Let’s examine a microcosm of how the filthy mainstream media industry actually works.
Yesterday, a Vanity Fair hack called Joe Hagan released exactly the kind of smearjob one would expect against the 2024 Democrat Party candidate (for now; he may go rogue) for president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Without subjecting you, dear reader, to too much of the bilge, here’s an excerpt to get the flavor of the piece via Vanity Fair, titled “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (emphasis added):
On an overcast afternoon in mid-August, I find myself on a ferry to Nantucket with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—son of Bobby, nephew of John, Democratic candidate for president of the United States. Trapped between Kennedy on my left and a window facing the Atlantic Ocean to my right, it is no exaggeration to say this is the low point of my summer—a supposedly fun thing I wish I’d never done.
A couple weeks before, Kennedy had responded to an interview request by calling and expressing exasperation at various hatchet jobs in mainstream media and skepticism that a correspondent for Vanity Fair, a card-carrying member of the legacy media, might be fair to him. “Your editor won’t let you write anything positive,” he promised.
Hagan apparently meant this as an exculpatory explanation of initial good intent on his part, which was thwarted by RFK Jr.’s paranoid conspiracy theorizing about the outlet he works for. However, RFK’s skepticism that he would receive fair treatment from the likes of Vanity Fair turned out to be highly warranted.
Related: RFK Jr. STILL Pushing 20% in Dem Primary Polling Despite Constant Attacks, Censorship, Smears
Continuing via Vanity Fair:
For Kennedy, the “legacy media” is corrupted by pharmaceutical companies and an implicit allegiance to the Democratic Party. The federal judge who ruled against him is an appointee of President Joe Biden and is therefore in bed with the whole gang too—as am I. I assure Kennedy I wasn’t given any marching orders from the DNC or Big Pharma, nor was I on the CIA payroll. “You wouldn’t be sitting there if you were willing to depart from official orthodoxy,” he tells me, “so there’s a self-censorship that goes on”…
But as I question him, he gets increasingly tense. His arms are crossed tightly across his chest. He hasn’t laughed or smiled once since we started talking. Given all that he’s saying about Biden, plus his wholesale embrace of, and by, the conservative media, plus his appearance before the Republican-led, anti-Democrat Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, not to mention unlikely fans like Donald Trump, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Ron DeSantis (who said he would consider making Kennedy the head of the FDA in his administration), I can’t help but wonder who Kennedy would vote for in a general election matchup between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2024.
“I wouldn’t answer that question,” he replies. “I think the Ukraine war is an existential war for us. I think we are walking along the edge in a completely unnecessary war.”
But as a Democrat, I press, wouldn’t Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of the vaunted Democratic Kennedy family, vote for the Democratic nominee? “You’re giving me a hypothetical situation,” he says. “It depends what their positions are on issues.”
The first issue he mentions, Ukraine, is one that aligns him with Trump’s pro-Putin position. “Well, maybe,” he says, pointing out that he’s also critical of Trump’s COVID policies from 2020. “Trump engineered a $16 trillion useless expenditure with the COVID lockdowns,” he says.
The entire article, virtually, consists of guilt-by-association denunciations, accusations of being an “anti-science” conspiracy theorist, etc. — again, exactly what one would expect from someone like Hagan.
Then, following his vicious attack disguised as objective journalism, Hagan appeared on MSNBC to explain that he felt “bullied” by the man whom he shadowed for a day in order to produce a hit piece on him for corporate state media.
I am reminded of the scene from the 1989 Batman movie, in which the Joker jokingly mocks Batman: “You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses,” the joke being that someone with the right demeanor and appearance should get a pass for any sort of aggression, but if his victim ever pushes back, it’s “bullying.”
I thought it was a bit over the top back in the 2016 election cycle when Trump repeatedly characterized the media as the enemy of the American people and offered similar unsavory criticisms.
But he was absolutely right about the corporate state media and ahead of his time in his denunciation of it. The problem with Trump’s analysis, as is often the case, is that it lacks nuance. The media at large is not the enemy; it’s a very specific sliver of the corporate state media, which acts as the lapdog of the corporate state, that is.
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