The Media Fellating Thread

[George K]

Note, this is not in the "opinion" or "style" section.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/14/joe-biden-jill-pda-468831

Historians and relationship experts agree: The first couple’s romantic gestures aren’t just genuine — they’re restorative.

“I think that the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other is serving as a healing agent,” said Dr. Douglas Brinkley, the Rice University professor and presidential historian.

“New presidents and first ladies have to be empathetic,” he explained, and the Bidens’ PDA is just one part of the first couple’s effort to fulfill that institutional imperative.

“When we watch [first couples] together, we don’t want to feel a tension in their marriage,” Brinkley said. “We don’t want to feel that they enjoy being separated from each other. One wants to believe that there’s some harmony and deep respect there.”

Casual displays of affection weren’t always so commonplace for first couples. According to Dr. Barbara Perry, director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, it was the sexual revolution of the 1960s that redefined standards for how all Americans — including commanders in chief — could interact with their spouses in public.

Since Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidency has seen a series of first couples — George W. and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Joe and Jill Biden — who demonstrate that American culture is “past all the taboos” that were formerly associated with PDA, Perry said.

The glaring exception is the previous first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, whose frigid public encounters interrupted what had otherwise been a natural integration of PDA into everyday presidential behavior.

In that sense, the Bidens’ displays of affection appear somewhat foreign after the last four years, even though they represent yet another return to the norms of past administrations that the new president repeatedly pledged to rehabilitate on the campaign trail.

“It’s comforting. It’s warm. It’s genuine,” Perry said. “And so if you layer the Covid issue, our divided country [and] the violence in our country upon the contrast with the Trumps, it just symbolizes everything.”

Good job, "Politico!" Just keep on keepin' on!

[Copper]

I don't get it.

What does a Personal Digital Assistant have to do with these couples?

Oh

That PDA

Public displays of affection

I had to look it up.

[Mik]

They should get a room, There's no shortage in that house if you don't mind thinking about past presidents watching you.

[George K]

[Horace]

LIterally the most perfect dog poop in her lifetime. Wow. I'm not sure anybody on WTF, or jon, or ax, or NS, has ever reached this level of rhetoric. Try harder, everybody!

[Mik]

That's a complete photoshop.

[George K]

@mik said in The Media Fellating Thread:

That's a complete photoshop.

What???

Are you saying that America's Paper of Record (The Babylon Bee) is fake news?

[Mik]

I didn't see that it was the Bee.

Pretty damning indictment of our MSM that I entertained it as possible.

[George K]

@mik said in The Media Fellating Thread:

Pretty damning indictment of our MSM that I entertained it as possible.

OK, well, here's some hard-hitting journalism from CNN:

[Copper]

Cute

[Renauda]

@doctor-phibes said in The Media Fellating Thread:

The British Heads of State have centuries of inbreeding behind them.

Do you really want to go there?

[George K]

[Copper]

Those Bidens are so cool

[George K]

Finally! A "What's it like to be POTUS" interview!

Speaking of the Naval Observatory:

"You can walk off a porch in the summer and jump in a pool and, you know, go into the work," Biden said of the vice president's residence. "You can ride a bicycle around and never leave the property and work out."

Presumably, he was not naked while riding the bicycle.

He compared the heavily fortified White House, on the other hand, to a "gilded cage, in terms of being able to walk outside and do things."

Biden said his brother and several presidential historians, including Jon Meacham, had helped him set up the Oval Office.

"It all happens within two hours, you know, literally," he said of the quick transition after former President Donald Trump left office. "They move everything out and move something in."

[taiwan_girl]

@george-k said in The Media Fellating Thread:

"It all happens within two hours, you know, literally," he said of the quick transition after former President Donald Trump left office. "They move everything out and move something in."

It is funny. One of the ministers left and was replaced. Pretty much at the same time the announcement was made, the new minister was in the office with all of his furniture already there and set up.

[George K]

@taiwan_girl I believe it was in McCullough's biography of Truman in which the move-in/move-out scenario was described.

It's remarkable that everything happens so quickly.

[Mik]

The one singular thing the federal government does efficiently.

[taiwan_girl]

My story was about a Taiwan minister so maybe that is one thing that governments all over the world do well. 555

[George K]

[George K]