Closing all the tabs for the year ...
Viewed in a bemused spirit, 2024 provided (in Mark Twain’s words) “not merely food for laughter,” but “an entire banquet.” Begin with the Texan who, preparing to run for president, changed his name to Literally Anybody Else. John F. Kerry, the Democrats’ 2004 nominee and, in 2024, the State Department’s designated climate worrier, said people would “feel better” about the war in Ukraine if Russia would “make a greater effort to reduce emissions.” War criminals should minimize their carbon footprints.
A whistleblower charged that a federal supervisor directed workers responding to Hurricanes Helene and Milton to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Miss Sassy, the Springfield, Ohio, cat who police were told might have tempted hungry Haitian immigrants, was found healthy in her owner’s basement. Online applicants for some positions in Kamala Harris’s campaign were invited to say whether they are “he/him,” “she/her,” “they/them,” “xe/xem,” “ze/hir,” “ey/em,” “hir/hir,” “fae/faer” or “hu/hu.” At a post-election seminar, a senior official of the campaign pronounced it “flawless.” The day after the election, various universities provided milk, cookies, coloring books, Legos, “reflection spaces” and “destress sessions” for young adults “struggling” with the election results.
Ed: If you want to laugh at 2024's excesses, George Will's WaPo column is a good place to start. Much of what follows will be more serious in nature, but there's a lot of ridiculousness in the past calendar year too, some of which has been forgotten in the urgency of the election. Will includes some serious developments in this too, especially the decline (and hopefully fall) of DEI in corporate America as well as in culture. And WTF is a "hu/hu," anyway?
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Ed: Not Safe For Work (language), but worth every second of attention you have.
Chris Cuomo on the left downplaying the Trump assassination attempt: “How f*cked up up is that? That you wished he had died? That you play down that he was shot at? It was disgusting.”
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 31, 2024
pic.twitter.com/unGSBGIbNv
If that had happened to Harris, you guys would have talked about it for three days nonstop about how we’re in helter-skelter mode or whatever it is. And then you call me a bigot for saying that this is why you lost the election. That’s exactly why you lost the election. You are out of touch. You lost the plot about how people feel in the majority. That’s what you did.
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Late-night comedy hosts including Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel spent 2024 repeatedly bashing now President-elect Donald Trump — and experienced another bad year as their cultural relevance and viewership continue to crash.
The network comedians told a total of 1,463 jokes about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the recent fall election period, with a whopping 98 percent of them aimed at Trump, according to a recent study by the Media Research Center. The study covered the period from September 3 through October 25.
In addition, 78 percent of jokes aimed at vice presidential candidates targeted J.D. Vance.
Ed: And media companies wonder why their consumers rate them less reliable than used-car salespeople and political candidates.
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Remember when legacy media colluded with the DNC/Kamala camp to run the “Joy!” campaign?
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 30, 2024
In retrospect, it’s hysterical.
🤡🌎 pic.twitter.com/oxHBnURRV1
Ed: I'll never get tired of Tim Walz' case of projection over "weird."
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How stupid was 2024?
Let’s start with the art world, which over the centuries has given humanity so many beautiful, timeless masterpieces. This year, the biggest story involving art, by far, was that a cryptocurrency businessman paid $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction for ...
A banana.
Ed: At least he got something tangible from it. It's the Six Million Dollar Snack, soon to be an ABC series. As Dave Barry goes on to explain, it's not even the dumbest thing to happen in 2024, but it certainly has to be in the top three ... right?
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So dramatic. pic.twitter.com/gZoVmuexif
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) December 30, 2024
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Andrew Walworth added: "You can't have a winner without a loser, so the Democratic defeat -- how they went from 'brat summer' to this November wipeout in 107 days -- it started out so well. You've probably already forgotten about the Politics of Joy."
"To me, the story of the year might be the rejection of the excesses and worst impulses of the Democratic Party," Carl Cannon contributed. "Harris hasn't held a press conference to this day since she was chosen, and Tim Walz didn't help. He got on the radar because he called Donald Trump and J.D. Vance 'weird,' and then he went out and behaved kind of weirdly."
"I think the American people were tired of being gaslighted and lied to on all these issues," added Cannon.
Ed: And as Christian Toto and I discuss on today's Off the Beaten Path, that's not just true in politics. There's a 43-minute YouTube podcast at RCP from which this is taken, and it's pretty interesting.
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Dozens of influential media figures were asked what they got wrong in 2024 for a retrospective report, and several of the respondents admitted to eating crow over President Biden's mental acuity.
"While last year’s list varied, one of 2024’s most consequential news events, Joe Biden’s failure on the debate stage and subsequent decision to leave the presidential race, was clearly top of mind for many of our respondents this year," Semafor's Max Tani wrote.
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- We suggested in February that Joe Biden wasn’t going to be the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. “In short,” we said, “given that the establishment left is now insisting that Biden will be the nominee makes it more likely that he won’t be.” Turns out the Democratic Party was playing the long con. ...
- It was clear to us all year, and we mentioned it frequently, that Biden was suffering from an obvious cognitive decline and was unfit for the presidency, a fact that has finally been widely accepted. Of course, we weren’t alone in our observation. Biden’s infirmity was been obvious to tens of millions. But we noted his slurring and stumbling as early as March 2020 and then called out his mental descent a month later. It was clear even then that he was in no shape to take that 3 a.m. emergency call. We did the same two months after his inauguration, and consistently throughout his miserable term, even as the coverup and angry denials – weren’t we conspiracy theorists? – were flying.
Ed: This is from Issues & Insights, and the entire piece is worth reading for their self-assessment of 2024 coverage.
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This year was dominated by politics, ending with Donald Trump's historic election. 2024 also saw triumph in the Olympics and the Eras Tour making music history as well as shocking tragedy and natural disasters.
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) December 31, 2024
Here's a look at 2024 in review pic.twitter.com/DzfIPO4Qb9
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