NBC News’ Dasha Burns recently aired the first in-person interview with Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman since his stroke. The candidate needed a closed-captioned monitor to answer questions because of “auditory processing” struggles caused by his recent stroke. “In small talk before my interview,” Burns added, “it wasn’t clear he understood what I was saying.”
Oh, boy. Democrats swarmed, attacking Burns for stating the obvious: Fetterman isn’t OK. It’s remarkable to watch how quickly partisans can coalesce around a new talking point. For months, the national media has been telling us Fetterman’s campaign was completely “normal,” even as video emerges of the candidate struggling to cobble two coherent sentences in succession. In September, Fetterman said that the “only lingering issue” he experienced was occasionally missing a word or “mush(ing) two words together.” Yet in only a few minutes last night, the entire left adopted a new position, denouncing any mention of his ailment as an “ableist” attack on a person with a “disability.”
Democrats struggled to calibrate this new accusation, comparing Fetterman’s cognitive struggles to handicaps. “How is this any different from Tammy Duckworth or Madison Cawthorn needing a wheelchair? How is it different from many elderly Senators who need hearing aids?” asked left-winger Eric Michael Garcia. Others wondered if it meant Fetterman critics believed “deaf” people should not run for office.
Well, for one thing, being paralyzed does not undercut a person’s ability to comprehend ideas or articulate thoughts or participate in debates — all essential functions of a politician’s job. Fetterman is not deaf; he is unable to process spoken words because of brain damage. There’s a big difference. Some people completely recover from strokes, and some do not. We don’t know the extent of Fetterman’s problems because he won’t release his medical records. That’s his prerogative. And there is no shame in suffering a stroke. Nor is it ableist to wonder if a candidate running for the most powerful legislative body in the world is able to do his job.
Kara Swisher, who recovered from a stroke, claimed she had spoken to Fetterman “for over an hour without stop or any aides.” Then, it’s fair to ask, why he can’t participate in a debate, and why can’t he answer basic questions from journalists without a closed-captioned transcriber? “If we’re going to judge folks by their verbal skills and zoning out,” she went on, “I have some internet billionaires you might want to meet. Most of them have all kinds of processing issues and seem to be doing just fine.” She added in a now-deleted tweet that autism is not “nearly as easy to solve as a stroke.”
Does Fetterman have processing issues, or is it autism, or is he just fine? They’re still working it out. This is what happens when you create a political talking point on the fly. Then again, these days, your position doesn’t need to be consistent or coherent, just accusatory and sanctimonious.
Indeed, the rage-filled meltdown over an interview has two purposes. One is to tamp down any undesirable “narrative” from forming. The Twitter mob views media as another activist branch in the struggle and has no patience for journalistic integrity. One leftist Twitter personality actually argued that NBC News “deliberately fixate(d) on and exoticize(d) Fetterman’s straightforward accommodations for his disability.” “Fixating” on an issue means having an obsessive attachment to it. NBC merely mentioned Fetterman’s accommodation — something the candidate himself discusses — and offered a passing comment on his inability to participate in a normal conversation. That is basic journalistic transparency.
The second purpose of the Twitter mob is to dissuade future acts of journalism. The peer pressure exerted on reporters within media outlets can be extraordinary. But social media, a place most journalists spend large chunks of their time, disincentives diligent or dispassionate political journalism. It was enlightening to watch CNN’s Jake Tapper, who will occasionally triangulate coverage to create the impression of balance, mollycoddle the president of the United States the same night Fetterman was interviewed. Many journalists are just partisans and ideologues, but many others simply value their careers. All of them know that unintentionally helping Republicans by engaging in acts of journalism will be met with struggle sessions and condemnation from the people you seek to impress.
Maybe Dasha Burns will be one of the exceptions.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books – the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on Twitter @davidharsanyi.
” Many journalists are just partisans and ideologues, but many others simply value their careers”. “Partisans and ideologues”? These “Partisans and ideologues” are communists and the others that “simply value their careers” are the “brainless sheep” in society, who willingly drink from the well of communism, because they are gutless cowards.
WHich is why for a long time, i’ve felt 99% OF our so-called media, NO LONGER deserves any 1st amendment protection..
EITHER THEY ARE FLAT OUT the democrat propaganda dept, OR THEY ARE cowards unwilling to DO THEIR JOB.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democrat pro-abortion nominee for the state’s U.S. Senate seat,
This fits right in with the treasonous Democrat Party’s intensions to destroy the U.S.A.
Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman since his stroke. The candidate needed a closed-captioned monitor to answer questions because of “auditory processing” struggles caused by his recent stroke. “In small talk before my interview,” Burns added, “it wasn’t clear he understood what I was saying.”
The treasonous socialist Democrat Party successfully manipulated the corrupt, demented, puppet president Joe Biden and his unqualified, fool, giggles Kamala Harris into the White House.
Now they are trying to manipulate mentally handicapped into Congress.
When brain debilitated people like Biden and Fetterman get elected to the highest offices of the land, the Democrat party of Socialists have indeed achieved their goals of turning our Democracy into an IDIOCRACY, where the best and the brightest bulbs of American leadership all get turned off, and the darkest of the Dumb and Dumbest all take their place who when they open their cans of darkness cannot overcome the light of American truth. Forced Equity in leadership where the lowest of the low I.Q.s are force fed into the depleted financial and political leadership kitchens of American power, hunger, pain and disease is all that will follow. Neither God nor the laws of nature are an equity warped form of democracy. Neither should we be. Let only the proven successful need apply. Anything less is guaranteed failure of the type we are now Biden experiencing, whose costs for electing them will be born to the 3rd and 4th generations most vividly in national debt and the hidden tax of inflation. We have cast our American peals before the Democrat porkers and they have trampled them and turned upon us to render the country into total deblitation. Never feed dogs, that which is Holy, nor allow them to devour and lift their legs upon our sacred American Constitution. There are way better men than Fetterman.
His T shirt ” My name is Fetterwoman! said it all. Another “WOKE” politician we do NOT need.
Cain slew Able,,,,,American voters need to put down the Fetterman Ableist in the same way. When Democrat politicians offer to kill you with kindness its time to kill them in the voting booth, with WE THE PEOPLE pulling the levers, not the fake Democrat Wizards of Odds operating behind the or curtains of corruption pulling the levers of government to the breaking point of nobody is in control.