Last week my friend and Splice Today contributor Ken Silber sent me an email—maybe as a joke—offering a free month of the new Substack, The Contrarian, run by ex-Washington Post loon Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen. I declined—Ken sent his “gift” to five people—and said to myself, “Ah, c’mon man, you know I can find more intelligible, if equally daffy, anti-Trump material from The New Yorker, The New York Times or, if feeling masochistic, The Atlantic.”
An excerpt of the already-doomed propaganda newsletter’s silly mission statement: “We will platform some of the brightest minds and keenest experts—legal scholars, historians, civil rights leaders, political activists, creatives, policymakers, and journalists—to deliver the unvarnished truth, make sense of the chaos, and help formulate a response to defeat the noxious threat we face today. And we will lift up voices that speak to wider audiences, ones not served by corporate media pablum.”
And that’s that, Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Mr. Peabody, Top Cat, Daisy Duck and Porky Pig! “Creatives,” every one of them.
I’m writing before Donald Trump’s second inaugural speech, and undoubtedly it’ll contain what stomach-patter George W. Bush described as “some weird shit” eight years ago, but that’s not my concern. Most presidential speeches aren’t memorable, they’re filled with vague promises, chest-thumping and the rote conclusion “God bless America.” (Isn’t all the “God” stuff a relic, more associated with William Jennings Bryan and Mike Pence?)
I wasn’t surprised, but still disappointed that New Yorker editor David Remnick—as I’ve noted before, once a great writer, especially on boxing—couldn’t leave well enough alone and wrote a painstaking defense of Joe Biden’s farewell address last week. Remnick eased into his editorial, mentioning George Washington’s famous farewell after his second term, and, it goes without saying, Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about a “growing military-industrial complex” in 1961, and before getting to the turning-green meat of Biden’s remarks, said that the outgoing president wasn’t mentally or physically fit for a second term, “no matter how much one dreads the dreadful alternative.”
This is what Remnick might’ve thought was the skyrocket of the speech, even though it was a damp firecracker: “And yet one passage in Biden’s remarks stood out and should echo with the same lasting resonance as Eisenhower’s prescient admonition [which JFK and LBJ ignored] more than half a century ago. What Biden was intent on describing was quite real, even self-evident by now, but to hear it from a President was startling.”
As the few who bothered with Biden’s speech (and this was before Sippy Cup, or a moronic staffer, erroneously, and petulantly tweeted the ERA was officially the 28th Constitutional Amendment), heard this absurdity: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”
I’ve no idea who wrote that enormously hypocritical sentence, maybe court chronicler Jon Meacham, maybe Davids Frum or French, but it wasn’t “startling.” Remnick, who’s so blinded by TDS (a sickness that has destroyed the minds of once-estimable commentators), willingly embarrassed himself.
Who knew that “an oligarchy is taking shape” today? Was it a cabal of “normies” who screwed Bernie Sanders in 2020 and installed Biden as the “safe” Democratic presidential candidate? Did the Democratic Party accept donations of just $50 or less? Did George Soros and the Clinton Foundation back Trump in 2020 and last November? Did Biden’s DOJ relentlessly track down who hired 20-year-old Matthew Crooks (a cut-rate Lee Harvey Oswald) last July to assassinate candidate Trump in Butler, PA? Was there no “oligarchy” behind Kamala Harris’ lavishly-funded campaign? Did the “media oligarchy” detail Biden’s failing health—visible to “ordinary” voters since 2020—and allow a sentient Democrat to run instead
Frustrated Democratic consultants, politicians and pundits, starved for even stale-bread material, are lambasting Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, in particular, for sucking up to Trump at the end of the campaign and after (a late addition to gala is Bill Gates). According to Biden, or his moronic staffer, this trio exemplifies the wealthy men who are “literally threatening” the freedom of Americans. I don’t care one way or another about those tycoons, but why can’t the “opposition” just admit that they’re with Trump because, as businessmen, it’s to their advantage? When a Democrat’s back in the White House, perhaps in four years, the apolitical “tech bros” will switch sides again. Is that so difficult to comprehend?
Meanwhile, the Times’ Maureen Dowd—who said Biden’s “narcissism trumped his patriotism”—offered this sludge about presidential inaugurations: “Leaders and luminaries would put aside their grudges and come together to celebrate democracy. This day marks the deepest conviction of the American experiment—that power must pass peacefully from commander in chief to the next.”
Maybe it’s time for a “New York Times experiment” and let Dowd join columnists Paul Krugman, Pamela Paul and Charles Blow in the never-never-land that’s accessible by walking the plank.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
