Rush Limbaugh made a rare television appearance this past week, returning to Fox for a sit-down with Sean Hannity to kick-off the latter’s return to his starring 9pm hour. Rush did not disappoint.
While he said all kinds of things that doubtless resonated with the Fox audience, in terms of the media, he zeroed in on exactly the complaint of so many. Fox wrote it up this way:
“He said the mainstream media has now been ‘corrupted by liberalism’ and is no longer delivering the news to Americans like they used to.
‘They don’t do the news. There is no news. There is the advancement of the Democrat Party agenda, which is 'get rid of Trump,' and they are totally devoted to it,’ Limbaugh said.”
Not to put too fine a point on it? Bingo!
“Corrupted by liberalism” is indeed the problem of the mainstream media. For that matter it is a problem that is shot through all manner of American institutions from religion to education to the law to Hollywood, science, sports and beyond. But for our purposes, it is the media that is the focus.
A week ago, the Media Research Center celebrated its 30th anniversary, with Rush as the speaker. Much merriment was had with assorted video clips from various networks featuring media luminaries bemoaning everything from President Trump to this or that issue or personality of the day. While it was indeed hilarious to watch, it was also a sobering reminder of just exactly how corrupted by liberalism the mainstream media actually is.
The clip that stood out for me was in the “Trumpocalypse” segment. There, the morning after the election, was the Morning Joe crew, with Mika Brzezinski saying this: “When you walk around our world, and you see…everybody is crying and is so upset. And it is the end of their world.”
Yes, we all laughed at the sheer nonsense of this. But think of that. Everybody in the world of liberal media was “crying” and “is so upset” over the election of a particular presidential candidate. Those people aren’t journalists - they are partisans. And they now don’t even pretend not to be.
Here’s Rush from the MRC dinner getting it absolutely on point in sobering fashion:
You saw these clips tonight, it’s stupid. And the problem is, these people have influence....They believe it. They’re killing everything they touch, they’re corrupting everything they touch, and they’re destroying it. We laugh at it because we need the relief, but they believe it. And they’re dead serious, they’re dead wrong, they’re dead stupid, they’re brain dead, and they are a problem. And they’ve got to be – in the arena of ideas – they have got to be beaten.
Exactly.
This is indeed no laughing matter. Every single day the media is pounding away at not just President Trump but any and everything about America. And in doing this it leads more than enough people who should know better down a garden path of the sheerest ignorance.
No better examples of this can be illustrated than the media’s coverage of the 2016 election and the current chaos engulfing the National Football League.
The coverage of the election was so wildly wrong for a reason. The coverage was premised on elites in and out of the media talking to themselves and believing almost to a person that Donald Trump was going to lose and lose in a landslide. It blinded them to reality even as it stared them in the face.
Example? The night before the election Hillary held a closing rally in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. Opened by rockers Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, the crowd was then graced with appearances by President and Mrs. Obama, Chelsea and Bill Clinton and finally the nominee, Hillary.
The media oooohed and ahhhhed. “Star-studded,” proclaimed Time concerning the rally.
The Los Angeles Times found Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer, who “said it was a display of political firepower unlike any other. ‘I can't think of anything comparable,’ he said.” CBS enthused about the size of her crowd. “Earlier, a record crowd of more than 33,000 cheered her on in Philadelphia, where she needs to run up the score Tuesday to win the state.”
And the next day? Unimpressed Pennsylvanians voted for Trump.
So too is this liberal media corruption in evidence in the NFL controversy. In this case players and team owners were led to believe their audience of football fans would rally to the kneelers, the latter choosing to make their protest during the playing of the national anthem. In a blink they discovered that NFL fans were not only not on the players’ side but were livid with their favorite teams.
As the Dallas Cowboys took a knee before a game the stadium rocked with boos from the fans. Across the country, New England Patriots fans did the same. In Buffalo, Bills fans greeted a kneeling Colin Kaepernick with a chorus of “USA! USA!” In Pittsburgh, Steelers fans burned memorabilia.
Now? Now NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell felt compelled to hold an emergency meeting with owners and players. In the words of New York Giants team captain Jonathan Casillas: “We were basically talking about what we're going to do to move forward and how we're going to approach the whole kneeling situation.”
But how did the NFL get itself into this situation in the first place? Answer? It is in this mess because too many people who should know better were listening to a media corrupted by liberalism tell them that kneeling during the national anthem would be well received if not overwhelmingly popular. As with the 2016 election, people who should have known better were totally misled by a corrupted liberal media that was wildly out of touch with reality.
As usual, between his appearance on Hannity and his MRC speech, Rush has put his finger on exactly the problem. Liberalism has corrupted the mainstream media and the American people no longer trust it.
It makes for great fun to see the clips of all these media elites so stunned at getting the election wrong. It is less than fun to watch a great institution of American sports struggle with a serious existential problem resulting from believing media elites.
But in both cases Rush has gotten it exactly right. Liberalism corrupts everything it touches. And whether its politics or sports or anything else, it has to be beaten.
