I was watching a level of lying on CNN yesterday that was so breathtaking, I still struggle to understand it. I’m trying not to jump to anger because anger doesn’t help me. (Plus, ‘jumping to anger’ is pretty much Chockamo’s job description, and he does it so much better.) It was an impossible mix of disingenuous lying and misogyny.
I wrote a couple of notes on the Three-String Raconteur Facebook page about the dull things Carl Bernstein said in a CNN discussion yesterday (Sept. 13) on Anderson Cooper’s 360. But I realized that wasn’t enough. Nobody on the discussion panel challenged Bernstein on what he said, despite his saying it over and over. He wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t an accident, he was breathtakingly wrong, and they didn’t even seem to notice.
I don’t usually watch Anderson Cooper, but it was on the TV, and I was bored. Anderson segued from his Hillary Clinton interview to a panel discussion, so the panelists could pretend to praise her book as a prelude to tearing it down and (of course) Hillary herself. It was a perfect reprise to the same stilted coverage we saw all through the last election.
What a surprise. The press talked about themselves, including long self-reflection, then didn’t make any substantive changes.
So there was Carl Bernstein, making claims straight-faced that left me standing, arguing with the TV screen. After the interview, Anderson Cooper asked Bernstein an open-ended question about Clinton’s book and her interview. Bernstein chipped a couple of backhanded, ‘damning by faint praise’ compliments, then got to his real feelings:
What never comes through, though, in the book and in the interview, is that she made it possible for Donald Trump to be president. The shortcomings were hers: that she should never have been in a position where Comey couldn’t have taken advantage of the server.
In Carl’s world, it’s all the girl’s fault. Only her flaws are measured. And she alone allowed Trump’s election. No one else has a higher responsibility for what happened. Not Carl, not CNN, and not Trump voters.
News flash: Trump was elected by voters who chose him, the way he was. They could easily see he was an angry racist shouting empty promises. It’s not like Trump was hiding or pretending. So why do the news people pretend he isn’t exactly what he said? You don’t overlook that much unless you choose to.
Carl went on:
Well, the server — she put it out there for Comey to investigate. It was her conduct that did that in the first place. So some of the things that she goes to others for, had they not been in place by her actions, including even with the Russians. She’s going to turn out, I think we’re going to — about to find out that the Russians were a lot more effective than is commonly believed in this election, and she knows some things too. That’s evident, and I think I know from people that she knows some things that the intelligence community knows about what was done and about where some of these investigations are heading.
But nonetheless, she allowed Donald Trump to become president of the United States through her own weaknesses, call it character, call it an inability to campaign effectively, her actions —
Carl was interrupted at that point, but you get the idea. Hillary started the Comey investigation into her server. Hillary knows something the Russians, and he hints she’s even responsible, somehow. Hillary is involved in the Mueller investigation, which she has information on. She’s a devil with unhuman capabilities.
And above all, Hillary is responsible for Trump becoming President through her specific, feminine weaknesses that Bernstein strongly believes, even though he has trouble describing what he means in clear English. Clearly, this woman isn’t suited for public life.
She’s so unlike, say, Trump. Or name another white guy.
And nobody on the panel called Bernstein on any of this. They nodded along, in tacit agreement, until Cooper changed the subject. Nothing was prejudiced here.
We have to stop pretending that this isn’t racism and open misogyny.
