There’s a great line in National Lampoon’s Animal House. Dean Wormer stands before our heroes – the boys from Delta House – but he’s focused on Flounder in particular. “Fat, drunk, and stupid,” says Dean Wormer, “is no way to go through life, son.” Dear News Media: think of me as Dean Wormer and you as Flounder. And, let’s toss “fat and drunk”. Neither of those precludes being a great journalist. However, being intellectually lazy and stupid do. That’s your problem, American News Media. If you sat at home doing nothing all day, that’d be fine. You’d do a lot less harm. But you’re journalists! And YOU being intellectually lazy and stupid has created a massive problem for America!

Journalism tells our collective story in real time – ideally with sources and receipts. And, ideally, with a large degree of even-handedness. But, “even-handedness” isn’t neutrality. Our news media thinks being “neutral” equals being “even handed”. Instead, being neutral equals being amoral. In a democratic republic such as ours, that’s the last thing we need our news media to be.

America’s founders, for all their flaws, saw the press as essential to democracy. The news media is the Peoples’ last line of defense against power. Journalism – a free press – is the only non-governmental job mentioned in the Constitution!

Power has always tried to manhandle journalism. When power buys journalism, it accomplishes the same end. “Both sides do it” is a product of power manhandling journalism. It’s cynical as only power can be cynical when it wants to assert itself. It’s bullshit, too.

What is it exactly that both sides do? Or, maybe the better question is, what is it exactly that both sides do exactly the same and in the same proportion? Be corrupt?

Okay, sure. Democratic New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is corruption’s poster boy. There might even be a few more corrupt Democrats out there.

Now let’s talk Republican corruption. Simply putting Donald Trump’s considerable corruption on the table kinda puts Bob Menendez’s to shame. Menendez deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison for what he did. So does Donald Trump – and every single Republican who enabled his corrupt attempt to overthrow our democracy. Every. Single One.

I’d start counting on June 25, 2016 – the day the GOP made it official that they were Vladimir Putin’s co-conspirators. On that day, former Speaker Of The House Kevin McCarthy left a meeting where our intelligence community briefed members of Congress on Putin’s ongoing attempts to undermine Ukraine’s fragile, new democracy. McCarthy walked right into another meeting – this one of Republican leaders.

The very first thing McCarthy said upon entering (the entire meeting was recorded and that recording played nearly a year later for then Washington Post Reporter Adam Entous) was “There’s two people I think Putin pays – Rohrbacher and Trump – swear to God!”

That’s an odd thing to say about the man you’re about to nominate to be POTUS. It says – quite directly – that the guy you want to nominate would pose a grave national security risk should he actually win election. Because a hostile foreign leader OWNS HIM.

That is what Kevin McCarthy said out loud. In hindsight, was he wrong? Was he describing reality?

The most painful part of this particular story is how the news media followed up this story. More or less, they didn’t.

After the WaPo published this story in April 2017, a few intrepid reporters approached McCarthy to ask follow ups. McCarthy replied “I was joking“. And that’s where that story apparently ended for America’s journalists.

By April 2017, a few people had begun to point with growing evidence that Trump and Putin had a strange, unhealthy relationship (“Hey, Russia, if you’re listening!”). The news media has scratched its head from the jump trying to figure out Trump’s incredible hold on the Republican Party, its leadership especially. What made Lindsey Graham go from being the ultimate Trump hater to Trump’s full time fluffer?

Remember Trump’s furious rage when the FBI raided not just Mar-A-Lago but Trump’s private safe in his Mar-A-Lago office? He had our secrets all over the place – out in the open. What, in Trump’s mind, was sooooooo special that it had to sit in a safe?

I bet Lindsey Graham knows the answer. I bet the entire Republican hierarchy does.

Why did the news media accept Lindsey Graham’s flip so readily? Hmmmmm… could it be they’re intellectually lazy and stupid…?

Both sides don’t do this. But then, both sides don’t have the same make up, the same ambitions, the same willingness to do anything to hold onto power. That’s because only one side actually has power – as they always have.

America remains a great idea (human self-government) poorly executed. The instant our founders made a deal with slavery, they undermined the value of their own grand idea. We are still dealing with slavery because our founders cut a deal with it. And, ironically, the Party of Lincoln morphed into the white power party he opposed.

That’s another story our news media can’t seem to grasp. Or, they’ve slowly grasped but don’t know what to do with what they grasped.

Our news media still want to report the GOP’s assault on democracy as just another policy position.

But then, our news media want to report cheating to win is the same thing as not cheating to win. Trump conspiring with Russia to win in 2016 is the same as Hillary Clinton playing by all the rules!

How the hell can that be?

The Republican Party has lost all interest in governing. Our news media has reported it (and good thing, too!) The GOP – per Trump – had no policy positions in the 2020 election. Their platform was whatever Trump said it was at any given instant.

Trump didn’t change the Republican Party, he unleashed its worst instincts. He freed them (in their own minds) to speak their racism out loud. Also their misogyny, bigotry, religious lunacy, general ignorance and hypocrisy. Their only policy position: maintain power in conservative white, Christian hands at all cost.

There are no red lines in the sand. No “don’t go there’s!” Including treason.

Our news media isn’t blind to this. Hell, they’ve reported it! The problem is either they don’t read what they report or – more likely – they don’t know how to aggregate their own reporting so as to maintain a constantly evolving narrative.

For example: once you establish that a person lies regularly, how can you take anything they say at face value? Wouldn’t you – for your own sense of well being – demand receipts up front? That’s how most of Trump’s lawyers work now – they get paid up front because Trump both lies and stiffs his lawyers. That, too, is a story journalism has reported constantly. And yet, American journalists never seem to connect those reported dots into an evolved story point unto itself.

How much benefit of the doubt can journalism give one man – who they already know deserves zero benefit of the doubt?

To be fair, it’s a tough assignment – telling a story that begins with the assassination of Truth. But a few journalists do know how to tell and report such stories. Mehdi Hassan (now late of MSNBC – and boy, was that a dumb move!), Ali Velshi, Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace and Katie Phang (among others) have all demonstrated how to interview liars. You do not let any of their lies stand.

If you have to end the interview because the interviewee refuses to stop lying, then so be it. The interview’s over. Interviews filled with bullshit have no value other than to the bullshitter.

But, when you lack intellectual curiosity and sincerely believe that ‘both sides do it”, you have become bullshit’s ambassador. Its poster boy. Its first team water carrier.

Our news media has the strange habit of looking at everything first from bullshit’s perspective. And then – because they’re “neutral” – telling their audience that they (the audience) must decide whether the Truth or Bullshit is “how it is”.

Well, bullshit is never how it is – cos it’s bullshit!

Our news media isn’t revealing a different truth, they’re empowering bullshit. That is how bullshit wins. It’s how authoritarians and fascists win – and they are pure, unadulterated bullshit on mega-steroids.

So, as Dean Wormer to the news media’s Flounder, I repeat what I said up top, News Media. You can graduate near the top of your class if you exert yourselves a little. But you’re going to have to change first.

There’s simply no better way to put it: “Being intellectually lazy and stupid is no way to go through life”.