MeAgain Kelly: I'm Totes Worried About Trump's "Dangerous" De-Legitimization of the Media

Nothing but ego and skinny legs.

I really don't like people like this: Lawyers who think five votes by judges are the end-all be-all, reporters who think that Reportage is just the yak's tits. It's a very provincial, egotistical, solipsistic way to view the world: I trained in the use of the hammer, therefore, all the problems of the world can be classified as types of nails.

People who think this way do so to construct a belief in themselves as the omnicompetent hero, always the Man in the Arena, always the keystone upon which the burden of the arc of history weighs.

Everyone is the hero of their own life movie, but MeAgain is also the hero of your life movie.

And any tribe to which she belongs is therefore the Best Tribe and must be championed.

Her membership in the Media is what gives her Status; like all egotistical people, she will defend the source of her Status like a warrior bee defends its queen.

We begin this Hero's Tale as we begin all Hero's Tales, with an origin story. John McCain had his seven years as a prisoner tortured daily in North Vietnam; MeAgain's origin story begins, as usual, with her torture by Mean Tweets on Twitter.

Kelly felt that power firsthand in August 2015, when she pressed the candidate about his derogatory comments about women during the first Republican primary debate. Trump responded with a Twitter attack, which was quickly followed up by a barrage of insulting tweets and even death threats from his followers.

"What people don't realize about Donald Trump — and I don't even know if Donald Trump realizes it — is that every tweet he unleashes against you ... creates such a crescendo of anger," Kelly says.

The host of The Kelly File says that although she worried for her own safety and that of her children, she and her producers were determined not to let the threats impact their coverage of Trump. Now that Trump is the president-elect, she is especially concerned about his "de-legitimization" of the media.

"I think it's dangerous," Kelly says. "People ... need good, strong, skeptical journalists to be covering whoever it is -- whether it's Barack Obama or President Donald Trump -- and we're in a dangerous phase right now, where too many millions of Americans aren't listening at all to what the press tells them."

The Press is your teacher, and you are its Students, kneeling before your master, who will impart wisdom to you, if you would only be good students and believe what master tells you.

posted by Ace at 12:20 PM

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