From the opinion sections of the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, those who make up the ranks of America’s elite commentariat have failed utterly to provide audiences with measured and well-researched information regarding the COVID-19 disease. They have chosen instead to indulge in their worst, shallowest inclinations, spreading panic, ignorance, and fear almost as quickly as the infection itself.
The general failure of the pundit class to serve even a moderately useful purpose in the time of the coronavirus pandemic has manifested itself in several forms.
First, there is the class of commentator that has given up entirely on the idea of being measured and has chosen instead to embrace hysterical panic.
“Can we talk about [one] of the few topics I may actually know too much about: homicide?” MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner asked Tuesday. “Specifically, whether Donald Trump may have criminal exposure for some level of negligent homicide or voluntary/involuntary manslaughter for the way he’s mishandled the coronavirus crisis.”
He goes on in that vein for quite some time. I will spare you.
Earlier this week, another MSNBC legal analyst, Neal Katyal, had this to say: “Idea: Trump resigns for grave incompetence. George W Bush and Obama run this thing together.”
He added, “We can figure out how to do this constitutionally. It’s tough but possible. Doesn’t actually even need Trump to resign, he just needs to get out of the way [and] let the pros do the hard work.”
Unlike Kirschner, Katyal is not just some anti-Trump “resistance” lunatic. He served as a solicitor general for the Obama administration. He is fairly respected by both sides of the aisle. Yet, this is how he has chosen to respond to the COVID-19 virus, not with a restrained, knowledgeable response but with conspiracymongering and wish-casting.
There is also the class of commentator that sees the pandemic as the perfect opportunity for partisan ax-grinding.
“Trump won’t be able to deflect and project and create a daft alternative narrative,” the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd wrote in late February for an article titled “Trump Makes Us Ill.”
She adds, “The virus won’t respond to conspiracy theories from Rush Limbaugh or nasty diatribes from Sean Hannity or nicknames from Donald Trump."
Earlier, on Feb. 26, Dowd’s New York Times colleague Gail Collins authored an op-ed titled “Let’s Call It Trumpvirus.”
There is nothing I can say that will bring greater shame on Collins than her own headline, so let’s just leave it at that.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin also claimed this week that there is a “particular cruelty" and an "irony” in the likelihood that more Republicans than Democrats will die from the virus because Republicans watch Fox News.
"[T]here will be less Democrat deaths because there will be less mass gatherings, there will be less opportunities for people to congregate and share this horrible disease," she said.
Fox Business anchor Trish Regan, meanwhile, did something a little different. On March 9, she used the pandemic as an opportunity to attack Democrats and the news media.
Regan dismissed fears over the virus, telling her viewers the pandemic is yet “another attempt” by Democrats and their allies in the news media “to impeach the president.”
Democrats are creating “mass hysteria to encourage a market sell-off,” and it is all being done “to demonize and destroy the president,” Regan claimed while an on-air headline flashed: “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam.”
The network placed her on hiatus until further notice following her remarks.
Next, there is the class of commentator that sees the pandemic as a perfect excuse to police for problematic language and other culture war favorites. This class includes the Atlantic’s David Frum, who believes that it is racist to refer to the virus by the name of the country and city where it originated.
“Nobody calls the 1919-20 pandemic the Spanish flu anymore,” Frum said this week on social media, “and not because we are soft on the Inquisition. It's just not a useful way to name a disease.”
Everyone calls it the “Spanish flu,” including David Frum.
“The reason sensible people resist Trump's urging to call coronavirus ‘China infection’ or ‘Yellow Peril’ or whatever name he's test-marketing tonight is that it's just too blinking obvious that his purpose is to redirect attention from his failure to do his job competently,” the Atlantic columnist also complained this week.
The president has never called the virus “China infection” or “yellow peril.” He has called it the “China virus.”
Lastly, there is the class of commentator that has responded to the virus by acting as the unofficial public relations arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
“How uncomfortable is it,” NBC News’s Chuck Todd asked last weekend, “that perhaps China’s authoritarian ways did prevent this? Meaning, had China been a free and open society, this might have spread faster?”
Elsewhere, the New York Times published an op-ed titled “China Bought the West Time. The West Squandered It.”
Imagine having a platform as large and influential as NBC News or the New York Times and then squandering it to take cheap shots or praise the Chinese Communist Party, which is responsible for the pandemic in the first place.
If nothing else, the viral outbreak has shown that the U.S. pundit class is no more informed or credible than your average comments section. Our commentariat is a collection of irredeemable zealots, partisan guttersnipes, and all-around know-nothings, which makes them not only the most useless class of person to be involved in the public discourse surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, but also one of the most dangerous.