Bill Maher Was Right on Trump, Cheney and the Media
The legacy media loses credibility daily
Bill Maher was right on his criticism of the media’s accounts of Trump’s words about Liz Cheney.
In fact, he also highlights the hypocrisy of the media itself.
Donald Trump's message about Liz Cheney is that those people who are ready to send men and women to war do so from the comfort of their own environments. His point was that these warhawks would not be so hawkish if they were in the battle themselves. He used Liz Cheney as his example.
Criteria for going to war
I am a veteran, not a war veteran because I am not old enough for Vietnam. I did enlist in the Navy in 1978 and served as a Sonar Technician . Many veterans, post-enlistment-myself included, are anti-war. My definition of whether our nation should or should not go to war is not much different than Mr. Trump’s words about Liz Cheney. If you can look into the eyes of an eighteen year-old soldier who just had his legs blown off from an IED and tell him that the only way we could secure our peace and security was through his lifetime sacrifice, then you met the criteria for going to war.
Neither Liz nor Dick Cheney are veterans. I think what I find most disturbing is that the so-called liberal party is and always was the hawk party. Republicans tend to be isolationists and are reticent to going to war. There are exceptions. One of the most anti-war senators in the nation was always Massachusetts’ own Ted Kennedy. Those who continued the false narrative of Mr. Trump’s words about Liz Cheney are proving they support the US's warring actions. It would make sense.
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) also on the program with Maher mocked Trump for his deferment from the draft. The Maryland representative is not a veteran and he is younger than I am. He went to Harvard. The audience applauds his hypocrisy.
Did these people who pounce on Trump march against the war when Cheney was vice-president? I did. I would do it again. Few of those reporters ever entered a military base except to see an air show.
Today’s journalists and Trump, non-veterans
The old media, the one that I grew up on, employed many World War II, Korean and Vietnam era veterans. The current media has no military experience and still they feel they are qualified to pick sides in this dispute between Trump and Cheney. They are not. I voted neither for Trump nor Harris so I am not defending my vote for one or another. I am just explaining that the legacy media has many hypocrites who know nothing about what they report except what their editors, equally naive, tell them. The Catholic media, by the way, is no different.
Chris Hedges, a former member of legacy media continues to be anti-war which led to his firing from the New York Times. Say what you want about Jesse Ventura who also is anti-war and a former governor of Minnesota, He explains MSNBC essentially side-lined him because of his anti-war perspective. Hedges and Ventura may not stand with Trump but they do not stand with the US war focus.
Hedges may not be a veteran but he was a war-correspondent and is anti-war.
Many say the media is collapsing others say legacy media is now dead in the aftermath of the election. I lost respect for the mainstream media long ago when they lost credibility with many of us.
There are other sources many of us seek out that do have credibility, none of them work for any legacy network or newspaper. They report the news in ways the main stream reporters no longer do because they know the real people affected by their reporting.
Trump could have phrased his criticism of Liz Cheney to a more civil expression. However, the irony of many talking heads in the media who call themselves Democrats and liberals siding with the Cheneys is a lesson in American propaganda. Adding to the irony is that Chris Hedges reminds us that Dick Cheney had a 13% approval rating when he left office as vice-president under George W. Bush.
I spoke with someone recently who explained that she voted for Donald Trump because she did not want to see members of her family drafted into a war. That was Bill Maher’s point on Donald Trump’s words and the media missed it.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at CatholicAudioMedia.com