Donald Trump’s “news distortion investigations”
In the summer of 1967, just before they gave their first and only performance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Sullivan’s son-in-law made a request of the great rock and roll group The Doors. He asked them to change a single lyric in their flagship song “Light My Fire.” Instead of singing, “girl we couldn’t get much HIGHER,” he asked them to substitute, “girl we couldn’t get much BETTER.” Apparently “higher” had too many drug connotations.
They agreed. During the live performance, lead singer Jim Morrison deliberately sang the song with the original lyric intact anyway. Nobody was going to tell him what to sing. They were never invited back, but they made history.
That is where suppression of free speech starts and ends. When you’re told you can’t say something, and if it isn’t hate speech or it doesn’t incite riots or it doesn’t constitute a conspiracy to commit a crime, then you should go ahead and say it. Especially if the edict came from The Man, the constituted authority, the System attempting to stifle criticism of itself.
So when Disney boss Bob Iger and ABC News chief Almin Karamehmedovic asked the hosts of The View to “tone down” the political rhetoric on the show, especially toward Trump, they told him to go to hell. They doubled down.
Karamehmedovic called a meeting with the show’s five hosts, Joy Behar, Sara Haines, Ana Navarro, Sunny Hostin, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and the show’s moderator Whoopi Goldberg. He laid it on ‘em. More celebrities, less Trump. They said NO!
Thursday’s show kicked off with a segment focused on Trump’s insane Oval Office meeting with the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which featured Trump oing on a rant about baseless “white genocide” conspiracy theories. They excoriated Trump. They roasted him alive. Good for them.
But it is worrying. This is creeping authoritarianism. This is the thin end of the wedge. This is where a gentle nudge from above can turn into an iron fist, followed by fines followed by imprisonment, followed even by murder.
Trump and his gang of thugs, goons, liars and thieves, laughingly referred to as an “administration,” will continue to apply pressure to that part of the media that refuses to get in line and bow down to Dear Leader. They are already beginning what they chillingly call “news distortion investigations.”
The irony here is, of course, that they are the ones distorting the news. Remember, whenever Trump and his pirate ship of hooligans accuse anyone of a crime or wrongdoing, it’s because they don’t like competition.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.