Imagine this pathetic situation.
Imagine yourself praising the grocery store for putting new items on the shelves after the old ones had been purchased. Imagine yourself excitedly telling all your friends that the waiter at Applebee's brought a plate of food directly to my table that matched what I had ordered just minutes earlier.
Yet this is what I caught myself doing this week.
There I was, singing the praises of Time Magazine owner Marc Benioff, who rightfully criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her refusal to engage the public honestly through credible (read "non-cupcake") media interviews.
His statement was anything but heroic, and yet in our current moment of dealing with an utterly compromised Democrat Media Complex, it felt like a profile in courage:
'Despite multiple requests,' Benioff charged, 'TIME has not been granted an interview with Kamala Harris - unlike every other Presidential candidate. We believe in transparency and publish each interview in full. Why isn't the Vice President engaging with the public on the same level?'
You shouldn't get effusive praise for doing what you're supposed to do. Christians shouldn't get credit for being honest. Atheists shouldn't get credit for ignoring reality. Teachers shouldn't get credit for teaching. And media shouldn't get credit for reporting facts and evenhandedly holding the powerful to account.
And yet I found myself congratulating Time for reaching the bare minimum of journalistic standards.
That line about publishing "each interview in full" is particularly noteworthy given the recent debacle with CBS's 60 Minutes getting caught deceptively cutting Harris's boneheaded response to a question and replacing it with a different answer from a different portion of her interview. In the aftermath, the once preeminent news program has refused to publish the full transcript or release the unedited footage.
That's why even though my behavior is part of the problem (we have every right to expect more of our media rather than celebrate them for the bare minimum), I think it's understandable. Consider what just the last week has revealed about the state of our corporate media:
The New York Times downplayed the new charge that Kamala Harris plagiarized at least a dozen portions of her book "Smart on Crime." The paper even went so far as to manipulate a "plagiarism expert" by giving him only a handful of the offending excerpts to analyze.
MSNBC trotted out anchor Kristen Welker to badger Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about Donald Trump's cholesterol numbers, all while actively debating him over the redirection of FEMA funds as if she were a spokesman for the Democrat Party.
ABC news host Martha Raddatz humiliated herself trying to stand in the gap to defend Kamala Harris and her failed border policies by claiming "only a handful of apartment complexes" were taken over by Venezuelan gangs. Her guest, Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance responded indignantly: "Do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in America were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem?"
Speaking of Vance, this interview with The New York Times revealed far less about the Senator's knowledge of a subject, and far more about a journalist's willingness to play dumb in order to protect Harris.
The New York Times tried to promote Barack Obama's recent barnstorming for Harris among black men by releasing a profoundly dishonest piece, "Trump Spreads His Politics of Grievance to Nonwhite Voters." Never mind that Barack Obama himself has been the author and master of grievance.
All of this on top of the 60 Minutes scandal.
It's been such a spectacle of bias that only the geniuses at The View could come up with something as deranged as this:
Ms. Hostin, it's true that Kamala Harris may actually lose the upcoming election in a couple weeks.
But it won't be because the media hasn't sold the last shred of their dignity in trying to help her.
