Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Mourning Eric Boehlert amidst the chaos of 2022

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Charles P. Pierce/Esquire:

Eric Boehlert’s Spirit Was Decades Younger and His Wisdom Decades Older

One of the only media critics who mattered has died at 57 years old.

He was gloriously unimpressed by reputations. He was the implacable foe of journalistic laziness in all its forms, especially as expressed through access journalism and the reportorial arch-heresy of Both Siderism. Take him all in all, he was something of a proud throwback to what the craft of journalism ought to be. It pains me as a professional to know that a lot of famous yahoos are going to get a freer ride now that he’s gone, although I feel certain that the likes of Dan Froomkin and Margaret Sullivan—and, in its own little way, this shebeen—will carry on his work as best we all can.

Joan Walsh/The Nation:

Eric Boehlert Got Everything Right About Our Petty, Self-Congratulating Media  
From his early coverage of political reporters’ savaging Al Gore to his incisive critique of their Joe Biden coverage right before he died, he got it. And he will be missed.

Many fine journalists have written tributes to Eric’s insight and bravery in covering the media, and also his generosity and warmth as a colleague and friend. What more can I add? Well, we worked together at Salon for five years in the early 2000s, and I was frequently his editor. I went looking for some of his early pieces for us, and I found treasure. Whether even his admirers know it or not—and many do, but not all—Eric has been on the same story for the last 23 years: the callow, irresponsible way that our Beltway media has covered Democrats in these decades.

And he has fucking crushed it.

WaPo:

Trump deflects blame for Jan. 6 silence, says he wanted to march to Capitol

The former president struck a defiant posture and repeated false claims in an interview with The Washington Post.

Trump, speaking Wednesday afternoon at his palatial beachfront club, said he did not regret urging the crowd to come to Washington with a tweet stating that it would “be wild!” He also stood by his incendiary and false rhetoric about the election at the Ellipse rally before the rioters stormed the Capitol. “I said peaceful and patriotic,” he said, omitting other comments that he made in a speech that day.

In fact, Trump said he deserved more credit for drawing such a large crowd to the Ellipse — and that he pressed to march on the Capitol with his supporters but was stopped by his security detail. “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” he said.

He’s our best GOTV tool. 

Taylor Lorenz/Twitter:

The NYT announced a new policy on Twitter today and it’s very disappointing and contradictory to see. This is not how a newsroom should approach the internet or social media. It only deepens the NYT’s vulnerability to bad faith attacks. Let me break it down.

For the majority of my career I ran social strategy for newsrooms. I wrote social media guidelines for large media cos. A good social policy is about *supporting* your staff, protecting them against bad faith attacks, and recognizing that we all live as full humans online now. 

These two things are in direct contradiction w/ each other. The issue w/ NYT is that they consistently buy into bad faith attacks online and punish their journalists when they’re subject to gamergate style smear campaigns.

David Axe/Daily Beast:

Two COVID Variants Just Combined Into a ‘Frankenstein’ Virus

First identified in the U.K., the ultra-infectious “XE” subvariant could already be spreading undetected in America.

The first subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant of the novel coronavirus, was bad. BA.1 drove record cases and hospitalizations in many countries starting last fall.

The second subvariant, BA.2, was worse in some countries—setting new records for daily cases across China and parts of Europe.

Now BA.1 and BA.2 have combined to create a third subvariant. XE, as it’s known, is a “recombinant”—the product of two viruses interacting “Frankenstein”-style in a single host…

But don’t panic just yet. The same mix of subvariants that produced XE might also protect us from it. Coming so quickly after the surge of BA.1 and BA.2 cases, XE is on track to hit a wall of natural immunity—the antibodies left over from past infection in hundreds of millions of people.

HuffPost:

Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes History As First Black Woman On Supreme Court

For the first time ever, the court will no longer be a majority of white men.

Jackson, 51, was confirmed in a 53-47 vote. Every Democrat voted for her, along with three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with cheers and applause from the balcony.

Jackson’s confirmation seals a promise by President Joe Biden, who vowed as a candidate to pick a Black woman for the Supreme Court.

With Jackson on the court, white men will not be a majority of justices for the first time ever.

Amy Knight/WaPo:

Is a coup against Putin possible? Russia’s history offers clues.

Vladimir Putin has never faced a serious challenge to his power. But his disastrous war in Ukraine could change that…

The most likely threat to his rule comes from within the regime. Russia’s history offers some insights.

There have been two successful coups d’état since the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 — the overthrow of Stalin’s dreaded secret police chief Lavrenti Beria in June 1953 and the ouster of Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964. Aside from the execution of Beria and six of his associates, these coups were relatively bloodless. In both cases, the support of the security services and the Soviet military were crucial to their success.

Jessica Bruder/Atlantic:

A COVERT NETWORK OF ACTIVISTS IS PREPARING FOR THE END OF ROE

What will the future of abortion in America look like?

Ellie snugged the rubber stopper into the mason jar. She snipped the aquarium tubing into a pair of foot-long segments and attached the valve to the syringe’s plastic tip. In less than 10 minutes, Ellie had finished the project: a simple abortion device. It looked like a cross between an at-home beer-brewing kit and a seventh-grade science experiment.

The two segments of tubing protruded from the holes in the stopper. One was connected to a cannula, the other to the syringe. Holding the anatomical model, Ellie traced a path with the tip of the cannula into the vagina and through the cervix, positioning it to suction out the contents of the uterus. Next, to show more clearly how the suction process works, she placed the cannula into her coffee. When she drew back the plunger on the syringe, dark fluid coursed through the aquarium tubing and into the mason jar, collecting slowly within the diamond-patterned glass.

I had read about such devices before. But watching the scene on the beach towel brought history into focus with startling clarity: Women did this the last time abortion was illegal.