Why CNN sucks, example # 47,324.

An article on their Politics page boldly announces:

Photo surfaces of Cindy Hyde-Smith posing with Confederate artifacts

Republican Mississippi Sen. candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith evidently visited a museum in her home state four years ago and took pictures with some of the artifacts. She was the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture at the time. Seems like pretty standard fare for a politician, right?  Not in these days of hypersensitivity and Yellow Journalism.

You see, the museum was The Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library located in Biloxi.  And the artifacts she was shown posing with were Confederate artifacts.  Our modern-day Social Justice Warrior society has deemed the Confederacy to be the root of all evil.  The recent push to strike the rebel flag and other Confederate memorabilia from public view has come with the canard that those items “belong in a museum.”  Evidently simply visiting said museums are now (to use an SJW phrase) “problematic.”

The most curious thing here is the way CNN frames the story.  “Photo surfaces…”  Well, that is one way to look at it.  The photos have been on Hyde-Smith’s Facebook page for four years.  Some intrepid CNN journalist “uncovered” it after what was no doubt an exhaustive search on her timeline.  Woodward and Bernstein were amateurs!

In days of yore, such phraseology was reserved for instances where photos were actively being hidden from public view, lest they be incriminating.  I’m going to guess that having said photos publicly available on her Facebook page was NOT an effort to hide them.  If so, it is the poorest such effort in modern history.

And then there is the fact that CNN felt obligated to describe the artifacts as “Confederate.”  *sigh*  The three most commonly used rifles in the war were used by both sides. The weapon she is holding in this oh-so-controversial picture could have just as easily been used by a Billy Yank as a Johnny Reb.  But that would not have made for such a salacious headline.

You know what, CNN?  I live in Danville-Virginia.  We were the last Capital of the Confederacy.  In addition, I live a mile from the American Armored Foundation Tank Museum.  In that museum, they have lots of German and Italian artifacts from World War Two.  I have taken pictures of them, and I suspect I am not the only one. Does this now qualify me for a similar headline:

Photo surfaces of drunk libertarian rabble-rouser posing with Nazi artifacts

CNN is more than free to continue to act as a de facto PR firm for the Democratic National Committee.  They are free to publish anything this side of libel and say anything this side of slander.  But do NOT insult my intelligence by telling me they are an unbiased source of news and information.