A couple of weeks ago in this space, I speculated that CNN, the Crackpot News Network, had reached the terminal stage of malevolent implausibility. “[I]t would be a good thing,” I wrote, “were CNN humiliated and sued out of existence. It performs no journalistic function, merely a destructively partisan one.”https://amgreatness.com/2017/07/05/trump-provokes-cnns-self-immolation-america-relieved/
As usual, I was too kind. CNN will not have to be sued out of existence, as Gawker Media, another disgusting purveyor of malicious gossip and fake news, was a year or so back. No, CNN seems to be performing a species of hara-kiri or seppuku in public.
Actually, CNN’s behavior is closer to the behaviour of the fanatic Naphta in his duel with the suave humanist Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. The two antagonists confront each other, pistols in hand. Settembrini calmly delopes; Naphta screams “You coward!” and shoots himself in the head. Everyone is happier.
Several people have suggested to me that the whole travel ban drama, in which Trump’s legally formed and disseminated executive order was stomped upon by a couple of grandstanding district judges run amok, was actually a cunning plan™ devised by Democrats. The idea, the hope, was that Trump would be so enraged by the obvious affront to his constitutional authority that he would overreact, do something legally culpable, and thus give his enemies grounds to call for his impeachment.
It didn’t work. Trump did issue his ill-formed “so-called judge” tweet, but beyond that, he sat back, fumed, and let his lawyers loose on the preposterous temporary restraining orders. Last week, the Supreme Court vindicated Trump (more or less), allowing a modified version of the travel bans to proceed (which they did as of last Thursday).
But two can play at the provoke-your-enemy-into-doing-something-stupid strategy. The media keep telling us how thin-skinned and volatile Donald Trump is. Just about everybody wishes he would Tweet less and enjoy it more. But when it comes to the art of provocation, Trump is a Supreme Galactic Master and the media are weenie pikers.
The media wheeled out Kathy Griffin, whose infamous photo shoot featured her holding a bloody severed head in Trump’s likeness. They deployed foul-mouth pundits who, like grubby, ill-bred school boys, emitted various scatalogical epithets about the president of the United States. They published fantastical stories about alleged connections between Trump surrogates and “the Russians,” but then walk them back or, in the case of the latest libel, publically disown the story, scrub it from the Internet, and fire the three senior employees responsible for its writing and publication.
When the avid Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson goes on a hunting expedition against Republican congressmen, shooting several, the media blame Republicans for creating a “climate of hate.” (One Democratic official was recorded saying he hoped Rep. Steve Scalise [R-La.], the most seriously injured, would die.)