Unburdened
By the yoke of the legacy media… and all that came with it.
The usual disclaimer
I have long avoided writing about politics. Some would say that makes me wise.
I like to think it is because I have had enough humility, at least in writing to the public (all thirty of you), to recognize that I am either “out of my element” or “in over my head.” Pick the cliché you like best. Pick both, and you may be on point.
But today feels a bit different. I feel a bit different. So, I’m going to try something new. I will share my perspective on current events while unabashedly pretending that I am not writing about politics.
And to give an early warning: this is an opinion piece from the so-called conservative viewpoint. One that will fail to capture the nuance of every claim I make (and every breath I take).
Election Results: Trump vs. Harris
As of 10:02 PM CST on November 9th, we know that Donald Trump has won the presidency, and we know he has won it in part because his opponent, Vice President Harris, received 10,353,039 fewer votes than Joe Biden received in 2020.1 Conversely, Donald Trump has secured 432,181 more votes than he did in 2020.
When you read this, those exact numbers may have changed. But the proportions will be nearly identical.
Please take a moment to ruminate on the disparity of those proportions before we go any further.
The Obama Era
Let me take you back to 2008 when Barack Obama ran against John McCain.
At the time, I was among the few people (34%) my age voting for McCain. I played it secretive while attending Gulf Coast Community College, listening to my peers talk in the parking lot about how they couldn’t wait for Obama to become President.
I remember every news and media outlet fighting like hell to help Obama win the presidency, with Fox News being the only run-down place a right-winger could go for self-ideological-reinforcement. It wasn’t easy being proud of Fox News, either.
The odds were not in our favor for gaining a media foothold.
Meanwhile, I watched as late-night talk shows and SNL did their duty to mock the McCain-Palin campaign and to glorify the Obama-Biden troupe. I accepted it, too, because I knew—this was the deal. Hollywood and the media buoy up and champion the left. On the right, we fend for ourselves and hope for the best.
It was how the world worked, and I didn’t question it.
Obama made it even easier. He was a good-looking, charismatic speaker and personality, achieving celebrity status with what seemed a minimal effort. If all panned out, he would become the first black President of the United States. McCain never stood a chance. I was on the losing side, and I knew it.
Recently, a close friend of mine, recalling the same period in his life, admitted to having felt a sense of pride in a black man becoming President of the United States even though, like me, he voted for the other guy. I also remember feeling this pride—a feeling that, even though I hadn’t helped, we had finally done it.
We, Americans, had gotten over that line.
I remember tuning in to most of Obama’s speeches, too. Even though I worried his policies would draw us closer to a socialist outcome from which we could not extricate ourselves, I still wanted to hear from him. It was an odd period of duality for me, and I embraced it.
Four years later, we played a similar game, and I joined forces with the losing side again. But I remember feeling even less invested then. Why? I guess I knew one of two people more qualified than me would attain the presidency. Meanwhile, I would have to continue figuring out what to do with my life, largely unaffected by either outcome.
Again, the media championed the Obama presidency. Our Mormon boy, Mittens, did the best he could. But by then, Obama’s hold on culture was unbeatable. The Democrats had a real champion.
The Trump effect
Fast forward to circa 2016, where Donald Trump blasts onto the scene and, in so many words, tells the establishment GOP and the whole DNC to kiss America’s ass.
The media loved him by hating him—they covered him 24/7 because they knew there was no way in Hell America was going to vote for a guy who talked and behaved like that. This time, the Democrats didn’t need a champion because the Republican frontrunner had no chance of winning the presidency.
Right?
But the media didn’t understand who they were dealing with. As for me, I had an idea. About nine years before, I had read a book by Donald Trump entitled, Think Big and Kick Ass. That book alone was enough to tell me what this guy was about, and I remember having the uncanny feeling that I knew something the media at large did not. In the back of my mind, I knew Donald Trump stood a chance of becoming President.
The media dealt standard, predictable blows to John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. But with Trump, they launched their entire arsenal of nukes. Did you hear what he said today? Did you see what he did? Can you believe what he said about women? About black people? About Hispanics? About building a wall? We’re a nation of immigrants! We don’t build walls! This will be the end of democracy as we know it.
You know the story. Trump won in 2016, shocking the world.
From that point on, the media ensured that everything we saw or heard had to do with identity politics and the imminent threat of racial injustice, which somehow justified riots—but remember, riots are not the same thing as insurrections. Insurrections are organized.
We had ushered in a new age of demonization. On steroids.
Identity politics and the culture wars
Speaking of riots, I remember when George Floyd was murdered, and people were traumatizing themselves by watching it on social media.
On Blackout Tuesday, I logged on to Apple Music, only to find a stripped-down version of the app, blocking other menu options, as the platform’s Beats 1 Radio service streamed a playlist of music by black artists for 24 hours, songs that exemplified, in their words, “the Black American experience and struggle.”2
I wondered at the time if any of my black friends or acquaintances had wanted to listen to a Mozart station that day but couldn’t because Apple insisted on force-feeding them their music. Apple must have forgotten that black people also gave America jazz and rock and roll.
The mega brands and S&P 500 corporations were joining with black people everywhere in solidarity. Because of how much they cared. Not because they had anything to gain. Not because marketing—in all its guises—works like a thirty-seven-year-old Toyota.
How could these companies not see how racist they were being? How could the public not see it? I felt like I was taking crazy pills. The media and the soulless corporations were capitalizing on a man’s death, weaponizing it for their political gain. And people bought it.
Biden's rise: eighty-one million votes
Fast forward to the 2020 election. Trump stuck to his guns. Biden preached unity. As a result, and assuming no foul play, Biden won ten million more votes in 2020 than Kamala Harris has attained in 2024, despite support for Trump remaining relatively even across both elections.
Again, recall those proportions I gave you earlier.
How we account for that disparity remains to be seen, but I suspect Biden had the support of the moderates—people who wanted the unity he preached, hoping for the culture and race wars to come to a decisive end.
And so, they seemingly did, as far as I can recall. Excluding January 6th, 2021, when a Trump rally turned into a riot. One that got coverage. A lot of coverage. I guess D.C. should have waited a few months before defunding—er, I mean reallocating $15 million away from their police department.3
Whether spontaneous or instigated, that event played conveniently into the pervading narrative that Donald Trump was a clear and present threat to democracy. True or false, they needed that narrative to play out to its ultimate conclusion—not just the accusation of insurrection, but the conviction that would once and for all prevent Trump’s return to office.
Like it or not, that didn’t happen.
From 2017 to 2021, all we heard about was how the free world was going to end because of racism, COVID-19, and Global Warming under the diabolical regime of Donald J. Trump. Enter Biden, and we stopped hearing about two of those things. Did Covid and racism go away? Or did they cease to be relevant political weapons?
You tell me.
As for Global Warming, we all know it’s the most time-sensitive issue our planet faces today. Right? That must be why Hollywood and the left-leaning media despise Elon Musk and his ultra-successful EV company. That must be why we’re sending billions of dollars to Ukraine to aid them in yet another forever war.
Is it any wonder that Americans are calling out the legacy media for its overt hypocrisy and partisan coverage unapologetically favoring the left?
The legacy media vs. the new media
I use the word legacy now to come full circle if I can. If the American people proved anything last Tuesday, it was this: they are officially unburdened by the influence of legacy media.
Jimmy Kimmel isn’t just crying because he fears for American democracy. He’s crying because he knows his days of influence are numbered.
Meanwhile, the new media has taken the stage and given voice to alternative perspectives. Love or hate them, people like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly have figured out they can launch their own shows (in true entrepreneurial spirit, I might add) and not be canceled because they say the wrong thing. Joe Rogan can host a three-hour conversation with a presidential candidate, allowing people to find out what they think of him or her. Or just him, I guess, since the “her” declined to take the interview. Whoops.
Brand these rising pillars of new media heretics all you want. They’re here to stay.
Meanwhile, the old guard stands at a crossroads. The legacy media that held all the cards and all the sway when I was watching Obama vs. McCain in 2008 will die with the boomers. And when that happens, the Democratic Party as it has come to be known (but unlike anything it was in that mythologized era of classical liberalism we keep hearing about) will face a choice: evolve or die.
In a free enterprise society, we call this “disruption.”
Unburdened by what has been
So, with great optimism salted by a pinch of trepidation, I deliver these parting words to ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, the AP, and all their bumbling, fumbling ilk (you, too, Fox News).
Ten million fewer people showed up for your champion this time around. Why? I think I have an idea.
You leveraged racial injustice and the pandemic as political weapons and then dropped them when they no longer suited your agenda.
You told us that COVID-19 vaccines were effective while Pfizer sponsored you. (The same Pfizer that paid the largest healthcare fraud settlement in history back in 2009.)4
You told hard-working Americans they were racists, fascists, and bigots for exercising their right to vote for the person you hated as they participated in the democratic process that undergirds the sanctity of our constitutional republic.
You condemned and excommunicated as heretics anyone with legitimate questions about vaccines, masks, and lockdowns.
You censored yourselves and others in favor of partisan reporting when you knew not to do so might mean deducting points from your chosen candidate.
You pretended that our current President, Joe Biden, was in his right mind until you could pretend no longer.
You supported the installation of a puppet candidate to replace our mentally declining President even though the Democratic Party never once consulted its constituents about what or who they wanted.
And you had the nerve to call this “joy.”
So, to you, I say...
Good night and good luck.
P.S.
Whether the new media will prove to exist for our ultimate benefit or become susceptible to the same faults as the old, time will tell. But one thing for me at least is clear: I’ll be damned if I go to the likes of SNL to find out who my next President is. America has officially called BS on the weaponized political media machine. And frankly, I approve.