As the sexual harassment lawsuit against chief Roger Ailes—a lawsuit which, early indications suggest, may very well turn into a even larger scandal—threatens to outrun the nation’s ever-dwindling supply of brain bleach, let us instead turn our red and weary eyes to competitor CNN.
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Because CNN, for those of you not recently subjected to it in the nation's many airport terminals, has managed to at long last cross the threshold into completely unwatchable.
Any assumption that CNN thus had enough in-house Trumpites ignores the essence of CNN under President Jeff Zucker: More, more, more! And so today brings the news that Scottie Nell Hughes, political editor of RightAlerts.com will join CNN in a paid capacity to also say pro-Trump things on air. Of course, she has already done quite a bit of that, and in the process triggered some skeptical questioning from CNN anchors.
For example, she engaged host Brianna Keilar in a ridiculous back-and-forth over whether Trump’s original tweet featuring the shape of a Star of David over a pile of cash in a meme ridiculing Hillary Clinton was still on the Internet.
This would be after steadfast Trump apologist and inexplicable CNN fixture Jeffery Lord opined that the same symbol was merely a "sheriff's badge" that the campaign had happened to lift from an anti-Semitic website—because Jeffery Lord is a professional idiot. He, like Hughes, represents a particular brand of professional idiocy that the network has eagerly scooped up in what can only be described as an effort to shore up the network's political both-sides-isms by hiring Trump acolytes willing to reliably defend even the indefensible. The poster child is, of course, ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, a man who is now paid by CNN to offer up public "analysis" of a man he is contractually barred from criticizing. No plausible excuse has been offered as to why such a move would benefit network viewers; no rationale has been given to explain why hiring an “analyst” contractually obligated to tell only the most flattering side of a story is not a cynical exercise in network dishonesty.
Faced with an indefensibly silly—and indefensibly offensive—candidate, the network who ushered in a new era of "news coverage" consisting almost exclusively of multiple people sitting at a desk arguing with one another appears to be so flummoxed by the possibility that perhaps tweeting an anti-Semitic image, promising to bar Muslims from the nation or opining that America ought to be torturing the children of terrorists is not defensible that they have engaged in a hiring spree to make certain they will always have someone on call willing to defend exactly that. Because without that person, Wolf Blitzer's already oft-insufferable show would become dead air. Without that person, the stage would become displeasingly unbalanced. Without that person, there would be no pushback against the notion that tweeting an anti-Semitic image cribbed from an anti-Semitic website is an unquestionably a bad thing; the news cycle would then turn against Trump, if only for that day; Trump would get very angry, and then pout, and then refuse to appear on CNN the day afterwards, and Jeff Zucker would have to explain to his own bosses why Donald Trump is appearing on all those other networks but not his own.
And so we are off to go dreg-scraping, looking for anyone out there who will opine that anti-Semitic websites are obsessed not with Jews, but with Sheriffs.
Imagine a revisionist version of the Iraq War, one in which war correspondent Wolf Blitzer emerged from under the hotel furniture, during that night of bombing, to debate with handsomely paid fellow CNN contributor Baghdad Bob as to whether any of it were really happening. Perhaps guided missiles were not really seen flying by the window; perhaps that is just what a thunderstorm looks like, now.
This is the Big Tobacco model of journalism. If your business hinges on obfuscating the facts in order to keep the customers eagerly consuming the product—in this case, cheap, pre-packaged arguments sandwiched neatly between commercial breaks—that is what will be done. CNN's product requires having two opposing sides, even when there is nothing to oppose. It requires defending the indefensible, and if the usual suspects cannot stomach it then ringers will be brought in to keep the formula appropriately formulaic.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Obama one step closer to the Senate:
While the Illinois GOP hilariously tries to draft Mike Ditka into the Senate race, Barack Obama effectively sealed his election by raising a solid $4 million in a single quarter.
It's clear that Obama will have whatever resources are necessary to wage his battle, and it should ensure that no legitimate Republican will step to the plate to serve as the GOP's sacrificial lamb.
Update: Oops. It looks like Ditka is being drafted to head the Illinois Republican Party. That's probably even lamer than trying to get him in the Senate race. The Senate race is still hostile territory for any GOoPer willing to enter the fray.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin rounds up the e-ghazi fallout & media interest in equating it with continuing Trump-adjacent anti-Semitism. The Alton Sterling shooting brings out the trolls. Gun “enthusiasm” gives rise to niche businesses, some of which raise... a lot of questions.
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