Earlier this evening while eating my dinner, I turned on the Erin Burnett Show on CNN. I usually turn on CNN while eating. I don’t know why. Habit, I guess. Or maybe I’m punishing myself. Maybe CNN is like my version of a hair shirt. And Erin Burnett is especially irritating to me. She comes across as rather dim and flip.
Tonight she orchestrated a little discussion about the Chick-fil-A story, and she and her producers managed to come up with a slightly different slant. The question was do politicians have the right to tell Chick-fil-A that they can’t open up a store in their prospective towns. Never mind that no one has denied Chick-fil-A anything, and never mind that so far the only thing that’s happened is a few politicians have rattled their sabers. CNN and Burnett decided to create a segment in which Chick-fil-A was made out to be the victim.
The background information that they supplied did include a brief reference to Dan Cathy’s remarks about how his god would smite us if we were nice to the gays, but after it was mentioned, the comment and the depths of hostility which it conveyed were quickly dispensed with. It was much easier for Burnett and CNN to pretend the story was just about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something that even President Obama did until very recently, as Jeffrey Toobin pointed out.
They simply glossed over the fact that Chick-fil-A has been giving millions to hate groups for years. And so of course they never mentioned that these hate groups spread the most vicious lies about LGBT people--they’re sick, diseased, prone to molest children, out to recruit children… They never mentioned that these hate groups support “ex-gay” and reparative therapy, even for young people and minors who are still financially dependent on their families. They never mentioned that these groups want to criminalize homosexuality. They didn’t say anything about these groups’ efforts to export their hate to Africa and other regions of the world. Burnett and her “analysts”, Jeffrey Toobin and some other smirking bobblehead, pretended that it was all cut and dry, very simple. For them, it’s all about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something even President Obama did until very recently. (Somehow I missed hearing about how Obama warned that his god would smite us if we disagreed with him, or how he had given millions to hate groups.)
Toobin went so far as to suggest that the politicians that objected to Chick-fil-A coming to their towns didn’t have a leg to stand on given that Chick-fil-A released that statement a few days ago assuring that it didn’t discriminate. The statement was rather bland, passionless, and not very convincing, and it was released by the company to quell a growing impression that Chick-fil-A was in business to financially support hate, but the statement was good enough for Toobin who insisted that the story was all about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something that even President Obama did until very recently.
Burnett pointed out that some companies vocally support marriage equality, like Starbucks and Goldman Sachs, and she asked what if a town wanted to ban a company that was supportive of marriage equality. She then claimed if one was okay, then so was the other. Now there’s some sophistry that will make you want to beat your head against a wall. Someone should point out to her that in the real world the two sides of this debate aren’t equal, and that ordinary mortals don’t have to throw out their convictions in order to appear “balanced.” Ordinary people are allowed to say one thing is right and the other thing is wrong.
And of course not one openly LGBT person who knows something about this story was given a chance to say anything.
Obviously, this is just one story, and it’ll most likely fade away in a few days, but the way CNN and Burnett handled this story represents a pattern. Burnett and her friends glossed over important details. They dumbed the story down. They didn’t ask for the opinions of LGBT people. And Burnett and the other two sat there and talked about it with shit eating grins on their faces, suggesting that this was all for entertainment anyway, it’s not very important, and they are far more wise than anyone else, and their opinions far more important because they’re on television.
What will it take for them to actually do some in depth reporting on LGBT issues? What will it take to convince them that the campaign to destroy us here in this country and around the world isn’t taking place for their amusement? Their ineptitude is only surpassed by their callous disregard for how these stories impact the lives of LGBT people.
No comments:
Post a Comment