NBC's Raf Sznchez claims the Spanish border crisis is "becoming a global political flashpoint" and goes with the old Republicans Seize angle "the images of chaos have rattled Europe and been seized on by President Trump."
It is axiomatic that whenever a news event casts legitimate shadows on Democrats, progressives or their allies, the story is framed by the Axis media as a partisan attack by the political Right (Republicans, conservatives, President Trump) with the event itself de-emphasized. “Republicans pounce!” is the short-hand name for the phenomenon.
Of course the practice is unethical and deliberately misleading. The news media’s coverage of the Fauci hearings was a classic of the genre. For example, ABC’s correspondent Jay O’Brien said on Wednesday’s Good Morning America that the retired scientist would, at “85 years old,” have to face “a fiery hearing” because he “has long been a target of” Rand Paul, who obtained his “private diary.” Later, on World News Tonight O’Brien described Fauci as “the man millions of Americans turned to for answers during the COVID pandemic” now being “needled” by Republicans even though he “served in government for 54 years and has testified in more than 200 hearings.”
That commentary is revolting in its mendacity. People who do bad things need to be held responsible, and how old they happen to be when the piper must be paid is irrelevant. Citing Fauci’s age was a pure appeal to emotion: “Aw, poor old guy, can’t they just leave him alone?” The diary, legally and factually, was not private because it was created on a government platform. Yeah, sure, millions of Americans turned to Fauci for answers, including the President, and he lied to them all, repeatedly, or gave wrong answers.
You know…when Dr. Fauci revealed himself to be a narcissist, a coward, a fick, and an all-time American villain.
The Fauci Ethics Train Wreck is yet another integrity test for the American Left and the Axis of Unethical Conduct. It has flunked the others, so it is not surprising that it is flunking this one. The ethical course would be to admit the truth:
“Yes, they were thrilled with the pandemic lockdown, because it wrecked the Trump economy and gave them a chance to install a puppet President who could be manipulated by extreme left unelected functionaries. Yes, that made us especially willing to accept Dr. Fauci and Co.’s draconian measures, especially since it gave Democratic elected officials an opportunity to play dictator and constrain Americans’ civil rights in the name of “safety.” Yes, we sanctified Dr. Fauci beyond all reason to enhance our irresponsible “follow the science” grift, which has been so successful in the climate change policy debate. Yes, we were complicit in installing ruinous and unnecessary policies, based on panic that our media sowed, that retarded a generation’s education and social development, ruined businesses, permanently damaged whole industries, and killed people.”
Nah! That’s not how the American Left rolls in 2026. How much better it is to deflect, lie, ignore multiple metaphorical elephants, and maintain a position that has become completely untenable.
The op-ed titled “What We Really Learned From the Fauci Hearing” (gift link, but this is no present) from the New York Times could have been designed by an AI bot with the instruction, “write an op-ed denying that the Fauci hearing was what it was, using the topic to blame Republicans while avoiding inconvenient facts.”
This paragraph, near the end, is a masterpiece of dishonesty and sophistry:
“Dr. Fauci is a complicated man who has been both elevated and reduced to a symbol. His legacy after a decades-long career at the intersection of science and politics is now defined by incompatible, contested accounts of his pandemic-era impact. There is little hope of resolving that contest any time soon.”
“Complicated”! The smoking gun of brazen sophistry, prevarication and equivocation. There’s noting complicated about Fauci. He’s a lifetime bureaucrat who became intoxicated with power when the opportunity arrived, and abused that power for the benefit his own ego, his political party, and the detriment of millions. It is an old story. Faucis have been analyzed by historians, playwrights and novelists for centuries. “Complicated” is an anodyne, toothless word used to excuse wrong-doers.
I believe, and have believed for as long as I can remember—Shut up, I remember more than most people—that everyone in our society has an ethical obligation to know as much as possible about the society and culture we live in. This takes time and effort, as well as humility. For the young, it means showing an interest in what had transpired before they were born, if it had a significant effect on history and culture.
I have related here my interaction with a professional woman, ten years my junior, who revealed that she didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was. I told her that was inexcusable, and sent her to some sources. A lawyer I worked with at one point, even younger, couldn’t come within 70 years of the dates of the Civil War, despite graduating with honors from Cornell and being an associate at Skadden Arps.
The case was made powerfully in the Eighties by J.D. Hirsch in his best-seller “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” and he updated his book several times. His main declaration was that without a shared cultural knowledge, communication and understanding between generations becomes impossible, and society’s connective tissue is eventually degraded and destroyed. Analogies and metaphors no longer work; patterns are no longer detected; “presentism” becomes epidemic. Jackie Robinson was on Hirsch’s list; so were John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, James Watson, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire.
Older generations have obligations too. As a child who watched more television than anyone I know (or knew), I became convinced that TV was an essential cultural literacy tool. My parents, one a lawyer and Harvard College grad and the other a career Harvard administrator, had many friends who boasted of either never watching TV or only deigning to watch PBS. Even when I was ten, I regarded them as arrogant and foolish, which they were. They didn’t see the Sixties coming, or comprehend the culture that was its catalyst when it fell on then like a rock squishing Wile E. Coyote.
I acknowledge that keeping up with current culture, while in some respects easier than it used to be due to technology, is overwhelming, and to some extent even impossible. We have many parallel cultures trying to coexist today, and some are antithetical to each other. At very least, I believe, all of us have to try to keep abreast of popular culture, which includes important societal developments that drive that relentless engine.
Last week EA expressed disgust that Sen. Jim Clyburn had revealed that he only recently became aware of ChatGPT. He’s 80: it’s no excuse. It would be almost as inexcusable if Clyburn announced that he didn’t know who Taylor Swift is. President Trump was recently dragged in social media for apparently conflating a kids’ TV host from the Fifties with Eighties star Paul Reubens, aka. Peewee Herman. At least Trump is aware of Peewee’s existence; that fulfills his cultural literacy obligation.
Five years ago, I wrote a discouraged post about how my cultural literacy commitment was failing, Confession Of A Life Competence Failure. I am obviously over-due for an audit, so I went to the same source for a pop quiz: WeSmirch, a web aggregator of celebrity news. In 2021, I regarded my performance as a failure, writing in part,
“It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in these stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathlessly shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about. Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). My score was 15 celebrity names recognized, with 17 complete mysteries. My conclusion: “When all the celebrities are strangers, I will have reached the dreaded stage of my uncle, who got the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones, and the codgers today who talk about the internet like it’s some new-fangled fad. And at that point, I will be useless.”
Let’s see what my score is today. The “celebrities”…
Ethics Alarms 