- While Joe Biden’s summit with Vladimir Putin saw no breakthroughs, the president’s Geneva press conference did yield some arched brows among the media. “To be a good reporter, you got to be negative,” said Biden to a CNN reporter who had surmised that nothing positive had resulted from the high-profile meet-up with Putin. “You got to have a negative view of life, it seems to me.” The president later apologized for being a “wise guy.”
But Biden’s point was more than a wise guy’s throw-away line. Professional, non-Fox journalists can’t be seen as cheerleaders if credibility still matters. The best do their due diligence and remain skeptics without morphing into cynics.
As Walter Cronkite once responded to a question about why the media seems so negative: “Nobody is interested in all the cats that did not get stuck in trees today.” The charge is to keep everything in context, don’t become an appeaser or a follower, and let the facts ultimately speak for themselves. Most “wise guys” would agree.
- “With millions of people relying on the Affordable Care Act for coverage, it remains, as ever, a ‘BFD.’ And it’s here to stay.” That, of course, was President Joe Biden on the most recent SCOTUS ruling upholding the ACA. “BFD” was a Biden hot mic moment in 2010. Yes, we know what it stands for.
- If House Dems have their way—with a Senate where they have the tie-breaker—there’s a likelihood that a resolution to expel Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol could succeed. It would also include replacing the bust of Roger B. Taney, the chief justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, with one honoring Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy waxed snarky when he noted that all of the Confederate statues up for removal are of (back-in-the-day) “Democrats.”