I just woke up from a six-year-long nap and I can’t believe the incivility of our president!Alexandra PetriPresident Biden called Fox News reporter Peter Doocy a WHAT? I am appalled!
I am appalled and outraged and sad to be alive on a day when such a thing could happen. I should also mention, probably, that I just woke up from a six-year-long nap and have no recollection of any events since early 2016!
I was playing ninepins with some friendly Dutchmen and then I fell asleep and now I have a long white beard and I couldn’t wait to see who the president was — until I saw this. Now I just cannot believe the presidency has sunk to this unprecedented low. I am pretty sure it is an unprecedented low.
Imagine! A president! Saying something like this! Again, I have been asleep for the past six years and have no recollection of anything that happened during them, in case that’s relevant at all. But I doubt that it is. Something like this can surely have no context or precedent.
Denigrating the free press is wrong. Why, once we uproot the cherished norm of presidential civility toward the members of the media, next the president will be accusing the press of manufacturing fake news! He might slide, from there, into something hideously Stalin-esque like calling the press the “enemy of the people," and turn a blind eye when his supporters started threatening journalists — or even encourage it!
That is where such unprecedented statements lead, to things like that, a dark road down which (thank gosh!) we have never ventured as a country and, I hope, never will! Until seconds ago, I was cocooned in moss on a hillside and I have no idea who the last president was. Why is everyone in masks?
Making a remark like this, whether you knew it was audible or not, is so bad that I — no, I cannot imagine a president making such a remark when he knew it was audible. Fortunately, he was not greeted by cheers. Imagine if he had been! I have never seen anything like this. Not even in my long dream, which, again, occupied the past six years.
How will the presidency survive? The president (as we all know and I’m sure would have all said had anything like this ever occurred before) has a duty to not undermine the press. We need a free press for our democracy!
No, thoughts of the alternative cannot be borne. We must nip this unprecedented thing in the bud. Thank God no president has ever said any such thing before that I can recall, although I was until recently lying on a hillside with my eyes shut, dead to the world.
Anyway, I am appalled! Appalled! May we never see anything worse. I’d better go back to sleep now. Wake me up if something else stunning and unprecedented happens, like the president’s children getting in the news, so I can be duly outraged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -civility/