“Like maybe don’t say the laptop can’t be verified when it can,” she said, referring to Stahl’s response to the Hunter Biden laptop. How are you a journalist if you don’t want to follow up on that story? And then when your own organization verifies it, come out and do a mea culpa and admit you embarrassed yourself. Maybe don’t stealth edit the presidential candidate interview with ’60 Minutes,’ your flagship program that you’re an anchor of, without telling us, and then when it becomes a controversy, refuse to release the transcript because you’re more interested in running cover for the Dems than you are in honest reporting. Maybe don’t host a vice-presidential debate where you fact-check only one side. And then when your fact-check gets fact-checked by the vice-presidential candidate on the Republican side, you cut his mic…”

—Megyn Kelly, who has become considerably more quotable since abandoning news broadcasting for her podcast, responding to Leslie Stahl’s lamenting that “legacy media” media may be dying, that it’s all Donald Trump’s fault, and that she doesn’t know what to do about it. “I have some suggestions,” Kelly began.

Megyn was just riffing off the top of her head, of course. She could have gone on and on, as could I.

What do you call the insistence of Axis media defenders that while they may make “mistakes” (doesn’t everyone?) our journalists are noble, hard-working, objective truth-tellers who deserve our trust and respect? What is that? Denial? Delusion? Gaslighting? Outright lying? Insanity? Blindness? Stupidity? What?

What is the difference in effect between a state-run press, which is what the Founders devised the freedom of the press to prevent, and news media that voluntarily aligns itself with a single party and ideology and abuses its special status to manipulate the public, society, and elections?

Answer: There isn’t any.

In related news, I read earlier today in an article I can’t find now that Don Lemon was saying that CNN fired him because he wasn’t afraid to tell the truth. Lemon is a narcissist of remarkable wattage even for an industry full of them, and what he calls “truth-telling” I would call Dunning-Kruger symptoms. Don Lemon just isn’t very bright or informed. I scrolled down his huge EA dossier until I came to the first post about him misinforming those foolish enough to watch CNN, and found this Lemon classic: “You know what we’re going to have to do?… You’re going to have to get rid of the electoral college….And if Joe Biden wins, Democrats can stack the courts and they can do that amendment and get it passed.” Brilliant! I wrote,

“Lemon apparently thinks the Supreme Court “passes” amendments, or something. He clearly doesn’t understand how amendments actually get passed, and why this particular amendment will never, never be passed. Since he doesn’t know what he is talking about, it is incompetent, irresponsible and unprofessional for him to talk about it. Journalists are supposed to enlighten, not make the public more misinformed than it already is, a condition that poses a danger to democracy, without being made any worse. It is also incompetent, irresponsible, unprofessional, reckless and a breach of duty for CNN to allow someone who couldn’t pass junior high civics to pretend to be able to analyze the nation’s political scene.”

Lemon is exactly the kind of dim-bulb, “I’m smarter than all the little people” biased jerks who has made mainstream American journalism untrustworthy and nearly worthless. Today, Lemon was freaking out over Time Magazine naming Donald Trump the “Person of the Year,” as if that wasn’t the easiest choice the magazine’s editors have had in decades. Here’s Dim Don:

“Is this a joke? Did we get something wrong? Did someone scam us? Are we sure about this, producers?There is a convicted felon on the cover of Time Magazine as the Person of the Year. Maybe we’re being scammed. Did someone put out a fake tweet or something about this? I don’t know. Time magazine, what are you doing? Let me ask you, Time magazine, what would you say to those women who I guess still read Time magazine? You have someone on the cover of your magazine who is an adjudicated assaulter. You have someone who inspired an insurrection. We have someone who, without a doubt, the evidence is there, tried to overturn a free and fair election. You had someone who had multiple criminal counts and was found guilty on multiple criminal counts. And you name them Person of The Year.”

Someone try to explain to Don, as he just mouths Democratic Party talking points (like he did on CNN) what “Person of the Year” signifies, about how “fair” the 2020 election was, how all those “criminal counts” were absurdly derived from a single act and that the verdict will almost certainly be reversed, how a large number of women who don’t regard abortion as the most important issue facing the United States with voted for Trump, what an insurrection is and that “inspiring” isn’t a crime no matter what is being inspired because of another part of that same Amendment that lets boobs like Don Lemon have a platform for their lies.

This pathetic excuse for a news analyst was once considered a superstar among the highly paid talking heads. How is anyone in the media puzzled about why it has lost its influence?