Here’s another one: I have yet to ban a commenter for doing no more than saying the mainstream media isn’t flamingly, ostentatiously, democratically and destructively biased in favor of progressives and Democrats, but the day is coming, and it’s coming fast. Ridiculous smoking guns like this one, from the New York Times, will seal the deal. The Times’ apparent standard, based on the story: If Harris says something happened with no evidence to back it up, it’s true. If Donald Trump questions the claim, he’s lying.
Got it. The sickening display of bias reminds me of the line circulating on Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit lately: “No matter how much you hate the mainstream media, it’s not enough.”
Back in August, Ethics Alarms noted that it was becoming increasingly likely that Kamala Harris’s oft-repeated claim that she worked at McDonald’s like the typical middle-class kid she claims to have been was, like so many other Harris claims, a load of hooey. I wrote in part,
Since taking over the top of the 2024 ticket from poor Joe, Harris has again been evoking the fast food job to portray what the Washington Post called “her humble background.” (Harris, the daughter of an eminent cancer researcher and a tenured Stanford economist, does not come from a humble background.) Harris’s campaign said this month that she used her McDonald’s job to pay for college. That was obviously hooey, so according to an August 14 note in Politico, the new narrative is that she worked at McDonald’s “to earn a bit more spending money”…The next version I foresee : Kamala worked to earn money so she could contribute to a charity that feeds starving children in Appalachia…The fact is that the Harris Campaign can’t or won’t say where the McDonald’s she worked at was or provide any further details about the claim at all. Why would that be? … Never mind: the mainstream media takes Harris at her word (but Donald Trump lies all the time—did you know that?). Where are those factchecks? (To be fair, Snopes did one.) TheNew York Times reported this week that Harris “return[ed] to the Bay Area for a summer during college when she worked at a McDonald’s in Alameda, a city next to Oakland.” No evidence or attribution is provided….Meanwhile, Harris’s fast food job was unmentioned in both of her memoirs, published in July 2010 and January 2019, even the most recent one that discussed the “many jobs” she held in college. Nor do the two biographies written about Harris mention Mickey D’s …The failure of her campaign, however, or Harris herself, to provide any verification at all, combined with her already spectacularly devious manipulation of her positions and beliefs since becoming the Democrat standard-bearer, makes this episode just one more reason to distrust Harris, and to violently roll one’s eyes when the Democrats fulminate about Trump’s “lies.”
Now, as the Axis circles the wagons and throws all honesty, decency, fairness and ethics to the winds in a desperate effort to salvage the most unethical Presidential campaign since 1840 (at least), the New York Times is stooping to defending this likely Harris lie. Get a load of this:
Birtherism, meet burgerism.
Vice President Kamala Harris has recalled her stint at a Bay Area McDonald’s 41 years ago in introducing herself to voters — a biographical detail relatable to millions of Americans who have toiled in fast-food restaurants.
But former President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly accused her of inventing it. Lacking a shred of proof, he has charged that she never actually worked under the golden arches — recalling his earlier false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
Mr. Trump’s latest allegation also appears to be false.
Whether a presidential candidate actually flipped burgers as a college student is a far less serious allegation, of course. But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.
It exploits the fact that her life story is not as well known or as well documented at this late stage of the campaign as those of most presidential nominees have been. And it gives voters who may already harbor doubts about her another invitation to dismiss her and doubt what she says.
Unbelievable! The “shred of proof” that Harris never worked under the Golden Arches is that she had presented no proof whatsoever that she did! It is famously difficult to prove negative, and the Times, which is supposed to check facts before they are deemed ‘fit to print,” continues to take Harris at her word—you know, like her word that Joe Biden was solving Rubik’s Cube blindfolded and singing the Major General’s song in Greek right up to the moment that he revealed himself as a babbling idiot in his debate with Trump; like her word that she was never assigned the job of fixing the mess at the border; like her word that she never advocated de-funding the police.
The reason to doubt Harris is that she has constantly tried to deny and hide the fact of her career and political positions.
The Times’ justification for saying that Trump’s accusation that Harris never worked at McDonald’s is false? The Times found an old, close freind who says she did. Oh. Well that settles it, then! You know, if an old freind of mine thought that backing up my claim that I used to run a 4 minute mile would save America from Hitler, I’m pretty sure he would swear as much under oath.
Then the Times really and truly compares doubting Harris’s summer job claim to Trump’s claims more than a decade ago that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. Oh, I get it: both are proof that he’s a racist. Meanwhile, this part of the Times’ humiliating debasement of its professional duties as an objective news source was genuinely funny:
Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held, according to a copy of her résumé from 1987 when she applied for a summer position at the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Her other work experience listed on that document includes an internship with former Senator Alan Cranston of California, a student assistant position in the public affairs office at the Federal Trade Commission and a summer clerkship at a San Francisco law firm. The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s…
Waitwaitwait! The Times references her “stint at McDonald’s” as “one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held, according to a copy of her résumé” then admits that the job isn’t on that résumé!
Then the Times quotes with approval a spokesman for the Harris campaign, who said, “When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie. He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”
This is what the Axis calls a Trump “lie”: Harris makes a claim that she can provide no evidence to support whatsoever, and Trump is “lying” to question her account.
These, and I include the staff and editors of the Times in this assessment, are corrupt, ruthless, unscrupulous people who want to confuse and mislead the American public so they cannot make an intelligent, informed choice on election day.
Ethics Alarms 
I worked at McDonalds in 1974 thru fall of 1975. I worked at two different McDonalds, one on East 3rd Street in Bloomington IN and the second one on Lincoln Ave in Evansville, IN. I remember loads of details about my time at both McDonalds. They n my opinion there is no logical reason why Harris hasn’t released the details of her McDonalds employment unless she may have been fired which is really hard at McDonalds.
Lots of people were fired at the two McDonald’s restaurants where I worked. One was a franchise, however. As a trainer, I remember being shocked at only being able to successfully train about 50% of the hires. Only about half the people could learn how to make hamburgers, quarter pounders, and run the vats in 3 days of training. About half of those hired were fired or quit within 6 months.
Most people were fired for not showing up. That was a continual problem at the first McDonald’s, but not as bad at the second. However, I did work open-close the day before Christmas once because all the openers and 6 AM people showed up and everyone else called in ‘sick’ for the entire day. I started at 4:45 AM that day and left about 9 PM (we closed early on Christmas eve). It was cold, snowing, and had a ton of last-minute holiday traffic coming in off the interstate. Good times.
Other reasons for being fired: stealing waste food before counting it, smoking pot in the drive-through freezer, and yelling a stream of expletives at the store manager (there is no ‘truth’ exception to that). We had 2 employees who were sentenced to work there by the court; if they quit or were fired before they paid off the restitution to their victims, they went directly to jail.
I worked at both a company store and a franchise. The franchise in Evansville, IN had many, many more problems than the company store. The biggest problem was a sincere lack of knowledge. One example is, when I was on my way to work one day (I walked a few blocks) I could smell them cooking burgers that were way past the expiration date on the box and badly freezer burnt, when I walked into the kitchen I grabbed the box of meat and threw it in the trash and told them to empty the prepared burgers on the front line. The ignorant manager (very new to McDonalds) threatened to fire me until I very verbally threatened to call the health department on the spot.
Interesting note; I worked at the very first drive in McDonalds in Evansville, IN. Some lady pressed the accelerator instead of the brake in the parking lot and physically drove her car straight through the wall and into the kitchen area of the store. Pushed the fryers about ten feet into the grill area. What a freaking mess!
I was working when they changed the waste food rules sometime in ’75. They thought the front line was intentionally ordering extra food so there would always be extra food left over. If there were apple or cherry pies left over that was a huge score for me. I lived on McDonald’s food almost exclusively for nearly a year until I moved back in with my Dad.
Somebody who worked at my store on W. 10th St in Indianapolis hit the accelerator instead of the brake and ran right into the glass window past the front doors.
It’s terribly difficult to get fired from McDonald’s, I do agree. We even took back employees who’d lost their jobs when they went to jail. Soon as they got out…
By the way, did you see that Trump “worked” at a McDonalds recently in Pennsylvania and of course the filmed it for his campaign.
Thanks for bringing THAT UP, Steve; hadn’t heard it.
Say what you want about Trump, but that guy can FLAT OUT troll!
PWS
In my opinion, it was a “genius” tactical campaign move to force a new focus on an issue that Harris has intentionally used to promote her rebranding as some kind of regular person without a shred of evidence to support her claims. Either she steps up and proves her McDonald’s claims or she’ll be tarred as a bald-faced lying Chameleon. The Trump better be ready for an 11th hour type of trolling response if she proves she worked at McDonalds or it was all for naught.
I worked my ass off at McDonalds for minimum wage to help pay rent when I was in High School (yes I was paying rent while in High School) that’s where “I” came from. By the way, I worked at one of the only McDonalds in the USA when they started serving breakfast and I was nominated for the All American Grill Team after the IU basketball game where the IU Basketball team held the opposing team to under 49 points and in the Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana and the local McDonalds had vowed to give away a burger and fries to any ticket holder to the game. We were literally over run!!!
https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/indiana/2018/01/11/time-bob-knight-helped-indiana-basketball-fans-win-free-mcdonalds-43-years-ago/1025175001/
We continuously cooked burgers and fries for many, many HOURS after the game to meet the need, the Assembly Hall holds over 17,000 people and it was damn near full. There were literally chants from the stands from both sides that were something like “burgers and fries under 49” in the final quarter of the game. It was absolute chaos for the two McDonalds in Bloomington, IN. We broke absolutely every record that McDonalds ever had at any McDonald’s in the world for volume of burgers and fries “sold” during those hours. You really can’t imagine the complete chaos in the kitchen in those two McDonalds (my brother-in-law worked at the other McDonalds in Bloomington at that same time) especially when some lunatic ordered a quarter pounder and all the grills had all been switched to cook the smaller burger patties.
Yes, I know where I came from and I support it with facts, Harris needs to step up and support her narrative.
Trump trolling to antagonize his opposition is the observed pattern of what he does. Is the Julie Principle applicable even though it’s a campaign season, yes I think so.
By the way; the video I saw of Trump working at McDonald’s made him look like a fish out of water. I give him credit for stepping up and making the effort even if it was a pure political move, which it was.
Yeah, well imagine what Abe Lincoln would look like doing that.
Or George Washington…
Washington would never do that. Lincoln….? Well, he might have been more amenable, but I don’t see him doing it either.
Now the press is claiming that Trump working at McDonald’s was STAGED!! STAGED I SAY! IT WASN’T REAL! before they went back to fact-checking the Babylon Bee.
The Bee is still on the job:
https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-forced-to-cancel-campaign-rallies-for-next-two-weeks-as-time-off-request-denied-by-mcdonalds-manager
Our local paper which is now owned and published be USA Today had an above the fold headline GOP Prepares for Election Challrnges. No mention of Jamie Raskin’s expressed statement that he will be working with Democrats to disqualify Trump under the 14th amendment should he win . If I recall correctly John Eastman was prosecuted for conspiracy to overturn an election for giving Trump legal advice as his attorney.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/10/20/pildes-on-the-elections-guardrails/?comments=true#comment-10766674
I can understand one of the reasons why 2020 election truthers believe as they do.
They have been told that the 2016 election was stolen by a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Facebook ads bought by the Russians®™ acting in concert and participation with Donald J. Trump.
The federal law enforcement and intelligence establishments gave the illusion of credibility to 2016 election trutherism.
Both the Clinton campaign and Kevin Clinesmith admitted to committing crimes to further 2016 election trutherism.
In 2018, two-thirds of Democratic voters felt that the Russians®™ actually changed the vote totals.
Think about it.
If this side was willing to violate campaign finance laws and laws against forgery on a delegitimization campaign against Trump, what wouldn’t they do to win the 2020 election?
this left me dumbfounded:
But Mr. Trump’s seeding of doubts about Ms. Harris’s story, while insidious and outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics, advances his goal of portraying Ms. Harris as a fraud.
“outside the lines of traditional fair play in politics”?
portraying Trump as a fraud has been the modus operandi of the left (and the press) for almost a decade.
-Jut
In online discussions, the phrase “Russian bot” or “Putin stooge” often comes up.
Guess why?
Here is someone who claims it was fake.
https://www.threads.net/@ohjesse/post/DBXae1BSrbS
Did anyone but a die-hard leftist believe that Trump applied at McDonald’s and now is working there? Of COURSE it was staged! That was the point!
Bite me!
That was my first thought when I read Jack’s statement (promise? warning?threat?)
But the part in above statement regarding Jack’s judgement about the mainstream media is rather broad and at some places even vague. (note 1) And therefore very hard to prove or disprove
So, I decided to set myself a smaller task. Can I find an example in this blogpost where Jack writes negative about mainstream media while not warranted by the facts. An example that even might suggestithat Jack is a little bit biased against the mainstream media.
I think I have found such an example. Bear wih me.
The example I want to discuss is the one where Jack discusses the text in the Times regarding Ms. Harris having worked at McDonalds or not.
He uses a quote that begins with
and ends with
Based on his analysis of this quote Jack concludes that
Waitwaitwait!
Did Jack just write that this part of the Times’ humiliating debasement of its professional duties as an objective news source was genuinely funny.
Can he proof that? Is he lying? Or is it just sloppy language; a Trumpian hyperbole to troll his readers?
Just kidding. I think we all can agree that the essence of his analysis is not that this part of the Times article is genuinly funny but rather that the quote is a proof of the Times’ humiliating debasement of its professional duties as an objective news source.
Quite a claim. Let’s fact check this.
Jack’s argumentation is as follows.
Bias makes you stupid. And the Times is stupid to try to fool her readers by this trick to use a résumé that does not mention her time at McDonald’s as proof that she worked at McDonald’s.
There are two options here. This ‘trick’ could be an error or a willfully obfuscation of the Truth.
And it is certainly possible to suspect that Jack believes that both options are true.
So far, so good.
Here is my counter claim.
Let me explain.
Jack focuses on the claim that Harris worked at McDonalds. And he is absolutely correct as he concludes that one can’t prove Harris her claim with a résumé that doesn’t contain any reference to working at McDonalds.
However, the above quoted sentence claims that “Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held“. (note 2)
The claim made here is: Harris has held few blue-collar jobs.
And the proof for this claim: Look at Harris’ résumé from 1987 when she applied for a summer position at the Alameda County district attorney’s office. See, no reference to any blue-collar job.
My conclusion:
The Times’ claim that Harris has held few blue-collar jobs is valid and probably true.
However, to prevent that readers would get confused and/or readers would claim that the Times is stupid or willfully misleading it’s readers they end this part of the Times article with the sentence
So, the Times did not draw stupid conclusions, did not try to fool it’s readers and therefore did NOT debase of its professional duties as an objective news source.
Therefore the Times text as analysed above can NOT be used as proof that the mainstream media is flamingly, ostentatiously, democratically and destructively biased in favor of progressives and Democrats.
There, I said it. That is, more or less wih more than less words.
_________
Notes
Comment of the Day.
But the whole bit with the resume is textbook deceit. What the Times wrote was factual, but placed in a context and done in a manner that was designed to deceive. The reason for my conclusion? It fooled ME. When I read that, I thought, “Whoa! In the EA article I just quoted, the Washington Free Beacon claimed that Harris’s resume did NOT mention McDonald’s!” Then I read on (as X number of readers will not do) and saw the “The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s”. And this means that the Times is spinning, citing evidence that is irrelevant to bolster its lie that it is TRUMP who had failed is burden of proof rather than the Harris campaign. The report is padding the evidence they (and Trump, and I) have that Harris’s account is true because I”l they have is 1) Harris said so 2) a good friend who didn’t work with her claims she’s telling the truth and 3) Her campaign says Trump is a lying liar. In other words, they got nothing.
And I honestly did laugh when I read that sentence.
But this will get me an email from “A Friend” that says “See?” Guaranteed.
#2 Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be
This is also true-ish, if she actually worked there and does not contradict the observation of the lack of evidence.
Without evidence though, the subject of the sentence is constructed to assume it is true, yet the placement of the “may be” seems to read for the purpose to allow some ambiguous out. Furthermore, the plainness of the “The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s” is so bland as to be ignored by the reader.
If the TImes was not sloppy or biased it would have written:
Ms. Harris’s [claimed] stint at McDonald’s may be
This is not merely a formal rewriting. I have been reading the reporting regarding any clamin made by Trump… Baseless, without evidence, etc since 2016.
“…did not try to fool it’s readers…”
Yes it did. They’re stupid because of bias. It does not take much effort to maintain the bias of the readership. It’s like building muscle, takes more protien to build than to maintain.
“…flamingly…”
Not literally anyway.
It’s a pity the NYT doesn’t take as exacting an approach to investigating the veracity of VP Harris’ claims as it does word-smithing the language it uses to provide cover for her.
How many times does one have to be caught omitting or distorting facts or outright misrepresenting information to advance a preferred candidate before the readership becomes biased toward the reportage?
Bias is not inherently bad. It keeps you from being victimized over and over again. You can only make a claim of improper bias when that bias is not predicated on experience.
Zanshin,
I thought the very same thing when reading it: the resume is evidence of how few OTHER blue collar jobs she had.
And, I thought that the resume may certainly omit jobs that were NOT RELEVANT to her professional applications. I worked at a bar while in Law School and that probably never made it on to my professional resume.
At the same time, the language used by the Times was sufficiently vague that I thought Jack’s criticism was defensible, even if there was a more charitable interpretation that was likely more accurate.
The explanation by the Times could have been clearer.
-Jut
But why would it be fair to be more charitable when the whole article was a contrived effort to defend Harris and condemn Trump? When Trump had evidence (not proof) that Harris is lying (again) and Harris has offered no evidence that her story is true?
The Times explanation was deliberately misleading. Aren’t these people professional communicators? Don’t they have editors?
Jack: “The Times explanation was deliberately misleading.”
I guess that is where we disagree. Yes, I agree they are in the bag for Harris, and yes, I believe they are slanted in this case. But, I think they meant what things the way I interpreted it, but they did a poor job of stating it.
Does that also make them incompetent? Yes.
-Jut
How do they deserve the benefit of the doubt in a report designed to mislead? It states, as fact, that Harris was telling the truth. The weight of evidence is that she wasn’t. Yet it’s mere happenstance that it uses a resume that does not support their position in a manner that suggests that it does?
Zanshin,
Nice evaluation; however, if I’m reading you correctly, I think you may have skimmed over something that I think is insignificant. The New York Times is targeting bias in a very subtle way.
When a major media outlet like the New York Times, that’s supposed to be one of the most trusted wide-spread new sources in the entire world, writes that “Ms. Harris’s stint at McDonald’s may be one of the few blue-collar jobs she has held“, the direct implication to readers is that Harris has had a few blue-collar jobs. They intentionally used the word “few” (a “small number of”) in a way that can be interrupted in a couple of ways, one of which, that I think you missed, is that it directly implies to readers that there were actually more than one or two blue-collar jobs. If it had only been one job it would have been referred to in a singular manner, they referred to “jobs” which is plural. If it had been two jobs it would have been referred to as a couple and more than two becomes a few. The New York Times has shown their bias and this was very a intentional propaganda lie.
“The résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s” is simply a cover your ass statement that does not cover the direct implication of multiple blue-collar jobs that exists within the article. Also, logically speaking, since people have a tendency to list past positions in a résumé that have some relevance to the position being applied for, just because the “résumé does not mention her time at McDonald’s” does not mean that her time at McDonalds didn’t exist.
Subtle propaganda.
The fact remains that there has been absolutely no direct evidence presented by the Harris campaign, the New York Times, or any other media outlet to my knowledge that Harris has ever had any kind of blue-collar job, period. This is a fact that cannot be rhetorically twisted by unscrupulous media outlets into being evidence that she did have blue-collar jobs. The New York Times is lying to their readers in a very subtle and very deceitful way, they have shown us that they are very good at this kind of propaganda. The New York Times is a pro-Democratic Party & pro-Harris propaganda tool and this is yet another example of this long time verifiable trend.
That’s my two cents.
My typo fix is in bold…
Bottom line, Harris has been on a gravy train with biscuit wheels her entire life.
I find it fascinating that a stint or not at McDonalds may prove to be her undoing, not that her positions are all of the place with no real line of defined core values.* The take away is that if Harris is lying about her work at McDonalds to gain some some of street credibility with the working class, then what else will she lie about? Yet, she is allowing this nonissue to fester to the point that Trump is running around a McDonalds slinging fries and surprising customers at the drive-up window. Trump wins this issue and it is making Harris look feckless and unprepared. She could shut it down with a few words.
It is so silly. For example, when I applied for jobs during and after graduation from law school, I didn’t include the brief stints at fast food restaurants during high school or college. I did, though, highlight that I worked for a number of years at a grocery store, starting at entry level and moved into higher responsibilities. Why? Because what I did at Romito’s pizzeria (spectacular pizza!) or Arthur Treachers during high school had absolutely no relevant work experience whatsoever on whether I would be good law clerk or new associate at a law firm – my law school credentials were relevant.
Yet, Harris opened the door to this issue. Her ignorance or silence/refusal to address it, hoping the media will cover for her**, is a stunning display of political naivete. She allowed Trump to take her story about working at McDonalds and turn into a media blitz, giving him to do what he does best: mock her for working 15 minutes more at that chain than she ever did. It is not a serious issue but she blew it; the MSM cannot fix it for her, though.
jvb
Endnotes:
*Politicians are always all over the place and I get that. A vote against, say an border security bill, may not mean the person wants iron clad or wide open borders. Perhaps there was so much pork in it that it didn’t achieve any realizable goal or it didn’t have enough pork for the person’s pet projects. Yet, over time, you can figure where a person stands on oil and gas production or social security benefits or banking regulations. Harris has made so many about-faces that it is impossible to discern what her policies are or who she is, aside for Sanders saying it is a calculated, cynical ploy to get elected.
**The best the Harris-Walz Campaign., the MSM, and the DNC can do is accuse Trump of staging the whole McDonalds campaign tactic and stating that he actually didn’t work there, that it was all prearranged. Well, anyone who really thought Trump applied to work at a local McDonalds and did so after interviewing for the job is just too stupid to be allowed out of the house. Trumps supporters are not saying, “golly, what a working class guy!” They are laughing at the Harris-Walz campaign for allowing themselves to be set up for this free punch in the nose.