On the same day that the instantly infamous “vulgar video” of Donald Trump’s bawdy conversation with Billy Bush in 2005 was taking the media by storm, a headline in The Guardian (of an article by Natalie Nougayrède) asked: “We are watching the destruction of Aleppo. Where is the rage?” Well, as soon as the words appeared, we knew where the rage was: all gone to swell the media’s chorus of contempt for Mr. Trump’s self-described locker room language of over a decade ago. And yet no one seemed to have noticed or cared what that said about the media’s sense of priorities, let alone the genuineness of their concern for suffering Syria.
Mr. Trump himself fleetingly tried to make the point during the second presidential debate, held in St. Louis the following day, when he responded to the inevitable question about his bad language and bad behavior by pointing to “the carnage all over the world today” that is being caused by terrorists. “They look at us,” he said, referring either to the terrorists or to the rest of the world—but then he seemed to lose his train of thought and ended by promising, not for the first time, to give isis a good thumping when he becomes president.
For those of us who were around for the presidential election of 1996, Ms. Nougayrède’s question might have reminded us of Bob Dole’s asking “Where’s the outrage?” over Bill Clinton’s first term. Unfortunately for Mr. Dole, we had