New York magazine has published an incredibly disturbing story (paywalled, but see below) about U.S. Sen John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing Pennsylvania Democrat who was elected in 2022 while recovering from a serious stroke.
Reporter Ben Terris portrays Fetterman as suffering from what sounds like serious mental-health issues. We knew about his struggles with depression, but this goes much deeper than that, veering into what at times seems like a disconnection from reality, compounded by a refusal to take his medications.
Adding to its power is that much of the story is based on the on-the-record comments of Fetterman’s former chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, as well as a 1,600-word email that Jentleson wrote to Fetterman’s doctor. “I believed in John’s ability to work through struggles that lots of Americans share,” he told Terris. “He’s not locked into a downward trajectory; he could get back in treatment at any time, and for a long time I held out hope that he would. But it’s just been too long now, and things keep getting worse.”
This is an important piece of journalism, but unfortunately it’s locked behind a paywall. So I’m going to tell you something you may or may not know: There’s a service that lets people save paywalled articles at publications they subscribe to so that others can read them for free. It’s at archive.is. You can search by keywords or URL. That’s how I found the Fetterman article.
I’m going to be a hypocrite and tell you that I’m uncomfortable sharing free links from archive.is, but that I’m not adverse at telling you how you can do it yourself. So if you want to read the Fetterman story, you know what to do.
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At the beginning of his big debate last October, Fetterman was asked at the start, “What qualifies you to be a US Senator?”
The first words out of his mouth were, “Hi. Good night, everybody!”
It was outright bizarre. Yet the media felt no need to investigate Fetterman out of its desire to see him win and keep Democrats in power in the Senate.
Now, the media’s sudden “expose” and “concern” about Fetterman reeks of partisanship, especially since Fetterman is no longer towing the Party line on every issue.
(It’s the same with Joe Biden. Biden’s decline was obvious to anyone who was watching and paying attention, yet the legacy media nodded along when staffers laughingly claimed that the guy was as “sharp as ever.” Now we know the truth. The legacy media has lost all credibility.)
Fetterman’s cognitive impairment was literally the only issue of his 2022 campaign, the source of endless media speculation and commentary. But enjoy your fantasy.
I appreciate the importance of this story but I’m both surprised and disappointed that you’re suggesting skipping any paywall. We should honor the business decisions publishers need to make that allow their journalists to produce work just like this.
I hear what you’re saying. I did a little research and found (1) archive.is appears to be a legal service that has been around for several years; (2) there is no evidence that it has been sued for copyright infringement; and (3) publishers can block their content from being carried by archive.is if they choose to do so.