How many, I wonder, of those who had been abusing President Trump on Tuesday for his violation of civilized norms during his debate with Joe Biden were the same people who, on the following Friday, were leaping for joy (like the actor Dominic West) at his diagnosis with covid-19—or, like Hillary Clinton’s former spokesperson Zara Rahim, wishing for him to die of it. Maybe publicly hoping for the death of your political opponent (or “enemy” as Mrs. Clinton herself prefers to put it) doesn’t count as boorishness on the same scale as interrupting him in debate, but I don’t think I’m the only one who was inclined to take the Trump haters’ over-the-top outrage at his debate performance with more than a grain of salt, even before his diagnosis with the disease.

Here, for instance, was John Harris in the next day’s Politico: “An Epic Moment of National Shame: The Debate Was an Embarrassment for the Ages.” You may have noticed, as I did, that the media seems to have discovered rather a lot of “Embarrassments for the Ages” during the last four years. In fact, they’re as common as blackberries these days, which might tend to lessen their shock value a little. Yet the Embarrassing One himself never seems to be the least bit embarrassed. A bit like the media, come to think of it. They have, as some of us think, at least as much to be embarrassed about as the President, but they