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| Scumbag CNN |
The notion that Donald Trump referred to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, white nationalists, skinheads, the KKK, or any related groups who might have been in Charlottesville in 2017 as "very fine people" is false, thoroughly and easily debunked, as perfect an example of fake news as any. (PHILOSOPHER'S QUESTION: if that isn't fake news, then what is?) Trump's statement about "very fine people on both sides," stripped of context, would appear to be some sort of dog whistle to these racist groups. The full context includes not just the entirety of the press conference in which he said "very fine people" but also other statements made within days of that in which he explicitly and unambiguously repudiated - by name - neo-Nazis, white supremacists, the KKK, etc.
In other words, there really is no excuse for spreading what is in essence a fucking lie that Trump called Nazis "very fine people."
It's a notion that took hold in the minds of vast swaths of the American left - Democrats, "progressives," academia, and media such as CNN. And if you have any doubts that this notion went all the way to the top, just see what Obama said: "How hard is it so say Nazis are bad?" (How the fuck can Obama not know better than this? How can he not know that Trump explicitly, repeatedly repudiated Nazis? This makes Obama a fucking liar, plain and simple.)
But what really pisses me and a ton of people off, is the likes of CNN refusing to own up to their de-contextualized misreporting - the spreading of fake news and lies. CNN refuses to accept accountability and responsibility, indicating they think they can spread lies with impunity. (And, yes, had CNN done the right thing and issued a full and clear correction, it would be headline news impossible not to have heard about. All we have so far, it appears, is a half-assed admission from one if its anchors.)
It's one thing to spread lies and fake news; it's another to refuse to own up to it. There's only one logical consequence of this: CNN deserves no credibility as a news outlet - certainly not when it comes to its coverage of politics. The only logical question to raise at this point is: What else might CNN be lying to our faces about, this very day?
Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams (for one) has spent lots of time calling CNN to task for its lies, and CNN has chosen to ignore him. Well, fuck CNN, then. If they ignore him, who won't they ignore? Fake-news motherfuckers.
But as I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt throughout many blog postings, this is a problem going well beyond CNN and applies pretty much to the entirety of today's American Left and what, to them, passes for decent and responsible discussion about political matters. The American Left has become chock full of dishonest motherfuckers who think they can smear their opponents (not just politicians like Trump but intellectual figures like Rand) with impunity, and cry "racism" all the time with no consequence, and generally act like scum who have no business wielding power over others. What's more, if they're not in on this scummy act directly, they are complicit in it. If they don't actively take measures to hold the likes of CNN to account for its lies (while still rooting out every mistruth stated by their opponents, and screaming bloody murder when they pretend to have found something for sure), then they're partisan pieces of shit who also have no business pretending to act in the name of truth and goodness.
I hardly bother watching CNN any longer; it's quite predictable how its commentators will one-sidedly distort things (i.e., lie through context-omission), exaggerate the misdeeds of their opponents and downplay/ignore their own, etc.; whatever value it might have to offer I can get on another network, anyway; they offer no-value-added.
And that is part of a wider picture which I have also suggested before: the best (not merely good, or okay) minds in politics today have ended up being on the Right broadly speaking. (Think about it: if someone like Daniel Patrick Moynihan dies and isn't succeeded in Democratic politics by anyone of remotely comparable stature, then where do you suppose the potential successor-minds have gone instead? Suppose that the very best minds coming of age in, say, the 1990s make lots of attentive effort to sift through competing political ideas. Such a mind would be carefully observant of the state of the debate, a meta-level observation as it were. And what if such a mind is not only disappointed by what Democrats and the Left have to offer, but becomes increasingly disappointed over time to the point of being appalled at the intellectual bankruptcy a quarter century later? What if the so-called minds of the Left nowadays consistently and unaccountably caricature and smear their opponents on the Right (and pat each other on the back for doing so) rather than engage in serious dialectic? And what if those so-called minds, with increasing regularity, accompany their smears with hubris and contempt for their (imagined) opponents? At what point does the best and most attentive mind stop giving these intellectual slobs the benefit of the doubt; how obviously slovenly and slothful does their behavior have to get?) I'll add: those with the more reputable moral character have also ended up on the Right. The Left has deluded itself with the notion of intellectual and moral superiority, which is belied the moment you get leftists pretending to debate the merits of opposing political views. The likes of CNN are employing lesser intellects and more morally defective people than their competition.
(MSDNC is even more of a fucking joke; I haven't wasted a second of my time on that pitiful excuse for a news/opinion network in well over a month now; its commentators are obviously of a lesser intellectual and moral caliber, and the only point of its "news" is to propagate DNC talking points. Or maybe it's just that CNN does a better job of disguising itself doing essentially the same thing; in that they would happen to be only more clever, but hardly wise.)
Even if you still wanted or hoped to trust CNN, to give it the benefit of the doubt, how can you? If what they've done so far isn't enough to have squandered the benefit of the doubt, then what would be?
If "liberal centrist" Jonathan Haidt and his now-4-years-old Heterodox Academy project, with all its commonsense recommendations for how the Academy (and especially the Academic Left) might restore a reputation for honest inquiry, is pretty much ignored by the Academy (and especially the Academic Left), then what more do you need to convict the Academy/Left of peddling the equivalent of fake news and elevating one-sided propaganda over genuine dialogue, and squandering any remaining benefit of the doubt?
One thing the likes of CNN could do to restore at least a shred of credibility is to hire Republican fact-checkers on stories they publish that might so much as remotely suggest President Trump is saying something racist. (The Academy and Academic Left could take similar measures in relevantly similar contexts, if credibility, contrition and honor are their concern.) At this point the likes of CNN should want to bend over backwards to remove doubts about their honor and credibility, or else they deserve every negative tweet the president and others direct their way. At this point, anything less from them suggests ongoing scumminess.
