Skip to content

Can media stop Trump? Cluck. Cluck.

Mainstream media in America is spinning on its head trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President of the United States. Mainstream media in Canada and abroad are watching the attempt in the way people would watch an agonizingly slow-motion train wreck.My question is: who decided it’s the media’s job to overtly campaign in a presidential race in this way?
RichardsHarleyMugMay23jer
Array

Mainstream media in America is spinning on its head trying to stop Donald Trump from becoming President of the United States. Mainstream media in Canada and abroad are watching the attempt in the way people would watch an agonizingly slow-motion train wreck.

My question is: who decided it’s the media’s job to overtly campaign in a presidential race in this way?

Granted, Donald Trump really is the worst choice possible to lead the world’s largest economy and command the world’s most powerful military. Full stop. But beyond informing voters of their choices — and, yes, suggesting a better option — it’s up to voters to choose who will lead them, not the media.

The picture I get comes from old-time farming, when families supplied their own larders. People would select a broody hen, and have it sit on a few duck eggs to hatch them. The little ducklings would follow the hen around until they caught sight of water and they’d happily toddle in. The hen would pace back and forth on the shoreline, clucking like only a mother hen can, while the ducklings did what ducklings do naturally.

That’s what mainstream media is doing right now. Clucking on the shoreline while their duckling readers flock to Donald Trump.

We’re talking about the big guys here — Washington Post, New York Times, National Review, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post to name a few. In Canada, it’s the Globe and Mail, National Post, CBC News and more. All are wondering aloud how a certified bozo like Donald Trump could possibly become President of the United States. In Europe, if anyone pays attention at all to the U.S. primaries circus, they are horrified (but they have other, real, problems to worry about).

All are worried about the disaster that must certainly follow the moment American voters decide they’d rather have a serial liar, a proud hatemonger, an unrepentant misogynist, a wannabe war criminal and economic buffoon as president, rather than the candidates selected for them by the elites in the backrooms, and the billionaires that fund them to enrich themselves.

Oscar winners, hyperventilating as they clutch their golden statues, exhort America to Stop Trump! while the ushers direct them offstage. TV comedian/commentator John Oliver set himself up for a lawsuit to begin the minute Trump is elected and “loosens” American libel laws — the Constitution be damned.

Everyone who is anyone wants to Stop Trump and everyone else doesn’t seem to be listening. Cluck. Cluck.

It’s become an online game to discover the worst transgressions ever committed by The Donald. My personal favourite (so far) is his agreeing with shock radio host Howard Stern that, yes, he could have “nailed” Diana, Princess of Wales. “She was supermodel beautiful … she had the height … she had the magnificent skin.”

Do voters know what it says about a person who can sexually objectify dead royalty? Eeww.

Do voters know what ignoring all this says about them? About all the other candidates?

The worse things seem, the worse things get. But still, it’s the voters who decide. Perhaps the mother hens in the media should check their clucking, lest the duckling voters cast their votes both in open defiance of party big shots, and the media big shots together.

People like Hollywood metaphors, so here’s the one with Donald Trump. America is the female lead, who wakes up in a garishly glitzy hotel room the morning after the election. She looks across purple fake-satin sheets at Trump and realizes she has made The. Biggest. Mistake. Ever. A dark, pathetic spiral ensues.

In the end, the voters decide. In the end, you get the government you deserve.

Follow Greg Neiman’s blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca