Following the Foibles of our Foes–2nd Installment

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2024 April Blog

by Chuck Peek

I was, at the first, thinking of possibly crowd-sourcing the title, Following the Foibles of our Foes; but, so far, no suggestions have come my way regarding titling these three related monthly installments. Meanwhile, the political shenanigans in Nebraska have increased day-by-day, so a fourth installment may be necessary! Now, however, April: April brings the second installment–Can Fact Emulate Fiction?

I’m belatedly reporting that there were some little problems with the media coverage of the State of the Union. Oh, yes, there are some problems with the Media, one of them being it is hard to see why MAGA-thought thinks the Media is a villain when they are repeating now what they repeated constantly in the run up to 2016—an almost endless coverage of the former president balanced by an almost single-minded focus this round on Joe Biden’s age. What could be fairer than that? No chance of age-ism being involved, in the deprecation of experience! And come on, if Joe’s opponent pays all his fines, he won’t be able to afford much publicity so giving it him free publicity a la 2016 is the American way.

We watched the State of the Union a day later, taped from the night it was given, so we already had the advantage of tons of takes like, “the five take-aways from the State of the Union.” One of those five take aways was not that, aside from airing the address itself, most of the commentary was reducing it to a few Media-chosen talking points. I know—you have to keep talking heads employed or they quit talking, and then what would we ever do except listen to the talk and decide for ourselves what the take-aways might be?

But wouldn’t it be great if the Media were to stop telling us what we are going to hear and what we heard.

Having already heard that I would be seeing the Speaker of the House unable to contain his grimaces of disapproval, I watched his face carefully enough to get a rough count, enough to be pretty sure that in fact, he smiled or nodded in approval a lot more than he smirked, he stood twice (although how anyone would not stand in opposition to Putin I cannot fathom). But you can’t divide us into camps and so generate listeners/viewers by not joining in the current American pastime of looking only at what divides us. Apparently, never enough.

The so-called freedom caucus seems to think that being free means you are given a license to be rude and boorish, and their childish camera shots were certainly on display, even charging about the chamber to get in people’s faces or get the attention away from everyone else—well, they were not so amenable to bi-partisanship. A friend of mine claims that he/they are just behaving like oafs to “awaken” us dolts to reality. Well, their fact-less version of reality. Watching them reminded me of Jeremiah 7:24b: they walked in their own counsels and looked backward rather than forward.

Then the media pronounced the address as the most partisan speech ever given as the State of the Union Address. Somehow, I am pretty doubtful anyone did a rhetorical analysis of, say, any dozen or half-dozen such addresses to come to that unequivocal conclusion of the talking heads. The presidency has ever been a “bully pulpit,” and it was never more so than when it was in the hands of a bully as it was during Biden’s predecessor’s term.

Meanwhile, with the State of the Union as backdrop, MAGA’s true colors raced to catch up…making me wonder if we are prepared to trust them when they tell the truth about what they believe. Here’s what was said next, the real response to the State of the Union, not that little housewifely 5 minutes that came immediately after:

How religion and authoritarianism have come together in modern America was on display Thursday, when right-wing activist Jack Posobiec opened this weekend’s conference of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., with the words: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He held up a cross necklace and continued: “After we burn that swamp to the ground, we will establish the new American republic on its ashes, and our first order of business will be righteous retribution for those who betrayed America.”

As the gamblers say, Read ‘em and weep!

Next blog: May, intended to be the last installment of Foibles—unless my cup runneth over and the gag writers, excuse me the State Senators have simply provided too much material.

Kearney, Nebraska

April 2024