Thursday, August 06, 2020

The Persistence of Narrative



As the many responses to this on Twitter ask:  "What gaffes?"

The only one cited is Biden's "You ain't black" comment, which, yeah, was not the best think he could have said.   Took a bit of looking, but I found what Biden said today that is so "alarming":

“Unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” Biden told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “You go to Florida, and you find a very different attitude about immigration in certain places than you do when you’re in Arizona.”

Let me just show my work, and say I got that as the reference from what Maggie Haberman posted:

And then I found out how the Trump campaign tried to respond to it:

Lost, all lost, now; thanks to Trump.  I don't think his donors are getting their $1 billion worth.  

Besides, the term "Latinx" is supposed to cover all people considered "latin," as in "Latin America," and there are legitimate problems with that blanket term, since people from Mexico are not people from Puerto Rico are not people from Colombia are not people from Peru (and Brazilians?  They speak Portuguese?  Where do they fall?), etc.  So Biden's comments aren't even a gaffe; it's simply sound observation.

But considering how man blithering idiocies Trump pronounces on a daily basis (pardon me while I repeat myself):

To the point even Facebook and Twitter won't let him be on their platforms claiming children are "largely immune" to covid-19, one has to ask not just "what gaffes" but:  what the hell are you talking about?

"How little land they have to live off now?"  Trump trades in lies the way other people trade in small talk.  Yes, yes, all politicians lie; but Trump does it believing whatever he says is now true because he said it.  Biden speaks foolishly once in a blue moon; Trump goes before the cameras once a day and spews so many outright lies it takes hours to catch up and document (and counter) each and every one.  It's become obvious to everybody except, apparently, "objective" journalists, that Trump is telling a lie because his lips are moving.

Gaffes?  Biden's gaffes are like spitting in a hurricane.  Who can even notice he's spitting?  Trump hasn't overwhelmed Biden's gaffes by sucking all the air out of any room he's in or demanding all eyes be constantly on him (though both things are true), he's done it by have so little relation to reality he can't NOT tell a lie.  Or even, at this point, understand what a lie is.

Biden is not benefitting from that; the country is suffering for it.  Jeebus, but journalists can be the most clueless twits in the public discourse.

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