How does something like this make a publication like The Wall Street Journal? Of course it is. The press has thrown out all pretense of objectivity with this election. Thanks to Trump, publications and anchors can express unrestrained disgust and contempt for the GOP candidate. And what can we do? Disagree? When Charlie Rose or Erin Burnett or Gayle King express clear and obvious outrage or disagreement with Trump and what Trump is saying, how can we possible call them out? Most people I know – myself included – typically agree.
Of course I always have agreed. So I was taken by Charlie Rose questioning Mike Pence last week. When Pence said he felt the accusations against Trump are false, Rose fired back, asking – with visible indignation – if Pence was suggesting that these women were…liars! For his part, Pence insisted he wasn’t by more or less dodging the issue.
Now I have no evidence, but perhaps Charlie was one who openly condemned those who called Bill Clinton’s accusers far worse than liars back in the day. If so, then he gets and A+ for consistency. I don’t know. I don’t recall his reaction to the scandal and, believe it or not, you can’t find everything on the Internet. So I’ll assume Charlie broke rank with the majority of the press in the 90s and actually felt that women being called liars and trailer park trash was bad, and that even though it was about sex, it still mattered because things like character, values and morals matter where our leaders are concerned.
But whatever they thought in the 90s, their opposition to Trump and what Trump says and stands for is clear. Because of that, it likely not a coincidence that the press is not talking about the leaked Clinton emails that much, except for on a need-to basis. And when the press does cover the emails, it prefers the emails that suggest the Clinton campaign talked about (horrors!) staging certain things like Hillary bussing tables for photo ops, or (I can’t believe it) local Democrats might have been making deals with the Clinton campaign in order to curry favor and receive paybacks down the road. In short, things we all assume happen and, in politics, aren’t a big deal.The more damning ones, like Democrats talking about those backward thinking Muslims and the backward gender relations in Islam, have been no more than an afterthought, covered at the end of the hour once, or not at all. Coincidence? Possibly. Coincidence can explain anything if we want it to. But the bigger question was posed by my oldest son who wondered what it will be in 2020. After all, since the line has been crossed and Trump’s deplorable behavior and rudeness has allowed media outlets to express their obvious preferences with impunity, will it be the same next time around no matter who runs for office? It’s certainly worth thinking about.
