Three days into his broadcasting career at MSNBC, Ronan Farrow was given the Cronkite Award for journalism. Yet that’s not even the most ridiculous thing about Ronan Farrow.
To be sure, an anchor who works at a network that gave up on journalism a long time ago winning an award for journalism is ridiculous. MSNBC does not do journalism, it “leans forward.” That Farrow won that award just three days into his career is astounding. That he accepted it is laughable, almost as laughable as Barack Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.
The most ridiculous thing about Ronan Farrow is that his own mother doesn’t even know who his father is. It’s either Woody Allen or Frank Sinatra. That’s quite a range to work with.
The second most ridiculous thing about Farrow is that he has a job on the air at MSNBC at all and is expected, by that network, to turn its ratings around. That would be a big ask for a seasoned broadcaster. Seasoned broadcaster and leftwing crazyman Keith Olbermann failed at it. Less seasoned broadcaster Rachel Maddow has also failed at it. Ronan Farrow, though, is no seasoned broadcaster. He’s not even a broadcaster at all. Up to his appointment at MSNBC, he has no career to speak of.
What Ronan Farrow is, more than anything else, is a beneficiary of things that the left that loves him claims to hate. Namely, he is a beneficiary of genetic accidents, family connections, money, and upper class privilege. Farrow would not have the gig he has if not for his family connections, he would not have had his “apprenticeship” with Richard Holbrooke, and MSNBC would have tossed the resume reel that he never even had to submit onto a pile of other resume reels that actual broadcasters did submit, if he was not a son of Hollywood elites, good looking, young and rich. He’s one of the right people because he was born that way.
His ascension to hosting a show at MSNBC is blatantly unfair to the thousands of other young, earnest liberals out there who are plying their trade as broadcasters in places like Wichita and Peoria and elsewhere. Farrow leapfrogged all of them, to pull down a salary said to be in the “low millions,” because of accidents of birth and wealth, not hard work, talent, or paying his dues.
Farrow isn’t NBC’s only privilege hire. The network that once had an all-white lineup on cable hired former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton a few years back to host soft-focus human interest feature stories. What she really does is read a few lines written for her by producers, and pretend to conduct interviews for the camers. Those stories she has taken part in are unwatchable and amateurish. The younger Clinton has no charisma on camera or off. She has no broadcasting chops. But NBC keeps her on the payroll for an undisclosed sum all the same, which crowds out other potential hires.
Clinton’s mother is also a beneficiary of privilege and wealth. At their winter meeting, Democrats who say they’re “ready for Hillary” to be president couldn’t even name any worthwhile thing she had done. They support her because of who she married, or because of who picked her to be in government, or because of her abortion stand or something else — not for anything she has actually accomplished herself. After decades in public life and even stints in the Senate and as Secretary of State, Clinton’s resume isn’t much deeper than Ronan Farrow’s. She certainly didn’t “reset” US relations with Russia. An ambassador was killed by terrorists on her watch.
Yet liberals love the Ronan Farrows, Chelsea Clintons, Hillary Clintons and Unnamed Kennedys of the world. Think the world of them. Can’t get enough of them. Never seeing their hypocrisy. Liberals hating on the controversial Cadillac ad because it espouses hard work, and who want to use government to enforce their narrow definition of “fairness,” don’t blink at the fact that their own heroes tend to rise to positions of power not because of hard work or even talent, but because of the inherent unfairness of life. If life was actually forced to be fair, Hillary Clinton would be less than an afterthought in the presidential sweepstakes, and Ronan Farrow would still be an unknown non-broadcaster not having his thoughts aired on a cable network. But they’re all Kennedys by another name.
Past the hypocrisy of the left, we run into their gullibility and stupidity. Leftists consistently slam the greed and evil of big business, increasingly devalue hard work in favor of creative laziness, and cast government as society’s great salvation. They do this even as it has become clear that the big government they want is often equal parts incompetence and thuggery. Big government is spying on our Facebook updates while it misses Russia preparing to invade Ukraine. Big government gave us Obamacare, which is driving doctors out of practice, canceling millions of Americans’ health care, and strangling hiring. Big government couldn’t even manage to roll out its awful Obamacare competently. And big government in the form of the IRS has put its boot on the throat of Americans who wanted to organize and express their rights to peaceably assemble and make their views known. In the Obama age, big government is unchecked and getting bigger.
For all the power that big business wields, though, nothing on this earth wields more power than the federal government. The federal government is everywhere, not just inside our borders, but all over the world. It’s collecting taxes over here, keeping landowners from using their own land over there, pushing new regulations on car makers, telling fuel makers exactly what they can and cannot do, spying on our cell phone use, etc etc, all the time, everywhere.
No business or insurance company — the left’s perennial targets — exercises anything close to the power of the government. Because the government is so powerful, and because it handles so much money and information, it is obviously a magnet for greed and corruption. It is obviously a magnet for people who want to force their will onto other people. Where Americans have the choice to work for a big business or not, and until Obamacare had the choice of which insurance to buy or even whether to buy insurance at all, Americans often have no choice when federal regulations and federal bureaucrats are concerned. You will do what it says or, in many cases, you will end up losing your property and your livelihood and even going to jail. A powerful government is going to attract tyrants, both petty and not so petty.
But despite their claim to want everyone to be free, leftists never seem to have a problem with government getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful.
They’re either gullible — unaware that a powerful government is going to attract greedy people who lust for power for themselves — or they’re not very smart about how the world works and how despicable people can really be. Or they’re just dishonest about it all, and don’t really care about fairness, don’t really resent privilege as long as it benefits the right people, and are fine with government accumulating more power because they expect that that power will end up benefiting them in some way.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member