Joseph’s Second Dream: The Slaughter of the Innocents

After the Birth of the Messiah, a second angelic dream warns Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and the Christ Child as Herod orders a slaughter of the Innocents.

December 28, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Editor’s Note: The following is the second of a special two-part Biblical Christmas Season post. Part one, which appeared here two weeks ago was “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah.”

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In the proclamation of the Gospel Matthew (2:13-18) on the day this is posted, the Church recalls in just six verses an account of the Visit of the Magi, Joseph’s second dream of an Angel of the Lord, the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, and the wrath of Herod as he orders the slaughter of all male children under two years of age in and around Bethlehem. As a priest, I have read this account over forty-one consecutive Christmas seasons, but never before was it overshadowed by such tragic realism.

Our safe, emotional buffer zone from that 2,000 year old account is gone now. The sense of personal distance is lost. A dark cloud still hangs over America since the shocking and senseless deaths of 19 young children in a small Texas city called Uvalde. I first wrote of this midway through the year in June, 2022 in “Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men Were Missing.”

A lot of soul searching has gone into a quest for what could have spawned such a horrific event, how it developed, how it might have been prevented, and what should have been done differently by responding police. The tragedy was devastating. I can only imagine the heartache of the parents of Uvalde as they faced this Christmas with broken hearts and shattered dreams.

Then it happened again — this time in Thailand, and this time the killer was not a crazed teenager, but a drug addicted police officer. The story devastated the Kingdom of Thailand. On October 6, 2022 the recently fired police officer brought a 9mm handgun and a knife into a preschool daycare center in the village of Uthai Sawan. It was near where Pornchai Moontri lived as a small child. With no known motive, the former officer murdered 24 children ages two to five. Then he killed his wife and his own child before turning his gun on himself.

I could not bring myself to write that story, but Pornchai Moontri bravely took it up. Several readers told me that they did not read it because they knew it would be terribly painful. It was and still is. But there is much more to it than sorrow. There is hope there as well. “Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand” was Pornchai’s faith-filled gift to his Homeland and to us. It is a most unusual post that I highly recommend. We will link to it again at the end of this one.

The Magi Take the Long Way Home

I am painfully aware that on the day this is posted, the Church honors those first Christian Martyrs, the innocent male children of Bethlehem who were subjected to the selfish wrath of King Herod. They became collateral damage in the first demonic attempt to rid the world of Christ. The explosive account is told with blunt force in the Gospel According to Matthew:

“Now when the Wise Men had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise! Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.’

“And Joseph arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the Prophet: ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’ When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, he was in a furious rage. He sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and all that region who were two years old and under according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the Prophet Jeremiah:

“‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.’”

— Matthew 2:13-20

In the first installment of this two-part post, I described the unique attributes of Joseph’s three dreams in Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. Dreams are an important element of the story. As I wrote in “Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah”:

“There are 126 references to dreams among the characters of Sacred Scripture. Some of the pivotal moments in Salvation History were set in motion through dreams. But the dreams of Joseph are unique in the Biblical literature. In the original Greek of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the term used for Joseph’s three dreams about the birth of Jesus is ‘onar,’ and it is used nowhere else in Sacred Scripture but here.

“‘Onar’ in Greek refers not just to a dream, but to a divine intervention in human affairs. Coupled with the fact that the dream is induced by an “Angel of the Lord,” then the scene takes on a sense of great urgency when compared with a multitude of other angelic messages conveyed through dreams.”

In this second of Joseph’s dreams, the urgent intervention is God’s foresight that Herod is enraged, believing that he was tricked by the Magi. Herod plots to kill the child. He had asked the Magi to return from Bethlehem to reveal the location of this Christ-child with a false promise that he, too, would pay him homage. After a dream premonition not to return to Herod, the Magi left by another route. I wrote about the Magi in a popular Christmas post linked again at the end of this one: “Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear.”

There is an important element of the Magi story that I omitted when I first wrote that post. The Magi were traditionally associated with astrologers and astral religion, a fact seen as scandalous to some early Christians who did not want to accept this aspect of Matthew’s account. In later Christian tradition, they became not Magi, but kings, a likely reflection on Psalm 72:10 — “May the kings of Tarshish and of the Isles bring him tribute, may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.”

The Star of Bethlehem is a popular element of the story, but it, too, was a scandal among some in the early Church. Some of the people of the Ancient Near East were drawn to astral religion because it brought a sense of surety in the midst of social chaos. But over time, astrology became oppressive, making people feel hopeless against the tyranny of “fate” when their destinies seemed dictated by the cold movement of the stars.

In contrast, however, the Star of Bethlehem served only God’s purpose. That, and the presence of astrologers who came to worship Christ, broke the power of astral religion and its belief in fate. But history repeats itself. As our culture again becomes socially chaotic, many are once again drawn into nature religions such as astrology, Wicca, and druidism for a false sense of determinism guided by practitioners claiming to interpret and control destiny. I recently saw a TV commercial selling fifteen minute intervals with a California seer. G.K. Chesterton once famously said that people without faith do not believe in nothing. They believe in anything.

Tragedy in Thailand | Photo courtesy of Reuters

Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents

There are four rulers named Herod appearing in New Testament Scripture: Herod the Great reigned in Palestine from 37 B.C. until shortly after the Birth of Jesus. His son, Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, ordered the beheading of John the Baptist (Matthew 14) and sent Jesus to trial before Pilate (Luke 23:7-15). His son, Herod Agrippa, imprisoned the Apostle Peter (Acts 12); and his son, Herod Agrippa II, attended the trial of Saint Paul (Acts 25:13).

Herod the Great was part of a non-Jewish Edomite family from a territory east and south of the Dead Sea. They were descendants of Esau, the elder brother of Jacob (Genesis 25:30). Herod was given the title, “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate and ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 B.C. as a vassal king appointed by Caesar Augustus. Centuries-old adjustments to the Roman calendar place the birth of Jesus near the end of Herod’s life between six and four B.C.

Herod the Great (“Great” by Roman standards only) appears in Scripture only during the events surrounding the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1:5). He ruled Palestine with brutality and paranoia. It is ironic that Herod took such violent steps to end the life of Jesus just prior to the undocumented end of his own life. He took great umbrage at the Magi’s revelation that the Star of Bethlehem was an omen for one who is born King of the Jews, a title Rome had bestowed upon Herod.

But Herod’s paranoia ran deeper than that. The Star of Bethlehem innocently described by the Magi recalled for Herod and his Hebrew advisors the ancient Fourth Oracle of Balaam in the Book of Numbers. The oracle predicted a future messiah and the end of Edom’s power. From the Oracle of Balaam (Numbers 24:17-19):

“I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. It shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites. Edom will become a possession of its enemies, while Israel thrives valiantly. One out of Jacob shall rule.”

Being a descendant of the Edomites, Herod “was greatly troubled” (Matthew 2:3). So he summoned the Magi to ascertain exactly when the Star appeared. He sent them on to Bethlehem after securing a promise that they would return with the exact location of this newborn Child-King. When the Magi failed to return, Herod flew into a rage. He ordered his forces to find and kill all male children under two years of age in Bethlehem.

This event also has an echo from a much older time in Salvation History. Jesus is presented as the New Moses, one who will lead God’s people out of bondage. The first Moses led Israel from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, but Pharaoh was immovable until the Tenth Plague struck down the firstborn sons of Pharaoh and all of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-31).

The Evangelist, Matthew, captures with a quote from the Prophet Jeremiah the devastation that Herod left behind. In the Eighth Century B.C. the Assyrians devastated Northern Israel when their army swept through the city of Ramah about five miles north of Jerusalem. Ramah became equated with Israel’s great depth of sorrow left behind by the evil of tyranny. So it is of Ramah that is recalled in the face of Herod’s evil:

“A voice heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled because her children were no more.”

— Matthew 2:18 and Jeremiah 3:15

Jesus, the New Moses would lead God’s People from the bondage of sin and death. Herod believed that the murder of the Children of Bethlehem was the last word, but it was not the last word. Then Herod the Great somehow became Herod the Dead. Scripture does not describe how, when, or where. God knows. The narrative of the Birth of the Messiah ends with the third dream of Joseph from an Angel of the Lord:

“Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead. And [Joseph] rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Herod’s son reigned in his place, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.”

— Matthew 2:19-23

Thus concludes Matthew’s account of the Birth of the Messiah. It was not the end of tyranny, but it was the beginning of all hope.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post. You may also like these related posts cited here:

Joseph’s Dream and the Birth of the Messiah

Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men were Missing

Elephants and Men and Tragedy in Thailand

Upon a Midnight Not So Clear, Some Wise Men from the East Appear

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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. Today the Chapel has a real-time live feed for a most beautiful adoration chapel where people around the world can spend time in Eucharistic Adoration. We invite you to come and spend some quiet time this Christmas celebrating the rebirth of the Messiah in your own life.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Life and Death, Defunding Police, and That Space Telescope

Science and Religion and Politics and Death are among the last things people want to ponder in summer months, but they dominate all the news beyond these stone walls.

July 27, 2022 by Father Gordon MacRae

Pay some attention, please, to the Scripture readings at Mass on the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time on July 31 this year. They are about life and death, though the latter is about the last thing anyone wants to ponder in this first summer after two years in a pandemic lockdown. We are just now beginning to live again. I have been especially struck by the Second Reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians (3:1-5, 9-11):

“If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on Earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

I have long been both moved and perplexed by this haunting image. I have read it many times, but I only heard it in my heart for the first time a few years ago. When we had a weekly Sunday Mass in this prison (there has not been one for over two years), my friend Pornchai Moontri was recruited to be a lector. He did not want to accept at first because he was conscious of his Thai accent. After he finally assented, he would review the readings on the day before and ask me for correct pronunciations and the meanings of phrases.

Pornchai asked me to explain what St. Paul meant when he wrote, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” I had heard this verse many times, but never fully pondered it until that day.

That single sentence drew me into a long and mystical pondering of the meaning of life and death. We have a point of reference for life. We live it every day and it is all we know. But death remains an ominous mystery, dreaded by most and hidden beyond time and space. Those we love who have died fall into total silence except in the recesses of our hearts.

If the dead are simply “no longer,” then how would we Catholics explain our very much alive prayers for the intercession of patron saints? It is a sort of heart to heart dialog that is inexplicable for nonbelievers, but very real for most Catholics and many other Christians. I find myself in casual conversation almost daily with two patron saints. I do not believe I could have survived 28 years of unjust imprisonment without their intercession and example. And yet, by the standards of this world, they have died.

The passage of St. Paul above was meant to convey that the messianic promises have been fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ. It signifies the meaning of becoming a follower of Christ. To do so is to die with him, and to live with him while living here in the gap between the Resurrection of Jesus and the fulfillment of our lives in Heaven. This fulfillment is “hidden with Christ in God.”

While living in this gap, our true lives are hidden. It is a beautiful, but haunting image. It makes all things experienced here in the gap to be bearable whether they are loss, or illness, or alienation, or loneliness, or prison or death itself. The great challenge of our time is to actually live as though this were so. The pain of illness, loneliness, and loss can be either carried as the cruel burdens of life or as a share in the Sufferings of Christ. They become the tools of our advocates in spiritual battle, the Saints who are hidden with Christ in God.

Courtesy of Pete Luna / Uvalde Leader-News

The Ongoing Pain of Uvalde

After I wrote “Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: When God and Men were Missing,” many people spent a lot of time pondering that awful story and its aftermath. It seems that just about everyone in Texas read my post, some several times. It’s unusual that I receive letters about a particular post, but I received many about that one, and most were from men. I am still in the process of responding to them. It has been heartbreaking to witness the losses those parents endured. We will be living in the wake of Uvalde for a long time to come. Please pray for them.

As that post mentioned, Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke in defense of a longstanding Texas long gun policy. He said that 18-year-olds in Texas have been legally allowed to purchase and own long guns since the Frontier Days of the 19th Century, but only in the last two decades have these problems of school shootings emerged.

I also wrote in another post of a necessary focal point in this problem that our culture must find the courage to face and address. I wrote the post a decade before the events at Uvalde, but it seems to predict them and others like them. It was obviously already on our collective minds because it is the most-read post at this blog. It started showing up all across the nation just hours after news emerged out of Uvalde that day.

There is a lot to be learned from that post, but recent history tells us that learning it and putting it into practice are very different things. I have received mail from multiple communities urging me not to let the topic of that post fall by the wayside. It is “In the Absence of Fathers, A Story of Elephants and Men.”

Anti-terrorism vehicle acquired by the Keene, NH police force under a $286,000 federal grant for high-terror threat areas.

Support Your Local Police, But Not With Tanks

There is another matter in the aftermath of the tragedy at Uvalde that I want to address because no one else has touched it. A lot of ink is being devoted to the highly negligent response of local police that day.

After our recent post, “Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State” by Charlene C. Duline, you might find it ironic that I am addressing fair treatment for police after all that she described. That was our fourth post in eight weeks to be endorsed and promoted by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for which I am grateful. This blog received thousands of new readers after each of those posts were recommended by Catholic League President Bill Donohue.

Please be clear that I do not at all excuse, or even understand, the apparent inaction of Police in Uvalde as events unfolded on that awful day, but I believe there is a more panoramic view that we as a society must consider. Our political system, especially among its Progressive and Democratic wings, has bludgeoned police since the death of George Floyd in 2020. We should not forget the urban riots across the land in the summer of 2020 as the news media and Democratic politicians dismissed the horror we were seeing as “mostly peaceful protests.” There are no Congressional hearings to discuss the events of those days.

Calls to “Defund Police” became a mantra chanted across the land, promoted heavily until we approached another election year. Then the slogan became a clear electoral liability and was quickly abandoned. For the previous two years, however, police were openly vilified and demonized through the United States. Many in politics and the news media were guilty of the same sort of profiling for which they accused the police. The misconduct of specific officers became an indictment of all police.

We have to fix this. When police face an explosive situation with guns in hand, all the training in the world will not compensate for the political burden now imposed on them. They have been forced to second guess their every move, forced to learn the race of an offender and weigh in the spur of a moment whether their actions will land them on the evening news cycle as abusive cops.

The hesitancy and indecisiveness in Uvalde was the result of a leadership vacuum. It should never have happened and must never happen again. Police, even in light of that awful negligence, must have the support of their community. The politics of Defund Police must be silenced. I wrote about a path for doing so in “Don’t Defund Police.  Defund Unions that Cover-Up Corruption.” I wrote that in the awful summer of 2020 when our cities were burning and our police stood by and watched.

Officer Derek Chauvin had numerous complaints in his police personnel file for claims of using excessive force. Before his behavior resulted in the death of George Floyd those abuses were a secret kept from the public by his union.

There is one more important step that could be taken immediately to reform police departments. Over the last twenty years or so, there has been an ever-increasing militarization of police. Beginning with the Bush Administration, and then greatly extended under the Obama Administration, unused military equipment has been reassigned to local police forces giving them the appearance of military might at the expense of community policing.

The small city of Keene, New Hamshire that employed Detective James McLaughlin, for example, received an armored personnel carrier from the Obama Administration. If it was really the look the Keene police wanted, it worked. That small department has been plagued by abuse claims ever since the tank arrived.

Lost in Space

Perhaps it was too soon to venture into space, but one week after I wrote of Uvalde, we posted “The James Webb Space Telescope, and an Encore from Hubble.” I apologize for the jarring change of topic, but the Space Telescope was also happening just then and I felt we needed a break from tragedy.

Parked in a neutral gravity zone one million miles from Earth, the revolutionary infrared JWST began producing images from deep into our cosmic past and transmitting them back to NASA on July 12. Our editor has managed to send a few of the early images to my GTL tablet. They are awesome, and only the first of many to come. For the first time in human history, we will be able to look deeply through time to the earliest days of the Cosmos following the Big Bang some 13.2 billion years ago. When I first wrote of the James Webb Telescope, a few readers asked me to explain the difference between it and the Hubble Telescope which has been functioning in space for three decades. The basic difference is that Hubble is tethered to the Earth and in orbit around it. The Webb Telescope is in a fixed position one million miles away from the Earth, four times the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and along with the Earth it orbits the Sun. Its 21.5-foot diameter primary mirror is more powerful than any telescope in existence. Another reader asked me to explain what NASA means by the claim that the Webb allows us to look deeper into space, and thus further back in time, than has ever before been possible. The image you see below, the first taken by Webb and revealed by NASA, is a section of space the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. Within that space, Webb captured some of the first images of galaxies to come into existence after the Big Bang. Human beings are seeing these images for the very first time. The light that emerges from them took 13.2 billion years to get here. We are thus looking at the Cosmos in its infancy after Creation. I have long known about this theoretically, but seeing it for the first time was my “WOW” moment.

“The glory of the stars is the beauty of heaven, a gleaming array in the heights of the Lord standing like sentinels on high.”

— Sirach 43:9-10

“When I look at the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and stars which you set in place, what is man that you should be mindful of him, and the son of man that you should care for him.”

— Psalm 8:3-4

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Editor’s Note: If you have assisted Father Gordon MacRae with personal expenses and the cost of this blog, please note that we have a new Paypal address for this purpose: FrGordonMacRae@gmail.com. You may also consult our Contact and Support page for further information.

Please visit these related posts linked in this one:

Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas: when God and Men Were Missing

Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

Don’t Defund Police. Defund Unions that Cover-Up Corruption

The James Webb Space Telescope and an Encore from Hubble

Fifty Years after Watergate Comes the January 6 Committee

A news commentator described the January 6 Committee hearings as the most fascinating since Watergate, but I have yet to find anyone who has watched any of them.

July 20, 2022 by GJ MacRae

Many of our readers know that I was asked awhile back to serve as a Registered Wall Street Journal Opinion Leader. Besides its slightly ego-inflating title, the position actually means very little and comes with no perks at all — not even a discount on my annual subscription. The voluntary position requires only my commitment to participate in regular surveys about the news, about how it is gathered, reported and delivered, about marketing, and about various WSJ features. As a result I regularly publish commentary on news and opinion at WSJ.com.

I suspect that this led to a more surprising invitation. A few months ago I was asked to participate as a journalist and agree to an interview for the Pew Research Center 2022 Survey of Journalists. I have just received the full report of this survey on the state of journalism and the news industry in America. The Report has surprising results — the most important of which is a very wide disconnect between the perceptions of journalists and those of the public about the news. Here is a summary:

The Pew Research Center 2022 Survey of Journalists

“Washington, D.C. (June 14, 2022) — From the economic upheaval of the digital age to the rise of political polarization and the Covid-19 pandemic, journalism in America has been in a state of turmoil for decades. In this major new study, The Pew Research Center shares the perspective of journalists about the news industry they work in and their relationship with the public they serve.

“While journalists recognize challenges facing their industry, the Center’s survey of nearly 12,000 U.S. journalists finds that they express a high degree of satisfaction in their jobs and 77% say they would pursue a career in journalism again.

“At the same time, when asked to describe their industry in a single word, 72% used a word with negative connotations. The most common are words that relate to “struggling” or “chaos.” Specific areas of concern for journalists were widespread. They include disinformation, freedom of the press, and partisan coverage of the news. Here are some key findings of the Report:

• Just 14% of journalists surveyed think the U.S public has a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media.

• About seven out of ten journalists (71%) say made-up news and information is a big problem for the country. This was significantly higher than the 50% of the adult public that said the same thing.

• In a separate survey, 82% of the American public says that journalists should keep their views out of whatever they are reporting on. Among journalists, only 55% agree while 42% report that they feel unable to keep their own views out of their reporting.

• Over half (55%) of journalists say that in reporting the news every side does not deserve to have equal coverage while only 44% said equal coverage of the news is a goal.

• Journalists express far more concern than the public about politically like-minded people clustering around the same news outlets. 75% of journalists report this as a major concern while only 39% of the general public shares the same concern.

• Two thirds of journalists surveyed say that social media has a negative impact on the state of journalism while only 18% say it has a positive impact.

• The survey results reveal that journalists recognize that the public views their work with deep skepticism. When asked what one word they think the public would use to describe the news, the majority of journalists answered with “inaccurate, untrustworthy, biased, or partisan.”

• Journalists and the public stand far apart on how well they think news outlets perform their key functions:

  • 67% of journalists report that the quality of their coverage of important news is very good or good compared to only 41% of the public.

  • 65% of journalists say they report the news accurately compared to only 29% of the public.

  • 52% of journalists report that they fulfill their role as a watchdog of government. Only 29% of the public agrees.

  • 43% of journalists say that they manage or correct misinformation in their reporting. Only 25% of the public agrees, and 51% of the public says that journalists do a poor job at correcting misinformation.”

The Journalist / Public Disconnect

Though not a part of this survey, other media surveys report that the only U.S. institution with less public trust than journalism is Congress. Perhaps nowhere is this journalist/public disconnect in perception more evident that in the work of the Congressional task force known as the “January 6 Committee.” It has been conducting hearings about the events of January 6, 2021 and the chaotic transition of power at the U.S. Capitol. After the Tragedy at Uvalde, Texas and the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it seems that far fewer people have been paying attention to the January 6 Committee hearings.

I was interested at first, and even began to follow the hearings. Then I heard one of the Committee members or an associate complain that the Uvalde, Texas tragedy was “a distraction” that took public attention from the partisan hearings. Like many Americans, I lost interest in the January 6 affair after that.

I have long admired and respected Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, and I frequently publish commentary on her column in the WSJ Weekend Edition. However, I suspect that she was misreading the nation in one aspect of her June 25, 2022 column entitled, “Trump and Biden Both Face Rejection.” She attached to the January 6 hearings an awareness and importance to the collective consciousness of America that just doesn’t seem to be there. She did this, as her excerpts below attest, by drawing a comparison with the 1972 media coverage of the Watergate scandal. Ms. Noonan wrote:

“There has been criticism that the 1/6 committee isn’t the Watergate hearings, which the entire country watched and which in the end turned public opinion. Totally true. We had an entire country that watched things together once. But the Watergate story was often hard to piece together in those hearings. Not so here.

“The 1/6 committee has been knocked for hiring television producers, but that’s part of why it is yielding a coherent story. They made it tight, not cheap. And after they aired, the Watergate hearings disappeared because there was no internet. The 1/6 hearings will be telling their story forever — on C-Span and YouTube … and they will be heavily viewed.”

With all due respect to Peggy Noonan, I could not disagree more. The Watergate hearings of 1973 were iconic. They left a lasting impression on the American political psyche. The public was riveted to them. The hearings resulted in the production of a major motion picture — All the President’s Men — which won numerous Academy Awards and still enthralls 50 years later. Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, remain household names 50 years later as icons of journalistic pursuit and integrity. No one in today’s news media has a similar reputation.

I was 19 years old when the Watergate burglary was reported at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC on June 17, 1972. I was 20 when the Watergate Congressional hearings took place and led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Along with the entire nation, I was riveted to the unfolding story and its fascinating cast of characters.

America was a different nation in 1972, and it was a different time. There was no Internet, no Facebook, no Google. The most memorable newsman in America was Walter Cronkite. As Washington correspondent for CBS Evening News, he established a reputation as a trusted, paternal figure. As a result, his reports on the Vietnam War and the Watergate affair greatly influenced public opinion. Today, no one in the news media evokes a similar reputation for trust that comes even close. I cannot say that the news media is better off for having generated no one of similar character and prestige over the last half century.

These Are Not Your Father’s Watergate Hearings!

I admit that I write from a peculiar vantage point. I cannot jump on the internet to take the pulse of the nation, but I am in touch with a lot of people who speak from varying points of view. So over a recent week, I informally polled some of them about their awareness of the January 6 Committee Hearings. This is by no means a scientific survey, but here is a sampling of the underwhelming results from some honest observers. I have not excluded any results that spoke from a contrary point of view:

Law enforcement officer #1 : “I know the hearings are going on, but they are totally one-sided. When I heard that Trump wanted to send troops to stop the Capitol riots but Nancy Pelosi declined, I stopped watching. No one I know watches any of this.”

Law enforcement officer #2 : “I haven’t watched. If they gave equal time to the Joe and Hunter Biden scandal, I might watch.”

Parish priest : “I have not seen the hearings, and none of my parishioners ever even mention them. There are way more important things going on like the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

High school teacher #1 : “The hearings came as school was ending so I watched a little. I just don’t trust MSNBC which seems to be the main network covering (or exploiting) the story.”

High school teacher #2 : “I got pretty disgusted when I heard one of the Committee members complain that the tragedy at Uvalde was taking attention away from Jan. 6 hearings so I lost interest.”

High school teacher #3 : “I don’t follow the hearings after Nancy Pelosi declined to allow the participation of two prominent Republican Committee members. It is a one-sided political panel.”

Retired obstetrics nurse : “After the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, I don’t think anyone even knew these hearings were still going on.”

Federal Government Employee #1 : “I followed a little at first, but it seems totally one-sided. They just want to ‘get Trump’ while the country is moving on.”

Federal Government Employee #2 : “I haven’t watched the hearings, but I hope they can get Trump! Can’t stand him!”

Ten random prisoners: “Hearings? What hearings?”

The Rise and Fall of the News Media

In 1972, The Washington Post sent two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to cover the story of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Office Complex. The Post editors made a decision early on to allow that story to go where the facts led. As a result, Peggy Noonan was right. The whole country watched entranced as the Nixon Administration dissolved before our very eyes.

Fifty years later, Washington political scandal has not changed at all. What has changed is the news media. The Washington Post is now arguing in its editorials that George Washington University must change its name because of its namesake’s association with slavery 300 years ago. The Post is conveniently not applying the same argument to its own name. As historian, Barbara Tuchman wrote in The March of Folly, “There is nothing more unjust than to judge men of the past with the ideas of the present.”

The Washington Post and other news outlets today join the partisan Congressional framers of the January 6 Committee hearings to exaggerate public interest or decry the lack thereof. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins demonstrated journalistic courage in covering anew a story that most in the news media and the Democratic side of Congress helped to actively suppress.

In “Hunter and the Press: Who’s the Real Degenerate?” (WSJ July 2, 2022) Holman Jenkins revealed a series of evolving Washington Post headlines about the now notorious Hunter Biden laptop in late 2020. The Washington Post coverage leaves no doubt that the paper was actively suppressing that story in order to help facilitate a desired election outcome without regard to the damage it was doing to journalism, not to mention democracy. There was no hint of The Washington Post of the Watergate era. In the Hunter Biden story, The Post showed no consideration at all to its Watergate-era determination to “let the story go to where the facts take it.”

In this age of partisan spycraft and woke politics, the news media that was once the underpinning of democracy is now in a state of determined self-destruction. Most in the news media have chosen a partisan political side to the detriment of journalism, and perhaps the nation itself.

I hope, with the small voice given to me, to remain a purveyor of truth, and let the story go where the facts take it. Please do tell me anytime you think I might be screwing this up!

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Note: Thank you for reading. Please continue to take the measure of the news media with these related posts:

Miranda Devine, Cardinal Pell, and the Laptop from Hell

Hitler’s Post, Nazi Crimes and The New York Times

The Exile of Father Dominic Menna and Transparency at The Boston Globe

A Soap Opera at CNN Amid the Winds of War