Drew Holden Profile picture
Jul 2, 2021 19 tweets 11 min read Read on X
🧵Thread🧵

Vilifying people in their obituaries is, simply put, a bad, inhumane development. There’s also a lot of hypocrisy in how it’s done.

If you don’t believe me, look at how yesterday’s passing of former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compares to Cuban butcher Fidel Castro.⤵️.
I’ll be honest. I think a lot of these don’t need much of an introduction; I trust all of you can read.

Here’s @AP. Notice anything different between the obits of a former military leader and a brutal tyrant?

Can you tell which is which?
@NPR found the space to take a dig at Rumsfeld in the headline of his obit.

For some reason, they couldn’t do the same for Fidel Castro.
We had something similar for @washingtonpost. Once again, Rumsfeld is billed as controversial.

For Castro, he was a “revolutionary leader who remade Cuba”
I mean. Cmon. @TheAtlantic
I’m fine if @thedailybeast doesn’t want to pull punches. That’s their brand.

But what about the victims of Castro? Are they less deserving of mourning? How come they don’t get a shoutout in the tweet?
This from @Reuters was also a common thing.

For an easy partisan target, focus on the controversy around their death. For someone who doesn’t fall into that category - even if they’re far more deserving of scorn - keep it just to a straight news obit.
Same thing here from @BusinessInsider
I know it doesn’t quite fit but really what are we doing here @Slate?
Pretty hard to pretend these from @guardian each provide the same, fair level of commentary.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like “The Hell Fidel Castro Built” would make a little more sense, @intelligencer.
Less than subtle, @TeenVogue
Obviously I didn’t have high expectations from @ajplus but I mean, this is bad.
This from @thenation presented without comment.
Not a media outlet but honorable mention goes to @cmclymer
Also honorable mention to @JohnSimpsonNews, who couldn’t find anything good to say about Rumsfeld but found a lot good to say about Castro.
Anyone who follows me knows that I don’t exactly share former Secretary Rumsfeld’s view of the world.

But why - why - is it necessary to excoriate the recently deceased the moment their passing is announced? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it applied across the board?
Anyway, I wish people would save their Twitter dunks until a family has at least had a funeral. And I hope you’ll pray for the repose of the soul of Donald Rumsfeld and all others who leave this world.
Last thought: I think part (maybe a lot?) of this is a result of the coarsening of the discourse over the last couple years.

Many like to blame that on President Trump. But I can’t imagine any of these outlets/people count themselves as fans of his, which begs a question.

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More from @DrewHolden360

Jul 24
🧵THREAD🧵

The media are already hard at work to mislead about VP Kamala Harris.

The latest is an effort to memoryhole Harris’s role leading Biden’s disastrous immigration policy as “border czar.”

Who’s up for some side-by-sides, lest we forget? ⤵️
There’s no better place to start than with @axios, who made waves today when they claimed that Harris was never the “border czar.”

The problem?

Axios had called her exactly that back in 2021.
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They added a truly Orwellian editors note after the backlash, claiming that they had misreported initially.

Really. Image
Read 23 tweets
Jul 10
🧵THREAD🧵

Biden’s disastrous debate performance brought to a screeching halt a multi-year campaign from the media to present the president as mentally fit.

Do you really remember how hard the press pushed you not to trust your lyin’ eyes on Biden’s decline?

Start here ⤵️
I suspect most of you remember the allegations from the White House that videos showing Biden behaving erratically were “cheap fakes.”

The media rushed to repeat this claim. Look at the extent @nytimes went to say you didn’t see anything and that Biden was fine.


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Perhaps the wildest was @washingtonpost, who gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to videos showing Biden displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as fakes, “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype.”

Part of their defense was that Biden “doesn’t dance.”

Really.


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Read 34 tweets
Jun 27
🧵Thread🧵

You remember Russian Collusion. But do you remember the “Russian bounties” allegation, where the press ran with a conspiracy theory to make Trump look like a monster?

With the debate tonight, I think it’s timely to revisit a falsehood Biden pushed. Follow along ⤵️
It started with a scoop from @nytimes that claimed Russia had placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, that Trump knew about it, and he did nothing.
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Days later, @washingtonpost followed up with the claim that these bounties—again, allegedly ignored by Trump—led to the deaths of American servicemen.


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Read 24 tweets
Jun 12
🧵Thread🧵

Do you *really* remember the Hunter Biden laptop story? I fear we’ve lost the plot.

With Hunter’s name in the news I wanted to revisit the extent to which the media went to cover up corruption allegations against—and at the behest of—his father.

Follow along. ⤵️
You have to start with the scoop from @nypost and @EmmaJoNYC.

Their lede from October was damning:

“Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.”Image
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The story was fundamentally about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption. It was huge news, on the eve of an election.

The press leapt to claim the scoop wasn’t legit. And they reframed the issue: now it was about Hunter, not Joe. Here’s @NPR before/after
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Read 27 tweets
May 29
Good to see the NYT’s considerable resources being put to finding the truth in a debate between private citizens that led one of them to raise a flag upside down.

Real afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted stuff here.
This is not, in a well ordered universe, news.

It has only become “news” because of the pivot to left wing clickbait that Trump inspired among the press.
It’s politically inspired harassment and not only is it noxious it’s driving a deep animus among its target demo that is fraying what remains of the bounds of our body politic and society more broadly.
Read 4 tweets
May 28
🧵Thread🧵

I’ve got an oldie-but-a-goodie for you from the archive of unhinged media coverage.

Do you remember how insane the coverage of Trump’s killing of Iranian Gen. Soleimani was?

I bet it’s worse than you remember. Follow along ⤵️
It all started with what I’ve gotta say might be the coldest presidential use of social media in history.

After ordering the strike that killed Iranian General Qaseem Soleimani, Trump tweeted out simply a picture of an American flag.

Many in the media went berserk. Image
First, the issue was directly with what Trump had done. Outlets claimed that he was rushing America into a war. @washingtonpost tried to point out the hypocrisy of a president who had said he would prevent a war.

All evidence suggests he did exactly that.
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Read 25 tweets

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