Campaign Action
Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh was quick to become, in the wake of the Dallas mass murder, one of the worst human beings on Twitter. For his tweet: "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter punks. Real America is coming after you" he was temporarily suspended from Twitter—but was quickly rewarded with an invitation to appear on CNN.
Because, apparently, of all the individuals in all of America who might have insights into the shooting, CNN decided that his "analysis" was the one they wanted to run with.
“I stand by what I meant, Don,” Walsh told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday night, regarding the flood of tweets he sent blaming activists, liberals, and Obama for a the deaths of five police officers at the hands of a lone gunman during a Black Lives Matter protests in Dallas on Thursday.
He didn't intend to threaten the president, he explained. But Twitter got all huffy at him for maybe suggesting violence and isn't that just so representative of how angry dumb jackasses like him can't catch a break in this country.
As I've mentioned before, this has apparently been a calculated shift for CNN. The network has appeared to make conspicuous effort to go to full chair-throwing in their "analysis" segments, consistently booking white conservatives who will push the boundaries of credible speech on the network. The hiring of reliable Trump apologist Corey Lewandowski is but one of many such moves; for raw race-baiting offensiveness Jeffery Lord is regularly trotted out. It may be an attempt to provide "both sides" coverage of a political environment in which one side is quite clearly racist, xenophobic, inaccurate, fraudulent, and wrong; it may be a genuine attempt to woo the Trump wing of America, those Americans who, like Joe Walsh, are fed up with black Americans' complaints of racism and think it's high time they "watch out."
CNN is where you can hear grown adults opine that a Jewish star hovering over a pile of money in an image nicked from a neo-Nazi forum is not a Jewish star at all, but a "sheriff's" star. CNN is where you can hear that all the various things Donald Trump has said on-camera he did not actually say, not even if you can watch him say it again in the very next clip. CNN is where you will hear a panelist insist that black Americans are “prone to criminality.”
The format itself is, at least in the CNN rendition, unwatchable. Summoning panel after panel of angry know-nothing idiots makes the whole enterprise seem like a deeply unfunny attempt at a Monty Python sketch; supposing Lord or Lewandowski or whichever radio show talking head said the most unhinged or violence-provoking thing the previous day have thoughts worth beaming into every American cable household is at best lazy, and at worst intentionally malevolent.
If there's a point to it, it would be nice for the network heads to let us know. Because from the outside it looks like CNN has decided to egg on America's worst elements, the race-baiters, xenophobes, and the conspiracy mongers, just to see what camera-friendly blood might come of it.