-By Gary Krasner
After watching Hugh Hewitt on the guest panel of pundits for three outings on Meet the Press so far this year, it’s looking like he’s content on joining the ranks of David Brooks and Michael Gerson in being considered just part of the scenery for liberal media programs.
Admittedly, the token conservatives who get invited to Sunday Morning news shows do not get many opportunities to chime in. Which means that they can’t afford to waste their shot with a neutral, squishy comment. Editor of National Review Rich Lowery, for example, ably gets in some good conservative jabs when it’s his turn to speak. He gets invited back to Meet the Press and Face the Nation, because he’s had enough skill and poise to slip the knife in without much blood spatter. It’s a skill that Jason Riley, editorialist for the Wall Street Journal and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, didn’t exhibit when he appeared on Meet the Press last August.
After making stinging comments against Obama on Iraq–which was fine by Andrea Mitchell who supports Hillary–something unexpected happened. What happened was that Jason Riley spoke up, without prompting by moderation manager Mitchell (David Gregory was out), and hauled off on the Ferguson shooting that was under discussion, saying how blacks own violent crime, statistically.
That sent alarm bells ringing in the control room. You can see moderation manager Mitchell starting to squirm in her chair, and tried to interrupt Riley, a man with unmistakably black skin. But not before Riley–ignoring the nonverbal signals to pipe down–segued into attacking Al Sharpton, saying that 40 black kids got shot in Chicago by other blacks during the Ferguson affair. But said that instead of going to Chicago to protest, Sharpie went to Ferguson to exploit his grievance agenda.
This time, moderation manager Mitchell raised her voice louder to thank the guests and abruptly, and awkwardly, to end the segment. What we don’t know is whether police were called in to remove Riley. We don’t know if he left voluntarily, or was dragged out of the studio. All we know was that the 3 other pundits were still seated at the table after the commercial, without Riley being there. There was some discussion among the panel about Robin Williams’ suicide, before the show ended.
Well, no one knows yet how NBC allowed this to happen. Riley is a known black conservative who was doing interviews promoting his book about how blacks are themselves to blame for their troubles. A clean, articulate black man saying that, is a dangerous man—oo-to NBC and MSM. Ironically, Meet the Press had the “correct” panel in the prior half hour, with 5 luminaries of racialism and promoters of the victimization narrative. People like Mark Eric Dysan and other renowned race hustlers.
Mr. Hewitt, Meet Mr. Brooks
Getting back to Hugh Hewitt, his latest appearance on the discussion panel on Meet the Press was April 12. Here was the first question and answer for Hugh:
CHUCK TODD: Hugh, the Republican party this morning, they made sure they came in, they said they had something the RNC called, “StopHillary.GOP.” They sent out a little thumb drive that they claim have her email. They’re getting T-shirts. They went to all the news divisions this morning and did this. You know, I look at sort of an obsession on the right of beating Obama and beating Bill Clinton over the years, and I think, “They’re oh for four.” Is there a point where you do this too much?
HUGH HEWITT: Oh no. Not with Hillary. That was a little surreal when the mayor said she’d been thoroughly vetted. That was the talking point that they’d asked her, I think, to make sure they got out there. Because of course she hasn’t been thoroughly vetted. Brent Budowsky calling her “The New Nixon,” reminded me this is like a “new Coke” moment as well. And it’s actually kind of a “Weekend at Bernie’s” moment. I think they’re afraid that they have a candidate that they have to prop up from now until November of ’16, that there isn’t any substance, there isn’t any charisma, and most of all, she’s not trustworthy. And that’s what those plans she showed, Quinnipiac polls. She fails on the trustworthy question again and again.
Not too bad. But the low information crowd knows all that. Hewitt should have talked about the federal laws she violated by using her own email server for State Dept. business, then deleting emails on it. Andrew C. McCarthy and others have cited the laws that were broken. Hewitt should have mentioned her Benghazy sins–attributing the killings to a video. And failing to recommend to the president to send in a rescue team. Or preventing one from going. The fact that we don’t know what she was doing every minute that evening is scandalous and shameful.
The same day, Hilary announced that she’s a candidate for president. Her video presentation said that “When families are strong, America is strong.” That is a direct refutation to her government knows best ethos, so well represented by the title of her book, “It Takes a Village”–which when translated from Clintonese reads, “It takes a government agency.”
Hewitt’s next opportunity came when Chuck Todd was discussing the shooting by police officer Walter Scott. He discussed cops wearing video cameras, and played a video of a staged newscast (something NBC is good at) showing how the media would have given the benefit of the doubt to the cop, when no video of the shooting existed. A purely speculative and unlikely speculation, as recent events shows us:
CHUCK TODD: You know, Hugh, we also, there’s been a study of the pilot programs where there’ve been cameras on cops. And where there have been body cameras, the number of complaints against officers, down 88%. And the decline in police use of force, down 60%. I think we know the solution, don’t we?
HUGH HEWITT: Oh, the BWCs as they’re called, are changing, revolutionizing both what the police do and what suspects do. They all react differently when you’re being watched. And I must say, that was a very provocative and well-done piece. And it does present to you why this video makes so much sense. On the front page of The Washington Post today, they have gone back ten years. There are 54 prosecutions with police who have shot people, only 11 convictions. Some are still pending. And you wonder if BWCs had been available, whether those numbers would be different. But the downside is, if you’ve seen Furious 7, God’s Eye, do we really want police recording everything all the time?
Hewitt really dropped the ball here. The fake video news presentation was designed to show how the story would have played out had there been no video capturing the cop shooting the unarmed black in the back while the latter was running away. Here’s what Hewitt should have said:
QUOTE
You know Chuck, given how the press had given the benefit of the doubt to repeat offender Garner; strongarm robber Brown; and angry black Trayvon Martin who was eager to use his mixed martial arts fighting skills on someone (such as a “white” hispanic), I don’t think that faux news video captured what would have happened.
But regardless of how the news media would have handled the story on the first night it happened, absent of a video, and whom they would have demonized before the facts came in, it is clear from prior incidents that were attributed to racism absent of evidence, that once the evidence from forensic analysis showed that the fleeing man was shot in the back, the media would grudgingly report the evidence and their liberal audiences would still refuse to believe the evidence. The sad legacy of Ferguson taught us that.
UNQUOTE
Unfortunately, Hewitt did not say anything like that. As long as Hewitt wants to be liked and accepted as their token “conservative” by Chuck Todd and the eastern liberal media intelligencia, he’ll continue to drop the ball for real conservatives.