COVID-19 caught lots of people in America by surprise. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise for cynical political gain.
This morning, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough claimed that, unlike the Trump administration, “Everybody saw this coming in early January.”
If Scarborough knew that a deadly, once-in-a-century pandemic was about to descend on the nation in early January — I assume he considers himself part of “everyone” — why on God’s earth didn’t he warn his susceptible viewers that they should begin social distancing? Why didn’t his producers book a single expert who could beseech his viewers to start wearing masks, to shutter their non-essential businesses, and to avoid church and sporting events? Why didn’t he mention coronavirus at all? Even in late January, nearly a full month after “everyone knew,” Scarborough’s show was dominated by the Donald Trump impeachment trial.
As far as I can tell, in the entire month of January, Morning Joe didn’t reference the coronavirus once to his 2.6 million followers on Twitter. Imagine the thousands of lives Scarborough could have saved if he had only shared his insight.
Does “everyone” include the World Health Organization, which claimed in a January 14 tweet (reflecting earlier findings) that preliminary investigations into Chinese authorities found “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus”?
Does “everyone” include the Chinese government — whose propaganda Scarborough shares as reliable data? Because it was China’s downplaying and lying about coronavirus that ensured its spread around the world. The blood is on their hands, not on the hands of your least favorite American politicians.
In early March, when reporters were fixated on a vacuous debate over the political correctness of affixing “China” to the virus’s name, researchers at the University of Southampton released a study indicating that 95 percent of COVD-19 cases would have been prevented around the world if the Communist regime had acted three weeks earlier. If China had intervened just one week earlier, there would have been an 66 percent mitigation, while two weeks would have led to 86 percent fewer cases.
Scarborough, like most of us, was busy talking about the impeachment trial in early January. And that’s exactly the topic we should have been focusing on. We had no business expecting our elected officials or our media outlets to obsess over every outbreak in China. No doubt I’m older than many of you, but I can recall warnings about perhaps a dozen potentially dangerous epidemic breakouts around the world, and none of them ever materialized in a legitimately scary way for us. It’s human nature to assume similar outcomes. And if China had acted like a first-world nation, coronavirus would have been contained.
Even if Scarborough had warned us, what would the public have done differently in early January, before a single confirmed case in the United States? When Trump “did something” in late January and restricted travel to China, I don’t recall a single mainstream pundit applauding him for taking the virus seriously. (In fact, the opposite happened.)
And even if we had “listened to the scientists,” the United States wouldn’t have been able to avert the coronavirus. Expert predictions were all over the place, and very few researchers or scientists came close to calling the spread correctly. But now we’re going to act as if politicians were negligent for failing to try to lock down the entire economy in early January? In mid March, you could hardly get people off beach in Florida, but you think the American public was going to consent to deep-freeze the economy and shut down the NFL in January? To say such things is just armchair quarterbacking of the most cynical kind.
Major media outlets, incidentally, ran plenty of their own stories in January and February tempering fears over coronavirus. And that’s okay, too. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it’s impossible to be on a perpetual war footing, organizing and planning for every known emergency and eventuality at all times. Of course there is great room for improvement. Of course we should have more flexibility to produce ventilators or other emergency equipment. But it’s unrealistic for the public to expect there is any policy proposal or political leader that can immunize us from disasters such as this one.
Why is a grandstanding journalist seen as more virtuous than a self-sacrificing business owner?
MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, a self-made former crack addict, is going to transform 75 percent of his manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 cotton face masks per day by the end of the week, ramping up production to 50,000 a day in a month. That sounds like a patriotic act to me, especially given that Lindell is undertaking the effort without being forced to do so by a federal agency. I hope the guy becomes a billionaire after this is all over.
NBC? Not so much. The headline on its “analysis” of Lindell’s remarks was “Trump fluffs MyPillow in Rose Garden.” This matched the basic tone taken by a large faction within the political press. Why? Presumably because, at the end of his remarks, Lindell claimed that the Lord Almighty had helped elect Donald Trump president to save our once-beleaguered nation from its alleged depravations. Listen, if there is a God, I hope He refrains from tipping the scales of presidential contests. But it’s not surprising to hear an evangelical Christian talking about the world this way — unless, that is, you’ve never met one.
Of course, anyone who shows anything less than hostility toward the president is immediately cast as a reactionary, and their actions dismissed as questionable and self-serving. Many of the CEOs who have stood with Trump at his press conferences — this week, or in weeks prior — hold varying religious and partisan beliefs. The press didn’t have similar qualms about the CEOs of CVS or Walgreens, because they kept their views to themselves.
Lindell is a villain for speaking his truth, as the kids say. Yet the real heroes of our age — White House political correspondents — are applauded for speaking theirs. Yesterday, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, one of the many pundits masquerading as a dispassionate journalist, was chided by Trump during his presser. Immediately, journalists, who are now perhaps the most tribalistic group in American political life, rallied around her with fawning tributes to her bravery and victimhood (because Trump only lashes out at black women, apparently). #WeLoveYamiche is the hashtag, if you’re interested.
Philip Rucker of the Washington Postnoted that Alcindor “routinely gets under his skin with probing questions,” as if rattling our irascible president was a noteworthy accomplishment, or an act of heroism, or, in and of itself, a reliable indication that a reporter is doing a good job.
The Post’s media critic, Erik Wemple, meanwhile, was forced to reimagine what Alcindor’s question might have sounded like had it been more coherent. And, simply because Trump had been rude to her, he claimed that Alcindor has now become “the symbol of American journalism.”
Yes, that’s the problem.
It’s Alcindor’s prerogative to try and bait the president, as she has done on numerous occasions over the past weeks, and it’s PBS’s prerogative to send her to ask questions that do absolutely nothing to help the public gain a better understanding of the government’s efforts to fight the coronavirus. But we should not forget that most of her narcissistic defenders are really talking about themselves. Some journalists are indeed on the front lines of “war zones, refugee crises, genocides,” as CNN’s S. E. Cupp put it recently. But Alcindor, whose Twitter feed is littered with all kinds of absurdity, is not. She risks absolutely nothing by asking the president questions. Like Jim Acosta, who titled his book, Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America, she is stealing valor.
The overall breadth and intensity of the anti-Trump press demonstrates there are few inhibitions and zero limitations on free press (though many in the media do advocate to limit your free speech). No one has been stopped from engaging, investigating, writing, or sharing their antagonism toward Trump. Nor should they.
MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell waits to be introduced by President Donald Trump to address the daily coronavirus response briefing at the White House, March 30, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)Why is a grandstanding journalist seen as more virtuous than a self-sacrificing business owner?
MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell, a self-made former crack addict, is going to transform 75 percent of his manufacturing capacity to make 10,000 cotton face masks per day by the end of the week, ramping up production to 50,000 a day in a month. That sounds like a patriotic act to me, especially given that Lindell is undertaking the effort without being forced to do so by a federal agency. I hope the guy becomes a billionaire after this is all over.
NBC? Not so much. The headline on its “analysis” of Lindell’s remarks was “Trump fluffs MyPillow in Rose Garden.” This matched the basic tone taken by a large faction within the political press. Why? Presumably because, at the end of his remarks, Lindell claimed that the Lord Almighty had helped elect Donald Trump president to save our once-beleaguered nation from its alleged depravations. Listen, if there is a God, I hope He refrains from tipping the scales of presidential contests. But it’s not surprising to hear an evangelical Christian talking about the world this way — unless, that is, you’ve never met one.
Of course, anyone who shows anything less than hostility toward the president is immediately cast as a reactionary, and their actions dismissed as questionable and self-serving. Many of the CEOs who have stood with Trump at his press conferences — this week, or in weeks prior — hold varying religious and partisan beliefs. The press didn’t have similar qualms about the CEOs of CVS or Walgreens, because they kept their views to themselves.
Lindell is a villain for speaking his truth, as the kids say. Yet the real heroes of our age — White House political correspondents — are applauded for speaking theirs. Yesterday, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor, one of the many pundits masquerading as a dispassionate journalist, was chided by Trump during his presser. Immediately, journalists, who are now perhaps the most tribalistic group in American political life, rallied around her with fawning tributes to her bravery and victimhood (because Trump only lashes out at black women, apparently). #WeLoveYamiche is the hashtag, if you’re interested.
Philip Rucker of the Washington Postnoted that Alcindor “routinely gets under his skin with probing questions,” as if rattling our irascible president was a noteworthy accomplishment, or an act of heroism, or, in and of itself, a reliable indication that a reporter is doing a good job.
The Post’s media critic, Erik Wemple, meanwhile, was forced to reimagine what Alcindor’s question might have sounded like had it been more coherent. And, simply because Trump had been rude to her, he claimed that Alcindor has now become “the symbol of American journalism.”
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Yes, that’s the problem.
It’s Alcindor’s prerogative to try and bait the president, as she has done on numerous occasions over the past weeks, and it’s PBS’s prerogative to send her to ask questions that do absolutely nothing to help the public gain a better understanding of the government’s efforts to fight the coronavirus. But we should not forget that most of her narcissistic defenders are really talking about themselves. Some journalists are indeed on the front lines of “war zones, refugee crises, genocides,” as CNN’s S. E. Cupp put it recently. But Alcindor, whose Twitter feed is littered with all kinds of absurdity, is not. She risks absolutely nothing by asking the president questions. Like Jim Acosta, who titled his book, Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America, she is stealing valor.
The overall breadth and intensity of the anti-Trump press demonstrates there are few inhibitions and zero limitations on free press (though many in the media do advocate to limit your free speech). No one has been stopped from engaging, investigating, writing, or sharing their antagonism toward Trump. Nor should they.
Some lucky Americans, such as Alcindor, are afforded the benefit of challenging the president personally. That’s fine. I wish the press had exhibited the same level of reflexive antagonism toward every president. They don’t. But Lindell’s political and religious views do not diminish his patriotic act, just as Alcindor’s ability to make the president mad does not transform her into a hero. It doesn’t even make her good at her job.
Now, perhaps our media culture has spent so much time politicizing the world that they’ve confused patriotism with victimhood. Or maybe they’re so obsessed with fighting the president that they can’t recognize that his fans might be capable of a good deed. But if where you stand on Trump is your guiding definition of patriotism and heroism, your moral compass might be broken.
