That’s a real headscratcher, I tell you what. Big coverage yesterday in right-wing media, some in mainstream media, plus public condemnation by multiple Republican senators. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Sasse all chimed in, with Sasse calling Northam to “get the hell out of office” if he can’t refrain from supporting infanticide. And this is all taking place amid a battle over abortion laws in two blue states, New York and Virginia, the latter still something of a battleground in presidential elections.

No one knows nothing about nothing. Go figure.

I just spoke with over 10 Democratic Senators in the past 2 hours. Not one of them would acknowledge @GovernorVA's comments on late-term abortion. Everyone of them denied ever hearing them. — Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) January 31, 2019

Follow Rogers’s thread for vignettes of Democratic senators shuffling away after being asked about late-term abortion.

I wonder why.

The only reason to believe their ignorance might have been accidental rather than deliberate is that yesterday’s coverage in “neutral” media was partly of the “conservatives pounce” variety. There go the right-wingers, flying off the handle again over nothing. You could argue that restraint by the press was prudent under the circumstances; Northam’s office and various liberals online insisted he’d been misunderstood, after all. Can’t knock the media for pausing to make sure it has its facts right before proceeding with coverage of an electrically charged controversy.

Why, though, wonders Ross Douthat, does that caution only ever run one way?

Yet somehow the same kind of mainstream (not left-wing) journalists and editors who were commissioning thinkpieces about white supremacy within an hour of the Covington video managed to control themselves, to resist tweeting the story, to hang back, to ask for context … — Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 31, 2019

There's a case for a mainstream media that handles viral outrages with caution and patience, and that frames debates in terms of "partisans say X" rather than just running with "X." But not for a media that only practices caution for outrages that stir up social conservatives. — Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) January 31, 2019

“You aren’t a good gatekeeper” as a journalist, Douthat goes on to say, if you find yourself skeptical that David Daleiden’s video exposes of Planned Parenthood tell the whole story but perfectly credulous that the first video of the Covington kids arguing with Nathan Phillips does. Which is true: For a journalist whose first duty is to tell the truth to the public, that’s indefensible.

For a journalist who considers his first duty to a political cause, though? Perfectly responsible gatekeeping. The question to be asked about Rodgers’s tweet above isn’t really why Democrats in Congress won’t comment on Northam, it’s why only a reporter from a right-wing site like the Daily Caller seems to have tried tracking down Democrats for comment and found it remarkable that so many somehow missed yesterday’s news. If a Republican governor was pushing legislation as morally abhorrent as Northam or Andrew Cuomo in New York, Cruz, Rubio, and Sasse couldn’t turn a corner in the Capitol without running into a journalist eager to pin them down on it.

Which is to say, our media is very deep in the tank on this issue, even more so than they are for most left-wing causes. We’re all long used to it. But occasionally the depth still manages to shock.

Via the Free Beacon, Pelosi did happen to face a question about this today. See if you can guess how she answered. And stick around for Ben Sasse lighting into Northam and the left on the Senate floor this afternoon.



