PIGS ARE FLYING!

Because Rasty was busy on house repairs this afternoon, he left the TV running on the wrong channel: CNN instead of MSNBC, for once.  Thus I came to see something astounding.
Pundit Alex Jones, on his regular show, used the Jussie Smollett case as an example for a half-hour speech about the dangers of political hysteria.  He warned that the media have become so used to believing anything that could possibly be used to denounce Trump that they’ve let themselves forget not only civil discourse but logic, the rules of responsible journalism, and common sense.  He followed that with an interview with a Gay Indian Muslim TV comedian who had nothing good to say about Jihadists.
Quick, run to your window and look out, and see if you can spot a pig soaring past!
Of course, the show then moved on to explain how the Sanders/Occasional-Cortex “70% marginal tax” on the rich wouldn’t really take that much, and played an announcement for Bernie Sanders hosting a “presidential town-hall” – but still, that first speech (and its following interview) was astonishing for the corporation that has previously well earned the nickname of “Clinton News Network”.
Was it just the revelation that Smollett’s supposed attack by racist/homophobic/Trump-supporting White men turned out to be a hoax?  That Smollett set it up himself with a couple of Black Nigerian buddies?  That he did it to jack up his ratings and extend his contract? 
Or was it the announcement that the libeled Covington students had hired a really good lawyer, who was now suing the Washington Post for $250 million (coincidentally ((?)) the amount that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid when he bought the Post in 2013)? 
Could it possibly be something so unrelated as the massive outpouring of negative reactions to the Green New Deal and its supporters, despite all the approving build-up the media gave it?  That does, after all, imply that the media don’t have the manipulative power that they thought they did.
Or could it be something as simple as the steadily falling subscription rates of not only print media but their online versions, and the shaky viewership-rates of the cable-TV networks?  People rarely view media outlets that they don’t trust, after all.
None of this, really, can be blamed on Trump’s insistence that many of the media push “fake news”;  after all, Trump really isn’ta very good speaker.  He doesn’t have anywhere near the oratorical skills of the average Baptist preacher, let alone the near-hypnotic abilities of Hitler.  Remember that the American political right – from one inch to the left of Hillary all the way out to the fanatic fringe – has had plenty of experience (immunization?) with skillful speakers.  It was never Trump’s speeches that won him public support.  His simply repeating the phrase “fake news” wouldn’t have worked. 
Nothing could have disenchanted the public with the media except direct and repeated experience with sloppy and biased reporting.  There’s no teacher more effective than personal experience, and in their two-years-long blizzard of anti-Trump propaganda, the media have clearly overplayed their hand. 
Possibly the icing on the cake was the too-often repeated phrase that the supposed attack on Jussie Smollett was the result of “Trump’s divisive rhetoric”, when everyone can see that the “divisive rhetoric” has been coming steadily from the other political side.  So the revelation of the hoax blew that claim completely out of the water.
It’s interesting that CNN was the first media outlet to realize that the tide had turned.  We’ll have to wait and see who else catches on, and how quickly. 
--Leslie <;)))><