If you tune in to CNN or MSNBC at the top of any hour, anchors and commentators will probably be decrying the latest outrage some Republican congressman has incited. But then at the bottom of that hour, without any hint of self-awareness or irony, those same anchors and commentators will be questioning the failure of the Biden administration to communicate its manifold successes to the American people.
For the record, those successes include vaccinating nearly 200 million Americans to combat Covid-19, creating over 5 million jobs, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, ending the war in Afghanistan, passing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, restoring US alliances, aiding US (Black) farmers, and passing a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill.
This reached a tipping point for me yesterday when Rachel Maddow, arguably the most reputable anchor in cable news, propagated the following ratings claptrap:
Rep. Matt Gaetz doesn’t just want Donald Trump to become House Speaker, he’s spoken directly to the former president about the idea. The more Republicans talk about this bizarre idea, the more important it becomes.
(The Rachel Maddow Show, December 8, 2021)
My immediate thought was: Et tu, Maddow?
After all, who cares what this disgraced, third-rate performance artist masquerading as a congressman wants? More to the point, Maddow knows full well that, far more than Trump becoming Speaker (which anyone with half a brain knows is patently ludicrous), what Gaetz wants is for celebrated anchors like her to make him even more celebrated than AOC by featuring him on their shows.
Unfortunately, such self-righteous hypocrisy abounds these days among anchors in the mainstream media, who pretend to abhor the dystopian antics Republican trolls deploy while continually featuring them for ratings.
Of course, if they had any conscience, these anchors would be chastened and repentant. After all, the Jan. 6 insurrection was just the culmination of the fallout we’ve been living with. Ever since they began featuring the antics of performance artist Donald J. Trump along the campaign trail in 2016, we’ve been dealing with these consequences. Yet it’s clear they have no compunction about aiding and abetting mini Trumps in similar fashion, so long as the ratings are good, the welfare of the country be damned.
Simply put, Trump pioneered the politics of saying or doing outrageous things, knowing that the more outrageous, the more likely the mainstream media’s Pavlovian coverage. Nothing betrays this quite like Rep. Boebert rushing to publish her monkey-see-monkey-do Christmas card with all family members brandishing assault rifles. This, after the liberal media gave Rep. Massie’s Christmas card featuring the same such viral, clickbaiting coverage.
No, for what little it’s worth, I won’t play their game by doing the same … Then again, iPINIONS is just the small still voice that has been trying for over a decade to get the media to stop giving mass shooters the attention they covet. This, by plastering their pathetic mugs all over television and on the front page of every major newspaper, and reporting pop psychology about why and how they did their dastardly deeds – as commentaries like “Massacre in Omaha“ December 7, 2007, attest.
The point is that, just as it was with Trump, CNN and other media outlets are too interested in exploiting the outrageous things people willfully say. They cannot ignore them – even in the public interest.
After all, if they did, beyond the Fox-News echo chamber, nobody even in the Republican Party would care what fringe representatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, or disgraced journalists like Lara Logan and Tucker Carlson have to say. Hell, nobody would even give them the time of day.
Media coverage is all that matters to Republican trolls, which facilitates their fundraising and grifting for dollars. And ratings are all that matter to the anchors who cover them, which generates their corporate revenues. That, alas, is the mercenary symbiosis afoot …
So beware of liberals in the news media decrying these trolls. Because, if they were really troubled by the antics of these Republicans or, more importantly, if they were truly concerned about the fate of American democracy, they would stop fueling them with such wanton coverage.
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.