This past weekend was a busy one for our brothers in the media. On Saturday, you had March for Our Lives, the modern-day version of the Children’s Crusade. The children marched, and held signs, and cussed out the adults. The celebrities marched, and speechified, and kept to their circle of armed security. One website I saw compared it to the student uprisings in Paris in the 1960s. I prefer the analogy of the Children’s Crusade of 1212.
The Crusade started well enough. The goal was to peacefully march from Europe to the Holy Land, convert all the Muslims, and regain Jerusalem as the capital of Christendom. Children from all over Europe left their homes to march for Jesus. Except, it didn’t end very well for the kids. Those that didn’t die of dysentery, cholera, or malnutrition were sold into slavery before they even made it out of Italy.
And that’s probably what will happen to this Children’s Crusade. They’ve been used, and as soon as their usefulness is over, they’ll be abandoned to make their way in the cold, cruel world.
Oh, and none of the temper tantrum that they threw whilst throwing their trash on the ground, made the slightest difference to poll numbers about President Trump.
The Children’s Crusade can’t get rid of him.
Sunday, now Sunday was a whole different ballgame, or so the media dons thought. Sunday, we had Stormy Daniels. A porn star. She went on 60 Minutes to talk about that time she had consensual sex with Donald Trump. In 2006. But surely, a porn star confessing to a one-night stand with a man who has made no secret of his past, would be the coup de grace, and mark the end of Donald Trump.
No. That’s not what happened at all.
Stormy Daniels went on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper and said: the sex she had with Donald Trump was consensual, that she was looking for a spot on The Apprentice, and that when they met up a second time, he gave off signals that he was interested in another turn in the barrel so to speak, she turned him down, and that was that. She never did get that spot on The Apprentice.
However, in red meat to our media types, she did claim that in 2011 when she threatened Trump that she would go public with the “affair” (sorry, sister, a one-night stand is not an affair), a man approached her and made a veiled threat about her and her daughter’s safety. There were no witnesses to this encounter, and even Anderson Cooper had trouble swallowing the claim.
Now we have the media suddenly discovering a new morality bone. Trump violated his marital vows with Melania! His lawyer paid a porn star hush money! He’s not morally fit to be president! Impeach him! Today!!
This is the same media who told us in 1998 that it was wrong to criticize people for their sex lives (see Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky), and that what consenting adults did was not germane to their job performance. All perfectly true. Bill Clinton wasn’t impeached over the fact that he, a 50 yr old man had a 21 yr old intern on her knees in the Oval Office. No, he wasn’t impeached for that. He was impeached for lying about it.
And here’s one of the two differences between Trump and Clinton. You can make the case that they men are both morally bankrupt, loathsome individuals. You cannot make the case that Trump, unlike Clinton, has ever tried to hide his libertine past.
In fact, Trump has gone on record flouting the fact that he was able to hook up with a lot of attractive, ambitious women. And those women will tell you that the relationships were consensual.
Which brings me to the second biggest difference between Clinton and Trump. On the surface, it seems that most of Trump’s encounters were consensual. Even Stormy Daniels claims that she said yes. Clinton, on the other hand, has a troubling history of being overly demanding when it came to his escapades. Yes, he had a long-term mistress of 12 years, Ginnifer Flowers; but there was also Kathleen Willey (groped outside the Oval Office,) Paula Jones (he dropped trousers and demanded she orally service him), and Juanita Broderick (outright rape).
Those of us old enough to remember, remember how the press circled the wagons around Bill Clinton. “None of our business”. Move On—that’s actually when MoveOn.org got started. The press also tried, and succeeded for the most part, in destroying the accusers.
This same media is now having an attack of vapors over Trump and his porn star. Last week, CNN was all Stormy all the time. Surely this coverage and discussion must be having some effect, right?
Nope. Like the Children’s Crusade, the Porn Star Pity Party hasn’t touched Trump’s approval numbers at all.
Why do you suppose that is? This time around, the media doesn’t control the message or the information. We all knew about Trump and his lifestyle choices. He never hid them. We also remember how the media treated anyone who disagreed with the coverage they afforded Clinton.
This time it is different. This time, the media can’t kill the beast. And how they spin themselves into little tornadoes of futility is absolutely a joy to watch.