Opinion: What Marjorie Taylor Greene still deserves
They didn’t hearken to me over at CBS, not that I’m stunned.
The very fact is, although, “60 Minutes” producers and correspondent Lesley Stahl in all probability have been already at work on Sunday’s prime-time 14-minute tribute to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene once I wrote right here a month in the past that we People ought to ignore the extremist Republican congresswoman as a lot as potential. That we must always adapt her bonkers thought of “a nationwide divorce” — a severing of pink states from blue — to as an alternative give up her.
The inordinate consideration Greene will get is her oxygen, permitting her to unfold the outrageous, divisive messages and far-right conspiracy theories that endear her to white nationalist audiences, and make her a fundraising juggernaut.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a crucial eye to the nationwide political scene. She has many years of expertise overlaying the White Home and Congress.
And now right here I’m, (sheepishly) feeling like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather Half III”: “Simply once I thought I used to be out, they pull me again in.”
Nevertheless, “they” isn’t a lot Greene and her antics as it’s the media. Too many reporters, task editors and producers are obsessed about overlaying attention-addicted, anti-democratic demagogues just like the congresswoman and her idol, Donald Trump. Tuesday was a two-fer: Reporters swarmed Manhattan to cowl each the arraignment of the previous president on felony prices, and the pro-Trump rally there for which Greene was the self-appointed head cheerleader.
“Trump is becoming a member of a few of the most unbelievable folks in historical past being arrested at the moment,” she instructed Proper Aspect Broadcasting Community. “Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in jail. Jesus! — Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman authorities.” (Not solely did Greene not get any pushback for these idiotic parallels, she obtained a peck on the cheek afterward from the interviewer for the right-wing community, a person she has been relationship.)
The Trump Present was again, and the star was sharing the limelight with a real-life Apprentice and successor in ready.
For some time, I assumed the media, particularly the cable information networks, have been repenting of their journalistic sins in 2015 and 2016, when information retailers lavished billions of {dollars} price of free air time and numerous inches of print on the performative Trump and his hate-mongering. Even Fox Information is not carrying each Trump rally stay and in full.
Or possibly they hadn’t seen the sunshine, simply that the rankings, clicks and advert {dollars} weren’t what they was.
Whether or not an indicted Trump reclaims the media’s consideration on the outdated scale or not, Greene represents new materials and a contemporary face for information retailers that thrive on controversy and battle.
I’m reminded but once more of what disgraced former CBS chief Les Moonves mentioned again in 2016 about hyper-covering Trump: “It will not be good for America, but it surely’s rattling good for CBS.”
His successors on the community have to be saying the identical factor about Greene. Sure, she’s a newsmaker, however that doesn’t justify the coveted prize of a profile on the venerable “60 Minutes.” And it actually doesn’t justify so calmly difficult a lady who nonetheless considers Trump the actual president.
Only a week earlier than the profile aired, Greene led a tour of the D.C. jail, to go to the defendants there — “political prisoners,” she calls them — charged with crimes associated to the Jan. 6, 2021, rebellion. In December she mentioned that if she’d organized occasions that day, “We might have received… To not point out, it could have been armed.”
But interviewer Stahl didn’t ask Greene concerning the 2020 presidential election or the terrorist assault on the Capitol, regardless that she and like-minded Republicans are utilizing their Home majority to rewrite historical past on each.
As a substitute, Stahl sympathetically repeated to a stricken-looking Greene some epithets that folk in each events have used in opposition to her. However she didn’t observe with examples of the numerous assaults Greene has dished in opposition to others. Later within the piece, Stahl did confront Greene about calling Democrats “pedophiles.” However when Greene unabashedly owned the assertion, Stahl was actually — and naively — rendered practically speechless. “Wow,” she muttered, and rolled her eyes.
So predictably emboldened was Greene by the change that she tweeted this the subsequent day: “I’ll say it once more: Democrats are the occasion of pedophiles,” linking to a reprehensible video titled “The Predator President.” It mashed up clips of Biden with youngsters — together with his poignant encounter with a boy who, just like the president, stutters — as proof of the president’s purported depravity.
Greene denied to Stahl that she had as soon as “preferred” a social media put up suggesting somebody fireplace a bullet into then-Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s head. Possibly her employees did it, she claimed. Stahl may need adopted up with one thing extra present: like whether or not Greene takes any duty when such assaults encourage an unhinged extremist to pound a hammer into the top of Pelosi’s husband Paul. However no.
Clearly Stahl spent numerous time with Greene. There was video of the 2 girls speaking in Washington, at Greene’s white-columned manse in Georgia, on the streets in her rural district with Greene’s admiring constituents, and even within the fitness center, the place Greene lifted weights.
However Stahl apparently didn’t spend as a lot time researching Greene’s file. She launched Greene with the discordant commentary that she’s “identified to be good and fearless, and has a historical past of believing in conspiracy theories.” Stahl mentioned Greene is “influencing the path of Republican insurance policies” however didn’t say which of them. Actually, Greene (like Trump) displays a Republican Celebration that has turn into policy-phobic. Tradition wars are their factor.
Not less than Stahl introduced up the looming showdown with President Biden and Democrats in Congress over elevating the nation’s debt restrict so the federal government will pay its payments. Greene reiterated Republicans’ ransom for his or her votes — large spending cuts — and Stahl pushed for specifics. However when Greene replied with the weak occasion line — reduce Biden’s green-energy applications — Stahl failed to notice what’s been broadly reported: One of many largest beneficiaries up to now is a job-creating solar-panel producer in Greene’s district.
Late Sunday, Greene instructed the information web site Semafor that she preferred the “60 Minutes” piece. No surprise. In case you’re attempting to normalize the egregiously irregular, what wasn’t to love?
