Are Nellie Bowles, Jonathan Chait, the Atlantic, the New York Times going to apologize for journalistic malpractice?
It's bizarre that pundits who are so, so wrong just go on their merry way without mea culpas.
On last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher, progressive TV host Krystal Ball made the point that charging Donald Trump with a crime wouldn’t fix the “underlying rot” that led to his ascendence and the events of January 6th.
Maher countered that, sure, but it would mean something—likening it to putting a guy in jail for robbing a liquor store. As they’re exchange heated up Maher demanded to know if she thought people should go to prison when they commit a crime and when Ball aired the perfectly reasonable idea that, no, jail isn’t the best solution to some crimes the other guest, James Kirchik, smugly deadpanned, “Maybe she should run for DA of San Francisco.”
Maher threw his head back and roared with laughter for like 20 seconds as did his audience. Ball backed off.
That a joke about a district attorney had such mainstream resonance is a testament to the power of the campaign against him—as well as wall-to-wall media coverage right before and right after the recall.
Nellie Bowles called San Francisco a failed state, blaming Boudin. Jonathan Chait, writing in New York Magazine, concluded that voters had unequivocally rejected criminal justice reform. The New York Times news section concluded that voters had unequivocally rejected criminal justice reform. The Atlantic had three stories pinning crime on Boudin. One was called, “The People vs. Chesa Boudin,” suggesting Boudin was a criminal and the People rose up organically. On trial, too, they suggested, were all criminal justice reforms that had “gone too far” and triggered a backlash. All suggested this backlash occurred in communities of color, and that Boudin’s policies were embraced by virtue-signaling white liberals.
You almost can’t blame the douchey rich people who funded the recall campaign, they were scapegoating Boudin to send a message about how much they dislike visible homelessness in “their” city. But the pundits who pose as reporters? What’s their excuse?
First of all, that very night, ridiculous clown Michael Shellenberger and “tough-on-crime” DA Anne-Marie Shubert were trounced at the polls. Both Shellenberger and Schubert spent the bulk of their campaigns slagging Boudin and pledging to crack down on crime and disorder, with Shellenberger floating the idea of the forced institutionalization of homeless people who use drugs.
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