Yesterday I wrote that NBC was smart to hire Ronna McDaniel.
"Peter, we love you but this is crazy. She can be a guest. But her hiring as a commentator suggests she has more authority, intelligence, credibility and honesty than she has."
"I think you have misplaced your priorities here, Peter. If I hire someone, it's rightly assumed I am vouching for their integrity."
I got lots of comments like these.
Let me explain.
An ongoing theme of this blog is that the message cannot be disentangled from the messenger. Who is saying things and how it is said are huge parts of the received communication. Indeed, when I am being bold, I claim that nearly all received communication in political speech is from the who and how, and that denoted, literal words are nearly irrelevant.
I use the exaggerated example of Joe Biden or Clint Eastwood. No matter how superbly either of them acted the part of Juliet in Shakespeare's play, they could not do it persuasively. They don't look the part. I cite the response to Biden's recent State of the Union speech. All of the attention was on Biden's tone of confidence, his strength of voice, and his apparent clarity of thought -- not what he said.
Ronna McDaniel would not be hired to be a source of truth. She would be a paid contributor to play a specific role -- the role of Republican quisling and collaborator with Trump, a person who corruptly enabled Trump to spread falsehoods. She would be the semi-reformed villain.
Regular viewers of NBC know that Eugene Robinson is on multiple news panels. Every time the panel is introduced we hear that Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter with The Washington Post. For all I know, he won it 30 years ago for a heartwarming human-interest story about a lost puppy, but that doesn't matter. He won a Pulitzer Prize, so he is presented as a highly-qualified serious reporter for a major newspaper.
Ronna McDaniel would be introduced as a former Trump enabler who participated in the gaslighting of America, who participated in the fake elector plot in Michigan, and who, even with that effort to undermine democracy, was insufficiently loyal to Trump to keep her job. I can imagine her on the panel next to Eugene Robinson. He gets his intro. Then:
" . . . and Ronna McDaniel, former head of the Republican National Committee, who in that role echoed Trump's false claims of a stolen election and who participated with him in the Michigan fake-elector plot -- actions she now recognizes were lies, but done 'for the team' during her role as RNC head. She was fired by Trump and joins us to give a Republican perspective."
She would be positioned as an unreliable narrator. Because she is a woman and a professed Christian, NBC would need to exercise some care. If she looked like a punching bag, particularly for male news hosts, it would send an unseemly, counter-productive look of misogyny -- a man humiliating a woman when he asks her tough questions. She claims the identity of Christian mother. This could look like a concerted NBC effort to pick on and humiliate "deplorable" Christians, if hosts aren't careful. Avoid that, too.
Her place on a panel, positioned as a thrust-from-the-Trump-cult Republican, would be to articulate that some of what Trump did and does is criminal. Anti-democratic. Lawless. Shockingly crude as regards women. Dishonest. And that McDaniel, a professional Republican partisan, rejects some parts of Trump-ism, although she also minimizes that because she is a Trump apologist at heart. MAGA Trump-cultists are a lost cause. But there are Republican and Republican-leaning voters up for grabs. They are offended by Trump. Those are the people NBC would be trying to reach with McDaniel trying to unpack Trump, picking between the legal and illegal.
McDaniel might not last long at NBC if she were forced to confront Trump's most lawless behavior and lies. She would probably quit. She would not like being introduced as a dishonest enabler of an authoritarian criminal. She would be, as Trump celebrated in a Truth Social post, politically homeless -- in Never-never land:
The easy thing for her to do would have been to work for a few weeks at NBC, realize she looked terrible being described as having a history of partisan lies while trying to defend Trump, and negotiate her way out of the contract.
Then she would go to Fox, where she can delight audiences by complaining about her treatment by the liberal media.
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9 comments:
Hiring liars and conspiracy theorists lends them credibility whether it’s intended or not. But I suppose in Post-Truth America, networks need to present such nonsense along with facts in order to appear “fair and balanced.” They should probably also consider hiring Christian nationalists and commentators from Qanon. They certainly have some interesting, widely believed viewpoints.
I still think you were wrong.
Peter, would you turn down $300k (her reported salary) just because your history of lying was used in your introduction? I doubt many people would.
Lying isn't a bug for most of the current GOPee, it's a feature.
Would you hire someone who said wine was awful and that industry leaders needs to be in prison? Doubtful.
You know she will lie about her experience because that's all she knows.
NBC will pay her but needs to get an NDA so she doesn't further monetize her dishonesty.
And Rashida Jones needs to go, too, along with anyone who thought hiring a known liar/possible criminal was good for business.
I think Clint Eastwood, in his prime, could have played Juliet if he wanted.
Robin Williams had phenomenal range, including playing sort-of-women (Mrs. Doubtfire).
Ronna McDonald and NBC are getting piloried, and deservedly so, because they both thought integrity didn't matter.
NBC hosts and sane Americans disagree.
This debacle should hurt NBC financially, and those involved in the decision, such as Rashida Jones, should be fired.
If I were convinced NBC or MSNBC were going to actually introduce serial list and propagandist Romney McDaniels as you proposed, I would agree with you, but I think the chances of that happening are as remote as is Trump actually going to Prison for any one of his multiple (alleged) crimes.
NBC/MSNBC still employs former CIA chief John Brennan as a news contributor. Aside from his more recent Trump/Russia/Hunter claims, we should recall that ten years ago the WaPo itself called for Brennan to be fired by President Obama for lying to the Senate about CIA spying on Senate staffer computers. Ditto for ex-Obama DNI James Clapper, who lied to Ron Wyden on the record about the NSA collecting data on American citizens. Meh....
Serial list, not list. Damn spell check!
Serial Liar, not list. Damn spell check
Ed, I agree with you.
Look, she changed her name just to please the orange turd.
A commentator has to have an informed opinion and a backbone.
She has neither.
She's suitable for Dancing with the Stars, or Survivor (Deplorable Island). Or any of FOX's dillusional news programming where, it's been proven, facts don't matter and viewers are uneducated.
Ya know what's really cool about this?
The uprising was by the employees, and management surrendered.
Granted it's not a Norma Rae moment but it shows the on air talent who viewers trust care about their profession and their product, and successfully pushed back against management.
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