We thought that American politics had reached its nadir in 1954 when Boston lawyer Joseph Welch said, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When Joe McCarthy kept coming in his false allegation that a certain lawyer was a communist, Welch interjected, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
That was on live television back in an era when TV was in its infancy. That simple, basic confrontation pretty much finished off McCarthy, who died three years later at the age of 48 of cirrhosis of the liver.
Nowadays, that’s bupkis. That certainly wouldn’t stop the likes of George Santos (who I had to put in the above meme because the only thing he hasn’t claimed to be is from outer space.) The tragic fact of how we do politics in this day and age is that you can’t rely on a candidate being truthful or on members of his own party, or even the opposition party, to get the real story. New York Times:
Interviews with more than two dozen associates, adversaries and donors, as well as contemporaneous communications and other documents reviewed by The Times, show that Mr. Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including in the upper echelons of his own party.
Well-connected supporters suspected him of lying and demanded to see his résumé. Another former campaign vendor warned a state party official about what he believed were questionable business practices. And the head of the main House Republican super PAC told some lawmakers and donors that he believed Mr. Santos’s story did not add up.
But in each case, rather than denounce Mr. Santos publicly, the Republicans looked the other way. They neglected to get the attention of more powerful leaders or to piece together shards of doubt about him, and allowed him to run unopposed in the 2022 primary. Some assumed that Mr. Santos’s falsehoods were garden variety political embellishments; others thought Democrats would do their dirty work for them and Mr. Santos would be exposed in the heat of a general election campaign.
But Democrats struggled to do so. In 2020, the party incumbent, Tom Suozzi, dismissed Mr. Santos as a nonviable threat, and conducted no opposition research at all while cruising to victory. When Democrats did vet him two years later, they failed to find some of the most egregious fabrications that prompted members of Mr. Santos’s campaign team to quit.
Democrats then labored unsuccessfully to convince the news media, which had been weakened by years of staff cuts and consumed by higher-profile races, to dig into the troubling leads they did unearth. Aside from The North Shore Leader — a small weekly newspaper on Long Island, which labeled Mr. Santos “a fake” — and a few opinion pieces in Newsday, New York’s media machine paid Mr. Santos scant attention.
The problem the small weekly newspaper had is that it did, in fact, unearth some of Santos’ fabrications but larger outlets simply didn’t pick up on the story. New York’s media machine, as it’s referred to here, was dormant. Santos was allowed to continue on, expand his operations, expand his lies, and the public bought it. And who wouldn’t? Santos fantasy candidate is one heck of an accomplished guy. Too bad the real thing that Santos is can’t hold a candle to his self-created legend.
This needs to act as a warning, on a lot of levels. We need to be more vigilant in this country. Political office can’t be the purview of the clever and the criminal or we are surely done.
The cheaper the crook, the guadier the banter. Humphrey Bogart
Oppo research was I thought a standard practice. At least it appears like some did take place but I still say Democrats dropped the ball, then recovered their fumble and ran back towards their OWN goal line! I simply will not accept that they “tried” to get major outlets to pick up on things. WTF is the internet for? Local TV and radio ads in the District could have been run, flyers produced and distributed and the old standby of volunteers outside campaign offices with banners and signs asking questions. And posting THAT content online, including on local news station’s websites! No, they didn’t take Santos or the race seriously, and had they done so and done it right the GOP covering for him could have painted a larger and damaging picture for other GOP candidates in NY.
NYT has been resting on its withered and cobwebbed laurels for a long time. They show no indication of recognizing that they even have problems.
Mainstream media, run by the rich for the rich, was too busy playing both sides so they can keep up the hypocrisy that they are fair and unbiased. Sure. I guess so was Goebbels.