Patterico's Pontifications

6/29/2022

Is MSNBC to Blame for the End of Roe and Casey?

Filed under: General — JVW @ 7:15 am



[guest post by JVW]

For those of you who can stand further discussion of last week’s developments (and judging from the most-commented posts, it looks like you can), a very interesting piece at The Spectator wonders if the sort of cloistered progressive hubris so perfectly envisioned by the Ship of Fools that is the MSNBC line-up might have ended up being the unwitting euthanizers of the Roe and Casey rulings which were overturned last week by the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization majority decision. The piece is behind a firewall, so I will quote liberally from it, though I also strongly encourage you to consider subscribing to The Spectator for interesting and witty writing from a right-of-center perspective which encompasses several different strains of conservative thought. Here’s what the author, Matt Purple, has to say:

Over now to MSNBC, that glorified test of the emergency broadcast system between Fox News and the Big Bang Theory reruns you want to fall asleep to. The Supreme Court on Friday announced it had overturned Roe v. Wade, upending fifty years of abortion law. And the mood on America’s favorite left-of-left cable network was, er, punchy.

It began with Lawrence O’Donnell, who demanded that his audience “never forget the GOP presidents who overturned Roe” (in case Donald Trump was at risk of slipping your mind). After lying that George W. Bush hadn’t won the popular vote before appointing Sam Alito (Bush beat John Kerry by three million votes in 2004, then nominated Alito in 2005), O’Donnell sighed that he was profoundly disappointed. “I spent most of my life in awe of the Supreme Court,” he intoned. Yet today the Court “is not reflexively worthy of respect.”

One imagines Amy Coney Barrett running down the hall: “You guys! We just lost Lawrence O’Donnell!” And certainly the Court has desecrated itself forever by not doing what O’Donnell would have liked it to do. O’Donnell then went on to patronize Clarence Thomas for disagreeing with Roe while being black and married to a white woman. Thus did MSNBC give the country exactly what it needed: a lecture on race from a white guy from Boston.

Having taken the measure of the oafish voices, Mr. Purple turns his attention to the twerps, in this case the unceasingly annoying Chris Hayes:

Hayes is like one of those dorky kids who struts around calling people “malefactors” and “ne’er-do-wells” even though he clearly he has no idea what any of those words mean. Yet it’s his use of “democracy” that’s especially telling. Strictly speaking, “democracy” means simply that the people get to decide, either directly or through their elected representatives — as they now will on abortion. Yet for progressives, “democracy” has taken on more of a folk definition. Just as Orwell said the word fascism “has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’” so too does “democracy” now have no meaning except as something that makes an MSNBC contributor feel all peachy on the inside. So: lawless abortion, etc.

This debauching of our language admittedly runs both ways (a “Republican” is now one who thinks Donald Trump should maybe be king?). Yet flipping “democracy” to mean “judicial authoritarianism” might be a whole new level of doublespeak altogether. And it really is curious just how many words have had to be blurred in order to keep the abortion boat afloat: “fetus,” “procedure,” “late-term,” “constitutional right,” “choice.” If this much of your thinking is based on not thinking, it may be time to turn the critical gaze inward for a while.

This perversion of the language to fit political goals, the author suggests, has led progressives to ensconce themselves in their urban, credentialed, gentry echo chambers where everyone is in violent agreement with each other, and blinded them to the reality that people who live way out there don’t while away the hours discussing the latest editorial in the New York Times or mulling over whether it was members of the BIPOC or the LGBTQQIP2SAA community who were the most harmed by the legislative failure of Build Back Better. Nor, despite what they have been telling themselves to one degree or other since 1992, were coming demographic changes inevitably going to guarantee a progressive future in this country. This myopia bore consequences:

This same sense of inevitability has pervaded their abortion coverage, which is why MSNBC and their kith and kin may be more responsible for Dobbs than anyone else. They refined pro-choice smugness into televised narcotic. Not only did they fail to seriously engage with the arguments put forward by the other side — fetal personhood, the weakness of constitutional “penumbras,” etc. — their complacency lurched them even further to the extreme. “Shout your abortion!” they cried. “Scrub ‘rare’ from ‘safe, legal, and rare’!” Why not? The other side was just a bunch of theocratic Neanderthals, practically self-refuting.

Even after the Dobbs arguments back in December, which saw the conservative justices all but skywrite “THE VIABILITY STANDARD IS BULLS–T” above the Supreme Court, they still couldn’t quite believe the knuckle-draggers were about to pull it off. Now, they’re making the same mistake again, assuring themselves it’s just a matter of time. Republicans will pay in the midterms! Will they though? Polls have consistently found that decisive majorities support something like the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs, which bans abortions after fifteen weeks. And are the intricacies of abortion really going to trump the pain of $5 a gallon gas?

As a parting shot, Mr. Purple takes a thwack at MSNBC contributor Elie Mystal, whose shtick is more or less being Al Sharpton with a degree from Harvard Law. (We’ve had occasion to subject him to withering contempt from time to time). Closing his piece, Mr. Purple notes a less-than-practical suggestion coming from the this buffoon:

So it is that we return to MSNBC for one last ray of insight. On Saturday, a deranged individual named Elie Mystal screamed that Biden ought to make abortions available at federal facilities — and surely he should. Democrats, here’s your game-changer: third-trimester abortions at every post office.

Renowned fraud Elizabeth Warren went one better by actually suggesting that the Biden Administration open up Abortion Pop-Up Tents at the edges of National Parks in states which place strong restrictions of the former “Constitutional right.” It’s an idea just dumb enough for Democrats and their media/academic/bureaucratic adjunct to rally around, and there will be no one inside of their ideological bubble to counsel them otherwise.

– JVW

36 Responses to “Is MSNBC to Blame for the End of Roe and Casey?”

  1. Pro-abortion advocates like to assert that their opponents are all men, and suggest that every single woman naturally favors abortion rights. But the truth is that women are heavily represented in the pro-life cause, including at the leadership level. I am always struck by how many young women show up in images from pro-life rallies, which runs counter to the media narrative that there is universal support for abortion among that cohort.

    JVW (020d31)

  2. When LBJ left office, the Court was reliably 6-3 or 7-2 Liberal:

    Earl Warren (Ike), Hugo Black (FDR), William O. Douglas (FDR), John Marshall Harlan II (Ike), William J. Brennan Jr. (Ike), Potter Stewart (Ike), Byron White (JFK), Abe Fortas (LBJ), Thurgood Marshall (LBJ)

    Yet not one peep out of the Democrats about how terrible such an unbalanced court was. Even a few years later, after middle-of-the-road Nixon got a few nominations past the Democrat-controlled Senate, it was still 7-2 liberal and actively pursuing “change.”

    Now, it’s their ox that was gored and it’s “worse than Hitler.”

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  3. which runs counter to the media narrative that there is universal support for abortion among that cohort.

    Women voters aren’t “women” if they’re considering voting Republican.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  4. They’ve miscalculated, after discovering their priorities were considered laughably insane at best, they’ve doubled down.

    Colonel Haiku (835d36)

  5. The pop up tents in national parks idea is one of the many things that’s making me reconsider the simulation argument.

    frosty (af6c86)

  6. Hubristic.

    nk (d9811c)

  7. One of the reasons that Roe/Casey failed was the way courts routinely pushed the limits on abortion, and the way certain states allowed elective abortions of late-term fetuses.

    Such as: https://southwesternwomens.com/southwestern-womens-options-albuquerque-new-mexico/

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  8. The usual conservative ignorance on display so I will inform again. Msdnc is not the left though chris hayes occasionally strays into that territory. MsDNC is the media arm of the corporate establishment and donor class not the left. Ask bernie sanders supporters if they think msDNC represents them. When ed schultz wanted to cover bernie sanders 2016 presidential announcement from Vermont msDNC said no. When bernie won michigan primary maddow chimed in the clinton won the democrat primary in mississippi! Before the election their nightly shows had gary johnson on because he took votes from trump ;but never jill stein who took votes from clinton. I read closely mr purple’s comments on federal land. He does not mention indian reservations which are sovereign territories hence indian gaming. He condems ;but does not say they can’t do it. Last night on colbert show AOC said biden could issue an emancipation proclamation on woman’s rights as lincoln did on slavery to counter the supreme courts dred scott decision.

    asset (e75d41)

  9. I recently saw the headline/analysis that our society had out-sourced the problem of public toilets to Starbuck. Pithy, with a tang of truth.

    In much the same vein as opening abortion clinics in national parks, conservatives ought to at least begin discussions about opening public toilets in every federal post office or other facility. After all, the danger to the public posed by the homeless is not due to the lack of a roof over an impoverished head, but the lack of a sanitary toilet under a destitute derriere. The public good represented by replacing the federal motor vehicle fleet with Prius and Tesla electrics can only accrue from reduced CO2 emissions over decades. The public health improvement from opening more public toilets in our cities accrues instantly by reducing the amount of manure and urine on our sidewalks.

    Are there really more pregnant voters in search of abortions, perhaps near national parks, than there are disgusted voters stepping around poo-piles and wondering why adult humans are behaving like feral dogs?

    I also wonder: If society allows rape victims special exemption to take the life of the resulting babies, is society as a whole allowed to, by a special exemption, take the life of the perpetrators of the rape?

    pouncer (0b6e80)

  10. I’m pro-choice, but even I shake my head at all these TV talking heads who don’t understand how a constitutional republic works.

    norcal (da5491)

  11. Don’t blame the messengers. The court simply is no longer secular. Religious zealots have infected plenty of institutions from time to over centuries, attempting to impose their morality upon others; from the crusaders to the inquisitions- [even the one nobody expects]- from burning witches, torching Joan of Arc, jailing Galileo, dealing with Nazis, diddling kiddies and even dictated media content. In the end, in the long run, progress leaves them behind.

    DCSCA (848cb9)

  12. I’m pro-choice, but even I shake my head at all these TV talking heads who don’t understand how a constitutional republic works.

    That’s just it- as the current caldron of boiling populists will tell you: it doesn’t work. And from their POV, bad boy Jefferson’s got their back:

    https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/jefferson/thomas-jefferson-god-forbid-we-should-ever-be-twenty-years-without-such-a-rebellion

    DCSCA (848cb9)

  13. If society allows rape victims special exemption to take the life of the resulting babies, is society as a whole allowed to, by a special exemption, take the life of the perpetrators of the rape?

    Rape was a capital offense until 1972. Louisiana had it until 2008 for the rape of a child when Five Of Nine struck that down too. The 1972 Court is all gone and Kennedy was the swing vote in 2008, so who knows?

    nk (d9811c)

  14. I’m pro-choice, but even I shake my head at all these TV talking heads who don’t understand how a constitutional republic works.

    norcal (da5491) — 6/29/2022 @ 2:36 pm

    It’s because they don’t see it as a constitutional republic. They don’t even see it as a democracy. They see it as a marxist utopia that hasn’t reached its final form, and any deviation from this historic determinism is sliding towards fascism.

    Their worldview hasn’t changed since “Counterrevolution and Revolt” was published 50 years ago, they’ve simply created about 2.5 generations of new adherents. When things don’t go their way, they’re literally incapable of processing the fact that they lost, or that they are in the minority. If their priests and apostles weren’t so completely saturated in academia and the entertainment industry, they would be popularly seen for the fringe cult they actually are.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  15. Earl Warren (Ike), Hugo Black (FDR), William O. Douglas (FDR), John Marshall Harlan II (Ike), William J. Brennan Jr. (Ike), Potter Stewart (Ike), Byron White (JFK), Abe Fortas (LBJ), Thurgood Marshall (LBJ)

    You mean when the court was secular.

    https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/391649/religion-supreme-court-justices.aspx

    DCSCA (87d22b)

  16. Lenin wrote a book titled: what is to be done. Malcolm X said by any means necessary. The democrat party will do work arounds like federal and sovereign indian lands for clinics and driving women to blue states until the 2022 election Its one thing to try voter suppression tactics on an apathetic democrat voters luke warm on biden. Its quite another to try and stop democrats who are as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore from voting.

    asset (64afa4)

  17. You mean when the court was secular.

    “Secular” is probably the least tolerant of all religions.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  18. asset, you do know that Native Americans are probably the least likely group in America to host an abortion clinic, don’t you? You’d have better luck putting a mosque in West Hollywood.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  19. @16 wasn’t there a story recently about a lot of Ds switching to vote R? Are they the ones who aren’t going to take it anymore?

    frosty (ea77a6)

  20. Its quite another to try and stop democrats who are as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore from voting.

    Yeah, yeah, and they’ll pick up a couple more seats in California, New York and Massachusetts. Everywhere else they’ll be swamped.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  21. List of films condemned by the Legion of Decency

    This is a list of films condemned by the National Legion of Decency, a United States Catholic organization. The National Legion of Decency was established in 1933 and reorganized in 1965 as the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (NCOMP). Under each of these names, it rated films according to their suitability for viewing, assigning a code of A, B, or C, with that of C identified as “Condemned” for viewing by Catholics.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_condemned_by_the_Legion_of_Decency

    ‘The Producers’ is on their list.

    Seriously.

    And Brooks would say: ‘Go to Mel.’

    DCSCA (87d22b)

  22. I know some donor-class Dems in Santa Monica who are rip-sh1t about the direction the activists are taking their party. They are only sticking with the Dems because of Trump and his flying monkeys, but let them vote for someone else and they just might.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  23. Lenin wrote a book titled: what is to be done. Malcolm X said by any means necessary.

    Pretty ironic, considering these session rulings are turning out to be a massive lamplight that the political right appears to be abandoning its 40-odd year gentlemen’s agreement to never use what power it’s allowed to have for any purpose beyond cutting taxes, reducing (arbitrary) regulations, empowering the surveillance agencies, or ramping up defense spending.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  24. asset, you do know that Native Americans are probably the least likely group in America to host an abortion clinic, don’t you? You’d have better luck putting a mosque in West Hollywood.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9) — 6/29/2022 @ 6:57 pm

    I don’t know, I suspect a lot of NAs would be more than amenable to the idea of facilitating a means for the wasichus/bilagaanas to willingly eliminate as many of their offspring as possible.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  25. you make me sad, mr. asset

    you make me realize that there are delusional people to the left of me and to the right of me

    i don’t like to realize things

    it shakes me out of the comfort of my own delusions

    there will be no abortion clinics on indian lands

    it is a shuck ms. aoc is selling you

    so you will give her your money

    and she will keep her bony butt in her house of representatives seat

    nk (b9325a)

  26. OT- Yellowstone Visitor Gored by Bison

    Attack, second in recent weeks, comes shortly after park experienced devastating flooding. A Colorado man was gored by a bull bison in Yellowstone National Park on Monday, the second bison attack at the park in recent weeks, according to the National Park Service.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellowstone-visitor-gored-by-bison-11656529832

    So what’s his beef?

    DCSCA (87d22b)

  27. OT- Yellowstone Visitor Gored by Bison

    It never ceases to amaze me how many idiots think wild animals are like what they see in Disney movies. Now, I’ve been around legitimately domesticated wildlife in national parks–during a recent trip to Zion, there was a squirrel letting this little kid pet him like a housecat while he munched on pine nuts, for example.

    But ungulates are some of the most unpredictable, moody beasts you could possible encounter, and are easily capable of killing someone for doing nothing more than sneezing.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  28. But ungulates are some of the most unpredictable, moody beasts you could possible encounter, and are easily capable of killing someone for doing nothing more than sneezing.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 6/29/2022 @ 7:28 pm

    And yet they taste so good.

    norcal (da5491)

  29. 18 I am native american and was told the same thing about gaming on indian lands. 19/20 The last year is not the last week with democrats floudering around led by an old fool with no trump around. I am not talking about who will win the midterms ;but trying to make it difficult for democrats who now have a purpose and a cause from voting. 22 The donor class can go pound sand. They fund corporate establishment democrats. 23 That has kept corporate republicans out of re-education camps.

    asset (64afa4)

  30. @29 . ‘Many moons ago…’

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihj5rNhyitA

    DCSCA (d7dfc2)

  31. LOL, apparently there’s a trend on TikTok with Katniss Everdeen posts from mentally ill dangerhairs about “overthrowing the government.” The most hilarious part of this pretense is that they’re all urbanite fancies who are closer in nature and temperament to the residents of the Capital in their depraved, decadent solipsism, than they are to those in a district full of Appalachian coal miners.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  32. In Alaska the tourists are always trying to pet a moose.

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  33. @31: And that they are posting this on a Chinese-owned service is most ironic. I guess they have to be clear about which government they want to overthrow.

    Be sure to respond with “June 4th!”

    Kevin M (eeb9e9)

  34. In the latest npr/pbs poll taken over the weekend after supreme court ruling on roe vs wade 48% said the were now more likely to vote democrat and 41% more likely to vote republican. On msDNC tonight the topic was democrats split on response to supreme court ruling on roe. As guests they had a DNC spokesperson and an anti trump republican to discuss the split on what to do between the democrat left base and moderate establishment democrats in the party. Except nobody from the left base was allowed on to discuss their side of the split in the party!

    asset (44def9)

  35. It’s just as easy to blame any given messaging arm of the De and/or the left generally. The original motto was pro-choice. Some people may have believed that but it has always been easy to see that it was pro a particular choice. Over time it was inevitable that the pro-abortion foundation would be more visible. The message itself is the problem.

    For example:

    On the issue of counseling for pregnant women; the pro-choice lobby was against it because it might lead to less abortions.

    On a variety of other issues where the pro-choice principle would apply; the pro-choice lobby would push back since this might water down or weaken abortion arguments.

    frosty (8c9e29)


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