The bitter Soviet-era joke about the honesty and reliability of their major news organs translates as “There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia” – Pravda (Truth) being the official newspaper of the Russian Communist Party, and Izvestia (The News) was the official government newspaper. Teasing out actual tidbits of accurate and relevant information from those two sources may have been the most popular indoor sport for decades among Russians, after chess, depressing novels and drinking heavily. Pravda and Izvestia told the citizens of Soviet Russia only what the top-tier authorities wanted ordinary people to know about – anything contrary to the interests of party and government was deliberately omitted. Any embarrassing civic disasters with a high casualty count, sexual peccadillos on the part of the Party elite, and serial killers on the prowl – news coverage of that kind of event or development was firmly squelched, as things like that just didn’t happen in the perfect Soviet worker paradise.

Considering the punitive resources that the Soviets had readily at hand, one really cannot blame Russia’s official internal media functionaries for toeing the party line. Loss of employment, internal exile, a labor camp in the gulag, forced psychiatric treatment or simply a bullet to the back of the head in a gray basement somewhere – yes, any and all could be the punishment for committing acts of genuine reporting in the bad old days in Russia.

It has increasingly appeared that Americans must now practice the same deductive skills as ordinary Russians used to do, with regard to our very own Establishment Media. In the meantime, and to my increasingly bitter amusement, the Mainstream Establishment Media is tying themselves into pretzel knots (soon to become Gordian knots) in trying to convince us all (and possibly even themselves) that Joe and Ho are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings that we have ever known in our lives, and also the most competent and ethical president and vice-elects that American history has ever known. As Joe increasingly seems to lose track of his last remaining marble, and as Ho continues to twerk flatfooted on the national stage, I anticipate the Mainstream Establishment Media shredding their last few remaining scraps of credibility. I might as well get some entertainment value out of 2020. Comment as you wish.