Getting the Village band back together

I got out my old Alanis Morrisette CD this week and listened to “You Oughta Know” for the first time in a decade or more. I had been hit with a strong sense of deja vu and it made me feel nostalgic. A Clinton scandal was burning bright and there was a feeding frenzy on cable news of which I hadn’t seen the likes since Ezra Klein was in grade school. It seems Hillary Clinton did something terrible to do with records she didn’t keep properly and “it doesn’t pass the smell test”. In any case, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”. Or it could have been fog. A light mist perhaps, who knows? But something very serious must be going on or all these people wouldn’t be talking about it, right? So they have to talk about it. Incessantly.

Just like back in the day, no one was prepared to report what was actually supposed to have been wrong about all this, of course, because it was pretty clear after the first NY Times vague report was clarified that Clinton didn’t actually break any laws and there’s no evidence she didn’t adhere to the rules that were in place during her tenure. Sure, something could be wrong with it, but until someone else does some reporting it’s important to discuss ad nauseum what “the problem” really was: this scandal, true or not, important or unimportant, “feeds the narrative” that Clinton is a person of hugely flawed character. None of them were prepared to say this themselves, of course, being unbiased reporters just reporting the facts and all. It’s just that a lot of other people think Hillary Clinton is a devious, Machiavellian control freak and therefore it’s important to report this story. Which will, of course, further feed that narrative.

This is the laziest form of political reporting and commentary imaginable. They are basically sitting around gossiping about what people in DC say about Hillary Clinton and surmising that this story will force them say it even more. Which they will because all these commentators are saying it 24/7 on cable news in a shrill, shrieking feedback loop they mistake for actual public opinion...