Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Resarch Center loves to mock liberals (and those suspected of being liberal) of being "emotional" as a way to devalue their arguments. For instance, the MRC repeatedly dismissed Jimmy Kimmel's monologues about health care and the Las Vegas massacre as "emotional" in an attempt to shut him up. A NewsBusters tweet even mocked him as "Cryin' Jimmy Kimmel."
But if a conservative gets emotional, the MRC has decreed that it's wrong for anyone to criticize it.
That's the message we get from an Oct. 19 post by Curtis Houck headlined "Tasteless CNN Debases Itself by Blasting Kelly for Emotional WH Remarks":
Just when you thought CNN couldn’t cheapen itself any further. On Thursday, CNN Newsroom reacted to a powerful White House statement Chief of Staff and Gen. John Kelly (Ret.) amidst the Gold Star families controversy by noting Kelly’s personal sacrifices before lambasting him for calling out a Democratic member of Congress and attacking the media.
Right off the bat, CNN Political Director David Chalian noted that “it's hard to listen to a father tell that story and not have sympathy” before declaring that Kelly’s emotions must be separated “from the White House chief of staff going into the press briefing room to clearly try and attempt to clean up a political mess that, quite frankly, his boss largely created.”
“[B]ecause John Kelly wouldn't be part of this story and wouldn't feel the need to go to the press and address this and we wouldn't have a ton of questions if it were not for his boss who injected him into this entire episode this week,” Chalian added. That’s the thing with CNN. Network personalities might accurately claim that something isn’t political, but then disqualify themselves by going political and making any segment into an anti-Trump tirade.
White House Correspondent Jeff Zeleny was in the room for the pin-drop moment, but put aside Kelly’s message to lament how he “did not answer, what role President Trump played in politicizing this as well.”
So it wasn't tasteless and debasing for the MRC to sneeringly mock "Cryin' Jimmy Kimmel," but it's somehow tasteless and debasing to point out that Kelly was exploiting his own son's death to make a political point and extract Trump out of a politial mess?
Also, of all the epithets the MRC hurled at Kimmel's monologues, "pin-drop moment" was not one of them. Apparently, only conservatives are allowed to be emotional while making a political point.
