Good morning. It is September 30th. A tiny bit of sun is shining here in Manhattan for the first time in a while, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Western North Carolina is in ruins as the floodwaters from Hurricane Helene recede. Power, water, and roads are out throughout the region. The Morning New York Times has it on page A15. After it did put a flood story on the front of the paper, on Sunday. Today's headline, three columns wide, is “Storms inflict tragedy on North Carolina. Raging floods and mudslides unleashed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene,” the Times writes, “have dealt an unprecedented tragedy in the mountains of western North Carolina, leaving at least 37 people dead in the region and communities struggling to cope without water, food, power, gasoline, and cell phone service. Officials,” the Times writes, “said that some 460,000 people were without power and more than 1,000 had taken refuge in 24 shelters.”

It seems like between the scope of the devastation and the ongoing uncertainty about who may need to be rescued and how to get water and other necessities to people who've been cut off, the story still has high enough stakes to be page one news. What is on page one is a two-column lead story about Israel killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over the weekend. “Israeli strike on Nasrallah was years in the making” is the headline. “Spy agencies expanded resources to track Hezbollah's plans and leaders.” Nowhere in the entire account of Israel's relentless intelligence effort and bold willingness to act, creating a “success” and a “defining moment” for Israeli intelligence, does the Times supply any sort of body count for how many people were killed when all this precision intelligence was translated into action by means, as the Times writes, of dropping more than 80 bombs on four apartment buildings in Lebanon. I guess if you ask about the suitability, proportionality, or appropriateness of dropping 2,000-pound bombs on occupied residential buildings, then you would have to address the fact that the United States has said it's the wrong thing to do, and also the fact that the United States has kept sending Israel the 2,000 pound bombs with which to do the wrong thing. If you're not going to balance civilian deaths against purported military goals, then there's no real point in counting how many civilians got killed. Over on the left-hand side of the page, once again, still and always, as we head toward a presidential election in which Donald Trump and the Republican Party are overtly rejecting the idea that it will be fair, as a pretext to once again try to steal it. The people who package the news at the Times are going out of their way not to say it. The headline is, “GOP is filing deluge of suits over elections.” The lead is, “Republicans have unleashed a flurry of lawsuits challenging voting rules and practices ahead of the November election, setting the stage for what could be a far larger and more contentious legal battle over the White House after Election Day.” Only after you scoot down below the fold, does the text of the story get around to telling you what the headline wouldn't tell you about what the story is. “Voting rights experts,” the Times writes, “say the legal campaign appears to be an effort to prepare to contest the results of the presidential election after election day. Should former president Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, lose and refuse to accept his defeat as he did four years ago.” Almost getting to the point. “The lawsuits,” the Times writes, “are concentrated in swing states and key counties likely to determine the race. Several embrace debunked theories about voter fraud and so-called stolen elections that Mr. Trump has promoted since 2020.” The story continues “in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the state's third largest county. The party is seeking to force local officials to count ballots by hand, evoking debunked conspiracy theories about corrupted voting machines. A case filed by the Republican National Committee in Nevada this month falsely asserts that nearly 4,000 non-citizens voted in the state in 2020, a claim that was rejected at the time by the state's top election official, a Republican.” Seems like if you wanted the public to understand the stakes of the election, that would be the lead of the story. But the Times would rather appear detached and nonpartisan, even about a partisan effort to steal the election, than put an ugly fact above the fold. 

Right next to it, and even more poisonously, scrupulously non-candle, the headline is, “Outcry over cities welcome mat to refugees” with the embedded subhead “In Wisconsin fears of change to Midwest way of life.” What the Times means about fears of change to Midwest way of life is that 75 African refugees have moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a city of 70,000, and the racist supporters of the Trump political movement in the surrounding white countryside have mounted a vicious campaign against their existence. Of the anti-immigrant activists, the Times writes, “Often deploying selective facts and misinformation, they insisted the resettlement was unlawful and founded with ill intent, and that the refugees would bring a rise in crime, disease and disorder — along with Shariah law. At the heart of their manifold arguments: a skepticism of all immigration that frequently bleeds into anger and abhorrence.”

Not to be a tedious, doctrinaire lib here, but the word you're looking for is racism. These people are racists. They don't have a damn thing to do with the changing Midwestern way of life. A hundred years ago, these same-ass people would have been joining the Klan and out burning crosses in people's lawns. The only relevant change that these jackasses have seen in their own lifetime is that a major American political party has stopped deciding that their behavior is shameful and started cheering them on as they do it. 

Inside the paper, on page A17, there are two stories about New York Mayor Eric Adams and his increasingly bedeviled circumstances. On the right, there's “Big Business is Worried About the Fate of Adams.” As our scumbag business community, which thought it had put itself in the driver's seat of the city again by getting behind Adams, is shocked to discover that the person who shared their values is, in the eyes of the feds, an incorrigible criminal. “The mayor's indictment,” the Times wights, “leaves many in the business world without a clear candidate in the next election, and stirs the fear that a progressive candidate won't cater to them as Mr. Adams has. Four candidates have announced runs for mayor, and all are considered left of Mr. Adams.” Who could have guessed that the guy who was elected for his willingness to do what people with money wanted him to do would have been indicted for taking money to do things? Real stroke of tough luck for our business community. 

Next to that is the news that departing school's chancellor, David Banks, and first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright, finally solemnized their long-running engagement with a wedding on Martha's Vineyard. The Times notes that the happy couple now have access to “spousal privilege, which gives them the right to decline to testify against each other in court, should that become necessary.” Mazel Tov. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. 

The Indignity Morning Podcast will be off tomorrow for some long-awaited vocal maintenance work. But if all goes well, we will talk again on Wednesday.