I am wracked with guilt over the way I sat transfixed and watched someone die on live television. Ghoulish? Macabre? Insensitive? Yes, I was guilty of all of those things.
In my defence – and I admit it is a weak excuse – it did look as though the person had already died some time ago.
But before you take to social media to flay me alive, I do ask you to consider your own reaction to the end-of-life display by President Joe Biden in his debate with Donald Trump.
And, of course, I am talking figuratively. Biden took to the hustings after the debate in a desperate attempt to prove he was very much alive and planned to remain so after being re-elected. I’m not sure he succeeded.
There is no getting away from the fact that he died a death in front of the cameras in CNN’s Atlanta studios. Even the most ardent Biden supporters had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they said Trump’s falsehoods were more damaging than their own leader’s fumbling missteps.
Media commentators were excoriating in their descriptions of Biden’s performance, and none more so than the Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn who drew on an imaginative array of metaphors to describe not only Biden’s performance but also the spectacle of two bizarre opponents slugging it out. Here are a few examples:
Last night’s US Presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, made a bar-room brawl in the Bronx between two incontinent old age pensioners look decorous…Biden and Trump reminded me of Statler and Waldorf, the quarrelsome geriatrics from the front row of the balcony on The Muppets…If the President had been a racehorse at Ascot last week, the steward would have put him out of his misery with a single shot to the temple…The post-match quarterbacks on Republican-friendly Fox News were enthusiastically describing last night as a victory for Trump. Which, because of Biden’s cringe-making meltdown, it probably was. But honestly? Trump was kicking a cripple. It was excruciating to watch.
Littlejohn was not alone in delivering damning descriptions. Shannon Proudfoot, writing in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, recalled a ghoulish episode of the cartoon South Park in which Britney Spiers walks around with most of her head missing after shooting herself in the wake of relentless bullying. Comedian Bill Maher, on his show Real Time declared that Trump would not have got away with lying if Biden had been there. Time magazine’s Philip Elliott fact-checked a comment by Biden’s wife that he was prepared for the debate and declared it false.
And the New Zealand Herald, which keeps an ever-watchful eye on the local property market, quoted comedian Jon Stewart saying after the debate that he needed to call a real estate agent in New Zealand. I half expected to see the logo of NZME’s real estate marketing arm OneRoof on the story. After all, it appears on so many.
The more sombre reflections were no less damning. The Economist said that if the Democrats had thought the debate would give the lie to Republican assertions that Biden’s powers were failing, “he presented irrefutable evidence to back them up”. The Wall Street Journal described Biden’s debate performance as “painful”, and the Boston Globe declared Biden had lost the debate “thoroughly, overwhelmingly, undeniably…in such a candidacy-crippling fashion”.
The most forceful – and arguably the most influential – verdict was given by the New York Times. Its editorial board stated in the Friday edition of the paper, that “the greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election”. It described him as “the shadow of a great public servant” who struggled to respond to Trump’s provocations, lies, failures, and proposals. More than once, the editorial noted, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence. It concluded by leaving no-one in any doubt about what Biden and the Democratic Party needed to do.
The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: Acknowledge that Mr Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr Trump in November.
Such an acknowledgement on the part of both Biden and the party whose nomination he will seek in August is yet to be forthcoming. One can only hope that the New York Times’ commonsense plea takes root with donors and powerbrokers who have the ability to force Biden’s hand. If that does not eventuate, and Biden contests the election, the prospects for his country and the world are too awful to contemplate.
If Trump wins, the White House will be occupied by a self-serving convicted felon who Mr Biden believes has “the morals of an alley cat”, and whose relationship with the truth is not so much fleeting as severed.
If Biden wins, an octogenarian with what might charitably be described as ‘brain fade’ may be required at any given moment to issue presidential orders in the wake of another Russian invasion in Eastern Europe or a Chinese move on Taiwan. God help us if those decisions have to be made when he is in the same state he was in when facing not-very-challenging questions from two CNN debate moderators.
Some may dismiss concerns about Biden’s age and his ability to see through another term by claiming last week’s fiasco was “only a debate”. I would remind such people that ever since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, voters have placed considerable store by how participants perform.
They say perception is everything, but last week’s debate went beyond perception. It proved Joe Biden is old. He is not “no longer young”. He is old. He is too old to sensibly contemplate another term. And he is old enough to remember Hans Christian Anderson’s folktale The Emperor’s New Clothes and to realise that that he is deluding not the public but himself.
Sad but not unexpected
The imminent demise of Sunday News (last issue July 28) is a sad moment in the history of New Zealand media. For 60 years it has provided a tabloid and sometimes titillating view of the world and periodically rattled the powers that be.
For me, it was ‘the opposition’. I worked on the Sunday Herald (the Wilson & Horton era’s foray into the Sunday market) and every week we tried to beat the News with a better – or more eye-catching – lead. Sometimes we succeeded sometimes not. Once or twice we turned up in the same clothes: “Kirk dead” in banner type on both front pages.
However, the glory days for Sunday News are long gone. The Sunday market is too crowded at a time when print circulation is in decline. The economics for three Sunday titles simply do not stand up. That is clearly in evidence when you consider that much of the content of the Sunday News is now shared with its sister the Sunday Star-Times.
The only significant difference between the two titles is presentation. The SST remains relatively restrained while the News delights in screaming skulls. That, however, is insufficient justification to continue both mastheads.
The closure of Sunday News will now see NZME’s Herald on Sunday take what is left of the tabloid market while the Sunday Star-Times secures the more measured ground.
Still, I will miss the News’ sometimes brilliantly tabloid headings. Last Sunday, the News reproduced its more memorable front pages in announcing the closure and some of those lead headlines were testaments to editorial creativity. My personal favourites: “Ocker soccer shocker” when the All Whites took a pasting, and “It’s herstory” when Helen Clark won the 1999 election and became the country’s first elected female prime minister.
On a brighter note
This month marks the 30th anniversary of Pacific Journalism Review, the journal founded and championed by journalist and university professor David Robie. PJR has provided a unique bridge between academics and practitioners in the study of media and journalism in our part of the world.
The journal is now edited by Dr Philip Cass, although Robie continues to be directly involved as co-editor of some editions. The latest edition (which they co-edited) explores links between journalists in the South Pacific with the conflict in Gaza, together with analysis of the wider role of media in coverage of the plight of Palestinians.
A special 30th anniversary printed double issue will be launched at the Pacific International Media Conference in Fijion Thursday night. The online edition of PJR is now available here. (https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/)
Sustaining a publication like Pacific Journalism Review is no easy feat, and it is a tribute to Robie, Cass and others associated with the journal that it is entering its fourth decade strongly and with challenging content.
Concerning the cognitive decline of Joe Biden, aren’t you missing a couple of rather important points?
Firstly, it’s not if Biden WINS that an octogenarian with what might charitably be described as ‘brain fade’ may be required at any given moment to issue presidential orders in the wake of another Russian invasion in Eastern Europe or a Chinese move on Taiwan.
That’s the situation RIGHT NOW, not just after the election.
It is highly likely that the Chief Executive Officer of the most powerful institution on planet Earth is suffering from senile dementia. He’s scheduled to hold that position for at least another 7 months, that’s kind of a big deal. A lot is known about the progression of senile dementia, there are good days and bad days, but overall, it only goes in one direction, down.
This directly relates to my second point. Senile dementia is a slow process, this didn’t happen overnight. This process has been happening for a long time, probably years. Did the White House press corps and their orbiting media constellations just discover this overnight, or have they been ignoring and/or suppressing it for years?
The presidency of the United States of America is a power node of enormous importance, therefore the reporting on it should be subject to the highest standards, have those standards been met?
It could be time for an investigation, perhaps a bit of recent media archeology is called for. What was the mainstream press reporting on the cognitive state of the president over the last few years and how did it flip so suddenly?
I don’t deny the hypothetical crisis I outlined also exists in Biden’s current term. I chose to concentrate on the nomination process rather than addressing the considerably more tortuous process of removing a sitting president from office. For good reason, it is a high hurdle.
This situation, and it’s a hugely significant situation that goes well beyond Joe Biden’s mental faculties, it goes right to the heart of the most powerful nation on earth, is a scandal for the entire mainstream media complex.
This situation didn’t just occur last week, it has clearly been going on for months, probably years and those who could see it most clearly were not the ones closest to the centers of power but those furthest from it. It was the bloggers and citizen journalist, not the professionals who spoke truth to power. None of those willfully blind professionals will be held accountable for this, at least not directly. Nobody at a major news outlet or network is getting fired over this and no deep introspection over how they got this so wrong for so long will occur.
The consequences of this obvious media bias and corruption will be that the already very low faith that the western world has in the western media, will continue to sink even lower.
Not so. Mainstream media were questioning his age over a year ago, although there were differing opinions on whether his strengths outweighed that significant weakness.