When Will They Ever Learn?

Kristi Nichols- Kansas City resident and the organizer of Open Mo. 2020 about 80 protesters attended the midday rally near the Country Club Plaza. pic.twitter.com/iBEIBlxMhO

— Glenn E. Rice (@GRicekcstar) April 20, 2020

Not that long ago, somebody unearthed opinion columns (IIRC) that James Gunn had written long before he went to work for Marvel Studios/Disney making two very profitable films for them.  It was all over social media and terrified Disney, which promptly fired Gunn.

And then, six months or so later, realizing what a stupid business decision that was, they quietly re-hired him.  Social media is not the vox populi it is still taken to be.  Hell, the American electorate is barely that, and it is at all because it's a Constitutional necessity that we pretend it to be.

Hold that thought a moment:

[Katy]Tur lamented that the network was having to cover the protests.

“Because they are so small,” she said. “But their message gets amplified on social media. Their message gets amplified by the president of the United States.”

“They are not just putting themselves in danger, they are putting everyone around them in danger,” Tur concluded.

I admire Katy Tur.  I like her work.  I wish she wasn't on MSNBC, so I could see more of her work (I don't have cable, is all).  But "their message gets amplified on social media"?  I'm sure some producer told her that, and said cover the protest anyway, because.  Funny, Facebook has dropped some of those protest sites because, well, Facebook doesn't have to carry water for crazy.  Facebook is a private company, not an arm of the federal government.

But because of "social media" (which is WAY more than Facebook), MSNBC and all the other news outlets have to cover protests of crazy people where 80 or more (or less) are gathered.  80 people!  Imagine it!  I've seen small Tex-Mex restaurants with more people on a weeknight.

Besides, these people are idiots.

“We are a group of patriots and grassroots efforts to open up Missouri,” she said. “I want all the states to be opened up. We have to end this tyranny. Our constitutional rights have been violated and we need Missouri to open up.”

“The information that has gone out with the virus — it’s no worse than the flu,” Nichols continued. “We didn’t lock down cities, states and nations because people had the flu.”

That's the lady in the tweet.  And no, you don't have a constitutional right to go about infecting people freely and at your convenience.  Then there are the people Tur was talking about:

“She said she does not believe these numbers that are coming out of New York, does not believe that the rate of contagion is any more than the flu,” Hillyard said. “A lot of these theories that are pushed by the president of the United States.”

I don't care if the POTUS says the moon is made of green cheese and the earth is flat:  you don't have to find people who agree with him and put them on TV.    Trump has also said it's okay to defy civil order and "liberate" whole states.  Should journalists be interviewing militia members and white suprmacists and insurrectionists to be sure they cover what the President is talking about?

Trump is smashing the rules and inviting anarchy.  The press doesn't have to play along "because we've always done it this way" and no President has ever done it that way.