Good morning. It is October 4th. It is a warm and humid October morning in New York City, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The lead story in this morning's New York Times is about the verdict in the Memphis police brutality case yesterday in the killing of Tyree Nichols. A federal jury found that the three police officers who beat Nichols to death were guilty of witness tampering, and that one of them was guilty of violating the victim's civil rights by causing bodily injury. They were found not guilty of violating Nichols' civil rights. Video of the January 2023 encounter, the Times writes, “show that after Mr. Nichols fled a traffic stop, officers viciously punched and kicked him, ignoring his cries for his mother and his attempt to comply with a barrage of conflicting commands. None of the officers reported the extent of the beating. The three, and two other defendants,” the Times notes, “who pleaded guilty, still face additional state charges, including second-degree murder.” 

Next to that on the page is a confoundingly triumphal story. “Israeli military wins back stature lost on October 7th. A year after perhaps the worst military and intelligence debacle in Israel's history, the Times writes, the military is rehabilitating its image as a formidable regional power. It has penetrated the most secret and secure bastions of its arch enemies with intelligence-based precision strikes, eliminated key leaders, pounded away at their assets, and largely thwarted their efforts to mount a response.” Rather than wading on past the jump to the 13th paragraph to find the first appearance of the word “civilians” in the article, let's just skip over to the open letter released this week by 99 American medical workers who've been working in Gaza. They wrote, “Children are universally considered innocents in armed conflict. However, every single signatory to this letter saw children in Gaza who suffered violence that must have been deliberately directed at them. Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency intensive care or surgical setting treated preteen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.” So there's winning stature and then there's winning stature. Circling back to the front page story, despite its muscular enthusiasm for the idea that the Israeli military is becoming less reluctant to engage in a broader regional war, not even the sub-headline on the piece could get away from acknowledging “string of tactical gains lacks clear path to end conflict.” The killing may be pointless, but at least they're doing an unlimited amount of it. 

Next to that, back up at the top of the page, a month before Donald Trump stands for election to the presidency, more than three months after Joe Biden's shaky debate performance precipitated a media frenzy about his age and ability that led him to drop out of the presidential contest. The Times writes, “Trump retains secretive grip on health file, promises to release his records, but hasn’t.” The Times runs through the past nine years of Trump covering up his medical records and the various health problems that he apparently experienced along the way, then writes, “Now, just over a month from an
election that could make Mr. Trump, 78, the oldest person ever to serve as president (82 years, 7 months and 6 days when his term would end in January 2029), he is refusing to release even the most basic information about his health. If he wins, Mr. Trump could enter the Oval Office with an array of potentially worrisome issues, medical experts say: cardiac risk factors, possible aftereffects from the July assassination attempt and the cognitive decline that naturally comes with age, among others.” The debilitating effects of age may be natural and unavoidable, but the fact that this discussion is happening a month before the election falls entirely on the people publishing the story. In another world, both of the extremely old men who were vying to become the next president would have been subject to aggressive scrutiny a year ago. At the very least, after Biden's debate performance made his senescence into a career-ending issue, the logical and responsible thing to have done would have been to immediately pivot to the question of Trump's fitness, especially given his erratic behavior and light schedule. But instead they chose to let the question sit there while more and more of the electorate locked in. 

Inside the paper, speaking of priorities, the election coverage spread as a piece about each candidate. On the Kamala Harris side of things, the Times writes, “Vice President Kamala Harris has cast herself as a candidate of the future, but she has been yanked back by the problems of the present as the Middle East lurches toward a wider war, a longshoremen’s strike threatens to undermine the country’s economy and Americans across the Southeast struggle to recover from a deadly hurricane.” It didn’t make the paper, but the longshoremen are back on the job, and seem to be on the way to a satisfactory labor agreement, so when a third of the rule-of-three setup for Kamala Harris's problems fell apart before the paper hit the doorstep, “the confluence of domestic and global traumas combined to knock Ms. Harris,” the Times continues, “off a message that has been carefully calibrated since she took over for President Biden to showcase her as the avatar of a new way forward, as her slogan puts it.” Did they knock her off a message? What does it mean to be knocked off a message, except having the New York Times write a campaign narrative story about how you've been knocked off your message? And for that matter, what exactly was she supposed to be doing about the hurricane, beyond being part of a seemingly effective disaster relief operation that stands in grave contrast to her opponent's record as president when faced with disaster? So the Times brings in neutral political analyst Matt Gaetz to declare that this all just supports the fact that people feel like things are getting worse. Bad faith declarations about feelings. That's what we got. 

Meanwhile, on the Facing page, “Trump says he'd revoke protections for Haitians.” Kamala Harris stands accused by her opponents in the Republican Party and the politics desk of the New York Times of failing to manage the mood of the country. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is running on a specific campaign promise to deport the hardworking, taxpaying legal residents of Springfield, Ohio, who his campaign has been slandering, to fulfill his central campaign promise of ethnic cleansing. There are, in short, some concerns about both candidates. 

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. Hit that button, send us some money, please, to keep us going. And if all goes well, we will talk again on Monday.