“Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.”
That was a popular playground retort when I was an adolescent growing up in Toronto and someone was taunted with an insult. I thought perhaps maybe it was a Canadian saying, but it wasn’t. According to Gary Martin, a writer and researcher on the origins of phrases, the first mention of the saying was an American periodical with a largely black audience, The Christian Recorder, March 1862:
Remember the old adage, ‘Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me’. True courage consists in doing what is right, despite the jeers and sneers of our companions.
America’s corporate media journalists feign sensitivity about name calling when it serves their purposes. The New York Times last weekend noted in a feature that Donald Trump on multiple occasions privately referred to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “bitch” and legions of publications picked up the reference, while ignoring a much bigger exclusive buried in the story. The Times also reported that Trump hasn’t revealed “any loss of confidence” in his running mate J.D. Vance and “dismissed out of hand donors’ suggestions that he replace Mr. Vance on the ticket.”
The Vance detail revealed the falsity of multiple media reports saying that Trump regretted choosing Vance as his running mate and was entertaining thoughts of replacing him. Those reports were intended to undermine Vance, suggesting that he was even too controversial for Trump.
The corporate media predictably glommed on to the disclosure that Trump privately referred to Harris as a bitch, as it provided an opportunity to advance their preferred narrative. They deemed calling Harris a bitch was sexist, another example of Trump’s disrespect and fear of powerful women.
A sampling of headlines from the corporate media peanut gallery.
Given that Harris has called Trump a “threat to Democracy,” a “predator” who should be locked up, and weird, I’m surprised Trump hasn’t used a few more choice descriptives in his references to Harris. Moreover, Harris herself has admitted the risks of sometimes being perceived as a bitch.
“As a woman, there is a balance to be struck between being tough and being a bitch,” Harris said. I urge you to watch the embedded video in this link so you can capture the full flavor and context of Harris’s remark.
I’m typically not a betting man, but I’d wager that among the nearly 50 staffers who resigned working for Harris after she became vice president had some unkindly words to describe their former boss, who the Times and other media now refer to as Black, when she is in fact multiracial. Harris had an extraordinary 91.5 percent staff turnover rate since becoming vice president, according to Open the Books, a government watchdog group. Only four of Harris’s initial 47 staffers from her first year as VP have been employed without interruption.
In the trailing 12-month period, 24 staffers left, a nearly 50% turnover. The Atlantic last October referred to the turnover as “top-to-bottom dysfunction.” Admittedly, the Atlantic story ran before the corporate media’s concerted efforts to rebrand Harris as a competent presidential candidate of immense talents and accomplishments.
Harris’s leadership maturation in less than a year is truly historic.
One likely reason for Harris’s alarming employee turnover is that indications are she’s not all that nice to her subordinates. Terry McAteer, a multi-term superintendent of schools for California’s Nevada County and a former member of the local newspaper’s editorial board, in 2019 published this column about his son Gregory’s one-month experience working as an intern for Harris when she was California’s attorney general.
Here’s a portion of McAteer’s column:
Senator Harris vocally throws around “F-bombs” and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others. The staff is in complete fear of her and she uses her profanity throughout the day.
As Attorney General, Senator Harris instructed her entire staff to stand every morning as she entered the office and say, “Good Morning General.”
Never once during the month-long internship did Harris introduce herself to our son (as he was only in an office with 20 paid employees) and staff was too intimidated by her to introduce him. The only acknowledgment was a form letter of “thanks” signed by Harris given to him on his last day of service.
Gregory was also given instructions to never address Harris nor look her in the eye as that privilege was only allowed to senior staff members.
Harris has revealed a potty mouth even in public settings. In an interview with actor and comedian Jimmy Yang last May that was livestreamed on the White House website, Harris urged Asian Americans about the need to break down barriers.
“We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that f****** door down. Excuse my language,” she said, followed by her signature cackle.
Of course, Harris isn’t the first presidential candidate known for using vulgarity. At a Labor Day rally in 2000 when George W. Bush was running for president, he spotted the New York Times’s political reporter in the crowd and pointed him out to his running mate, Dick Cheney.
“There’s Adam Clymer, major-league a**hole from The New York Times,” Bush said, unaware the microphones were turned on. Cheney, also unaware the microphones were turned on, agreed, saying, “Oh yeah, he is, big time.”
I always respected Bush for refusing to apologize, except to say that he was sorry the microphones were turned on. Harris’s public use of vulgarity was deliberate.
During an interview with J.D. Vance last weekend, Jonathan Karl falsely stated that Donald Trump has never denounced white supremacist and Jew hater Nick Fuentes, who accompanied the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) to a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump previously denied he knew anything about Fuentes and insisted that if he did, he wouldn’t have allowed him to join the dinner. In fact, Trump did denounce Fuentes’s views in this December, 2022 Breitbart interview.
While Karl and his corporate media brethren feign concern about Trump meeting with a Jew hater, there has been scant pickup of this Washington Examiner story that Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas‘s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel and promoted a film popular among Neo-Nazis that glorifies Adolf Hitler.
The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, reportedly joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz’s gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman, who Walz called a “master teacher,” attended a May 2019 event the governor hosted for Ramadan, social media posts show.
“Imam Zaman has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel,” an Anti-Defamation League spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
“He also has justified violence against Israel, including from terror groups,” the ADL spokesperson said. “Given his hurtful remarks post-Oct. 7, and absent any recognition of the pain he has caused the Jewish community, we urge all public officials and leaders to avoid meeting with him in the future. Those who have met with Imam Zaman should clarify that they don’t agree with his toxic views about Jews and the Jewish state.”
Walz also has embraced Ilan Omar, a rabid Jew hater and the recipient of the “2019 Antisemite of the Year.” Walz’s support for Omar goes well beyond normal political expediency.
“When I’m about five mile on my run and I’m feeling kind of down and the world is pressing on me I think Ilan Omar is a Congresswoman and it just brightens you up,” he said while introducing Omar at an event.
While Walz pays lip service to Israel when he meets with Jewish groups, a person is best judged about the company they keep. It’s conceivable that Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, named the 2023 Antisemite of the Year, could potentially be appointed to senior positions in a Harris/Walz administration. The corporate media would squeal with the delight if Tlaib or Omar were appointed U.S. envoy to the United Nations or some other critical ambassador positions influencing foreign policy. Only those who believed Harris’s and Walz’s assurances until just weeks ago that President Biden was “as sharp as tack” could think otherwise.
It’s notable how little respect Democratic party leaders have for the corporate media and implicitly admit they regard the legacy news outlets as useful and dependable idiots. Despite the corporate media’s enthusiastic support for Kamala Harris and dutifully rewriting her history, Harris has yet to grant even one corporate media reporter the time of day.
“The vice president is showing all of us that you don’t need to do high-profile interviews or press conferences in order to get attention from the media or from voters,” Democratic strategist Christy Setzer told The Hill. “I’d say she has a robust communications strategy: large, energetic rallies, barnstorming the swing states, and a wildly different tone in ads and press statements designed to generate media. Plus, there’s true joy — she’s having so much fun.”
I urge you to watch the exchange between CNN anchor John Berman and Harris/Walz senior campaign spokesperson Adrienne Elrod about why Harris has yet to grant even one media interview. Take note how Elrod multiple times talks about Harris “taking her message directly to the people,” an implied criticism that the media couldn’t effectively communicate Harris’s policies and message points.
There is much to criticize about Trump and good cause to be alarmed about him regaining the White House. I could write a heartfelt and persuasive column arguing that Trump is reprehensible, despicable, and incorporate every known negative under the sun. On that front, I commend the corporate media for doing so 24/7.
But the public should be warned about Harris’s past and policies, and the far-left viewpoints she and Walz have embraced over the years. Instead, the corporate media has rewritten their histories and readers who get their news from traditional media sources have no clue about the flawed Democratic candidates looking to lead America for four years.
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I welcome constructive feedback from readers and can be reached at eric@starkmanapproved.com