It’s hard to say exactly when unbridled, gossipy speculation about the health of our political candidates became an accepted part of the American media landscape. It might have been November 2015, when Vanity Fair published an article entitled “Is Donald …
The paranoia driving office politics
Picture a huge, poisonous fruit falling to the ground, its skin splitting open, the rancid pulp pouring out. Picture the ants discovering the mess, swarming over it, drunk on the abundance in front of them — and far too preoccupied …
What the media gets wrong about Watergate
The media misremembers the Watergate scandal of 50 years ago in two significant respects: the first for an understandable reason, although one that ultimately is unflattering to the media. But the second misrepresentation defies explanation. Let’s take the puzzling one …
Watergate and the death of the scandal
In 1942, an entrepreneurial gourmet named Marjorie Hendricks opened a restaurant in the down-at-heel Washington DC neighbourhood of Foggy Bottom and called it the Water Gate Inn. Two decades later, developers drawing up blueprints for a waterfront complex of six …
Why Libs of TikTok terrifies the media
It’s an unmasking worthy of a demented superhero story: the exposure, after months of intrigue, of the elusive political operative known as Libs of TikTok. You may have missed this story — part secret identity drama, part media gatekeeping controversy, …
