Some thoughts. (GAZA and UKRAINE entries for this date are HERE and HERE.) — MCM

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Thoroughly mainstream Politico.  Hours after RFK Jr.’s announcement suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing former President Trump’s re-election bid, Politico came out today with THIS commentary cataloguing some of the “weirdest” moments of Kennedy’s last few months — and also THIS analysis. The weirdness column exemplifies what might be PORE-AAA, or the power to re-emphasize again and again, a corollary to POLO, or the power to leave out, which Patrick Lawrence has cited in one of his ScheerPost columns. There was more POLO in the Politico analysis.

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One-second story?  AP and Reuters, at any rate, demonstrated POLO in their reports on Kennedy’s announcement, regurgitating elements of their coverage of his campaign to date and not failing to include other Kennedys’ continued disappointment in their relative.

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What constitutes ‘weird’?  One reason for dismissing as weird RFK Jr.’s candidacy is that so much of what he has had to say through Children’s Health Defense, in The Real Anthony Fauci, and on the campaign trail, has been breezily ignored in the media. So it’s weird.

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Weird, the word.  An English teacher of yore forbid students to use “nice” in papers — also prohibiting “very ” — as overused and misused and hence usually meaningless. How about weird?

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What did he say?  The 50-minute address was filled with the kind of stuff that a candidate who is bowing out usually doesn’t bother to include. Because none of it was included in any of the “kiss it off” news stories, some people may want to check out the speech on C-SPAN.

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Politics and IQ.  Can general awareness — call it IQ — go up while reading a good novel? Say one by Stanley Elkin or Herman Wouk. Hundreds would apply. RFK Jr.’s speech hit me the same way. But it won’t hit anybody that way who didn’t see it, because of POLO.

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Vacation.  Insufficient notice that the renegade was suspending his campaign may have caught media managers off guard. So much of what he packed into his talk may have seemed alien to people who rely on the news media for information. So many reporters may be on summer vacation that the event was under-covered. In any case, vacation may applies to establishment reporting in any season.

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A horse of a different color.  Is RFK Jr. a maverick? A certain bleach-blond politician comes to mind. Is he a renegade? Some cousins or siblings say so. Or is he just too weird? Was JFK a maverick — at all? Was RFK?

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Zionists all?  The current president, the former president, the vice president, and the renegade candidate all appear to be true-blue Israel loyalists. Israel didn’t specifically come up in the speech on Friday, but RFK Jr. did refer to “neo-cons.”

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Betrayal, or a cabinet post?  If RFK Jr.’s latest move is allowed as suitable for Sunday morning network TV bantering, or elsewhere, will commentators talk about the risks in his gambit, or whether he would make a suitable cabinet secretary, and if so in which post — and if not why not?