The year 2017 unfolded into a massive surprise to liberals, who fully expected that before Christmas we would (a) all die in a nuclear war over Donald Trump’s tweets, or (b) be swearing in President Pence after Trump was impeached or petulantly quit because the news media were full of meanies.
More than ever, the media see themselves as valiant tellers of truth. More than ever, thanks to the man to whose destruction they are committed, most Americans peg them as emotionally intense -- putting it nicely -- leftists.
As the year began, Barack Obama exited the national stage. His ultraliberal reign ended almost exactly as it began, with weeping over his wonderfulness. Literally. Take NBC’s disgraced Matt Lauer on January 13: “President Obama surprising his vice president, Joe Biden, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom....So I’m glad there were no cameras in my apartment yesterday because I was just sitting there weeping. I just burst out crying when I saw that moment. It was incredible.”
Oh-so-sensitive Matt was exposed as a crude, subordinate-pawing sexual harasser and was fired at year’s end.
Chris Matthews still has chills and thrills up his leg over Obama. He asked, rhetorically, on January 18: “Is there a husband, a father that we would wish more as a model for our sons, for our sons-in-law to have and raise our grandchildren? Is there anyone who carries himself better in word, in sentiment, in temperament, in optimism?”
In equal measure they cannot stomach the thought that Donald Trump is president. Matthews came seriously unglued on January 21, the day after the Inauguration. The MSNBC host thought Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was already on his way out. “It’s hard to fire your son-in-law,” he declared, “but Mussolini had a great solution to that. He had him executed.” Rachel Maddow replied “Jesus, Chris!” Matthews added: “So, if I were Jared, I’d be a little careful.”
CNN anchorman Don Lemon couldn’t hide his Trumpian feelings after an August 22 speech in Phoenix: “He’s unhinged, it’s embarrassing and I don’t mean for us, the media because he went after us, but for the country. This is who we elected President of the United States....There was no gravitas. There was no sanity.”
Lemon's colleague Reza Aslan hosted a CNN program on religion until this tweet about the president on June 3 after a London terrorist attack: “This piece of [excrement] is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”
On MSNBC on November 30, Joe Scarborough claimed Trump was literally suffering from dementia: “You have somebody inside the White House that the New York Daily News says is mentally unfit, that people close to him say is mentally unfit, that people close to him during the campaign told me had early stages of dementia.”
The folks at PBS (when will Republicans ever defund this mockery of journalism?) thought Trump’s crazy religious backers had distinguished ancestors. NPR host Kurt Andersen declared America’s founding fathers were a “theocratic cult of religious nuts.” PBS host Charlie Rose could only respond “Right, right.”
Which is why no one will miss Charlie Rose, who always had a soft touch for liberal guests and a tight squeeze (or an open robe) for his female employees.
Let’s close with the late-night comedians, who double-down on the media’s arrogance. On CBS, Stephen Colbert told the president “You are the glutton with the button. You are a regular ‘Gorge Washington.’ You are the Presi-dunce, but are turning into a real prick-tator.” He added “the only thing your mouth is good for” was as a holster Russian strongman Vladimir Putin’s penis.
That's how classy 2017 was. Because there’s one thing where liberals feel they excel: In unifying the country with civil discourse.
