CPAC, which is the nation’s largest annual gathering of conservatives in America took place this week and a lot of the usual stories emerged in the aftermath.
President Trump took some more shots at the media and many reporters took shots back at him.
As Piers Morgan has been saying, I really wish both the President and the media would ease up a little bit and I still hope that will happen eventually.
But I have to say, one story that emerged really disturbed me
That story was the ejection of National Policy Institute Director Richard Spencer from CPAC.
In case you are unfamiliar with Spencer, he basically believes in white nationalism and a demographic heavily skewed towards those of European ancestry.
As a Jewish man, I find Spencer’s views to be both wrong-headed and bigoted.
The issue I have here is that CPAC did not invite him and even asked him to leave when he showed up, yet, instead of focusing in on that, much of the media reported with glee about his presence there as if he had been asked to be there.
Stories were written about the “alt-right” and how conservatives were going to have to deal with the influence and popularity of people like Spencer.
The problem is, this is a completely false narrative. Spencer does not have any major influence or following. In fact, up until the media started building him up, virtually nobody even knew who he was.
He was just an obscure individual with a fringe think tank until he started being given all kinds of attention because he coined the term “alt-right” and many wanted to tie Donald Trump into that movement.
So they gave Spencer the attention he so desperately craved because they wanted to use him and his white nationalist views in an attempt to write President Trump off as a racist.
That’s why there was so much coverage of Spencer’s post-election event in Washington, DC, where he spoke to a room of maybe 100 people and jokingly shouted “Hail Trump” as a way to keep the spotlight on himself.
Of course, the media played it up like this was some large, dangerous group that was spreading hate across America. In truth, it was nothing more than a bunch of social rejects who found themselves finally being paid attention to, not by President Trump, but by hordes of eager reporters.
Michael C Moynihan of Vice News summed it up best, joking on the Fifth Column podcast that when there are more reporters than people attending the event, you know the story is being way overblown.
For his part, I don’t really blame Spencer. I may not like his views one bit, but I see exactly what he is doing. He knows the media see him as a representative for what they believe vaulted President Trump into power – white resentment – and he is more than happy to soak up as much coverage as he can.
In essence, he is reveling in being a national bad guy, because it keeps people talking about him while providing the public with the illusion that he has any significance.
He doesn’t.
He has very few people in a country of 320 million people who take him or his ideas seriously, and nobody cares about him except those who wish to serve their own agendas by trying to tie him to President Trump.
For those complaining about Spencer, remember, it is attention he craves, so stop giving it to him.
You can hurt him most by simply ignoring him.
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