Former CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy suggested Sunday on his newsletter site Status American democracy was teetering and a descent into authoritarianism was afoot. Even though his unhinged outlook on life appears permanent, this new reason was legacy media outlets having refused to join the Associated Press in using “Gulf of Mexico” instead of Gulf of America (and instead vague uses of “the gulf”) to avoid the Trump White House’s ire.
The headline and subhead will have you cackling or rolling your eyes (or both): “Gulf of Fear; When news anchors tiptoe around the name Gulf of Mexico, it’s not just semantics—it’s a glimpse at how the press starts to flinch under political pressure.”
The miserable liberal tool started off on an incendiary note, comparing President Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America to communist China in that they consider Taiwan as “a province” and such an actual Orwellian policing of language is obviously “not about semantic,” but “wielding influence and asserting dominance.”
Darcy went right for the miserable wine mom vote in Northern Virginia with a doomsday scenario: “In the United States, that kind of top-down dictation might feel like a distant threat” since there’s “free speech safeguarded by the First Amendment.”
This was where the Gulf of America comparison came into full view as Darcy declared the ocean splashdown from space of NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore in a SpaceX capsule “demonstrated” legacy TV networks are “far less adversarial and far more compliant than the breathless promos these networks air hyping themselves as fearless truth-tellers.”
There we go again with the comical audience out there who believe the liberal media are actually subservient and pro-Trump.
His research of broadcast and cable coverage “revealed an alarming reality: not one of the outlets could muster up the courage to simply refer to it as the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Instead,” he grimly shared, “television news organizations tied themselves in knots, performing linguistic gymnastics to stay out of Donald Trump’s crosshairs, while also tiptoeing around audiences who would have surely been incensed to see them bend the knee and call it the ‘Gulf of America.’”
He cited examples, ranging from “the Gulf” to “off the coast of Florida” to “the Florida Gulf coast.” The former conservative-turned-ardent progressive seemed particular miffed at CNN’s Jake Tapper for having used “Gulf of America” and “Gulf of Mexico” and then NBC’s Tom Costello for using Gulf of Mexico before flipping to simply “the Gulf.”
Darcy whined this was all “an act of submission” to dictator Trump and anything but “a fairly harmless concession” because “Trump made it clear that he will punish news organizations that do not fall in line on the matter when he banned The Associated Press...for refusing to bend the knee.”
He lectured his fellow lefties this was worth raising hell publicly over because, otherwise, it’s an open question what they’ll do when the President vis-à-vis Greenland and Panama.
It sure seemed like he wanted this otherwise unifying event and marvel of modern science to be some sort of last stand for the liberal media: “When the battle is over what words are permitted to be used, cute linguistic gymnastics amount to a surrender. Words are the front lines of truth, and once they’re ceded, it becomes far easier for strongmen like Trump to shape reality.”
This real-life Chicken Little closed by deeming last Tuesday a “significant” and “uncomfortable...crack in the Fourth Estate's foundation” and willingness to accept “authoritarianism...through softened language and adjusted maps.”
In essence, Darcy suggested America has made way for the country to join history’s list of dangerous, evil regimes to grow, as evidenced by....whether you say “Gulf of Mexico” or “Gulf of America.”
