As our summer draws to a close with hints that a third Kennedy will be shot before next year’s election, let us examine an attempt made on his character when summer began.
In late June, Vox (the first journalistic outlet that made me suspicious those whom we now call “journos” are ideologically and socioeconomically similar graduates from colleges failing for the past decade to teach the liberal arts, born into enough privilege to have their metropolitan rent paid for them as they work thru a year or two of now mandatory internships teaching them what not to say and how to self-police before they are annointed—not by themselves nor by any readership—as writers of our news and social commentary) produced this pathetic self-tell:
“RFK Jr.’s fringe Democratic presidential candidacy, explained”
That’s a title. To be fair, it certainly isn’t the only recent piece calling the candidate today polling as the strongest contender within the major parties, the candidate with the highest approval rating, “fringe.” Several journos have used that term. And no, Vox isn’t even the only outlet to put that word in the title of a piece about him.
Because that’s what they learned during their internships: Calling a candidate “fringe,” especially a widely respected one, is journalism. Extra helpful adjectives like that are why we should trust media outlets like Vox. They let you know. Up front.
And it could be parrotry, another symptom of the laugh-less, touching-grass-less dispensers of our approved news and views. Parrotry accounts for a great deal of the diction in the title-focused articlettes framing our otherwise hopelessly misinformed understanding of the world. We need these enlightened observers to provide such adjectives, both accuracy and pertinence be damned, and any concerted, simultaneous use of identical terminology is only evidence of their efforts to make sure we hear the truth.
You call it parrotry. You should call it signal boosting, to be heard over the noise of malinformation.
malinformation: a new term invented this decade to describe accurate information that if consumed could lead people to dangerous or unhelpful conclusions. The term was coined by an equally new expert class called “disinformation experts,” who seem to have no self-awareness about what such a definition implies about them.
So let’s give credit where credit is due: for the more original word choice at the end of the title: “explained.”
“Explained” lets us know this piece will, expertly, break down the complicated political meaning of this extraneous Democrat candidacy that has so inexplicably become a thing.
Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer…
We haven’t even got past the subheading.
We should categorically dismiss Kennedy’s mature stances and fine political mind with the same label we know includes the MAGA Right, whom we are informed to equate with the group that refused the covid shots… plus I guess now Kennedy. Those who question any vaccine or its application or its scheduling for children must be categorically “anti-vaxx,” and also right-wing… except Kennedy…
… and except those Hasidic Jews in Colorado from a few years ago, where we were told it was dumb rich white hippie women causing a measles outbreak.
… and except most black Americans, who refused to take it and still strongly lean Democrat… and nearly all of Native America. But those groups refused for “understandable historical reasons,” so we’ve already sublimated those exceptions into subconscious vapor, excusing again our poor marginalized lessers for their expectable ignorance, as we were told to, because, you know, we can’t hold them to the same standard.
And these don’t matter if you don’t think about it at all. We’re good to go on to the end of the subheading:
“… isn’t a serious challenger to Biden — but he’s getting some traction.”
It must have been some serious traction. Would anyone be impressed at this point if my prediction comes true that his twenty-point high will double by the end of next summer?
No. You might have already thought the same.
But don’t even trip. He isn’t a serious challenger. How could he be? The DNC won’t let him compete on a playing field even close to even. You know that part in Bloodsport when they raise two thirds of the fighting floor so Van Damme has to fight that scary, rule-breaking killer on an uneven surface. Not even that.
So how could he be a serious challenger?
That must be what this article from this news outlet is about, the predictable anti-democracy of the Democrat primary as we saw in 2016. The bridge is out, there’s an unchecked brawl in the tunnel, and the train is delayed again, so let’s indulge in reading past the title, not that the writer expects more than 20% of us to.
But one of his Democratic challengers, anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Right off the bat. Introduce Kennedy and make sure in the next mention of his name to apply the anti-vaxxer label again. It’s almost like Vox knows its audience’s values, having a very clear read on what kind of people its skydiving readership has retained, and wants to make sure you didn’t forget, since the headline, what this candidate is about.
Disavowed by members of his own family…
If I start a characterization that way, I want anyone who has ever loved me to take me to Canada and enroll me in their M.A.I.D. program, because I am no longer myself.
But for Vox, one of a hundred interchangeable journo outlets that have adopted the advanced ethic of presumption of guilt by association, it is important to note that “the previously celebrated environmental justice lawyer” may have a difference of opinion with members of his family.
Sorry, his own family.
I almost can’t. I mean… Are they so insipidly pseudointellectual that they think people aren’t perceptive enough to notice the one-way trend, the contant interjection of these unnecessary verbal nudges, the denigratory connotations of excess adverbs and descriptive clauses developed during the mid-witted sarcastic banter every so-called liberal arts sophomore engages in to display what passes for social awareness at that life stage, still removed from real world experience—ohhh, that’s the issue.
now peddles false conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccine
Back that up. Tell us a single one that hasn’t already been proven accurate, and not only accurate but in contradiction with misinformation your outlet parroted as fact. Mention one.
Nope, not in the whole article. And not ever from this journo, I promise you. For some still just trying to get a good grade, their past words have exactly no value. Just like in school.
receiving the praise of prominent right-wing figures and Silicon Valley billionaires
Guilty! Never mind which prominent right-wing figures! (I’m guessing Russell Brand, Jimmy Dore, Tim Pool, Glenn Greenwald, you know… conservatives.)
Guilty I say! Also, he clearly takes TRT! The Nazis took TRT!!!
His campaign is predicated on ending what he says is the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country,”
Are you advertising for him? Or just displaying your own profound need to catch up? Quick test: give us a definition of fascism, that thing you so fear, so earnestly.
He sounds more like a MAGA Republican than a Democrat.
Boo-yah. Him sound diff’urnt.
The lifelong environmentalist pro-choicer who wants to use government to back first-time home buying doesn’t keep up with our shifting talking points nor lace his speech with our shibboleths. Him not sound exactly like us. So him bad. Disengage and chant together now: Nothing new! Nothing new!
And Kennedy himself has acknowledged that he holds controversial views.
I… what. I don’t even…
Is there anything to… add to that? I chose this particular reflexive spasm of a political piece because it well describes the hive mind still composing such embarrassing drek.
No c[r]ap, I’m embarrassed for you.
But I didn’t till just now recognize how… worryingly telling it really is. Let’s proceed more gently, aware our treading could crush what so fragile shouldn’t be lying in our way.
Despite all of that,
(Here’s the link to the piece again, so you can decide how for yourself the substantiveness of her critique, and whether it’s all that.)
I call this the ‘ol Fluff-and-Sum. Write several nothings of either zero relevance or zero merit, then summarize them as a guiding reminder for your little goldfish:
Despite alllll that terrible stuff you just read!…
… Kennedy seems to have struck a chord with voters.
Well, not everyone went to an Ivy school. Sigh. Sip.
That might be a reflection of the fact that Americans still revere the Kennedy name and are willing to give him a chance because of his place in a storied political dynasty, even if they may not know much about his platform. (Upstarts typically poll well initially, but their numbers tend to go down as voters start to learn more about them.)
How’s that goin’, champ? Your cult’s predictive power just keeps knockin’ ‘em out of the park, eh? My parents don’t even remember the Kennedy assassinations. But you think voters prefer a legacied name? Because political family dynasties have been so inspiring this century?
Biden isn’t currently facing any real threat from Kennedy when it comes to winning his party’s nomination.
You know you’re dealing with a keen political observer when they repeatedly dismiss a candidate using descriptives that something isn’t “real.”
(e.g. “Cancel culture isn’t a thing.”)
Again, how is that read holding? Still got that finger on the pulse? That’s the elbow, love.
He’s pushed disinformation about vaccines since 2005,
I want you to remember you said that, Mz. Narea. And, as ever, you forgot to mention an single example of the target of your disparagement, even one “disinformation.”
Biden won’t debate Kennedy or any other of his Democratic challengers, as is typical in a primary where an incumbent is running for reelection.
AAAAAAAA! Oh man… Nice dodge. A dodge on behalf? No, that was a dodge of having to criticize the pathetic, illiberal, telling unavailability of your basement candidate you would lose your whole world if you criticized.
(It’s a poopworld, sister. Red rover, red rover, the water’s fine. We get to breathe over here. Speak, even.)
I’m starting to feel mean. Like this poor woman really did just finish her internship. I’m sorry. Your language is filled with dross, concerned with slanting and spinning, empty of facts and argument. This is how not to write. Pick up a copy of Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones and figure out what matters to you, then get back to politics. All I hear is tribe, tribe, tribe; and not one of us, not one of us.
were even condemned by his wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines.
See how you’re using “even” again? Do you think readers aren’t distracted by that? Would your professor notice? The prejudice visible in your writing, I mean, not Hines. Use of “even” should be relatively unnoticed by the reader as it flows naturally with the point being stated. What is this swerving way out into un-ignorable and unnecessary curvature? I mean your writing again.
… opposed by all but one of his seven siblings.
Can you not stop?
He blames psychopharmaceuticals for mass shootings.
Is this a Vox-wide issue, not ever including an explanation or even a link to the counterargument, like, say, an article about how many mass shooters are drugged out of their already unbalanced minds and how many trans mass shootings the public isn’t allowed to know the psychopharmacology of? A+ for consistency, I guess.
(Now you can drop out, and check out some stuff not on the reading list. Shhh.)
Kennedy has drawn powerful allies in advancing his views. Just this week, podcaster Joe Rogan and Twitter CEO Elon Musk…
So it’s clear you’re relying on the casting by your publication and its many sister publications of these two personalities as dangers to the cult you’re totally not in:
Rogan, because his show is mostly about the views of hundreds of people who aren’t himself, and Musk because he is the kind of fascist who believes in stuff like free speech and the marketplace of ideas, both foreign to a graduate from four-to-seven years’ indoctrination of what to think, instead of how to think, by illiberal blowhard professors, vanities burnt by lack of recognition for their insights into the world outside academia they never grapple with, concern themselves with even more entrenching of their views by replicating themselves in your own borrowed vanity.
… tried to publicly goad prominent scientist Peter Hotez (who spent most of the pandemic trying to dispel vaccine disinformation) into debating Kennedy on the subject.
So this is mostly parrotry. How are Hotez and his views looking to y’all now? I couldn’t find a follow up by any Vox writer about Peter Hotez’s phenomenally well reimbursed public stances. Surely he is so well paid for espousing them publicly because their inherent strength would withstand both scrutiny and debate.
BUT WHY BOTHER PROVING SUCH TO “LIBERALS” WHO CANNOT IMAGINE THE NEED FOR SCRUTINY OR DEBATE?
Sounds uncomfortable, all that confront-y engagement. Mean, even. Not safe like college. We don’t even ask questions like we’re “doing our own research” or challenge statements made about “lived experience” in college. When you know what the smart and good thing is, why discuss?
Also, how discuss? You mean embellish our agreement? Use our vox to amplify the marginalized? Those poor marginalized…
Kennedy has also been endorsed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who shares Kennedy’s view that cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is an “exercise in democracy.”
And that’s it. Again zero context. Nothing else on this point. Not a word.
Can you at least tell me why it’s bad they would agree on such a thing?
Is it a presumption that separation of currency and government strengthens democracy, and that’s a bad presumption? Is Bitcoin itself bad because China has a lot of it and we should us a faster altcoin that doesn’t harm the environment so much?
Again you make no further comment, just leave as is the associations and insinuations we’re supposed to grant our own evaluation, which must come from some preconception, which presumably you share with those in whom you are trying to activate it. But I really don’t get it.
Care to explain this gliberal, cursory mention, maybe in a future piece? Is Bitcoin a right-wing thing now? I seriously don’t know. I’m not into Bitcoin. Please tell me the secret I am supposed to know about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency, or Jack Dorsey.
He’s received praise from right-wing figures including Alex Jones of Infowars, former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, and Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk.
Sharks like water. Do you like water? So you eat baby seals, is what you’re saying.
The author goes on to quote an expert who is similarly unworried by Kennedy, because he could “eke out a better-than-expected performance that could be ‘potentially embarrassing’ to Biden.”
That’s the real concern these authentic voices have, that the storytelling, obviously criminal president, who traded his constitutionally assigned powers with foreign powers while a representative of the people, could be “potentially” embarrassed.
No threat.
Nothing to read here.
I know some of you assumed I would be discussing the recent arrest of an armed imposter at one of Kennedy’s events, assumed to be an assassin. He could have been, but he also could have been a hired scout probing the quality of Kennedy’s security, and also could have been an agent from Kennedy’s side, enacting a false flag to draw attention to the Biden administration’s strange refusal of Secret Service protection to this obviously vulnerable candidate.
Because of Hunter Biden’s virtual immunity (#TeamBiden) granted during his gun charge trial in consideration of his extra specialness, he cannot plead the 5th on grounds not to incriminate himself, so his testimony regarding his (the president's) business dealings will be delayed till next year, or so I figure, conveniently scheduled for right about when the DNC is ready to lose Biden and replace his whole ticket in a surprise bait-and-switch no one in the world expects.
Whether it was a real assassin or a false flag, Kennedy has still not been granted the security force assigned to each of the Biden children and for some reason John Bolton.
Do I have to say what this implies about the state of our union?