Posted on 12/12/2017 5:19:44 PM PST by Kaslin
RUSH: Kirsten Gillibrand is about to have a conniption fit out there over Trump’s tweet about her today, and she’s roped in CNN. CNN’s now doing a whole panel discussion on how Trump was behaving very badly toward her, and it’s a sexist tweet and so forth. These people… Does CNN have any idea that they’ve become a joke? This is what amazes me.
CNN has humiliated itself at least seven times this year. They’ve had to fire three people over a fake story about Anthony Scaramucci. The thing that happened on Friday would have been enough to get most people involved in it fired and drummed out of the business! It was such a violation of every canon of journalism. And then there have been a number of other stories that they have just been dead wrong on or where they have altered 911 tapes like NBC did during the episode with Trayvon Martin.
I mean, these things are just repeating, and now they’re acting like they’re just outraged. Yesterday they did a story on Trump maybe being in the throes of dementia because he drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day! They’re bringing in psychologists, psychoanalysts, gastroenterologists, and then their own staff doctor, Sanjay Gupta. They’re bringing all these people in and ignoring the terrorism story at the same time. During the break here I’m watching Gloria Borger and some other woman and Brooke Baldwin, and they’ve got these stern, serious looks on their faces as they’re discussing the Trump tweet of Kirsten Gillibrand.
I’m literally asking myself, “Do these people know what a joke they have become? Do they have any idea?” You know, one of the keys to media success is being able to empathize, being able to envision and understand — comprehend — how your audience sees you. You know the greatest example of this I can give you? These sports team mascots. Some of them are really good and some of them are not memorable at all. One of the best sports mascots in the history of mascots was the San Diego Chicken. Ted Giannoulas was the guy that was inside the suit. Right along with him was the Phillie Phanatic.
But of all the mascots that there are, how many of them can you literally name that have made an impact on you either comedically or any other way? Those two come to my mind. Maybe you can name others, but you can’t name anywhere near all of them nor very many of them, and I maintain it’s because of what I always thought about Giannoulas. You know, we had him in once when I was at the Kansas City Royals, and it was earth shattering because the Royals had never done anything like that.
I mean, they were staid, button down. You promote baseball with baseball, not chickens. And we overcame that and we got the San Diego Chicken in there one day. It was a great hit. Everybody loved him. He was already widely known. He was showing up at baseball and football games. The San Diego Chicken was there at the Holy Roller, Raiders-Chargers game with Dave Casper. That’s how far back he goes. But I always maintain… I try to analyze, “Why are people who do what they do successful and other people who do what they do it are not?” In the case of Ted Giannoulas — and I told him this.
I said, “I think you have an innate sense of how you are seen in that suit. You, in other words, bring a consciousness and an alive factor to that character, that chicken suit that you’re wearing. You’re not just putting on a suit and running around waving your arms and chatting with referees. You have an innate sense,” and I don’t think these people at CNN do. I think they’re sitting there on their panel and they’re wringing their hands and they’re deathly serious about Trump’s tweet of Kirsten Gillibrand and they’re going on and on about, “It’s the most outrageous thing that’s ever happened in politics and Trump just keeps lowering the bar!”
And you just sit there and laugh at it because you know that it’s just the latest in a long line of, “Oh, my God, we’re so offended; we can’t believe it” stories that they’re not selling. They may be selling them to, you know, 20/30% of their core audience, other demented leftists. But in terms of growing their audience, building their audience, establishing credibility and believability as journalists outside their core base, they don’t have a prayer. They’re not even close. They’re still lagging along in third place.
I think one of the factors is they have no idea how they’re seen, and when you imagine yourself to be deathly serious about what you do, when you can’t tell that people are laughing at you, you have a problem. Now, if you’re trying to make people laugh at you and they’re laughing, you’re succeeding. But if you’re sitting there thinking you’re the incarnation of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow and you are there to bring down the powerful and you’ve got the goods and you’re deadly serious about it?
And you can’t tell that people don’t believe you anymore? You can’t tell people are laughing at you? You can’t detect that people are making jokes about? You’ve got a problem, and I think that’s where CNN is. Just by looking at stern, serious faces — just as stern and just as serious and just as excited as they were last Friday when they had another bogus story that was fully fraudulent, made up, and filled with lies. And there they were, deadly serious. It was the end of Trump. It might have been the end of the world if CNN had not discovered it.
And that’s another thing: People who think they are so damned important that nobody can get along without ’em, that they’re so special. That’s how these people in journalism see themselves. It doesn’t help that they’ve got constitutional acknowledgment in the First Amendment. But they’ve lost themselves. They have lost all… I don’t think it’s just CNN. The press briefing when Sarah Huckabee Sanders is openly mocking them and telling them what-for, they haven’t slightest idea how they look to people watching them.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned Jim Acosta. There were fireworks in the pressroom yesterday at the White House because Sarah Huckabee Sanders went to these people, primarily at CNN, and said (paraphrasing), “Look, you guys, it’s one thing to get a story wrong. It’s another thing to not correct it when you get it wrong. It’s another thing to not care that it’s wrong. It’s another thing when you’re purposely misinforming the American people.” And of course they blew up and said she is challenging our legitimacy, she’s challenging us as journalists and so forth.
And she, talk about courageous, you talk about somebody not a wallflower, somebody’s not an innocent, harmless, fragile little snowflake, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She doesn’t take one ounce of grief from these media bullies. In fact, they think she’s the bully. He-he-he-he-he. Anyway, this afternoon on Wolf Blitzed, senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta slowly losing his mind in this job now about what happened to him this morning at the White House prior to his asking a question of Donald Trump during an event there.
ACOSTA: Sarah Huckabee Sanders pulled me aside. Uh, this was prior to me asking that question to the president, and she warned me that if I asked the president a question at this “pool spray,” as we call them, that she could not promise that I would be allowed into a pool spray again. Uh, Wolf, this was a — a — a direct threat coming from the press secretary, uh, to me, warning me not to ask a question. And of course I went ahead and asked the question anyway and the president did not respond. But, Wolf, uh, as you know, we don’t respond to threats. Uh, we’re not going to be intimidated. But that did happen prior to my asking that question of the president.
Sanders gets into testy exchange with Acosta over erroneous media reports
RUSH: You are such tough guys! You’re so admirable, Acosta. You’re not sure gonna be intimidated, not when the girl tells you you’re not gonna be allowed back into the next “pool spray,” which sounds vaguely obscene to me anyway. What the hell is a pool spray? I know what it is. I’m just… But now remember, there was an Obama event at the White House, and the press was told, “No questions! Not allowed! This is a no-question event,” and a reporter from the… What was his name? He’s still out there. Having a mental block.
Anyway, either Washington Times or Washington Examiner or something. He asked a question, and the press chased this guy practically to the Washington Monument! The press was so obedient. The Obama team said, “No questions,” and they obediently didn’t ask any, except this guy did, and the press went after him like he had committed the greatest offense, looking bad for all of them. Jim Acosta is told, “No questions here,” and he asked one because he’s not gonna be intimidated! (impression) “We’re real men at CNN! As you know, Wolf, we are real mean and we don’t respond to threats, and we’re not gonna be intimidated.”
You people are intimidated every day.
It’s obvious the way you can’t stop talking about this stuff!
I’m thinking Mike the Headless Chicken. True story, quite entertaining.
We laugh AT CNN.
I don’t think it was a smear, Fauxahontas said you were a “slut”.
They want to be Edward R Murrow, and come off like Ted Baxter.
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