06.29.23
Race to the Bottom – MSNBC
- Screen doors in a hurricane are not as unhinged as the network is today.
Holy cow, where to even begin?! The Supreme Court ruling today against Affirmative Action (AA) regarding college admissions has the entire MSNBC lineup and its guests losing their collective minds. There are so many examples from this gaggle of reactionaries at MSNBC it is tough to know where to start!
How about kicking off with the always rational and balanced Al Sharpton?
Al Sharpton weighing in on SCOTUS decision on Affirmative Action: "I think that this is tantamount to sticking a dagger in our back because what they have said now is that it is unconstitutional to even consider race..." pic.twitter.com/oCpbZDlXrm
— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) June 29, 2023
Charles Coleman declares that admitting students by merit is actually segregation.
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MSNBC legal analyst @CFColemanJr: "What you’re doing is you are limiting people’s access to the American Dream, and that is something that we have not really been honest about in our discussion ... Now we’re going to see that segregation become wider and wider." pic.twitter.com/L6FAhjTtmf
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 29, 2023
Catherine Christian essentially states blacks are not smart enough to succeed without AA helping them into careers.
MSNBC legal analyst @cchristian_LA on SCOTUS outlawing racial discrimination in college admissions: "I fear what will happen. Will there by many lawyers who look like Charles and I in the future? Or doctors? Or accountants? It is a problem. It is not preferential treatment." pic.twitter.com/dU2htDKIaf
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 29, 2023
Maybe the best display is in regard to Justice Clarence Thomas. The president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, states Clarence Thomas only reached his level today through AA.
NAACP's @DerrickNAACP: "Clarence Thomas, who benefitted from [Affirmative Action] & now is in a position where he’s going to deny many young African American[s] an opportunity ... [policy was meant] to ensure that we have a diverse population & not an Apartheid reality" pic.twitter.com/pbghztWmix
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 29, 2023
But then we get told that the only reason Justice Thomas ever succeeded was because of his opposition to AA.
Christian: "Clarence Thomas, you know, he has criticized Affirmative Action. That’s how — that’s one of the reasons why he graduated from Yale and we know that’s one of the reasons why he’s on the Supreme Court." pic.twitter.com/O3r0HI7rKJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 29, 2023
This has been a fun, if exhausting, day of watching the press unravel.
Race to the Bottom – THE NEW YORK TIMES
Taking an approach that was maybe less hysterical, though no less intolerant, The New York Times addressed today's ruling with a jarringly racist approach to things. If anyone is looking over the coverage of things today and wondering why Asian students are frequently mentioned, it stems from a central issue found in the Affirmative Action programs at colleges.
Years ago, after AA was instituted, some black leaders looked into the resulting admissions and saw that blacks were not being represented at an approved level. The initial cries that this was systemic racism that still favored whites were beaten back when it was learned that white admission numbers were in line with where they were supposed to be. It turned out that more Asian-American students were getting into schools beyond their population percentages.
This meant that if AA was applied strictly, admissions would be taken away from a minority group, and one getting into schools based on merit.
That is why today, The Times was giving this assessment of things and coming off sounding like it was a pre-reconstruction news outlet.
To paraphrase the @NYTimes:
— Brad Slager: CNN+ Lifetime Subscriber (@MartiniShark) June 29, 2023
"Too many of those Asians will be getting into universities because POC and Hispanics are not smart enough."
This is exactly what you sound like. https://t.co/wATgiJAfqB
Pre-Written Field Reports – CNN
- Seriously, by this point, Carl can just hold up a placard and be done with his segment.
Last night, Anderson Cooper was covering the severity of the revelations of the Donald Trump recording where he is heard declaring to commoners the classified documents he was showing them, a seemingly damning piece of audio. Cooper invited Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to join him and analyze this news story, and it went exactly as one might have scripted ahead of time, as we have learned over the years, the Wood-Stein Show is very well established.
Woodward began with his usual ploy of laying out particular facts and tying those in with his books and past interviews with Trump.
Bernstein – the one trick pony he is – delivered exactly what you would expect, right on cue. As he has for the past six years, any Trump story is related back to Carl's career-defining exclusive, and then he declares some variation of, "This is far worse than anything we have seen with Watergate and Richard Nixon."
Watergate legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein join @andersoncooper with their reactions to the latest Trump classified documents audio obtained by CNN. Watch: pic.twitter.com/ErIu316wQM
— CNN (@CNN) June 29, 2023
DNC PR Firm – MSNBC
When you are a journalist with a narrow field of vision and report from inside your bubble, you deliver items that unintentionally undermine your central point. At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen looked at a proposal from Ron DeSantis where he pledges to shut down four large government agencies and describes this idea in the most angered of tones.
Of course, for him, even constricting the government to any degree is unthinkable. But in his shouting manner of losing major pieces of the federal government – including the IRS – Benen manages to endear DeSantis to far more people than he thinks he is scaring off.
Democratic Custodial Services – USA TODAY
Joining others, like Bloomberg, we now have USA Today choosing to edit out President Jose Biden's comment that he believed Vlad Putin was losing the war in "Iraq." Francesca Chambers became another White House correspondent who elected to edit out Biden's inaccuracy.
We just enjoy considering the outrage from these very same truth experts had Fox News selectively reported on Donald Trump's quotations.
"He’s losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world," Biden said of Putin. https://t.co/Fibk4Hy4c4
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) June 28, 2023
"Riffed from the Headlines" is Townhall's daily VIP feature with coverage of the deeply flawed aspects of journalism in the nation, where Brad Slager looks to bring accountability to the mishaps, malaprops, misdeeds, manipulations, malpractice, and manufactured narratives in mainstream media.