I am sorry to have to do this, but as a representative of the mainstream media, I hereby declare war on GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz.
In the media’s defense, Cruz started it. Literally.
I received a fundraising email from him today that said, “I am declaring war on the liberal media.” Liberal media and mainstream media are synonymous, generally defined by Republicans as “any media outlet that presents facts that prove we’re lying.”
Even Democrats, when their lies are assaulted by reality, gripe about the mainstream media, but media-bashing has generally been a conservative avocation. Cruz and his fellow Republican candidates amped it up to a more bellicose level at Wednesday night’s GOP debate, lambasting the CNBC moderators for having the audacity to ask them questions.
"The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media,” Cruz said, rather than answer a serious question about his opposition to raising the debt limit. “The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and why?’”
I didn’t recall the handsomeness question, so I went back to a full transcript of the recent Democratic debate.
Hillary Clinton was asked: Will you say anything to get elected?; Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?; How can you credibly represent the views of the middle class?; Do you regret your vote on the Patriot Act?; and, on Benghazi, Should you have seen the attack coming?
Bernie Sanders was asked: How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?; Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?; and, Would you shut down the NSA surveillance program?
He was also asked this corker: “You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t — doesn’t that ad write itself?”
(You can find more examples here.)
If mainstream journalists are, as Marco Rubio said during the debate, the Democrats’ “ultimate super PAC,” then they did a lousy job for the Democrats in that debate. Of course that’s a statement I’ve backed up with facts (there I go again!), so it’s meaningless to Rubio and Cruz and company.
They have a “Hatfields and McCoys”-like response to fact-laden questions.
Donald Trump was asked about calling Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator.”
Trump responded: “I never said that. I never said that.”
He went on to say that somebody at CNBC was “doing some bad fact-checking.” Except that Trump’s campaign website references “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio.”
How dare the liberal media make that lie become reality!
Moderator John Harwood said to Rubio: “The Tax Foundation, which was alluded to earlier, scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top 1 percent as to people in the middle of the income scale.”
Rubio said, “No, that’s — you’re wrong.”
No he wasn’t. The analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation shows people in the top 1 percent gaining 11.5 percent while middle-income earners range from 1.1 percent to 2.4 percent.
Clearly, lamestream media operatives hacked the Tax Foundation’s website and doctored the data on Rubio’s plan. (You could also blame math, I suppose, but it’s not nearly as juicy a scapegoat.)
Anyway, woe-is-me complaints about the media are one thing, but Cruz’s declaration of war (which oddly accompanied a request that I contribute to his “Million Dollar Money Bomb”) clearly represents an existential threat to me and my fellow journalists.
So I officially say to Sen. Cruz: It’s on like Donkey Kong, droopy-face. (Sorry for the name-calling, Teddy. War is hell.)
OFFICIAL DECLARATION OF WAR:
Whereas Ted Cruz has formally declared war against the people of the mainstream (or lamestream or liberal) media of the United States of America:
Therefore, be it Resolved by the Secret Cabal of Liberal Media Overlords that the state of war between the media and Ted Cruz, which has thus been thrust upon the media by Ted Cruz being a total jerk, is hereby formally declared. Rex Huppke, as a representative of the media, is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire forces available to the media, including but not limited to: pens that can be waved in a menacing manner; paper-cut inducing notepads; barrels of ink; and limitless Internet space, to carry on war against Ted Cruz and to bring the conflict to a successful termination.
Strap on your boots, Teddy boy. We’re comin’ for ya now. And we’ve got the weapon you fear the most: the truth.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-cruz-media-huppke-20151029-story.html
In the media’s defense, Cruz started it. Literally.
I received a fundraising email from him today that said, “I am declaring war on the liberal media.” Liberal media and mainstream media are synonymous, generally defined by Republicans as “any media outlet that presents facts that prove we’re lying.”
Even Democrats, when their lies are assaulted by reality, gripe about the mainstream media, but media-bashing has generally been a conservative avocation. Cruz and his fellow Republican candidates amped it up to a more bellicose level at Wednesday night’s GOP debate, lambasting the CNBC moderators for having the audacity to ask them questions.
"The questions asked in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media,” Cruz said, rather than answer a serious question about his opposition to raising the debt limit. “The contrast with the Democratic debate, where every thought and question from the media was, ‘Which of you is more handsome and why?’”
I didn’t recall the handsomeness question, so I went back to a full transcript of the recent Democratic debate.
Hillary Clinton was asked: Will you say anything to get elected?; Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?; How can you credibly represent the views of the middle class?; Do you regret your vote on the Patriot Act?; and, on Benghazi, Should you have seen the attack coming?
Bernie Sanders was asked: How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?; Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?; and, Would you shut down the NSA surveillance program?
He was also asked this corker: “You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t — doesn’t that ad write itself?”
(You can find more examples here.)
If mainstream journalists are, as Marco Rubio said during the debate, the Democrats’ “ultimate super PAC,” then they did a lousy job for the Democrats in that debate. Of course that’s a statement I’ve backed up with facts (there I go again!), so it’s meaningless to Rubio and Cruz and company.
They have a “Hatfields and McCoys”-like response to fact-laden questions.
Donald Trump was asked about calling Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal senator.”
Trump responded: “I never said that. I never said that.”
He went on to say that somebody at CNBC was “doing some bad fact-checking.” Except that Trump’s campaign website references “Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio.”
How dare the liberal media make that lie become reality!
Moderator John Harwood said to Rubio: “The Tax Foundation, which was alluded to earlier, scored your tax plan and concluded that you give nearly twice as much of a gain in after-tax income to the top 1 percent as to people in the middle of the income scale.”
Rubio said, “No, that’s — you’re wrong.”
No he wasn’t. The analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation shows people in the top 1 percent gaining 11.5 percent while middle-income earners range from 1.1 percent to 2.4 percent.
Clearly, lamestream media operatives hacked the Tax Foundation’s website and doctored the data on Rubio’s plan. (You could also blame math, I suppose, but it’s not nearly as juicy a scapegoat.)
Anyway, woe-is-me complaints about the media are one thing, but Cruz’s declaration of war (which oddly accompanied a request that I contribute to his “Million Dollar Money Bomb”) clearly represents an existential threat to me and my fellow journalists.
So I officially say to Sen. Cruz: It’s on like Donkey Kong, droopy-face. (Sorry for the name-calling, Teddy. War is hell.)
OFFICIAL DECLARATION OF WAR:
Whereas Ted Cruz has formally declared war against the people of the mainstream (or lamestream or liberal) media of the United States of America:
Therefore, be it Resolved by the Secret Cabal of Liberal Media Overlords that the state of war between the media and Ted Cruz, which has thus been thrust upon the media by Ted Cruz being a total jerk, is hereby formally declared. Rex Huppke, as a representative of the media, is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire forces available to the media, including but not limited to: pens that can be waved in a menacing manner; paper-cut inducing notepads; barrels of ink; and limitless Internet space, to carry on war against Ted Cruz and to bring the conflict to a successful termination.
Strap on your boots, Teddy boy. We’re comin’ for ya now. And we’ve got the weapon you fear the most: the truth.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/huppke/ct-cruz-media-huppke-20151029-story.html
