(no subject)

When I was still a young man living in the Soviet Union, students like myself were required to take a class named "History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (and we were issued a big red textbook knows as "the brick" among the students :) ). I personally used whatever materials were available to acquire whatever information I could, there was a lot that one could read between the lines, and I have always been an enthusiastic student of history. But the classes themselves were usually extremely boring. And yet - there were a few exceptions.

A significant part of the course was devoted to criticizing those socialists/communists who dared to deviate from the main Party line (and the term was exactly that, "deviationists", "уклoнисты"). A fellow student of mine named Slava Mymrin was called to the board to talk about a certain group of such "deviationists." And he started by describing their views (he must had done quite a lot of work digging that info out). The instructor - and the whole class - quickly woke up. She told Slava to stop describing their views and to start the critique. He answered that he did not understand how can you criticize something without knowing what're you talking about. The instructor got angry and told him to go back to his seat.

Fast forward to 2018 America:

<< President Trump is tapping into one of the powers of the presidency, a televised Oval Office address, for his first time. ....

While the address may not change anyone's mind, there are very strong feelings both for and against the television networks' decisions to televise it in the first place.

....

At issue: How should a uniquely deceptive president be treated by TV networks that value the truth? >>

The last statement is making me laugh so hard that I am afraid I am going to die. But that part aside, let's see what some of those network people are saying. For insatnce:

<< The major networks "should refuse to turn over the airwaves to Donald Trump tonight for what they know objectively to be a steady stream of lies," MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski said Tuesday morning. >>

And so on, and so forth.

To be sure, private networks certainly have a right to decide to not televise anybody's speach. But the phenomenon still deserves attention. The problem is two-fold.

One one hand, the President of the United States is certainly a serious enough figure to not dismiss his speech as something insignificant. And the desire of the networs and certain politicians to keep the viewers from having an opportunity to hear the President's remarks firtshand and to make their own judgement is no different that the desire of that Communist teacher to keep the students from knowing the very views of the "deviationists" that we were supposed to condemn.

On the other hand, the belief of these media "elites" that they are our "moral betters", that they decide what is right and what is wrong, that it is them whi are right and those who support Trump (remember, half of the country voted for him, and he still has an approval rating that is higher than Obama had at the similar point in his presidency) are so wrong that it's OK to not even give the president any air time, is quite disgusting. These people are not journalists, they are a partisam propaganda machine. But what else is new?

BTW, I am wondering how havily will CNN and the other left media outlets "comment" during the speech and how much of the actual Trump's words will they let people hear.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/08/media/trump-prime-time-speech-debate/index.html