Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Scott Pelley and Self Inflicted Stupidity

Power Line   "CBS News anchor Scott Pelley — make that former CBS News anchor Scott Pelley — is the face of sanctimonious liberalism. The attempted assassination of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and his GOP colleagues on the baseball field in Alexandria last week somehow prompted Pelley’s comment on the day after: “It’s time to ask whether the attack on the United States Congress, yesterday, was foreseeable, predictable and, to some degree, self-inflicted” (video below). Pelley of course answered the question that approximately no one was asking in the affirmative."
"You have to love that “to some degree.” Pelley didn’t say that Scalise and his colleagues were entirely responsible for the mania of the leftist wack job who shot them. This is a fine tuned assessment."
"Scalise lies in a hospital bed unable to defend himself from disparagement by the likes of Pelley. What might Scalise or any of his House colleagues have said to justify the imputation of responsibility for their own shooting to them? From the wide world of Republican politics, Pelley cites President’s Trump February tweet that the news media are the “enemy of the American people.”
"Now if we were deliberating whether Trump were responsible for an irate viewer punching Pelley in his smarmy face, Pelley might have a point. Perhaps then Pelley “to some degree” might share responsibility with Trump. But that’s not what we’re talking about (don’t say “unfortunately”).
"Pelley combines mind-numbing stupidity with Olympian condescension. His disdain for the likes of us is patent. The case for his contribution to the climate of opinion in which the maniacal leftist assailant James Hodgkinson stewed would have more to it than his case against Trump or Republican congressmen."

WSJ: What was on the teleprompter at CBS News?  . . . "Believe it or not, the segment went downhill from there. The CBS newsman concluded by citing President Trump’s harsh rhetoric about his network and other media outlets, as if Mr. Pelley and his colleagues were the real victims of last week’s violence. 

"Coincidentally on Friday Mr. Pelley left the CBS nightly anchor chair to focus on his reports for the CBS program, “60 Minutes.” The move had been announced in May and in media terms, Mr Pelley remains kind of a big deal." . . .

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