Perhaps I am dating myself a little, but one of my favorite movies as a young teenager was “The Bad News Bears.” It was a very moving story about an alcoholic youth league baseball coach who takes over a losing team. Walter Matthau was the lead character. The movie was all about never giving up, working hard, and finding success. Of course, who can forget the end scene of the movie? No, the Bears did not win the championship; they finished second. But they realized they were capable of being champions, and in their eyes, they were. They did not seek out a participation trophy but rather found their moxie.
The movie was a huge success; it was done on about a $9 million budget but grossed about $42.3 million at the box office. There were two later sequels, which were not as profitable. Sometimes Hollywood needs to learn when to stop. And building off that lesson unlearned, Hollywood did a remake of the movie in 2005 starring Billy Bob Thornton. The movie was budgeted at about $35 million and grossed about $34.3 million at the box office.
You may be thinking that the purpose of this missive is to talk about the lessons from the original 1976 movie and how we can defeat the culture of the participation trophy in America. Yes, that is a great point, and a worthy concept perhaps for a future writing, but this missive takes the title and presents a different twist, applying it to the liberal, progressive media: the new Bad News Bears.
The Media Research Center has done a phenomenal job of tracking the percentage of positive news stories about the Trump administration. I would just like to focus in on the past week as an example.
Consider how the week ended with the announcement of a Q2 GDP growth number of 4.1 percent. That is the fastest economic growth increase in years. As well, we saw President Trump visiting a steel mill in Illinois that had been reopened. Now, one would think these are the type of good news stories that every news media outlet would want to highlight. Why not focus on an economic restoration that is getting Americans back to work, and our production and manufacturing industry churning again? This great news comes along with record unemployment and the fact that we have hit a time when we have the most Americans in our history employed – some 156 million.
We have more job openings than we have persons to fill them, and these are not just service sector jobs. We have companies and corporations signing up to dedicate resources to training and preparing the next generation of skilled American workers. You would think that every news agency would be featuring stories on Americans who have departed the welfare rolls and have reentered the workforce. After all, we have a rising workforce participation rate.
Last week, we had the President of the European Union visit the White House and the resulting press conference was positive news. We are opening more markets for our agricultural products, and we are on track to have fair, free, equitable, and reciprocal trade agreements and relations. And you would have to have a stone-cold heart to have not teared up watching the repatriation of the remains of our servicemen lost during the Korean War. Loved ones will finally have closure, and our uniformed warriors will be heading home.
This was just the past week, but what was the Bad News Bears media talking about?
Yes, you guessed it, the same ol’ stuff. Of course, when you travel by airlines, you are inundated with one predominant news channel – CNN. Hmm, should that be a violation of some anti-trust law? Lest I digress, watching the news headlines, the “breaking” story was all about former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and his new revelations. Yes, we had to go back to Playboy models and Russia, Russia, Russia. I find it so very humorous that the left, and their complicit media accomplices, are just bent on finding something that will stick. Their hope is not in the American people getting back to work but rather casting their hatred upon one person, and by extension the entire nation.
The leftist media was all over the story about the Trump administration meeting a deadline to reunite illegal immigrant families. Then again, the Bad News Bears refers to them as undocumented immigrants, just like a drug dealer is an unlicensed pharmacist. How about focusing on the reunion of long-lost loved ones from the Korean War back to their American families? Nah, that would not fit the Bad News Bears’ anti-Trump ideological narrative.
It is obvious why the left is so angry. They are constantly being fed bad news. Of course, the very same liberal, progressive media, during the Obama reign, was all about sunshine and rainbows. Leading from behind was brilliant: the policy of strategic patience with North Korea and sending billions of dollars to Iran, the number one state sponsor of Islamic terrorism because it was owed to the Ayatollahs (well, actually, it wasn’t), gave us peace. Giving Russia a “reset button” was astute diplomacy, and trusting Russia to remove chemical weapons from Syria was an impeccable foreign policy success. Telling Dmitry Medvedev that he (Obama) would have more “flexibility” after reelection meant that “Oh, well,” Putin got to have Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and shoot down a civilian airliner – but that was all spun into good news or not even reported at all.
Therefore, it is rather child’s play to debate someone who only watches the Bad News Bears. They are so ill-informed and inadequately prepared to engage in any substantial, intellectual discourse. Recall Whoopi Goldberg stating, no ranting, to Judge Jeanine Pirro that she was tired of someone stoking violence. Could Whoopi have been referring to Maxine Waters? What ends up happening is that the patrons of the Bad News Bears, when they realize they do not know of which they speak, they resort to shouting. After all, the purpose of the Bad News Bears media is to foment anger and stoke the fires of dissension, resulting in the #Resistance movement.
But resist what? Astounding economic growth, a revitalized military, a resurging and respected foreign policy, or moving more Americans out of poverty and on food stamps to working.
We had a saying in the military as commanders to our subordinate leaders, “Bad news only gets worse with time.” And so it is for the Bad News Bears of the liberal, progressive media.
This article originally appeared on CNSNews.com.
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
