It is understandable that jaded establishment columnists and TV commentators — including the ones who labor under the pretense of being conservatives — cannot find interesting items to write or talk about.

We are not talking about run-of-the-mill local or even regional spinners of opinions; these are “elite, intellectual” national columnists and TV commentators. As one of their heroes, the Clinton Clan, would say, they feel the pain of the people so deeply that it makes for mundane writing.

Humor finds no home there.

There is nothing to be gained by naming these nationally known pseudo-conservatives since they have enough shame to bear imagining that people read or listen to their drivel, even if the numbers of readers and listeners are miserably low, and sliding lower.

To illustrate that there are plenty items for interesting commentary, let’s look at one example.

There are enough items on a single page of a recent edition of a regional southern daily newspaper to provide even a pseudo-conservative columnist, especially one who labors for a liberal publication like The New York Times or The Washington Post, with enough “safe” prose for at least one column.

To make the items juicier than would have been the case otherwise, all the items are written by employees of what is perhaps the most liberal/progressive/democrat-friendly news organization in the world — the Associated Press.

The headlines for each of the three items hint at what is to come, and illustrate what the Associated Press thinks is important, and presents it deadly seriously.

The headline reading “Give drug felons food stamps, many states now say,” is followed by a report in favor of it. It’s only in the last two paragraphs that the co-writers get around to letting opponents of the move have their say.

The sad thing is that the co-wrote article contains much valuable information, but it loses its value by the use of biased language, terms such as “desperate to stop the runaway growth of … prison population.”

It also required two writers to put together another story on the same page, headlined “Student says he was victim of Islamophobia.” Note that “Islamophobia” is capitalized, reflecting the importance writers place on the condition.

(To be fair to the two writers, it is difficult not to be swept off one’s feet given the propagation by the national media that the so-called “backlash” from terrorist attacks are often worse than the terrorist acts.)

In this case, according to the article, a college student who was also something that was called an Iraqi “refugee” was so dumb and peaceable that he spoke Arabic on a plane and “may have” used the phrase “Islamic State” when talking on his phone. To cap off the scenario, he ended the phone conversation with “inshallah,” meaning “God willing.” The young, likeable fellow was tossed from the plane, detained, but was later released.

According to the story, he told the AP that FBI agents asked him about his thoughts on martyrdom, and he told him he had no interest in such matters, which probably convinced AP to picture him as a martyr, but not so the woman who overheard the phone conservation and reported it to plane personnel. In the writers’ minds, she came off as a dastardly islamophobic.

If someone had asked the two reporters if the woman erred in reporting what she saw and heard, one could imagine them saying, “Well, if she hadn’t reported it and the plane blew up and killed everybody, her survivors wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge that she’s a sick, demented bigot and hater.”

The third item is a story about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigning in New York and there was no byline, for whatever reason. Maybe the writer(s) covering that beat was sick that day, and so an idle member of the Associated Press’ editorial board whipped it up.

However biased the whole of the story is for Democrats, it is puzzling that included in the story was a list of unflattering Hillary Clinton activities: dancing to Latin music at a Brooklyn block party; vowing to defend abortion rights to females in Manhattan; praying at a black church in Westchester; drinking a bubble tea at a dumpling shop in Flushing; and cheering newly unionized workers in Queens.

Oh, well, fatigue can cause lapses in judgment when one is called on day after day to churn out pieces flattering to Democrats, any Democrat, and to moderate (i.e. Democrat-friendly) Republicans. Mistakes are made.

L.E. Brown, Jr. is an independent writer based in Magnolia, N.C. Contact him at [email protected].