Today, more than a dozen publications were featuring a Herschel Walker event in Richmond Hill. He didn’t take his shoes off and start sucking his toes, so, for the most part, the media coverage is positive.
In the meantime, you can’t find one single story on Senator Warnock. Not on him, specifically. You can find several about him and Walker, both. But not about him. I had to go to his campaign web site to find out he’s currently in Atlanta.
That the media can impact the election with this grossly uneven coverage doesn’t matter, because to them, it’s all about eyeballs and clicks. Attention. It’s all about attention. And what generates attention?
Republicans and their never-ending show of crazies: the crazier, the better.
All Walker has to do is show up and he gets attention. Why? Because of the idiotic things he’s said in the past. My particular favorite was the one about bad air from China coming over here, and our good air going over there. I’m less fond of his demand that women obey him when it comes to our healthcare choices—particularly since his philosophy seems to be do what I say, not what I do.
Sure, you say. It’s good to expose idiocy in a Senatorial candidate. Except now, Walker’s minders have him sticking to the script and following the party line. So when he gets media attention now, the news folks can’t help but comment on the fact that Walker showed up, and he acted normal.
The same applies to JD Vance. To Mehmet Oz. To Boebert. To…well, you get the point.
And when the Republican candidates do the crazy, well, that’s OK, too. The media’s right there, except they aren’t. The Republicans do the crazy at audience-friendly pep rallies. And they do the crazy on friendly media shows, like Tucker Carlson’s, where there’s no real questions; never any pushback. In environments where the rest of the media might say, “Well, hold on now…,” the crazy gets put away.
So in rallies, Walker is against any form of abortion, no matter what. But in the studio or the debate, well, he’s no such thing. Whatever the GOP decides here is OK by him. And too many (not all, but too many) in the media just let it all slide…because after all, they’re fair and balanced. Right?
When the media chooses to go along with the Republican ploy—giving attention to the crazies and then normalizing their behavior when they behave—we all lose. We lose fairness in media coverage. We lose fairness in truth in reporting. And with so many Republicans being election deniers, we risk losing our democracy.
But hey, look what I did. I only talked about Walker. My bad. But since we’re talking about Walker and giving Walker attention, I think I’ll let Pastor Jamal Bryant have the last word on Herschel Walker.
