In the depths of the Covid Crisis, CNN rolled out with this opinion piece:
Race-baiter Peniel E. Joseph basically went full-on fanboy in his effusive praise of LeBron James. I countered that LeBron James and Donald Trump were both billionaires, and if you looked closely, you would notice that: James and Trump: 2 Sides of the Same Coin.
This was my money quote from that article: "Today, LeBron is on the opposite side of the political spectrum as Trump, James being a left-leaning populist and Trump being a right-leaning populist, but James is certainly not the Anti-Trump. He is simply a different shade of Trump. The Anti-Trump would be humble. The Anti-Trump would be poor in wealth, but rich in spirit. The Anti-Trump would be transparent. The Anti-Trump wouldn't know about branding. The Anti-Trump would be someone like Gandhi. NO ONE worth around a billion dollars is the Anti-Trump. Billionaires are all in the same category: Businessmen."
If we had opposite messages, what was the difference between me and Joseph? The platform.
Yesterday, CNN's Zachary Wolf posted: Same Old Story with Aging Politicians.
Finally, CNN and I agreed on something....I thought.
Wolf's story said that Republican Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, was the poster boy for senility. Then came out with this seemingly contradictory quote: "Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got some early attention for her presidential campaign when she suggested a mental competency test for politicians over 75. It was ageist." Wolf's examples of politicians with diminishing skills? McConnell and 90 year old Diane Feinstein.
I was aghast. How do you not focus on Joe Biden? Just this week I suggested a mental acuity test for the president. I'm not a partisan hack, I have suggested the same for Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump and Rudy Guiliani.
Before I could even start on my next article-
I left CNN...
But I couldn't shake Zachary Wolf. How can you, in good conscious, write a story about elderly politicians and not include Biden?
So I decided to look in the Zack Wolf archives. Maybe he's actually part of Biden's re-election campaign?
What is this? 2 weeks ago Zack Wolf wrote The Curse of Third Party Presidential Candidates.
His take? "The viable third-party presidential option is the fever dream of American politics." That's funny, last week I literally wrote the 180 degree opposite missive. I said "How about a 4 way race with 4 debate chairs? For the millionth time, the Republicans and Democrats don't stand for anything anymore but corporate interests. They are in the business of winning elections."
Zack Wolf's rebuttal, from his own article? "The current third-party alternatives would seem to be more damaging to Biden...." And as I scrolled through Wolf's CNN bibliography, I noticed I would have either written the opposite of what Wolf was writing, or would be neutral on topics he was passionate about.
In a different corner of CNN, Stephan Collinson wrote: Trump shows in Iowa he still rules the GOP – despite his deepening criminal peril.
<sigh>
Donald Trump should be the easiest candidate in the world to beat, he's got a knee-deep stack of indictments. How do you NOT exploit that? Well, cause your kid's got a knee-deep stack of indictments, too.
According to fivethirtyeight.com, as of this week,
Biden v Trump is a statistical dead heat-
What the hell is wrong with this country?
What is so hard for the media to say that it's time for both Biden and Trump to go?
You ever see the owner of a sports team fire both the manager AND the general manager because they can't figure it out? We live in a democracy. We are the owners of our democracy. Time to start firing people during the presidential primaries.
The whole situation reminds me of philosopher Edgar Friendly. He knew about the dangers of overreaching bureaucrats. Friendly also recognized that those who controlled the mechanisms of speech controlled the message. CNN is nothing more than a tentacle of those in power. "You want to live the corporate way? What they want, when they want, how they want? Your other choice? Come down here, make no money, maybe starve to death."
(Yeah, I know, I paraphrased.)