In the continuing saga of taking tertiary news stories and making a big deal out of them, I proudly present comments about the firing of Terry Moran, now formerly employed by ABC. His crime was doing a social media post about Donald Trump and his advisor, Stephen Miller. He called them both haters.
I won’t give you all the quotes because I don’t have access to the now deleted post but it’s not necessary to my thoughts here. Funny thing though, one of them re Stephan Miller included this phrase: “You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment….”, this from a senior journalist making $600-900k annually. I say funny thing because I thought something similar just looking at the image of Terry Moran. My personal impression of his image is that this is a man with very soft hands, very pampered and privileged, very liberal. I expect to see him weep and for blue tears to well up in the corner of his eye.
One could sit here and think, ‘well there you go doing the exact same thing that he just did, judging by his appearance!’ Except it wasn’t the same thing. What Terry Moran did was take Trump and Miller, with an enormous record of public acts, proclamations, analysis, and numerous national and global movements supporting and moving parallel to their official acts, and he reduced it all down to hate. They hate. And not so much as even an allegorical example? That’s all you’re getting for your $600-900k. Contrast this with my judgement of Moran. I know he interviewed Trump and argued with him in the process. Like Trump, I had never heard of Moran before that. I read maybe two articles about his woes, sort of got fascinated that with all his training, a whole career as a journalist, and all of his current exposures to the people in power that he covers, and yet he had the shortsightedness to only make a conclusion about Miller based on his looks and do it for the whole world to see. In contrast, I’ve just taken an image, a couple short articles, and informed you of my impressions in enough detail, equal to a good fraction of everything I read. I’ve seen his image and synthesized that with what little record I see and presented a profile of what his public life has led him to. I have yet to make any direct comment about his moral balance. Let’s just say, I think I’m earning his former salary better than what he demonstrated.
What should we derive from this? Certainly, don’t be like Terry Moran. Don’t take a world of information and reduce it down to inanity, and in the process, make yourself into the valueless beast that you accused others of being. If you’re a progressive nut job, you might argue that Terry Moran simply came to the same conclusion as millions of other progressive nut jobs. Of course, and therein lies the problem. Terry Moran represented and demonstrated about the same level of acuity as most modern Democrats, and vice versa. They don’t validate each other; they do the opposite. The flip side is what you should do, think, then speak. When you speak, appeal to reason, explain yourself. It’s a given that not everyone is going to agree with you. You may not have a perfect argument but at least have one. Even so, you’ll never win converts among people like Terry Moran. Their reflexive nature has shut the door to reason.
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