CNN star Chris Cillizza poked his head out of the womb Tuesday — you know, the MSM womb where everyone is safe from the real world consequences of failure and lying, the womb where everyone fails upwards, where no matter how dishonest and dead-wrong you are you are always loved and perfect and precious? — and things went hilariously, gloriously, righteously awry. Cillizza discovered that out here in the real America, thanks to his shallow ethics, shoddy work, and high opinion of his own adorableness, he is nothing less than a universal laughingstock.
To recap, this is the Chris Cillizza who demanded we all stop talking about the “fable” surrounding Hillary’s ill-health — just hours before she collapsed at a public event. This is the Cillizza who devoted an entire column (and I’m assuming a number of CNN segments) to second-by-second analysis of the Trump-Macron handshake. This is the Cillizza who is certain no fake news exists, who blames Trump for the media’s credibility problems (cuz Trump is behind all the bad things), who demands we stop debating important issues, who publishes strategy memos to defeat Trump, whose attempts to brand himself are laughably lame…
Cillizza is shallow and stupid and dishonest, and like most of the punditocracy, almost always wrong. Nevertheless, in an institution buried in Cillizza clones, where holding him accountable for his sins would be a condemnation of the entire media-complex, he persists, refuses to change, and is 100% certain that everything he does is equal parts brilliant and precious.
Tuesday afternoon, though, Cillizza discovered what everyone outside the media bubble thinks of him. Obviously unaware of this truth, Cillizza ventured out for a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) and from every single side of the political spectrum, it was just brutal. Cillizza also learned that CNN is every bit as despised as he is.
So you know this isn’t me cherry-picking, you are strongly encouraged to read the entire Reddit thread, which is a thing of beauty. For a myriad of legitimate reasons, Left and Right blasted Cillizza for a full hour, hundreds of comments, almost all of them savage, like these…
Why is it that journalists and pundits who habitually get things wrong are rewarded with higher paying, more prestigious jobs rather than being forced out of the national conversation?
Is there any possible political event that could occur that you wouldn’t treat like a sports match?
Who told you the Blue [glasses] frames was a good look?
are you worried that the media has created a closed loop feedback cycle with a bloated technocratic pundit class increasingly detached from the lives of working americans?
Chris, do you believe in meritocracy? If so, why do you get paid so much? If not, why do you get paid so much?
Chris, how would you describe your feelings on the hyper-capitalization of news media by major corporate interests in the modern age and the resulting shift in focus from accurate reporting to fast reporting that is high in spectacle and low in ethics in 3 emojis or less?
Are you aware that real, actual horse races exist? I ask this because you seem desperate to cover a horse race, to the point that you take life-and-death political struggles that affect a nation of 300 million people and a planet of billions and treat them like they’re a horse race. Why not just “cut out the middle man”, so to speak, and cover an actual horse race?
Would it improve the trust Americans have in the media if the number of unnamed sources were fewer and only used when a source legitimately faced physical danger if they were identified? Isn’t that’s how it’s supposed to be?
hey chris your article “Why bernie sanders wife is more like Gal Gadot FTW then you might think” changed my life. Thank you for your service
The beauty of the Gal Gadot question above is that I have no idea whether or not Cillizza actually wrote that article. Here’s a question mocking Cillizza’s CNN colleague Jeff Zeleny, who famously asked Precious Barry this question at a White House news conference:
What’s surprised you the most? What’s enchanted you the most?
Cillizza even managed to AMA some fake news about Wolf Blitzer’s Jeopardy skills:
QUESTIONER: You, Wolf Blitzer and S. E. Cupp play Jeopardy. Do any of you end with a positive amount of money?
CILLIZZA: I think Wolf for sure. That dude knows a lot about a lot. SE too. She is smart as hell.
QUESTIONER: So, do you just not know about that time Wolf embarrassed himself when he was actually on Celebrity Jeopardy?
With Cillizza, you never really know if he’s just ignorant our lying. But dim-bulb Blitzer …. Wow.
Anyway, Cillizza’s Reddit AMA offers a ray of hope in this divided country of ours. At the very least we can all come together and agree that everybody hates Chris.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.