RETURN OF THE WHITE WORKING CLASS WHISPERER!
I've unlocked a few recent issues of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, a wonderful newsletter to which all you good people should subscribe (especially at my low, low COVID-era prices, which conscience compels me to state are the same as pre-COVID prices but still damn low). Today's freebie is loosely about a recent column by White Working Class Whisperer Salena Zito. I confess I haven't been following her lately; there's low-hanging fruit, and then there's rotten apples lying in the tall grass, and after a spot of controversy about the, how shall I say, integrity of her sources back in 2018, she seemed to be making an effort to hack in a more traditional rightwing journalistic manner, which made her less interesting to me.
More the fool I; there are no small subjects in the view of the mature satirist, and I was alerted to a great new Zito column by the intercession of longtime Zito advocate and rightwing buffoon Bethany Mandel, who in a recent, increasingly deranged stream shook her Twitter fist at unnamed "doxxers" who felt "entitled to destroy the life, reputation and career of a good woman from behind a keyboard... while remaining anonymous," and suggested Jim Swift of the Bulwark was the Soros behind it. (Mandel gets so worked up she even does the "[Zito's] not a Trump supporter BUT she gives voice to those who are" bit, as if anyone who didn't know any better would be paying attention.)
The Bulwark is hilarious, like all NeverTrump integrity shtick, but to me the really interesting thing is Mandel not being more specific -- what doxxers did she mean? And what Zito column had set all this off? It's difficult to tell and I'm practically a Kremlinologist when it comes to these guys. Following the bread crumbs, however, I ascertained that they probably meant this thing, which is hilarious from jump:
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania—Charlie Gerow has lived and worked in Pennsylvania’s state capitol for a very long time. “I've seen a lot of rallies and protests over the decades, and generally they're relatively small.” On Monday, when he walked up to the state capitol steps to observe the demonstration, urging Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, to reopen the economy, Gerow was blown away at the number of people in attendance.'
For a man who has long given up on being blown away by anything in politics, that says a lot.
“The parade of cars alone was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed..."
Bliss it was to be alive then, but to be the Republican media consultant/single source in a Salena Zito column was very heaven! Anyway enjoy my trenchant analysis.