If nothing else ... this!

Oh, good lord … this, this, this!  From George Neumayr:

Whenever editors say that they refuse to acknowledge “two sides” on such matters as “marriage equality” or Darwinism or climate change, they are paying homage to Lenin’s devious politics by shorthand. They pay homage to it whenever they substitute their opinions of the news for actual reporting of the news. Even the squabbling among journalists recently over whether or not to suspend “conventional reporting” in Trump’s case, or whether front-page stories should declare his misstatements “lies,” is a tacit acknowledgment of that politics. With Lenin, the Christiane Amanpours have no use for the peskiness of precise responses. Just call Trump a “liar,” their attitude goes, and “everyone will understand everything.”

But that demagogic shorthand only works as long as Republican politicians defer to it. For years journalists opined self-servingly under the guise of objectivity and got away it because Republicans were too afraid to shatter that illusion of objectivity. They permitted the media to serve as the arbiter of what qualifies as “mainstream,” “extremist,” “racist,” and so forth, and made sure to stay within the media-determined parameters of any discussion.

Donald Trump has blown up that absurd arrangement and is beating the media at its own game. He labels reporters in the same way that they label him. He upends their dishonest framing of debates by treating them as what they are, liberal partisans. His exchange last week with April Ryan, a correspondent for the American Urban Radio Network, captured that perfectly. She asked him a loaded question not as a neutral reporter but as a water-carrier for the Congressional Black Caucus. So he treated her that way. “I’ll tell you what, do you want to set up the meeting?” the president said to her, after she asked if he would meet with the CBC. “Do you want to set up the meeting? Are they friends of yours?” Of course, they are friends of hers and she was trying to score a partisan point for them. Had Trump not deconstructed that for the audience, her question might have done him damage. Instead, it fell flat and looked unserious.

Reporters are thrown by a president who questions them as aggressively as they question him. And they resent that he refuses to accept as “facts” what is nothing more than their biased interpretation of the facts.

This is a perfect summary of why the left has been “winning” the culture war and why I’ve called the establishment GOP a bunch of spineless “old ladies” (with apologies to real old ladies).  They have been cowards in the culture war … period.  They’ve allowed the left, through the media, to frame the issues, bully them into silence and essentially they have ceded the cultural field to them because of the GOP’s inordinate fear of the media and its assumed power.

Trump has deflated that myth about as well as can be done.  Whether or not you like the man, voted for him or anything else, he has literally spoken “truth to power” and we’ve found out that most of the power the media has is assumed rather than real.  He has the media running in circles and fouling itself regularly.  For that alone, his presidency is worth it.

Here at QandO we’ve talked about the media’s agenda for years and the refusal of establishment GOP politicians to confront the bias and call out the perpetrators of what is now called “fake news”.   I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see someone do that and to watch a pretentious, arrogant and spoiled industry get its comeuppance.

Glad to see it!

~McQ