If you believe the media build-up, Joe Biden’s political future, and the country’s fate, depends on the President’s interview with George Stephanopoulos tonight. Historic times, right? America’s very survival hinges on whether the Democratic Party’s candidate can pass his big test — which will be administered by the Party’s most famous fixer. Remember that it was Stephanopoulos who did a documentary on Christopher Steele to whitewash the Hillary Clinton operative years after the Trump-Russia narrative he was paid to sell was exposed as a hoax. So, sitting with Stephanopoulos isn’t exactly running the gauntlet. What’s really at stake if Biden doesn’t ace the interview is less the President’s political future than the interviewer’s. Stephanopoulos is toast if he can’t do the one thing he’s paid to do — service Party interests.

I was saddened to hear the news today that Dr. Ruth Westheimer has passed away at the age of 96. I danced with her once.

In the mid-1990s, I edited the Voice Literary Supplement, the monthly literary review of the Village Voice, America’s first alternative weekly newspaper. We hosted regular events in New York to publicize our contributors, which often turned into contentious, albeit rewarding affairs, like the night my friend Joe Wood argued with Stanley Crouch about the legacy of the great Albert Murray. Crouch had famously beat up another Voice writer, Harry Allen, to conclude their debate about music, but that night Joe and Stanley simply moved to the bar to continue their argument.

The VLS’ publisher wanted to have a party in Chicago to coincide with the American Book Association’s annual book fair. So, we arranged to co-host it with Verso Books, a leftwing publisher then headed up by Colin Robinson, a Brit with a gravelly baritone voice made for BBC radio theatre. The other co-host was The Baffler, a great small magazine based in Chicago and hooked into the city’s lively indy scene so they arranged for the music.

I tried to get David Foster Wallace to come. He was in the area staying at his parents’ home in Illinois. I think it was the year Infinite Jest came out and he’d done lots of publicity, so he opted out. But I’d gotten him to agree to review Joseph Frank’s biography of Dostoevsky. He grumbled when he realized it was a five-volume work, but David’s essay is great — it’s here.  

I guess Dr. Ruth had a new book out that year. Her bibliography shows that the ‘90s were perhaps her most prolific decade. She was so famous that Saturday Night Live impersonated her. Dr. Ruth was everywhere — radio, TV, movies. She was also at our party.

I can’t remember who invited her but there she was, the world’s most famous sex counselor standing on the sidelines like a high-school girl at her first dance. She smiled at me. Maybe it was just because I was the host. The music was very loud, so I leaned in closely and then led her to the dance floor. It was only for one song, but she was smiling the whole time, and so was I.

It was only later that I learned about her life. She grew up in an orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt and at the age of ten her mother sent her to Switzerland to keep her safe. The Gestapo had already taken her father away to Dachau. He was murdered at Auschwitz. Her mother and all her relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. After the war, she moved to pre-state Israel, trained as a sniper with the Haganah, and was wounded during Israel’s war of independence. At the age of 90, she showed she could still reassemble a gun with her eyes closed. She studied in Paris and New York, where she worked as a maid to put herself through school. She spoke German, Hebrew, French, and English. She was married three times and leaves behind her two children. She was a serious woman who knew how to laugh at herself. She made a career out of encouraging people to enjoy their physical intimacy with others. She had an unforgettable smile.

May her memory be a blessing.

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While we’re gearing up for Thursday evening’s match-up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it’s probably best to keep in mind that the debate will be about nothing. At least that’s the plan of the Biden campaign, and host network CNN, too. If reality intervenes, it will mark a huge setback for the candidate and the press and a stunning shock for perhaps nearly half the country, as its fantasy world crashes for all the world to see.  

The debate can’t be real, because none of the issues troubling our nation conform to the epistemological framework of our current reality as constructed by the regime and its media allies. The debate will look like a debate because it will take the form of one, with two speakers, a stage, and the moderators firing questions at the two speakers. The problem isn’t that the moderators will toss softballs to Biden while trying to grind down Trump. No, in fact, that’s Trump’s advantage going in. Two media elites ganging up on the man the establishment class has done their best to break is good for the Trump campaign. They’re probably wishing they could get Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis to join the staged prime-time assault.

The issue is much more fundamental than that. The moderators can’t ask any real questions of either candidate without puncturing the fantasy that the media, with CNN playing a leading role, has created in open collaboration with the political apparatus floating Biden since the 2020 campaign.

Sure, the CNN moderators can frame voters’ serious concerns as debate questions, like on immigration, for instance:

Mr. Biden, the many undocumented Americans now looking for meaningful work throughout the country appear to be proof that, as you’ve long said, our immigration policy is broken. So how do you intend to fix it in your second term?

That would set up Biden for the answer he wants to give:

It would have been fixed in my first term if only the Republicans, led by my opponent here, weren’t being obstructionists and playing politics instead of showing concern for Americans, including our great undocumented Americans.

But that’s a fake answer because the question is fake. The immigration system is not “broken,” Biden just opened the borders, like he said he would on the 2020 campaign trail.

So, a real, and meaningful, question is something like:

Mr. Biden, how many illegal aliens will you usher across our border before you decide to close it? Do you have a number in mind, like 10 million, 15 million, 25 million? Or do you just intend to keep the borders open until you leave office?

But CNN’s moderators can’t ask a question like that because by covering for Biden’s open borders scheme at every turn, they and all the media are complicit. A genuine debate with real questions would in effect acknowledge that the press has helped corral Americans into an alternative reality at serious cost to the country and its people.  

Let’s start with the 2020 campaign:  

Mr. Biden, why did your political allies in the FBI and CIA go to such lengths to hide your son Hunter’s laptop from the American electorate in the 2020 election cycle?

And election night?

Mr. Trump, are you concerned that we’ll see a repeat of 2020 and ballot counting showing your large lead in swing states will again inexplicably shut down and re-start hours later showing your opponent in the lead?

 And as for first term accomplishments:

Mr. Biden, why has the Inflation Reduction Act had no effect reducing inflation, while transferring trillions of dollars to Democratic Party donors, clients, and China?

And to follow-up, Mr. President, are you punishing middle-class taxpayers that constitute your opponent’s base of support by eliminating the college loan debt owed by your base of support?

And surely one of the big questions for voters wondering why the commander-in-chief can’t finish sentences and often has to be physically guided from one spot to another by the First Lady or aides:

Mr. Biden, your obviously frail physical and mental condition has many voters wondering if you’re actually running the White House. Indeed, your former boss Barack Obama’s habit of conspicuously stepping in front of the cameras, gladhanding crowds, sometimes ignoring you, whenever the two of you are together has suggested to many he is claiming ownership of the presidency. So, who is in charge, you or the first former chief executive to stay in Washington, DC since Woodrow Wilson, who was confined to his quarters with a stroke?

But since the media can’t destroy the illusion they’ve built, the debate will invariably devolve into even more absurd fantasy:

Mr. Trump, will you commit to naming a Trans identifying or non-binary person to the Supreme Court should there be an opening during your second term? Same question for you, Mr. Biden.

Mr. Trump, former federal officials like ex-Deputy FBI Director, and CNN contractor, Andrew McCabe fear that you will use the Department of Justice to prosecute your enemies— will you? And Mr. Biden, what do you say about the prospects of your opponent using the DOJ to target political opponents?

Mr. Biden, in your opinion, what historical event was the biggest threat to our democracy — the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or January 6? And relatedly, Mr. Trump, will you take responsibility for the insurrection you led on January 6 that was the biggest threat to our democracy ever?

Even for the left it must seem at odds with their understanding of the world that there’s anything to debate. Are they not wondering why their candidate is honoring a Nazi, white Christian nationalist, and de facto leader of a domestic terror organization comprising half the country by according Trump the privileges normally reserved for candidates who didn’t collaborate with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 race?

What’s strangest about this moment in our history is not that ruling party elites manufactured a fantasy world to advance their privilege and prestige, but that their sanity and the integrity of their souls requires them to sustain it.

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