OAN v CNN re: FDR

President Trump’s regular, televised briefings on the coronavirus and our nation’s efforts to fight it have proven hugely popular, but not universally so. Cable news outlet CNN has regularly provided truncated or no coverage of the events, and its defenders have justified the decision by saying that the briefings are more propaganda rallies than news conferences. In response,One America News President (and longtime San Diegan) Harris Rightwing today called for history to “cancel President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” who held office from 1933-1945.

“Look” offered Rightwing, “there are lots of reasons to cancel FDR, the man who exploited the Great Depression and the Second World War to implement his vision of Big Government, a bureaucratic boondoggle that haunts us to this very day. But what I’m proposing here is one very specific reason, using CNN’s own reasoning: his use of mass media — at that time, radio — to push feel-good propaganda at the American people at a time when many of them were suffering and even dying. Roosevelt’s fireside chats sought to bolster a nation that found itself dragged out of the frying pan of economic devastation and thrown into the fire of a second war in Europe, just one generation after its declaration of ‘Never again.’ Did he tell them the whole truth? Hell, no. Did he hold out hope where he could, however slim? Hell, yes. Was he a great leader? Absolutely. So when Trump gives us good news about ventilators in Colorado or possible benefits from hydroxychloroquine, people either need to shut up and cheer along or get busy putting FDR in his place.”