CNN's laughing rape enthusiasts 
by DC Larson

David Gergen may be thankful few watch CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront.

During a recent appearance on that program, the clay-footed Beltway dinosaur wheezed his usual tedious twaddle. But then, his disgusting inclination threw off its ebony cloak. 

Remarking on the possibility of Roger Stone serving time, Gergen said: "Roger Stone must also worry that if he goes there -- you know, he's seen as something of a dandy -- will he be physically safe? Will he be subject to rape? There must be a lot of things going through his mind."

And also through the twisted sludge-tunnels of Gergen's fetid imagination, it would seem.

"This is the second time a CNN leftist has planted the seed of Stone's prison rape in the public's mind," reminded Breitbart's John Nolte.

In January, CNN host Jake Tapper and guest Jen Psaki (formerly an Obama advisor) joked together, on camera, about Stone being a victim of prison rape.

"No one's going to cry if Roger Stone goes to jail, or when he goes to jail," chirped Psaki. 

"He might like it," Tapper creepily speculated.

"He might," Psaki laughed.

Nolte noted another who recently made light of potential Stone assaults was creaky Never-Trumper and Commentary writer John Podhoretz. Podhoretz infamously tweeted that "The thing is, given his proclivities, Stone would enjoy prison."

Podhoretz later deleted that tweet. But a screenshot was captured, and yet more proof of mainstream political commentators' real-world sickness was thereby preserved.

The hideousness of Gergen's apparent enthusiasm for rape had been preceded by his wretchedness of other nature. Also on CNN, Gergen once defended late Senator Robert Byrd against charges of racism. That Byrd had in earlier years recruited members to the violent Ku Klux Klan, and in later times voiced related unpleasantness, gave Gergen no pause.

(In 2004, Alex Jones confronted Gergen about the Bohemian Grove,  an 'occultish' annual gathering at which unclothed elites romped and that the obsequious White House advisor attended. Caught-out scoundrel Gergen's near-teary declamations are deliciously risable.)

Gergen was previously an adviser to Presidents Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton. And, like Tapper, Psaki, and Podhoretz, he exemplifies an elite that regards moral matters like sexual assault and race hatred as mere tactical devices, ones to be grabbed up or tossed away however suits momentary imperative.

Shakespeare warned of opportunistic, cretinous counselors who burrowed deeply inside chambers of influence. And those vermin of centuries ago doubtless have contemporary counterparts, some as nearby as cable television or fast-shrinking newspapers.

They plot deviousness against the people, and whisper dark ambitions into the ears of those who wield authority. They author (or, at least, claim to) bland, New York Times bestsellers few real people completely read. 

And they loll and chuckle in shadowy banquet halls, giving one another plaques and praises without genuine significance, and for which they had done nothing that advanced genuine public interest.

They are the full opposites of high-minded, principled statesmen every country desperately needs but rarely actually receives.

Since American voters booted the Democrat Party from the White House and rallied beneath Trump's banner, that party's stalwarts have been exposed as charlatans of miserable description. Whereas they once inveighed against slurring people for skin color, sex, or girth, they now freely rail against "white men" and attack the president as "obese." 

Newspaper doodlers like Steve Benson, David Horsey, and Andy Marlette seem unashamed to daily rise as the bigots against whom their sort once railed, depicting President Trump in monstrously exaggerated and unflattering aspects. 

Yes, I grasp the point of caricature. But the malicious scrawlings rendered by them and their inky ilk are more puerile smears than reasoned opinion expression.

Liberals including late night host Stephen Colbert, and those at Saturday Night Live and the New York Times, freely framed criticism of President Trump's dealings with Putin as anti-gay accusations. That sort of thing was once beyond the liberal pale. But it no longer is.

And now, sadly, we can add anti-Trump media figures' rush to threaten ideological adversaries with sexual assault (in the #MeToo moment).

I have my own reasons for disliking Roger Stone. I've written of them at length, before. (Several examples are collected here.) But I would never suggest, as some now horribly do, that Stone suffer perverted physical attack.

That CNN has repeatedly ballyhooed that moral ugliness, from Gergen, Tapper, and Psaki, speaks uncharitably about owner Jeff Zucker's heart.

Fake News vehicle to power

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
- Friedrich Nietzche

In her recent Washington post essay, ("I doubted Jussie Smollett. It breaks my heart that I might be right.") Nana Efua Mumford actually bemoaned the possibility that a "hate crime" may not have been perpetrated against the Empire actor.

"I wanted to believe Smollett," Mumford wrote. She effectively admitted she shared the knee-jerk bias so common in  DemocratWorld. "I really did. I know that there is a deep, dark racist history in Chicago, and, if proved true, this would be just one more point on the list. I wanted to believe him with every fiber of my being, most of all because the consequences if he were lying were almost too awful to contemplate."

Mumford cited a "racist history in Chicago," as if that extended to and made likely contemporary assertions. Remember, that which is plausible is not necessarily actual.

Chicago has for decades been under Democrat control, and many black Democrat politicians have enjoyed success in that crime-ridden city. But never mind all that. Republican racism!

According to her bio, Mumford is an executive assistant to the editorial board of the Jeff Bezos-owned, Democrat Party-megaphone Washington Post. Nowhere in the piece did she apologize for the media's howling lack of objectivity, or for cavalierly deepening existent racial and political divisions.  

Instead, she worried that the public would judge the press accurately.

"The incident would be touted as proof that there is a leftist conspiracy to cast Trump supporters as violent, murderous racists. It would be the very embodiment of 'fake news.' "

Mumford later cautioned that potential exposure of possible Smollett fakery might hinder receptiveness to future such allegations offered by others.

"And that reason, more than any other, is why I need this story to be true, despite its ugliness and despite what it would say about the danger of the world I live in."

Think about her words. She would prefer that a heinous crime had taken place -- that her bias be confirmed -- than conclude the hateful incident never truly occurred, and the world be that much better. 

She and like-minded sorts would rather negatives exist, than not. They need to reflect that, if their worldview depends for confirmation on a television actor's dubious scene scripting, it is of suspect soundness. 

Often, when ultimately caught out, perpetrators of hate crime hoaxes defend their dishonesty with the claim that they'd intended to focus public attention on a supposedly widespread phenomenon. 

Were there truly an ongoing national epidemic of such crimes, of course, there would be no need to stage attention-getting mock ups; the real thing would already be in front of us.

And, were they sincere, politicians, journalists, and fundraising behemoths like the Southern Poverty Law Center and NAACP would cheer the increasing disappearance of hate groups. Instead, they churn without cessation hyperventilated fundraising missives that shriek melodramatically of largely imagined menaces.

Why do they do that? 

Probably because it is a tactic by which power can be got. That also explains their rush to demonize Judge (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh and the Covington Catholic School kids. Certain execrable actors are eager to advocate anything in opposition to President Trump, his patriotic supporters, and America's character. 

I have no idea why Jussie Smollett apparently staged his own attack. But I do know why his chimerical account was immediately, uncritically embraced by scheming supporters like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Washington Post essayist Mumford, television producer Ana Duvernay, the entire Empire team, and pretty much any mainstream press outlet that can be cited.

For each, influence was the reward that beckoned. The public interest in truth and social peace be damned.

Ignore Biden. Embrace America

In a piece for The Hill ("Biden: 'The America I see does not wish to turn our back on the world'"), writer Michael Burke quotes former Vice President Joe Biden as being publicly critical of President Trump and the policies of his administration, while addressing a Munich audience.

The American people expressed our preference for the Commander In Chief and his Make America Great Again agenda through the democratic process. But that the will of the people is unimportant to unpatriotic elitists like Biden is hardly news.

(Burke made no criticism of Biden's running down America before a foreign audience. As per his reporting, Biden received a "standing ovation" for his contemptible act.)

There was a time when blasting America and its president while on foreign soil simply wasn't done. The Dixie Chicks never recovered, professionally, after their 2003 London scandal. 

But judging by the uncritical coverage of Biden's slurs by The Hill, the seditious trio may simply have been ahead of its time.

.

Lets turn our thoughts from Biden, the Dixie Chicks, and others of their back-stabbing ilk. Let's recall instead a time when patriotic sentiment was a sturdy bridge that united even Americans of divergent pursuits. 

In 1941 film Roar of the Press, reporter Wally Williams (Wallace Ford) and numbers racket boss Sparrow McGraun (Paul Fix) discuss an anti-American network active in their hometown of New York:

Sparrow: "Me, I'm mixed up in a good, clean racket. But there's some people runnin' around loose who ain't. They're out to get this country into trouble. And that's the mob you're runnin' up against. They're tough. Plenty tough. Foreigners, mostly. And they won't stop at nothin'!"

Wally: "How do you know about this?"

Sparrow: "They propositioned me. Wanted to know how much you know about their set-up. They figure you're gettin' too nosy."

Wally: "Wait a minute. Did they send you to scare me off?"

Sparrow: "Certainly not! I don't want any part a them. They're un-American. They're against this country, and they oughtta be exposed. Me, I got me a racket, sure. And the cops don't like it. But that ain't nothin' against this country."

Wally: "Thanks, pal!"

Sparrow: "Ah, it's nothin'. Us Americans gotta stick together."

A return to that spirit is needed.

Democracy requires tolerant discourse

In the 2006 Ralph Nader documentary An Unreasonable Man, Village Voice journalist James Ridgeway commented on the Democrat Party and its coordinated attacks on the consumer rights legend who'd mounted an independent presidential bid.

"They're the meanest bunch of motherfuckers I've ever come across," said Ridgeway, of the Democrats.

I volunteered for Nader's 2000 Green Party presidential campaign. And I served as paid Iowa Coordinator for his 2004 bid. 

For decades previous, I had been a Democrat, as are many in my family. All those years, as I moved from Democrat to Green to independent (where I still am, today), no one in my family said a discouraging word.

All that changed, when in 2017 I became a Trump supporter. Suddenly, intolerant relatives who knew better assailed me as somehow bigoted -- a false, despicable allegation they knew to be untrue, and one often hurled tactically and without foundation at Trump backers.

And my partisan allegiance, as it had shifted over decades, was misrepresented as frivolous. In actuality, of course, open-mindedness, due consideration of contrasting perspectives, and philosophical evolution are positive, healthy signs. 

That cannot be said of intellectual timidity and stagnancy.

My experience is not remarkable. It represents an all-too common political bigotry Trump supporters face, and a breakdown in popular standards of discourse. 

That traditional American principles are endure, and open democratic government thrive, tolerance and civility -- not prejudice and character assassination of political adversaries -- must again become the norm.


copyright © David Charles Larson

Belief a virtue
by DC Larson

"All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed."
- I.F. Stone

I thought that a clever and accurate line, some twenty years ago. With profound cynicism, it cogently encapsulated the knee-jerk distrust in institutions many feel, and encouraged citizens in the malicious fallacy that those elected to power are, to a man, as conniving and deceitful as the lowest back-alley miscreant.

Of course, there are persons who exploit authority. But their misdoings are in conflict with legitimate democratic governance.

Inveighing against the governmental concept itself probably allows smug feelings of superior insightfulness. But to assume inherent unjustness, and that no office-holder can possibly be trusted, is to dispute the practical existence of goodness.

Holding fast to the belief that good persons can and do make impacts is far from naive. It represents high faith in humanity. 

On the other hand, proclaiming mistrust in everyone bespeaks not  wisdom, but ignorance of the finest human potential.