It was fun while it lasted, but I'm calling it https://t.co/u5Njtv3Ti4
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) July 21, 2023
… of Our Major Conventional Media. (But so fun, while it lasted!) Benjy Sarlin, for Semafor, “The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. boomlet is over”:
This week marked the official demise of a two-month stretch in which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was treated as a relevant candidate worthy of significant national media attention. The cause of death: Significant national media attention. His campaign is survived by several of its favorite podcasts.
Thursday’s House appearance told the story. Kennedy was invited by Republicans probing weaponization of government to testify about online censorship of his vaccine takes. Democrats took the occasion to excoriate him over a video in which he suggested COVID-19 may have been bioengineered to avoid “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese,” which he denied was antisemitic. Republicans have distanced themselves from the Jewish conspiracy part, but defended his overall value as a truth teller: “It’s why Mr. Kennedy is running for president, it’s to stop — to help us expose and stop — what’s going on,” Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said…
Kennedy had a brief moment in the sun because he had two superpowers. One, a famous father, which enabled him to soak up just enough support on name ID alone to look credible in early polls. Two, he was an irresistible canvas for every magazine reporter and opinion columnist in America to project their favorite hot take onto.
Do you have 10,000 words of thoughts on the role of conspiracy thinking in American politics? Every writer does! Do you have a hilarious riff about the broader Kennedy clan you’ve been throwing out at parties? Go publish it! Are you a conservative who wants to argue that both sides embrace anti-vaccine cranks? Worth a shot! Would you like to debate the very concept of debates? Go wild! Do you have an angle on how the press covers fringe candidates? I’m giving you one right now!
A similar thing happened with Donald Trump in 2016, who has a magnet for cable segments and thinkpieces alike. But while more coverage of any kind pushed GOP voters towards Trump, Democratic voters began running away as soon as they started learning the first thing about Kennedy’s campaign. And it’s a lot harder to hang a decent column on his candidacy when his base looks like the exact same group of right-leaning conspiracy enthusiasts we already know about.
A Quinnipiac poll this week found Democrats disliked Kennedy by a 2:1 margin, while his numbers were almost perfectly reversed with Republicans. And the picture looked even worse in New Hampshire, where he’s campaigned: A UNH poll found a whopping 69% of Democrats had a negative opinion of him…
media have spent decades greasing the skids for this fucking con, just like they did trump, and just like they've been doing for musk. media and journalists in all of these elite social circles own an awful lot of blame for these people.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) July 20, 2023
Bill Weld primaried Trump in 2020 and got 1% of the media exposure as the freak show primarying Biden, and he was a former governor.
— Now on Threads! (@agraybee) July 19, 2023
Maya Wiley just leveled RFK Jr’s bigoted rhetoric with an emotional intelligence not often seen in these hearings.pic.twitter.com/WGyuXbG43B
— Renee (@PettyLupone) July 20, 2023
West of the Rockies
He’s a dead-eyed creep.
mrmoshpotato
The K is for kook.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Rockies: Like a doll’s eyes!
Ruckus
@West of the Rockies:
I think you may be too nice….
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: The judges will accept “crackpot”.
balconesfault
Just not enough Venn overlap between QAnon and Dem voters.
I’m betting 29 of the 31% of the NH Dems who don’t have a negative opinion are going strictly on name recognition.
ColoradoGuy
I wonder what percentage of voters know the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
satby
I know he has a rare condition* that causes his vocal problems, but that awful sound coupled with the crackpot views and the angry, entitled old white guy demeanor add up to completely repellant for me. If course, he’d still be completely repellant even if he had the smooth resonant vocal delivery of Orson Welles too.
*spasmodic dysphonia: often caused by extreme drug use, which he admitted to in his past.
NotMax
Looking back.
“A little more of a liberal interpretation, Senator.”
:)
SpaceUnit
So long, weirdo. Enjoy being Sideshow Bob on Joe Rogan’s Youtube channel.
Shalimar
@satby: I know it’s not his fault and i have empathy for him for that, but his voice was completely unlistenable 20 years ago on Air America, when he was just an envirnomental activist pre-awful views. I can’t listen to him talk about the country’s problems even if he did have something worth saying.
Baud
First I heard of it.
Baud
@ColoradoGuy:
That’s what Big Cardinal Directions wants you to think.
HumboldtBlue
Wow, dying seconds of the game and the Zambia goalkeeper gets sent off with a second yellow card and gives up a penalty.
Tony Jay
Bloody weird having to get my passport stamped to travel on the Eurostar. Yet another ‘Brexit Benefit’. This departure lounge is busier than the complaints desk at an RFK Jr campaign speech in the Simon Wiesenthal Jr Centre for Vaccine Preparedness.
If anyone’s wondering where half of America are right now, they’re here. I’ll say hi for you.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Fire a gun into the crowd. Make them feel at home.
hells littlest angel
Funny how the Kennedy name and the Kennedy good looks are undercut by the Grandpa Simpson voice spewing Grandpa Simpson crackpottery.
OzarkHillbilly
Off topic but feel the need to pass this on:
Still not a drag queen.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Clever girl.
Was it a group called Good Samaritans, or is the article calling them Good Samaritans?
Brachiator
It is good and necessary that a moron like Kennedy is taken down. But I hope the Republicans who also want to indulge in conspiracies and anti-vax nonsense are also dealt with.
The Republicans invited RFK, Jr. The Republicans need to be held accountable.
Tony Jay
Baud: The international phase of the Baud ‘23 – You Can’t Impeach Me campaign is going to be lit, I can see it now.
Tony Jay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Woke made him do it.
eclare
Huh. An ad during the WWC for a VW that starts when you sit in the driver’s seat. Does it use butt recognition technology? Or can any butt can start it?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: That stopped me too but in a 2nd reading it looked like the article is referring to the 2 passersby as good samaritans.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tony Jay: Of course! It’s so obvious!
eclare
Wow amazing save by England GK!
Tony Jay
@OzarkHillbilly: The poor man was just thinking of the children and it got out of hand. If he hadn’t been forced by those saucy trans groomers in the videos he
likes to watchheard about in the internet to think of the children so regularly then this wouldn’t have happened. QED.Soprano2
@satby: Diane Rehm has that condition, too. It took me a little while he get used to hearing her voice without cringing, but she’s such a good interviewer it’s worth it. I miss her having a 5 day a week show. The condition can be treated with Botox injections. Oh, and RFK Jr is a horrible person. Makes you wonder what happened to him, he did good environmental work.
evodevo
@satby: I knew several people with the condition…however, there is a remedy nowadays…botox, of all things. I just wish it had been available when I knew these people…
Ha Nguyen
That Haitian goalie is pretty good.
Princess
Excellent point about Bill Weld. The media also gave zero attention to the fact the GOP basically cancelled their 2020 primary because Trump was afraid of opposition. Shows how in the tank the media is for GOP victory
Just imagine what they’d say if Dems were restricting their primaries in 2024 like the GOP did.
Baud
@Princess:
Hell, there’ll be more stories about the unsanctioned New Hampshire primary than there was about the GOP canceling primaries altogether.
Raven
There is a soccer thread, please use it!
Salty Sam .
Wow. I guess you and I listened to her on different days- what I recall was her giving way too much platform to centrists, and allowing “both-sidesing” to a massive degree. She seemed to me to be the ultimate DC insider.
To each his own I guess…
lowtechcyclist
Gotta agree with Golikehellmachine:
As long as the chattering classes are willing to do puff pieces and inflate the profiles of crazy people, crazy people (and those who would find a benefit in using crazy people to their political advantage) will continue to take advantage of the fact that the media treat our politics like the society pages.
Dangerman
Just to piss off RFK, I got another booster. Didn’t qualify but an opportunity presented itself (not reproducible) and I said stick me.
BellyCat
@eclare: My seven year old will love this (idiotic) feature!
SFAW
@satby:
Interesting how the Partei of Traitors supports him, while telling us that Hunter and his Dad are History’s Greatest Monsters.
mali muso
@Soprano2: One of my favorite podcasts, Maintenance Phase, did an excellent episode on him last week and traced his descent into the crazy. Worth a listen!
SFAW
@Dangerman:
So you landed the sticking?
SFAW
@Raven:
“You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!”
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, I’m hoping that would be because YOU will be one of the candidates.
mrmoshpotato
Go bitchslap Nigel and BoJo (and the rest of the Tory trash.)
How long until Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have successful referendums that go 🖕?
zzyzx
@Tony Jay: I thought you’d always need that going into the UK since they were never part of the Schengen area. I know I needed to have my passport stamped and go through a very quick border check on Eurostar on a London > Paris trip in 2018.
The Pale Scot
@Tony Jay:
But the passport is BLUE!!!!
Another Scott
@Tony Jay: My J and her twin were in Switzerland recently. She said that Americans were everywhere there too. They were only able to get away from them on hikes. :-/
When we were there about 10 years ago, there were lots of Chinese tour groups – not this time. Maybe they moved on to Monte Carlo or something. Dunno.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Scott.
Juju
Lawrence O’Donnell did a segment on RFK jr. on Thursday’s show. It is worth watching. Now on to Cornel West and the no labels people and other third party morons.
Uncle Cosmo
@zzyzx:
Bingo! It’s the Schengen status that rules. E.g., traveling from the USA (non-Schengen) to Éire (Schengen) by way of Iceland (Schengen) and the UK (non-Schengen), one’s passport would be examined four times, once at each airport, then four more times on the way back. TJ is just casting about for a reason to fulminate in his inimitable logorrheic fashion.
Montanareddog
@Uncle Cosmo: Everybody arriving in and leaving the Schengen area has their passport checked but, prior to Brexit, British citizens would not have their passport stamped. That is the change Tony is fulminating about. Now, they are non-EU, they are effectively in the same bucket as, say, Americans and Canadians.
ETA: and Eire is not, and never was, in Schengen either, because it was important for Eire to keep borderless movement with the UK. So, Irish citizens arriving in Schengen do not have their passports stamped and can use the EU queue at passport control, but Brits cannot and they get stamped.
topclimber
@eclare: Way late but it uses a butt dialing system.
Tony G
@Brachiator: Yesterday the despicable Gary Null was whining that RFK Junior was being “censored” because people were quoting his own lunatic words about the Holocaust. Horrible human beings.
Bill Arnold
@Tony G:
It’s especially despicable because over here in real reality, they are, through propaganda which features absolutely false claims that vaccines are (net)( causing mass death, themselves committing mass homicide. (I have occasionally poked at such claims. They do not survive even lightweight poking. They are bullshit, grounded in bullshit, bullshit all the way down.)
Chris T.
What I don’t get is why RFKJr didn’t just run as a Republican.
Tom Q
@Chris T.:
Because rat-fucks don’t work that way.
Captain C
@Chris T.: Much easier to RatFucK the Democratic primaries if you’re running in them.
Tehanu
@Soprano2:
Well, gotta figure seeing his uncle and father be murdered when he was in early adolescence had something to do with it. I doubt he really got the psychiatric help he so obviously needs.