On Thursday, Florida’s fairly progressive former Republican Governor Charlie Crist spoke in support of President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Crist became an independent during his failed 2010 run for the U.S. Senate, after it became clear that his party was likely to nominate Marco Rubio for the seat instead. All of that had come about after Crist had demonstrated the temerity to famously embrace the President when he came to pitch the stimulus bill in the Sunshine State, which ended up saving tens of thousands of Florida jobs after the 2008 global economic meltdown threatened to plunge the country into another Great Depression.
Echoing Ronald Reagan’s famously-cited reasons for the former President’s own switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, Crist explained during his speech last night: “I can certainly relate. I didn’t leave the Republican Party; it left me.”
“Then again,” he added, “as my friend Jeb Bush recently noted, Reagan himself would have been too moderate and too reasonable for today’s GOP.”
With all of that, here is how CNN described Crist during his speech yesterday…
For the record, American Heritage Dictionary defines defines the word “turncoat” as “One who traitorously switches allegiance.”
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law redirects web-queries for the word “turncoat” to its page on “treason”, which is defined there as “The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.”
Perhaps we missed it, but we don’t remember the “liberal” CNN similarly labeling Democrat-turned-Republican Artur Davis a “turncoat” when he spoke at the RNC last week in favor of Mitt Romney. Or did they just reserve that distinguished label only for Republican-turned-independent Charlie Crist when he spoke on behalf of Barack Obama?
In any event, CNN is in terrific company with their slur. They weren’t the only one to compare Crist to a traitor by describing him as a “turncoat”. Rightwing extremist Glenn Beck’s pretend “news” site The Blaze did so as well:
Unlike CNN, however, Beck’s site appears to have done the right thing and removed that descriptor from its headline (though it’s still in the page name) after initially using it.
To our knowledge, CNN has issued no apology for likening the former Governor of Florida to a traitor, which, by the way, is still punishable by death in the United States.
Don’t remember how Zel Miller was presented… Don’t remember any derogatory tones though… Where is this “liberal media” I keep hearing about?
A turncoat is only a turncoat when it’s from your own side.
I guess CNN sees itself as Republican rather than an exercise in journalism. And they wonder why their ratings keep dropping.
Clueless “news” network (cnn)…Consider the source of your news 😉
CNN–>Glenn Beck–>Fox News–>”entertainment channel”
CNN has (depending on how you want to count them) only 3 degrees of separation from once being an independent broadcaster of the news, to an “entertainment channel” which is not accountable for the lies they create and/or perpetuate.
Well, splitting conservative viewers with Fox News
should bring about the early demise of CNN as there is only room for one purveyor of mistruth for conservatives and they are loyal to Fox.
Say goodbye CNN and CNN management for making the disastrous decision to move out of the middle and way over to the right.
And say goodbye to the jobs of CNN workers who will bear the brunt of job cutbacks and wage cutbacks as CNN’s ratings drop. Wonder how big the golden parachutes of CNN execs are, or if David Koch already took care of them.
The rumors of his alleged gay sexual orientation didn’t help his standing with the base.
Ron @4 wrote:
Real journalism is neither Left, Right nor Center. You either objectively describe the object being reported on, including the deceits of powerful people and institutions, irrespective of where those people or institutions, or you act as nothing more than stenographers for the powerful.
Unfortunately, there is very little in the way of real journalism that emerges from any component of the corporate media, irrespective of whether they are seen (or depicted) as hard-right, conservative, centrist, or liberal.
It seems CNN is banking that aping FOX will improve ratings. Disgraceful.