After three weeks of honest coverage, the mainstream media is finally reverting back to its normal state of sycophancy towards the Democratic party. When the debate with former President Donald Trump illustrated their coverup of President Joe Biden’s mental decline, news networks began calling on him to step down, stating that he was incapable of serving for another term. Now that he has backed out of the race, President Biden has regained his old status as the patriotic old defender of democracy willing to put his country over personal ambition. While such flattery is clearly dishonest it pales in comparison to the media’s newfound obsession with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Indeed, their coverage of her resembles that given to a man named Barack Obama who ascended to the presidency in 2009. Despite clear evidence of his radicalism, the media presented former President Obama as the new hope of his country, ready to usher in an age of prosperity and tolerance. All but forgotten was the fact that his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright had blamed America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks and said “God damn America.” Then Senator Obama deflected from these comments by stating that he didn’t think his church was controversial and that Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” The difference between an uncle and a pastor, however, is that one does not choose their own uncle. You do choose the person who marries you and baptizes your children.
There are other instances in former President Obama’s past that point to his sympathy towards radical positions. During a 1991 demonstration at Harvard, he encouraged his listeners to “open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell.” Bell was the founder of critical race theory, a legal framework holding that the United States is fundamentally racist. Not only does CRT hold that America had racist laws in the past (a contention which nobody would dispute) but that our current legal framework and Constitution need to be dismantled. As early CRT scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic have written, CRT “builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.” (from Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 2012 NYU Press). Both of these intellectual disciplines were heavily influenced by Marxist doctrines seeking to overthrow social norms through radical action.
Like all politicians, however, former President Obama was also an actor who was able to distance himself from his earlier radicalism in his race for the presidency. There can be no doubt that he was helped by a complicit media who lauded him as a hero.
The same phenomenon is happening today with the ascension of Vice President Kamala Harris. Like former President Obama, she has an exceedingly radical past. In 2019 an organization called GovTrack rated her as the most liberal senator at a time when Bernie Sanders was also a member of the senate. Since then, they have deleted the webpage in an attempt to boost Harris’ electoral prospects.
Similarly, the mainstream media has insisted that Harris should not be called the “border czar,” despite repeatedly insisting that she was tasked with stemming the flow of immigration in 2021. Now is a particularly strange time for the media to realize their alleged mistake. Perhaps they all simultaneously realized that their reporting was wrong. Even if one were to agree with the sycophantic talking heads, however, her past statements are still on record. She has said that she wants to decriminalize illegal border crossings and force taxpayers to fund healthcare for illegal immigrants.
Furthermore, the media routinely portrays Harris as a tough-on-crime prosecutor despite her fundraising efforts for the Minnesota Freedom Fund in order to bail out BLM rioters. Indeed, CBS recently denied this fact in what can only be described as an attempt to further her presidential prospects.
The efforts of liberals in the media to cover up Harris’ radical past represents a pattern that is consistent with their general treatment of the Democratic party. Rather than reporting on radicalism or condemning it, they attempt to polish the record of the candidate they are currently supporting.
In addition to their outright denial of facts, mainstream news networks have also used frivolous puff pieces to make their preferred candidates seem more relatable. In 2008, for example, MSNBC ran an article with the headline “Barack Obama’s ‘Fist Bump’ With Wife Becomes Internet Hit.” The story was thinly sourced and was apparently an attempt to bolster Obama’s status as nothing more than a regular guy. A CNN story recently took a similar tack when describing Harris’ consolidation of the Democratic party. The piece described her as“wearing a hoodie from her alma mater, Howard University, workout sweats and sneakers” and claimed that “she also called her pastor.” These seemingly unnecessary descriptions are meant to give readers the impression that Kamala Harris is an everyday American rather than a radical professional politician.
Fortunately, Harris is twelve years older than former President Obama was when he sought the presidency. This means that she has twelve more years of radical statements on record. Hopefully these statements will be viewed by the American people thereby thwarting the media’s attempt to rebrand her radicalism.
