Is the Green New Deal more than a climate change initiative?
Radio talk show host Tony Katz weighs in on the Democrats' Green New 'Dream.'
The similarity between the left’s greens and reds became as clear as black and white this week. And the press failed miserably at making the connection.
Media darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, delivered a draft of her socialist blueprint for America — the “Green New Deal.” She and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., her partner in insanity, botched the delivery of the extreme plan. AOC’s staff also sent out a support document that lefty Slate described “as if the resolution had gotten drunk at an office party [and] decided to tell its co-workers exactly what it thought of them.” The original version even included, “economic security to all who are unable or unwilling to work.”
You’d never know that from following the traditional media. All three broadcast networks ignored the release the night it came out, even though a parade of Democrat presidential candidates endorsed it. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson declared: “A ‘Green New Deal’ sounds like pie in the sky. But we need it.” And Wired said the plan, “SHOWS HOW GRAND CLIMATE POLITICS CAN BE.” (They like all caps.)
HEY, DEMOCRATS, I'VE LIVED IN A SOCIALIST COUNTRY WITH INCOME 'EQUALITY' AND IT WAS MISERABLE
CNN raved about the proposal, comparing it to FDR’s New Deal, “only smarter and non-polluting.” Special Correspondent Bill Weir went gaga over the “aspirational” plan. Literally. He envisioned a “movie of this moment” about the duo proposing the resolution with “Bradley Cooper as Ed Markey, the old climate warrior, and Lady Gaga as this new freshman.” Weir’s apocalyptic description of the future also envisioned Texas climate refugees fleeing into Wisconsin.
Grabien caught AOC admitting that her plan called for massive government intervention in one interview and 12 hours later denying it to NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd. She then claimed, “one way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we're doing as though it’s like some massive government takeover.” Todd didn’t lay a glove on her or point out the discrepancy. He didn’t try.
The proposed resolution also added to Ocasio-Cortez’s profile and set in motion widespread discussion of socialism. President Trump used his State of the Union address to warn about it even before the plan was released.
The New York Times shockingly acted like conservative opposition to socialism was something completely different — forgetting pretty much the entire Cold War. “The threat of socialism was something new,” claimed the paper.
The Times noted that the Trump administration had released a new 72-page report averaging two mentions of socialism per page. “Yet there is no evidence of any growing public angst about socialism sweeping the United States,” the article argued.
Apparently, they don’t have TV or the internet in The Times office.
Journalists certainly mirrored The Times worldview that socialism was just fine. Former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson told CNN, “We're a socialist country already.” He spoke well of socialism. “We are getting to be a better country,” he concluded
“The View” hosts rose to socialism’s defense. Joy Behar, who Celebritynetworth values at $12 million, complained that people are misusing “socialism” and “taking that word and distorting it.” Co-host Sunny Hostin (Net worth: $3 million) whined that the term is “being weaponized.”
With socialist Venezuela collapsing and 3 million refugees having fled to nearby countries, how dare we mock socialism?
Even The New York Times took a swing at eating the rich, despite corporate support from Mexican mega-billionaire Carlos Slim. Times columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote a piece headlined, “Abolish Billionaires.”
2. Virginia Needs a New Slogan: Out with “Virginia Is For Lovers.” In with “Virginia Is For Scandal.” You’d need a larger space than this one to detail the dueling scandals in this key purple state, currently dominated by Democrats.
The governor and attorney general both have blackface incidents in their past. The lieutenant governor has multiple sex crime allegations and was accused of saying “F--- that b----” in reference to his first accuser.
The disaster jeopardizes all three top spots in the state, putting the press in an awkward spot where stories that criticize the trio in effect aid Republicans. NBC’s “Today” warned of just that result. Reporter Geoff Bennett cautioned that if all three left their jobs, “the governorship, would go to the House Speaker. The House Speaker is a conservative Republican.” Several other outlets repeated the “Republican” or “conservative Republican” warning.
And talk about downplaying the scandal, The Times used the term “dark makeup” instead of blackface to describe the governor’s racist past. It was so bad that Politics Editor Patrick Healy wrote several tweets explaining how “our initial story, headline, tweet and alert used a phrase that wasn't appropriate.” No kidding.
As always, there’s more to the story. A lot more. Blackface has been common throughout entertainment history. Numerous celebrities such as late nighters Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon have done it. So did Behar of “The View.” A quick trip through movie history shows many more, and like most of Hollywood, they are generally liberal.
3. Journalism Scandals Get Even Worse: The battle between Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and The National Enquirer stood out even in a week where Virginia’s political scandals were stunningly awful.
Bezos posted a detailed blog accusing American Media Inc., which owns the Enquirer, of “extortion and blackmail.” Bezos went on to list in detail the “intimate photos” he was allegedly hit with the threat of having published.
Until the Bezos divorce settlement, he remains the richest man in the world. But he’s not immune to privacy problems. The billionaire also owns The Washington Post, which reported, “Bezos said Thursday that the Enquirer threatened to publish intimate pictures of him unless he backed off an investigation of the tabloid.”
This isn’t just a run-of-the-mill journalism scandal. The Post cited #MeToo reporting star Ronan Farrow as also claiming to have been threatened by the Enquirer. The fallout from this could ultimately result in lawsuits, criminal trials or possibly both.
That dwarfed the controversy over a new book by former New York Times Editor Jill Abramson. Allegations that she plagiarized parts of the book would have been the worst journalism controversy in most other weeks. Her book, “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” arrived under a cloud of controversy.
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Vice’s Michael Moynihan accused Abramson of including passages too similar to the original writing of others. Abramson responded on Twitter, noting that her “book has 70 pages of footnotes, and nearly 100 source citations in the Vice chapters alone.” She vowed to correct the errors and the places that “should have been cited as quotations.”
It’s not surprising to see the media targeting Abramson. She painted a target on her back by blasting The Times in January, saying its “news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump.”
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