July 26: Kamala’s glow up

In which, VP Harris gets an overnight fan club, Benjamin Netanyahu visits DC, and China makes its bid(s) for world peace.

I can’t say it was a quiet week in the realm of American politics (far from it), and it certainly wasn’t quiet on the world stage. But you’d be forgiven for thinking so because all the chattering class (progressive and conservative) in American news could talk about was the Harris coup… er… I mean, “passing the torch” to VP Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee. 

So, this week’s newsletter will be something of a reflection of this alternate reality the American media is living at the moment. My apologies.

Kamala’s glow up

According to Urban Dictionary, “glow up” can mean:

To go from the bottom to the top to the point of disbelief. An incredible transformation.

When you go from ugly to stunning.

An amazing transformation.

That about sums up the state of what is called the mainstream media in America in its coverage of the Vice President turned presidential candidate. 

The glowing coverage started small, with a basic denial of reality on the VP’s role and record on the border crisis, and grew exponentially more sycophantic from there. If you think I exaggerate, then you might find this X thread useful for side by side headlines and stories from different news outlets. What a difference a day makes, right?

Or, if you think I’m trafficking in the well worn conservative criticism of a biased left wing media, don’t take my word for it, you can read another great Substack publication, The Liberal Patriot, these left of center guys are picking up on the same basic trend: a sudden, (over)dramatic shift from VP Harris the non-entity to VP Harris the “Gen Z meme queen,” VP Harris the “fun” candidate, VP Harris the able diplomat, VP Harris the celebrity darling, VP Harris the not-left-wing-Senator, VP Harris the… authoritarian? OK, conservative media outlets are obviously not jumping on the bandwagon, but those kinds of headlines are the exception and are only to be found on conservative platforms. Outside the mainstream, there appear few voices on the left willing to point out that Harris has a pretty hard test in front of her. Vox was one such publication, but that was before Biden made his formal “passing the torch” speech on Wednesday. 

Why do I make a big deal out of all this?

First, to illustrate just how dead the idea of “objective journalism” in mainstream media outlets is. With the exception of some right of center columnists here and there, there is no “neutral” mainstream media. 

That doesn’t mean you give up on journalism, or don’t trust what’s being reported. Rather, it means you’ve got to recognize you’re reading more than just facts. You’re reading selective facts and selective narratives, so you need to broaden your sources if you’re going to get the full picture. That’s why every week, you find a mix of progressive and conservative stories linked in this newsletter. I use them to sketch as complete a picture as possible. 

Second, the idea of “objective journalism” was always more aspiration than reality, so don’t feel like something has been lost. In fact, this kind of highly partisan media coverage is pretty normal in American history. What is NOT normal is the degree to which the progressive ideology has captured so much of the media space. It’s not quite a monopoly (thank God for Substack!), but it’s darn close and that is a threat to our constitutional system because of the capacity for such a media ecosystem to squelch an open and civil public square.

So, don’t read this as me just shrugging my shoulders with a “Who cares? We’ve been here before.” Yes, in a sense, we have been here before, but in some ways it's also worse. It’s certainly deeply concerning and morally troubling to see the level of dishonesty. It points to a deep entanglement between major media institutions and political interests such that it’s becoming really hard to determine who is manipulating who. Either way, it’s the American people who lose. We lose trustworthy leaders, trustworthy information sources, civic cohesion, and any sense of national unity. Not small stakes.