Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 03/10/23

It was a week for Selective Outrage and finger-pointing in the media.

Above is internet firebrand Russell Brand on Bill Maher’s Real Time confronting MSNBC talking head John Heilemann about his selective outrage regarding Fox News.  Good stuff! Bonus: A short time later, in the Real Time Overtime segment airing on CNN, the topic of DIE (aka Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) came up (8:08) and Bill got Sen. Bernie Sanders to admit that he prefers the pursuit of equality (as in “equality of opportunity”) to the pursuit of equity (defined as guaranteed outcome). Now that’s progress!

Then, of course, I was among those tuned into Netflix Saturday Night for comedian Chris Rock‘s live stand-up event actually called Selective Outrage. You know, the one in which he got paid a lot of money to vent about being slapped by Will Smith at the Oscars nearly a year ago. Suffice it to say it wasn’t a sermon on the value of forgiveness.

Of course, before he really got to that subject he touched on a variety of other controversial topics including, of most interest to me, abortion. I couldn’t find a video of this portion of the show so here is what he said per TV Insider: “I want my daughters to live in a world where they have complete control of their bodies.” The comedian then added: “I believe women should have the right to kill babies. I believe you should have the right to kill as many babies as you want. Kill ’em all. I don’t give a f*ck. But let’s not get it twisted. It is killing a baby.”

You know, I’m certainly against killing unborn babies (including unborn black babies who are aborted at nearly four times the rate as unborn white babies) but I think he’s basically saying what I was when I wrote last July that, as a person who would like to see no abortions, I’ve come to the conclusion that “It’s worth considering the possibility that both the Pro Choice argument that every person should have jurisdiction over what happens to his or her own body (also, ironically, a point of contention regarding COVID vaccines) and the Pro Life position that an unborn baby is a human life worthy of protection are both absolutely correct.” The question I then posed was what to do when two moral truths collide. Maybe when we do that we’re all be forced to focus less on our own selective outrage and more on turning our attention toward love, listening, education and practical assistance to encourage the choice of life.

While Chris Rock was live lampooning selective outrage on Netflix, over at NBC the cast of SNL was hurling some toward (who else?) Fox News.

Of course, it was all in good fun. Those cutups at SNL just follow the comedy no matter where it takes them. I can hardly wait to see how they skewer CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the corporate media as their non-racist narrative about the pandemic being the result of poor Chinese people eating bats at a wet market falls apart faster than a boiled bat at a wet market. This amid mounting evidence that the Wuhan virus sprang from an accident at the Wuhan virology lab conducting gain-of-function research in the city the virus arose from. You know, like Jon Stewart took heat for saying. Talk about a plot twist! Next it’ll be come out that SNL hero and Brad Pitt lookalike Dr. Fauci may have helped fund the research.

BTW, with regard to the SNL skit, the Dominion Voting Systems $1.6 billion (with a B!) lawsuit against Fox News that its competitors seem so aroused by, I don’t quite get how Sean Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham‘s reported mocking of Rudy Guiliani or Tucker Carlson‘s apparent “scorn” for Donald Trump has any bearing on the case whatsoever – yet their purported sentiments are treated like smoking guns in the corporate media. As are reports that Carlson and Hannity wanted journalist Jacqui Heinrich fired for debunking a Trump tweet about the plaintiff. For one thing, while I would agree calling for Heinrich’s dismissal seems to be a bit petulant on their parts, by my lights, it’s hardly proof that Fox News as an entity acted with malice when it heeded its audience’s wishes to at least hear what election skeptics had to say. Even if they didn’t believe the rather far-fetched allegation that the company actually rigged their own voting machines, that does not equate to knowing for a fact that the allegation is false. Furthermore, Heinrich’s stature at Fox has only grown since then as she covers the Biden White House and now often fills in as a substitute anchor. In other words, Fox management did not heed their wishes. The fact that Fox’s critics can’t seem to grasp the concept of different opinions within a news organization or the idea that people with controversial opinions you disagree with should be given the opportunity to make their case (and be challenged), says more about them than it does about Fox News. It’s worth noting that Dominion’s CEO was reportedly invited onto Fox News to refute claims being made against it but apparently turned down the opportunity.

In my mind though, this lawsuit is about issues much larger than Fox News. Whatever you think about the merits of the case, that $1.6 billion dollar figure has a certain pulled out of one’s rear-end aura to it that could at least appear to some observers to be more designed to intimidate questioning than to reflect actual damages or the actual value of the company. It sort of reminds me of when the beef industry sued Oprah Winfrey (for a comparatively paltry [not poultry] $10 million) in an apparent attempt to intimidate her into a retraction of an opinion she expressed on her show that called into question some food safety practices. Winfrey had the resources – and the will – to fight them. Thankfully, she won her case and scored a victory for the First Amendment in the process.  Though the two cases are different in many ways, they share the principle that we should be very weary of corporations and industries utilizing the civil court system to shutdown scrutiny of their practices.

Furthermore, it’s extremely important that election results be believed. If a significant portion of the population harbors serious doubts about election integrity, that doesn’t mean they’re un-American. It means the system needs more transparency. One way of providing that transparency is through open debate of the issues raised. The Big Lie is a sort of nothing-to-see-here coercive slogan that does the opposite of reassuring doubters that everything’s on the up and up. When people don’t believe that their voices and concerns are being heard, it can lead to things like the 2020 George Floyd-related riots, including the media memory-holed riot outside the White House that was serious enough that the Secret Service decided to evacuate President Trump to a bunker. And, yes, it can lead to an indefensible attack on the Capitol like what happened on January 6th, 2021. BTW, if you’re not bothered by all those events, you could be engaging in selective outrage.

That, of course, brings us to the selective outrage over Tucker Carlson’s airing of previously unreleased security footage that counters 1/6 Committee contentions that the Capital riot should be elevated in the annals of history as being a threat to America on par with the Civil War or 9/11. Some worry that he skewed the footage to fit his narrative – which, of course, is exactly what people on the other side of the political fence were concerned about when the committee released its highly edited version of event. Here’s what Carlson reported. I suggest you discern its veracity for yourself rather than rely on partisan recaps from either side. My biggest question is why wasn’t everyone in the media petitioning for the release of all the 1/6 video?

I also wonder why no one else that I know of is interviewing Albert Watkins (below), the attorney for Jacob Chansley (the so-called QAnon Shaman) who, after spending months and months in jail, was sentenced to 41 months in prison last November. Where’s the ACLU? Where’s 60 Minutes?

Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11