On Saturday night the White House Correspondant’s Dinner kicked off without Trump or anyone from the Trump WH in attendance. Yet somehow Trump was in the room. Well, he is living rent-free in the media’s heads so… But I digress. Historian Ron Chernow gave the keynote. But for a historian, he sure got a few things wrong. Most notably information regarding Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
As noted elsewhere, there was a lot of teeth gnashing and lecturing from several others leading up to Chernow’s keynote. The evening resembled a dark, grumpy, humorless scold.
Nerdprom abandons traditional shit insult comics, pivots to indignant whiny finger-waving sermons https://t.co/YJJXpGl9yM
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 28, 2019
WHC President Oliver Knox can’t quit Trump.
““I don’t want to dwell on the president,” Knox said while discussing President Trump. “This is not his dinner. It’s ours, and it should stay ours. But I do want to say this. In nearly 23 years as a reporter I’ve been physically assaulted by Republicans and Democrats, spat on, shoved, had crap thrown at me. I’ve been told I will never work in Washington again by both major parties.”
“And yet I still separate my career to before February 2017 and what came after,” Knox continued. “And February 2017 is when the president called us the enemy of the people. A few days later my son asked me, ‘Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?” At the end of a family trip to Mexico he mused if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.””
You know what? Pull up your big boy panties and get a clue. At that very same dinner your organization gave the WaPo an award for Trump’s ‘shithole countries’ remark. A remark ALL of you took out of context. CNN got an honorable mention for the Kavanaugh coverage. Coverage that was debunked several times. So the whining about being called ‘enemy of the people’ has gotten very old.
But back to historian Ron Chernow. For someone who is supposedly a great historian, he got a lot wrong in his speech.
Two things in particular.
One: Chernow snipes at Trump’s Mt. Rushmore remarks.
“Campaigns against the press do not get your face carved in Mount Rushmore because when you chip away at the free press you chip away at the heart of democracy.” — Ron Chernow #WHCD2019
— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) April 28, 2019
Only there’s a teeny tiny problem with Chernow’s use of Jefferson to make his point.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson, who is on Mt. Rushmore
— I'm real (@edkrayewski) April 28, 2019
Well, how about that? Thomas Jefferson was calling out the media for Fake News over 200 years ago!
Photo Credit: National Park Service, cropped and modified
Even more telling is what Chernow had to say about Alexander Hamilton and immigration.
“The system is full. We can’t take you anymore,” Trump said earlier this month, adding that for both “illegal immigration” and “asylum,” the answer is “I’m sorry. We’re full.”
Chernow joked that Hamilton, who came to the American colonies from Nevis, was lucky he arrived before the present era.
Hamilton was “an immigrant who arrived, thank God, before the country was full,” Chernow joked. “Frankly, I don’t know why they let the guy in. Clearly, someone slipped up at the southern border.”
People took that and RAN with it. Keep in mind that Chernow’s book was the inspiration for the Broadway play Hamilton. You know, the one with Lin Miranda as Hamilton? The one where the cast decided to lecture Vice President Pence and look like a bunch of childish snowflakes while doing so?
Chernow’s remarks on Hamilton are totally misleading, yet many over social media are buying that Hamilton was an immigrant.
Guess what? HE WASN’T. Why?
Hamilton was born in St. Kitts/Nevis. As a teenager he was sent to New York. By 1777 he was serving with General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Was he an immigrant?
Absolutely not.
You see, St. Kitts/Nevis AND the colony of New York were under British rule at the time of his birth and when he landed in New York Harbor around 1773. COLONIES under British rule. In other words Hamilton literally traveled from one state to another within the SAME country.
However, when that was pointed out, the tantrums commenced. You are WRONG because Trump! was one of the battle cries. The other? Trump hates brown people! When it was pointed out that Hamilton was white, one would’ve thought that Guam had tipped over again.
Chernow played and pandered to the crowd, that was evident throughout his entire speech. However, as a historian, he did a disservice to the American public by stating facts not in evidence regarding Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
Historian Ron Chernow led with Fake News and thus became part of the problem.
Welcome Instapundit Readers!
Feature Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org, cropped and modified
Jim says: ‘enemy of the people’ Isn’t that most of the progressive/woke media in the Western democracies?
Chris Newman says: Then there’s also the fact that Hamilton supported the Alien Act, which was designed to make it easier to remove aliens with dangerous ideologies (at the time, primarily French Jacobins) from the country.
Wfjag says: As their audiences continue to shrink, members of the press have fewer and fewer people to talk to, and so spend more time talking to each other. This isolates and reinforces their views.
It’s been a long time since I saw a true Man On The Street type program. When those are done, they are almost always faked by having had the interviewees screened and pre-selected to give a predetermined point of view response. Reporters now must have J-School degrees to be hired. No longer does a reporter wear out shoe leather tracking down sources. Most just repeat press releases.
And, yet, members of the press cannot conceive of a reason why increasing numbers think they are ill informed and out of touch.
Scott says: Watters World is the most recent one I can think of, used to be a segment on Fox news on the old Bill O’Reilly show..Jesse Watters was awesome.. He was asking people, on the streets of NY i think what they thought of Obamas running mate Sarah Palin.. the responses were awesome, and showed just how clueless many of the voters were. He did segments o college campuses and other places as well.
Steve S says: US Constitution, Article 3, Section 1:
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;…”
In my history classes (just before the 2nd meteor strike) I was taught that this clause was deliberately put there for persons in circumstances like Hamilton’s. There were a hey-of-a-lot of emigrants directly from Britain, too, who were potential candidates for the Presidency.
Ron H says: Wait! Do you mean to say that Manuel Lin Miranda was culturally appropriating a white man’s story??
Suburbanbanshee says: Hamilton was half-Scottish (like part of the ancestry of Trump) and half-black. Or maybe 1/4 black, depending on whose guess you believe.
Ryan says: Nope. Sorry.
Half white Scottish and mother was French Huguenot and the father was Scottish, invented mythical faux history notwithstanding.
GWB says: he mused
Yes, it was a f*ing JOKE. And it therefore adds no actual weight to your angst.
Chernow snipes at Trump’s Mt. Rushmore remarks.
Heh. BTW, it wasn’t just Jefferson. Roosevelt also made very negative remarks about the press. And Lincoln practically put fetters on the press during the Late Unpleasantness.
one would’ve thought that Guam had tipped over again.
Heh. 🙂
Yeah, so they pick comedians that aren’t that funny, and historians that aren’t that accurate. Next year… how much you wanna bet they go with Michael Mann? (You know, for a scientist that can’t science.)
9 Comments