If the media didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards.

The current medical situation involving Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell truly is scary. This is quickly moving into “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” category. The senator, as Toni noted, blanked out and locked up during a press gaggle, and aides had to step in and lead him away. McConnell’s office has since released a statement from his doctor, which is blaming continuing concussion-related “lightheadedness.” While that may be true, it is deeply unsettling to watch in real time. There is a reason this – and the previous moment – has gained as much attention as it has.

Naturally, the media headed straight for the age arguments.

Following his second on-camera freeze, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is faced with the question of how old is too old to serve, which has been simmering in the Senate and the presidential race all year.https://t.co/9hZK5OuQ7W

— Axios (@axios) August 31, 2023

You have to love that gratuitous throwaway acknowledgement that Joe Biden is also old, though we are not allowed to talk about that. Why, Karine Jean-Pierre says that she has a hard time keeping up with Joe Biden!

Karine Jean-Pierre lays it on thick in response to polls showing most Americans say Biden is too old to run for re-election:

"It is hard for us to keep up with this president, who is constantly, constantly working every day to get things done!" pic.twitter.com/67BeUU86jC

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 29, 2023

And while someone like Jake Tapper might press Karine Jean-Pierre about Biden’s age and ability, the media in general is more than happy to suck it up and cover for the old man for the sake of politics. Where this can most obviously be seen is in the case of Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.

For those who are more than a year old and can remember, John Fetterman suffered a stroke in May of 2022 during his Senate campaign. His campaign and his wife actively covered up the severity of the stroke. The media enabled the cover-up – with the rare exception of Dasha Burns, whom Gisele Fetterman wanted fired after speaking up. The debate with Mehmet Oz was a disaster. And yet politics carried the day, and the insistence by the Fetterman campaign that he would be all better once he was elected, as if that would be a magic elixir to cure a stroke.

As we all know, it was not. John Fetterman ended up hospitalized for depression, his wife is building her own personal “brand” and is rarely seen with her meal ticket (it has also been revealed in other media that Gisele Fetterman had dated Cory Booker – so, this woman clearly was on the lookout for someone on the political ladder), and now Fetterman avoids the Senate floor so he can dress in his sloppy hoodie and shorts, but still gets glowing media coverage. For example, this profile from Time Magazine this last July titled “How John Fetterman Came Out of the Darkness.”

The Pennsylvania Democrat is sitting behind a big wooden desk in his sparsely furnished Senate office. His 6-ft. 8-in. frame is clad in a white hoodie, gray sweat shorts, and sneakers—a sartorial signature he has maintained despite Senate rules. (For most votes, Fetterman discovered, he can stand just off the Senate floor and give a thumbs-up or -down to the clerk, thereby avoiding having to put on a suit.) Surrounding us are three iPads propped up on stands—two facing him, one facing outward—that transcribe our conversation in real time, helping compensate for the auditory-­processing difficulties brought by his stroke just over a year ago.

This is written without a hint of irony by the author, Molly Ball. You see, the point is not that John Fetterman has severe cognitive issues that neither his family or the press are willing to acknowledge. No no no, Fetterman is STUNNING AND BRAVE because he is courageously and openly fighting his clinical depression!

When Fetterman set out to shatter that long-standing taboo, it was far from clear what the response would be. But he has been met, by and large, with an outpouring of goodwill, from colleagues and the public alike. Senators of both parties have lauded him. People come up to him on street corners to tell him he saved their life. On a May day that I interviewed him in Washington, a suit-jacketed Republican congressional staffer carrying a Chick-fil-A takeout bag approached Fetterman to thank him for talking about his struggles. As he sat on a park bench in Philadelphia recently, a 28-year-old Black woman pressed a handwritten note into his hands: “I just wanted to thank you for your bravery,” it read. “I have lived with ­Bipolar II for years. You have opened a door that has profoundly change [sic] the conversation in my household and community!”

The media has moved on from John Fetterman’s stroke. That is now considered to be baked into the proverbial cake. The voters of Pennsylvania are supposed to accept that their senator has severe cognitive limits and actively concealed the severity of his health condition – with the willing assistance of the media – in order to be elected. Mitch McConnell is old and may be having absence seizures (possibly brought on by his concussion), but we are told to ignore what we see with John Fetterman. And Joe Biden. Even when Biden absolutely blanks or butchers the names of people in his own cabinet.
https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1697417083091337232
Buttigieg is now and forever “Secretary BootyJuice,” because the media will not dare to correct Joe Biden.

Now, it would be great if we had an honest media who was willing to say to all politicians over the age of 75 to check themselves before running for office again, or to someone like John Fetterman, who suffered a major medical emergency, that his health is more important than the office. We do not have an honest media. We have a media who is gamely running cover for Dianne Feinstein, whose mental faculties are worse than Joe Biden’s, and has signed over power of attorney to her own daughter, and yet continues to serve as a United States senator until she can run out the clock on her term of office. So, while it is appropriate to ask hard questions about Mitch McConnell’s health, it is hypocritical in the extreme for the media to point fingers while they happily ignore Feinstein’s obvious frailties and Fetterman’s obvious struggles.

The political realities on the ground mean that none of these senators will resign. Feinstein has already been told that she isn’t running for re-election, and Gavin Newsom does not want to get involved in a Democrat primary battle that is sure to be bruising by tipping the scales one way or another. Fetterman could resign and the Democrat governor of Pennsylvania could appoint another Democrat, but state election law would require a special election, which puts the seat at risk. McConnell won’t resign because the current governor of Kentucky is a Democrat. The gubernatorial election in Kentucky this coming November will be important, because if current Attorney General Daniel Cameron beats Governor Andy Beshear, it could open the door for McConnell to resign without handing a Senate seat to a Democrat.

But just because the senators are going nowhere doesn’t mean that the media should get a pass on their obvious bias.

Featured image: composite of Senator Mitch McConnell (official Congressional portrait from 2016, cropped, public domain) and Senator John Fetterman (from 2019, cropped, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)