Dear Weekend Jolter,
Russia is amassing troops along the border with Ukraine. The economy of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is nearing collapse. Something . . . unusual . . . just happened at the Natanz nuclear site in Iran. China is menacing Taiwan and possibly rehearsing for the real deal. Then there’s inflation, Omicron, that dang supply chain, and other woes on the home front.
But the real crisis? It’s the tone of coverage about the Biden administration, dontcha know.
So attuned to this diplomatic quagmire is the White House that they’ve reportedly dispatched emissaries to cajole newsrooms into offering more favorable takes on the economy. As Jim Geraghty notes:
Perhaps the more significant aspect of this story is not just that the Biden administration thinks the country’s economy is in much better shape than it was last year — a pretty low bar, considering how one year ago, we were just about to get the first vaccinations — but they think that they have a perception problem, not a substance or reality problem. But the national average for a gallon of gasoline is still $3.43, inflation has skyrocketed this year, the country has 10.4 million unfilled jobs, and all kinds of small businesses have signs that say “please be patient, we’re understaffed,” and we’re enduring a supply-chain crisis. (If you’re not reading Dominic Pino’s coverage here at NR, you should be.) Americans don’t think the economy is lousy because of bad media coverage. Americans think the economy is lousy because they feel the pain in the form of higher prices and stores not having the goods on the shelves that they usually have.
Meanwhile, Biden allies from Chief of Staff Ron Klain to friendly cable outlets have been promoting a column from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank claiming Biden’s media coverage has been as negative as — or more negative than — Donald Trump’s. Milbank leaves nothing to the imagination in assessing the damage this will cause: “My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.”
Woof.
As Charles C. W. Cooke notes, the AI-driven analysis undergirding this claim inevitably suffers from deficiencies in its ability to truly assess negativity in press coverage. All of us who lived through both administrations know that Trump faced a more adversarial press. But even if the coverage were as critical as they (they being a computer program) say, well . . . good!
For starters, the toughest of said coverage occurred around the time of the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Which makes sense. And broadly speaking, the media counterpoint to the press shops promoting the agendas of the officials we see on TV every day is a necessary thing. Without it, you get something like Chinese state-media mouthpieces gaslighting Twitter over ultimately accurate U.S. reports of an American diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Without it, you wouldn’t know that Biden’s fabulizing about acting as a liaison between Golda Meir and Cairo during the Six-Day War was just that. (Credit to CNN for calling this out. Trump earned many of his fact checks, and Biden does too.) Without it, you might not know that a DCCC chart purporting to show plummeting gas prices was outrageously misleading, though the surging cost of gas and other goods in real life would give you a strong hint. Without it, you wouldn’t know about the trouble in veep paradise, the details of which sure do bring to mind certain characteristics of the 45th president.
If you work in a Biden press shop, then yes, you live and die by the tone of these reports. For everyone else, including the president himself, much bigger crises are on the horizon, or already here. They shouldn’t be sugarcoated.
Now — who’s hungry for some links? We’ve got just the plate to satiate.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Adoption is being unjustly maligned amid Supreme Court arguments over abortion: An Appalling Attack on Adoption
ARTICLES
David Harsanyi: Sorry, Omarova’s Soviet Birth Is Not What Sank Her Nomination
Charles C. W. Cooke: Biden Is Losing His Grip on the Democratic Party
Ryan Mills: Jussie Smollett Found Guilty of Staging Hoax Hate Crime
Robert Agostinelli: An Alumnus Story: Going Home, and Finding Woke
Ramesh Ponnuru: Phony Abortion History Returns to the Supreme Court
Kelly Rosati: Telling the Truth on Abortion and Adoption
Michael Brendan Dougherty: America Unready
Madeleine Kearns: Male Swimmer Shattering Records in Female Competition: Why Is This Allowed?
Craig Shirley: Bob Dole, the First and the Best Compassionate Conservative
Kyle Smith: Jussie Smollett: Funniest. Trial. Ever.
Dan McLaughlin: Manhood Is the Purpose of Masculinity
Nate Hochman: How a Handful of Republicans Killed the Female Draft
Jack Crowe: Prosecutors Raise Concerns about Lefty Boston DA ahead of Confirmation as U.S. Attorney
Isaac Schorr: Remembering Yamiche Alcindor’s Greatest Hits
And ICYMI, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas when the debate over which Christmas song is most intolerable moves into full swing.
CAPITAL MATTERS
Brian Riedl reflects on how remarkably unnecessary, wasteful, and damaging was the American Rescue Plan: The Worst Spending Bill in Decades?
Casey Mulligan & Tomas J. Philipson are dismayed over a bid by Nobel-winning economists to prop up the BBB bill: Errant Nobels Try Again
Jonathan Williams & Nick Stark are here with a reminder that tax cuts didn’t start the fire: Tax Cuts Didn’t Lay the Federal Debt Trap
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Steven Spielberg has improved upon a flawed classic. From Kyle Smith: Can West Side Story Be Saved from Itself?
Armond White highlights a shocking work of Covid honesty from a Romanian director: Bad Luck Banging Critiques the New Normal of the Covid Era
Brian Allen finds another cultural gem in Texas: Japanese Ceramics at Dallas’s Crow Museum
SAVOR THE EXCERPT EXCELLENCE
Ryan Mills has been providing stellar reporting from the Jussie Smollett trial since the start. This week’s coverage can be found here. But his story on the verdict captures the whole sordid saga:
Smollett was found guilty on five of the six counts of felony disorderly conduct, low-level charges, each tied to making a false report to police. The Empire actor showed no emotion as the verdict was read, standing motionless with an attorney’s hand on his shoulder.
A sentencing hearing is expected to be scheduled in January. Smollett will remain free on bond. He could face up to three years in prison but could also be released on probation. The severity of the sentence will in part depend on whether Judge James Linn determines that Smollett perjured himself during his testimony, as the prosecution alleged. . . .
The jury’s ruling marks the end of one of the most bizarre national criminal cases in recent years. Smollett, who is black and openly gay, claimed that two attackers — at least one of them white — jumped him out of the blue around 2 a.m. on January 29, 2019, used racist and homophobic slurs, doused him with bleach, hung a noose around his neck, and yelled “this is MAGA country,” a reference to then-president Donald Trump’s slogan. . . .
But there were red flags from the start, for anyone willing to look.
For one, why would two men be walking around downtown Chicago in subzero temperatures at two in the morning with a noose and a hot-sauce bottle filled with bleach on the off chance they would stumble upon a gay black celebrity? And why would anyone declare Chicago — where Hillary Clinton won almost 74 percent of the vote in 2016 — MAGA country?
With all the debate and angst over Build Back Better, it’s easy to forget how foolish and sloppy Biden’s first big spending package was. Brian Riedl reminds us:
ARP’s more urgent failure is its significant contribution to today’s soaring inflation. In early February, CBO estimated that the baseline economy would operate $420 billion below capacity in 2021, and a total of $857 billion (or about 1 percent) below capacity over the next four years before returning to full employment in 2025. Even for those soft Keynesians who believe that government spending has a small multiplier, a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill would vastly overshoot the output gap. And once America’s output capacity taps out, any additional stimulus will simply bring inflation. Don’t take my word for it. Top Clinton and Obama White House economist Lawrence Summers warned Democrats that ARP would accelerate inflation.
And inflation is precisely what occurred. . . .
Speaking of economic malpractice, even rising Covid vaccination rates and the prospect of a general economic reopening did not dissuade lawmakers from including a $300 weekly federal unemployment benefit bonus. This bonus combined with the typical $387 in weekly state unemployment benefits to equal $687, or the equivalent of roughly $17 per hour. That exceeded the wages that a large share of unemployed workers had been earning in their previous jobs. Accordingly, the number of unfilled job openings soared to unprecedented levels. Many employers proved unable to lure new applicants, and the labor-force-participation rate remained roughly equal to pre-stimulus levels. . . .
Perhaps the most absurd ARP provision granted state and local governments an astounding $350 billion to close budget deficits that did not even exist. Democratic economists Jason Furman and Mark Zandi warned lawmakers that $350 billion was excessive and unnecessary, especially since Washington had already provided states with more than $500 billion in emergency pandemic aid. Lawmakers did not listen, and California now projects a $76 billion budget surplus over two years — nearly half of its $165 billion general fund budget. State and local government revenues are now 16 percent above pre-pandemic projections, and many governors have little idea what to do with such a large one-time cash infusion. Congress forbade states from rebating the federal funds to taxpayers. Creating permanent new state programs would recklessly outlast this one-time cash infusion. Addressing state and local infrastructure backlogs may have made the best sense, but Congress instead went ahead and recently threw $550 billion at infrastructure as well. It makes no sense for Washington to go deeper into debt so that state and local governments can sit on bloated budget surpluses with little use.
Robert Agostinelli reports back with a tale of wokeness run amok, upon visiting his high-school alma mater:
Aquinas Institute of a half century ago taught us that America was an exceptional nation. My own success is proof of that American dream, and there has always been a sense of indebtedness to the institution — although in recent years I had learned of the school’s drift, akin to many a Catholic institution’s mission shift, genuflection before political correctness, and affinity for and accommodation of the secular.
Still, presented with the opportunity to return, and having had from the school’s administrators and development officers an open invitation to visit and to speak, those emotional bonds compelled me to . . . go home again.
What transpired proved shocking and disturbing. . . .
My wife and I had offered to share our life experiences with junior and senior classes, and this we did. It is fair to say that the talks — through which we sought to reassert our ancient truths, to inspire students to understand them, to show the implications to them personally as a matter of self-interest, and to remind them of their right to the pursuit of happiness in a time when political correctness, Black Lives Matter orthodoxy, and woke ideology are determined to indoctrinate them — enthralled the attendees.
Most, but not all. . . .
Little did we know, our talk had “triggered” a tiny number of students. What ensued unmasked a cauldron of woke political correctness within the school’s teaching ranks, the administration, and the board of trustees.
Their mistake? They had allowed us to speak truth about our times, our country, and its future, and about our disdain for those sentiments by which America is held in low esteem. This does not go over well with the professional education class, even in a Catholic institution whose classrooms were once filled with the direct words of Fulton Sheen, espousing ancient truths now rejected as fairy tales and outdated mores.
Craig Shirley’s look back at the life and the example of Bob Dole is well worth the read, if you missed it last weekend:
On April 14, 1942, Lieutenant Dole was leading a company of the 85th Infantry Regiment in a battle to take Hill 913 when they found themselves engaged by heavy machine-gun fire. In an unbelievable display of courage, Dole charged and eliminated a machine-gun nest with a well-thrown grenade. After falling back into his foxhole, he saw his radioman, Corporal Ed Simms, collapse. He braved enemy fire again to pull the young man into his foxhole. But as he rose from the foxhole again, a Nazi shell exploded near him.
He later recalled seeing his parents and his “little home” flash before his eyes. When he came to, he couldn’t move his arms or his legs. . . .
What people don’t realize is how determined he was to regain use of some of his body. He worked with weights for hours, alone. He crept along the streets of Russell, alone, hour after hour. But he also determined to train his mind in academics.
First, he had to finish his undergraduate work at Washburn University, with honors. Then he earned his law degree, again with honors at Washburn in 1952. Along the way he married his occupational therapist. The marriage revitalized him. He became a new man, despite the infirmities. In 1954, he welcomed his first and only child, Robin Dole, to the world. Though his marriage would end in 1972, he maintained a strong relationship with his daughter.
While he had many role models through his life, Bob Dole had one hero: Dwight D. Eisenhower. The fellow Kansan, former president, and supreme allied commander of Allied Forces was one of the most essential figures in holding together the fragile alliance between Allies in World War II. Dole recalled one of his most memorably excited moments was the day Eisenhower announced he was a Republican. Perhaps it was this, or simply a desire to continue serving his country, but Bob Dole decided his future was in public service.
Shout-Outs
Timothy Jacobson, at The New Criterion: A pilgrimage to Pearl Harbor
Sarah Westwood, at the Washington Examiner: Far-left House members push four-day workweek
David French, at The Dispatch: Don’t Denigrate Adoption to Defend Roe
Charles Fain Lehman, at City Journal: New York City’s Drug Experiment
CODA
Not very tanned but certainly rested, this newsletter impresario (Kevin Nealon translation: middle manager) is back in the saddle (Kevin Nealon translation: basement home office) after some time traveling out West with family (no translation needed; this actually is what I was doing). A hearty thanks to Isaac Schorr for handling Weekend Jolt duties these past two weeks.
Since the scenery and the vibe are still on my mind, to close things out, here’s Springsteen singin’ about the West, about dreams and faded glory, about cowboys on screen.
And might as well share some pictures from the trip, right? A few snapshots follow of those beautiful empty spaces found all over this country. Mostly empty, anyway.
Sedona:
Mike O’Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge, at the Hoover Dam:
View of the Channel Islands, from Santa Barbara:
Got a tune? Want to share? Send a link to jberger@nationalreview.com. Thanks for reading.