The media aren't joking — and don’t call them Shirley

It’s the Frank Drebin election. Nothing to see here, folks, please disperse.

The MSNBC talking head Stephanie Ruhle explained this week why Republicans are pretending to care about the border: “This is a strong economy. That’s one of the reasons you see them pivoting so hard to immigration.”

All these mean liars are just acting like the country is something less than completely perfect, in a desperate effort to smear the brilliant Joe Biden.

It’s all fake, you see. The mean Republicans have been trying to pretend that the economy is bad, but they can’t go on doing that, because the American economy is so ridiculously strong and successful that no one will listen to them. So right-wing politicians are “pivoting” to another made-up issue, dishonestly playacting like illegal immigration is a problem so they can have something to run on in an election year.

How cynical of Republicans to pretend about all of those completely fake things!

There’s a lot of this going around. Take a look at an equally lazy effort from Paul Krugman if you feel the need. The American economy is “almost miraculously strong,” illegal immigration isn't much of a problem anywhere, the COVID-19 vaccines work so perfectly that only right-wing anti-vaxxers ever get sick any more, and “the anxiety driving MAGA isn’t driven by reality.”

All these mean liars are just acting like the country is something less than completely perfect, in a desperate effort to smear the brilliant Joe Biden, the most stunningly successful leader in the history of the universe.

The nightly news broadcast in Pyongyang is more subtle than this. And North Korea will at least kill you in remarkably ugly ways if you don’t pretend to always worship the government, so they have a better excuse.

The shamelessness level of the American “mainstream” news media can no longer be measured — it’s so far off the charts that it’s punching holes in the roof, and Krugman should probably carry an umbrella indoors.

Here in the physical world outside Paul Krugman’s head, an endless flood of illegal immigrants is challenging the deepest of the deep-blue zones.

Here’s a months-old headline from Krugman's newspaper about New York City Mayor Eric Adams: “In Escalation, Adams Says Migrant Crisis ‘Will Destroy New York City.’” What a right-winger this Adams person is, right?

Here’s a more recent headline from CNN about another city with a Democrat for a mayor: “Denver nears its breaking point as migrants and the cold pile in.”

Here’s the news from Chicago, where the current Democratic mayor is somehow well to the left of the last Democratic mayor: “No help: The federal immigration deal won’t fix the migrant crisis in Chicago — and it’s unlikely to pass Congress anyway."

Strange, isn’t it, how many liberal news organizations and Democratic mayors are warning of a migrant crisis while MSNBC anchors and the opinion pages of the New York Times warn that Republicans are inventing a fake crisis? It’s almost like the whole thing is actually real and a thin layer of allegedly elite professional journalists are just nakedly lying to cover for the political party they favor.

Similarly, Americans are experiencing record-high credit card debt and dangerously high credit card delinquencies just as Paul Krugman says the economy is stunningly strong and nearly everyone is living in comfort. You might almost get the impression that Krugman is capable of being wrong. Almost.

If it's hard to imagine why they're bothering to do this, consider this recent poll of the top 1% of earners in the American economy. The world looks good to them. The economy feels strong at the top, and Joe Biden must be successful. “Elites are much keener on the U.S. government than others. Fully 70 percent of them trust federal officials to ‘do the right thing most of the time’ — more than twice the nationwide average.” They think people will believe a set of absurd claims that look plausible from where they sit. The economy is strong to people on television.

The rest of us are stuck with nine more months of gaslighting about the fake migrant crisis and the magnificent economy. But take heart! You’re watching a bonfire. People who shouldn’t be believed are scraping up the last thin shreds of their credibility and burning it all, and they don't seem to have the capacity to notice what they’re doing to themselves.

Or, rather, they don’t seem to have the capacity to notice anything at all.