The left-driven mainstream media is facing one of it’s greatest challenges this election season: the citizen candidate. This election cycle has brought out more “citizen candidates” than any other election cycle in our lifetime. More people are running for office that have done something else with their life other than go to college for a poli-sci degree, go to law school, and run for office – the traditional path for the career politician. Nurses, scientists, and blue-collar Joes are running for office and more often then not they are running on a conservative platform. This has posed a new challenge to the MSM. Before the awakening of the modern-day patriot candidates, the MSM could bring on a conservative politician and frame their questions with smarmy language unchallenged. The conservative politician would respond with equally slick talking points and everyone left the interview thinking that their side did a good job at dulling the audience’s curiosity of trying to find out what the “truth” was to anyones’ claims.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The luxury that the left-fueled MSM enjoyed is gone this election cycle (and hopefully for good). Candidates and the viewing audience know that with the internet, YouTube, and blogs they can get the message without the “context” that the leftist media spin machine used to exclusively put on conservative candidates’ messages. Now candidates don’t have to take this blatant attempt to influence narrative anymore. With the loss of the surplus of slick-talking career politicians, candidates, empowered by their knowledge that their unadulterated message is capable of being out on the internet, are empowered to engage their liberal “hosts” and demand, in no uncertain terms, balance and proper context during their interviews. The most riveting example of likely this campaign season happened last week.
On October 7th, Art Robinson, challenger to Representative DeFazio in Oregon’s 4th district appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show in what is sure to be one of the most memorable interviews in this election. Maddow prefaces the interview by describing the supposed lack of documentation on a PAC that is being used to fund a specific ad campaign against Rep. DeFazio. Maddow then brings on Art Robinson and asks him about this funding. Mr. Robinson doesn’t even give an inch of space before going on the attack. He immediately questions Maddow on whether or not she gave Rep. DeFazio the same treatment about his finances. Art Robinson in less than two minutes into the interview catches something that Media Matters has been ignoring since its inception.
The grueling, cringe-fest, and riveting 18-minute interview has Maddow on constant defense. Her only defense, by the way, is deflection. By the end of the interview, Maddow completely loses her pseudo-intellectual pseudo-investigative composure. She drops her passive aggressive façade and fills the gaps with wildly condescending comments to Mr. Robinson. He responds by pointing out her sarcasm laced with her condescension and Maddow in the middle of the interview claims that he obviously doesn’t know what sarcasm means.
You don’t have to be an Art Robinson expert to understand that he felt that his writing was being taken wildly out of context and he was totally unafraid to call out Maddow on her error and her bias. As the interview shows, Maddow was unable to handle the challenge and keep her professional composure
Another something that’s interesting about this clip is how MSNBC chose to headline it. The headline is a Robinson quote from the interview, “I’m not a politician, I’m a scientist.” When I first saw the headline I thought, is that really the best they can do? A headline is supposed to get you to click on the link to find out more. It’s the engine that drives traffic to your site. This didn’t seem very provocative considering the explosiveness of the interview. I suppose they couldn’t say, “Rachel Maddow Loses It On Her Own Show after Interviewee Calls Her Out on Her Obvious Bias,” but I still expected something better. Then I realized that this headline is provocative in the leftist mindset.
Art Robinson doesn’t care what people think of him. He cares about running for office and getting the job done and hopes of undoing some of the votes that Rep. DeFazio has already cast. This concept of a politician not caring about being liked by the media is no doubt a foreign one to MSNBC. That’s why they made this quote their headline. They might as well have said, “Unbelievable: Politician Who Isn’t Interested in Being Liked by MSNBC.”