Bryan Cranston Dedicates Tony Award to Journalists 'In the Line of Fire'

The Tony Awards were held last night, which is news to 99% of America. Most of us don’t know or care what’s happening on Broadway unless somebody makes a movie based on a play, or stages a play based on a movie. In Bryan Cranston’s case, it’s the latter. The Breaking Bad star is currently portraying Howard Beale in the Broadway adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 media satire Network, which was revived a couple of years ago to #Resist Trump or Fox News or whatever. Cranston won a Tony, which is nice. And in his acceptance speech, he praised the real heroes.

Jessica Campisi, The Hill:

Actor Bryan Cranston dedicated his Tony Award to journalists Sunday night, saying in his acceptance speech that “the media is not the enemy of the people”…

Cranston said he was dedicating the honor to “all the real journalists around the world.”

“Now, Howard Beale is a fictitious TV newsman who found his way in the line of fire because of his pursuit of the truth… And I would like to dedicate this to all the real journalists around the world, both in the press — the print media — and the broadcast media, who actually are in the line of fire with their pursuit of the truth.”

“It’s absurd to think that the media is the enemy of the people.” Bryan Cranston explains why he called out Trump’s attacks on journalists during his #TonyAwards speech. pic.twitter.com/2JZ3TPo095

— Patrick Ryan (@PatRyanWrites) June 10, 2019

I couldn’t make out most of that. Something about “reproductive rights”?

But assuming The Hill is quoting Cranston correctly, notice that he specified “the real journalists.” That doesn’t include anybody who reports bad news about Democrats. It doesn’t include Fox News and Breitbart.com and the Daily Caller and the site you’re reading right now. It doesn’t include all the people currently being demonetized and deplatformed on YouTube because a Vox.com vlogger threw a temper tantrum over some mean insults. It only includes the people who agree politically with Bryan Cranston, and who reaffirm Bryan Cranston’s worldview. Only the real journalists are “in the line of fire.”

I know it makes Trumpkins angry when I criticize Trump (and especially when I call them “Trumpkins”), but I agree with a lot of the things people like Cranston say about him. I don’t like the tweeting, the insults, the alternate reality Trump creates around himself. His general comportment does not appeal to me.

If the left limited their criticisms to what Trump actually does, that would be fine. But they don’t. They keep fighting the Trump they’ve imagined, not the one who exists in real life. They keep lashing out at what they imagine he’s going to do, and then… he doesn’t do it.

Here’s the thing about Trump’s 24/7 temper tantrum: That’s all it is. It’s just talk. He talks a lot. That’s what he does and has always done, and he has absolutely no reason to change now. But if he was going to start cracking down on journalists, if he planned to do more than just vent about them, wouldn’t he have started by now?

If Trump was the tyrannical despot they make him out to be, we wouldn’t see things like this:

Later this morning… on CNN’s @ReliableSources with @brianstelter and @CBSSunday learn more about my new book: “The Enemy of the People: A Dangerous Time to Tell the Truth in America.” It’s out on June 11th. The truth is worth the fight… pic.twitter.com/jHLzFfNiDX

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) June 9, 2019

Is Jim Acosta being interviewed in an undisclosed location, staying one step ahead of the government assassins sent to silence him? Have the secret police gathered up all the copies of his important book and burned them? Is he being repressed or oppressed in any way as he launches his national book tour? Nope. But Trump tweets bad stuff about him, just like Trump tweets bad stuff about anybody who hurts his feelings. So now Acosta gets richer and more famous while pretending to be a victim.

If Bryan Cranston lived in the world he thinks he lives in, he would’ve been booed off that stage and then thrown into a gulag. Nobody is subjugating him or the journalists with whom he’s declaring solidarity. They can talk all they want.

And boy, do they ever.