DECEMBER 3, 2024 – Judging by the colored blonde hair with dark roots, the long pink sparkly false nails, the oversized ring, the expensive blanket cape, the high black shoes . . . the middle-aged woman across the aisle and one row up on the flight back to Minnesota was definitely not from my zip code, I figured, and probably not of my political persuasion. For the first hour of the flight, I noticed, she was engrossed in the Food Channel. Later, upon looking up from my book, I saw that she was watching FoxNews, which was showing everything there was to know about Hunter Biden and the president’s much talked-about-pardon. Her choice of unabashed propaganda—and the fact she was so obvious about it—confirmed my assumptions about her politics.
After 20 minutes of watching animated Fox hosts and smug pundits pounding the figurative table, I saw the woman turn back to the Food Channel. What amazed me were two things: First, that the FoxNews people could spend so much time talking about Hunter Biden and the pardon; and Second, that Ms. Food Channel could pay such close attention to Fox talking about Hunter Biden and the pardon.
Ever since I first heard Republicans make an issue of the president’s son, I was not much stirred one way or the other about poor ol’ Hunter. By all appearances he’d made some poor choices and decisions, but I also assumed that there was a back story about which I knew very little and had even less interest in knowing anything about it. Moreover, I’d heard of no evidence linking Hunter’s wayward path to undue influence of any kind over the president. What did bother me was the Republican hypocrisy in using the Hunter Biden scandal as a way to balance the scales after all the graft and corruption surrounding Trump; all the evidence-based allegations against Trump, and indeed, the verdicts and judgments against him.
On one side of the scale we have an open guilty plea by the president’s adult son on income tax charges. On the other side, are two impeachments, grand jury indictments, a jury verdict, a judge’s findings, and recorded phone call in which the defendant notoriously pressured the Georgia Secretary of State “to find 11,780 votes”—not against the former and president-elect’s sorry sons but against the president himself. By any objective standard, there is no equivalency between the two sides of the scale.
Furthermore, as much as the Republicans harangue about the Democratic “weaponization” of the Department of Justice, it was the DOJ that brought charges against Hunter Biden; it was not the DOJ that impeached Trump—twice—or brought the civil fraud case in New York, the Jean Carroll defamation case in New York or the election interference case in Georgia.
I could only imagine the FoxNews spin on President Biden’s pardon of his son, especially in light of Joe Biden’s promise not to. The woman across the aisle and one row up was definitely taking it all in.
I then decided to watch my own choice for “news and information,” namely, the BBC. There I watched extensive reporting on President Yoon’s surprising declaration of martial law in the Republic of Korea—and rescission of the order in light of unanimous opposition by the national Assembly. Coverage of the political crisis in South Korea and its implications vis-à-vis the DPRK (North Korea), China and Japan, and was followed by a long-form interview of Peter Boehringer, Vice Chairman of the German rightwing party, Alternative für Deutschland, by Stephen Saklur on his hard-hitting show, HARDtalk. Saklur was a veritable bulldog who refused to let Boehringer off the hook, and the interview revealed much about troubling political developments inside our largest and strongest ally in Europe outside of Britain. Next up: what we can expect next in Lebanon (!) and Gaza.
By the time the BBC had circled the globe, I noticed that Ms. Food Channel had turned the channel back to . . . the Food Channel. I was ever more mindful, however, that against the big stories covered by the BBC, the protracted FoxNews spin-coverage of the Biden pardon was and would continue to be, nothing but small potatoes.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
