I wasn’t entirely surprised by your decision to intentionally miss the Fox News debate last night because I was still unsure about how you would be treated. As the day drew closer and the messaging got nastier I realized that Fox was trying to force your hand and they forgot who you were. The Murdoch Boys seem to have slowly altered the DNA of the Fox News mission given to them by their father and so, can no longer to be trusted.
When you announced that you wouldn’t be in attendance I surmised that your sixth sense went into overdrive with little red flags going up all over the place. The thought of giving M. Kelly another shot at you would certainly be masochistic. I can only imagine her salivating at the very thought of slowly sipping thru her ruby painted lips another cup of Trump Tea.
When you handed your appearance over to CNN to cover your fund raiser for Veterans I easily understood how delighted Anderson Cooper would be to have the opportunity to (finally) outfox Fox. He had everything to gain and nothing to lose so I looked forward to see how they would treat you…if they would do the right thing and use this opportunity to pivot way, even for one night, from their political bias.
The CNN lead up to your event appeared to have the tone of civility of those on his panel. It seemed that Anderson Cooper was doing his best to hand the baton over to Don Lemon without exposing any real contempt for you.
I found myself beginning to relax having avoided watching CNN years ago (and have had no reason to watch them again since Fox entered the world of cable news.) So, I was hoping that tonight was going to be different. I waited…really wanting to have a chance to like CNN again.
It wasn’t the fact that they loaded the panel with known republican haters 3-1, Van Jones comes to mind, but I thought that your stump-speech/fundraiser would be worthy of decent coverage.
Then again, we’re talking CNN here…
My disappointment came as soon as they revealed the quad split screen. They positioned you in the upper left quadrant with Bill Clinton to the right…the Mrs. beneath you (don’t even get me started on the significance on that one) and Bernie Sanders diagonally across to the lower right. (Is it me, or is anyone else getting annoyed by the constant use of his exaggerated hand gestures?) I can only watch him for a few minutes at a time. I’m sure there’s some body language expert somewhere who can give us the low-down on why he’s trying to dismiss his words with his hands.
(There’s one of those on the Republican side of the house too…John Kasich can do more frowning in one sentence then a petulant child in kindergarten.) Even when he’s smiling, he’s frowning.
In all fairness, the first ten to fifteen minutes of their coverage was solely focused on you; which gave me the feeling that perhaps CNN had decided to finally do something to stem the steady flow of their viewer exodus.
Then, Hillary Clinton announced that she was fully responsible for the deaths of the four Americans in the 2012 terrorist attack on our Embassy in Benghazi. Yeah, that didn’t happen either.
The worst part is that they could have chosen to give you the time exclusively. They could have chosen to lay aside their regular programming and give the audience who followed you over a reason to stay. They could have done so much to help them become more likeable…but they didn’t.
They treated this night pretty much like any other night. They wasted an opportunity to embrace a demographic not seen on their ratings for fourteen years and counting. They forgot that there are those of us who wanted to hear your speech and the words of those invited to your stage to speak.
I must remember, this is their network and to hell with the opposition. I guess if you’re committed to an idea then there’s little to be gained by trying to broaden your appeal to those who don’t agree with you. That seems to be the message I got from CNN last night. And recently it looks like Fox is following suit.
The truth is, and I hate to admit it, there’s an opening in the news department on a national level. Conservatives across the country are looking for a placed to call home. Someone somewhere is going to see the void left by Fox and fill it. There was a time when they could be trusted to deliver, with some level of objectivity, news that mattered to us in flyover country…but sadly those days are further and further behind us. Perhaps Breitbart would consider going into cable syndication.
All the campaigns are in go mode…gearing up for the first true volley of this political season. The ultimate question on everyone’s mind is already being weighed and bantered about…will your pole position translate into votes. This can’t get anymore intense. It’s put up or shut up time and I think there’s a vast amount of frustration that’s about to cast its vote.
Perhaps, the best part about last night was that you demonstrated you’re a man of your word and that you can be counted on to stay the course (no matter who you’re up against).
There were winners and losers last night…just not all of them were on stage.
Watching from the sidelines,
Roger J Conway