My, my — how calm things have gotten in Washington since Jan. 20.
Watching cable news and reading the major newspapers, you’d almost never know that hundreds of people continue to die daily from COVID-19, that nearly 10 million people are out of work (largely thanks to government lockdowns), and that hundreds of thousands of destitute migrants continue throwing themselves into our care at the border.
No, the people who for four years could find a scandal in a box of fish food couldn’t be more relaxed.
The New York Times’s Michelle Cottle loves the way things are right now under her new president. “He’s making the presidency boring again,” she wrote ahead of Joe Biden’s joint address this week. “Mock if you will, but this is a major achievement — one welcomed by many exhausted Americans. … Mr. Biden keeps his head down and keeps pushing his policies.Whether the crisis is a police shooting, the enormous toll of the pandemic or the everyday economic challenges of so many Americans, Mr. Biden approaches the issue with compassion and decency.”
Surely you share Cottle’s sense of relief at how peaceful the country has become under our new and decent president.
It’s the dumbest kind of projection. Journalists think things are back to the way things should be, so they assume you are just as happy as they are. Even better, they act as if they’re completely unaware that they’re the ones who made the last few years hell with their perpetually hysterical coverage of the last administration.
Those days are gone. CNN’s Jake Tapper is certainly in a more jovial mood these days, now that there is a president more deferential toward the media!
Remarking on lawmakers gathering in the House chamber for Biden’s speech, Tapper noted that they were greeting with hand shakes and fist bumps despite the remaining health guidance for non-family to keep distance from one another. “Once again, they were told not to, but politicians do what politicians do,” he said, followed by a chuckle from Dana Bash. “They are excited to see each other.”
It’s a glorious day, and pandemic be damned. Politicians do what politicians do.
🙂
I’m so glad Tapper is seeing things in a new way. Compare that cheery outlook with how he felt about the pandemic just six months ago. When then-President Donald Trump tweeted, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” Tapper was absolutely incensed.
He called Trump’s tweet “disrespectful” and told his audience, “It’s OK to be afraid of COVID, and it’s OK that it’s dominating your life.”
We’re currently averaging 700 deaths from COVID-19 each day. But hey, politicians do what politicians do. Smiley face emojis and all that.
What a difference a party in power makes in the moods of Washington journalists.
