I'm sure we all notice [View all]

how the media has more or less stopped talking about Epstein. DOJ last week releases to Congress a bunch of stuff that is mostly public record. No media outrage. Just more or less acceptance. Convicted felon, sexual offender, business cheat, habitually bankrupt both financially and morally, snuggler to people committing sex crimes involving underage females, grifter using his elected office to extort money for himself and friends all over the world, callous cruelty, bigotry on display.

All of this and yet the major media treats this all as just something being "observed" like it's "just another day", "calling balls and strikes" and they're waiting for another story to come along. Another ambulance to chase or grieving parent to shove a microphone at and say "Tell us how you feel."

Those of us who lived through the latter part of the Watergate scandal with Nixon saw a media that was relentless, rightly so, and made this a major focus day after day. We saw the media focus relentlessly on Jimmy Carter when the Iran Hostage Crisis happened.
Ted Koppel every night on "NIghtline" telling us that it was "Iranian Hostage Crisis Day number such and such". We don't see anybody in media starting off every nightly program with "Epstein Coverup.....Day number.....".

"And so it goes" was the sign-off by Linda Ellerbee and Lloyd Dobyns after they would lay out some truth on our TV screens. Big media won't allow programs like "Weekend" or "NBC News Overnight". The bosses get more pressure than their lack of spine can overcome. So now we get a media that accepts a press conference where a spokesperson lies to their face and denigrates them. They accept this out of some fear or worship while many of us remember Helen Thomas and her relentless push-back against propaganda and spin. Helen Thomas would have been physically removed from the White House Press Room by the current fascist regime.

What we have now is a New York Times that dutifully notes the destruction of our democracy and the immense grift as though they are reciting a grocery list. A Washington Post that didn't even bother with a funeral for its credibility. We have Maddow but the attack is on against her and the maneuvering to diminish her began long ago. We have John Oliver for those with HBO.

But late at night as millions of us sit up in the wee hours of the morning we remember Ellerbee and Dobyns and seeing reports nobody else dared to do about our prisons, our migrants in the fields, our indigenous peoples, chemical plants etc. So I'll go to work today, after being up in the wee hours again, and know what is missing, how it was and a time when it could be. And so it goes.