Media watch: Media Created Cuomo Myth
Gov. Cuomo ordered COVID-positive patients into elderly-care facilities and relented only after news of deaths trickled out, fumes The Federalist’s Christopher Bedford. He never took blame for that but instead offered “lie after lie,” plus his usual bullying. And “what did the corporate media do? They got creepy, worshipping him like something between a savior and a manipulative boyfriend.” The Post and others “demanded answers,” but “leftist outlets thanked him for his leadership.” Hollywood gave him an Emmy, and daytime shows invited him to pitch his farcical book on pandemic “leadership.” Indeed, the “myth” of Cuomo, “Master of Pandemics,” was the creation of the American media — “the very people whose job is to hold politicians accountable,” regardless of party or ideology.ᐧEmmys are for acting. But for “CNN, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP and PolitiFact, there is no excuse.”
Conservative: Limbaugh’s Lasting Legacy
At Spectator USA, Daniel McCarthy mourns Rush Limabugh, who will “be loved by the right and hated by the left for years to come.” A “media powerhouse,” he proved “there could be a mass audience for [conservatives’] message” large enough “to support a television network.” He showed how to be “successful in using weapons that the left forged,” including bringing “a rock irreverence to conservative commentary.” “Millions of Americans don’t accept the orthodoxy that the old media and now the new social networks promote,” and if deprived of a platform, “they’ll look for another, no matter how irreverent it might be.” If lefties fear a new Rush will be “even more shocking to their sensibilities,” they need to “encourage more speech, not less.”
White House beat: First Felines
Only “about a dozen cats have padded through the White House, compared with more than 100 dogs,” but the Bidens will “add a rare first feline” to the family, reports The Washington Post’s Bonnie Berkowitz. Some cats “had the run of the White House.” Theodore Roosevelt’s cat Tom Quartz “liked to stalk Jack, a family terrier, and jump onto his back” — and did “something similar to Joseph Cannon, the speaker of the House.” The Fords’ Shan was more chill: She liked to “grab an afternoon nap with first lady Betty Ford.” Not so Misty Malarky: As Jimmy Carter appeared at the top of the Grand Staircase for his first state dinner, “the Marine Band began to play, the press waited expectantly” — and Misty strode first down the stairs.
From the left: The Cancel-Celebrities Culture
“Stop treating celebrities like politicians,” demands New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait. Social media are producing “panicky firings,” because no “film or show wants to be linked, however tangentially, to ‘racism’ or ‘anti-Semitism,’ either real or imagined.” Gina Carano was axed from Disney’s “The Mandalorian” “over a supposedly anti-Semitic social-media post.” Yet the post wasn’t bigoted, and anyway, we shouldn’t expect an actress “to analyze her social-media posts for their historical undertones with the same level of intellectual sophistication” as members of Congress. “A person can have a job vamping on a reality show or dressing up in a silly costume and pretending to chase around Baby Yoda in a spaceship without possessing a fine-tuned antenna for decoding political symbolism.”
Education desk: Illinois’ Useless Standards
At FoxNews.com, Eli Steele recalls a young, illiterate man seeking a job whom he met while gathering footage for a documentary on Illinois’ “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards.” Steele marveled at “how far this man’s world was from the new standards” leaders thought would uplift blacks. The disconnect between their “progressive values” and “the realities on the ground could not be starker.” Illinois teachers “failed to uphold the most basic” of education standards for that man, and he isn’t alone: In 2019, only 37 percent of Illinois third-graders showed proficiency in English. When Steele asked the man “how he felt about the education system wanting to encourage students to become activists, he laughed: “Anyone can march, but not everyone can get a job.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board