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Media: ‘Dear America, Please Hate Us’

Can the press corps cover Trump, conservatives, or Christians fairly?
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That’s the headline of a Washington Post story, which begins:

Computer scientist David Gelernter, a Yale University professor who has decried the influence of liberal intellectuals on college campuses, is being considered for the role of the Donald Trump’s science adviser. Gelernter met with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday, according to press secretary Sean Spicer.

Gelernter is a pioneer in the field of parallel computation, a type of computing in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously. The programming language he developed in the 1980s, Linda, made it possible to link together several small computers into a supercomputer, significantly increasing the amount and complexity of data that computers can process. Since then he has written extensively about artificial intelligence, critiquing the field’s slow progress and warning of AI’s potential dangers.

In 1993, Gelernter was seriously injured by a letter bomb sent by Ted Kaczynski, the anti-technology terrorist known as the Unabomber.

Beyond computer science circles, Gelernter has made a name for himself as a vehement critic of modern academia. In his 2013 book, “America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats),” he condemned “belligerent leftists” and blamed intellectualism for the disintegration of patriotism and traditional family values.

So wait: this guy is a computer scientist at Yale University, a leader in his field, author of a number of books, including one on consciousness, others on computing, and one on Judaism … and he’s “fiercely anti-intellectual” because he has criticized the liberal intelligentsia? Good grief. They don’t even know what they don’t know.

Mollie Hemingway cites that and three other very recent examples in this broadside against the media. Conclusion:

If the media would like to understand why they’re not viewed as the innocent victims they believe themselves to be in their war against Trump, this tiny little sample is a good place to start.

If the media can’t be trusted to fairly report on successful governors, genius Yale professors, or Martin Luther King III, they can’t be trusted to have the emotional distance, objective aims, respect, tolerance, journalistic skills, or sanity to cover Trump himself.

A strong media is required to hold politicians accountable and help preserve a functioning republic. Our media, who are swinging wildly from eight years of sycophancy into an era of cartoonish hostility, are in no position to hold anyone accountable. This is a crisis, and one that nearly everyone except those in the media establishment and the political movement they support seems to recognize.

True, true, true. They’re making it so, so easy for Trump.

 

 

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