BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- The far right’s obsessive effort to demonize the “media” doesn’t seem to be going too well lately.
Anthony Scaramucci, the now-you-see-him now-you-don’t White House communications director who gave the nation a brief laugh last summer, just tried to bully an op-ed columnist for the student newspaper at Tufts.
The kid’s sin – writing a critical column about Scaramucci, a Tufts alumnus who actually sits on some kind of advisory board there, as if his advice was something you’d want.
Instead of rebutting the student’s diatribe with a column of his own or letter to the editor, which would duly be seen by the several hundred people at most who read that paper, Scaramucci chose to waste his money by ordering up a lawyer’s letter threatening the kid and the paper with a defamation suit.
Thus, he drew much more attention and ridicule than he might have suffered otherwise, with an empty threat that will never materialize.
This is, of course, the MO of Scaramucci’s idol, President Trump, who calls true stories he doesn’t like “fake news” and threatens lawsuits that hardly ever happen. It seemed to work for him during his campaign.
But guess what?
The campaign is over, and Trump’s pet trick isn’t working so well anymore. Recent polling shows "trust in the news media is increasing as trust in the Trump administration decreases."
The failed effort by right-wing trolls to sucker the Washington Post into buying a “fake news” story about Roy Moore won’t help reverse that trend.
To all those who lap up media-hatred like it was mother’s milk, be warned – you’re on the wrong side of truth and history, and that’s never a good place to be.
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