That line comes from this National Review column, The Media Want the Flaming Wreckage of the Biden Campaign to Explode — to Cover Their Tracks, and it’s a companion piece to what Gravedodger put up the other day, A Conspiracy From Hell, from former NYT reporter, Alex Berenson. But NR is not into Berenson’s more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger approach:

The reason, of course, is that the mainstream media were caught not merely with their pants down but in flagrante delicto, making sweaty, grunting, undignified love to their true occupation: stewarding the Official Democratic Line that Joe Biden is so healthy he expects to compete in the next Ironman Triathlon.

Ewwww….. That’s quite the image isn’t it? But it’s a perfect metaphor to describe the American MSM’s approach to Biden and his myriad personal problems over the last few years. And remember that this comes from the magazine that, in January 2016, devoted an entire edition to railing against Donald Trump, which was gleefully reproduced by the rest of that same MSM. And just look at the excuses being made.

POLITICO: ‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate.

Who’s this “we”, kimosabe? Plus all that blather about an inner circle that grew tighter around Biden, preventing our brave journalists from penetrating further. Even a hero of Watergate turned up:

Both those articles cover the famous Bernstein getting in on the hot action by suddenly talking about all that he has learned in recent years about Biden’s decline, the second article listing a lot of those excuse-making pieces of recent weeks that “fought back” against stories of Biden’s mental incompetence in the WSJ and little sites like RedState, PJMedia and TownHall.

If only we had a reporter who would pick up on rumours about Presidential goings on, investigate further, dig deeper, and then publish the awful truth, no matter how much it damaged the President? Right Mr Bernstein? A reporter like that would really be worth something. They might even have a movie made about them: All The President’s Men II: Protologists or Spotlight II: The Return Of The Catholic Cockholster.

After listening to Mr Bernstein, NR deservedly throws more stones at him and the rest of the MSM:

(“Don’t worry, kid — there’s a promotion around the corner for ya if you survive the next round of layoffs.”) Now they’re infuriated, not at being lied to, but rather at their loss of face with an American public they keep attempting to swindle.

Almost everyone in the Washington press corps knew — or had heard through the grapevine — that Biden was asleep at the wheel of his own administration, but knew full well the consequences of pursuing that in their reporting: To do so was to be cast by the administration, social media, and your peers alike into the professional Phantom Zone. Instead, write a story about how “crazy right-wingers are lying about Biden” and move on. (“We already covered this in our paper!”)
…
Hence the media rage: They did their job — why, look at how enthusiastically they coordinated with the White House on the “cheap fakes” story a mere two weeks ago! — but Biden failed to keep up his end of the deal, and now he’s going to pay. Not for being a senile vegetable posing as commander in chief while directed by a coterie of Jill Biden’s secretaries, mind you, but for dropping the curtain and revealing how deep an inside game the press has always played with the Democrats.

For decades actually, going right back to the 1960’s, although excuses were made because Nixon was just so awful: another standard trope from the MSM has been that each Republican President was awful, requiring Nineteen Eighty Four type redemptions of the previous GOP hobgoblin.

Many on the Right noted all this ages ago but there’s no doubt it got worse through the Clinton era as the guard rails of the Cold War vanished, reinforced only slightly after the 9/11 attacks, and then only until Hurricane Katrina in 2005 allowed Bush Derangement Syndrome to fully flower. And since the rise of Obama in 2008 the partisan bias towards the Democrat Party has been off the scale. I had wondered what would break it, and the June 27 Trump-Biden debate seems to be the driven wedge, except it has (hopefully) also driven the MSM credibiity with the American public from 37% (2023) to near zero:

Never again. With each additional piece — each “Now It Can Be Told!” preface, each additional scandalous detail about Biden being non compos mentis — my blood begins to curdle. Oh, the sudden enthusiasm with which the media is now reporting on this!

And why now? Because it can no longer be hidden! If Biden had succeeded somehow in hiding it — or had he declined to debate altogether, as most observers expected him to before he (surprisingly) agreed to an early debate — then it is undeniably true that none of these pieces would be written now.

Did we experience an orgy of self-recriminative “make up” reporting about the implosion of the Russiagate hoax? Or about Hunter Biden’s laptop being authentic? How about Covid likely being a Chinese lab leak? Of course not — no apology was necessary in the media’s mind because those were no longer “live” issues, and their suppression of the truth had served its necessary purpose.

This time the ruse was exposed before the con had been completed. Now the only job: Get a new shyster in to run at the top of the ticket and complete the mission.

Read the whole thing.

Okay. To be fair MSNBC is apparently genuine; they’re still all in on Biden and are now attacking other media and Democrats for (finally) going after Joe.

Meantime, out in the slightly more real world of politicians, is the usual whip-smart, blunt assessment of the situation by Lousiana GOP Senator, John Kennedy, delivered in his inimitable style.

Plus his summing up of the current Democrat-MSM meltdown:

You shouldn’t look to Washington, D.C. for wisdom or comfort at this difficult time. As you know, most people in Washington, D.C. will unplug your life support in order to charge their cellphone….Most people in Washington, D.C. right now are worried about how the president’s problems are going to impact them personally.