Eric Boehlert: How the media normalized QAnon smear of historic Black nominee

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/how-the-media-normalized-qanon-smear

How the media normalized QAnon smear of historic Black nominee
Ugly stuff
Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago


Signaling that the Republican Party would not allow the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be an entirely serious and dignified one, Republican senator Josh Hawley began trafficking vile claims about the first Black woman tapped for the Court.

For the last week, Hawley and his allies have been trying to turn Jackson, arguably the most qualified Supreme Court nominee in the last half-century, into a child-pornography apologist. It’s breathtaking, unconscionable and straight out of the QAnon cult playbook— but the press doesn’t care. In their eyes, there is no decency line that the GOP can ever cross. Nothing is out of bounds for them.

snip//

There’s a direct line between Hawley slandering Jackson as child pornography apologist and the right-wing’s sprawling conspiracy culture. During the 2016 campaign, Pizza­gate was concocted. It alleged that prominent figures in the Democratic Party were running a child sex ring in tunnels beneath a pizzeria in a residential Washington, DC, neighborhood.

Today, bizarre claims of child abuse, sex trafficking, and pedophilia remain the center of the crazed QAnon belief system. It’s no coincidence Hawley picked those issues to baselessly smear Jackson. In fact, the wider QAnon conspiracy theory insists that Trump remains on the verge of uncovering a throng of liberal elites for facilitating and participating in a sprawling child sex ring.

That’s the garbage today’s Republican Party is tapping into during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. And the press shrugs.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Hell, aren't they claiming Putin, with TFG's blessing, is wiping out the international child

marketing in Ukraine, or something?

[czarjak]

2. Actually give the Pussy-Grabber a pass though!

[spanone]

3. ...K&R...

[hay rick]

4. The press is cowed into passive acceptance of bad behavior. nt

[MustLoveBeagles]

5. Yes

For one party only.

[ancianita]

6. Willingly, too. It cows itself into its own passive acceptance of bad behavior, too.

The press choose the easier path, to show the traits of laziness (obedience to owners, mindless feel-good reporting of noise and distraction over signal) rather than make the professional effort to earn the trust of people who want to believe the press do their jobs of investigating and reporting the whole truth.

They make a living no matter what they report. They'd earn a professional living if they tried to report the truth.

[maxrandb]

7. The media is no longer about the truth, it's about the strategy

Facts, truth and investigating be damned. The press of the past 40 years can be summed up thusly:

- Retrumplicans to attack Judge Jackson as soft on pedophiles. Stay tuned to see if it works.

- Retrumplicans to blame Biden for Ukraine. Stay tuned to see if it works.

- Retrumplicans to blame Obama for EVERYTHING. Stay tuned to see if it works.

That's it. The attack strategy, and whether or not it will be successful is all that matters.