Blinded By The Right

Have you heard? Jenifer Rubin, columnist (of sorts) for the fairly unbalanced Washington Post (WaPo to news junkies) has called – screeched, actually – for the elimination of the Republican Party. No biggie. She’s been unmercifully beating that poor dead horse since 2019   in every media venue she can show her face or type face. Her WaPo column is informs she “writes reported opinion.” Hmmpf – sounds redundant. Why report ‘reported opinion’?

But I digress…

Recently, Ms. Rubin added the predication the press must abandon all this ‘objective’ nonsense and go Full Monty with “All Opinion; All the Time”. 

: “The free, independent media is supposed to be the tripwire between disinformation… and widespread misinformation… Instead, it has been a megaphone for disinformation, upholding the pretense that there are two political parties with equally valid takes on reality.”

Of course, the news media is only “free and independent” when reporting strictly conforms to Ms. Rubin’s contumelious and myopic political visions.

“The Kabuki dance in which Trump, his defenders and his supporters are treated as rational (clever even!) is what comes from a media establishment that refuses to discard its need for false balance that it has developed over the course of decades.”

Ms. Rubin (no relation to the sandwich) unknowingly yearns for the early days of newspapers when “balance” was only found in ads for the circus: 

The highly partisan era of newspapers continued well into the 1820s when campaigns waged by candidates John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and Andrew Jackson played out on the pages of newspapers. Vicious attacks, such as in the controversial presidential elections of 1824 and 1828, were carried in newspapers which were essentially controlled by candidates. The History of Newspapers In America 

Ms. Rubin would also prefer to be rid of the entire Republican party, “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.” 

While neither party can claim consistently robust political health, “journalism” as regularly assaulted by the “Press”, died an ignominious death decades ago. Feel free to select from the notoriously doctored coverage of FDR, Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, Bush & Bush, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Biden to predict where the death throes began.

There appear to be two reasons why Ms. Rubin has her panties in a wad over allegedly repulsive press coverage of Republicans and Trump.  

One, her party of political preference perfected the art of dirty politics and prejudiced (now referred to as ‘weaponized’) press coverage of its opponents long, long ago. In all likelihood, it had something to do with the seriously deranged policies and practices of a squirrely bunch of bad actors who only saw politics and government as means to an end – and that end was possession of power and control over everyone else for their personal benefit. Such are the psychological machinations of the pathological liar, psychopath and narcissist. Judging from the frequency and vitriol of her published screeds, it’s easy to see how well qualified Ms. Rubin identifies with Democrats.

Secondly, a take-away for devotees of either the Evil or Stupid Party: there is no ‘fair and balanced’ news media outlet, print, broadcast or digital. So-called “news outlets” are precisely divided along partisan lines. 

Some Liberals…    

• Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Media Matters, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Politico, Salon, Daily Beast

Some Conservatives…

• Washington Times, NY Post, FOX News, Newsmax, Blaze, Zero Hedge, Townhall.com, American Thinker, Blue State Conservative, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, Cato Institute, Mises Institute, Hillsdale College, American Enterprise Institute, Hoover Institute, Tom Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, Jonathan Turley 

What you don’t see are any media outlets, think tanks or individuals touting themselves as “fair”, “balanced” or “impartial”. FOX News may have grabbed the Fair, Balanced and Unafraid tag line, but any rational, objective news consumer knows FOX is none of those. It is only somewhat more so than the others, even unfair, unbalanced and afraid, it sounds as if it is the Mr. Clean of news outlets.

Not that any of that matters to Ms Rubin. Logic, reason and objective analysis left her quite some time ago after a self-performed lobotomy. Law professor, attorney and columnist Jonathan Turley writes:

“Rubin’s attack on disinformation is ironic given her own past controversies in misrepresenting news, cases, and events. For full disclosure, I clashed with Rubin over her personally attacking me for a theory that I did not agree with in a column that I did not write. I also challenged her on an equally bizarre column where she wrote about my impeachment testimony and later column misrepresenting the holding in an appellate case involving Trump. That false account was never corrected the Washington Post. It appears that misrepresenting the holding of a major case is not being a “a megaphone for disinformation.”

Agree or disagree with the emotionally challenged Ms. Rubin, whether Liberal, Conservative, Libertarian,, Anarchist, Methodist or Buddhist, there is a political outlet out there just for you. Ms. Rubin’s penchant for the ‘scorched earth’ approach might only be attributable to a traumatic cinematic experience.