worked hard to persuade myself) because I still think I’m right: that Kamala Harris has already used her prosecutorial skills to expose the lunacy, contradictions and violence of the Trump movement in a way that will transcend next month’s election, regardless of the outcome.

But Monday arrived and with it a muted shrug from the mainstream media that, in my opinion and others, amounted to collective, professional malpractice on a breathtaking scale. Over the weekend Trump had blathered truly hideous things, about migrants, his opponent, and due process of law. And the press coverage was basically a yawn.

The Bullwark’s Tim Miller—a former campaign advisor to Republican candidates—conveys the emotional exasperation/outrage in this short video post that includes excerpts from Trump’s rants in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin on Saturday and Erie, Pennsylvania on Sunday.

The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky makes the salient points in a piece, yesterday, entitled Ooops, They Did It Again: The Mainstream Media Buries Trump’s Outrage.

I noticed that Tomasky’s piece had a loose header entitled “Sanewashing” at the top of it. It’s the short version of what The Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg termed “a bias toward coherence” in a brutally honest newsletter post in June.

“Sanewashing” and “bias toward coherence” are not compliments. They’re acknowledgments that something has gone awry—that the rubric of journalistic ethics and practice that is supposed to promote accuracy and fairness is being successfully exploited by a charismatic figure (a convicted felon who is also an ex-president) who clearly views media accuracy and fairness as an existential threat.

At some point I’ll stop quoting from Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s statement to writer Michael Lewis. But not yet. Here’s the quote: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

For all the MAGA chants of “fake news!” the reality is Bannon’s formula has worked well for Trump. So well that it has put the future of our democracy in doubt.

The term “sanewashing” is too cute by half—it’s the practice of making Trump sound reasonable when he’s not, and sound like he’s channeling genuine populist grievances when he’s inventing or repeating lies. Among his most egregious lies is the racist, make-believe, pet-eating plague he and JD Vance continue to pin against legal, Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.

Journalism doesn’t have to change its standards for accuracy and fairness, but reporters and editors do have to sharpen their standards and attitudes. And they have to understand the moment and what’s at stake. The public interest is not hard to locate, it just takes focus, hard work and courage to find it, and ensure it gets served.

Early Monday I happened to catch video of Trump’s weekend rallies in Prairie du Chien in southeast Wisconsin and Erie, Pennsylvania. Both stops were in swing states considered vital to Trump’s chances of returning to power. Both rallies were disturbingly unhinged, even by Trump standards. Given his felony convictions and other charges pending against him, Trump will likely need a majority in either of these two key swing states to avoid going to prison next year.

Here’s a summation of some of Trump’s incendiary statements at Prairie du Chien (Saturday), about immigrants:

 “These people are animals.”

“I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We’re going to liberate our country.”

“You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You're gonna lose your culture, you're gonna lose your country, you're gonna have crime, the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.”

“They don't commit crimes like us, no, no. They make our criminals look like babies. These are stone cold killers. They'll walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat.”

about his opponent:

“Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Sad. But Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong with Kamala.”

In Erie (Sunday):

“We only need four seats to win back the house. And it takes good people like you to power. (sic) And I told him, if we win and when we win, we're gonna prosecute people that cheat on this election. (crowd cheering) And if we can, we'll go back to the last one too, if we're allowed. But we're gonna prosecute people so at least they know that's gonna happen.”

[On how to deal with shoplifters] “All these stores go out of business, right? They don't pay rent, they did the city does that, but the whole, it's a chain of events, it's so bad. One rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately. (crowd cheering) You know, it'll end immediately.”

(For the record, even Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, says there is no significant election fraud that would have affected the outcome of the 2020 election, which Trump still insists he won. In the last quote, on shoplifting, Trump was clearly suggesting that we should suspend the Constitution for a day so police can physically attack suspected shoplifters and just summarily beat on them, in order to discourage them.)

I didn’t check every media source, but on Monday I visited the Washington Post and New York Times on-line (I have on-line subscriptions to both, as I consider them to be the twin pillars of American print journalism) and found precious little on Trump’s weekend speeches.

Here’s what I saw…

To continue reading, please subscribe to The Daily Rhubarb at the link below—tjc