I will never fault a man for walking through an open door and pursuing his dream. If God – or fate, depending on your worldview – allows you an opportunity, I have nothing but respect for those who overcome their own insecurities, take a leap of faith, and seize the day.
But many times, such a swing for the fences just doesn't end well, and the glory comes in being willing to pack it up and go home. How few are able to muster the courage to admit failure and acknowledge that though they gave it their best, this just wasn't their moment.
Take the tag team duo of Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy, CNN's "media correspondents" tasked with keeping tabs on the machinations of American media. Both men are remarkably unsuited for their roles on television – Darcy never appearing prepared for his segments, and Stelter suffering from a staggering credibility problem. Even when he does his homework, his poise and manner of delivery are almost comical.
But besides the subjective nature of evaluating their on-screen talent, it's the content of their "work" that is persistently subpar, utterly predictable, and often embarrassing for a major news network. Perhaps it should just be expected from a network as ideologically partisan as CNN, but their media reporting team is really little more than the Fox News tattletales.
As but one recent example:
Trump's spurious claim aside, remember what Stelter's job is. This tweet isn't focused on the merits of Trump's theory, but on the fact that a Fox reporter didn't offer "pushback" when it was floated. Fair enough, but if it's Varney's job to second guess and counter his guests remarks, shouldn't a "chief media correspondent" be doing the same thing with the non-Fox media himself?
For instance, when the powerful corporate behemoth Amazon uses its newspaper, The Washington Post, in such a provocatively contradictory way as this, shouldn't someone like Stelter speak up?
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Why is someone at the Daily Caller noticing this, but a highly paid reporter at CNN – whose singular purpose is to keep such corporate media entities honest – can't be bothered to speak a word about it?
When the country's newspaper of record, The New York Times, offers editorial garbage under the cloak of news reporting like this, shouldn't it catch the eye of a "chief media correspondent"?
Isn't this the moment that either Stelter or Darcy live up to their own demands and offer pushback against the Times? Something along the lines of, "Why is the Times condemning Manchin for betraying his party's president, but seemed ecstatic whenever Mitt Romney did the same thing during the Trump years?"
Wasn't the media's song and dance routine throughout the Trump years that Republicans should not be expected to bow the knee to the wishes of the president? Why should Manchin be treated any differently? All questions that would be asked by competent media correspondents.
And remember what I was saying about Stelter's credibility problem?
The same man who seems so concerned with journalists who don't offer pushback, recently conducted an interview with current White House press secretary Jen Psaki that rightfully landed him in the crosshairs of nearly every person who observed it. Prostrating himself from the beginning, Stelter led by asking, "What does the press get wrong when covering Biden's agenda?"
It only got worse from there.
I don't get into the name-calling, personal attacks on Stelter's physical appearance. Those are shallow, cruel, and completely unnecessary. Ditto that for those who mock Darcy's deer-in-the-headlight look virtually every time he's on camera.
I don't think CNN owes it to their viewers to move on from this duo for such shallow reasons, or even for their low viewership ratings. But both men are just willfully bad at their jobs, and it seems like that should matter to someone in charge.
