I want to piggyback on Hans' thread her to think about the implications and implicit populism of these endeavors, though. I don't think it's the intent, but the diner interview genre contributes to an asymmetry in the way accountability is depicted in the media 1/? https://twitter.com/ProfHansNoel/status/1332454695756058626

i have a ton of work to do, but hey it's been awhile since i did a thread ranting about populism so here goes. The greatest trick of American populism, especially on the right is to scramble our sense of who has power and who is alienated from it.

The "Trump country" interviews highlight the voters in that coalition who have the least recognizable (to an NYT audience) cultural capital, who have economic struggles (a bipartisan phenomenon) and who live away from urban centers. 3/

Notably, these folks do have some political power, if they're in competitive states. But this never translates into real power. However, it highlights a linkage between political power (a presidential administration) and these less powerful citizens, thus...

placing political accountability out of reach for the administration. If criticizing Trump is criticizing THE WILL OF THE DISEMPOWERED PEOPLE AND THEIR VOICES then that puts these - as Hans noted - fairly distinct and elite media at a real disadvantage in holding them accountable

this is pretty obvious but only jumped out at me as i've seen lots of stories asking questions about what Biden's various appointees have been up to in the last 4 years. These are GOOD questions that SHOULD be asked. ?/?

but we don't see them framed in terms of well Biden is appointing someone who did X dodgy thing between 2017 and 2020 NEVERTHELESS THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. we don't see the many working class minority voters who voted for Biden invoked as justification for questionable actions.

it might just be a coherent narrative drawing this together is not really possible - but it's also true that highlighting one group as the authentic voiceless people, and not another, is not just racist and inegalitarian but also has downstream consequences wherein...

accountability coverage for the 2 parties is not always the same. /fin

also the amount of shouty all caps should make you a little sympathetic to what my students have suffered this semester.