THE NEWS MEDIA PERFORMS WORSE THAN MELANIA TRUMP

I just finished writing a blog about how dangerous the news media is and how poorly they have served the public in recent months...and just a few hours later I see more blood in the water....

Yes, there was clearly plagiarism ...but some things are even worse, especially coming from those we are supposed to trust....

I can excuse Melania Trump if she thought she could get away with including a couple of sections of Michelle's 08' speech. I knew she was not the love child of Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein; I knew she was likely as deep as a birdbath. I don't expect much from her and she is not the candidate.

To me, the News Media looks worse than Melania…and more dangerous!

While watching the last moments of MSNBC’s coverage of the first night of the RNC convention it was noted that several parts of Melania Trump's speech mirrored almost exactly, sections of a speech given by Michelle Obama at the 2008 DNC convention….

MSNBC royalty was on hand when the news broke and Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell and Republican Strategist Stephen Schmidt were quick to be presumptuous and ignorant. Instead of saying that they had no real idea who was responsible for the plagiarized portions of Melania’s speech, everyone there, to a man, immediately dismissed any possibility that Melania, herself, had taken those portions of the speech from Michelle Obama... After all, she did say in an interview today with Matt Lauer that she wrote the speech herself “with as little help as possible”. Republican strategist Stephen Schmidt said one of the most idiotic and reckless statements ever uttered on television when he said "there was 0.0% chance that Melania herself plagiarized those words…it had to be one of the speech writers." Lawrence O’Donnell, the venerable MSNBC talking head who was a speech writer himself said the same thing essentially (with righteous conviction), as did Chris Matthews…..Rachel Maddow kept quiet about who was at fault (not her typical style)…I was totally shocked…dumbfounded. I wasn't so much bothered by Melania...I was bothered by the media....it was inexcusable. They are the custodians of our information...and they failed us. They are so full of themselves.

I quickly switched to CNN to see if I was losing my mind…the consensus was that a speech writer had done the Trump campaign a great disservice.."he should be hung in the public square" and "how dare he shame Melania…", etc.. CNN contributor Van Jones did leave open the possibility that Melania was responsible, how refreshing. I will note that Anderson Cooper of CNN was much more restrained and less presumptuous than most of the others. He even did the accurate thing by pointing out that just a portion of the speech was seemingly plagiarized...a fact that MSNBC failed to mention (at all).

Here are all the gross assumptions that were made:

A. Melania is a liar (because she said clearly that she wrote most of the speech)

B. That a speech writer would have the audacity and stupidity to think that he could inject sections of a speech from the sitting first lady given only 8 years ago and get away with it…(Now that seems even too careless for the Trump speech writers).

C. It was not possible that a speech writer for the Trump campaign looked over Melania’s speech, added or subtracted a few things…but didn't have enough command of every speech given in the last 8 years to know for a fact that Michelle Obama had said virtually the same words in those sections…

Switching back to MSNBC I was refreshed to see that Robert Costa, one of the MSNBC reporters, said “we don’t know yet who is responsible”. He actually said what needed to be said…why assume that Melania is a liar. There is no precedence for that…..Melania comes from Slovenia where she may not know that plagiarism is not only seriously frowned upon, but that someone among the 340 million people in our country will surely remember Michelle Obama’s speech, if only Michelle, herself…

Chris Matthews, in my opinion, needs to be asked to step aside…he even cut off and (lightly slammed) an MSNBC contributor (whose name I can't remember) for suggesting the possibility that Melania is responsible. Chris Matthews was playing judge and jury before any facts were in...suggesting that "that speechwriter be fired and never work again, etc.". He fried him on the show…as did O’Donnell…Stephen Schmidt? How can anyone say something like that....?, heck, there is more than a 0.0% chance that Carrot Top "wrote" that speech. How reckless can a person be...especially on TV in front of a large audience.

The media is as bad as the candidates….at least!

Time to Re-boot in all 3 cases…(in my opinion)