From “Joy” to Giddy Glee: The Democratic National Convention
“Joy, joy, joy,” cheered the assembled political, entertainment, sports, and other glitterati in Chicago this past week, where the secular coronation of “Queen Kamala” took place, ensuring that the old Democratic Party machine is stronger and bolder in its new 2024 avatar than it was ever before. Supporting this “joyous confection” from the front, back, and the flanks were the armed and ready forces of “mainstream” media, with the occasional sniping, grumbling, and complaining left to the “right-wing” media, some social media “influencers,” and those embittered former liberal, left-leaning voters, including the well-known like Musk, and his faithful followers on “X”.
We might wonder why no academic expert, media commentator, or political analyst has bothered to label American media as left-leaning, right-leaning, or centrist but instead continue to perpetuate the linguistic fraud of choosing “rightwing media” and “mainstream media” as their branding choices in these Orwellian times.
So, “joy” it was, fine-tuned to the best of media amplification signals:
Paradoxically, it was not just the right-leaning or the disgruntled Democrats who were complaining, lamenting, griping, and moaning, but also the present occupant of the White House, quietly in the Oval Office, with the door shut, and only his wife and son by his side. Biden, who after his first day’s tearful appearance at the DNC, and after abjectly “passing on the torch” to Kamala Harris, has once again gone AWOL, with his family in tow, awaiting a quiet but “dignified” burial, which he knows he would be denied if he made nary a peep about how Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama held a gun to his head and told him that he better quit. This was the same man who, just two months ago, till June 27th, was as sharp as a tack, but then became “unviable” after the disastrous debate performance, and after the lies that the Bidens themselves, the Democratic Party, and all the mainstream/left-leaning media had told us for four years had been exposed to all the world that was watching and listening. On July 21, 2024, Biden, who had held out for three weeks and through three soft-ball interviews, gave up, and within four weeks thereafter, Harris was anointed, her profile juiced up, and her wild, nervous-tic laughter reconjured as “joy”.
Here is a small sample of the power, confidence, and organizational ability of a political party joined at the hip by the left-leaning media:
The New York Times: “Kamala Harris’s Laugh is a Campaign Issue. Our Comedy Critic weighs in”: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/arts/kamala-harris-laugh.html (The Trump campaign sees Harris’s laugh as a vulnerability to exploit. But far from a liability, it is one of her most effective weapons.)
The New York Times: “Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign,” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/us/politics/kamala-harris-walz-joy.html, (Democrats are smiling again, and so is a vice president who once weighed the political risks of cheerfulness. The high spirits are also providing air cover for scathing attacks on Republicans.)
The Washington Post: “Kamala Harris’s powerful laughter in the face of weirdness” — https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/30/kamala-harriss-powerful-laughter-face-weirdness/ — (The sound and sight of Vice President Kamala D. Harris laughing carries confidence, strength and a peek into her own humanity.)
The Los Angeles Times: “More than a Laugh: Kamala Harris’s is a sound check for a divided country,” https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-07-21/kamala-harris-laugh (To gauge how some people view Kamala Harris, the first woman and woman of color to be vice president, look at how they respond to her laugh.)
The Atlantic: “Kamala Harris and the Threat of a Woman’s Laugh,” https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/07/kamala-harris-laugh-trump-sexism/679215/, (Criticism of emotional expression has long been a weapon of choice for those wanting to cut down women in political power.)
The New Republic: “Trump’s Repulsive New ‘Laughing Kamala” Smear Reveals a MAGA Weakness,” https://newrepublic.com/article/184287/magas-repulsive-new-laughing-kamala-smear-actually-reveals-weakness, (As Trump and his allies ramp up the vile attacks on Kamala Harris’s personality, a progressive strategist explains why Harris’s joyful disposition might be perfectly suited to taking on MAGA.)
There are few if any articles from the “right-leaning/MAGA” media space analyzing or critiquing Harris’s laugh. That numerous talking heads and guests on FOX News and people on social media had made fun of Harris’s “word salads” and her loud laughter at inappropriate moments is verifiable, if one wants to scour the internet for such mocking and memes:
FOX News: Harris roasted for latest word salad about ‘duality’ of democracy: ‘This is why she can’t go off script’, https://www.foxnews.com/media/harris-roasted-latest-word-salad-about-duality-democracy-this-why-she-cant-go-off-script (Harris described democracy as both ‘incredibly strong’ and ‘incredibly fragile’).
New York Post: “Kamala Harris’ worst ‘word salads’ and gaffes through the years,” https://nypost.com/us-news/kamala-harris-worst-word-salads/
There is even a book titled, “Kamala Harris Word Salad,” https://www.amazon.com/Kamala-Harris-Salad-Robert-Moriarty/dp/B0BKXRZH21
But Harris is no different than and somewhat similar to George W. Bush, our 43rd President, whose gobbledygook has forever been enshrined in modern American history as “Bushisms” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism
Beyond all this, and all the froth and glitter manufactured and collected over the past couple of weeks of the “Harris Anointment,” we have to ask something of what few have noticed: where is Kamala Harris’ father, and what is he not telling the world about his two daughters, including now, potentially, the next US President? Only once, in 2019, did Prof. Donald Harris comment on his daughter, and that was not a happy one, when his famous daughter joked about marijuana use. He wrote: “My dear departed grandmothers (whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their graves right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics”: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/20/kamala-harris-father-pot-1176805
There are no words, either of commendation or condemnation, from Prof. Harris, about his eldest daughter’s rise to political power and fame. One has to wonder therefore about both his discipline in keeping his thoughts to himself, and maybe of the pain that his wife and his daughters have caused him over the decades. Prof. Harris is a true scholar and academic, keeping his private and personal thoughts to himself, but we wish he could share with us a little of his thoughts on the nature of politics, the nature of power, the quest for power, and the amorality if not the immorality of those who seek power and fame.
Kamala Harris spoke about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, glowingly at the DNC. There were some of her mother’s family members from India at the Chicago convention. There were none from Donald Harris’ family from Jamaica. What deep pain and anguish did Shyamala Gopalan and Kamala and Maya Harris inflict on Donald Harris that he has turned his back on them and their glory days? What is it about Shyamala Gopalan and her two daughters that the Jamaican side of her family knows about and is not willing to tell?
There is much that we don’t know about Kamala Harris, potentially to be coronated America’s first “Queen” on January 21, 2025. It is not just about her economic or social policies that we know little about, but what she was and is willing and capable of sacrificing in her climb to the most powerful of offices in the world.
We can only wait and watch…