Media is plural. The proper form is "the media are..."
Okay, "media" can also be singular. "The media sucks," not "The media suck." But work with me here.
Being plural, generally, better reflects the baseline reality of the situation: there are many media: newspapers and web sites, TV stations and cable networks, magazines and radio programs. The media isn't—whoops, aren't—one thing, nor do their separate elements work in lockstep. The media are not a school of herring. They don't move in coordination. Those who say, "The media do this...." are usually really complaining about CNN, or the New York Times, or a tiny sliver of the vast, coral-like media. So I'm a little reluctant to address the media as a whole, even as a compliment. That said, the media seems to at long last, finally, and almost too late, have gotten the hang of reporting on the monstrosity of Donald Trump. You can't ignore him. The man's the president, for another ... 47 days.
But you can't give him the constant, wall-to-wall, 24-hours-a-day, suck-the-air-out-of-the-room attention he pathologically demands either. Because he lost, and is being eased out the door, please God.
Until then, the media must give him the context he deserves: increasingly superfluous, shoved to the side, repeating the same old stale lies, vomiting a septic stream of delusion and fabrication to whoever falls for that kind of thing. Well, 70 million plus Americans. Quite a lot, really.
Thus it was only on the free-fire zone of Twitter that I noticed Trump's 46-minute rant Wednesday, or at least the 2 minutes and 12 seconds he repeated to his 88 million followers. Just 132 seconds of empty bombast, and I assume the other 44 minutes is even worse.
As is common with Trump, it was both shocking and more of the same.
Still, I retweeted it, adding my own commentary. "Pathetic." It seemed something for people to see. Look at this shit.
I should have added "reprehensible." The truly horrible part is that, according to reports from those within the White House, Trump knows he lost. He knows he's going. This entire fraud is about squeezing money out of the credulous, medieval serfs who support him. Building a slush fund for him to glide out office on, toward his next shams and scams. And I suppose to salve his ego, which can't accept loss. He did the same thing in 2016, preparing to lose to Hillary Clinton, until cruel fate, James Comey and bone-deep, baked in sexism waved him into the White House.
I said before that I didn't care what happens to Trump, but I've changed my mind.
I hope the iron grip of justice awaits him. I hope he goes to prison, that Supermax prison in Colorado, or else in a special Spandeau-like prison built just for him, on the moon like Lex Luthor, to make sure he never escapes back to the planet he ravaged. Him and his whole leering frat boy plus Barbie family, his self-pardon tossed out for the grotesque abuse it surely must be.
Ignoring him is good, and generally the right thing to do. Thirty-one hundred Americans died of COVID Wednesday. We have real problems to address and he is only standing in the way.
But it should never be a polite silence. Every day is a good day to remember that Donald Trump is a traitor and coward, a self-dealing liar and utter fraud, who is doing what he can to ruin the federal government even as he is being muscled out the door. There's no harm in reminding ourselves that, because there are people who still support him, though it seems, just from the volume, that the distant thud of reality is finally starting to register through the dim haze of their blown-out senses.