MAN of DESTINY?
Honeymoons could hardly get any shorter. The day after Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States, Politico columnist Jack Shafer went to ponderous lengths to deplore what he regarded as fawning media coverage.
“Washington’s public works department should have built an emergency system of drainage ditches, culverts and tunnels to divert into the Potomac River the torrents of praise, approval and adoration the press poured down on President Joe Biden,” wrote Shafer. CNN, he said, carried on like a state media while the New York Times swallowed “the recent myth-making that has transformed Biden from a shifty politician … portraying him as a disciplined, restrained character when anybody who has studied his career knows he’s anything but”.
Shafer’s wider point seemed to be that a lot of Americans mistrust the mainstream media, therefore gushing over Biden after four years of excoriating Donald Trump isn’t going to “help build trust among media sceptics”.
One imagines the mainstream media’s collective response would be that Trump got what he deserved and so, thus far, has Biden. Besides which, they have more rewarding things to do than trying to “build trust” among people who regard journalism as fake news and propaganda as the real thing.
“If the former VP stutters or misstates the GDP of Azerbaijan, he will be tut-tutted and the subject of a
