The mainstream media is wrapping up a banner week.
The endless examples of hypocrisy delivered by “serious” people, as Jonathan Karl calls them, were hysterical.
The guardians of our democracy have always been hypocrites — this is nothing new. If there were an award show for the least self-aware people on the planet, I have no doubt Brian Stelter and his gaggle of “Reliable Sources” would sweep.
They would fly in on private planes, of course, and would lecture Americans on the seriousness of global warming while accepting their trophies.
But this week was especially tone-deaf, even by Very Fake News standards. Let’s start with the return of Jeffrey Toobin.
After CNN’s legal analyst was caught masturbating on a zoom call in October, he took a hiatus from the network.
But this week he was back to explain the unexplainable. Alisyn Camerota had the distinct displeasure of interviewing Mr. Toobin, and the entire sit-down was cringeworthy.
Some critics wondered why CNN couldn’t just hire someone — anyone — else to expound crappy legal expertise to their dwindling audience. Couldn’t Jeff Zucker find someone with a legal background who didn’t take their pants off during an election simulation?
But hey, who knows why the network brought him back. Perhaps there is a big Toobin fan base that I’m not aware of. Or perhaps, to use the Dr. Anthony Fauci line of thinking, attacks on Jeffrey Toobin are attacks on the law.
The most trusted name in news is not going to attack the law and therefore Toobin stays. Case closed.
Next up we have MSNBC’s Brian Williams. While criticizing Sen. Joe Manchin, the disgraced anchor came out with this whopper: “He seems to live in a world between Wheeling, West Virginia, and a Frank Capra movie, perhaps, of his own making and his own imagination.”
At least Manchin’s world doesn’t involve seeing dead bodies floating by him in the French Quarter, like you falsely claimed, right, Bri? Someone over at “The 11th Hour” should google “Brian Williams, fabricated stories” and print out the results for the anchor, because he clearly has a mediocre memory.
On the plus side, he has a vibrant and active imagination. I’ll put it like this: he seems to live in a world between mid-town Manhattan and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.”
Not to be outdone by her colleague, Joy Reid also weighed in on Manchin’s and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decisions to defend the filibuster against their more rabidly lefty Democrat colleagues.
“What the senators are choosing to ignore, as they chase this mythical bipartisan beast, is that the current batch of Senate Republicans have shown no interest in compromise.”
Should Reid be lecturing people on chasing mythical creatures? After all, she never was able to track down that mysterious hacker who wrote homophobic slurs on her old blog. The mythical, time-traveling, blog-hacking beast is still out there. Be safe, everyone.
Of course, no one is more detached from reality than Chris Cuomo.
When it comes to lacking self-awareness, no one beats Fredo. When he saw a tweet about how Florida will no longer update its COVID-19 dashboard, CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime” host wrote, “Odd timing…just as piece comes out (about) how data was handled?”
The fact that the Hamptons Hothead typed out this tweet and clicked send is mind-boggling for so many reasons. Fox News’ Janice Dean was kind enough to explain to Andrew Cuomo’s younger brother why he might want to sit this one out.
“From the brother of the guy who for months hid thousands of nursing home deaths to help land a ($5.1) million book deal. Might want to skip little comments like this one, unless you want to call out the luv guv too.”
Chris naturally couldn’t respond to Dean’s tweet because he isn’t allowed to cover his big bro anymore. Now that the New York governor’s news cycles have shifted from giant Q-tips and mom’s meatballs to sexual harassment allegations and nursing home deaths, well, Chris has a sudden conflict of interest.
But there’s no point getting angry at the Democrats who play journalists on TV. They cannot feel shame.
That said, I have to admit that watching the fall of Fake News is getting increasingly entertaining by the hour. Someone at MSNBC should convince the Rev. Al Sharpton to do a segment on tax evasion. Then I’ll know we indeed are in the golden age of irony.