I’m in Boston getting ready for a seminar in 45 minutes, so I shouldn’t be writing this now, but I can’t resist.
I have been watching Chris Cuomo and the CNN morning gang whooping it up—I mean, laughter, jokes, unrestrained glee—over Republican leadership’s discomfort with the Donald Trump candidacy. More blatant antagonism towards the Republican Party—and the assumption that it’s viewers share that animus–could not be broadcast if it had been scripted. Apparently CNN thinks naked bias and partisanship is professional and ethical. They aren’t. CNN is embarrassing itself. Disgracing is a better word.
When will they acknowledge the unpleasant fact that a majority of Democrats support the candidacy of corrupt, cynical, dishonest and unqualified Hillary Clinton, and that this is far, far more disturbing, significant, and an indictment of that party than the fact that a 25% of Republicans momentarily favor Trump among a huge field, almost entirely because he was blunt about the genuine problem of illegal immigration?
Ethics Alarms 
I’m guessing CNN is run and staffed in large part by people forty years of age and under who to a person all consider Republicans inherently beneath contempt. I keep thinking my kids will grow out of this, but they haven’t so far. I thought their having to pay taxes on the money they make would have an effect, but I was evidently badly mistaken. They might as well be zombies in this regard. It’s as if they were inoculated to detest conservatives. And it’s very concerning. If Bernie Sanders lives long enough, he will be elected. I’ll be dead and only my ashes will be living in a Nordic socialist state.
Puh-leeze. The only person less likely to get elected than Donald Trump is Bernie Sanders.
Nordic Socialist State? In your dreams. The US is the most right-leaning country in the western world. CNN from most vantage points looks right of center; why do you think it’s Jon Stewart’s favorite punching bag?
Regarding which is more disturbing: remember Hillary was leading 8 years ago and Democrats ended up rejecting her. 4 years ago in the GOP, Herman Cain was leading the pack. Santorum led for a while too. I find it a major stretch to think it’s more “disturbing” that Hillary is leading than it is that Trump is leading.
More reasonable interpretation: both parties are indulging their base during the primary. Neither extreme will win.
And let’s be honest: who’s far more likely to utter disdainful inanities – Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump? Who you gonna get more chances to make fun of? Sanders is the worst sin of all – boring. Worse yet, sincere and boring.
Nordic socialist state nothing. The Scandinavians may be super-liberal, but they grasp that there’s only so much $$. On the other hand, a Greece-style overheat and meltdown looks like a possibility. I have to agree though, that Sanders has no more chance of actually going all the way than I have of a hot Irish model calling me up and inviting me to brunch this Sunday. Oh, and Hilary is starting to trail Bush and Rubio and Walker, you know, the serious GOP candidates, in some states, including key battleground Virginia.
Yes, I saw those polls too. very interesting. Hillary just does not wear well. This could end up being a pretty close race.
I didn’t put much stock in what Jack said about her eventually sagging, but it looks like he may have been right. It’s still going to be a tough fight due to the NY-CA-IL axis having gone Democratic since 1988, BUT, the myth of Hillary’s inevitability may be breaking. In 1571 the Holy League shattered the myth of the Turks’ invulnerability at the now little-known Battle of Lepanto, and Turkey began the long, slow slide down into the Third World.
Illinois went for Bush in ’88.
So it did. I think I remember one of the networks calling it for Dukakis at the same time they called NY, but it later turned out to be a mistake. So that axis only holds since 1992, still six elections in a row and easy to believe it’s “safe” although, ALTHOUGH, Illinois has a GOP governor and if any of those three were to crack, it would be the one.
I said Bernie will become president in thirty years from now with the way the younger generations are leaning. So many of them want something for nothing. It just seems like an inevitable trend.
No it isn’t going to, as you say, crack, any more than California was going to crack because they elected Schwarzenegger. An Illinois Republican can win an election against an unpopular opponent, that does not mean a Florida Republican can and that’s already assuming a Democrat on the ballot who is unpopular with Democratic voters.
It doesn’t mean a Florida, or Wisconsin, Republican can’t, either.
A Wisconsin republican? Well in the 80s and late 70s the Thompson family did well enough in both states but this ain’t the 80’s but today the Oberweiss family gets knocked around pretty hard when they run here. No I don’t think so, Wisconsin and Illinois are similar in many ways but Wisconsin’s lower population density pushes it just slightly more to the right and the larger part of Florida is still far too anti-gay to avoid turning off Illinois voters. You’d need a New York or California republican who doesn’t talk about gays or religion.
No one on the right with any whiff of culture warrior about them is going to get even a second look which means no Republican who could survive the primaries is able to win Illinois right now.
So the more heavily populated, the more liberal, or the denser the more liberal? Not quite following you there, but, yes, Illinois is basically Chicago and the rest of the state, and the city is pretty liberal (and corrupt, but I repeat myself). It is true that Jim Oberweis (one s, I got nothing when I looked him up with 2) has tried to move up from the state Senate, but hasn’t done too well. I see no evidence that the family has been attacked like the Koch brothers. I think gay marriage is off the table and will not play a big role in this election. I also think that your conclusions are just that, conclusions. Illinois may be in play this time out, it went for a Bush once.
The last time Illinois went Republican in a presidential election, the Democratic candidate was especially bad.
We are no Nordic-style socialist state — they take border control seriously.
Good shot!
The naïve Nordics have their immigration problems.
“If Bernie Sanders lives long enough, he will be elected. I’ll be dead and only my ashes will be living in a Nordic socialist state.” I meant Bernie will be elected in 2045.
Got it. A bit of a hypothetical that I won’t be around to collect the bet on, but I hear your intent, thanks.
Well, you can’t have less than nothing. I’d put Bernie, Trump, Lincoln Chaffee, Jim Webb, O’Malley, Santorum, Huckabee, Perry, Fiorina, Carson, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul—just for starters—in the “never in a million years” class.
“If Bernie Sanders lives long enough, he will be elected. I’ll be dead and only my ashes will be living in a Nordic socialist state.” I meant Bernie will be elected in 2045.
Fiorina? Really? I’ve been impressed by Carly, what’d I miss?
Well, did you miss her last, horrible campaign for the Senate?
Not my state so I didn’t see much of it. I don’t see anything too terrible on Wikipedia about it, although the demon sheep ad sounds like it could either be terrible or terribly amusing. Paying her staffers late seems like a pretty bad gaffe, but wasn’t an issue with the campaign per se. I’m not sure if it rises to signature significance without more information.
No, honestly…. I kind of figured if there was something in there to attack, the Democrats would have, this may have been in error. Cole’s notes? I’ve mostly been paying attention to her recently, and her interviews have been outstanding.
We’ll see if Carly’s second attempt at political office shows that she’s learned from her first, huh? I’ll say this for her, she doesn’t believe in starting out at county dog catcher and working her way up!
Jon Stewart to Obama: “Well, Trump helps the Republicans by making them look less crazy, right?” HAHAHAHAHAHA! You know, the great political satirists and comics—Mort Saul, Will Rogers, Mark Twain, et al.—didn’t align with just one party or the other.
In another thirty years, there may only be one party in our supposed two party system. Look at the incredible, incessant hostility toward the Koch brothers. The media and the academy are radically left. KIds younger than forty all want income equality and social justice and free healthcare and education. Their rich uncle (Sam) has bottomless piles of money and they intend to get their hands on it. And the Democrats are all in with this program.
“The media and the academy are radically left. KIds younger than forty all want income equality and social justice and free healthcare and education.”
In other words, what the youth of every single industrialized nation in the world have wanted since the 1930s. Stop the madness!
1. “Everybody does it” is not an ethical argument.
2. “Every kid does it” is an especially silly argument to justify any conduct.
3. Other countries do it is an irrelevant argument—on that basis, the wouldn’t have a democracy. In many, many matters, the US has been right while the rest of the world has been wrong. It is true that Obama doesn’t believe this.
4. Those same kids also have wanted jobs with out skills, high pay without value, free lodging, food and transportation, and the absence of personal responsibility. I don’t care.
Thanks Jack.
Jack, I understood Bill’s comments to imply that this was some new phenomena that would lead our nation to ruin (“In another thirty years, there may only be one party in our supposed two party system”). I didn’t so much mean to defend the positions Bill was describing on an ethical basis; I was simply pointing out that this is nothing new, and our two party system has managed to survive over eighty years of similar demands from the youth of America.
Old Bill, your comment struck me as little more than a “kids these days” rant which ignores that the kids of your day pretty much matched your description exactly. I guess that’s fitting given your username. :p
I don’t know how I read “Other Bill” as “Old Bill.” My apologies.
They don’t call it the Clinton News Network for nothing. I think there is a belief among the liberal news media that Hilary is a shoe-in for POTUS45 and the GOP field is a waste of time, sort of like Ireland in 2004, when President Mary McAleese was viewed as so popular and entrenched that running any opposition to her would be a waste of time and money , and so she was reelected unopposed. There is also a dim belief that no one in the GOP field is more worthy than Hillary, or worthy to serve at all, since most of them hold one view or another whose time is believed to have passed. As such, the GOP candidates are fair targets for jokes, mocking, and even outright contempt, much as you might poke fun at the groom at a wedding for even thinking he matters just a little compared to the all-important bride. Not only that, but most of them are already Clinton supporters themselves, same as that majority of the Democratic Party you truthfully indict, so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that Hilary glaring weaknesses really don’t matter to them. She is going to be the next president, and that is that, or so they believe, and there’s really no point in engaging someone who believes otherwise, just the same as you might tell someone “this is a conversation I can’t have” or “I really don’t think this discussion is going anywhere.”
We’re all too eager to jump on the newest bandwagon. I guess it’s easier than facing real problems.
And CNN is driving me nuts with their hyping every single example of poor policing. How many police are there in the U.S? How many interactions do they have each day with members of the public? How many arrests are made each day and how many citizens are taken into physical custody. How many interactions and arrests are not done in a textbook manner? Many, no doubt. If I were in a police department, I’d be militating for a national weekend of “Hands up! Don’t Police!” Seventy-two hours of no policing across the nation would assure CNN would have no questionable arrests to trumpet. Every criminal would have the run of the place. I’d like to see Carol Costello and Junior Cuomo Monday morning quarterbacking that one.
How would they reconcile this with support of gun control laws which would be enforced by these very same police?
“CNN is embarrassing itself.”
Unfortunately, no, it’s not. For most people, and thus for the television networks, including the so-called “news” channels, television is an entertainment medium.
Picking on Easy Pickin’s Trump (and by extension, his Party — that’s supposed to be the “news” part) is just the most blatant example of what they do when they can, which is pretty much every day. It’s bias AND business.
People laugh a lot when they’re scared.
Sure it is. You can’t jump back and forth between being “the most trusted name in news” (faint praise though it is) and a clown show whenever the mood strikes. It’s bias is embarrassing, and it’s unprofessional conduct is embarrassing. Who they are embarrassing is a good question, though. Their profession, I guess.
That depends on whether or not you took “the most trusted name in news” seriously in the first place. I didn’t. Not from the day thirty years ago this year when I was interviewed by CNN on the streets of Tokyo during Japan’s first international film festival and found myself later berated by friends, family, and staff of the publications I represented (only two of whom had actually seen the bit and spread the bad word) for supporting a re-militarized Japan. I had been led into this trap by questions from the interviewer who wanted to “know more about Mishima,” the subject of Paul Shrader’s excellent film which premiered there. I paid close attention to CNN … among other “news” channels … after that, and found more to question than to believe. If they have to fill 24/7 without losing viewers then, yes, they are entertainers who occasionally have information. Which leads — as has been pointed out in Ethics Alarms more than once — to sitting hard on the story (a missing airplaine, perhaps) until every little piece of it has been squeezed out flat, cut up, painted in different colors and pasted together again. They have to make. it. interesting. Scary. Tragic. Dramatic. Entertaining.
CNN is certainly a far cry from when it was the ONLY news channel on cable. Naturally, you expected some liberal bias from an outlet that Ted Turner created, but the standards were nevertheless higher. Of course, that was back when the BBC was likewise. Things change…