If you’re lucky, you missed this one. I was not so fortunate, and so, this Labor Day weekend, I found myself staring at what is probably the worst, most appalling, most offensive, and just plain old asshat-stupidest headline I’ve seen on a political story in many years. Sorry, in the interests of an informed public, I consider it my duty to foist it on you.

The story in question was in Politico, ostensibly concerning Kamala Harris’s CNN interview. In case you missed it, there was a moment during the interview when Dana Bash asked Harris about Donald Trump’s remark that Harris had recently “turned Black” for political reasons. You probably know by now what Harris said: “Same old, tired playbook. Next question.”

This was a good answer; it showed she wasn’t going to take the bait. But some genius editor at Politico thought otherwise! Ponder this headline: “‘Next question’: Harris evades questions about her identity.”

Sorry: Evades! What?! Where do we even start with that one? Trump said something dumb, false, malicious, and racist. She didn’t dignify it with a response. That’s evasion? What’s to evade? The story below the headline was fine, and the ridiculous headline got a stealthy edit after the fact. (Good chance that people like you, having to stomach the same nonsense as me, let Politico have it.) The problem, however, is that in today’s media world, sometimes that first headline is all some people see.

It’s emblematic of what the political media in this country are doing so badly in covering this race. With dizzying regularity, Trump lies. He says toxic, anti-democratic things over and over again. And he still gets treated like a normal candidate. It’s often the case that the media, presented with another one of his addled rants, will dive in, scoop and separate enough words to make it seem like he’s got enough actual grey matter gooping around in his skull to form a complete sentence, and present their director’s cut of his wandering mind for public consumption.

The Democrat, first Joe Biden and now Harris, gets called evasive or worse if he-then-she doesn’t respond to Trump’s ridiculous lies. The effect is to legitimize Trump—in this case, to make it seem as if he raised fair and reasonable questions about Harris’s identity.

But this isn’t even the most glaring recent example of the press laying down on the job. That prize goes to the two New York Times reporters who recently gave us this gem, which ran under another genius headline: “Harris and Trump Have Housing Ideas. Economists Have Doubts.”

You can tell instantly what kind of article this is going to be—one of those classic on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand pieces that pretends to weigh evidence in a sober way and absolutely refrains from drawing any conclusions that might give offense to one side or the other. Except that in this case, the conclusion gives offense to anyone with a functioning brain.

It’s worth going into this at a........

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