Because Rasty was busy on house repairs this afternoon, he
left the TV running on the wrong channel: CNN instead of MSNBC, for once. Thus I came to see something astounding.
CNN Pundit Kmele Foster used the Jussie
Smollett case as an example for a half-hour speech about the dangers of
political hysteria. He warned that the
media have become so used to believing anything that could possibly be used to
denounce Trump that they’ve let themselves forget not only civil discourse but
logic, the rules of responsible journalism, and common sense. He followed that with an interview with a Gay
Indian Muslim TV comedian who had nothing good to say about Jihadists.
Quick, run to your window and look out, and see if you can
spot a pig soaring past!
Of course, the show then moved on to explain how the
Sanders/Occasional-Cortex “70% marginal tax” on the rich wouldn’t really take
that much, and played an announcement for Bernie Sanders hosting a
“presidential town-hall” – but still, that first speech (and its following
interview) was astonishing for the corporation that has previously well earned
the nickname of “Clinton News Network”.
Was it just the revelation that Smollett’s supposed attack
by racist/homophobic/Trump-supporting White men turned out to be a hoax? That Smollett set it up himself with a couple
of Black Nigerian buddies? That he did
it to jack up his ratings and extend his contract?
Or was it the announcement that the libeled Covington students had hired a really good
lawyer, who was now suing the Washington
Post for $250 million (coincidentally ((?)) the amount that Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos paid when he bought the Post in
2013)?
Could it possibly be something so unrelated as the massive
outpouring of negative reactions to the Green New Deal and its supporters,
despite all the approving build-up the media gave it? That does, after all, imply that the media
don’t have the manipulative power that they thought they did.
Or could it be something as simple as the steadily falling
subscription rates of not only print media but their online versions, and the
shaky viewership-rates of the cable-TV networks? People rarely view media outlets that they
don’t trust, after all.
None of this, really, can be blamed on Trump’s insistence
that many of the media push “fake news”;
after all, Trump really isn’t
a very good speaker. He doesn’t have
anywhere near the oratorical skills of the average Baptist preacher, let alone
the near-hypnotic abilities of Hitler.
Remember that the American political right – from one inch to the left
of Hillary all the way out to the fanatic fringe – has had plenty of experience
(immunization?) with skillful speakers.
It was never Trump’s speeches that won him public support. His simply repeating the phrase “fake news”
wouldn’t have worked.
Nothing could have disenchanted the public with the media
except direct and repeated experience with sloppy and biased reporting. There’s no teacher more effective than
personal experience, and in their two-years-long blizzard of anti-Trump
propaganda, the media have clearly overplayed their hand.
Possibly the icing on the cake was the too-often repeated
phrase that the supposed attack on Jussie Smollett was the result of “Trump’s
divisive rhetoric”, when everyone can see that the “divisive rhetoric” has been
coming steadily from the other political side.
So the revelation of the hoax blew that claim completely out of the
water.
It’s interesting that CNN was the first media outlet to
realize that the tide had turned. We’ll
have to wait and see who else catches on, and how quickly.
--Leslie <;)))><