Friday, September 25, 2015

When Far Leftists, Even Would-Be Assassins, Utter Historical Falsehoods, the MSM's Anchors Fail to Challenge Them


An post on Progressives Today shows all that's wrong with progressives as well as all that's wrong with the mainstream media (thanks to Ed Driscoll).

The radical leftist who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford 40 years ago is interviewed by CNN's Alisyn Camerota. This allows Sara Jane Moore to opine that she has always been a “pretty good citizen” in addition to making the following remark:
“I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in San Francisco people were saying this all the time [speaking about killing Ford]. Number one, we elect our presidents, we don’t appoint them, and Gerald Ford was appointed, and he was appointed by a crook, if you will pardon the expression. So, uh, it wasn’t a unique feeling. It was partly that there were other people who had talked about it.” 
There you have it, according to commenter John:
If she isn’t the poster child for netherworld leftist drivel I don’t know who is.
While Jeff H adds:
The “Dem/lib/prog/commie/satanist [sorry for the redundancy]®” mindset, in one short statement.
True enough, and of course what is most egregious are the historical falsehoods throughout her statement.

Sara Jane Moore makes it sound like Gerald Ford was a crook because Richard Nixon was a crook (whether either was, or both were, will not be debated here today) and suggests that assassination was the only option available because otherwise both were immune to punishment.

But the facts — the incontrovertible facts and the uncontroversial facts — say otherwise. Ford was not appointed. SJM's suggestion is that Nixon illegally took over a democratic process, and among the candidates he — illegally, unconstitutionally — considered to succeed him in the White House (crooks, all of them, in all probability) he finally singled out one Gerald Ford.

Of course, that's nonsense. Gerald Ford was not appointed, by Nixon or by anyone else, he became president when Nixon resigned. As (duly elected) vice-president, moreover, he was the only person who could (in an entirely legal fashion) succeed the duly elected and the prematurely departed president. As for the suggestion that either or both of these crooks were immune to punishment, doesn't Ford's accession to the Oval Office lie on the fact that Nixon was forced to give up his presidency and leave the White House?

So, yes, we elect our presidents, we don't appoint them, but Gerald Ford was not appointed, the duly elected vice-president duly succeeded the duly elected president when the latter was forced to resign.

What is most jarring, perhaps, is how none of these simple historical corrections are ever brought up, however briefly, by the MSM anchor.

By contrast, in the wake of the Center for Medical Progress's exposition of the shenanigans of Planned Parenthood, the organization's spokesmen as well as the Republicans backing their cause have been berated by the mainstream media journalists (or should that be "journalists", with quotation marks?), most recently George Stephanopoulos. Might not Alisyn Camerotahave, indeed, have been the MSM anchor who repeatedly interrupted David Daleiden?

Do you remember all the outrage the MSM types voiced after Rudy Giuliani suggested Barack Obama did not love his country?

In any case, this helps explain why the mainstream media is always standing accused of using double standards.