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What is the difference between political commentary and reporting?
The distinction between the two is not as sharp now as it
once was, or pretends to be.
Pretends to be?
I do not think a convincing case can be made that print
media in the United States had ever been politically unconnected. News
writers gather their news from working politicians – that is politicians
holding office.
Here in Connecticut, Democrats have ruled the political
roost, particularly in the state’s large cities, for almost half a century. The
last Republican mayor of Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital City, was Antonia
(Ann) Ucello, who left office in 1971, a distant 53 years ago. The state’s
General Assembly is dominated by Democrats; all the members of Connecticut’s
U.S. Congressional Delegation are Democrats, the last Republican U.S. House
member, Chris Shays, having been defeated by Jim Himes in the 2008 election;
the last two governors are Democrats. And registered Democrats outnumber
Republicans in the state by a two to one margin.
There are no indications that this radical imbalance between
Democrat and Republican elected officials at the state level will be more
equitably adjusted any time soon. And this means that reportorial clients are
majority Democrats. Reporters do their business with Democrat office holders.
Republicans from time-to-time may be permitted to shout out alternative
political programs from the sidelines. But they really fall outside of Teddy
Roosevelt’s political “arena,” powerless lingerers in the audience, among other
non-participating witnesses to political events.
Roosevelt is often cited: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short
again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a
worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high
achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
knew neither victory nor defeat.”
I doubt that Republicans in Connecticut’s political arena may
properly be characterized as “cold and timid souls” bereft of “great
enthusiasms” or “great devotions” who dare not dare. I do know they are
underrepresented by a state media whose business it is to fill their papers
with news hawked by Democrat officeholders.
But this was not always the case. How did things get this
way?
There is a synchronicity, as mentioned above, between
Connecticut’s media and politicians, and not all of it is business related.
State Democrats are anxious presently, for campaign reasons, to portray the
Republican Party in Connecticut as having been abducted by “Trump the
Terrible.” But Trump’s influence upon Connecticut’s GOP as such is not likely
to extend much beyond his possible last term in office.
There are -- thank God and the authors of the Federalist
Papers, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison – constitutional bars
that prevent muscular presidents from the ever-present temptations of tyranny.
Or, as my dear old mother used to put it, speaking long ago of an obnoxious
candidate for president, “He only has four years, eight at the most,” to
unravel America’s unique experiment in personal liberty.
The claim that Trump, if re-elected to the presidential
office, will “destroy democracy in America” is clearly absurd, little more than
a campaign bumper sticker. One wonders whether any of the Democrat politicians
making this claim, largely for campaign reasons, have ever read Alexis de
Tocqueville Democracy in America.
“The American Republic,” Tocqueville wrote in a stunning
prediction, “will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the
public with the public’s money.”
Other elements that have transformed Connecticut into a
Democrat sinecure are, in no special order of importance, reportorial timidity,
a too friendly business relationship with politicians in power, intellectual sloth,
a crushing long-term Democrat Party majority in the state, and political
inertia.
Chris Powell is far more dangerous,
both as a commentator and a newsman, than most political operatives in
Connecticut, primarily because thinking about politics is, for him, not just an
entertaining pastime. He was, when he
first began working for the Journal Inquirer over in Manchester, the youngest
managing editor of a newspaper in the state. The paper he worked for, once
independently owned, is now a part of the Hearst chain of newspapers. The Hartford
Courant, once independent, is now part of the Tribune chain of papers.
Newspaper chains tend to have their own stables of reporters and commentators
and live in quiet despair that imprudent commentators will disturb their
carefully groomed sources, most of them in-office Democrat politicians and
their staffs.
Powell thinks people are becoming politically illiterate,
especially in the cities, and the remaining lonely literati have been
captivated, if not captured, by outworn credos, among them noxious post-Marxian
claptrap, refabricated and updated of course. These are two permanent stops on Powell’s
commentary organ. Some people may have noticed that rational argumentation no
longer plays a decisive part in political discussion. Powell still believes –
he has always believed – that rationality should trump the media-political
complex, and he has quoted in an approving manner Joseph Pulitzer’s maxim that
a “good newspaper should have no friends.”
Powell’s columns may be found at Chris
Powell Columns. He once butted heads with the editorial staff of the
Hartford Courant concerning an editorial he wrote, and the collision produced
an entertaining and instructive point-counterpoint preserved by Connecticut Commentary
under the title “The Stink War.”
Journalism should be a dangerous and disruptive enterprise. In
Trump’s case, there is no lack of opposition within the legacy media, but Biden
is left to graze undisturbed in fields of grain. Not so long ago, op-ed pages
in most newspapers carried vibrant contrary opinion. But presently contrary
opinion on the shrinking op-ed pages of many Connecticut newspapers invites
stern and humorless opposition from politicians who generally think they have
cornered the market on prevailing political opinion. What is the point, after
all, in enraging in-office politicians from whom many reporters and
commentators get their news?
A good news editor would from time to time dare disturb the
political universe and assign his reporters the task of presenting to majority
politicians in his state important questions that might ruffle the feathers of
the political birds in office.
It is not at all difficult to cite examples of politicians
in Connecticut who have not been grilled on important matters.
We know that the border crisis has produced a corresponding fentanyl
crisis in the United States, and we know that the product used to produce
fentanyl comes from China. That is,
Peter Schweizer tells us in his newest book,
Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans,
but the tip of the spear.
“You look at a situation like the fentanyl crisis,”
Schweizer recently told Mark Levin. “It’s killing 100,000
Americans a year. And a lot of people know that the precursors come from China.
What they don’t know is that China is involved in every single chain in this
link that leads to the deaths of Americans. The precursors come to a port at
the port of Manzanillo in Mexico. It’s run by a Chinese company. They send
those precursors up to a small border town in Mexico, where 2000 Chinese
nationals help them turn it into fentanyl. They take pill presses that are
imported from China, that are sold to the drug cartels at cost by the Chinese.
They make these pills. They then bring them across the border into the United
States.”
According to a CNN report, “More than 100,000
people died of drug overdoses in the United States during the 12-month period
ending April 2021, according to provisional data published Wednesday by the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s a new record high, with overdose
deaths jumping 28.5% from the same period one year earlier.” By comparison, In
2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people
died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC.
South American drug cartels have been enriched considerably
by a border they regard, correctly, as little more than a demarcation line on a
map. Border patrol agents, the last line of defense against aggressive South
American drug runners and their Chinese enablers, are now busily processing
illegal migrants, a change in function necessitated by the sheer numbers of illegal
immigrants crossing the border, 7.2 million since Biden assumed
office. Major sanctuary cities in the United States have been overrun by
illegal immigrants. Leading urban Democrats such as Mayor Eric Adams of New
York City have long felt the pinch.
Most recently, according to Fox News, “Adams on Monday doubled
down while speaking to a group at a town hall meeting in Canarsie, Brooklyn,
saying the sanctuary city law needs to be modified so that any migrant who
commits a felony can be turned over to ICE and deported.
Statutorily, Connecticut’s relationship with ICE,
particularly on deporting illegals in the state’s sanctuary cities, is icy.
Legislation barring sanctuary cities in New Hampshire failed in 2022, according
to a piece in National Public Radio (NPR) ironically titled “State House Republicans pursue focus on
illegal immigration even as data shows few border crossings.”
A competent news editor would suggest to his or her paper’s
best investigative reporter that he or she put the following question to every
one of the all-Democrat members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation:
There were in the United States in 2021 twice as many deaths from fentanyl than
reported deaths from firearms misuse.
Recent reports indicate that China is implicated in the manufacture and
distribution of fentanyl over what appears to be a highly porous southern
border. What bills have you written or supported that would reduce the mass chemical
murder of American citizens?
The question, well worth asking, will no doubt ruffle the
feathers of current Democrat officeholders up for reelection in 2024. But
ruffling the feathers of office holders is what an instructive and honorable
media is supposed to be doing.
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