The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

Posted on | December 23, 2019 | Comments Off on The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

 

Over the weekend, Breitbart News editor Alex Marlowe gave a speech at a Turning Point USA conference in which he invoked the memory of the late Andrew Breitbart. Coincidentally, I happened to be present at the 2007 Young America’s Foundation conference where Andrew first met Alex, who was then a student at UC-Berkeley, but I digress . . .

At the TPUSA event, Marlowe played a video clip for the attendees — most of them too young to remember Andrew in his heyday — in which Breitbart expressed his populist contempt for the elite media. And if you remember how Andrew operated on Twitter, one of his frequent targets was Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America.

 

You may recall the notorious paranoia of MMfA’s David Brock, and may even remember Brock’s ugly lawsuit against his ex-boyfriend, but surely the kids at TPUSA don’t understand the history of MMfA, which is basically this: During the presidency of George W. Bush, progressives became quite desperate to defeat what they saw as the success of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (to use Hillary Clinton’s phrase) in shaping the media environment. In particular, they hated the influence of Fox News, and feared that “mainstream” journalists were being too friendly to Republicans. With money from George Soros, among others, MMfA was created as an attack machine, compiling dossiers on “right-wing” figures in the media, in an effort to discredit anyone who disagreed with the Democrats’ left-wing agenda. Boehlert, who had previously worked for Salon-dot-com after getting his start in print media covering entertainment at Billboard and Rolling Stone, joined MMfA in 2006 and worked there for more than a decade. But in the past two years, Boehlert left MMfA and, since December 2018, has been blogging at DailyKos.

 

Excuse me? How does a veteran journalist go from a full-time position at a major left-wing 501(c)3 to doing a free DailyKos blog? Was there some kind of scandal or perhaps a falling-out with David Brock?

At one point, Boehlert was calling himself an employee of ShareBlue Media (an attempt by Brock “to build the left’s answer to Breitbart News,” which has since morphed into The American Independent) but it would seem that Boehlert left that gig sometime in late 2018.

There’s been no explanation of Boehlert’s career change, but he continues to pound away at his favorite themes in his DailyKos blog:

The press doesn’t have — or won’t use
— the proper language to describe
today’s radical Republican Party
— Dec. 8

Media pushes ‘Dems in disarray’
over impeachment — again
— Dec. 15

The New York Times’ impeachment coverage
devolves into Republican talking points
— Dec. 16

Media fail: The press keeps
covering impeachment through
the eyes of the Republican Party
— Dec. 18

Boehlert is a one-trick pony, endlessly repeating the same argument, that the liberal “mainstream” media is too nice to Republicans. You really have to be living in an alternative universe to believe, for example, that the New York Times is publishing “Republican talking points,” but in Boehlert’s mind, the only acceptable media coverage of politics would be nothing but press releases from the DNC. Boehlert denounces any “mainstream” news organization that ever treats Republicans as representing a legitimate point of view. Boehlert clearly desires to exercise the authority of a commissar in a totalitarian Ministry of Truth.

Boehlert’s weird worldview was on display Sunday morning:

MSNBC guest Eric Boehlert said the media’s focus on white working-class voters is “dangerous” and “racist” during an appearance on AM Joy.
“This obsession, and it goes back to the day after he was inaugurated, this obsession with interviewing white, Midwestern Trump voters and asking them what they think about Trump, it is a dangerous, it is a racist message,” Boehlert said. “Because the message is, white Republicans are who matter in this country. Their opinions are what really matter. The press invented this beat out of whole cloth after Trump was elected.”
Boehlert said that the opinions of white working-class voters are not news.
“After impeachment, article after article: ‘Trump voters, what did you think of impeachment?’ What’s the point? That’s not news,” he said. “That’s just not news. And again, I think it’s dangerous and I think it’s frankly racist.”

 

Could it be that Boehlert’s monomaniacal obsession has made him unemployable? Has he become so paranoid that nobody wants to hire him? Or maybe that “vast right-wing conspiracy” is to blame . . .

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Category: Media Bias

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