Media bias, anyone?

Politico reporter Marc Caputo was caught tweeting ugly about President Trump's supporters, following an incident where CNN correspondent Jim Acosta was jeered by a group of them at this week's Trump rally in Tampa, Florida.  Here's what he tweeted before apologizing.

This is about par for the course for the anti-Trump left, which includes nearly all of the mainstream media.  Anyone who supports Trump is toothless, uneducated, stupid, hillbillyish (remember that Peter Strzok considered Trump supporters "ignorant hillbillies," too), and unfit to live or vote in any part of the civilized world inhabited solely by #NeverTrumps and leftists.  We know they loathe us.  The Washington Times has a full account here.

Glenn Reynolds has a good summary of what's really going on here:

Two points: (1) Yes, this is what the press thinks about Trump supporters, and this now-deleted tweet was an honest reflection of that.  It's totally hypocritical for people like Acosta to clutch their pearls about Trump's "rhetoric" given how they treat, and talk about, his supporters.  And as for their fear that Trump's "rhetoric" might lead to violence, note how they skip right over the fact that Democrat James Hodgkinson shot GOP Congressman Steve Scalise as he tried to massacre the Republican House leadership.

(2) What's worse is, Caputo's actually one of the better political reporters, willing to report stuff that hurts Democrats and helps Republicans without sweeping it under the rug.  That's good, but if he thinks this way, what are the rest like?

And yes, he offered a solid apology.  But that doesn't change the attitude that his original statement revealed, or the fact that it seems to be widely shared among his press colleagues.

What's vivid to me is how pious and pecksniffian these press people are in responding to getting called out on their true feelings about Americans who voted for Trump.  They're in full "Victorian gentleman" mode, as Tom Wolfe described them in his masterpiece The Right Stuff.

Start with Caputo's lengthy and grand and lecture-like three-part Twitter apology, in lieu of "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that":

I need to apologize for tweeting caustic remarks after seeing a reporter berated & abused. Hate begets hate. My comments referred ONLY to those jeering and swearing at the man, not a broad swath of people. But the fault is mine for causing confusion and feeding anger. 1/3

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) August 1, 2018

...and...

In the age of social media, where divisiveness serves no decent purpose, these flippant comments on my part only made things worse and contributed to a cycle of rage that I should not have inflamed further. So I'm sorry. 2/3

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) August 1, 2018

...and...

While it’s usually a good idea to just delete tweets that are wrong, I own this and the criticism (both accurate and misleading) that has followed. I'll do better. Here they are: 3/3 pic.twitter.com/G2rZrHjYWb

— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) August 1, 2018

Oh, give me a break. The divisiveness is the result of media such as CNN quietly passing Hillary Clinton the debate questions during her campaign against Donald Trump, the better to give her an edge, and neither telling anyone about it nor seriously punishing anyone for it.  We all know this stuff goes on and is going to go on until the press starts caring about its craft more than who wins, so spare us the "lessons" about "divisiveness."

Second, the whipped up talk about mobs whipped up at Trump rallies stands in stark contrast to the low coverage the media has given to the shooting of House Republican leader Steve Scalise by a Bernie Sanders-supporter, the assaults and violence on Trump supporters in San Jose as cops stood by (this was what moved me over into the pro-Trump camp – I knew that nobody else would do anything about that sick situation), the restaurant harassment of President Trump's female Cabinet and White House officials (no angry feminists there and no curious reporters to ask why), the violent assaults and threats on the utterly mild-mannered GOP senator Rand Paul (repeatedly reported as a little misunderstanding over lawn clippings, fake news if there ever was any), and other acts of violence that I'm not recalling right now.  Victorian gentlemen are aces at hypocrisy, and this stands out in the press.

What also is Victorian-gentleman gag-worthy is how it's not just Caputo doing it.

Look at this awful interview between #NeverTrump HNL news host S.E. Cupp and Jim Acosta.  Cupp is clearly sucking up to him, theatrically nodding and frowning with lots of head tilts, as Acosta blathers on about civility and standards, "very unfortunate," "very worried," "dangerous for some time," "needs to stop" after his whinges about how his dainty safety is threatened.  That's the same Acosta whose network slipped those questions to Hillary Clinton and tried to get away with it.  The same Acosta who was last seen screaming about Sean Hannity.

It almost makes one want to think that if they want to hate us, fine, go open, hate us.  We already know they do.  But the pious lecturing, the whinging, the "dad" lessons conveyed pretty well make them intolerable.  Victorian gentlemen, indeed, brimming with hypocrisy.  It's time to call them out for that, too.