While the national news media outlets are engaged in a frenetic attempt to distance themselves from recent reporting debacles that have crippled their credibility, The Tennessean has produced a story attacking the Williamson County Republican Party for a meme included in a recent newsletter that mocked the intellect of the increasingly controversial new member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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The meme has a picture of Ocasio-Cortez being asked about her opinion on Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized abortion on demand). It portrays her responding in support of it since those are the “only two ways Mexicans can cross the river.” The Tennessean claims the meme is racist. National media outlets have been quick to jump in as well.
Williamson County GOP Chair Debbie Deaver noted that The Tennessean is engaging in the same sort of contrived controversy that we are seeing from other liberal news outlets. “As a political figure, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to be the subject of political satire and depending on your political view you may find it offensive others while others will find it humorous,” Deaver said. “When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested her progressive agenda was analogous to gang rape (running train) the sound of crickets from the Left was deafening and so was the hypocrisy from Democrat women who ignored it.”
“Democrats are making profanity laced speeches, holding vile and disgusting signs at their anti-Trump marches, and her fellow Democrat member of Congress Rashida Tlaib drops an F-bomb — all with absolute silence from The Tennessean and Tennessee Democrats, so I am shocked that they would be so thin skinned over a political cartoon which is tame by their standards,” Deaver pointed out.
Deaver said she received a total of four emails from individuals who are not part of the party nor on the email distribution list expressing their “outrage” over the meme. The emails arrived in quick succession as part of a clearly orchestrated effort by Democrats who “can’t win at the ballot box so they have to turn to their allies in the Tennessean newsroom” to get attention. Deaver pointed out that The Tennessean reporter called almost immediately after to quickly “get the story”, which is further indication that she was operating out of the same biased journalistic playbook that we have seen with the BuzzFeed story about Trump and the media assault on the kids from Kentucky.
“We are not going to let fake outrage from the Democrats and The Tennessean dictate the way we point out and underline the ignorance and idiocy displayed by public officials that the Democrats have put in positions of power that put our country and families at grave risk,” Deaver said.
One Williamson County conservative activist summed up the Tennesseans approach as “localizing” the extreme bias that has been displayed by the national media in the fake news story concocted by Buzzfeed claiming that President Donald Trump told his attorney Michael Cohen to lie to federal investigators — which was debunked by a release from Special Prosecutor Bob Mueller — and the media frenzy that targeted the school kids from Covington Catholic High School. “Apparently The Tennessean was feeling left out from the blatant displays of bogus and biased reporting and wanted to jump in to “prove” themselves worthy and relevant to the Left,” she said. “And then they wonder why readership declines, their colleagues in the newsroom get laid off, and vulture investors start circling their soon to be dead carcass? I’m just surprised that the reporter could find a way to claim that Russian collusion or Nazi sympathies were the real source of the meme.”
Just this week Ocasio-Cortez has decried a system that “allows billionaires to exist” and claimed that climate change is “our World War 2” and that the world won’t exist in 12 years because of global warming. Even left-leaning Politifact has been forced to label many of her statements so false as to qualify for “pants on fire” ratings.
The Williamson County GOP meme is not the first, nor will it be the last, to mock the New York Congresswoman’s ignorance of the Constitution, history and economics, especially since she continues to roll out mock-worthy quotes on an almost daily basis.
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Steve Gill is the Political Editor of The Tennessee Star and co-host of The Tennessee Star Report, which airs weekday mornings 5 am to 8 am on 98.3 and 1510 WLAC.
Photo “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Photo “Williamson County GOP” by Williamson County GOP.
Deny The Tennessean the subscription dollar–if you have to know what your enemy is doing, read the paper at the public library. This will help ‘put it out of business’ faster–then you won’t have to bother with it.
But John, what will I use if my toilet overflows? ( more convenient than a mop)
The Tennessean has never held back on slanderous political cartoons about Trump. I should know, I read that fish wrap everyday. ( I have to know what my enemies are talking about)