Once Again, Sunday Show Lineups Are Completely Dominated By Republicans
It would be sad if it weren’t so unsurprising and predictable. While it has been largely accepted that the majority of guests booked to appear on the Sunday news talk shows tend to be Republicans or conservatives, this week the producers decided to take it to the extreme. When the Associated Press released the guest lineups of the shows early Sunday morning, every single interviewee scheduled to appear was either an elected Republican official or a Republican candidate for office. Nary a Democrat to be found among the bunch.
Eventually, CNN decided to get Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, to sit down for a spot on State of the Union to talk about the Planned Parenthood shooting that occurred in his state two days prior. Of course, they probably also realized that they needed to provide some sort of balance from the crazy they were sure to encounter with another guest, GOP Presidential candidate and ultra-Christian Conservative Mike Huckabee. (And lo and behold, Huck made sure to bash PP and defend extreme pro-life rhetoric during his appearance.)
State of the Union’s other guest was frequent Sunday show interloper Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX), who is also the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. He let CNN’s viewers know that Friday’s shooting, despite it targeting a Planned Parenthood clinic and leading to three deaths and nine people injured, was definitely not terrorism. Probably because the guy’s name is Robert Dear and not Mohamed.
Elsewhere on the tube, Republican White House hopeful and narcoleptic stabber Ben Carson found appeared on THREE different programs. Apparently, Carson’s trip to Jordan to see real-life actual Syrian refugees was so groundbreaking that we needed to hear about it multiple times. Yes, a quickly fading political neophyte who’s never held any elected office whatsoever is in such high demand that three networks said “We’ve gotta hear from this dude!” Anyway, he gave hard-hitting and insightful commentary in his appearances, such as both sides need to calm down in the abortion debate and America should be sympathetic to refugees, but still not bring them in. (But we can use our Halloween candy to make their lives better.)
As expected, Donald Trump got his time, but surprisingly, he was only on one show. During his interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd challenged him on his many, many, many lies, but in the end, The Donald still got free media time. On Fox News Sunday, Carly Fiorina — is she still running for President? — complained about the liberal media (natch) and whined about “left-wing tactics” regarding the connection between falsified videos and Dear’s shooting of the PP clinic. (Fiorina is now taking a lot of heat for Planned Parenthood vitriol in wake of the shooting.)
Other GOPers to show up on Sunday were Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), life partners John McCain and Lindsey Graham — does a Sunday ever go by without one or both making an appearance? — supposedly moderate GOP Presidential wannabe John Kasich and Jeb Bush. The former Florida Governor and ‘smart’ Bush railed against Trump in his interview, yet still said he’d vote for him over Hillary Clinton. This despite the fact that he said the celebrity billionaire is “dangerous” and “scary,” not to mention an “uninformed” candidate.
The dominance of conservative opinion on the Sunday news talk shows is nothing new and has been researched and reported on numerous times. However, we have been inundated with much whining and screeching from conservatives in recent weeks over the so-called liberal media bias that they have to deal with all the time. In fact, last month’s CNBC GOP debate and the following week’s worth of news all centered on the goddamned LIBRUL media. Yet, here they are, given tons of uninterrupted broadcast airtime, not to mention their own fucking television network, and the crying continues.
