So, regarding Pompeo’s Hail Mary, I’d like to speak to the news media for a moment.
First, a brief preamble: I don’t expect CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and a hundred-thousand local affiliates and social media to have learned anything from 2016. The news media, almost as a rule, doesn’t learn; they simply move onto the next story — and years later, give head-smashing-into-keyboard interviews about their REGRETS.
We’re all aware that the network and cable news industry, once they shrugged off any pretense of integrity and became a profit-gobbling Kraken, has chased anything that draws ratings, refusing to commit to facts if those facts kick the shoes out from under the “both sides” balancing act and send their stockholders sliding down the pole. If they smell a story that could translate into multiple days of stable ratings in which they can draw a narrative out like a shiv, despite the consequences, with round tables choked with overpaid pundits, you can bet your Underwood, they will.
In other words, I’m not expecting a miracle, here. Miracles are for better worlds than this one.
So, here’s my plea, and I’m speaking directly to the network and cable news channels, anchors and pundits, now: I’m asking — no — begging: Don’t do it.
I know it’s going to be tempting; I know you’re going to feel like a heroin addict, sick and dragging a leg; you’re going to want to report on every single e-mail which will, no doubt, be drip-dripped into the atmosphere and into your inboxes, dear Media, probably every day for the next 3 weeks — and they’re probably going to be already highlighted, for certain pieces of it to be taken out of context, or come attached with a pre-written narrative, pre-filled with foul-smelling shit, so you won’t even need to do any work but hurl it into the living rooms of every voter for the next 20 days.
But for the sake of the country — for our Democracy, on its knees — and for our sanity — Don’t do it.
And here’s your best excuse not to: Hillary Clinton is not running in this election.
She has NOTHING to do with the next 3 weeks.
NOTHING.
The goal here, dear Media, as I’m sure you know, is for Pompeo to have Clinton’s e-mails swamp the news cycles for the next 3 weeks so that all of Trump’s scandals, investigations, COVID failures and bad press are swept away — and so that all of Biden’s good press, speeches and everything else he does is muted by the linking of him with Clinton’s e-mails in some distorted way (1) you can count on at least one of them showing up with Biden’s name on it, even if it’s a detergent recommendation — and 2) the patently ludicrous and almost immediately debunked Russian doll of a NY Post story on Wednesday, was likely the appetizer for that planned linkage).
DO NOT COVER THEM.
DO NOT DO A “SEGMENT” ON THEM.
This election is about saving Democracy from the very people who will be releasing those e-mails to distract you from the fact that they’re destroying Democracy.
And there is NOTHING TO COVER.
I realize that this may be a futile request. I don’t have millions of dollars to line your pockets; I’m just an American voter, a survivor of COVID-19 and the father of three cats — but for holy fuck’s sake: do NOT let Pompeo turn this election into “But Her E-mails”.
For the sake of sanity: don’t do it.
Here’s something better: make an announcement that you won’t. And explain why. Explain that you know what the Trump campaign and Pompeo are doing and that you see through it. Assert yourself; this is the perfect chance for you to re-claim your designated role as the Fourth Estate and play your duly assigned role as guardians of Democracy. Explain that Clinton is not running in this election and that Trump and Biden are - and that you will cover them, with so little time left before we choose our fate - and that you refuse to give in to false kings, trying to turn you into fools by jingling shiny bells around your heads while the executioner sharpens his axe.
For the sake of every suffering American in this pandemic and everyone who could suffer for the next four years under what will most assuredly become a fascist state, where journalism, itself would be under threat of retribution from a madman with nothing left to lose and a thousand vendettas to burn — DON’T DO IT.
Signed,
The People of the United States of America