Katie Hill Is Not a Banana, CNN
Let me explain
[I already sent out a newsletter at noon today, but that one is just begging for money. And tomorrow, all the stuff you’re about to read will be yesterday’s news because that’s how time works. So here’s a bonus newsletter. I hope you guys appreciate all this extra work I’m doing on my birthday!]
Back in the early days of the Trump administration, CNN ran an ad campaign bragging about the network’s unshakeable commitment to the facts. You see, that other network is always telling you an apple is a banana. But not CNN!
Get it? Do ya get it? Because an apple isn’t a banana. No matter how many times you say the two things are the same, they’re not.
It’s a clever ad, but unfortunately it has nothing to do with CNN’s daily output. Every single day, that network tells you an apple is a banana. Or an orange. Or a cantaloupe. Or a shopping cart. Or a used DVD of Manos: The Hands of Fate. Or pretty much any other object in the universe that is not an apple. They just plain lie to you, and then it’s your fault for telling them you can see through it. #FactsFirst? More like #FactsSecondOrThirdOrLast.
Here’s a perfect example, courtesy of CNN’s Brianna Keilar:
Last week, CNN brought back the guy who whacked his pud on a work Zoom call. Now they’re trying to rehabilitate the image of yet another perv. #MeToo? #WhatsThat?
If you were following the news when Katie Hill quit Congress in October 2019, including CNN’s own reporting, you know she didn’t resign over “revenge porn.” Nancy Pelosi nudged her out the door because she was having sex with her staffers and was under an ethics investigation.
As my friend Derek Hunter points out, it makes no sense to frame this as “lawmaker resigns from Congress to fight for new law.” Wouldn’t Hill be in a much better position1 to pass legislation if she had stayed in the, uh, legislative branch?
Katie Hill didn’t stand and fight. She ran and hid. Because what she did was wrong and she knew she wasn’t going to get away with it.
Keilar doesn’t care, of course. Her job isn’t to tell you the truth. She’s there to help her fellow Democrats. That’s why she’s ignoring actual victims to applaud an abuser who got a brief taste of power and wants it back.
I wonder what Anthony Weiner thinks about the Dems trying to rehabilitate Katie Hill? What he did was creepy and wrong, and then he tried to blame Andrew Breitbart for the whole thing, so he deserves his comeuppance.2 But Weiner never actually touched any of the women he was sexting with. None of them worked for him. And you don’t see him on CNN trying to get back into politics.
Yet!
Speaking of creepy blondes whose tenuous connection to reality has made them media darlings: Rebekah Jones.
She’s not a scientist
I don’t care what else you have to say about her if you can’t even get that first basic fact right
And as if on cue:
So, What Else Is Going On?
Why did it take an Australian news network to break this news?
Yes, the Wuhan Institute of Virology kept live bats. It’s not a conspiracy, as the World Health Organization insisted.
If they lied about this, what else are they lying about? What did Fauci know, and when did he know it? After the ordeal these people have put the whole world through, we deserve some straight answers.
(Kudos to Jim Geraghty at NRO for staying on this story.)
Our ordeal seems to be lifting, and not a moment too soon. I went to my nephew’s graduation party this weekend with at least 100 other people, and nobody was wearing masks, indoors or out. I don’t know who was and wasn’t vaccinated, but I am, so I don’t care.
As much as I criticize Trump, Operation Warp Speed beat back this pandemic and it was on his watch. That’s a feather in his cap, no matter what else you think about him.
And Biden has managed not to screw things up too badly. I just wish he’d take off the damn mask. Every time you see Biden with that mask on, he’s silently telling you he doesn’t think the vaccines work. He’s wrong.
Birds are racist. No wonder they always look so guilty! Don’t even bother trying to confront them about it, though, because they’ll just fly away. Cowards.
If you’re getting tired of being called a racist 24/7, you should check your privilege and save a prayer for the folks who are profiting from it. They have much worse problems than you do. Just look at Black Lives Matter founder Patrice Cullors, who just had to build a big fence around her $1.4 million home in Los Angeles because you people won’t leave her alone.
No word yet on security measures at Cullors’ other three homes, two in California and one in Georgia. Such is the plight of a black woman in the United States of America.
Everybody loves Tom Hanks. Well, not Chet Hanks, who seems to have some serious daddy issues. The American moviegoing public loves him, I mean.
But he’s also… OMG, it’s so disgusting… he’s white.
And yet he wrote a recent op-ed calling for more awareness of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. As if that expiates any of the guilt Hanks should feel about the horrible crime white racists committed 35 years before he was born. As if he’s somehow not guilty of racism by virtue of having the bad color of skin.
Well, Eric Deggans at NPR is having none of it:
Over the years, [Tom Hanks] has starred in a lot of big movies about historical events, including Saving Private Ryan, Greyhound, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, Bridge of Spies and News of the World. He has served as a producer or executive producer on even more films and TV shows based on American history, including Band of Brothers, The Pacific, John Adams and From the Earth to the Moon. He was an executive producer of documentaries such as The Assassination of President Kennedy and The Sixties on CNN.
In other words, he is a baby boomer star who has built a sizable part of his career on stories about American white men "doing the right thing…"
If he really wants to make a difference, Hanks and other stars need to talk specifically about how their work has contributed to these problems and how they will change. They need to make specific commitments to changing the conversation in story subjects, casting and execution. That is the truly hard work of building change.
Right? If Tom Hanks is such an anti-racist, then why does he superficially resemble white people who have done racist things? If he wants to raise awareness of America’s racist past, why doesn’t he admit he’s no better than those racists?
When it comes to fake meat, I’m with the legendary Joe Bob Briggs: “Stop Lying and Eat Your Salad.” If people don’t want to eat meat because they think it’s wrong, why do they keep trying to make foods that kinda-sorta look and taste like meat? The worst one I’ve seen was a recipe for “vegan bacon” that centered around banana peels. Yes, banana peels. The part of the banana you’re not supposed to eat.
Which is why, while I take no pleasure in seeing Americans thrown out of work, I can’t help but note the irony of a fake-meat manufacturer called No Evil Foods suddenly laying off its entire production staff without warning. Maybe they should’ve spent less time scolding the rest of us and more time trying to make things we actually want to eat.
That goes for all those bastards trying to get us to eat insects, too. Shut up already.
Do you know what a “birthing person” is? If not, you must be transphobic or something.
That’s weird, because “Mother” is perhaps the most precise word in the English language. Every human language has a word for the person who gave birth to you, and it’s not “birthing person.” I mean, a midwife or OB-GYN could be considered a “birthing person.” They’re not the ones squeezing out the kid. The mother is.
Not all women are mothers, but all mothers are women. Trying to change the language to take that away from women is just misogynist.
I’m sorry if that triggers you, but it’s just basic biology. Your feelings don’t enter into it. You can call yourself whatever you want, but science doesn’t care.
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Ahem.
Sorry.
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Apropos of Tom Hanks's op-ed:
In 2021, we learned that white people burning down a Black business district in Tulsa in 1921 was evil and wrong.
In 2020, we learned that Black and white people burning down Black business districts all across America was legitimate protest.
Also in 2021, we continue to learn that Palestinians burning down Israeli farms and villages is legitimate protest (but Israel conducting airstrikes against military targets in response is renewed violence and a breach of the ceasefire).
I get the Tulsa thing. But then how do those other things work?