Why do otherwise smart people waste so much of their talent on obvious lies? Worse, why do they want to waste our time with them? Is this some parlor game I missed? I have things to see, places to do, noses to pick, that kind of thing. Why are they still wasting our time?
It should matter if someone lies to you. And we already know Republicans are lying to us. Do I have to finish the sentence “Today, Kellyanne Conway said that…”? “Sarah Huckabee-Sanders insisted that…”? But there they are anyway, as if they matter. So many people work very, very hard to convince us we need to spend even more of our limited time on what they know are obvious lies.
All right, yes. This is Trump’s Republicans. I have to be more specific about which lies. There are so many possibilities. Is this where I rail about the Lawless Presidency conspiring to withhold Trump’s tax returns by illegally communicating with the IRS (a felony) to coordinate the crime (a felony) of obstructing (felony) obligatory disclosures (another few felonies, but who’s counting?). And using federal lawyers for personal services, just for icing on the cake?
Wait, I’m distracted again. No, as juicy as that story seems, I’m more concerned about how the media cycle deals with that kind of hogwash. That side is less lurid but much more important in the long run.
Here’s an example. The Republican attack machine is branching out from 24/7 attacks against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Good to keep busy, I suppose. Now they’re attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar. She’s scary! She’s a girl (gasp)! She’s pretty (double-gasp)! She’s a Muslim, and we know they’re all Terrorists! (Or maybe, “She’s brown, and they’re all rapists!”; I get their racist idiocies confused.) She said the American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) was powerful! (She’s an anti-Semite!) And Omar didn’t sufficiently condemn the 9/11 attackers! (All that other stuff, twice over!)
Did Omar really say that? No. It might almost sound like that, but only if you listen to the two-second video clip that Fox News cut out of its real context. (And which, unsurprisingly, Trump re-tweeted, jacked up and repeated against pictures of the World Trade Center attacks.)
But, of course, that’s not what happens.
With each new attack, the professional, worldly, experienced media sources carefully spool out cumulative column-miles of painfully detailed analysis. They suck down every stupid shrieking bleat from the attack machine, no matter how unlikely. They ignore the embedded dog whistles as easily as they forget every prior hypocritical stunt by the people making these the new and unlikely claims. Instead, the media turns their attention to the abused subject (Rep. Omar in this case, but it’s a common protocol). Our supposedly neutral media dissects everything that person ever said on the topic, ever. Our wisest nodding heads solemnly repeat each attack and assign blame. All they need is the slightest excuse. Omar talked about PAC money. She’s attacking world Jews!!
Dude, really? Does that seem… I don’t know, rational? This is an unlikely claim from a group of white nationalists who parade their prejudice against every Muslim in the world. Steve Miller said it so it must be true? And yet the media acts as if everything these openly racist Republicans have said in the past wasn’t grounded in lies. You have to work hard to avoid seeing it. The Republican party has been acting in bad faith for a really long time.
Is this just gullible media? Here’s a test: if a Democrat accuses a Republican of racism because they were recorded saying hugely racist things to adoring crowds, how does the media cover that story? Now, if a Republican accuses a Democrat of telling a story in private that might, if you squint hard, be in the same area code as a generic racial trope, how do they react? Compare and contrast.
Republicans lie because it works every time. With each new wave of nonsense, the collective gaze turns away from important issues to the latest outrage they’ve manufactured. We’ve accused Trump of sucking the oxygen out of the room, but he’s following the Republican party line. He just does it better than they do.
Republicans issue another breathlessly hypocritical accusation. Big media falls for it. After all the damage is done, they analyze their actions, spread the blame as widely as possible, and insist they have to do better next time. And repeat the pattern exactly the next time.
It’s not just that they’re wasting our time and their media space. Each attack works. They damage their targets. Sometimes it’s just a little, sometimes it’s bad, but it always works. And for the Republicans who manufactured and distributed the lie, the consequences are… nothing. The attack against Rep. Omar, for example, was an obvious lie. The media actually covered that and called it a lie, albeit after they’d blared out the Republican’s initial accusations.
Who told us the lie? Anyone remember? Want to guess the odds they’ll be censured in any way?
It doesn’t matter. The media will breathlessly report the next unhinged accusation just as faithlessly. That’s the circus. And all the commentariat will be shocked – shocked, I say! – when Republicans repeat the same bad behavior.
When the Media make the same mistake each time, over and over, I have to question whether it’s still an ‘accident.’ And the real crime is that they’re wasting our time on this nonsense. It’s a distraction. While we’re watching that, big corporations get less oversight, monopolies crush the or absorb their competitors, unions are broken, working people have to accept less, poor people get shafted, rich people get away scot-free, and our Republican party cripples any democratic institution they can’t gut completely.
