Editor's note: This piece may have language that is offensive to some readers.
In the Trump era, the media not only made the late John McCain a sainted figure. They made his entire family saints. Attacking them was like an attack on the best that humanity has to offer. When reports emerged that then-White House aide Kelly Sadler said in the senator's last weeks that his opposition to CIA director nominee Gina Haspel was no longer relevant since he was "dying anyway," there was about a week of teeth gnashing and garment rending for political blasphemy. Sadler was tarred, feathered and eventually dismissed.
But this secular sainthood can quickly be rescinded. Meghan McCain says conservative things on television -- especially calling out the left for anti-Semitism, saying the Democrats may be echoing Britain's Labour Party soon -- and now she's getting thrown under the bus.
On NBC's "Late Night" on May 7, Seth Meyers interviewed this star of ABC's "The View" and tried to shame her televised remarks on radical Rep. Ilhan Omar. Criticizing Omar was "unfair" and even endangered her safety.
"I do think it's fairly dangerous, and you brought it up after Congresswoman Omar also had some death threats against her," Meyers lectured. "She's obviously now stated that she needs to be more careful with her language. Don't you think other people who talk about her need to be a little more thoughtful as well? Or do you stand by those comments of tying her to this -- her rhetoric -- to this synagogue shooting?"
Meyers is referring to an April 28 panel discussion on ABC's "This Week" where several panelists insisted President Trump's rhetoric on immigration could be associated with the synagogue shooting near San Diego. McCain countered that we should pay attention to extremism on "both sides" of the aisle and recalled Omar's ugliest tweets about Jewish money and how Jews "hypnotized" the world. It's apparently not "dangerous" to the president when you try to tie him to a synagogue shooting.
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When McCain refused to retract anything she said, Meyers said he was trying to find "common ground." That's laughable. He was shaming. And he repeated himself. "I'm just someone who cares about the fact that there's someone out there who is in a minority, who has had death threats against her, and I think that we should all use the same language," he said. "You're asking her to be careful about her language, and I would ask everyone to be careful about theirs."
Does Meyers really think he and his fellow late-night lecturers are careful about their language? Stephen Colbert calling Trump Russian President Vladimir Putin's "c--k holster"? Samantha Bee calling the president's daughter a "feckless c--t"? Is that "careful"?
When the president gave a prime-time address talking about people like Kate Steinle who were killed by illegal aliens, Meyers tweeted a joke: "Is this Oval Office: SVU?" Don't forget Meyers let a lesbian staff writer describe Catholics on national television as guilty of "hosting a 2,000-year-long pedophile convention." How can he preach what he will not practice?
McCain insisted Omar's getting a lot of free passes, and Meyers brazenly supported that notion. "It's an interesting thing when we have two Muslim women for the first time" in Congress, he said. "They do have a different perspective on things. ... we have to listen to other people's perspective." Does that sound like something Seth Meyers practices nightly on television? He's beloved by the left for his vicious monologues ... not for dialogue.
McCain asked the perfect (rhetorical) question: "Are you her publicist?" He is. But Omar has many others.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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