Dan Gainor: Media convict Trump of racism and moon program of sexism
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}News media reports and commentaries were filled with claims this week that President Trump’s comments about four far-left Democratic congresswomen were racist – and even that the president is himself a racist.
Often the “racist” claims were presented not as assertions by Trump opponents but as indisputable facts – like saying “it sure is hot” on a 95-degree day. Trump’s strong statement denying that he is a racist was largely dismissed as a false claim or ignored.
On Tuesday, Joe Concha wrote in The Hill that the word “racist” was mentioned on CNN and MSNBC more than 1,100 times just since Sunday. If you say “racist” once every second, it would take you nearly an entire evening news broadcast to say it that many times.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}OMAR VOWS TO CONTINUE BEING TRUMP'S 'NIGHTMARE' AS HUNDREDS GREET HER IN MINNESOTA
The Grabien Media tally of mentions of “racist” isn’t all that surprising, given the media’s overreaction to Trump comments involving the radical congresswomen known as “the squad.”
The anti-Trump media adore members of “the squad” – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. Envision them as the female Marx Brothers – Ocasio-Cortez playing Karl.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}When the president dared criticize the four congresswomen, journalists fell over one another responding. “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough said on his MSNBC show that the GOP had “embraced the racial ideology of David Duke,” a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader.
Thrill-up-my-leg MSNBC host Chris Matthews accused Trump of having “taken the Republican Party hostage.” Then he added: “They are basically all POWs, they do anything he wants.”
Trump had tweeted Sunday about “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe.” He asked: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four of the congresswomen are U.S. citizens and three were born in America.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The president continued with a comment that the media have largely and deliberately ignored: “Then come back and show us how....it is done.” Trump wasn’t calling for exile, but you’d never know it from the major media. He taunted the press into doing exactly what he wanted – making anti-Semite Omar, socialist Ocasio-Cortez and the other two members of “the squad” the faces of the now-radicalized Democratic Party.
The media obliged and struck at Trump again and again. The Washington Post went back in time to find racism in the comments. “Trump’s racist tweets were written in the White House, which slaves helped build,” wrote reporter Gillian Brockell.
Breaking news: Trump as born in 1946, long after slavery ended in 1865.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Axios carried a story with the headline “Trump's premeditated racism."
New “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell hit the ground running left. She began her new job by saying that “the president denies his tweets are racist, even as he steps up his attacks on four congresswomen of color.” Then she called the tweets “racist.”
Coming on the heels of the media attacking the Betsy Ross flag because it was created before slavery was abolished, CNN “Inside Politics” host John King linked “the squad” to the original Boston Tea Party in 1773. He compared the complaints about America by members of “the squad” to “the very beginning of the American Experiment is that you have the right to complain.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The news went downhill from there. When some in the audience of Trump’s North Carolina rally chanted, “Send her back!” in reference to Omar, who was born in Somalia, the press had a mental breakdown.
Scarborough returned with new, crazier things to say. He called the Trump event a “Nuremberg Rally” – meaning he was comparing Trump’s rally to those held by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. Scarborough went to claim Trump’s comments were both “un-American” and even “illegal.” He claimed the president wanted America to be “ethnically cleansed.”
The news went downhill from there. When some in the audience of Trump’s North Carolina rally chanted, “Send her back!” in reference to Omar, who was born in Somalia, the press had a mental breakdown.
CNN tried not to be outdone. Anchor Chris Cuomo mocked the Trump slogan, saying: “Trump says he wants to Make America Great Again but what he means is Make America Hate Again.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Journalists who spent two years accusing Trump of being a traitor are now bothered by the nuances of language. Politico published a scary blame-Trump piece for something that hasn’t even happened. “House Dems warn Omar in 'imminent danger' after Trump rally chants,” read the Democrats’ house organ.
Over at ABC’s “The View,” there was actual talk of locking up the president. Host Joy Behar invented new laws. “Why can't he be brought up on charges of hate speech?” she asked. Then Behar went farther: “Why can’t be sued by the ACLU for hate speech?”
We’re still more than a year from Election Day in November 2020. This is Little League compared to how bad the media will get.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Out-of-this-world sexism
When astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon exactly 50 years ago he famously said: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
In today’s woke environment, the New York Times and Washington Post examined the lack of gender diversity and racial diversity in the program that got astronauts to the moon.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Times ran an essay by author Mary Robinette Kowal that was headlined “To Make It to the Moon, Women Have to Escape Earth’s Gender Bias.”
“As we look back at the Apollo mission and forward to Artemis, it is important to examine the gender biases of the early space program for lessons learned,” Kowal wrote.
Couple that with the pro-Soviet propaganda piece by Sophie Pinkham headlined “How the Soviets Won the Space Race for Equality.” Forget that the Soviets kept half of Europe in chains for decades and that dictator Josef Stalin killed millions. Let’s bash the “segregated United States!” Viva the revolution!
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Pinkham’s piece ends with this memorable piece of propaganda: “Cosmonaut diversity was key for the Soviet message to the rest of the globe: Under socialism, a person of even the humblest origins could make it all the way up.”
New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz slammed it, saying comparing the U.S. space program “unfavorably to the Soviet Union’s is morally inexcusable.”
The Times even included a re-whine-der of the lefties who opposed the space mission at the time: “Not Everyone Wanted a Man on the Moon.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Over at The Washington Post, it was time to criticize the media’s favorite villain – the white man. The newspaper took a dig at the NASA engineers who were “running the gamut from mechanical to electrical engineers, because that’s mostly what was taught in universities, and almost exclusively to white men.”
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The article wasn’t done. It added the typical gender complaint: “In archival Apollo 11 photos and footage, it’s a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ exercise to spot a woman or person of color.” The Post marked this important anniversary of the moon landing with a much-mocked tweet, noting: “The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Look for the Post to make next July Fourth about how the Founding Fathers weren’t diverse and to mandate the play “Hamilton” supplant them in history books. (I bet Berkeley is already doing this.)