Category Media Criticism

Another MAGA voice stands athwart history yelling Stop

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

From the midst of the gray cloud of politics and presidents, I found one brightly-colored flower this week.

Without getting into the gory details (again), my millimeter-deep analysis of how our president has done the job this year, and how he has upheld his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, is: this is even worse than the first term, right?  This Administration’s incessant lying, the historic self-dealing, the deliberate ignoring of – and demeaning of – the rule of law, the racism and cruelty, and the blatant and thorough obsequiousness of their apparently contractual requirement to overpraise Dear Leader at every turn fight against the flicker of hope I nurture that things will get better.  I think they will: doesn’t matter if our next president is a conservative – or even a MAGA Christian nationalist – things will have to be better once this man-baby leaves office, and when the U.S. House and Senate members of his party once again take seriously their responsibility for checks and balances on the co-equal Executive branch of our government.  Last month I wrote in praise when some of them seemed to be starting to do just that.   Now, here’s another one.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, “is widely considered to be a populist and far-right politician.”

Greene has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views including the white genocide conspiracy theory, as well as QAnon, and Pizzagate. She has amplified conspiracy theories that allege government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, implicate the Clinton family in murder, and suggest the attacks of 9/11 were a hoax. Before running for Congress, Greene supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis, and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, later apologizing for this comparison. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised its president Vladimir Putin. Greene identifies as a Christian nationalist.

So, yeah, a princess of MAGA America and an unflinching supporter of TFG.  Until suddenly she wasn’t anymore, and announced her resignation from Congress only halfway through her current term.  Can we get to the bottom of this huuuge change?

Yes, we can, thanks to Robert Draper in the New York Times Magazine this week.  The long-time magazine journalist (and long ago acquaintance of mine from the high school debate circuit in Houston) has a handy summary accompanying his full story this week; those free links are my gift to you.

When Marjorie Taylor Greene proclaimed in early 2021 that the Republican Party “belonged” to Donald Trump, I thought she sounded nuts. Not only did she turn out to be prescient, but the newly elected congresswoman also became a rising star in the MAGA ecosystem — and one of Trump’s most visible cheerleaders. To understand that ecosystem it was essential to understand this figure at the heart of it, so in 2022, I went to her hometown, Rome, Ga., to meet her, when the congresswoman, a prolific user of the term “fake news media,” had never spoken with a Times reporter before.

I have regularly interviewed Greene since then, and sat down with her in December for two lengthy interviews — in which she was remarkably reflective and forthcoming — after a spectacular break from the president, who called her a “traitor,” and her subsequent announcement that she would resign her House seat in January. “There’s a significant reason why women overwhelmingly don’t vote Republican,” she told me. “I think there’s a very big message here.” These interviews offer a window into Greene’s political journey — and the future of the movement she has long called her own.

Please take a few minutes to read the full story for the details behind what Draper calls the highlights:

–“Trump’s speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial was a clarifying moment for Greene”

“Our side has been trained by Donald Trump to never apologize and to never admit when you’re wrong. You just keep pummeling your enemies, no matter what. And as a Christian, I don’t believe in doing that. I agree with Erika Kirk, who did the hardest thing possible and said it out loud.”

–“Greene’s demands to release the Epstein files seemed to be the last straw for Trump”

After the hearing [with some Epstein victims], Greene held a news conference and threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women — names she says she didn’t know but could have gotten from the victims. Trump called Greene and yelled at her as she listened on speakerphone; the angered president was so loud that staff members throughout her Capitol office’s suite of rooms could hear him. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his resistance. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

–“Her disillusionment with Trump goes beyond the Epstein files”

Greene told me that she once believed that Trump wanted to help ordinary people but has since been disillusioned by his actions and statements on issues that include tariffs and Gaza. “I was so naïve,” she said.

Greene’s last exchange with the president was by text message on Nov. 16. That day, she received an anonymous email threatening her college-aged son: “Derek will have his life snuffed out soon. Better watch his back.” The email’s subject heading used the nickname Trump had given her the day before: “Marjorie Traitor Greene.”

Greene texted that information to the president. According to a source familiar with the exchange, his long reply made no mention of her son. Instead, Trump insulted her in personal terms. When she replied that children should remain off-limits from their disagreements, Trump responded that she had only herself to blame. Greene texted a senior administration official that Trump had endangered her family.

–“Greene said she was wrong for accusing Democrats of treason in the past”

[On] Nov. 16, Greene appeared on the CNN program “State of the Union,” co-hosted by Dana Bash. The congresswoman was uncharacteristically somber, describing the threats she received. Bash referred to a recent post by Greene on X saying that Trump had unleashed a “hotbed of threats” against her. The CNN host then pointed out the long history of Trump’s attacks on others. “And with respect,” Bash said, “I haven’t heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.”

“Dana, I think that’s fair criticism,” Greene replied. “And I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.”

I asked Greene in December to specify what she was referring to. There was a manifestly pugnacious side to her, I said, and I referred her to the period when, just before running for office, she was a far-right social media influencer practicing what she called “confrontational politics.” She harassed the 18-year-old gun-control activist David Hogg on the street and roamed the halls of Congress, writing “You’re a traitor” in the guest book outside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office and barging into Pelosi’s office to chant “Lock her up!” “We were terrifying everyone,” she boasted at the time in a video she posted on Facebook. And she went further, posting more videos that called Pelosi a “traitor” who deserved to either face prison or “suffer death.”

Was that the toxic politics she meant? “Yeah!” she exclaimed. “I was an angry citizen. An angry American.” She thought, she continued, that “Americans have to go through all this crap, constantly being lied to.” She went on: “And when I got here to Congress, I was attacked relentlessly and was enduring real pain in my personal life” — referring to her father’s brain cancer, which proved fatal, followed by the dissolution of her marriage. “And my emotions were just really raw.”

“And so, when you were apologizing about your role in the toxic politics,” I asked, “you were thinking about the times when your anger got the better of you, like the stuff about A.O.C. and Pelosi?”

“Yeah!” she exclaimed again. “Because a Christian shouldn’t be that way. And I’m a Christian.”

I again urge you to read the full story.  In it, Draper does a great job of making more of a full human being out of the caricature that most of us see, and provides us detail and context to another story of cracks in the seemingly solid MAGA wall around TFG.  It’s another piece of evidence that, for some members of MAGA America, it is possible for you-know-who to go too far, to lead his followers where some of them, in good conscience, can not go.

This is EXACTLY what the First Amendment protects us from

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

In the dark reality of the second Trump Administration and its near-daily attacks on the legal and Constitutional protections of the American way of life, I’ve resolved not to be that guy with the kneejerk rapid response to every “outrageous” action dreamed up by the Christian nationalist lawyers who plan and execute TFG’s official agenda.  Because if I did, there wouldn’t be enough time left in the day for sleeping late or watching TV, for playing golf or doing any of the things I like to do; sounding the warning about you know who is a thing I am increasingly uninspired about.  I figure, those who know the threat already know; those who know and don’t care aren’t listening anyway; the rest can’t read, I guess.

But our government blatantly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution yesterday, and I felt the need to say something even though others have and will say this, but I want to say it too.

Since the Bill of Rights was ratified December 15, 1791, my favorite Constitutional amendment has protected our basic freedoms: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  When it comes to free speech, what it means is that we can say we want (within some limits) without censorship by the government.  It doesn’t mean that your boss or your church or your spouse can’t punish you for what you say, or that your friends can’t ostracize you from the group chat or not invite you to the neighborhood barbecue; it means you have “the right to articulate opinions and ideas without interference, retaliation or punishment from the government.”  As explained in an article by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, freedom of speech

…has long since been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean that all American speech can not be infringed upon by any branch or section of the federal, state, or local governments. Private organizations however, such as businesses, colleges, and religious groups, are not bound by the same Constitutional obligation. The First Amendment experienced a surge in support and expansion in the 20th century, as Gitlow v. New York (1925) determined that the freedoms promised in it are applicable to local, state, and the federal governments. Further, subsequent Supreme Court decisions from the 20th century to the early-21st century have determined that the First Amendment protects more recent and advanced forms of art and communication, including radio, film, television, video games, and the Internet. Presently, the few forms of expression that have little to no First Amendment protection include commercial advertising, defamation, obscenity, and interpersonal threats to life and limb.

Yesterday we all learned that the ABC television network, a division of the Walt Disney Company, announced an indefinite suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”  That decision was announced after Nexstar Media Group announced it would preempt Kimmel on the 23 ABC-affiliated stations it owns due to comments Kimmel made “concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk”.  Nexstar owns and/or operates more than 200 local TV stations across the country, and it has every right to decide which programs it will air and which it will not.  As the possessor of a government license to operate a broadcast outlet, it actually has a responsibility to do that.  Whether or not you or I agree with Nexstar’s stated reason for deciding to pull Kimmel, that decision is entirely within the law and does not violate anyone’s First Amendment rights.  And if ABC pulled the show from the network as a means to try to placate a large business partner, that’s perfectly legal, too.  A little cowardly, maybe, but not illegal.

Now, just as background, be aware that both Nexstar and Disney are in line to get government approval for separate planned deals: Disney’s ESPN is trying to acquire the NFL Network, and Nexstar still needs final approval to buy Tegna, which owns 64 stations in 51 markets across the country.  Hmm, seems familiar: Paramount, which owns CBS, was awaiting government approval on a merger…then it settled a meritless $20 BILLION suit filed against it by Trump (for $16 million) and that led to the “big fat bribe” comment on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and then CBS cancelled Colbert (ten months in the future).  Paramount received the merger approval three weeks later.  But back to our current story.

You see, before Nexstar made its announcement yesterday and before ABC then followed up with its announcement, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appeared on a podcast and criticized Kimmel’s comments.  That’s cool.   Brendan Carr said the FCC “has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and network parent Walt Disney Co. accountable for spreading misinformation.”  Uh, I guess that’s OK if he means the agency responsible for regulating the use of public airwaves won’t permit the misuse of that shared resource.  But then Carr said “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

That doesn’t sound very much like the government threatening a business over its exercise of free speech, does it?  Take care of it…or else. ( Hey, nice network ya got there; be a shame if anything happened to it.)

The point of free speech is that you can say what you want and not face “intimidation, retaliation or punishment” from the government.  Like, say, the FCC chairman (a Trump sycophant) threatening the licenses of ABC affiliates who air Kimmel because he (and Trump) don’t like what Kimmel says.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez criticized the administration for “using the weight of government power to suppress lawful expression” in a post on X.

“Another media outlet withered under government pressure, ensuring that the administration will continue to extort and exact retribution on broadcasters and publishers who criticize it,” said Ari Cohn, lead counsel for tech policy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “We cannot be a country where late-night talk show hosts serve at the pleasure of the president.”

Like, the president who said “as he flew home on Air Force One on Thursday…networks that give him bad publicity should “maybe” have their licenses taken away. (The FCC regulates local TV station licenses, not networks.)”  Proving beyond all question that he really does not understand the role of the press in America.

Bill Carter, an editor-at-large at LateNighter who has spent 40-plus years covering late-night comedy and the television industry, said “nothing even remotely like it has ever happened before.” Calling the Trump administration’s recent actions an “affront to the Constitution,” Carter stressed the role previous late-night stars like Johnny Carson played in public discourse.

Carson “spoke comedy to power,” Carter said. “And that’s what late-night shows have done ever since.”

Other expressions of shock and anger rolled through the Hollywood Hills and Capitol Hill on Thursday, as concerns mounted about a new era of government censorship.

“This is beyond McCarthyism,” Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke. The Trump administration’s actions, paired with ABC’s capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

“Jimmy Kimmel has been muzzled and taken off the air,” comedian Marc Maron said in an Instagram video posted early Thursday morning. “This is what authoritarianism looks like right now in this country … This is government censorship.”

“This isn’t right,” actor and director Ben Stiller wrote on X.

Damon Lindelof, the writer-producer of the hit TV show “Lost,” vowed to take action against ABC’s owner, Disney. “I can’t in good conscience work for the company that imposed [Kimmel’s suspension],” he said.

There are many more reactions in this story, including from that fun couple Barack Obama and Roseanne Barr.  Click the (gift) link above to read them all.

My point is, this action – a government official threatening government action against a company over speech he (claims he) finds offensive – is as stark an example as I can imagine of what the First Amendment does not allow.  And, it’s just the latest example of what seems to be a top goal of the thinnest-skinned man ever to be our president: to punish any and all who would dare criticize his any or every action. (Gift article, too)

Billionaires are accelerating their efforts to consolidate control over media platforms and the president is eager to help them do so, provided they shut down his critics. If they don’t, he threatens to use the levers of government — particularly those designed to remain independent — to financially punish them. None of this is secret; the brazenness is, at least partly, the point.

(snip)

The systematic effort to censor American media isn’t exactly subtle. The president has not disguised his intentions or his reasons. He has gone to some trouble to emphasize that he wants to control who’s on television and what they say. (And in newspapers too — in the past two months, he has filed lawsuits against the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.) When Colbert’s “Late Night (sic) with Stephen Colbert” was canceled in July, Trump posted “It’s really good to see them go,” “and I hope I played a major part in it!”

For some valuable perspective on this big Constitutional issue, and the tiny-fisted tyrant at the center of the storm, I close with this:

David Letterman, the king of a previous generation of late-night TV hosts, spoke about Kimmel’s suspension at the Atlantic Festival in New York on Thursday. He said that as host of “Late Night With David Letterman,” he had mocked presidents across six administrations without fear of retribution.

We “attacked these men mercilessly,” Letterman told Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. “Beating up on these people, rightly or wrongly, accurately or perhaps inaccurately in the name of comedy, not once were we squeezed by anyone from any governmental agency, let alone the dreaded FCC.”

“The institution of the President of the United States ought to be bigger than a guy doing a talk show. You know, it just really ought to be bigger,” Letterman added. “By the way, I have heard from Jimmy. He was nice enough to text me this morning, and he’s sitting up in bed taking nourishment. He’s going to be fine.”

Dear 1A,

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I appreciate your coverage of the current redistricting fight in the Texas Legislature, another example of the on-going threat to democracy in my state and the rest of the U.S.  (There are so many threats to choose from, as you’ve demonstrated with your “If You Can Keep It” series!)  But your recorded interview with Texas state Representative Brian Harrison during your Aug. 11 program honestly made me shout at my radio.

To Jenn White’s follow-up question about Harrison’s position on the arrest warrants issued for the Democrats who left the state to deny the Republican majority a quorum to do any business in the state House, he unexpectedly blasted the GOP establishment.  From your online transcript at 00:18:46:

…if elected Republican leadership in Texas had been bolder or actually wanted to stop it, they had all the tools available to stop it, before they left or to have arrested them before they left the state.  [emphasis added]

FOR WHAT!?

At first I was just surprised that this political remora was paying so little attention to the circumstance of his interview that, as we now say so often, he said the quiet part out loud — we should just have arrested them because we knew they were going to oppose what we wanted to do.  No assertion of any kind that they had committed a crime that should lead to their arrests; just “we should have locked them up because it suited our purposes.”

A moment later I was more surprised that the interviewer let him get away with it.  I understand that this was a recorded interview dropped into the broadcast, but when it was still an interview in progress this assertion screamed for a follow-up: arrested for what?  The audacity to not follow Trump’s and Abbott’s orders?  No doubt he would have mumble/blurted the nonsense du jour from the MAGA talking points, but at least he would have been made to scramble for a minute.  And maybe that would have been the opportunity for the light bulb to go off above the head of some of your listeners.

As luck would have it, today I was catching up on the July 2025 issue of Texas Monthly magazine and its coverage of the just-concluded regular session of our state legislature, and I found out more about Rep. Harrison than I knew, and I’ll bet more than you knew, too.  You may have assumed he was, well, “representative” of the Texas GOP in the legislature, but that isn’t the case:

[Harrison] passed no bills and made about as many friends. But he forged something rare and inspiring in the House: bipartisan consensus. Most everyone agreed that Brian Harrison is unbearable.

As such, he is the successor to former state Representatives Jonathan Stickland and Bryan Slaton, past winners of our honorary title of “cockroach,” an old Lege term for a figure who mucks up lawmaking the same way vermin sully a kitchen. Even compared with the antics of his bomb-throwing predecessors, Harrison’s behavior was uniquely tailored to the X feeds of the Texas GOP’s most conspiratorial far-right voters.

Please click the link above for several examples of Harrison at work (sadly).

Thanks for your program and its thoughtful coverage of important issues we face in this historic era.

Things I think that I think you should think too

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

It isn’t any wonder that people are confused, thanks to the ongoing gratuitous lying of TFG, and the lazy characterizations of and headlines about the news of the day. There are so many examples from which to choose, here’s a recent one that’s got me annoyed.

Five years ago amid the protests over the murder of George Floyd there came a movement to end the tributes being paid to those who committed treason by taking up arms against the United States of America during the Civil War. This started with opposition to statues and other monuments to the memory of Confederate war “heroes” across the country — mainly in the states of the former Confederacy, of course — and grew to reconsidering the naming of a number of U.S. military installations, vessels and related facilities which honored the likes of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, the Battle of Chancellorsville and many more. (I wrote about my experience in this matter ten years ago.) Over the veto of President TFG, Congress created what was known as the Naming Commission — known in that way because its full name, I swear to God, was The Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America — with the mandate “to create a list of military assets with names associated with the Confederate States of America and recommendations for their removal.” In January 2023 the Department of Defense leadership ordered the Pentagon bureaucracy to execute the commission’s recommended name changes.

The changes themselves generated protests. Some, like a retired Army lieutenant colonel of my acquaintance, objected to the mothballing of the familiar names of places that they felt had created their own important history, despite the character of the men for whom they were named; I get that. But the real disheartening response was from the very many people who disagreed with ending the veneration of heroes of the Lost Cause, or who dishonestly argued that the change was meant to “change history.” No, the change was meant to stop honoring people who were never worthy of the honor, people who in fact were enemies of America.

Now, along comes a president who has clearly demonstrated, over and over again in the first five months of his second term in office, that he doesn’t believe any laws or other actions of the United States Congress apply to him — a position the Supreme Court has given him some reason to believe. He also (mistakenly) believes himself the cleverest little boy in class, and of course he lies as easily and as routinely as he breathes. In a speech this week, which prompted a renewal of concerns about his improper politicization of the U.S. military, he said “he would restore the names of all Army bases that were named for Confederate generals but were ordered changed by Congress in the waning days of his first administration.” Except, of course, he isn’t doing that at all.

In a statement, the Army said it would “take immediate action” to restore the old names of the bases originally honoring Confederates, but the base names would instead honor other American soldiers with similar names and initials.

For example, Fort Eisenhower in Georgia, honoring President Dwight D. Eisenhower — who led the D-Day landings during World War II — would revert to the name Fort Gordon, once honoring John Brown Gordon, the Confederate slave owner and suspected Ku Klux Klan member. This time around, however, the Army said the base would instead honor Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia.

The Army is acknowledging reality here, stating that the “new” names just so happen to match the previous names but actually honor other people and not the Confederates who are no relation to the new honorees.

Mr. Trump, however, contradicted that explanation in his announcement, at one point saying that the Army would be “restoring” the name of one Army base in Virginia — Fort Gregg-Adams — to “Fort Robert E. Lee,” previously named for the commander of the Confederate army. The Army said in its statement that the base would be renamed to honor Pvt. Fitz Lee, a member of the all-Black Buffalo Soldiers who was awarded a Medal of Honor after serving in the Spanish-American War.

The president lied, contradicting his own Pentagon. He did it, I believe, to curry favor with those people who didn’t want the names of the traitors removed from the bases in the first place, by telling them he was undoing what Congress and the Biden Administration had done. This is just a late example of something I’ve said about him for years: he will say anything, whatever he wants to be true in that moment, with no regard for its actual truth or even if it contradicts something he himself said previously. None of that matters to him. When it comes to anything he says, I find it helpful to remember, as was suggested some years ago (sorry, can’t remember by who), that he’s behaving as he always has: he’s a real estate developer hyping his latest project, and all that matters is closing the deal.

What I also find so very annoying in this case is how The New York Times presented the story I quoted from just now: the headline is “Trump Says Army Bases Will Revert to Confederate Names” and the subhead is “The move would reverse a yearslong effort to remove names and symbols honoring the Confederacy from the military.” Not “President Pulls a Fast One, Tricks Gullible Followers Into Thinking He Stood Up To The Woke Mob And Returned Glory To White Supremacists” followed by “Bait-and-switch inserts new honorees with same names as dishonored Confederates to make MAGA mob think they beat the libs again.”

I know that everyone gets it, intellectually, that our president is full of it. We all knew that last November, but he won anyway. Still, how come we seem to have to relearn the lesson day after day after day? I believe most people, including me, still start by hearing “the president” say something and think, hmm, that’s interesting, or terrific, or stupid or illegal, but our default reaction to Trump anytime his lips are moving should be, no, that’s not right. Honest reporters of the news do a pretty good job pointing out his “errors” but they must respond to such a tsunami of crap that the constant corrections can blend into the background noise.

On a related issue, I think it’s just wrong that anyone credit Trump himself for coming up with the ideas for the many rotten things being done by our government in his name. He’s not stupid, but he’s not educated enough about how the government works to have figured out how to short-circuit it, to sabotage it, to subvert our national ethos. Those ideas are coming from the smart, educated, devious and subversive supplicants in MAGA nation and the Christian nationalist world who are and have been using Trump as a figurehead to undermine our democracy and turn (or return) America into the nation of white Christians they believe it was and should be again. Maybe we can talk more about that another day.

Reality checkers

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

obfuscate: to throw into shadow; to make obscure; confuse; to be evasive, unclear, or confusing (Merriam-Webster)

We — all of us, I think — we need more people in our world with clear vision about things that are happening plus both the ability and the commitment to speak plainly and honestly about those things. Today I come to praise the deobfuscators.

Have you heard, there were people in the White House during the last term who tried to cover up the president’s physical and mental decline? I know, such a shock, right? Or, as the great Charles P. Pierce puts it in Esquire, the hysteria over Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s revelation “that a White House will withhold adverse health information from the public…is, of course, news to those people who remember Grover Cleveland’s secret cancer operation, the unspoken agreement not to photograph FDR in his wheelchair, the relative severity of Eisenhower’s heart problems, the staggering medical record of John F. Kennedy, Nixon’s manic boozing during the height of the Watergate crisis, and, in the closest parallel we have, Reagan’s staff’s successful concealment of the fact that he was a symptomatic Alzheimer’s patient for most of his second term.”

It’s not to say that what is reported in this book is not true; it is to say, rather, “duh.” The diminishment of public dialogue in our time, to a focus on what is shiny and new to the exclusion of all else, makes it easy for us to lose sight of the things that should really matter to our country, to our children’s future. Of course, there are those who prefer it this way:

Life will go back to normal for the elite political media and their useful idiots in the Democratic party. They won’t have to think much about assaults on habeas corpus, deportation of tiny cancer patients, destruction of the regulatory safeguards of the federal government, or clear-cutting of American democracy. Game on!

Earlier this month we all learned that Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, decided to lift the “permanent” ban from baseball issued in 1989 to Pete Rose, which makes Rose eligible for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Columnist Mike Finger at the San Antonio Express-News elegantly gives voice to the clear reading of events which corporate Baseball would prefer you ignore: MLB dishonestly re-defined “permanent” to mean “lifetime” and cravenly capitulated to a president who can’t keep his tiny tiny hands off of other people’s business.

In one view of America, apparently shared by Manfred, character counts, but it doesn’t count that much. Some sins are unforgivable, but only for a while. History should be honored, but the parts that make us uncomfortable can be omitted.

And above all, principles are what matter, right up until the day someone in power asks you to abandon them.

Within three years, baseball’s all-time leader in hits might be enshrined at last in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Thanks to Manfred’s decision, Rose is eligible to be considered by the veteran’s committee, even though he repeatedly broke the game’s most hallowed rule, even though he denied it for more than a decade, even though he never apologized, and even though the ban he accepted in 1989 was supposed to be “permanent.”

None of those facts changed after Rose died last September at age 83. The only big development since then was that Rose received a public show of support from the president of the United States.

If your consideration is limited to Rose’s career as a player, there’s no doubt he deserves the honor of being in the Hall, starting with the fact the had more hits than any other player, ever. But he was banned because he broke the rule that no player is allowed to bet on baseball, ever. Period.

Rose had his chances to atone for his misdeeds while he was alive, and he never did. He applied for reinstatement in 2015, initially claimed he didn’t bet on sports anymore, then admitted he still did. He kept making appearances in casinos, even after then-commissioner Bud Selig suggested that staying away could provide a path to removing the ban.

(snip)

And now is the time that Manfred chooses to ease off the most notorious betting rule-breaker of his generation?

Apparently, now is indeed the time. Now is the time, even though betting wasn’t the worst of Rose’s alleged transgressions. In 2017, Rose was accused in federal court documents by a woman who claimed to have had a sexual relationship with him when she was 14 or 15 years old in 1973, when Rose was in his 30s. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rose issued a response acknowledging he had sex with the accuser, but “said he believed she was 16 at the time, old enough to legally consent in Ohio.”

In 2022, when an Inquirer reporter asked him about the incident, Rose responded, “It was 55 years ago, babe.”

That, of course, is not an admission of guilt. It’s also probably not a line likely to be included on Rose’s Cooperstown plaque, if he gets one.

It is, however, a reflection of one version of America. As long as the right man is vouching for you, any source of shame can be overlooked, if not outright ignored.

We need people who are on the lookout for attempts to warp the facts of the reality we share, and I’m pleased to have found two more.