Media Embarrassment: Pundits Drool Over Obama Kitesurfing

Former President Obama went kitesurfing in the Virgin Islands Tuesday, and his sycophants in the mainstream media were beside themselves with barely contained glee.

The intrepid guardians of true journalism at CNN were so excited that they felt it necessary to post a slick video on Facebook, publish an online article, and run a live segment dedicated to Obama’s ocean adventure with billionaire globalist pal, Richard Branson.

“Pollsters are scientists,” Stelter claimed. “They do this scientifically.”

“Former President Obama [is] vacationing in the British Virgin Islands, accepting Sir Richard Branson’s tropical, physical challenge,” said host Chris Cuomo.

Apparently CNN believes that Branson’s challenging Obama to a friendly water sport competition should be national news — and for some bizarre reason the online article detailing a single moment of Obama’s holiday is actually in the politics section, not the entertainment section where it may more appropriately belong.

Obama “kitesurfed 300 feet, doubling Branson’s distance,” exclaimed a giddy Cuomo. “Oh my gosh,” responded Cuomo’s co-host. “I feel like he’s rubbing in his vacation.”

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But of course, unless CNN would have us believe that the former commander-in-chief called up the studio and threatened them in order to force them to spend money and resources on multiple reports about that vacation, Obama isn’t rubbing in anything.

The timing of the segment is interesting. President Donald Trump has been busy dismissing CNN as a fake news organization that is rigged against him, which has in turn led Cuomo’s colleague, Brian Stelter, to embark on a one-man mission to prove that he is in fact a legitimate journalist and the company for which he works engages in legitimate journalism.

But on Tuesday morning, Cuomo appeared to prove Trump right. Indeed, CNN’s saccharine segment stood as a blatantly damning contrast to the almost comically negative coverage of Trump for which CNN is responsible.

Moreover, when one considers the nature of this negative coverage, the Obama segment itself appears even more egregious. CNN’s Trump coverage often suggests we stand at the precipice of a new, hitherto unthinkable dystopian age.

But if we’re really in the midst of the rise of an American downfall, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever that CNN would take time to wax lovingly about Obama’s vacation itinerary. Of course, we’re not in the middle of the rise of an American crisis of leadership. Which brings us back to Brian Stelter.

If Stelter is now the most vocal crusader against Trump’s allegations of mainstream media chicanery, he is also the prime example thereof.

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During the election, Stelter asserted Fox News host Sean Hannity was “unpatriotic” for not questioning Trump’s claims of a “rigged” system. In December, following the election, Stelter suggested Trump’s win was “something of a national emergency.”

On Sunday, USA Today and The Hollywood Reporter columnist Michael Wolff told Stelter to his face that he was becoming “quite a ridiculous figure” for ending each of his shows with “a pious sermon about Trump’s perfidiousness and nursing personal grudges.”

But it would seem Wolff’s warning went in one of Stelter’s ears and out the other, as the very next day Stelter was back to making absurd statements which serve no other purpose than to make the Trump administration and its supporters look bad.

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On Monday, Stelter said something so ridiculous one might be forgiven for mistaking him for an overeager ninth-grader who thinks he knows everything about politics but whose understanding is in fact limited to the sophistication of Jon Stewart jokes.

During a discussion about Trump’s latest round of critiquing unfavorable polls with CNN colleague Don Lemon and University of Virginia political science professor Larry Sabato, Stelter appeared to assert that poll results are as scientifically sound as the laws of gravity. “Pollsters are scientists,” Stelter claimed. “They do this scientifically.”

Unfortunately for Stelter, the almost uniform failure of pollsters across the board to correctly predict the results of the 2015 U.K. general election, the results of the British E.U. referendum, and most recently the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, proves that modern political polling can be about as scientific as haruspicy.