misfit migrants
Crackerjacks. Cohorts. Greenhorns. Frenemies.
Guest contributors run the gamut, but they all pretty much rock.
Guest contributors run the gamut, but they all pretty much rock.
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Regular Contributor Raymond (@RaymondWPS)
NBC threw almost 20 Million Dollars a year at Megyn Kelly to deliver her prized Fox News Channel audiences to NBC Network News. She has a daytime talk show debuting under their umbrella this fall (yet to be named or formally promoted, but apparently will be sandwiched between the first two hours of Today and winos Kathie Lee and Hoda), and currently a show airing on NBC titled "Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly."
"Sunday Night" was clearly rushed on the air as evident by the unoriginal title and the scramble to air her exclusive interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was poorly promoted by NBC News. I (along with the rest of the country) had no idea her show was debuting. But the bad reviews to follow pretty much set the tone for how awful this newsmagazine would be. In her interview with Putin, she clearly wants to be seen as a hard interviewer. In the past, she has been. It's one of the reasons I like her. At Fox News, she aggressively questioned politicians (Mike Huckabee), pundits (Kirsten Powers), and newsmakers (Karl Rove). With Putin, it appeared as if she was asking questions, but had no idea how to follow up with his snide, condescending commentary. With the recent Alex Jones interview, she set the stage for an attack (despite telling him off-camera it wouldn't be), but there was nothing there other than her challenging his conspiracy theories. Nothing about his early life to this point. Nothing about what evidence drew him to the conclusions he has. And to top it off, Kelly rounded out her piece with a media expert and a Sandy Hook parent, both obviously placed in after controversy surrounded the interview. Her Erin Andrews interview is dry and full of eye-rolling banter. This is alarming because Kelly is modeling her future with NBC News after Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters, Charlie Rose, and other great mainstream interviewers. The problem with the interview is that Kelly wasn't engaged with her subject. Andrews would talk about her stalker, her cancer diagnosis, or her engagement and Kelly interrupted to make it known to Andrews and the viewer that she's here, she can crack a lame joke, and this is "Sunday Night." And of course she knows the difference between the NFL and NHL. As for the rest of "Sunday Night," it's all clearly rejected or recycled puff pieces from Sunday Today with Willie Geist (Keith Morrison's New Zealand piece) and bloated Nightly News Investigations (Cynthia McFadden's Pharma Piece). But particularly stunning was that there was no summation where Kelly could ask the reporter followup questions. Most newsmagazines with a headlining lead anchor talk one-on-one with the reporter (CBS News' "Eye to Eye With Connie Chung," and more recently, Sinclair Group's "Full Measure With Sharyl Attkisson"). She should be utilizing her star power to build a connection with NBC colleagues who contribute to "Sunday Night" and especially her audience. Lastly, Tom Brokaw's editorial to bookend her Alex Jones show is starkly reminiscent of when CBS News would trot out Bob Schieffer to help legitimize the weak and poorly reviewed Katie Couric. Is Kelly worth the trouble? When you couple Kelly's milquetoast interviews with the hollow content from the rest of the show, it's no wonder why groin punches on "America's Funniest Home Videos" sound more appealing to network audiences. Kelly is clearly at odds; she wants the best of both worlds (her conservative audience at Fox News and consumers of mainstream media). She wants to be liked by everyone; to not be seen as abrasive or aggressive to a mainstream audience. The problem is that she built an entire career out of being abrasive and aggressive. And in an era where anyone can cull a clip from YouTube, a reinvention of that image will never be successful and will be viewed as a false narrative. Her desire to imitate Winfrey, Rose, and Walters is baffling; her strengths have always been in interrogating guests over hard news topics. A daytime talk show with a loud studio audience and "Steals and Deals" doesn't suit her interrogation strengths, and judging by her Fox News Special last year and her "Sunday Night" outings, she can't overcome the deficit. As for where this leaves her daytime program, we all know this will go the way of Couric, Jane Pauley, Meredith Vieira, Anderson Cooper and others with star power who simply could not connect with their audience. But the question is: how many weeks do they give her before they yank her off the air or affiliates go rogue and air something else in that spot? Different daypart, but she may tank faster than Chevy Chase doing late night. She would be better suited in the afternoon, delivering to the NBC Network what she did for Fox News in an hour or two-hour "Afternoon Today" style block. President Trump's White House interrupts regular daytime programming often. So why not have a face for those daytime interruptions, especially with someone who publicly went toe-to-toe with him? She can deliver breaking news updates, live interviews with politicos and also do the celebrity/inspirational stuff she thinks she can sell to daytime TV audiences. One thing is for sure: NBC is watching this way more closely than we might think.
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On the one year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub Islamic terrorist attack, it appears the LGBT Left has learned nothing.
I remember hearing about the attack. I was on Twitter, and I began to see reports bubbling up on my feed. It was strikingly impactful as I remember easily imagining myself in the situation unfolding. Going to a club is supposed to be a fun and freeing experience. I have gone many times with friends and it simply never occurred to me that my life might be in danger. There was also an immediate and unsettling realization that the victims were targeted for being gay, something very rare in the United States. So rare, in fact, that the affront to my sense of humanity and decency was greatly offensive. I was angry. At the time I, like so many others, posted on my social media that I refused to be afraid. When it was revealed the attack was Islamic in nature, it struck me intensely that the fears I had pondered about Islamic influence in Europe had finally landed in America. Unfortunately, at the same time, the LGBT world interpreted the situation in a completely and utterly baffling way. LGBT media blamed everything from Christian intolerance towards gay marriage to transgender bathroom bills to Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric. Despite the now confirmed facts that Omar Mateen, the terrorist in question, was a registered Democrat and openly declared his intentions in the name of ISIS, the LGBT world insisted on blaming the entire tragedy on ‘hate.’ One year later the narrative has not changed. In my Twitter feed, I see nothing but calls for ‘love and kindness’ to defeat ‘hate and intolerance.’ I see calls for gun control and legislation to protect LGBT from hate crimes or discrimination. More absurdly, LGBT just this past week marched in support of Sharia law. It occurs to me that the Right and Left simply think differently. So differently, in fact, that it may be impossible to ever be on the same page at all. It reminds me of watching Hoarders and seeing family desperately insist that a wet and moldy box of magazines covered in rat feces is dangerous trash while the hoarder, baffled, angry or indignantly declares it valuable and worth saving. The two sets of brains think differently. No amount of reason can convince the hoarder because their view of reason itself is so profoundly warped. In the same way, it has become so ingrained in liberal identity to defend Islam at any cost that they are no longer capable of viewing Islamic terrorism rationally. The Left obtains a sense of satisfaction and validation that they are indeed good and decent people, by defending Muslims regardless of the context. Part of the liberal mindset revolves around their personal sense of standing alone against intolerance and injustice in the world. In order to prove their loyalty to equality and justice, they must stand up against all forms of ‘hate.’ Naturally, they view themselves in comparison to Republicans, Christians, or a generalized version of the Right. In their worldview, we are ignorant, hateful, dangerous bigots and they alone must battle us to protect vulnerable and innocent minorities. The LGBT Left, in particular, feels a sense of self-righteousness declaring loyalty to Islamic validation based on their perceived view that they share a common enemy. The Left is so apologetic and celebratory of Islam on principle because the Right is so critical and demanding of Islam. Not only does the Left encourage their own sense of goodness by ‘standing up’ for a perceived vulnerable population, they do so against a widespread enemy they believe they face oppression from. The Pulse attack validated a long-standing belief by LGBT that America is a dangerous place for them and the undercurrent of hate and intolerance was in danger of erupting. For decades LGBT have been warning of a ‘backlash’ and screaming about ‘hateful rhetoric’ inspiring average Americans to attack them. Of course, this just hasn’t happened, but the Pulse attack allowed them the perfect opportunity to proclaim their predictions accurate. The LGBT Left is so dedicated to this mindset that when they do, on rare occasion, admit Islamic brutality towards gays exists, they do so only in the context of generalized hatred of gays as a whole. Zack Ford, for example, insisted in an article titled, Conservatives Try To Scapegoat Islam To Avoid Responsibility For Perpetuating Anti-LGBT Violence, that ISIS executing gay men and gay men killing themselves due to Christian hatred is essentially the same thing. Hillary Clinton was praised as an LGBT hero after declaring she would fight the ‘hate’ that caused the Pulse attack while Donald Trump was vilified as an enemy to LGBT despite his call for an end to Islamic brutality towards gays worldwide. LGBT insist on referring to the gay detention camps in Chechnya, an Islamic majority country, as ‘Russian.’ It seems they are far more comfortable fighting the concept of homophobia than addressing the reality of Islamic brutality towards gays, or really anyone. The fundamental problem is in the way liberals value their identity. They have walled themselves in with varying and complex social rules making it impossible for them to respond to any situation rationally. After 9/11 the Left immediately defined itself by its position against negative reaction to Islam as a whole. While most Americans were angry, distraught, and utterly helpless in the face of true horror committed by an ideology so widespread it seemed impossible to tackle, the Left devoted itself to lecturing us on why that fear was socially unacceptable intolerance. 15 years and thousands upon thousands of Islamic terrorist attacks later, they have only more deeply embedded this position into their being. The vocal Jewish lesbian commentator, Sally Kohn, has practically defined her career on demanding Islam is the purest expression of freedom and tolerance in the world. Barack Obama was famous for his praise of Islam. Liberals get a warm, fuzzy feeling every time they repeat the phrase ‘Islam is a religion of peace!’ In all reality, this is more of an identity in opposition to the Right than it is an actual preference for the religion itself. Even at its most moderate and civil, Islam is far more religiously conservative and restrictive than any version of Christianity in the West. It is illogical for extreme liberal thinkers to support such a religion at all. The Left tends to define itself in opposition to the Right. The Right tends to define itself on a set of principles and morals. If Republicans support something, liberals are inclined to oppose it with every fiber of their being. Since 9/11 the Right’s position has been extreme suspicion of worldwide Islamic political and religious policy and the Left’s position has been utter blind devotion to the concept of Islamic benevolence. Where the Right can sometimes be too aggressive in their hostility towards Islam as a whole, the Left is absolutely unwilling to view Islam in any negative light whatsoever. To do so would be to engage in ‘bigotry’ and therefore nullify their sense of what being a good person is. As a result, sexual minorities, women, religious minorities, free thinkers, and advocates of liberty worldwide have greatly suffered, often subject to true genocide. The Left’s refusal to subject themselves to their own standard of immoral thinking has cost the lives of millions worldwide. Rather than address Mateen’s self-proclaimed motivation of grand Islamic purpose, the LGBT left instead fixated on a handful of marginal Christians online who posted videos celebrating the concept of ‘punishment’ for homosexual debauchery. Somehow random Christians online expressing distasteful opinions equated in weight and proportion to ISIS executing gays worldwide. The Pulse terrorist attack could not have been prevented. The shooter was a certified security officer who successfully passed extensive background checks. No current or proposed gun law would have prevented him from owning a gun or using it that day. The incident was rare in the United States, especially in regards to targeting the LGBT community. It was the first time such a tragedy occurred, and it has not been repeated. It was a symptom of the danger of Islamic political ideology. It was not caused by generalized hatred, and no amount of social agreement on LGBT acceptance would have impacted it one bit. The efforts to ‘fight hate’ today are nothing more than narcissistic displays of virtue and a poorly thought-out attempt at self-satisfaction. Memorials, parades, campaigns, and personal declarations dedicated to ‘fighting hate’ in the name of the Pulse victims are designed to validate the LGBT preference for victim status and the euphoric sensation of marinating in the emotional fulfillment of sympathy from others. It serves no true purpose and is, in reality, extremely offensive to the general population which has been overwhelmingly accepting and supportive of us for decades. To assert Pulse was a ‘hate crime’ caused by rhetoric or opposition to LGBT agenda topics is to accuse average Americans of holding such terrible views they would allow such a tragedy to occur. LGBT had the opportunity to shine a light on Islamic brutality towards sexual freedom and liberty worldwide but instead chose to entertain their pet cause of anti-Christian, anti-Republican conspiracy theory. No amount of evidence will persuade them. More alarming, and offensive, they have taken it upon themselves to demand further Federal protections for LGBT, citing the tragedy as proof of its need. They rightfully assume no politician will wish to oppose the Equality Act, the single most dangerous bill to liberty in a generation, on the heels of the anniversary of the worst anti-LGBT ‘hate crime’ in US history. Despite the bullying, it is vital Republicans remain firm against this proposal and resist the lure of social approval by supporting it as a symbolic expression of solidarity with the victims. It has come to my sad realization that the Left is uninterested in the motivation behind LGBT hate crimes, (unless they are Christian), and prefers to see a world where all violence or hostility towards LGBT is centralized around the same singular motivation. It is far easier to address ‘hate’ than it is to demand accountability from a religion they are dedicated to defending. Pulse is also not a direct damnation of Muslims in America either. The event was isolated and hasn’t been replicated. But denying the threat of Islamic political expression through violence for the sake of politically correct nuance is a mistake. Muslims in America should be standing alongside LGBT and the Right demanding a reformation of Islam represented in most of the world today. Instead, both parties choose to rely on victim status to obtain social sympathy. Innocent people going out for a night of fun were murdered and even hunted down helplessly. This is what should impact the American population. The reality that the motivation behind the attack is a worldwide ideology should inspire collective resistance. We should remember Pulse as an event where political Islam invaded our security and mercilessly massacred innocent citizens. We cannot address, contain, or prevent future tragedies like this one if we utterly refuse to say its name. For more from Chad, visit chadfelixgreene.com and follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg. |
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