Media Rules for Conservatives

This blog commented on Representative Steve King in August.

The Trump distraction gives conservatives cover to actually, well, be conservative, without being burned down by the media's beam of focused rage. It would appear that not many conservative politicians are making as much use of the situation as they should, but there is still time. Little by little, they will learn that the backlash for conveying "hate facts" and other such mortal sins is attenuated enough that it can be survived. Steve King, the Congressman from Iowa, is a great example. He committed outrageous heresy when he stated that we can't replenish our nation with other peoples' babies. He really drove down to the core of the matter. It's hard to believe he's survived. Had Hillary won, his outlook would likely be grim. He'd be the recipient of constant media outrage, which would fuel all kinds of money from the coasts towards some RINO usurper. But that's not happening. He will coast through an easy re-election. They don't have the ability to mount a sustained assault on him.

I don't believe that opinion has been contradicted, but everything has its limits. [I was wrong about it being an easy re-election, though, with only a 3% margin of victory.] Last week King did an interview with the New York Times where he gave them the following quote.

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” Mr. King said. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

As you can imagine, it has stirred a war cry from the left. For conservatives, the three rules of liberal media should be:

1. Don't do liberal media. There's no upside.
2. If you must do liberal media, don't say anything stupid or that can be taken out of context. Independently record the interview.
3. If the mob still becomes energized against you, never apologize. Wait for it to blow over. The news cycle is short and the Eye of Soros has ADD.

Why Steve King agreed to be interviewed by the New York Times is beyond me. A curt "I don't contribute to the fake news" is all that needs to be said. He agreed to be interviewed by them anyway. And then he said something like that. That is not careful language, to say the least. I'm a Steve King fan. He's a good man and he's an intelligent man. But he stupidly talked to the fake news and then stupidly blabbed about white supremacy to a New York Times reporter. Uber gaffe. His statement was not only stupid, but disagreeable. I share Mr King's affinity for western chauvinism. I see nothing wrong with white nationalism either. White supremacy is another matter. It reeks of imperialism and fails the principle of universality. If he stood by that quote, then I certainly call it out for its faults.

So Mr King failed rules 1 and 2. (GatewayPundit is suggesting that he was misquoted, but that remains to be seen. I don't put it past them to entirely fabricate a quote, but if he did not independently record the interview then he's still at fault.) How did he fare on rule 3? In his official response he did not apologize, but does grovel before the altar of liberal values, going so far as to ape their favorite term "bigoted." So he squeaks by on that account - I guess - but the whole incident amounts to an epic blunder.

I won't attack Mr King's morality over his statement. I believe he genuinely misspoke or was misquoted. He has issued a statement clarifying his stance on the matter. Of course, the normal suspects from the fake right can't help themselves when there's a heretic to burn. The editor-in-chief of the now defunct Weekly Standard called King an "unapologetic bigot" and leveraged the incident to disparage the entire Republican party. The National Review took the opportunity to explain to it's readers that western civilization is not white.* Ben Shapiro went the furthest and called on Congressional Republicans to censure Mr King, and spearheaded a funding campaign for his 2020 primary opponent. As normal, all the left has to do is call someone a bigot or a racist and these cockroaches go scrambling to outdo each other in their virtue signaling.

Steve King's career is probably over. I stand by him and wish him well, and I really hope conservatives will internalize the lesson that there is no upside to doing liberal media, nor in pandering to them.

*Apparently we can't say western civilization is white because some of the technologies we use were not invented by whites. (Agriculture, for one.) This is the level of social commentary you get from liberals posed as conservatives who get their historical perspectives from video games.