Legacy media blames American’s lack of attention.

Yesterday, as I walked my two dogs each on separate walks, I took the opportunity to listen to a podcast called Strict Scrutiny. I’ve been a loyal listener for years, trying to understand what the Supreme Court is doing and exactly what their reasoning is in this moment of our own making. This essential podcast is hosted by three brilliant scholars of the law: Leah Litman, Kate Shaw and Melissa Murray. The only other podcast explaining the Supreme Court I can recommend is Slate’s Amicus with Dalia Lithwick, which is well worth your time.

Both of these podcasts have been essential for understanding how the Supreme Court was overtaken by bribes from billionaires and the Federalist Society. They have brought on numerous guests that have experience and inside knowledge of the court, and have been markedly brave in their criticisms and analysis of the justices, their blatant biases and for some, their outright abandonment of the US Constitution and democracy.

And although I do not always understand the pop culture banter between Leah and Melissa, I do not think I have missed a single episode in years. I struggle to find much criticism for these scholars, and I believe they are doing a great service by explaining these things to Americans. Quite honestly, I just don’t have the time or bandwidth to think of such things, because I work in immigration and things are a bit chaotic at the moment.

Yet, this latest episode keeps replaying itself in my mind, and I feel I must write about it. Towards the end, Chris Hayes from MSNBC was invited on to talk about his new book. Appropriately, they pointed out that Hayes is married to Kate Shaw and that he is seen by the other hosts as sort of a husband to the show or “roadie to the show,” as they say. Hayes’ book is about how Americans’ lack of attention and how it is responsible for much of what we see today. This is probably a good time to point out that Hayes is a philosophy major and has interesting views on our current politics. I enjoy much of his work, and find it enlightening and often brilliant.

My problem is with the incestuous nature of this and the lack of interviews by people outside their club who are literally witnessing or experiencing the overthrow of our country.

Hayes is married to Shaw. Shaw has been on his MSNBC show. Melissa and Kate are on his show often. Strict Scrutiny is produced by Crooked Media which is run by former Democrat operatives of the Biden and Obama administrations. MSNBC has former Biden operatives as anchors. Many of the anchors write books, produce podcasts and develop documentaries outside of MSNBC. These are often well written and cover important topics, yet the anchors will have each other on to promote each others’ products and few others that are not part of this clique.

This is the supposed “liberal media.” MSNBC is, sadly, considered the leader in corporate center or left-wing media. The longer I watched it the more I began to make the connections to who was married to whom and who had worked for whom in the past and so on. This left a very bad taste in my mouth. It is why I no longer watch MSNBC. The breaking point for me came during the last election when I watched their most prominent anchors stall for nearly an hour, doing everything in their power to not admit that President Biden was late to his last State of the Union address to congress because anti-genocide protestors blocked his path.

It was an eye opener to watch them carry water for a man supplying the weapons being used to cut children in half and burn them alive.

There is nothing wrong with Hayes writing a book about our society’s lack of attention to serious problems. I think when we look back on these times, analysis of how we got here will surely include social media and the problems of too much information at our fingertips. I would just like to see him and others talk and write about things more substantive in these times. I would like to hear from people on the ground experiencing these ICE raids, the lack of women’s health care, the lack of vaccines, the complete blackout on covid and bird flu. I would like to know how people are resisting, fighting back and trying to save our country. I would like investigations into how our country is being stolen.

As my young neighbor likes to say, it’s all very bougie.

The level of privilege during these times it takes to write about the lack of attention of Americans by one of this country’s leading news anchors is mind boggling to me. It is as if he believes he and his industry are not somewhat responsible for this lack of attention and flood of information. What are we doing about this? What can be done? What are communities doing to fight back? How can scholars and attorneys help us with that? What will happen with the federal government eliminating the Department of Education? Is the food supply about to run short because workers are being targeted? Are we in a full blown coup that is about to be violent?

We don’t know, and few in legacy media are willing to discuss these issues.

But as Hayes said before when he was criticized for talking incessantly about Trump during the last presidential election, he has to talk about Trump. He has to write about Trump and his feelings, his emotions, his need for attention and how this lends itself to our lack of attention, yet he does not seem to make the connection that he and the media are the middlemen in all this. It is legacy media that gives us the context with which to talk about these issues and understand them. Right now, Chris Hayes and the whole MSNBC coterie are telling us our problem is a lack of attention. We are overwhelmed with too much information, much of which is disinformation.

And who is responsible for this? Well, it is people like Hayes and MSNBC who keep their circle of supposed experts small with insiders and ivy league pontifications on why we as Americans can’t seem to get ourselves out of this situation. His wife must promote his book. MSNBC, Crooked Media and all the other liberal, left connections have to circle around and push his book and fawn all over something that lends zero value to saving our democracy and civil rights in this moment because he is family to them.

Hayes could have written a book on any number of subjects that would have lent itself to this moment. Perhaps he could have made the argument that the Supreme Court is part of the insurrection, and that failure to recognize this means we are failing to address this as the authoritarian coup that it is. The job of the media is to draw out the connections, to show us the bigger picture of the times we live in. Legacy media, including MSNBC, have failed in this. They would have you believe the Supreme Court, the take over of the three branches of government, the gutting of federal agencies and the insurrection are just merely differences of politics, the results of an election.

The real news that they are afraid to tell you is that they are rounding up Brown and Black immigrants without due process and putting them in concentration camps. You would have seen this coming years ago if MSNBC had covered it instead of talking non-stop about Trump and every little thing he did or said. But as Hayes said at the time, he must talk about him.

The real news is that we are already well into a civil war.

As long as we continue to keep pretending these are just people with different opinions instead of traitors to the Constitution of the United States who were bought off by billionaires to corrupt the judicial, legislative and executive branches, we will never stop this. This is about corruption and lack of any accountability. That is what we should be writing and talking about.

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