GERARD VAN DER LEUN: Okay, Okay! Enough Ian Already! Unleash the Marias!
Already being front-loaded at near hurricane strength into the barrels of media bluster and blather will be the endless “Maria” stories aimed at denigrating and damaging Governor DeSantis. Within the next three days, the flood-sodden Maria stories will be pumped out of a hundred media outlets to be immediately replicated by ten thousand Twitterbots in an intense round of retweeting autofellatio. The aptly named headlines will all be a variation of “Papertowel DeSantis! Worse Than Trump!” Marias will come swarming out of the low-lying poor Florida neighborhoods like Bill Burr’s “epidemic of gold-digging whores.”
Once upon a time I had an intimate relationship in which I learned in pillow talk what went on in story conferences at the New York clone of NPR. In these Sancta Sanctorum meetings, one was often asked if the morning story line-up could be juiced up with a “Maria Story.”
The “Maria Story” was a handcrafted piece of journalistic lying through dramaturgy. The assigned journalist –who knew what was expected of him– visited one of his minority harems of (mostly) women who excelled at projecting a quiet dignity shining through their grave situation. These “assets” as it were had mastered the art of faking sincerity so the rest came easy; especially the standard “Maria Story” situation. This situation could be of the every suffering Maria who was turned back at the Rio Grande after attempting to swim across while pushing her paraplegic autistic daughter on a reed raft. Handmaid.
Since this was news from the days of morning NPR radio throbbing in the background of liberal kitchens across the land the only limit to the imagery was that of the “reporter’s” imagination and the sound engineer’s library of effects. And you didn’t have to look your best, as those who have met Terry Gross will attest.
Time to dust off the Katrina playbook, which the DNC-MSM can easily update to the catastrophe du jour:
● Chuck Todd: Coronavirus Can Be to Trump Like Iran Hostages Were to Carter.
Which dovetails nicely with this quote from Mickey Kaus in 2005: “In short, Katrina gives them a way to talk about Iraq without talking about Iraq. No wonder Gwen Ifill smiles the ‘inner smile.’”
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.