Let the grievance flow

Ronna McDaniel is not a victim.

She is among the most noxious public liars of this low era. She disgraced herself during the commission of a coup against the legitimate government of the people of the United States.

She lied about the results of an election thousands of times, and is utterly unfit to work for any credible news organization because she cannot be trusted. This is not an ideological issue. It is a grotesque character defect.

It is not surprising that a political movement that breathes victimization, resentment, grievance, contempt and anger as air would react vituperatively towards the announcement of the seditious lady’s defenestration.

The phony outrage, crocodile tears, fulminations and high horse reactions to the exposition of journalistic integrity and patriotism from the NBC News room perfectly encapsulate the rottenness of this moment, the absurdities of modern media and the shallowness of its most grizzled characters. What is playing out is a case study that perfectly explains how it is that we have all arrived together at this moment of national peril, two years shy of America’s 250th anniversary of independence.

Ronna, according to Politico, seems disoriented around what happened. These three speeches should help:

JFK’s City Upon A Hill speech (here is the transcript):

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Teddy Roosevelt Dunsmuir speech (here is the transcript):

Teddy Roosevelt on the character of the American people

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Margaret Chase Smith’s “Declaration of Conscience” speech

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I’ve written about them before, as well as the story of Avner Less. McDaniel seemed curiously inured to one of the very finest traditions of conservatism: accountability. She may tell herself that she is but “a simple mom in Michigan” moving up and down the supermarket aisle, but that is a delusion. She is a disloyal American and a disgrace. She participated in the plot against the republic, and never once said, “No.”

Here is another story about Americans who are remembered as heroes:

Call fascism by its name

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Roddie Edmonds was no Ronna McDaniel. He was, however, on America’s team. He was on humanity’s team, and he was on the right side of history. What would Ronna have done?

Semafor has staked a claim by being the first mover into covering the “backlash to the backlash story” at NBC. No doubt something is coming, but “backlash” isn’t the right word to describe performative contrivance and affected hysteria. With no further ado, let the grievance flow.

There are many who have waded in already:

Megyn Kelly reacted to Chuck Todd’s assertion of integrity with a snit so shallow it was almost undetectable. “Our sacred airwaves! They must be protected from liars,” she said, mockingly. Here is her reaction in its entirety:

Kelly was fired from NBC after 21 months for extemporizing about it being okay to wear “blackface” on Halloween in 2018. She was paid $69 million, and went on her way.

Kelly’s fundamental problem wasn’t so much the racism, but her cloistering. She was like a woman sealed in a convent removed from society and its changing mores. Here’s what I mean. This was okay at Fox News:

This is Fox News, and it is rancid.

Here is what Ari Fleischer had to say:

Ari Fleischer flies the Saudi Arabian flag with each appearance on Fox News —unbeknownst to its audience — because at Fox it is okay for foreign agents to remain undisclosed as they do their work. Of course, the most corrupt public company in the United States, fresh from paying a nearly $1 billion judgement for lying to the American people about the election, would like to pretend the lying serves some higher and noble person, but it doesn’t. It serves the ambitions of a man and his fascist movement.

This is a supremely difficult movement for someone like Fleischer because the issue is so profoundly disorienting. Because the issue involves integrity and character, Ari is disadvantaged, like a toddler trying to read some Dr. Seuss in the blackness of a sensory deprivation chamber.

Here’s what I mean. Fleischer, for 21 years would write an account as a witness to the events of 9/11. He did it until…..he started working for the Saudis. My father spent months working on the Ground Zero pile. Like many, he has paid a price. I wonder why it is that Fleischer thinks there is nothing more to be said about that day?

Here’s the deal. The words of a Saudi agent and Fox News propagandist don’t matter here because what happened is beyond the understanding of the Murdochs, Suzanne Scott, Bret Baier and Ari Fleischer. What they can’t comprehend is the thing they were wrong about.

What is it exactly? What is the thing they were all wrong about together?

America. They were wrong about America, and they were wrong about the presence of integrity.

It is still alive, and it lives across the street at 30 Rock, not in the C-suite, but in the newsroom, in the hearts of the journalists. They mean what they say. They believe in the standards and legacy of their institution. They see the totems all around them when they come to work that remind them of their duty to the truth.

NBC executives and the architects of this debacle, Carrie Budoff Brown and Rebecca  Blumenstein, would be much better fits at Fox News or Newsmax because, there, the only thing that matters is cynicism and its application. They are probably the best prepared to understand the rage that is building across the right-wing media and commentators like Ari Fleischer because they must feel the same rage that comes from the deepest shame.

Shame is what is triggering Kelly, Fleischer, Geraldo, and so many more denizens of the rancid right who live in the murk where the truth and the lie have become indistinguishable. It is tough to look in the mirror and ponder what Chuck Todd
did and face the facts of your personal appeasements, betrayals, acquiescence and whoredom. When the moment came, most didn’t measure up, they got in line.

This extends beyond politics, by the way. This is the story of the opioid manufacturers and social media companies. It is the story of a generation of takers, and a society of grifters who have chosen nihilism as their religion, MAGA as a community and Trump as a deity. It is the story of much of the media and a billion-dollar industry filled with liars, bloviators and scammers.

What Chuck Todd did was a titanic thing in an age of excess. His words and its urgent fury will only become more important over time. It was raw, true and perfect.

Elie Wiesel delivered the 20th century’s valedictory speech in 1999. I have written about it many times.

Chuck Todd delivered the valedictory for this age of access media and transactional posturing that holds that nothing is real, but feelings:

Our bosses owe you an apology.

Yes. Yes, they do.

Over time, the meaning of this will expand and include all media bosses, but in the instant, it was a simple act of declarative decency and exhaustion after nine long years of degradation.

Courage is contagious. The newsroom rebellion wasn’t about ideology.

Telling lies, or believing them, is not an ideology.

The Republican Party was not founded on lies in 1854, but instead, the most elemental of all truths: freedom.

Geraldo Rivera apparently believes that the election result is a “feeling,” as opposed to a fact-based outcome. There is no doubt that Geraldo Rivera is an American original, a free spirit and bundle of ambition, narcissism, showmanship and New York chutzpah that has kept him watchable for six decades on the air. He isn’t a villain, but rather a carnival barker, who lent himself in the end to a rotten cause at FOX, a rotten organization, that abused the American people with lies. Thousands and thousands of lies. Those lies were like a molten lava or dissolving acid being poured on the most important part of our entire society’s foundations.

What Rivera needs is something he cannot receive in the public square. He wants dispensation. He wants a cheap and easy pass for his complicity in a conspiracy of lies that was aimed directly at America’s heart.

He wants permission to know that it was okay. He wants to be reassured that if you believe hard enough that your side won, that tearing down the foundations of the country by any means necessary are okay.

It’s not. It never was, and it never will be. Thinking the election should have gone the other way does not make it so.

Thinking the election was rigged does not make it so.

Thinking it was stolen does not make it so.

However, the inability to distinguish between clear fact and false sentiments has brought us all to the abyss.

It is time to grow up and straighten up.

Here is why Ronna McDaniel won’t be on NBC News. She is a liar.

She was hired due to the cynicism of four executives, and her firing is being lamented because of shame.

Here is what shame looks like at age 80. It’s not a pretty sight:

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