I had the dubious honor of being invited to participate in Good Morning America’s first presidential town hall Monday morning, featuring Senator Cruz and his wife Heidi. Although I did not learn anything new, the experience did reaffirm some preexisting beliefs about both the news media-particularly, the way it frames narratives-as well as Ted Cruz, almost none of them flattering. I suppose you shouldn’t expect much from a segment billed as Coffee with the Candidates, yet I still entered the studio with relatively high expectations, most of which would be dashed over the course of the next hour.
The trouble began with the first audience question, which was asked by an extraordinarily tall, dapper African-American gentleman, who prefaced it with the caveat that he was a former drug dealer/gang member who had, presumably, turned his life around by becoming a youth pastor. I later spotted some copies of his self-published memoir, which he had brought to what was undoubtedly an advantageous marketing opportunity for his business/church. He wanted to know what Senator Cruz would do about those dastardly southern gun dealers who were flooding his community with illegal firearms, relying upon talking points derived from the thoroughly discredited Bloombergian campaign ascribing violent crimes in this city to legal, constitutionally protected businesses.
Lest you think this an aberration, the next question, asked by a gay pizzeria owner, pertained to the recently enacted North Carolina law forbidding the use of certain restrooms by transgendered individuals. A law that, even using the loosest definition of that term, might impact a tenth of one percent of the population of that state-and very few registered Republicans. Granted, there are probably lingering pockets of Rockefeller/Lindsay Republicanism in this city-most likely in neighborhoods like the Silk Stocking District and the tonier parts of Brooklyn Heights, prime Kasich territory based upon last night’s primary results-but the opening sequence of this town hall would give you the impression that they formed the majority-or at the very least, a decisive plurality-of New York State Republicans.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that this message-broadcast to the rest of the country-was deliberate. Much like the Jeb Bush plant of Internet acclaim, these individuals were carefully vetted by Good Morning America’s producers before being selected to appear on national television. Just as I was vetted before my question-dealing with the negative impact H-1B visas have upon American workers-was rejected. Regardless of whether you are in favor of open borders or support constructive immigration enforcement, the idea that this issue is inconsequential-especially to Republican primary voters-is hard to countenance. However, if you’re a member of the mainstream media, the boutique concerns of leftist members of the press corps must always take precedence over those of conservative Republican voters-even if you are hosting an ostensibly Republican campaign forum.
The natural counter-argument to this is, what do you expect from Bill Clinton hatchet man and Hillary Clinton sycophant George Stephanopoulos and liberal reporter Robin Roberts? That is precisely the point! We have become so desensitized and inured to the media manipulating how we discuss issues of public import, which issues we discuss, and what weight we give to those issues, that we have forgotten how divorced these “gatekeepers” are from the reality of most Americans’ lives. While the triviality of a question about ‘New York values’ and a lightning round consisting exclusively of non-political ephemera is to be expected from a show like GMA, we should demand that at least a few questions have some bearing on the concerns of ordinary, conservative Republican voters.
The 15-20 million illegal aliens who are lobbying for political representation in Washington, to say nothing of the tens of millions of legal immigrants who already wield a decisive influence over our electoral process, and the priorities of America’s chief news organs are not wholly unrelated. The media narratives that we blithely accept have disastrous, if largely unacknowledged, consequences for our country, problems which Senator Cruz purportedly hopes to address. However, it’s hard to see how that will happen if we don’t confront the root of the problem. The pervasive political correctness and distortion of the meaning of words, the veil of dissimulation, which obscures what’s wrong with our government. We can’t make any progress until we first deal with this massive impediment to honest discussion.
Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my thoughts on Ted and Heidi Cruz.
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