The parallels of the media treatment of George H.W. Bush and President Donald J. Trump are uncanny, yet Bush's death and history's portrayal bring out the best in them all. When looking back at the media's treatment of all republicans it seems as thought their motto is: The only good Republican is a dead Republican.
It Didn't Start With Trump
Don't think for a second that journalism's deep dive into fake news started with Donald Trump. The cover story above was written by Evan Thomas, then editor of now 2nd tier Newsweek magazine. Of course, now that the 41st President of the United States is dead, he wrote an article for Yahoo news explaining how he was wrong about calling Mr. Bush a wimp.
While reading through the article and noticing the heroic acts listed by the author I wondered 'why were'nt you wrong last week, last year or 10 years ago? Considering the degree of heroism being cited in the article was before George H.W. Bush became President why did you write the story in the first place? Was it that the author didn't do any research? Probably not. If that were the case, he wouldn't have become editor of The Onion, much less Newsweek. No, it's because since Reagan, all major media outlets have taken their cues from the DNC. I am convinced that nothing is written by major media outlets unless it has the explicit approval of the DNC. It wouldn't even surprise me if the DNC did the editing and wrote the headlines.
John McCain
Upon Sen. John McCains Death, all major media outlets ran 24 hour praise of the late Senator. It was wall to wall adoration from the same people who in 2008 labeled him a radical and a racist.
The practice of throwing around the term "racist" when referring to anyone with a different polotical view was pioneered during the run up to the 2008 Presidential election and aimed at John McCain. To be clear, I'm not the biggest fan of John McCain but "racist" is the last thing that comes to mind when I think of him.
McCain made the "error" of putting out a negative statement about then Candidate Obama (negative is relative, this was hair below neutral). He simply used the term celebrity when referring to Obama in a campaign ad. From there the lunacy ensued and the term "racist" was applied to all Republicans whether black, white or anything in between. The New York Times promptly blazed the erroneous racist claim trail. Of course, CNN and MSNBC quickly jumped on the band wagon with accusations of their own in different terms. Democrats started salivating with Rep. John Lewis seeing the remark as something that " too much of another destructive period in American history". Imagine that, if you call someone a "celebrity" you are labeled racist! It's not really that hard to imagine considering some of the harmless things that have put republicans in the bigot category in the past two years.
Teen Vogue's Utter Hatred for the Late Senator
The most outrageous of the unfair allegations against McCain comes from Teen Vogue (indoctrinating your kids since 2003). In their defense, they didn't skip a beat after his death, frantically rehashing all the things they hated about him within a week. As recent as 2017 they published the article "5 Problematic Things Senator John McCain Has Done During His 35-year Career in Politics", none of which could be seen as problematic by anyone without an agenda.
The first "problem" they had was that he didn't vote for Martin Luther King Jr. day citing that presidents and other civil rights leaders are not honored with Federal holidays. Well, Robert Newhouse at Teen Vogue actually saw that as a vote against Civil Rights. Again, something only a dimwitted, mouth foaming activist could construct out of an act such as voting against a day off.
Next, Newhouse claims racism due to John McCain's use of the term "gook" to refer to his captors directly after being rescued from the Vietnamese. So, for 5 and a half years McCain spent every day being tortured and berated and upon rescue he referred to his captors as "gooks" and this makes him a racist. Uh huh....
Out of the five things listed as "problematic" by this clown the most ridiculous is where Newhouse labeled him Islamophobic. The reasoning is something I can't even begin to make sense of. During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, one of McCain's perspective voters referred to Obama as 'Arab' while taking to McCain. McCain went out of his way to correct the woman saying, "No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about." So, wow! To deduce that this statement is Islamophobic takes a real leap of reality. But hey, Newhouse needed 5 things and calling people racist is the new 'in thing'.
The fact is that there are real things to criticize McCain about which highlights how lazy this journalist acitivist is. One could say he's a liar for running his last Senatorial Campaign on repeal and replace and then doing the exact opposite. One could call out the fact that he doesn't seem to have any solid values after he spent his last year voting against his own party. As far as racism goes, that is impossible to deduce with anything other than a deluded mental state.
Enough Time Saves the Day
The funny thing about the media onslaught against Bush 41 is that it is counter to their hatred for Trump. Bush 41, the man who was shot down over the Pacific and saved by a U.S. Naval Submarine was called "weak" by "journalists" who spent that time making up stories about how we shouldn't be involved in World War II. These leftist, who were in college or dodging the draft called the man who voluntarily joined the Navy BEFORE going to college weak.
In my opinion, the media label of 'weak' given to George H.W. Bush was less about him actually being weak and more about him being a 'regular guy' in that he was nice and gracious. This is the crux of the bias against Trump. Left wing media outlets viewed Bush as weak because of the stories they would hear from his colleagues. His wife, Barbara told the story of the night he found out he had won the election. When he was told he had just finished eating dinner. Before any celebrating, he helped clean and put away dishes. Cabinet members and staffers have reported that while in the White House Bush 41 would would ask how they took their coffee and instead of having someone get it he would get it himself. It was these types of good deeds that got him the 'wimp' label.
Now, in the age of Trump, the media hates him for not being more like H. W. Bush. There's no winning...well, unless you're a Democrat. Apparently the best way to win the medias approval is to do deals with governments who lead chants of "death to America".
Bush's death is just the most recent proof that history tells the real story a couple decades after the fact. The media hated Reagan, now they can't really say much because his policies turned out to be good. We shall see what Trump did to our country, it'll just be 20 years.
Sources:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/called-george-bush-wimp-cover-newsweek-wrong-140012335.html
https://dailycaller.com/2018/08/29/john-mccain-media-coverage-life-death/