It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
– Mark Twain
OK, so here’s what happened. Last week the Biden Administration issued one of these boilerplate proclamations announcing its support for whatever commemoration was going on at the moment. As I write this, for example, on April 2, it happens to be National DIY Day. Also National Ferret Day. Also National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. Congratulations to all.
When this column gets distributed, on April 3, it will be National Tweed Day, National Chocolate Mousse Day, National Walking Day and Childhood National Day of Hope. They all take place during Alcohol Awareness Month, National Parkinson's Awareness Month, Distracted Driving Awareness Month, National Financial Literacy Month, National Occupational Therapy Month, Cancer Control Month, Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Animal Cruelty Prevention Month.
Some of these categories of commemoration are more urgent than others. But at any given moment, something is being nationally recognized. And every year, many of these events get promoted by the White House and/or Congress.
For instance, for four years running the Biden Administration has singled out the March 31 Transgender Visibility Day, which is an expression of hope, empowerment and empathy for Americans who have historically been forced to shroud their identity from outside view. Discrimination. Vilification. Violence. Unjust shame. It’s worth speaking out against.
This issue most likely doesn’t preoccupy the president’s policy deliberations much more than Distracted Driving Awareness Month or National Ferret Day, but it's a worthy sentiment every March 31.
Unless you’re a transphobe, religious zealot or Republican. In which case it’s just more provocation from the woke, deep state, Marxist-Fascist antichrists. Especially when — as happened on Sunday for only the third time this millennium — the Gregorian calendar for March 31 falls on Easter Sunday.
As we are in permanent culture war, you know exactly what happened next. Rightwing media, Republican politicians, bigoted evangelicals and, of course, the Son of Fred, Jesus Trump, attacked Biden for taking his anti-Christianity crusade to new depths and spitting in the holy face of the resurrected Christ. As reported by the Associated Press:
“We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s press secretary. She assailed what she called the Biden administration’s “years-long assault on the Christian faith.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson also expressed shock that Biden would take such a big steaming dump on “the central tenet of Easter — which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
None of that is remotely surprising. Nor is it surprising that all of the reactionary criticism was built on a foundation of lies and misrepresentations. Not that it matters, because such lying is the central tenet of MAGA politics, but:
Transgender Visibility Day, having been a March 31 event for a decade, just happened to fall this year on Easter, whose calendar date is a moving target.
It has been an annual commemoration in this administration, not some fresh Easter blasphemy cooked up in Satan’s Kitchen of Woke.
It is not an attack on the tenets of anyone’s religion. On the contrary, actual central tenets of Christianity are tolerance and love.
Again, the particulars are irrelevant because the Easter allegations are neither an unusual or even unusually repugnant MAGA lie, merely the latest. What is relevant is the equally unsurprising yet journalistically inexcusable decision to report it.
A particularly galling example this time around came from the Associated Press, whose Josh Boak, in full awareness of those three points above, turned out the following lede:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is facing criticism from Donald Trump’s campaign and religious conservatives for proclaiming March 31 — which corresponds with Easter Sunday this year — as “Transgender Day of Visibility.”
The Democratic president issued the proclamation on Friday, calling on “all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity.”
Nicely reported. I’m sure the Trump campaign was turning cartwheels. Never mind that subsequent paragraphs provided the proper context; the damage had been done with the headline alone:
Trump campaign assails Biden for declaring Easter Sunday as ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’
Astonishing. At some point, perhaps realizing the disservice to truth and utter incompetence of that hed, the editors published a modified version:
The Trump camp and the White House clash over Biden's recognition of ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’
Much better. From malpractice to also malpractice.
But it’s not just the dreadful reporting, it’s that the story was reported in any form. Why can’t the press simply resist that foolish and destructive impulse? Because “democracy dies in darkness”? Because clicks? I’m afraid to know. But I do know why it’s unforgivable.
Look, the first time you catch a politician in a lie, that’s news. The second time, also news. Maybe up to the 50th. I know it’s long before 30,000. But at some point, when you have sufficiently demonstrated that a politician — or party — will say absolutely anything to incite outrage in its audience, repeating and amplifying the lie has no benefit no matter how thoroughly you debunk it. That’s not only because few readers get past the headline or the lede to see the actual due diligence, but because the target audience for the lie is not interested in the truth, only in vibing on the outrage.
Yet the AP and most of the press persists, benefiting nobody but the loathsome creeps being quoted. If there is any justification, it certainly has nothing to do with being newsworthy.
This I know because the biggest story in the history of humanity — the climate change that is destroying civilization before our eyes — gets only irregular coverage. Planetary doom, it seems, lacks the urgent daily developments. You know, just same old same old.
So how is it that every single day the same news-hungry organizations feast like so many bloated carp on exactly the same kind of MAGA bait? Trump or Kari Lake or Ron DeSantis or Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Stupid spout some insane bullshit and here come the suckers in feeding-frenzied schools.
To illuminate the dishonesty? Oh, for fuck’s sake, the scoundrels thrive on the spotlight, not just from approving rightwing media, but from the supposedly responsible media. The press thinks it’s so nobly shining light on lies. But that very light is like the ultraviolet that cures resins. It hardens the untruth.
The self-satisfied truth tellers throw in all the usual disclaimers — “without evidence,” “falsehood,” whatever — but that does nothing to undo the damage of their compulsive, destructive stenography. The only responsible journalistic decision in this environment is to refuse to repeat demonstrable propaganda. If it’s easily debunked, it’s just as easily spiked.
And must be. We should never, ever have been bothered with the Biden-proclamation story. Because demagoguery also dies in darkness.
So, so good. "The press thinks it’s so nobly shining light on lies. But that very light is like the ultraviolet that cures resins. It hardens the untruth."
Oh no Mr. Bob, the media *has* to report bullshit stories like that because ... *balance*. Also, rage sells subscriptions, clicks, Xes (is that what we call Tweets now?), and so forth and dontchaknow its been a tough time for media. Heaven forfend that they not treat every flatulence emanating for whatever orifice of the RNC or the antiChrist himself as The Word.
Like you, I am an old man. It saddens me to see our nation in terminal decline. The words of George Orwell and Hannah Arendt and Margaret Atwood still sing to those who listen. But America has washed its hands of high ideals and the fight against tyranny. Democracy is hard and tyranny promises (hahahahahaha!) the shit we want without all that discussion and compromise nonsense.
I love Big Donald.