I expect that many of the Alabama voters who will vote for Moore are willing to overlook the allegation of pedophilia because he’s on their side in the “culture war”. That smells bad to me, I hate to think that I’d ever be tempted to vote for someone who I thought was personally reprehensible, regardless of platform.
But I expect that some of them will vote for him because they would like to send a big old “Fuck you” to the Washington Post. I can’t say I’m totally unsympathetic to that.
I mean the nerve of those guys, writing a thoroughly researched story backed up by dozens of on-the-record witnesses attesting to Moore’s decades-long pattern of monstrous behavior. What kind of elitist assholes do they think they are?
Slow clap, but with a caveat: I live here in Alabama. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life in Mississippi and Alabama because that’s where the jobs at academic institutions for highly specific research interests were for me and Mr. Jilly. Politics in the Deep South are entrenched in ways that logic does not penetrate. The power of the pulpit and the sway of generations of closet prejudice are very, very real and palpable. Even those who might at first glance appear to be traditional, fiscal conservatives, well, you scratch the surface and they have sympathy for those poor old men that Doug Jones chose to prosecute for killing 4 innocent girls. There remains a lost cause mentality among the privileged, enfranchised white that is almost impenetrable.
The way through to these people is not pointing out their hypocrisy. Trust, I’ve tried.
They picked their target, marshaled their resources, and rolled out their evidence. Can’t argue with that.
It plays fabulously on boingboing, though.
“If you’re the Antichrist, you have to tell me.” 
You make it sound like the Washington Post decided to target Roy Moore for purely partisan reasons, so they marshaled their resources to find evidence that he did something wrong.
Has it occurred to you that you may have this backwards, and that they decided to run this story on Moore only after significant evidence surfaced about his decades of pervy behavior?
It’s occurred to me as a possibility.
Just not one that you’ll endorse, because you’d rather accuse them of partisanship instead of doing their jobs as reporters.
I like it when somebody posts something like the one you responded to, so that responses like yours can be made. Thanks for doing the legwork!
As for Moore and the squicky hypocrisy of the nominally Xian right wing, see Proverbs 16:4.
It’s pretty easy in today’s environment to do both at once.
NPR today reported that public confidence in the media is at thirty-five percent with many of those polled expressing their disdain for ‘fake news’.
My immediate thought: well yeah, if your main source of verbage is Fox News/Breitbart/Info Wars, then that impression itself would be unwittingly correct.
If presenting facts and pushing headlines and issues that cast a spotlight on the competence of your government (see: post-hurricane Puerto Rico)–you know, the very purpose of having a free press–if that kind of journalism is now considered partisan, well, we are in for a long haul.
(Edited to add: upon further reflection, I’m beginning to think that this may have been your point. Please, please tell me this was your point.)
I think that for almost everyone, “confidence in the media” = “feels that the media thinks the way I do”.
I’m fairly confident about the media because for the most part reporters in North America are pretty lefty and reflect my views. I’d fully expect the right to feel more or less the opposite.
If I lived in Britain, I’d have very little confidence in the media (outside of the BBC).
For me, mourning people’s lack of confidence in the media is simply short for mourning the fact that most of the populace are to the right (and perhaps substantially to the right) of me (and the median reporter).
And I have to point out respectfully that Jesus Christ is one of those left wingers whom nobody listens to any Moore. You know, that subversive stuff about feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoners, housing the homeless and welcoming the “stranger” (i.e., the immigrant). I also believe that the former judge could benefit from a close reading of Matthew 18.
Edit: Oops! Already posted somewhere else: 
Maybe he’s not a Nazi, but I feel pretty confident that it would be okay to punch O’Keefe.
Indeed. And I love it here. But I still fall into the trap of believing that they will somehow recognize the hypocrisy. I just can’t wrap my mind around it, so my feeble brain tries to figure out ways to break through that wall. The sad truth is that there’s no way way through. There is no spoon.
I notice your selective quote, in that you’d rather accuse them of partisanship rather than of doing their job as reporters.
He’s a collaborator, isn’t that enough?
It’s perfectly possible to do a competent and honest job of reporting about specific individuals and institutions …who have been selected for investigation based upon their having worldviews which the reporter finds repugnant.
The Nation does this all the time. So does the Weekly Standard. So does the Washington Post.
The partisanship is not in how you investigate, but in who you investigate and who you don’t.
