Media

Anita Chabria,  LA Times - Apparently, the Bee Gees saw this coming. In their 1977 disco hit, which was not in fact about dancing, but about surviving on the mean streets of America, the Gibb brothers sang, “We can try to understand the New York Times’ effect on man,” a catchy indictment of the power of  society to crush souls. These days, it’s really society’s effect on the media that’s crushing.

We’re driving the media crazy. News outlets can’t understand why we don’t love them anymore. A kerfuffle has broken out among the elite of the national political corps about whether Harris is dodging the press — and whether that would be a good or bad move for winning the White House. The New York Times has run stories about it. So has this paper.

This has led to much pontificating from columnists more politically seasoned than myself on whether Harris is smart in taking her messaging straight to the people in rallies and on platforms such as TikTok, or whether it’s an affront to both voters and democracy to avoid traditional on-the-record interviews with reporters.

Yes, like Trump, Harris hasn’t really laid out any specific policies.

But also, she hasn’t needed to. It has been less than a month since President Biden dropped out, and Harris is still high on a tsunami of good will. If we don’t know her specific plans, we do know some of her key positions: pro-choice, pro-union, pro-democracy, anti-hate.  For now, anyway, that seems to be enough — to win, if not to please the media.