General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am perplexed, troubled, and yet unsurprised by all the vitriol being directed at Garland and Hur [View all]Sympthsical
(9,197 posts)And Hur would have been fully aware that the lede would be buried under it. He used loaded language that was impossible to ignore. There is no universe operating under gravitational laws where the media don't pick that up and put it on the front page the next day.
I'm probably one of the more sedate DUers and tend to operate under the axiom, "Never apply to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." And if cable news is at an 11, I take that as holy dictum that I should be reacting at about a 3.
I've read the report. This isn't incompetence. This was willful. There is no way Hur did not know precisely how this would land.
Now, look, do you have a point that we're a largely reactive media culture where everything on tv is the WORST THING EVER until next week when we'll have forgotten about it because another WORST THING EVER has come along? Sure, absolutely. People need to shut cable news off for ten seconds. It's making this country worse. It's an incubation chamber for mania.
But this was pretty damn bad. I have no charitable explanation for both Hur's report and Garland's allowance of that language. President Biden's mental acuity is a very sore and vulnerable political spot - it's one of the Republicans' main lines of attack against him. And Hur delivered a haymaker straight at it.
Special counsels should at least pretend to aspire to be neutral. And most of the report was fine . . . right up until that point where it nakedly wasn't.