There’s one thing that some right-wing nutjobs say that I actually agree with, and that’s problems with the mainstream media – or as Palin so often liked to say, “Lamestream Media.” And I wholeheartedly agree with her in the fact that the mainstream media will twist whatever the issue is to make things outrageous for anyone who is not a white, heterosexual male but do the opposite for anyone it deems “not worthy.”
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
Back in the 2000s, Portland Oregon got the very first out (gay) mayor when Sam Adams took the helm of Oregon’s largest city. Being in Oregon myself, and having met Mayor Adams, the man is a charmer in person, and smart as a whip. He’s who you would want on your side if the need arose. Well Adams fell into a kerfuffle when he, an adult male, had consensual sex with another adult male. What was the headline that CBS news ran with?
Teen. Yes, the gay man had sex with a teen. Icky, right? Except that teen was eighteen. You know – eighteen years old, when you are considered an adult, when you can register to vote, and be drafted off to war. An adult teenager.
But surely that was a one-off, right? How about no. When Adams started his comeback in 2021, Fox News ran with this headline:
Again, the headline is there to make Adams into some sick perverted human being who sleeps with teenagers when in fact he slept with an adult. But that’s not scandalous enough for these people.
Contrast this information with Matt Gaetz, the former Florida Congressperson who literally committed statutory rape by having sex with a seventeen year old. Statutory rape. Even if it’s consensual, an adult sleeping with a seventeen year old in Florida is considered statutory rape. And how does the Wall Street Journal, one of the most mainstream, albeit right-wing, news outlets report the news? Like this:
Not only did Gaetz pay for sex – a crime in this country known as prostitution, but he did so with someone under the age of seventeen. You know, statutory rape according to Florida law. But that’s just not how the Wall Street Journal wants to portray Gaetz, who Vice President Elect Trump (because based on what Musk is doing in the spotlight and Trump is hiding at Mar a Lago, it seems that Elon Musk is the true incoming President) tried to nominate for Attorney General before laughingly having to withdraw.
So yeah, the mainstream media does earn the moniker “lamestream media” from time to time. But only because of how it distorts the news to fit whatever narrative they’re pushing.