What’s Gotten Into the Water at CNN?
As Allahpundit writes at Hot Air, CNN’s anti-Rubio, anti-dihydrogen monoxide-themed Chyron is proof that “at long last, American media reaches peak moron. I’m just thankful that Newsbusters was there to capture it. They’ve waited years for this moment and now, finally, it’s here. Cherish it, guys.”
But CNN’s been broadcasting at peak moron for some time now, haven’t they? Let’s review these recent classic “This is CNN” moments:
- “CNN Asks if Dorner Fans ‘Have a Point’; Panelists Find it ‘Exciting’ Like a ‘Movie.’”
- “CNN’s Don Lemon says ‘we need to talk about’ Chris Dorner’s not-crazy manifesto.”
- “CNN Warns: Christie’s So Fat He Could Die In Office.”
- “Piers Morgan, Papal Truther.”
- “CNN anchor Deb Feyerick asked Saturday afternoon if an approaching asteroid, which will pass by Earth on February 15, ‘is an example of, perhaps, global warming?’”
- “Nobody Wants to Talk About CNN’s ‘Ethnic’ Problem.”
- Time-Warner-CNN-HBO spokesman Piers Morton sneeringly describes the Constitution as “your little book,” when handed a copy by guest Ben Shapiro.
- “Do you think you should have the right to have a tank under the 2nd Amendment?”
- “America has over 5000 nuclear warheads. Quite hard to defend against a ‘tyrannical U.S. government’ with that kind of firepower.”
- “CNN is behaving in a very MSNBC-like fashion,” with its producers denigrating Ben Shapiro after he defenestrated Morgan.
- Soledad O’Brien’s multiple recent examples of epistemic closure.
- “During CNN’s live New Years Eve coverage, left-wing comedian Kathy Griffin dropped to her knees to kiss the crotch of co-host Anderson Cooper. Howard Kurtz asks ‘What was so awful about it?’”
- Howard Kurtz defends NBC’s David Gregory breaking DC’s gun laws.
- “Reproduction without sex, a liberating future.”
- “CNN’s Don Lemon: ‘Should white men be profiled?’”
- “CNN Blames Culture of ‘Manliness’ For Belcher Murder/Suicide.”
- “CNN: Time for a Gas Tax Hike.”
And that’s just going back to the end of November, for the most part just searching through my own archives.
Last year, when another TV news division began to completely go off its rails, I asked, “What’s gotten into the water at NBC?” At the beginning of February, NBC finally parted ways with Steve Capus, the president of its news division.
At CNN, Jeff Zucker, who came from NBC, is just beginning to settle in as the network’s new president. Are these recent — even worse than usual for CNN — gaffes a sign of the old regime ending, and a new improved one about to take its place, or will CNN beclown itself even worse in the weeks to come?
(Something tells me that the latter course is more than a little likely.)
Update: “A news network can only be a bad joke for so long before it ceases to exist,” John Hinderaker writes at Power Line. I worry, frankly, about Jake Tapper, one of the best newsmen in Washington, who has accepted what I trust was a lucrative offer to anchor a CNN show. He may be joining a ship that is not just sinking, but sunk.”
Late Update (2/14/13): Welcome readers clicking in from Instapundit, the PJM homepage, and Real Clear Politics. For some thoughts on how to fix the network (yes, the patient might not be terminal), fellow PJM editor David Steinberg writes, “It’s Not Science, It’s CNN.”
I’m betting on further, and greater, beclownment.
You Go, Jeff!
Well,let’s not forget these people are corporate liberal teleflacks…not genuine journalists….it’s their job to “advance the narrative”…not objectively report the news….so cut him slack…because he’s a flack…by the way…the proper chemical name for water is “hydrogen hydroxide”…not “dihydrogen monoxide”..because it is composed of one negatively charged hydrogen ion and one positively charged hydroxide ion
But it’s so much more fun to goof on this vintage Internet meme.
Yea,yea…it’s been around awhile now…bit I grind my teeth every time I hear it…even when Rush says it
Water, if not handled properly, is a dangerous chemical. It should come with instructions.
Expect new regulations and a new goverment agency to regulate the regulations. This water stuff is dangerous – it can drown folks!
It is the universal solvent, after all.
Well, shoot. Here I though water was made up of H+ and OH-, and I come to find out that it is made up of anti-hydrogen.
Robbins, does reality know that you just changed the rules?
The EPA wanted to regulate water as a pollutant. True story.
The mask is off. They think they’ve won and they’re not going to pretend anymore.
Yes, this has to be put in context of Ted Turner being upset two years into Obama’s first term that he felt Obama should have pushed for Cap & Trade before letting a lot of political will go the wayside, attritioned away due to the long struggle with Obamacare. This tells you that strategically, not exactly rocket science, CNN will be in full advocacy mode to try and help push policies as far to the left as possible during the relatively short window of a honeymoon period post-election. Politically, it is all about bandwagons.
That is all it is really, there is no need to go into CNN’s leftist bias, aided and abetted by the Overton Window with MSNBC acting as the even more extreme foil. The good news is that the far-left have overreached, as they always do, already losing momentum through Feinstein’s gun control overreach. Good to see people finally focusing more on CNN’s bias. For too long conservatives have been wasting their time addressing MSNBC, the much easier target.
The point that MSDNC was trying to make, is that Rubio should have been drinking Brawndo. It’s got electrolytes!
Well played Sir, WELL played.
LOL! The funniest and most depressing movie of all time.
The Thirst Mutilator!
Peak-moron is like peak-oil. It’s never going to happen. As long as there’s demand for it, there will always be more and more moron.
I don’t think the media have reached peak moron yet. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that they will do something even more moronic in the near future.
Oh, you can rely on it, CNN will definitely beclown itself even worse in the weeks and months to come.
They only exist now to advance a leftist propaganda message. They have no allegiance to the truth, or any semblance of what America used to consider to be universally-accepted journalistic standards.
They have an acknowledged Communist (Van Jones) as a contributor now, and are very comfortable with that fact. Does anyone think there is ANYTHING that they wouldn’t do now, now that they freely, openly advocate for a leftist, statist government that seeks to “fundamentally transform America?”
Just another classic case of not enough, or too many drugs.
Peak-moron.. skies the limit!
Season 26 of the moronic ‘Survivor’ show just began. A ‘reality t.v.’ program where the underwhelming, undeserving are voted ‘Winner’ of the $1 million kitty due to the voter’s spite of being duped by the Jim Jones-like ringleader!
I tried watching Season 2 after enjoying Season 1 and realized almost immediately.. ‘It’s the same show with different names/ faces’!
How it continues is due to skies the limit idiocy.
Look at all the ‘Big Brother’ ‘Real Housewives’ spinoffs for starters. That’s but the very tip of the idiotic, reality t.v. iceberg.
The infinite-like laugh track-laden unfunny sitcoms, ridiculously portrayed drama programs renewed every year etc.,
It’s pure, unadulterated idiocy run amok.
CNN may be for troglodytes though sadly.. ‘business is booming’.
Hey Wolf, you never go full retard!
Celebrity Jeopardy Score: A record setting -4000.
I think the people at CNN have been ordered to say more and more outrageous things because they think it makes them seem relevant. All it does is make them look very foolish. And if you’re going far left, like they did with that cop killer Dorner, they have to understand that they can’t “out-left” the far-left loons on MSNBC. In any case, why would they? MSNBC has the worst ratings in cable news, so why try to copy their format? Well, they seem to be just like any other bunch of hapless liberals. Liberals are always determined to copy economic models that fail, like the ones in Europe. So why not do the same thing for TV news? CNN’s ratings will just sink even lower, making FOX News that much more powerful.
Perhaps CNN and Zucker have decided to become like the cable version of Hee Haw?
Wolfman Blitzer in a straw hat, a couple of talking, cartoon jackasses in the background, some scantily clad babes in cut of overalls sitting on the edge of the desk. I’d wager fair change HHNN would gather a considerably greater number of viewers than the Clinton News Network on steroids is going to garner.
The Zucker hire alone told me CNN “didn’t get it” and just made a bad situation worse. CNN wasn’t very effective at “out lefting” MSNBC, and neither when added together was competitive with FOX.
Maybe it’s the new business model under the auspices of the multiple fail Zucker. Lefties love mission statements. I’ve literally seen them pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to formulate a mission statement for private corporations. Dozen of pointy headed consultants with bad teeth from academia get together and construct Newtonian mission statements with Zucker nodding his head wildly in approval.
That’s the ticket. We weren’t Left enough!!!! Full Commie! Charge…
Peak moron? The “I wouldn’t bet on that”, jokes are obligatory.
Don’t know why everyone is so strung up on CNN. I don’t think anyone is watching:
On Tuesday, when the nation was supposedly focused on the SOTU, CNN averaged a little over 1 million viewers during the evening, including during live coverage of the big “O”.
During the 1 hour time slot directly preceding the SOTU, on NBC, Betty freakin’ White’s show (both half hour repeats) drew 5 million viewers.
A repeat of a reality food show on cable almost beat CNN’s Tuesday evening ratings. Some reality show called “Pawn Stars” regularly beats the tar out of CNN on Mondays.
I’d be concerned about what CNN has to say if they were on in more locations than the local gym and the airport.
Ignore them and they’ll go away.
Don’t knock Pawn Stars. – Chumley is the prototype new ager – the adult we hoped NOT to raise. The “old man” is “ex-Navy crusty” – and Rick manages the chaos.
My CNN story.
Back in the early 2000s I was living in Warsaw, Poland. One of the English-language cable channels I could get was CNN.
One day they had a story about the Polish Sejm (parliament) so they announce, “Today the Polish Parliament…” with voice over some film footage of a building with snow capped mountains in the background and a sign over the building, “Urzad Miasto Zakopanego.”
The Sejm was less than a mile from my apartment in Warsaw, which is in the flat as a pancake center of the country.
The sign means “City Hall of Zakopane” an artists colony and ski resort in the mountains near the Slovakian border – about as far as you can get from Warsaw and still be in Poland.
Let’s do a compare/contrast shall we. Dorner vs Ruby Ridge or Eric Rudolph. Somehow, I don’t recall Weaver or Rudolph being extolled by any pundits as almost a Superhero or as having a point. Well sure he bombed the Olympics but we need to have this discussion about abortion. These are the folks who want to do away with the Second Amendment. It is fine to go on a killing spree as long as you hate and kill the right people. But all you fly-over wingnuts need to turn in your guns.
Why hasn’t anyone created a video of all the sips obama has taken during his speeches. included his eating habits. then that video needs to go viral.
I stopped watching CNN after their buffoonish misreading of the “Arab Spring”. It is a joke of a “news” channel. And I don’t harbor much hope that things will improve — it will probably grow worse, with Jake Tapper becoming yet another CNN bozo.
Low tide in cable news swampland.
Worse Than Benghazi!
…at least based upon sound-bites per second.
Policing is different in black and brown communities. Maybe that is why the left cheered on Dorner.
Don’t arrest white guys this DEA agent was told:
http://youtu.be/72Lf9ZQK8t0
I’ve been wondering who the one person was still watching CNN.
I have not watched CNN for almost a year. I watched it this morning about 8:30 a.m. Then I changed the channel to some station showing a rerun of Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper. I don’t watch much of ANY so-called “news” stations anymore, be they cable or network. Why? They are so biased and the people on them are so absurd as to render any real information they might provide as useless.
Well, when your Fuhrer wants you to go after the competition and you can’t find an argument in his speech, you invent something, right Wolfie boy? But this ain’t no president smacking an attack rabbit with a paddle or a texted erection. No wheels on this bus.
I can hear Wolf in 2016. “Remember when Rubio drank that water?” and his colleagues will look at him like he’s their crazy old uncle. And most won’t have a clue anyway, because they’ll all be pretty, young new faces with the memories of a goldfish.
I know all his lib friends probably patted Blitztard on the back on his ability to create controversy out of thin air. To at least 50% of America, he looks like a complete dumbs**t. But Honey Wolf don’t care!
Is it one of God’s little jokes that the living embodiment of “peak moron” has a name so eerily similar? I speak of course, of the host of CNN’s nightly foray into stand-up comedy, sit-down style; the Papal Truther himself.
Why all the surprise?
This is a network flailing at the air, frantically trying to keep its head above water.
They recently scored their lowest audience ratings in 20 YEARS, for Pete’s sake.
(Check it out: Prime Time Cable Ratings from January 10:
O’Reilly 2,523,000
Cooper 452,000
Even their president saw the writing on the wall, resigning with the admonition that the network “needs some new blood”.
Anderson Cooper’s talk show was even cancelled.
This is, after all, the network that employs the gray-bearded Wolf Blitzer, the anchor who performed so brilliantly on that fabled episode of “Jeopardy!” some years back. What a genius he is!
Today, they have reportedly dispatched anchorette Erin whatever-her-name-is to wait dockside for the arrival of the nightmare cruise ship in Alabama.
At least they post a bit of humor with each telecast:
“CNN. America’s Most Trusted News Source.”
Of course it is!
“Central Nazi Network” makes another poop. How is this a news?
None of this is terribly surprising. CNN has been leaning further and further left for a long time. That they would join the rest of Obama’s Poodle media as a full fledge member of Obama’s and the DNCs extreme left wing propaganda effort is NO suprise to anyone paying any attention. As they compete more and more for MSNBCs crazy Marxist/Maoist viewing audience it will get worse.
As a if not the leading candidate he becomes the #1 target to destroy.
Alinsky 101: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it (Alinsky 1972)
The ultimate goal, said Alinsky, is NOT to arrive at COMPROMISE or PEACEFUL coexistence, but rather to CRUSH the opposition. “A People’s Organization is dedicated to ETERNAL WAR,” said Alinsky. A war is NOT an intellectual debate, and in the WAR against social evils there are NO RULES of fair play.
Look the Alinsky details up yourself at:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2314
I don’t think I’ve watched the communist news network since the first gulf war.
Someone mentioned this above but it bears repeating- Wolf Blitzer’s performance on Celebrity (ie dumbed down) Jeopardy a few years back revealed that a person can travel all over the world, interview the most important people of the day, read current events aloud, and ABSORB ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I personally love trivia but I’m not a trivia snob- I realize that people have lives and other interests and not everyone is into trivia. But Wolf Blitzer? Doesn’t his JOB (in theory) revolve around names, dates and places? His deep voice and serious sagely demeanor is backed up by nothing. How did he get where he is?
Wolf Blitzer = Meat Puppet
I don’t watch CNN, but I would bet my 401k that this video of Max Baucus drunk on his butt in the Senate will never play there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA
It is definitely racism at CNN. You know “don’t drink the water south of the border”. And Rubio, being Hispanic drinks bottled water. Dang nazi Blitzer.
But are these guys real morons if the audience has been so “stupidified” that their comments have become part of our public DNA?
I bet Rubio has taken water breaks in all 57 states.