Just doing the job, hunkering down, governing…
The mainstream media is bending backwards to depict the Atlanta mass shooting in a sexual massage parlor as a racially motivated crime. But they ignored completely suspect Robert Aaron Long’s own admission to the Cherokee Country Sheriff’s office that he was driven by sexual addiction…
— email I received yesterday, offering me a source to interview (I passed)
Those were the opening words to the email, which was a puzzler. Presumably, this offer of the wisdom of one “Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Church in Chicago,” was going out to, you know, media people. In other words, people who are sick to death of idiots who say things like “The mainstream media is bending backwards to depict…” yadda, yadda.
Just so you know:
- There are a bunch of people out there who are very concerned that these shooting were related to the fact that so many of the victims were of Asian descent. Asian-America were already concerned about this; this act of violence touched off that tension that was there.
- “The media” are reporting what’s happening in item 1. Because it’s news.
- Note that it’s “media are,” not “media is…”
I could go on, but I won’t, except to say, one grows so very weary of this stuff. I mean, I’m sorry that so many people try to frame everything in Identity Politics, and that that offends you, “Dr.” Lutzer. But they do. It’s a huge, huge factor in politics today. I think it’s problematic, as I’ve said so many times before. And almost the only issue on which I agree with libertarians is “hate crime” legislation. Right now, there’s such a bill going through our Legislature — many people are terribly upset that we are one of only three states without such laws — and much back-and-forth about which categories of people are covered by it. I say, let’s forget it. Let’s punish the act, not the thought (beyond thoughts relevant to culpability, such as intent or premeditation). I guess I’ve read too much Orwell or something…
But whether “Dr.” Lutzer likes it or not, and no matter what I think, it’s out there, big-time. So of course it gets covered.
Now… rather than go further down that rathole, I will now get to my point….
Thomas Edsall had a great piece in The New York Times yesterday, headlined “Biden Wants No Part of the Culture War the G.O.P. Loves.” Which prompted me to tweet, simply in response to that hed, “One of many reasons why @JoeBiden is my main man, and has been for a long time. And finally, he’s in the right job…”
Edall writes about how Biden is out there actually running the government, and trying to address real problems facing the country, while the poor Republicans, as someone Edsall quotes puts it, “try to counter with stories about Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head.” (Or, if you’re “Dr.” Lutzer, with yammering about how the danged “mainstream media” keep trying to cram dang-fool liberal notions into our poor, hard-working, innocent white heads…)
An excerpt:
The second prong of Biden’s strategy is to lower the volume on culture war issues by refusing to engage — on the theory that in politics, silence saps attention — exemplified by the president’s two-month long refusal to hold a news conference in which the press, rather than the chief executive, determines what gets talked about.
The strategy of diverting attention from incendiary social issues is spreading.
“Taking their cues from a new president who steadfastly refuses to engage with or react to cultural provocations,” Democratic officeholders “have mostly kept their heads down and focused on passing legislation,” The Week’s Damon Linker wrote in “Will the G.O.P.’s culture war gambit blow up in its face?”…
I noted recently that someone here on the blog was objecting to Joe not having press conferences, something that hadn’t bothered me. I’ve been seeing him plenty, and I have a pretty good idea of what he thinks about things. And now that Edsall has pointed this out, I’m in no hurry for him to have one. Not because, as “Dr.” Lutzer would have it, them media are trying to fill my head with socialist notions, but because of an actual, real problem that afflicts reporters: They don’t have an agenda, except to serve the binary conflict model: If all the idiots in the chattering classes are talking about X, then by God, we’re not going to let this elected official get away with not “answering the hard questions” and declaring whether he’s FOR X or AGAINST it, so the half of the country on one side can clap and cheer, and the half on the other side can hate him for it. Because that’s the way the stupid game is played.
By the way, in case you’re confused, that approach arises from the opposite of being a purveyor of propaganda. It comes from seeing oneself as “fair” and “objective,” and refusing to think about the consequences of asking the question, because reporters aren’t supposed to think about, much less seek, outcomes. So if you want to kick reporters, kick them for that.
Anyway…
Finally, we again have a president who is interested in governing (and know how to do it), rather than encouraging more ranting along the lines of, As a member of X group, I’m really worked up, and I truly despise you people in Y group who disagree with me…
Joe is governing for the members of ALL groups, and even those of us who resist such categorization, and he’s doing pretty well at it.
And I, for one, am quite pleased…
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Dr Luther is a wonderful speaker. Heard him preach a number of times on the radio in years past. He didn’t seem to be a politics guy so who knows if your email was real.
I have been struck about how many people (on the right it seems) seem to want to believe the guy who killed these people and take him out his word so quickly. I would think an investigation would be in order to determine his real motives and not just take a murder at his word
Not that it matters, because what do I know? But the moment I heard of this, I had my own theory. At this point, I hadn’t heard anything about the ethnicity of the victim. I just knew someone had shot up three massage parlors.
I saw a picture of the suspect, and I just thought, “This is a guy who is angry because his experience has taught him that the only way a woman would touch him is if she is paid to do so.”
Don’t go by me. That’s a lot to assume from a quick glance at a photo.
But that’s what I thought.
Ultimately, I don’t think you can pin anything on one, simple cause. It could be that he hates women. It could be that he hates Asians. It could be that he was sexually frustrated. It could be because Trump said “Kung Flu.” It could be because he’s a Baptist (although I’ll say this one seems the least likely). It could be because it was ridiculously easy for him to buy a gun, and he’s one person who should never be allowed to touch one.
And it could be ALL of those things, plus a lot of stuff we’ll never know. In any case, people should stop being SO SURE they know exactly what it was, and what should be done about it, and getting furious at anyone with a different theory.
All we really know is that he did something profoundly evil, something no one has a right to do. And we should punish THAT, and not what we believe his reasons were for doing it…
And when you say “Dr. Luther,” do you mean Erwin Lutzer?
That’s one of a couple of emails I’ve gotten lately from a guy named Jerry McGlothlin, offering to set up an interview with him. I may have gotten others, but normally I delete the “interview opp” emails I get, offering me someone I never heard of who wants to offer his or her views on an issue of the day.
I’m not a reporter, and generally don’t need to interview anyone for a blog post. But when I do, it’s someone I’ve heard of, and who I know has something valuable to add to the conversation — something we wouldn’t have otherwise, something no one has reported.
The other recent email telling me Dr. Lutzer wanted to talk was headlined “The Equality Act is Thinly Veiled Inequality.” I don’t want to talk with him about that, either.
Anyway, here is the entire email that I quoted in this post:
Basically, I quoted it above because I had meant yesterday to write about Edsall’s piece about Joe and the culture wars, but didn’t get to it.
Then I saw this email in my queue and thought, “Well, THIS guy is a Happy Warrior in the Kulturkampf, isn’t he?”
I mean, did you check out the title of his book? We Will Not Be Silenced: Responding Courageously to Our Culture’s Assault on Christianity
I bet there’s a lot in that book about the danged “mainstream media” — singular, not plural, because they’re just one evil entity, right?
Reminds me of an encounter I had last year — when college kids on spring break were being blamed for spreading the virus. An older guy said he knew why they were behaving so irresponsibly. It was because prayer had been taken out of schools, along with corporal punishment. I had the distinct impression that was his explanation for any number of social ills.
Just another example of the culture war in action.
Since when is killing chinks and queers a crime?
meanwhile joe canned a bunch of young staffers who annoyed to having smoked pot in the past… guess when Obama and Harris did it, it wasn’t as meaningful. What an out of touch geezer…
That was before he tried to prove how virile he was by jogging up the stairs of Air Force One and tripping three times. I remember when Trump walking slowly down a ramp and drinking a bottle of water with two hands generated millions of words in the liberal media about dementia, strokes, and invoking the 25th Amendment.
Just imagine – today is the best day Joe Biden will have cognitively and physicaliy for the rest of his life. I’d say the odds of him finishing one term are 50/50. A second term has no chance.
President Squaresville:
Sounds like it could have been for not being upfront about it since it only impacted a small amount of people.
“ Some of these dismissals, probations and remote work appointments could have potentially been a result of inconsistencies that came up during the background-check process, where a staffer could have, for example, misstated the last time they used marijuana.”
“ .I remember when Trump walking slowly down a ramp and drinking a bottle of water with two hands generated millions of words in the liberal media about dementia, strokes, and invoking the 25th Amendment.”
Funny, I remember Trumpers bragging for years about how incredibly virile trump was and how he was the most vigorous president in history (which apparently let him watch hours and hours of cable news on Fox each day).
So yes, it was pretty interesting watching him barely walk down a stairway, or have trouble drinking out of a glass.