Just like that, the scare-word framing of information about the coronavirus begins to recede before our eyes. We can be sure there will still be prejudicial framing of the issue in the weeks ahead. But it will all be tied to Trump.
For months, we’ve been hearing about controversy, stupidity, rejection of “science,” disdain for opposing opinions about all things virus. The information theme in the mainstream media is that Trump has been a very bad leader in a pandemic, and it’s all his fault: all the clanging noise, the discord, the annoyance, the terrifying, never explained numbers, the draconian measures — simultaneously Trump’s fault but also dictated by “science” — imposed by the governors of Democrat-run states (and the mayors of city-states; i.e., New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago).
Tuesday morning, after such a media onslaught for months, this sweet lullaby of a headline aggregation came up on my MSN homepage.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Look! Suddenly it’s even OK to mention not requiring face masks: casually, without an embedded admonition or implication of guilt in the headline, just as if it’s something people might want to know apart from the fell intention to cause genocide and become the new Hitler.
Of course, aside from the abrupt switch to peaceful messaging, one thing a person of the merest mental competence discerns immediately is that someone really, really wants us to favor the Moderna vaccine. (This in spite of how vigorously Pfizer has denied the White House having anything to do with the Pfizer vaccine, announced a few days earlier.)
But the reassuring vibe is the point here, and it continues to the next headline set.
Isn’t that nice. Suddenly Netanyahu has ceased being a squint-eyed opportunist with suspicious legal problems, and it’s now heartening news that he and Joe Biden had a “warm conversation.” Biden is doing charmingly normal things like naming White House counsel and other key advisers. The usual suspects of the lobbying army are pivoting to Biden, as all things proceed decently and in order.
If you’ll just settle down and ignore all the irregularities you’re about to see or hear of regarding the 3 November election, you can have the safe haven of news headlines that no longer upset you. Everything reported about Biden will seem like a calm, tropical harbor in sunlight, boats bobbing gently on their moorings and the sound of island tunes wafting on the breeze.
And don’t worry. If anything about Trump-without-evidence or Trump supporters-without-evidence has to be reported, you’ll feel like Hurricane Iota has pounced personally on you, and everything you hold dear is being washed away in a surge of floodwaters infested with sharks, ocean trash, and brain-eating amoebae.
