Letter to The Editor: Right-biased Liberal media
Liberals continue to feel the loss of Eric Boehlert, the journalist and media critic, of Salon, Billboard, and his digital newsletter, Press Run, who died on April 4th, at an important stage of his career. He was, in addition to many significant contributions over the years, a senior fellow for ten years at Media Matters for America. Many, whose lives he touched, mourn him, and his relentless intolerance of the media’s failure to tell the truth.
Last night, with this letter almost finished, Mary Trump came on her podcast and started “doing my letter,” better than I ever could. I don’t know, and I’m still trying to figure it out, exactly what “elite” means to extremist Republicans, but y’all are listening to the wrong Trump — you should switch to the smart one.
This has happened a few times. I’ll write something, do what I can to edit, not my strong suit, I know, and then hear a podcaster picking up “my” subject. I usually scrap the letter. Wanting to avoid repeating a podcast. Generally, I try to avoid television news these days too, for this, and other reasons. We all get so much media information. I do like me some podcasts. Not to mention the publications and newsfeeds, we all check daily.
Decided to send my letter anyway. Republicans will have to suck it up — they’ve been riding their “poor-pity-us” victim train long enough, about the “unfair Liberal media bias, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla…” Another lie. Maybe it was true, or partly true at one point, but it ain’t true now. I give you Chuck Todd. The Political Director at MSNBC. Possibly, my main reason for giving up TV news. I used to claim to have a crush on Chuck, when he inherited “Meet The Press” from Tim Russert. I defended his goofy, nerdy, boyish vibe, compared to Russert, whom nobody could possibly equal. Got that wrong. I don’t think I’ve seen a “Liberal biased” reporter throw quite so many softballs to ridiculously vulnerable Right-wing interviews. It’s like Bill Maher, best buds now with Ben Shapiro, trying to get some of that Rogan action, I guess, and James Carville, defenders of the “Liberal elite,” crusading for two years against “Liberal wokeness.” I’m under no illusion my letters are as good as Mary Trump, despite my quip about being an “elite contributor.” No surprise, extremists were unable to grasp my meaning.
Eric Boehlert worked tirelessly to hold the Right-biased Liberal media accountable. Worrying about biases of their own isn’t a thing, we know, for the radical Right. His pet peeve, the crackhead addiction in the mainstream media to “bothsidesism.” The compulsive portrayal of everything that happens in politics as occurring equally on both sides. That’s my thing too! I don’t understand how people with brains can make this assumption. How lazy is that? Works out well, though, for the Republican Party, and it is why everyone focuses, and is so busy emphasizing, the “woke Liberal” refrain, on both the Right and the Left.
Turns out, I’m a flashy “woke Liberal elite” nowadays, according to the Republican Language Appropriation and Reinvention Movement, RLARM, for short. Now, everybody says so. I used to be a plain moderate Democrat, but like so many, I’ve been “rebranded.”
I don’t deny there’s a progressive wing of the Democratic Party. I’ll even go so far as to say, “I think that’s fine.” There are extreme Liberals on social media, I understand, and Right-wing extremists too. Wow. Low-content, blurted-out opinions aren’t all that relevant, in my opinion, or reflective of how people really are, or should be. Not a fan. What I know, is social media doesn’t run the Democratic Party, and it’s time people get over the “woke” name-calling Fox News. Republicans are just as “woke” as everybody else — the anti-mask kabuki theater, the woo-woo vaccine theories, their alternative “facts” and “science,” having their empowered feelings…
“The Squad” doesn’t run the Democratic Party, either. The Republican Party, however, is run by its extremist majority. Sixty-eight percent, give or take, of Republicans hold extreme MAGA, or other extreme views. Probably, it’s mostly the weird home-brew extremist conglomeration they are talking about amongst themselves when nobody can figure out what they mean. It is a fact that “brilliant,” elite politician, Mitch McConnell, openly admits to when he says, “I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference.”
Republicans don’t have, and don’t want, journalists like Eric Boehlert fighting to keep their biased media honest. They prefer bald-face liars like Tucker Carlson. I won’t dwell on the obvious low-hanging fruit today. Anyone questioning the party line gets branded a traitor, and is quickly run out of mainstream Republican media circles. Republicans want our national narrative to dwell incessantly on their phony “woke” “elite” Liberal narrative, as the only problem that exists, and to minimize the ever-increasing and unfathomable insanity of an out of control, dishonest, extreme, authoritarian, radicalized Republican Party.
Right-wing social media pundits openly brag, as reported by up close and personal Anthony Fisher of The Daily Beast, about manipulating the facts. How they lie and conjure false talking points to drive the national narrative. Their jonsin’ audience cannot get enough. Ben Shapiro, drug-addled, looney-tune, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Eric Weinstein, Dave Rubin, the “intellectual dark web,” (eye roll) seeded the fake “groomer” and fake “CRT” “controversies on social media,” then sat back and watched them grow. And because everything is about getting “likes” from your “friends,” and being a blowhard, not much is true anymore. Lucky for us in Plumas County, we have outraged Right-wingers writing into the opinion section, projecting their “isolated for too long in a cabin out in the woods” mentality onto regular Democrats almost every day.
Helene Day
Graeagle
