Between the facts avoided and the contradictions, the media are looking more foolish over Kyrsten Sinema.

Many are in a furor currently over the latest news about Kyrsten Sinema from The New York Times. The paper details how the Arizona Senator is in the midst of a trip to Europe, engaged in fundraising activities abroad this week. You get all the implication needed just from the implications in the headline: As Budget Bill Hangs in Limbo, Kyrsten Sinema Heads to Europe. Well that is a dastardly and tone deaf move on her part! Doesn’t she know what this means for Joe Biden?!

It is a headline tailor-made for social media outrage, as many details are given to tamp down the ignition of hair in response by many, but likely ignored in the share/retweet age we occupy at the moment. And just to stoke those outrage meters further, here is the Deputy Managing Editor from The Times yanking out this select pull-quote, knowing it would further enrage those already enraged and looking for any excuse for further enragement.

“Ms. Sinema’s office declined to say how long she would be abroad, what countries she was visiting, how the trip was being paid for and whether she was doing any additional fund-raising for her own campaign. “ https://t.co/dkBCFaJlj9

— carolynryan 🏳️‍🌈🏓 (@carolynryan) October 14, 2021

Yes, as the subheading notes, Sinema is not personally the sole reason a beloved spending bill is being held up — the Senate is in a recess session at the moment, so she is free to galavant off to foreign lands where she can use the water closet facilities free of snooping activists with phone cameras to record and axes to grind. Hell, this is reason alone to not be upset at her flashing a passport in defiant fashion. 

And as for the fundraising element that is also inducing teeth-gnashing from the activist set, she is attending not personal money hauls, but events for her own party. These are dinners held for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in order to snow shovel donations from American citizens situated abroad. If you are prone to howls of protest take it up with Chuck Schumer and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who is headlining the events.

But this positioning is just a continuance of the critiques leveled at Sinema for months now. The press appears to be oblivious to a certain reality in all of their outrage over the bi-partisan-curious Senator from the desert; by suggesting that she is the reason Joe Biden cannot succeed they are delivering unto her far more power than Joe Biden possesses. Odd to see them resent the woman and at the same time elevate to levels not bestowed onto her stature.

This is hardly the lone contradiction we see. Note the primary reason they are exhibiting this anger today — that she will not be available for their hounding and hectoring. Yet as they express contempt that she is seemingly ducking their interrogations on this same day we watched President Biden take the stage once again at his Potemkin Oval Office and then trundle off as he ignored the press. These mooks are more bothered that a rogue Senator will not buckle to them than they are at the President who openly mocks them with the display of his back.

The mere argument they make also exposes another contradiction. This “how dare she travel” commentary from the fainting couches in the newsrooms is in open defiance of the cheerleading we saw this past summer. Texas state House Democrats took their votes and went on a field trip in July, kiting over to D.C. while in session in order to block legislation, and the media could not have been more enthralled. 

What we are seeing taking place however is rooted less in facts than it is wishcasting. The press wants desperately to paint Sinema as intemperate and ignoring her job duties, hoping to have her lose stance with her constituents. You hear stories of Arizona Dems wanting to diminish her and work on her removal. What you do not hear is that in her state she is looked at favorably. 

Mark Kelly is the other Arizona Senator, and while he is obediently following party orders and voting with Democrats proprietary, it is not earning him raves. A recent in-state poll shows that Sinema has a higher approval rating than Mark Kelly. This reality defies the public messaging we are getting from the national press. Digest what this means. The media are upset at a Senator who is actually representing her state and its voters. This explains so much.