TRUMP CHALLENGES HARRIS to BATTLE of WITS; PRESS FAIL to NOTICE.
Perhaps today's footsoldiers of the Fourth Estate grew up in oddly tranquil worlds where one could challenge the capacity of a rival and never be called out to prove they can do any better.
That’s what’s so puzzling about the male presidential candidate’s unmanly attack on his female rival as a “low I.Q.” (intelligence quotient) individual a couple of weeks back.
One might have expected ABC News, which is expected to carry the presidential debate, to have lined up features on TQ testing already, and recruited the Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of a Major Medical University to administer tests to the two candidates.
Of course the ccandidates would reserve the right not to have their scores published.
And we voters would reserve the right to draw our conclusions.
It’s a wonderment how much the lack of comment — not to say of outrage—on the insult to V.P. Harris’s intellect reflects tolerance of racism, how much it’s the product of misogyny, and how much the result of reporters being too lazy to look up “IQ” on their smart phones.
It’s worth mentioning that ABC is about to air a program ostensibly about a crime-solving cleaning lady with a 160 IQ. Maybe the cross-promotional opportunities there could earn us a little coverahe of government and politics.
Imagine a pre-Trump world where one of the two leading presidential candidates called his rival "low I.Q."
What would have been the reaction?
It would NOT have been a dutifully stenographic reporting of the comment without any attempt to put it into the context of reality.
The insult would have created a furore.
The reaction would NOT have been a reflexive editorial response that "It's just crazy Uncle Donald spouting again, and if he thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, we'll just humor him."
Editorial normalization of criminal unreality through the complicity of omission is the most conspicuous feature of the Putin/Trump world.
And the least mentioned.