CommentsMY TURN-Hmm. Praise of dictators, campaign sexual harassment, sexist comments, socialist or nothing, adoration of Russia, Sandanista support, belief that cancer is psychosomatic?
If you watched the 2016 Presidential race there is one thing that anyone with common sense would have noted: the media gave both trump and Bernie Sanders a free pass on anything and everything that they said and did. Sanders was allowed to preach his stump speech and the media smiled; you see, Sanders became a media darling, and no one bothered to research or even talk about his past.
Why rock the ratings boat? After all, Bernie was developing a cult following and the more coverage they gave him, the more the cult followers tuned in to their channels. Both Sanders and trump were a gift from the “media gods.” They could put on a show and, like a strange scene from a bad sci-fi movie, the drooling crowd cheered.
The mere fact that the media allowed these two candidates to have a free ride from any negative situations and yet turned on Hillary Clinton with vitriol attacks, demonstrated that the media wasn’t there to report the news or the truth…but just to get high ratings. The more that was created against HRC, while not allowing her to talk about the details of her agenda and plans, the more it became quite apparent that we lost the ability for news reporting.
Sanders has a dark past, and while his cult followers were gleefully throwing mud at Hillary, anytime there was mention of Bernie’s bad decisions or support of dictators and Banana Republic governments, they put their fingers in their ears. For those of us watching and trying to bring attention to this, we were immediately suspicious that both the extreme right and the extreme left sounded exactly like each other. Something that the Russian and Macedonia purveyors of fake news took full advantage of.
There was only one strong and defiant member of the media that brought out one of the many negatives about Bernie. BusinessInsider includes this moment in their article: Bernie Sanders confronted with decades-old clip of him praising Fidel Castro.
“During the Wednesday-night Democratic debate, Univision moderator Maria Elena Salinas confronted Bernie Sanders with a decades-old clip of him heaping apparent praise on former Cuban President Fidel Castro.”
The article continues with:
“Salinas then brought out a video clip from 1985 showing Sanders apparently defending Castro, who was a leader of the Cuban Revolution and whose rule led the small island country to become a one-party, communist state.
In the clip, Sanders said:
You may recall way back in, what was it, 1961, they invaded Cuba. And everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world, [sic] that all the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They had forgotten that he had educated their kids, given them healthcare, totally transformed their society.”
However, in the flurry of the campaigning, this moment and even the information was lost. No one else brought up any topic of Bernie’s past, including the many horrid governments that he supported and his voting record in support of Russia.
Sanders Has a Dark and Sexist Past and Present
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, every female who has participated in the women’s rights movement immediately bristled at Sanders. His passive aggressive arm waving dismissal of women was notably different than the physical position he took with men. He yelled about women’s rights and civil rights and yet had a history of no women or people of color working with him.
Many of us could turn on the television and practically repeat his stump speech, verbatim, and for those who knew him over the years, they knew it was the same speech he has been giving for over 40 years. The only difference between the historic name that his fellow Senators called him “the angry old man” and now is that he had finally found bozos who would listen.
And all the while, the media was quietly letting him rake in the big dollars due to the ratings.
In 2017, I devoted 4 months investigating Bernie. I included the results in my article: Discovering Bernie Sanders Siren Song: A Journey to His Dark Side
The information covered a guy who basically floated along, living off of the system, ranting about why the U.S. wasn’t a socialistic government, so lazy that he was kicked out of a kibbutz because he wouldn’t do any of the work, writing essays about women enjoying rape, supporting the Sandanistas in Nicaragua and chanting “Here, there, everywhere, the Yankee will die,” and praising Fidel Castro. (to name just a few)
One has to ask the question: why the Republicans didn’t take this information and run with it to discredit Bernie? The answer is simple: Sanders was the useful tool against Hillary Clinton and they decided to hold the info in their back pocket. If, by chance, Bernie did become the candidate, they would release the information like a pack of hounds and have a field day with it.
The GOP knows how to push the buttons of their uneducated followers. All they had to do was say the word “socialist” and their mobs would be running down the street pulling their hair out. This is the same group that is ignorant of the fact that the U.S. already has many Democratic socialist programs in place! I covered this topic in my article: Hey America: You Already Have Democratic Socialist Programs — Don’t Fall Prey to the Conservative Hypocrite Fear Mongering.
Republicans appeal to the mostly white, racists who are part of their party. They only had to spread the misinformation they would be working to pay for programs that others would benefit from and the “white folk” go crazy. They ignored the fact that a majority of those on public assistance programs are poor whites in red states, and instead latch onto the brainwashing propaganda that minorities are in the grocery stores buying lobster with their food stamps.
Now there is Sexual Impropriety in the Mix
Bernie Sanders claimed he was unaware of the fact that the purveyors of “fake news” stories against Hillary Clinton were being fed to his cult followers on social media. If you were paying attention during that time you would have seen the same exact stories being fed to the extreme right. Given that one of the lead individuals in charge of the Sanders social media machine had brought this to the campaign’s attention, it is highly unlikely that Bernie didn’t know.
Now we are seeing another layer of bad news for Sanders: sexual harassment and pay disparities during his 2016 campaign. One only had to read the comments from the “Berniebros” to know that sexual harassment was just part of their existence and pay differences between men and women in the campaign is of no surprise. Of course, now that Bernie is thinking about running for President again, he steps forward to apologize and claim knowledge innocence. Given the sheer volume of both the social media stories and the many reports of harassment and pay problems, the answer to this is: no, we don’t believe you Bernie.
Even within social media posts from those who were running in local campaigns as BS “progressives,” the males were already making comments stating that women’s issues were not a priority on their agenda. This matches Bernie’s comments about women’s rights and even his support of an Omaha, NE anti-choice candidate, Heath Mello.
During the Presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders couldn’t get one ‘real’ women’s group to endorse him! They all supported Hillary Clinton. Why? Because they knew of HRC’s lifelong devotion to women’s issues and the fact that BS couldn’t even hire women throughout his political history.
Although some of the media have reported on the harassment and pay problems of the females within the Sanders 2016 campaign, it has received reduced or low placement given the daily chaos that Trump is throwing out.
We are also seeing fewer and fewer members of the BernieOrBust group (aka: Bernie is our Messiah) and this could be because they either ran out of $27 donations or they raised an eyebrow on the fact that post-election, Sanders became a millionaire.
The question remains: Is the media going to call out Bernie on his past – or -- is he no longer considered to be newsworthy?
(S. Novi is a journalist who worked in the media and continues to seek out truth and integrity. A liberal and one who is suspicious of cults and empty promises. Her posts originate at Medium.com. She is a contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
