It's July 25th. It is cloudy and humid once again in New York, still. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. Joe Biden gave a speech last night from the Oval Office about his decision to drop out of his reelection race. He looked pretty healthy and the delivery went well, as he described himself coming to terms with political liabilities, more than with physical liabilities. Although he did say it was time for younger voices. Kamala Harris turned 60 this year, just for reference, about how far down the age curve our entire national apparatus has gone. The New York Times put the big political moment there in the fifth column over from the right and just a little bit above the fold. The lead story, one column but with a four -column picture, was about Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress yesterday.

The photo of the Israeli prime minister's speech is a sort of off -kilter angle on the standard joint address to Congress speech that somehow makes the normal empty spaces around the rostrum look bigger than usual. So he's floating in a sea of dark wood accompanied only by House Speaker Mike Johnson smiling and clapping and Senator Ben Cardin, the highest -ranking Democrat willing to be in the backdrop for Netanyahu, clapping and not smiling. 

The coverage gives unusual deference, especially for the Times, to the protesters, giving them prominent placement in the fourth paragraph. “Outside the Capitol, pepper spray filled the air as police officers tried to push back thousands of protesters who had gathered to jeer Mr. Netanyahu,” accompanied by a whole story about the protests on the inside jump page, while relaying Netanyahu's message that the war in Gaza is supposed to be down payment by proxy on US war with Iran, which is, from Netanyahu's point of view, a good and desirable thing. And Times also pointed out what he didn't want to talk about, writing, “he said nothing about the tensions in the American -Israeli relationship that have flared as Israel has used American weapons in attacks that have led, by the count of Gazan authorities, to 39 ,000 deaths.” The story also noted prime minister said nothing about the intelligence his country had collected ahead of the October 7th attack that warned a brutal terrorist strike was brewing. He called out the military heroes of that day, but made no mention of the slow response of the Israeli Defense Forces. The story also says that the relationship between Netanyahu and Biden has turned poisonous at moments, “culminating in Mr. Biden's decision to withhold 2 ,000 -pound bombs from Israel for fear Mr. Netanyahu would use them in crowded cities.” 

“For fear” doesn't sound the right term there, more like “in the certain knowledge.”

Elsewhere on the front page, the left -hand column is another outsider's insider's account of how Kamala Harris locked up the Democratic presidential nomination. Get this. She made an advance list of important people to call as soon as Biden dropped out and then called them all. That's right. That was the maneuver. 

And the rest of the space above the fold is taken up by preview piece about the Paris Olympics with the kind of writering about Par-ee that tells us that the Eiffel Tower was built over public objection and that now “between its first and second floors five giant Olympic rings in blue, yellow, black, green, and red adorn the tower.” In case you didn't know that the Olympic rings are blue, yellow, black, green, that helpful and informative description is on the front page of the New York Times. 

Down below the fold, whooo doggies, one of the less-used but more amazing faces of the gray lady turns its wide staring eyes toward the reader and declares in frenzied tones, “Iron Lady inspires Venezuelans and strikes fear in ruling party.” That's right, the anti -socialist forces in Venezuela are campaigning for election against President Nicolas Maduro. And, as it has ever since it tried to put the 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez over, the Times discerns the true will of the Venezuelan people on the move. Is the Maduro government terrible? Are the people sick of it? That may be a reasonable viewpoint, but when the Latin American desk of the Times gets on it, it's guaranteed, regardless of its merits, to come out sounding like reactionary propaganda. The hero of this story is Maria Corina Machado, who has the Times writes, “struck fear into the hearts of the country's ruling party. In a matter of months,” the Times continues, “she has emerged from the political sidelines to build a powerful social movement capable of bringing thousands of people to the streets and perhaps millions to the ballot box. She is not the one running for president, but she is the driving force behind the main opposition candidate, a little known diplomat named Edmundo Gonzalez,” talking about the repression of the Maduro regime and the political apathy from which the Venezuelan people may now be being aroused, the Times writes, “an effort backed by the Trump administration to install a young legislator named Juan Guaidó as interim president failed. And last year, Mr. Guaidó fled to the United States.” Is there another word for “an effort to install an interim president in place of the sitting president?” Coup, maybe?

After painting Machado as the country's beloved redeemer, the story eventually drops back to discuss the fact that people didn't like her. Among colleagues in the opposition, she was often viewed as too conservative, too confrontational, and too “sifrina,” Venezuelan for snobbishly high class, to become the movement's leader. Anything else about her background worth knowing? Oh, right here in the next to the last column before the end of the jump, “questions still surround Ms. Machado's actions in 2002, when dissident military officers and opposition figures led a short -lived coup meant to oust Hugo Chávez. Ms. Machado was at the presidential palace during the installation of a new president, Pedro Carmona.” Side note here about how incredibly deeply in the bag the Times was and remains for the coup, and that they still describe it as short -lived rather than abortive, and Carmona as the new president, rather than the failed would -be president. Anyway, in a 2005 interview with the Times, Ms. Machado insisted that she and her mother were in the palace that day only to visit Mr. Carmona's wife, a family friend, not to support the coup. She wasn't in the presidential palace to support the coup, she was in the presidential palace to support the wife of the person who was in the palace because he was trying to get illegitimately installed as president.

Always bracing to be reminded that on certain subjects the times is indistinguishable from the government-overthrowing arms of the CIA except the CIA's cheerleading for the coups might be a little less florid. 

Good luck to the people of Venezuela in the upcoming election. But if I want to know what actually happens and why, I'm going to have to read it in some other newspaper. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again tomorrow.