Charles Cooke of National Review Online highlights one high-profile news anchor’s inability to separate news coverage from his preferred role of touting a skewed narrative.
From CNN’s Don Lemon comes a nice example of the total inability of so many in the media to discuss any topic outside of their preferred frames. The acting director of NOAA’s Hurricane Center, Jamie Rohme, wants to talk about Hurricane Ian. But Lemon isn’t interested in Hurricane Ian. He’s interested in climate change. So he talks about that instead.
“We can come back and talk about climate change at a later time,” says the director, before giving an explanation of Ian’s intensification patterns and the formation of a second eyewall. “Pretty interesting for your viewers,” he suggests.
But not, apparently, for Lemon, who insists that his guest had “said you want to talk about climate change” — which he hadn’t, as anyone with elementary social skills could have deduced — and immediately returns to where he started. “I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” says the director. “To link it to any one event, I would caution against that.”
To which Lemon responds that he grew up “there” — by which he didn’t mean Florida, but Louisiana; declares that “these storms are intensifying”; and then, with palpable irritation, moves on.
Beyond parody.
Perhaps Lemon was employing Rahm Emanuel’s advice to “never let a crisis go to waste.”
Rather than concentrate on providing people useful information about Hurricane Ian’s potential path and preparations people should make, he saw the opportunity to push the climate alarmism agenda once again.
And people wonder why a significant segment of the American population has little to no use for CNN and other national media outlets. If they can’t even get hurricane coverage right, how can they be trusted to address more divisive issues?