The mainstream media continues to report on an alternate universe. That is ironic to note because the liberal talking heads who increasingly can’t disern the difference between objective news reporting and subjective commentary are also the first ones to claim that President Donald Trump inhabits a sort of political Twilight Zone that is bereft of any tangible connection to the “real world.”
But the hysteria over Trump’s twitter threat to ban NBC from the air means the liberal media have not only lost their sense of purpose, they have lost their sense of humor.
We are well to remember that NBC stands for the National Broadcasting Company. When it when it virtually invented commercial radio in 1926 it was the first such national entity in America. Its founder, David Sarnoff, was legendary in both the journalism and entertainment fields; during one of his star-studded birthday parties, Frank Sinatra amended the lyrics of one of his signature standards to “that’s why the gentleman is a champ.”
But NBC is a champ no more and worried about its brand value these days. This concern has arisen not because it reports on stories that didn’t happen, such as the imminent departure of Defense Secretary James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, or because it won’t report stories — at least in a timely manner — that do happen, like the unravelling of Harvey Weinstein.
They think Trump is out to get them.
The other day Trump, outraged over the usual suspects reporting the usual crap at NBC tweeted:
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!”
The liberal media, not only in the U.S., but in Trudeau’s Canada, reacted with the same degree of alarm that they usually reserve for Trump’s North Korea missives. Many pointed out that Trump was poised to become a dictator or that he had no authority to pull the plug on NBC — nobody seemed to think for a moment that this might just be another moment of gleeful hyperbole from the president. If the media can engage in fake news, then he can have some fun with fake tweets.
Somehow the mainstream media managed to keep laughing all through the Obama years and never missed a beat when the previous president dropped quips at a news conference like a comedian hosting the Academy Awards.
But no one is laughing with Trump. Clearly NBC is no longer the broadcaster of the David Huntley and Chet Brinkley days when it believed journalists shouldn’t be making up stories or relying almost exclusively on anonymous sources who may or may not be credible or even real. The network, along with most of the cable news juggernaut, has egged on the absurd Russian conspiracy and — despite mounting evidence that this entire supposition is just the proverbial “hill of beans” referenced by Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca” — continues to insist that Trump is somehow an illegitimate president.
With Russia and white supremacists in tow and armed with stories of Trump’s alleged meltdowns in the Oval Office, the liberal media have waged a ceaseless war to bring orders of impeachment down on Trump.
When you’re engaged in a virtual coup d’état, there is little room for levity.
If the liberal media despises Trump, they clearly adore his Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau embodies all the progressive nonsense that the folks at NBC hold dear and you could hear the longing in the reporters’ voices when Trudeau came to town this week to meet with Trump: if only he were ours!
But say what you will of Trudeau, and having followed his career for the last decade, I am no fan. But Justin seems to get the joke and plays along. There he was on Wednesday, embracing Trump like the two were fraternity buddies. After the two spoke and Trudeau received virtually no guarantees about NAFTA coming together, the prime minister was telling the Canadian media how Donald Trump shared the same goals as he did. Then he lauded the president’s outstanding work on behalf of the American middle class.
Trudeau may be just as cloyingly liberal, annoyingly progressive and obsessively environmental as the American media — but at least he hasn’t lost his sense of ha ha nor his ability to treat people with whom he doesn’t necessarily agree with the respect they deserve.
Views expressed in op-eds are not the views of The Daily Caller.