The Media Loves — And, I Mean, Really Loves — Adam Schiff

Jonathan Adler wonders whom Adam Schiff thinks his audience is. The answer is simple: the media.

The same people who spent years passing along every falsehood and selective leak the California congressman gave them to fuel the Russia-collusion hysteria, and the same people who still accept his allegations — knowing his long history of fabrications — without much skepticism, spent yesterday pretending that Schiff was a modern-day Cicero.

All of it was about believable as Schiff’s contention that he is pursuing impeachment to defend the Constitution. But we expect partisans to behave a certain way. The excessive fawning by pundits and reporters over a middling speech by a middling congressman was just insufferable.

If you think I exaggerate, take Greg Miller, a national-security correspondent for the Washington Post, who contended that Schiff is perhaps the most “underestimated” politician California has ever produced, and “will leave a mark on history, exceeding nearly all contemporaries.”

Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine — and now an advocate for overturning the First Amendment — declared: “When we get back to teaching civics in this country—as we must do—Adam Schiff’s sweeping, beautifully-wrought opening argument, should be on the syllabus.”