..and neck problems? What the hell is that thing?

I have tried to find the full video of Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman’s “John Fetterwoman” speech that is supposed to show how bad his speaking problems are post-stroke, but so far I’ve failed. I was going to post one of the  edited videos that highlighted his problems, but decided that I couldn’t trust any of them.

Now the mainstream media, and notably NBC News, is (predictably) trying to rescue Fetterman and their clients, the Democratic Party. NBC wrote, “The videos include slight edits, such as cutting out the sound of the audience to make it appear as if he had abruptly stopped speaking (some of the stops occurred when he was pausing during moments of applause and crowd reaction, according to unedited videos seen by NBC News). Other edits cut Fetterman off mid-sentence, to create the perception that what he was saying was nonsensical…. The videos could run afoul of Twitter’s rules against political misinformation, even though they are still available…. Experts have warned that such lightly edited videos, also sometimes called ‘shallow fakes,’ can be particularly effective pieces of misinformation.”

Fair enough….but why isn’t NBC making the whole video available? (And if Fetterman can sing “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General,” why won’t he debate Dr. Oz before voting starts?) Moreover, that network especially is ethically estopped from crying foul over edited videos. NBC deceptively edited video of GM trucks blowing up. It deceptively edited the audio of George Zimmerman 911 call to make him sound like a racist. None of the news networks have metaphorically clean hands on this topic, but NBC has the dirtiest hands of all. I wouldn’t put it past them to deceptively edit video to show that video of Fetterman’s speech was deceptively edited.

Regarding Fetterman, it doesn’t matter whether his  stroke has left him significantly impaired and disabled, moderately impaired and disabled, or just a little impaired and disabled. If he’s not completely in top intellectual and cognitive form, then it is unethical for him to be running for the Senate, unethical for the Democratic Party to be putting him forward as a candidate, and unethical for anyone to vote for 1) a cognitively disabled candidate 2) one so irresponsible that he would run for office in that state, and 3) any party that would allow him to do so.

I’m not picking on Fetterman. The modern era Presidents who were elected while hiding serious health problems—FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, Biden—as well as Woodrow Wilson, who remained in office when he had aftereffects of a stroke that make Fetterman seem silver-tongued by comparison, were all irresponsible, dishonest and unethical.

I’ll close with Ann Althouse’s comments on the matter, more to show her state of mind than for anything else. She’s a good liberal, but she has obviously become increasingly disgusted with the flagrant bias of the news media toward Democrats and their politicians. She writes in part of NBC’s complaint [emphasis mine]:

We have to be able to edit video, but where is the line between editing and deception? NBC tells us it has seen the edited and unedited video, but it doesn’t show any of it to us. I can’t take NBC’s word for it, because I must assume that NBC wants the Democratic Party to control the Senate and will run interference for Fetterman.

 

Surely, we’re not required to show the full context of everything. Highlighting the worst lines and the stupidest speech of one’s opponents is a time-honored political tradition — and comedy device. Will Twitter empower the already-powerful to take down whatever is edited to make them look bad? That’s a terrible idea, particularly since there’s no chance Twitter will perform its role with viewpoint neutrality. 

 

As for TikTok, I’m guessing what found its way there and gained viewers was funny. It’s unseemly to laugh at a politician if he has brain damage, but it seems unfair to claim to be capable of holding office and, at the same time, to forbid us to laugh because he might lack capacity. If it’s wrong to judge him, he shouldn’t be running for a position of trust.

If Joe Biden really cared about threats to democracy, he would give a speech about how untrustworthy those purporting to practice journalism have become, and explain why democracy can’t function without trustworthy and objective communicators of current events. He doesn’t view this as a problem, though, because those untrustworthy journalists are work hard to making sure that “democracy” doesn’t result in his party losing power….which requires undermining democracy.

I know Ann is smarter than the average bear, but surely this reality is sinking into the brains of non-stroke victims who aren’t law professors. Surely.