The phony establishment-vs-the-people dichotomy

Yesterday on my podcast, I said that I had had it with this false establishment-vs-the-people dichotomy. It is a straw man put forth by formerly admirable, formerly conservative figures who now willingly overlook Squirrel-Hair's spiritual rottenness because they find a few things he's said about the two issues they obsess over - immigration and trade - exciting. These people have abandoned their principles and gone full in for "populism" and "nationalism."

There's a great piece today at the great National Review Online by Stephen L. Miller that dispels this phony juxtaposition.

To begin his argument, Miller looks at the sheer numbers involved in mainstream-media coverage of Squirrel-Hair:

Fox News granted two nights of town-hall coverage to GOP’s primary candidates to fight over. The night before, MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski had allotted a full primetime hour to Trump.

On the eve of Super Tuesday, Trump sat down in person for an interview with Sean Hannity. On the same night, Trump’s wife, Melania, was sitting down for an interview with Anderson Cooper; this was fresh off the heels of her interview with Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe.

The  Sunday-morning news shows allow Trump to call in for interviews, something practically unheard of for presidential candidates. Yet Chuck Todd, George Stephanopoulos, and Chris Wallace all allow Trump to do so. And last year, CNN even shelved its long-planned tenth-anniversary Hurricane Katrina special hosted by Anderson Cooper. In its place, they aired a post-Trump-rally special with Don Lemon.

TMZ, both online and on their television show, routinely run segments on Trump, as does ET! Greta Van Susteren has frequently invited Trump’s sons on as guests, either in the studio, via satellite, or on the phone. CNN and MSNBC carry Trump’s campaign rallies in full — and Fox, too. Media outlets breathlessly hang on his every word and insult and bombastic threat or incitement, and then they become instantly appalled when one of their own is choke-slammed to the ground by Trump security guards. Such reactions from them are telling.

New York magazine columnist Frank Rich declared on CNN that Trump wasn’t stealing oxygen from other candidates, because he “was the oxygen.” Trump was the one making the race interesting, according to Rich. But interesting to whom? Persuasive evidence suggests that there is a direct correlation between Trump’s poll numbers and his media coverage compared with the media and polls for the rest of the field.

When Trump happily sits down with Rolling Stone — a magazine that has published fawning interviews with Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders and that also featured each as a cover star – his supporters exult over how easily Trump is playing the media. Saturday Night Live — a show that weekly offers backhanded praise of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders and that portrays Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as greasy Latin dancers — gave Trump a full episode, inviting him to host.

The coverage of Trump is so lopsided that it’s impossible to deny any more. According to NewsBusters and the Media Research Center, 62 percent of all Super Tuesday evening network news coverage (NBC, CBS, ABC) went to Donald Trump alone. For the entire month of February, Trump accumulated more than 180 minutes on those newscasts, accounting for more than 50 percent of the coverage. Marco Rubio was second, with 67 minutes; and Ted Cruz was third, with 62 minutes. 

Is the fact that he's the frontrunner the long and short of it? No, there's a bit more to the explanation:

Robert Thompson, director of the Belier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University, offered a perceptive analysis to The Wrap, a news site that covers Hollywood.

"The Apprentice was very good for NBC. . . . It fashioned and reshaped Donald Trump for a new audience, many of whom didn’t even know who he was when that show started. . . . Now Zucker is at CNN and, once again, seems to be using Donald Trump to both of their benefits."

CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves explained it in blunter terms to the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco (as The Hollywood Reporter originally reported): “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Moonves elaborated even more on what Trump’s rise means for his network. The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "Moonves called the campaign for president a “circus” full of “bomb throwing,” and he hopes it continues. 'Most of the ads are not about issues. They’re sort of like the debates,' he said. 'Man, who would have expected the ride we’re all having right now?#…#The money’s rolling in and this is fun,' he said. 'I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going,' said Moonves. 'Donald’s place in this election is a good thing,'

"'There’s a lot of money in the marketplace,' the exec said of political advertising so far this presidential season.

Moonves just happened to give the exact same quote at a conference on entertainment law in Los Angeles in March of 2012. Referring to Citizens United, he declared “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.”

Last August, Moonves even foreshadowed the oncoming media-induced Trump when, in a CBS quarterly-earnings conference call, he declared, reportedly to applause: “The coming election cycle will clearly ‘Trump’ anything we’ve ever seen before.”

Perhaps this would be a good place to mention that Les Moonves is also a self-declared Clinton friend. In 2001, CBS quoted Moonves as acknowledging, “I’ve had numerous chats with President Clinton over the past few years. . . . He is a friend of mine.”

Bottom line:

Trump supporters who believe their candidate is the anti-establishment destroyer of media are being conned, and the con is being perpetrated by the people they hate the most: the Clintonistas of network media. 

Laura Ingraham, arguably the most despicable of the former conservatives now quite overly shilling for Squirrel-Hair and her two-note-johnny obsession with immigration and trade, has tried to use various figures from, yes, the establishment to perpetuate the myth. For the longest time, she clung to  Jeb Bush as some kind of symbol of the general opposition to S-H. She was even still trotting him out after he'd withdrawn. Now she has a new poster boy for her sham argument: Mitt Romney, who, of course, gave that anti-S-H speech this morning.

It's a load of crap. The actual major voices imploring post-America not to drink the S-H Kool-Aid are not Jeb or Mitt groupies.

People like Ingraham go on to suggest very strongly that there's something morally cowardly about denouncing S-H without endorsing someone else.

No, there's not. Pointing out that S-H is a bad human being on every level is a valid undertaking on its own. Those of us doing so aren't saying it in the context of a choice.

Kevin Williamson is not establishment. Erick Ericsson is not establishment. Dennis Prager is not establishment. Dana Loesch is not establishment. Andrew Klavan is not establishment. Guy Benson is not establishment. Ben Shapiro is not establishment. This blog is not establishment.


The third most disgusting and horrifying force in contemporary post-American politics, after leftism and Squirrel-Hair, is the abandonment of conservatism by formerly respect-worthy public figures who now shill for S-H in the hope of achieving some vague kind of national virility. He won't deliver, and it was stupid to ever think he could.