Ever notice how leftists routinely rally around people and things that the general public simply has no interest in, seemingly in the hope of forcing whatever that person or thing is to become popular? It might work for a short while – think Labubu, the ugly creatures that look like a cross between a monkey and bad dentistry that blew up for a minute last year – but reality has a funny way of insisting on itself and trends fade.
The same thing happens in politics, as Hollywood leftists love elevating people who could easily sell out a Beverly Hills fundraiser for millions of dollars, but could easily walk unrecognized through a mall anywhere else in the world.
Remember Wendy Davis? Most people don’t, but she was the flavor of the moment on the left in the middle of the last decade. Why? What did she accomplish? Nothing, actually, literally nothing.
She “became famous” for filibustering for 11 hours – less than half a day was the best she could do? – a pro-life bill in the Texas Senate. The Democrat wore ugly gym shoes. MSNBC and leftist comedians tried to turn into something.
The “fame” she got from this meaningless gesture in a losing cause gifted her the Democrat nomination for governor in 2014. She has more appearances on lefty cable news shows than she ultimately got votes, losing to Greg Abbott by more than 20 points.
The left literally threw everything they had at the wall to help her and she lost by three touchdowns with one missed extra point.
Needless to say, the enthusiasm for Wendy Davis from Hollywood was not matched by the real human beings living in Texas.
Her last attempt at milking the 15 minutes of fame fawning monologues from Rachel Maddow gives to liberals was losing a US House race to Congressman Chip Roy by 7 points in 2020.
I’m not saying James Talarico is going to end up being an obscure trivia answer in a few years, but the same old pattern is emerging.
During the primary for the Democrat Senate nomination in Texas, Stephen Colbert pretended to be interested in having the bowl-cut sporting weirdo on his show, back when he had a show. Knowing that would be subjected to FCC “equal time” rules, Colbert pretended the Trump administration was “threatening” CBS if he had Talaweirdo on. To “avoid the censorship,” Colbert posted the interview he did with James to YouTube, which helped him raise a ton of money for his campaign.
Unsaid at the time by dishonest Colbert and his fellow liberals was the fact that equal time rules were almost 100 years old and the FCC never once “threatened” CBS with anything. The FCC does not file complaints, it responds to them filed by others. The person who would have filed the complaint was Talarico’s primary opponent Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.
She would have been the one demanding the time on the public airwaves, not the FCC. But Colbert didn’t want to have the black woman on, so he pretended it was the Trump administration threatening them. Compliant or stupid leftist media swallowed the narrative, misreported the lie, and the story became legend.
Equal time rules, for what it’s worth, apply only to the public airwaves – over the air television and radio – and nothing else. Use the public airwaves for free to make billions and you have to be present both candidates 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before the general. The rest of the time, you can do whatever you want. But if you have one candidate on in that window, the other candidate can demand equal time. It’s really that simple.
There is no “penalty” if the opponent doesn’t request equal time, and the “punishment” is to have an equally long conversation with someone the host likely disagrees with.
Last week, Jimmy Kimmel tried to play this same game with Talarico again. He lied and told his audience that the Trump administration was going to punish them if they ran blackface aficionado’s interview with Talarico, so he’d be posting it to his YouTube channel. It was a lie, but it was a lie for liberals so Disney seemed pretty cool with it.
Does anyone believe Ken Paxton is dying to sit down for an interview with Jimmy Kimmel? In the primary, Crockett would have loved to have gotten some network time with Colbert, but he wanted the white guy to win, so he was never going to let that happen. Equal time has to be granted, not equal treatment. Paxton wasn’t likely to demand what would be his right because the host and audience would be hostile, and putting a candidate in that position is bad strategy.
Without the fake “controversy,” Talarico’s interview with the whipped Kimmel would be about as newsworthy as everything else the fat fascist does, which is to say not at all. But with the “threats,” well, that’s different.
The usual suspects in the media ran the same old story, blissfully unaware of reality or the truth, and Talaweirdo raised a bunch of money.
It says something about the character of these people that they’re willing to so blatantly lie – they either do not care about how they are perceived by their audience, or they believe their audience to be so stupid as to fall for the same lie over and over. It also says something about Talarico, that he would be a 2-time willing participant in a scam to raise money from people he is lying to tells you a lot about him. That it would work on the same “supporters” twice tells you everything you need to know about them.
Finally, that the Hollywood leftists would be willing tools for Talarico tells you exactly whose side these people are on, and it’s not yours.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.