Obviously fairy tales include fairy tale creatures, things that don’t exist in the real world, and that’s often true of the fairy tales of politicians – especially after they’ve been in office a long time and have grown detached from the voters. They need to craft up an ordinary person to whom they talk, and perhaps even discuss the issues of the day with. On very rare occasions they might even claim to have taken advice from them. It has become less surprising to find that these people were either mythical or have been dead for some time and thus unable to confirm their side of the story.

But Chucky Schumer has taken this to a new level:

But as this article points out, there’s a much greater scandal here than mere fibbing by a politician:

So how is it that no one – not one member of the media – has been curious enough to look in on this family before? Chuck has brought them up in detailed discussions with outlets like CNN, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, and C-SPAN, and with personalities such as Lou Dobbs, Charlie Rose, and Tim Russert. He has spoken of them publicly in nationally covered pressers and in “Positively American”, as John Oliver detailed, Schumer invoked the Baileys by name 265 times, in a book with 264 pages.

Yet we are to believe nobody in the press ever considered looking into the lives of this pretend nuclear family? One would rightfully expect, given the length of Schumer’s referencing of them and the breadth of his backstory about their “lives”, that some intrepid journalist would seek them out. How did we get here without some news outlet desiring to highlight Schumer’s favorite constituents, inquiring to have an interview on camera or in print, or simply looking to do a profile on an influential couple?

The speculative answer is that somebody from the MSM did, perhaps years ago, and decided to keep quiet, not wanting to damage a senior Democrat, even one with such a pathological level of bullshitting. Forty years ago, the American MSM was still willing to do so, tripping up a leading Democrat candidate, Gary Hart, during the 1988 Presidential election, for having affairs. Hart had practically dared them, playing on JFK comparisons, down to slipping his right hand into his outside suit pocket, like his hero.

But in the increasingly polarised US political world of the last twenty five years, and especially in The Age of Trump?

Not a chance in hell.

This speculation is reinforced by what’s happened since Oliver’s revelation:

….there has not been any level of energetic coverage on Schumer’s prevarication in the press this week. Apart from select conservative outlets, the main news cycle around Chuckles this week has been his combative stance against Trump taking over the D.C. law enforcement, his selection of a Kennedy grandson for a commission seat, and his support for August to be “Hip-Hop Recognition Month.” It is like news outlets would prefer this story be sent out to Massapequa to play out its remaining days, a location the press will still refuse to go out and visit. 

The old Memory Hole treatment, the perfect Half-Truth, in which a story is simply not reported on, in the expectation that it will vanish completely in the next news cycle.

The best description for what the Times and WaPo are doing is “totschweigetaktik,” a great German word for “death by silence,” a tactic to kill ideas or news stories by ignoring them – Miranda Devine

Now I would normally give kudos to Lefty John Oliver for attacking, in the strongest possible way rather than mere snark, a Democrat politician.

Except that Oliver is undoubtedly playing a game here too. His British lefty background means he’s very much to the left of the Democrat Party, meaning he supports the likes of long-time socialist (and Soviet lover) Bernie Sanders, AOC and New York City’s next mayor, Zohran “Seize The Means of Production” Mamdani. Oliver’s part-news-part-comedy railings against various aspects of American capitalism over the years – especially on taxes and healthcare – have sounded exactly like any British Labourite you care to think of, or here in NZ from Labour and the Greens.

He will be well aware of the rumblings inside the Democrat party against Schumer that are growing rapidly, with speculation that AOC might have a tilt at his Senate seat in a primary campaign.

So John Oliver’s little revelation of investigatory journalism is thus no surprise and is no evidence of him being fair and balanced in his strange MSM/Comedy slot. His ideology has finally exceeded his partisanship now that a sexier and viable Lefty alternative to Chucky has appeared. It’s therefore likely only a matter of time before the NYT and others decide that it is also time for them to “discover” this amazing fantasy of Chuck’s.