“Did I just hear what I think I did?”
“Did she really say that?”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CNN host Don Lemmon seemed to break into multiple personalities in recent interviews. Both did an about-face startling enough to make your head spin. I can imagine how many “rewinds” were initiated on the two videos.
In an interview last Friday with Recode’s Kara Swisher, Clinton was asked if Democrats are becoming the victim of too much political correctness. Clinton began to build a case for the moral superiority and inclusiveness of the Democrat party, but her follow-through seriously bombed.
“The Democratic party is a much more diverse party, attracting people who are African American, Latino, LGBT. Whatever the reason why, people feel more comfortable where they are taken in, where they are included as part of a political movement or party. And I don’t think it’s politically correct to say we value that. And I don’t want to go around insulting people. I don’t want to paint with a broad brush, every immigrant is this, every African American is that, every other person with different religious beliefs or whatever. That is childish.”
Immediately following that statement, Swisher asked what Hillary thought of Cory Booker’s comment about kicking Republicans in the shins.
“Well, that was Eric Holder,” Hillary immediately corrected her. “Yeah, I know they all look alike, yeah, they do,” she said with a grin.
The audience responded with applause and laughter.
Granted, Clinton’s comment was a completely failed and utterly hypocritical attempt at a joke. She even followed it up with another “joke” about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg paying her to make the comment. I’m not sure what that was about.
Imagine if the same comments were made by a Republican…by Justice Brett Kavanaugh…or President Trump. It was actually astounding how quickly Swisher attempted to shift the blame on the president, sarcastically complimenting Clinton for reading his tweets.
This week in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, in a bit of a tired, somber tone, Lemon also stepped onto a lofty perch to instruct the American people:
“I keep trying to point out to people not to demonize any one group of people or any one ethnicity, but we keep thinking that the biggest terror threat is something else – some people who are marching toward the border like it’s imminent. And the last time they did this, a couple hundred people came. And most of them did get into the country.
Most of them tired – got tuckered out before they even made it to the border.
So we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right. And we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on – we had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban. So what do we do about that?”
How did we get here? Where did journalism go?
When those a nation holds up as thought leaders are able to make such outrageously contradictory and incendiary remarks with incredible ease, we know we’ve moved too far. And while our president leaves us all shaking our heads at times, I think most clear-thinking people are grateful for his healthy doses of medicinal criticism for individuals otherwise not held accountable – at least not on a large scale.
In these particular cases, the hypocrisy is so obvious, it’s not necessary to offer commentary to explain it. So, I’ll offer wisdom:
“A fool's mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul” (Proverbs 18:7), but “The mouths of the righteous utter wisdom, and their tongues speak what is just” (Psalm 37:30).
