After 8 long years of deliberately isolating myself from cable news, I listened to CNN on TuneIn radio on my iPhone last night. For three long hours, I listened to Anderson Cooper, followed by some new dude who appears to be Larry King’s replacement, talk about Trump.
It was all Trump, all the time.
It reminded me of the good old Monica Lewinsky era.
They talked about Trump rallies, how he has the worst negatives of any presidential candidate in human history, the math to the nomination, how the GOP would react to Trump’s nomination, would they give him the nomination, would there be riots, are there riots right now, and Megyn Kelly.
Let’s stop right there. Is there anything weirder than Fox News writing a perfectly reasonable statement defending Megyn Kelly against sexism and misogyny and Donald Trump’s crazy, scary obsession with her?
Sometimes I think that if Donald Trump didn’t exist, the Democrats would have to invent him. Because who in their right mind would vote for this guy, right?? It’s got to be a shoe in for Hillary. Then I think that’s what a rational person would think and nothing about this year is remotely rational. In fact, the more the media covers him and points out what a creepy, disgusting, violence inciting, self-tanning mistake of a human being firmly pinned to one end of the narcissistic personality disorder spectrum he is, the more supporters he gets.
I could almost hear the gears whirring in the noggins of Anderson Cooper and his guests trying to figure out how to stop him. “We cover him and he does outrageous things and it’s clear that someone is going to get hurt eventually and women are really going to suffer under a Trump regime, and the more we cover this, the more people want to elect him. What if we… Nahhh, we can’t”
Yes, you can. You can just stop covering him. No, I take that back. Someone might say that it is your responsibility to cover a “legitimate” presidential candidate. Yes, it is, which is why it was so surprising that Hillary’s name was uttered so infrequently last night. And Bernie Sanders wasn’t mentioned at all. If, god forbid, something caused Hillary to drop out, Democrats would happily get behind Sanders in a way that Republicans would not get behind Ted Cruz. But nary a peep about Bernie Sanders. The network has been completely highjacked by Trump.
Think, people, think! You’ve been doing your best work against the Clintons.Why has Trump completely emasculated you??
All you need to do is cover him in completely misleading ways. You know how this is done. Get snippets of his speeches and paste them together to make it sound like he said something his supporters don’t want to hear. Like, “Putin and I are golf buddies. We’re going to talk trade policy and I’m going to get the best deal for both countries.” or “If you lose your job, you can apply for one at Mar-a-Lago. Can you speak Spanish?” or “I’m going to work with Congress and learn to play its game”. Tinker with the color balance in the shots you take of him. Drain the orange from his face and replace it with a nice shade of light bluish gray. Catch him being nice to a Mexican on his estate or accepting some small gift from the King of Saudi Arabia. Or laughing in the Green Room with Megyn Kelly. Find footage of him attending a LaMaze class with Melania.
You know how to do it.
If you really have to cover the candidates, you have to cover all of them, not just the ones that look like the car wreck you’ve been waiting impatiently in your car for 45 minutes to see.
I gave CNN three hours of my life I can’t get back. I now realize that I had made the right choice eight years ago. But not all of us can get beneficially nauseated by the news to stay away from it. If CNN is really that worried about the gigantic asteroid called Trump that is hurtling towards us, it needs to apply the Clinton rules of coverage to him now.
If it doesn’t, then it’s just looking for ratings and it’s part of the problem.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Clinton Rules, CNN, Hillary Clinton, Media, Megyn Kelly, Ted Cruz, Trump |
The Confluence 
https://newrepublic.com/article/131762/hillary-voter
You should read that.
The media is part of the problem. They largely created the media mess and now they’re reaping what they have sown.
The media doesn’t understand how cool we are. Or it knows and it wants to pretend we aren’t.
By the way,I’m as angry and fed up as an sanders supporter and lord knows, I am no fan of obama’s.
I think what separates a sanders person from a Clintonista is we were burned by the establishment 8 years ago and we’re still here.
Once she stops fluffing Obama, she really should take advantage of the anger. Because it is real.
Well, perhaps even if people are angry they don’t want an angry candidate like Bernie. It’s one thing for voters to be angry and expressing that in the voting booth and another thing for them to be attracted to a candidate because he is angry. I think angry candidates scare people away because anger can lead to making irrational decisions.
For quite some time the so call “Media”, has become a pathetic circus show of reckless spit of opinions, targeted to viewership competition. Divorced of ethical journalism and reasonable judgment.
No worth it to be taken serious and of my time…
Trump is obviously worth many millions of dollars to the cable news channels. Trump is quick to point that out. He is a barker who can put people in the seats and eyeballs looking at the screen. So it is a sort of demonic marriage. The networks started devoting multiple hours to Trump the minute that he started running. He said outrageous things, insulted the other candidates. He is like a host of one of those over the top; reality shows, which of course he actually was. So he is a big draw. And long ago the media sold whatever ethics or journalistic capacity it had, to create a ratings-driven “news as entertainment” brand.
So the media is always going to cover Trump, and could not now avoid it, if he does get the nomination. Now, if the media would actually do a little journalistic work, they would find all sorts of scandals and misrepresentations in Trunp’s life and career. Also, if they would ever deign to spend some time actually focusing on actual issues, they could point out that Trump has very few actual proposals; that most of what he says he will do is either unconstitutional or impossible; that an American president cannot bully world leaders, even if he wants to; that Trump actually doesn’t know anything about national or world matters, and literally has the knowledge of a poor third grade student. But I doubt that they will do any of this. They will leave it to Hillary Clinton to do it, but only if she does it in a genteel way, or else they will not be able to help; themselves, and will do hours on, “Was Hillary being intellectually elitist? “Did she anger average people, who do not like anybody to know any more than they do?” “Whom would you rather have a beer with?” “Wouldn’t a Trump presidency be a lot of fun; we could cover it every day; just think of what he might do or say.”
The First Rule of The Clinton Rules is “The Clinton Rules Only Apply To Clintons.” Our media salvation will come with the first slide in Trump’s ratings, then the media will go into “Feet Of Clay/Tearing Down The Hero” mode and then we can spend a full year hearing awful Trump is while he wallows in dollars in Bimini.
Trump is playing the media, he knows it, they know it- and he’s getting some advantage from it. We’re not going to make him change by logic, or guilt, or any reasonable requests.I’d personally like to see him arrested for inciting riots, or whatever, but that would give him more exposure. Outrageous behavior seems to capture the media’s interest, and Hillary is the opposite of outrageous. What to do???
I have always felt the Clintons are liberal who will go moderate liberal in the name of positive progress. Moderate politics are not newsworthy because they remove the controversy and replace with it ideas and possible solutions, therefore we have no moderate \cable news channels.
Years ago I suggested the Clintons start a moderate news channel. On facebook Blue Nation Review has become a safe harbor for Hillary Clinton and her supporters. In the year of Move on dot org and The Young Turks doing their max to push Bernie past Hillary, Bernie Supporters continually whine in the Blue Nation guest post section because Blue Nation Review is supporting Hillary Clinton and ignoring Bernie Sanders. And yet, it’s ok in their minds for Move on Dot Org and Cenk Uyger to blast the Clintons at every made up opportunity.
Off topic. Written by Bruce Belland and Dave Somerville, and sung by Willie Nelson.