Weekly Roundup: I Used To Do A Little But The Little Didn't Do It Edition

This is CNN's front page as of 9PM EST, 14 July 2019. I brought it up because I was curious to see what they are saying about Willen Van Spronsen, the fellow who brought a rifle to a privately-run immigration detention facility, started throwing Molotov cocktails at a propane tank, and died after being shot by police. His actions were no doubt at least partially influenced by media coverage of "concentration camps" and various calls to violent action from progressive media sources.

Think of him as Tim McVeigh, only far less effective, I guess. It has long been an article of faith among America's left wing that McVeigh was stirred to action by a rising chorus of antigovernment voices such as Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy. If you buy that argument, then it almost certainly applies to Van Spronsen as well, with the added unpleasantness of the voices in this case being so-called papers of record in the United States.

In any event, if you get your news from CNN you'll learn a lot this evening. A YouTube star died. "Duchess Meghan Meets Queen Bey". Serena Williams "drops the mic" on a reporter's question. But you won't see anything about Von Spronsen. He's been memory-holed. Was it ever going to be any other way? So let's focus instead on CNN's headlines for the night. As you can see, particularly if you aren't red/green colorblind, there's a common theme.

Let's dismiss, if only for the moment, the question of where Donald J. Trump is, in fact, a racist, whatever that word means at the moment. I've come to believe, from personal experience, that words like "racist" and "sexist" are nothing more than attempts to bully a conversation towards a desired conclusion. A few years ago, I did an article on TTAC about a white Buick dealer who had (in my opinion) overcharged a black grandmother for a new Encore. I sat down with the grandson of the woman in question, who was also black, and we went over the deal on video. Naturally, I was accused of racism by a TTAC reader --- "you're parading a colorful friend around". I can almost guarantee that if I had been on the video by myself, the same guy would have accused me of "whitewashing" the story. What can do you do in a situation like that, besides ignore the commenter in question?

Instead, let's consider the fact that CNN, at least as far as I can tell by using three search engines, has yet to call Jeffrey Epstein a "pedophile" --- but they are entirely comfortable calling Trump a racist. CNN is obsessed with Trump --- he is in all six headlines. And in four of those six, he is described as a racist, or someone who participates in racist behavior. Think about this for a moment. CNN doesn't want to call Epstein a pedophile because there exists the sliver of a possibility that he is not 100% guilty of every single charge leveled against him --- but they have tried, and convicted, President Trump of "racism" in their own kangaroo court.

Now imagine for a moment that you are Rip Van Winkle, no relation to the ICE firebomb guy, and you have been asleep since, say, 1950. You wake up and you see a major television network using a phrase like "racist" or "thief" or "fraud" in four out of six headlines regarding the President. You'd assume Trump was worse than Nixon, who never got labeled with a weasel word like "racist", even by the Post. Heck, you'd assume that Trump was worse than Literally Hitler, who made it all the way through the Second World War without being called anything other than "Chancellor" or "Fuhrer" by American newspapers. Furthermore, you'd probably assume that CNN had decided to make it their business to immediately remove Trump from office, by any means necessary.

How surprised you would be to find out that this sort of rhetoric has been used day in and day out for about two years by the vast majority of the major media organizations? And how surprised would you be to find that Trump's approval rating is about the same as the approval rating of his media-darling predecessor, Barack Obama, two years or so into his Presidency? What would you conclude about Trump? About the media? About the country as a whole?

Well, I'm no Van Winkle, not even a Robbie Van Winkle, but I can tell you what I've concluded: that CNN, and the media in general, is in a bit of Mr. Brownstone situation when it comes to accusations of racism. Eleven years ago, John McCain's campaign was effectively torpedoed by insinuations that the old POW was racist. By 2012, the gloves were off, with allegations of racism dogging Mitt Romney at every step. The Democratic Party, and their fellow-travelers in media and academic circles, became addicted to racism-as-strategy for the same reason that we rarely hear about casual heroin users: the stuff is just so good, and so effective. Ah, but as W. Axl once sang:

I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do So the little got more and more I just keep tryin' to get a little better Said a little better than before I used to do a little but a little wouldn't do So the little got more and more I just keep tryin' to get a little better Said a little better than before

And that, nonbinaries and genderfrees, is how you wind up using the word "racism" in four out of six headlines.

Alright. So what if CNN loves to call Trump racist? It's not doing much to alter the national discussion. There is probably not a single human being in the United States who will experience a change of heart in either direction because of these headlines. Where's the harm in it? Fox News used to say mean things about Obama. In the famous words of our previously-anointed Presidential candidate for 2016 --- what difference does it make?

I think it makes a difference for a very simple reason: CNN and the rest of the media have managed to destroy the meaning of a remarkably important word. It's the effing amazing business all over again, this time writ large on a political stage. When everything and everyone you don't like is "racist", how can you effectively identify actual racism? The answer, of course, is that you cannot --- and there are people who will take advantage of that. You are using full-strength antibiotics of last resort on factory-farm chickens, never thinking of the day when you, or your child, might need those antibiotics to be effective to save your own lives. It's not a good idea. Our ancestors knew it wasn't a good idea, and that's why we used to teach children the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It was meant to communicate a simple lesson: don't carelessly communicate grave danger unless it truly exists. CNN, and many other people, would benefit from learning that lesson --- but why should they listen to our ancestors, who were probably racist?

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If you think what you just read was controversial, wait till you read this!