Still on Team Herschel
Christine Flowers has penned an insightful post about the last brouhaha concerning Georgia US Senate GOP candidate and football legend Herschel Walker. I have two points to add.
My Philly friend Christine Flowers has penned an excellent and insightful Substack post about the single-anonymous-sourced hit piece on Georgia Republican US Senate candidate and football legend Herschel Walker. He has repeatedly and clearly denied these most recent charges, which I won't repeat here since Christine has mentioned them. Read and subscribe to her work.
I would simply add two points. First, this is not the Daily Beast's first rodeo at scurrilous tabloid journalism. I respect no one employed there, including the once-respected Matt Lewis. It is a bad place that harms journalism and the body politic.
Second, it is increasingly clear that "October surprises" don't work as they used to. The Gore campaign and their allies' dump of an alleged DUI by GOP nominee George W. Bush in late October 2000 suppressed some votes, but the more devastating "Hollywood Access tape" from October 2016 didn't work against Donald Trump.
Barring confirmation of the accusations, I remain on Team Herschel. He's been very open (writing a book) about his troubled past, and no one should be distracted by shiny objects in the final month of this campaign season designed to suppress the vote.
No, Herschel Walker doesn’t deserve a “pass” just because he’s overcome mental illness and found faith in Christ. But he also doesn’t deserve this kind of “journalism.” As a former newspaper editor and reporter, discredited organs like the Daily Beast harm my former profession when they issue October surprises based on a single anonymous source. The mainstream media does no better when they repeat it. Barring new information, I hope Walker follows through with suing the Daily Beast for defamation if he can.
He may need to add the discredited New York Times to the list, which now claims, again anonymously, to have “corroborated” the Daily Beast story with new information. Still, it’s the same “he said/she said” paradigm deployed by the Daily Beast. I hold the Times in disrepute after refusing to return its Pulitzer Prize for its debunked Trump-Russia collusion hoax (a prize shared with the Washington Post). Again, facts have a way of becoming known - as do falsehoods.
I wanted to read one post so must have followed, if that’s how it’s done in SS. But I now want to unfollow- just not sure how. B/c my inbox is full of nicely worded, beast-feeding commentary.
Well-purposed, critical thinking doesn’t hang in a comfort or rallying zone. It spies the variable nature of all people and the things that shape our divisions. In that, it has no use for idealism. No use for identity politics. It’s path won’t be foregone.
This author is capable of that, maybe. But appears too certain of the world and too comfortable in his zone.