The BOLDIES AND LEPERS, celebs may not want them but they're getting them.
This blog, the BOLD opinion page, and all of what's been built is all well and good. But let's get real: The greatest influence on opinion this year was exerted by people that were active a lot longer than me or any of the other writers on the BOLD page. Also, the rot in the existing media sphere extends a lot farther back than recent celebrities that supported Hillary Clinton. So maybe none of these people will read this, but I'm calling them out right how. Here are your 1st (maybe last) annual BOLDIES and LEPERS.
BOLDIE: Best in traditional or print journalism -- Peter Schweizer, Breitbart/freelance.
His 2015 non-fiction release Clinton Cash hit #3 on the New York Times bestseller list already in May of that year and gave the public one of the main angles through which to view the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
LEPER: Worst in traditional or print journalism: Barstow, Twohey, Craig, and Buettner, NYTimes.
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| Three time Pulitzer winner David Barstow had a hand in this tremendous own-goal that revealed no illegal activity on the part of Donald Trump, but may have broken laws on divulging private personal information. |
BOLDIE: Best on-camera personality -- "News" or opinion -- Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart News:
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| Milo's shameless trolling and ballsy forays into campus settings has made him a figure that transcends news. (Breitbart) |
LEPER: Worst on-camera personality--"News" or opinion -- Christine Quinn & Sally Kohn, CNN:
Where do we even start? If the print news media was bad, broadcast news TV was toxic and unwatchable at times. So who takes the title: Is it Rachel Maddow, with her judgmental glare? Chris Matthews and his pretensions to being a journalist? Don Lemon or the rest of CNN with their awkward an ungainly presentation of talking head interactions? There's also Chris Cuomo and his propensity to mislead the audience, and what about actual opinion shills like Sean Hannity, Bill Maher, and Cenk Uygur?
I had to think about this one. A lot of people on the right have it out for Megyn Kelly, but a personal feud between her and Donald Trump just makes me think she doesn't truly fit in this category. And then I remembered a pair of CNN "contributors", both of whom happen to be lesbians: Christine Quinn and Sally Kohn. After watching these two during this season, I came to the conclusion that I don't know what's the main advocacy group for lesbians, but it should bury these two as far from the public eye as they can because they're not gaining them any support. Let me say upfront, I'm not insulting them as a community, I'm just asking why they let these two buffoons continue to represent them in front of a camera.
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| Blogger Sally Kohn has come to epitomize the liberal brand of smug. (RealClearPolitics). |
Kohn, known for such important opinion pieces as last year's gem in the Washington Post where she lamented that her daughter isn't gay like her, made a fool of herself by mugging for the camera and making faces while discussing the second presidential debate with Trump surrogate Betsy McCaughey and CNN presenter Carol Costello. She has meanwhile drawn the mockery of both gays and the right by trying to fend off attacks on sharia law. . . which as a legal structure would most likely have her executed for her lifestyle.
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| New York magazine cover of Christine Quinn during her 2013 run for Mayor of New York. The Clinton campaign took an unpopular mayoral candidate and made her an unpopular surrogate on an increasingly unpopular network. Nice strategy. (NY Post) |
Quinn threw a temper tantrum at Trump surrogate Kayleigh McEnany in August over the attendance of Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen's father at a Hillary Clinton rally. In October she played ostrich over the issue of one of the James O'Keefe tapes by claiming that it was illegitimate even after two Democratic operatives had resigned and gone into hiding.
So why did I pick these two? Their statements weren't necessarily any wronger than the rest of the media. No, the real problem with them was that they completely abandoned the standards of professionalism and presentation of the news. Kohn shamelessly mocked her conversational opponent as if she was beneath her, while Quinn went into full-on attack even screaming over Chris Cuomo. Neither of these two, as acknowledged surrogates for Clinton, did anything to help her cause. If anything they did more to accentuate the resentment from Middle America. They represented none of the messages that the unemployed, disadvantaged, ignored people across the country were looking for. I'm not saying they should have put on some mechanic overalls and put some grease on their faces and faked it, but they did literally NOTHING except to reinforce the Democrats' message to their confirmed base: urban, middle class, educated women and gays.
BOLDIE: Best ambush interview:
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| TYT's Jordan Chariton caught Donna Brazile off guard by actually calling out her bullshit. (TYT/Youtube). |
LEPER: Worst "news" interview:
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| I wonder if Lesley Stahl's next interview is gonna be with Snively Whiplash, because she did her best to make it look like she was afraid Donald Trump would tie her to a railroad track (CBS News/60 Minutes). |
Stahl claimed in an April appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, she claimed that Bill O'Reilly favoured Donald Trump, and that the front-runner in the race would get the most "attention" (criticism). This was in response to O'Reilly's questioning of whether network media could fairly cover Trump. In retrospect, Stahl was making excuses for her future interview conduct. Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised about Stahl, after all she also blew an interview with then-new French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 when she opened with a question about his wife leaving him.
BOLDIE: Greatest acts of exposé journalism -- Julian Assange, Wikileaks.
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| Julian Assange has humiliated not only the Clintons but the mass media that shunned him (ABC Australia). |
This should be an easy pick. The only other competition was James O'Keefe's Project Veritas tapes, which are pretty good and all, but they wouldn't have rocked the race as much as Julian Assange's Wikileaks. They beheaded Debbie Wasserman Schultz from the DNC for skewing the primaries against Bernie Sanders, and immediately exposed her successor Donna Brazile for also being biased against Sanders. This was followed by a slow-motion avalanche of dirty laundry about everything from Clinton Foundation corruption to media collusion with the Demcrats to more Anthony Weiner drama. Wikileaks shot a massive cannonball into the hull of the mainstream media and eventually they had to acknowledge the validity of much of its material, even though Democratic officials started to claim that the emails were "doctored" and were the work of "Russian spies".
Leper: Worst cover-up of a real story -- Milwaukee riots sister rant, CNN.
As the media now is trying to demand a clampdown on "fake news" they forget the farcical nonsense of CNN's coverage of the Milwaukee riots in August. In one of the most blatant examples of the media twisting the news, CNN took the words of Sherelle Smith as a call for peace. Smith is the sister of Sylville Smith, a young black Milwaukeean shot by a black police officer after pulling a gun on him during a confrontation. CNN showed a clip of Ms. Smith calling on a crowd of mourners not to burn down neighbourhood businesses, but they left out the words that came out of her mouth right after that saying "take that shit to the suburbs, burn that shit down". Eventually after an avalanche of criticism from both foreign and American viewers of the full footage, CNN anchor Carol Costello admitted that the footage had been incomplete, but never issued an apology or retraction.
BOLDIE: Best comedian commentary -- Bill Burr.
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| Bill Burr didn't kowtow to anyone in his act during election season. He'll only get stronger going on from here, as he proves that he won't compromise his act on anyone's account. |
In a race where celebrities were being lobbied mercilessly to declare their loyalties, it must have been tough to be someone that wouldn't get on anyone's bandwagon. Ron White of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour was one such person who said he's running for president himself on a platform of fighting the meth epidemic. Dave Chappelle made headlines late in the race by claiming he regretted voting for Clinton, and then after the race he publicly announced on Saturday Night Live that he was giving Trump a chance if he would give America's historically disenfranchised people a chance too. But Bill Burr threw out a great harpoon towards the media whale by repeatedly trashing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during all of his live sets. Burr spoke very lucidly to a massive portion of society that rejected both candidates and wouldn't commit to either side. Right after the election he appeared on CONAN on TBS and called Trump the "greatest shit talker that ever existed" while claiming that Hillary Clinton looked like a real estate agent during her campaign and was going to Bildeberg gatherings and dressing in yak suits. I have only one thing to say to Mr. Burr: I want more.
Worst comedian commentary -- Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer
I hate it that this is gonna look like a diatribe against women. I mean in another category I trashed Sally Kohn and Christine Quinn. But let's get real, a lot of famous women were placed on the front line by the Clinton campaign, and they are gonna get a large share of the smack talking now that they've lost. Amy Schumer shamelessly shilled for Clinton all the way, including posting a topless photo of herself with the #StrongerTogether pro-Hillary tag. She stated in one interview with the BBC that critics of Clinton were "uninformed". In the midst of the campaign Bud Lite fired both Schumer and her colleague Seth Rogen from an ad campaign that had gone nowhere in improving beer sales. Though Rogen wasn't very active in the election season, it is very possible that Schumer's role in the Clinton campaign created a backlash. At an appearance in Tampa in October Schumer was booed and experience a huge walkout when she tried to shame a middle-aged Trump voter on stage.
Sarah Silverman, a career liberal comedian going back years, earned infamy for one statement: "You're being ridiculous". She said this to the Bernie or Bust crowd at the Democratic National Convention. Silverman. herself a former Bernie Sanders supporter, was by then firmly in the Hillary camp, and would later claim that only "assholes" would question Clinton's health. This was only three days prior to Clinton's now-famous collapse during the 9/11 memorial ceremony.
We can debate the place of comedy in politics and vice versa. There's no reason comedians shouldn't support or speak on behalf of someone they admire, but these two and others went above and beyond that and actually attacked people that questioned their candidate. Once that happens, they lose any artistic license; they are given to criticism just like anyone else.
Best celebrity advocate -- Susan Sarandon
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| Ex-Bernie or Bust activist Susan Sarandon hasn't backed down yet. |
There are legitimate people on each end of the spectrum for this category. John Voigt fought ferociously on behalf of Donald Trump, and Penn Jillette may have been a better candidate than the one he endorsed, Gov. Gary Johnson. Some of Clinton's celebrity supporters also did not make fools out of themselves, such as Tom Hanks and actress Uzo Aduba, AKA "Crazy Eyes" from Orange is the New Black. But from her support for Bernie Sanders to her opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline, Susan Sarandon committed herself fully to the progressive ideals. When Bernie endorsed Clinton, she didn't jump on board and immediately endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein. We might not agree with Sarandon's politics, but she's walked the walk and deserves your respect.
Worst celebrity advocate -- Lena Dunham, The View, and Madonna.
| Lena Dunham's success clearly went to her head as she steered into the iceberg of idiocy that comes with shilling shamelessly for the Clintons (HBO). |
First Madonna. She is famous now for offering to perform oral sex in exchange for Hillary votes. Looks like a real convincing argument. This artist that has shamelessly reinvented herself time and again as the "material girl", to Catholic symbolism ("Like a Prayer"), to the new Evita, to a New Age symbol (Ray of Light), and back to the material girl (MDNA).
As for The View, this iconic women's daytime TV show blatantly trashed Trump while cheerleading for Hillary for months, led by Whoopie Goldberg and Joy Behar. This included featuring his ex-wife Marla Maples in March and trying to goad her into smearing Trump. Maples didn't take the bait and praised her ex. The low point came in October when Behar called Bill Clinton's sexual assault accusers "tramps".
And finally there's the bottom of the barrel: Lena Dunham, the Girls creator and standard bearer for the clueless entitled snowflakes. Dunham's fangirl devotion to Clinton is almost slavish. After the Trump "locker room talk" Billy Bush controversy, conservatives struck back by showing a clip of Dunham and Clinton on a 30-second blurb for Dunham's Youtube channel talking about how much Hillary wanted to see a clip of Lenny Kravitz having a wardrobe malfunction where his firehose slipped out. Dunham also reacted like a complete basket case to Clinton's loss on her blog. The morning before, Dunham had pranced around on Twitter about prepping for the Clinton victory, even saying she "I love you all. Tonight we make history. I may or may not wear a bow" as if anyone gives a fuck. The return to earth was not a very soft landing. She titled her first post-election blog post "Don't agonize, organize". But most of the blog was about agonizing, not organizing. She even wrote this pathetic statement, surprising for a "feminist":
"A lot of people have been talking about how we need to try to understand how this happened and what's going on in the minds of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe let's leave that to the strategists, to the men in offices who need to run the numbers. It should not be the job of women, of people of color, of queer and trans Americans, to understand who does not consider them human and why, just as it's not the job of the abused to understand their abuser."
So Dunham had been the champion of a campaign that proclaimed the equality of people of all backgrounds, but in losing that campaign she suddenly proclaimed that people of only one background could be strategists who run numbers, the straight white men. Real encouraging.
So there you are folks, the first (and maybe last) annual BOLDIES and Lepers.
And finally there's the bottom of the barrel: Lena Dunham, the Girls creator and standard bearer for the clueless entitled snowflakes. Dunham's fangirl devotion to Clinton is almost slavish. After the Trump "locker room talk" Billy Bush controversy, conservatives struck back by showing a clip of Dunham and Clinton on a 30-second blurb for Dunham's Youtube channel talking about how much Hillary wanted to see a clip of Lenny Kravitz having a wardrobe malfunction where his firehose slipped out. Dunham also reacted like a complete basket case to Clinton's loss on her blog. The morning before, Dunham had pranced around on Twitter about prepping for the Clinton victory, even saying she "I love you all. Tonight we make history. I may or may not wear a bow" as if anyone gives a fuck. The return to earth was not a very soft landing. She titled her first post-election blog post "Don't agonize, organize". But most of the blog was about agonizing, not organizing. She even wrote this pathetic statement, surprising for a "feminist":
"A lot of people have been talking about how we need to try to understand how this happened and what's going on in the minds of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe let's leave that to the strategists, to the men in offices who need to run the numbers. It should not be the job of women, of people of color, of queer and trans Americans, to understand who does not consider them human and why, just as it's not the job of the abused to understand their abuser."
So Dunham had been the champion of a campaign that proclaimed the equality of people of all backgrounds, but in losing that campaign she suddenly proclaimed that people of only one background could be strategists who run numbers, the straight white men. Real encouraging.
So there you are folks, the first (and maybe last) annual BOLDIES and Lepers.
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