Never mind the currently-fashionable bit of wokery in the link explaining this reference, bolting on a vague accusation of racism (or raaaaacism) onto anything that a person of pallor says, does, or references – the metaphor of something nasty sticking harder and more firmly no matter how one tries to fight it off and disengage is curiously valid in the case of Joe Biden and the National Establishment Press.
The realization that Mr. Biden is a couple of sandwiches short of a full picnic comes as a horrible shocker … to practically no sane, non-partisan observer of the political scene for the past … I don’t know, decade? Two decades or more? But everyone else is shocked, horrified, discomfited! Until two weeks ago, he was almost universally painted by the National Establishment Press as the Sage of Scranton, honored and revered solon of the Senate, the experienced and steadying VP in the Obama Administration, a kindly and revered family man, beloved by all! (Or at least, somewhat better than that awful, bad, Orange Man!) Unthinkable, asking a blunt and unscreened question of the Incredible Talking Mop, Karine John-Pierre, at a White House press conference about Mr. Biden’s disintegrating mental facilities! The very notion – so rude, unprofessional, so very, very Deplorable!

In the wake of the disastrous debate two weeks ago, now we are entertained by the spectacle of well-established members of the professional National Establishment Press, or NEP, squirming and twisting in the wind, reduced to protesting, “What … what? We didn’t know… No one told us!” while desperately trying to disengage themselves from the tar-baby, the tar-baby of all that previous coverage poo-pooing concerns! All those past news features and editorials, insisting on Joe Biden’s peerless command of his mental functions and his administration are on the record, years’ worth of them and there for anyone to review, unless and until they are all until firmly escorted to the memory hole and pitched in. Where they likely will be consigned, once those members of the NEP recover their composure and receive new marching orders! How large a segment of the general public who were formerly unaware are now wondering what we have been paying these people for, all these years with our dollars and attention, when all they have been is the Democrat Party public affairs branch. Those who have been paying close attention might just as well say, like John McCain in Die Hard – “Welcome to the party, pal!” Alas, like Winston Churchill’s comment about a political rival occasionally stumbling over an inconvenient truth – likely, they will pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing ever happened. In the meantime, we can all point and laugh.

Will the NEP be able to carry on, likewise? For the last ten years or more, they played along with the charade, and indignantly told us not to credit what we could see with our own lying eyes, because it was a Russian plot, or a MAGA exaggeration, or raaaaacist, or something or other. But for this election season, at least, the tar-baby of Biden’s incapacity and their complicity in concealing it, is firmly attached – like the legendary tar-baby. For now, there appears to be little hope to dislodge it. No handy briar patch, or memory hole, for the moment; trust in the major news organs by the general public is dropping as fast as the cost of groceries is rising.
Comment as you wish. How much longer will the NEP remain stuck to the tar-baby? Another week? Until the Dem party convention? Election day?