I am, as are most Americans, inured to the reality of wading through partisan journalism in the vain hope of extracting a kernel of factual information.  So much of what passes for reporting today is, in fact, the most distasteful hackery, which goes far to explain why trust in our nation’s news media cruises in the vicinity of single digits and our national reflex has become to instantly distrust that whatever we are told is the actual truth.

Anonymous sources, unsubstantiated rumors, and obvious partisan hit jobs have long served to discredit both journalists and the practice of journalism, and the sheer one-sidedness of the spin now required to reinforce our comforting political preconceptions and keep our attention riveted—while ensuring our brains stay idle—is stupendously depressing at times.

And some days a bit of the “semi-news” we read or hear neatly encapsulates everything that is wrong with journalism today.  

A article published on December 21st on Slate entitled “‘Tis the Season to Debunk Your Family’s Hunter Biden Conspiracy Theories” is a Ho-Ho-Ho holiday attempt (complete with a photo of a grinning Hunter wearing a Santa hat) to prepare this website’s profoundly liberal audience for the unpleasant task of speaking with their annoying Republican relatives at Christmastime.  

Presented as a series of jokey talking points to use with a mythical line up of unenlightened Conservative family members ranging from Aunt Maria to Uncle Horace, this article by Molly Olmstead strives to cast as a “conspiracy theorist” anyone who wonders why the pre-Elon Musk Twitter and the legacy media establishment essentially banned this distasteful tale of influence peddling and payola involving the son of Joe Biden—and possibly Joe Biden himself—from public view prior to the 2020 Presidential election.

Ms. Olmstead essentially gives the game away by slipping in a gratuitous reference to Donald Trump in the first line of her article, which is the functional equivalent of waving a red flag in front of a Democrat.  Moreover, despite the well-documented fact that Russia-gate was an elaborate web of incredible political lies planted at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign, her article claims that the reticence of major news organizations to publish the information contained on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop computer was actually laudable journalistic integrity.  After all, she assures her credulous audience, “this was the first presidential election to occur after Russia had flooded our political system with both fully fabricated misinformation and authentic material that was obtained illegally.”

Censorship, according to Ms. Olmstead, was obviously the only possible response, which is itself a perfect example of the insanity that now passes for journalistic ethics: When you have a choice between a lie and the truth, you must privilege the lie if it damages the opponents of your preferred political party.  To do otherwise is simply inconceivable.

The damning lack of curiosity exhibited by our media overlords concerning the immense wealth, estimated to be $10 million, that Joe Biden has somehow magically accumulated during a career as a salaried government official tells you all you need to know about how the game is played in Washington, D.C. and why well-paid journalists at liberal news outlets such at The New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, ABC News, and so many others continue to play footsie under the table with Democrats instead of demanding investigations into credible allegations of official wrongdoing.  There’s money enough for everybody—as long as mouths stay firmly shut.

This partisan blindness and muteness is not, however, confined to one side of the political aisle.

Republicans are also culpable when it comes to averting their eyes from unfortunate realities that might call their party’s honesty or competence into question, and this points to a signal failure of governance by both Republicans and Democrats.  

Regardless of political affiliation, every one of our elected and appointed officials should be keenly interested in investigating instances of corruption and malfeasance.  The sad fact that elaborate cover ups orchestrated with the assistance of hopelessly partisan media outlets are now standard operating procedure for both of our major parties only serves to further erode confidence in government because any oversight becomes, by definition, a partisan political attack.

Democrats should be keenly interested in the immigration disaster on our southern border, the immorality of late-term abortions, and what is being taught (or not) in our public schools.  Republicans should help to investigate what happened on January 6th of 2021, instances of racist behavior by our nation’s police, and the purposes of the tens of billions of dollars of money and arms being shipped to Ukraine.

Undermining the legitimate—and necessary—oversight of government functions and policies by engaging in partisan games and obfuscation harms our nation in countless ways, and our nation’s news media must stop facilitating this extraordinarily destructive and foolish chicanery with their own brand of inflammatory and unfair attacks.

The never ending kneecapping that passes for reasonable public discourse in America today is crippling our country, and we must all demand better before it is too late. Whether we are asking questions about Covid-19 vaccines, institutional racism, transgender ideology, the climate change agenda, the encroachment of the regulatory state, or any of other countless efforts to frighten and divide us, we deserve direct and honest answers. Asking questions is as American as apple pie, but being attacked, denigrated, or censored for asking them is typical of the incipient and obvious totalitarianism that is a fashionable and disturbing feature of our politics today.