She did challenge him over his remarks about women, and she did get him to say whatever it was about her bleeding. And all over social media, there is outrage. How dare Donald Trump allude to menstruation? On the one hand, he's banned from some big GOP speaking occasion. On the other are people going after Megyn Kelly. How come she went after Donald Trump and went easy on the others? That's an interesting question, but absolutely none of the Fox talking heads asked the most interesting and obvious question. (I'll get to that.)
Another thing Trump said was that he gave to various and sundry candidates. He was challenged because he's donated to Hillary Clinton in the past. But at that point, Trump said something remarkable. He said he was a businessman, and when pols asked him for money, he gave. He said that a few years later he might ask them for a favor. Very Don Corleone, if you ask me. Except Don Corleone was portrayed as helping ordinary people, giving them power society may have unfairly denied them, in return for some unspecified favor in the future. Trump gave money to people who were already among the most powerful in the country.
In the clip I saw, Trump said he gave money to most of the people on the stage. One of them said no, while a few of the others asked him to give them money. They probably couldn't help it. Politicians in the United States spend so much time asking for campaign money it's a wonder they have time to do their jobs at all. And it's no wonder that so little gets done in the name of We, the People.
Then Trump said something truly remarkable. He said the system was broken. Sure, it's pay for play. Sure, he plays the game. Sure, he uses the rules as they are laid out. But Trump's utterance, and others like that, are the real reason GOP bigshots don't like having him around. He isn't supposed to say things like that. None of the other hopefuls wander around telling the truth. They all pretend to represent us, while Trump's right out there, in front of God and everybody, saying the system is for sale to the highest bidder.
So why am I attacking poor Megyn Kelly? It's because neither she nor any of her allegedly pro colleagues, as far as I know, followed up on that statement. Wouldn't it be appropriate to say, "If the system is broken, how can we fix it?" Wouldn't it be appropriate to ask that of not only Trump, but of every person standing on that stage? Isn't basic fundamental democracy something worth protecting?
Not to the talking heads of Fox News, and not anyone in MSM of whom I'm aware. As far as I know, the only candidate talking about Citizens United, which empowers the Koch Brothers to create and empower anti-union slime like Scott Walker, is Bernie Sanders. As far as I can tell, the great minds at Fox don't even think it merits a second thought.
The larger problem is that the rest of the media, like the NY Times, which is supposed to be better than Fox, is still harping on Trump and Kelly and whether this will be the thing that finally stops Trump's momentum. So far, just about every odious thing he says gives him a bump in the polls. Can Fox stop Trump from wandering around telling saying his unedited opinions, which sometimes turn out to be true?
Time will tell. Thus far, they've been pretty good about steering the national conversation to places that continually move working people backward. Thank goodness Ronald Reagan got rid of that inconvenient fairness doctrine that said issues actually had to be discussed from both sides. I remember the club owner in the Blues Brothers saying, "We have both kinds of music, country and western."
Sometimes, in these United States, I feel like we get both sides of the issue--right and ultra right. Make no mistake, I like Donald Trump about as much as I'd like some loathsome reptile I found crawling under my bed. But Fox likes him even less, because they simply can't afford to have him running around telling the truth, and focusing on issues that We, the People are simply supposed to ignore.
Posts
