Friday was quite a day for Steve Bannon. From being fired in the morning from his job as Chief Strategist at the Trump White House to convening an Editorial Meeting at his old home, Breitbart News, in the afternoon.
When the news crossed the wires that Trump had let Bannon go, cheers broke out on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. I’m sure that tickled the hell out of Bannon. He doesn’t do hurt feelings. He’s a warrior. He’ll use a tape of those cheers to his advantage in Central Pennsylvania, the Upper Peninsular of Michigan and the Panhandle of Florida.
I’ll bet he was singing the last lines of MLK’s historic speech as he walked out the door of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave…”Free at Last, Free at Last…Thank God Almighty…Free at Last.”
Hey, he lasted a year…measured from the day he took over the Trump Campaign, with the absolute certainty that Trump would win and that he would make it happen, until Friday. Good for him.
I say that as an Obama guy and a guy who thinks Trump must go. But, I also think that if you are going to try and disqualify a person from public service, especially a person who occupies a staff position and cannot fight back, there are certain rules of engagement that should be followed that can be reduced to two words…”be fair”.
The slime hit, by the hyper left (with help from Kushner and Rupert Murdoch) was fundamentally unfair.
The hyper left never really laid a glove on Bannon on substantive grounds. They didn’t bother to try. They just kept recirculating each others slime attacks.
Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean called Bannon “a Nazi”. Really, Governor. You mean he favors putting human beings in railroad cars and transporting them to be incinerated? Dean looked increasingly sick and evasive when the rare TV host asked him if he stood by those remarks. Dean is still a paid MSNBC Contributor. Pathetic.
On CNN, Senator Elizabeth Warren told Anderson Cooper that Bannon was “a white supremacist.” To his credit, Cooper said “there’s no evidence of that”. To Senator Warren’s credit, she backed off the charge. Good for her. Very few of the attack dogs had the character to admit they could not support their charges and had gone too far.
Now, if you’re willing to dispense with anything approaching fairness, you’re in the Rachel Maddow sweet spot. Cheap shot, low blow, sarcasm, and repeat. That’s Rachel Maddow. Five nights a week. We’re not talking Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters or Tim Russert here. They were Journalists.
Journalism does’t happen on Maddow’s show. Instead you get “shock and indignation” that a Jewish writer, David Horowitz, at a publication founded by a Jew, Andrew Breitbart, would describe another Jew, Bill Krystal, as a Jew. And all that constituted clear “evidence” that Steve Bannon, Executive Editor at the time, is unfit for service in government.
Maddow is what some call a “Progressive Except Palestine”. That’s the “safest” kind of progressive. They color inside the lines. They obey the only rule…Israel is always right. They have the benefit of job security and always being welcome in “polite” company. Are there any downsides? I’ve heard, real progressives are happier, sleep better and tend to be all around better company…they also say “polite” company is overrated…way overrated.
This subject (Progressive Except Palestine) deserves more attention and I will give it more, hopefully, in my next post. For now, I want to close this post as I’ve closed out every other post I’ve written on Steve Bannon:
HANG IN THERE STEVE BANNON
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