HUBEI PROVINCE (湖北省), LESSER TAIWAN—I don't always watch the news. But when I do, I prefer the One America News Network.
It's not a partisan thing. There is value in hearing from all sides—even the Far Left, which is why I watch Hannity and tune in to White House press briefings. I prefer OAN for one simple reason: As far as I can tell, their journos are significantly less likely than those at other networks to break down in tears under pressure.
I don't watch CNN, for example, because Brian Stelter works there. He's one of those "media reporters" who reports on the media. He inhabits a world of gratuitous self-gratification that, due to the physical limits of the human body, normal folks will never reach. His show, Reliable Sources, is where so-called "firefighters" come to get soaked by other "firefighters." It's the journo equivalent of the shirtless calendar.
You probably won't be surprised to learn that Stelter had a public meltdown over the weekend. He missed his deadline for the media newsletter he writes for members of the media. Because of his feelings. Because the China-caused pandemic has taken a toll on his eMoTiONs.
"I crawled in bed and cried for our pre-pandemic lives," Stelter confessed on Twitter, the popular social networking website. "Tears that had been waiting a month to escape."
On Sunday's episode of Reliable Sources, the lachrymose host elaborated in somber soliloquy. He had "tried to bottle it all up." He was "trying to be stoic." He was "so angry at the ignorance in Washington," where much of the political media is based. "That's when the tears came." I assume he removed his top hat and monocle before crawling under his weighted blanket and wailing like a child.
What, may I ask, has become of the American Man? By all accounts, this is the sort of Beta groveling to which He must succumb in order to get laid these days. He spends hours stacking His bookshelves with dog-eared copies of feminist memoirs. He schleps reusable tote bags to the local art collective, bartering essential oils for Hentai renderings of the Last Supper. He hoards sanitary napkins and partakes in "empathetic man-stration." He vlogs about spirit energy and believes, unironically, that journalists are human beings.
In other words, the American Man no longer exists. It was the Baby Boomers who put Him down—that generation of draft dodgers who taught their sons not to care about things like winning or being good at sports or loving America. Requiescat in pace, you noble bastard.
Say what you will about Walter Cronkite—a devoted communist and shameless Việt Cộng sympathizer—at least he wasn't a p*ssy. Maybe it was the authoritative mustache and the full head of hair, but Americans believed they could trust him, even though they couldn't. Christopher Hitchens was a devoted communist whose idea of journalism (getting waterboarded, not crying) was slightly different from Stelter's (analyzing presidential hashtags with Dan Rather, sobbing himself to sleep).
Stelter is a product of his time, a reflection of the (physical and moral) frailty of his professional class, the depravity of his coddled generation. A real firefighter, having never set foot in a Columbia Journalism School auditorium—save perhaps in response to a Green Room microwave emergency before a roundtable discussion with Brian Stelter—knows better than to fight a real fire with a limp hose. Tears might make a fine lubricant in the deviant fantasies of Manhattan elites, but they'll never retard the flames of reality.
Man up, America. We survived the Jimmy Carter administration, and we'll survive this Chinese menace, too. Dry eyes, full hearts, can't lose.