That Time I Triggered Brian Stelter

How to scare a prematurely immature man.

A few years ago, while working at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wrote a column that was slightly critical of CNN media analyst (and local guy) Brian Stelter when he went after Justice Neil Gorsuch.  Stelter had commented about the impropriety of Gorsuch going on Fox News to discuss a book that he’d recently published called “A Republic, If You Can Keep It,” harrumphing with the rhetorical question: “[He’s] on ‘Fox & Friends’ right now. The Q: How is it appropriate for a Supreme Court justice to try to goose sales of his three-month-old book by chatting on one of the most partisan shows on TV?”

I wrote, in response: “When Sotomayor went on [The View] in November of last year — around the time of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation — she was there to promote the children’s version of her autobiography, "Turning Pages: My Life Story." She was welcomed like a hero, as well she should have been. I didn’t see anyone complain that Sotomayor’s presence on the show, to promote her book, was problematic.”

And Stelter, who regularly criticizes people for being unable to take criticism, posted this gem: “It is surreal to see three tweets, including one of mine, used as the basis of a long op-ed in the Philly Inquirer. Humble suggestion:  Debate tweets here on Twitter! Use print editorial space for more important, and local, issues.”

The irony is not lost on me that Stelter, who seeks “debate” on Twitter, promptly blocked me after pressing the “send” button on his tweet seeking open debate.

But bygones are bygones, and this was over two years ago, so who really cares, right?

You know that this was also a rhetorical question, because I actually do care.  A lot.

This past week, Sonia Sotomayor was again subjected to the velvet-glove treatment by the political left and those who engage in Covid hyperbole, when she stated from the bench that nearly 100,000 children were near death fromCovid.  I’m not sure if Brian Stelter wrote anything about that gigantic lie/guffaw-inducing error/embarrassment, because as I said before, he blocked me (and I don’t watch his show.)

But very few of his colleagues in the mainstream media took her to task for her obvious and melodramatic comment.  The “wise Latina” left home without a few brain cells that day.  Of course, the conservative press was all over it, making sure that the rest of the world knew that one of America’s Supreme Court Justices is getting her information from Tik-Tok videos.  But the establishment media were loathe to shine a negative light on Sonia, just as they were hypocritically sanguine about her appearance on The View while going after Gorsuch for doing the exact same thing on Fox and Friends.

And speaking of Gorsuch, he also got involved in a little bit of a dust up with the facts on infectious diseases, although some deeper digging showed that his mistake wasn’t nearly as bad as Sotomayor’s (and actually wasn’t even a mistake.)  When commenting on the statistics about Covid deaths, Gorsuch observed that “hundreds, thousands” of people die from the flu every year. When the original transcript of the oral arguments were released, it noted that he’d said “hundreds of thousands” of people died from the flu.  

Problem is, he didn’t say that.  If you listen closely to the tape of the arguments, what he actually said was what I wrote before-“hundreds…COMMA….thousands.”  There is absolutely no wiggle room when you listen to the tape, no cough which could have hidden a vagrant “of,” no whispered preposition, no doubt that what he meant to say that there were hundreds and possibly thousands who die of the flu.  And that is actually correct.

The Supreme Court transcript was later edited to reflect the correction.  But you could not edit the transcript to correct Sotomayor’s statement, in English or in the Spanish in which she is also fluent, because this is exactly what she said “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.”  Kind of hard to fix that one with either prepositions, pronouns, or (and here I’m showing my Catholic school diagramming chops) entire dependent clauses.

This column really isn’t about grammar, although that’s a lovely topic and I’ll write about it one day soon.  It’s about the hypocrisy of those who are (1) interested in protecting liberal figures from criticism (2) not interested in correcting their own mistakes, Mr. Stelter and (3) so wedded to the useful myths about Covid deaths, Covid transmissibility and the reactionary policies put in place by uninformed people with a lot of power that they’ll ratify untruths.  That’s tragic, especially when those untruths are coming out of the mouths of Supreme Court justices.

We can all legitimately debate whether masks are good, jabs are necessary, vaccine passports are helpful and virtual learning isn’t destroying an entire generation of children (see what I did there?)  What we cannot do is pretend that black is white, up is down, wet is dry or the 1619 Project is based in any acceptable version of fact.  What we also cannot do is continue to see the world through a partisan lens.  What we also cannot do is ignore the mistakes made by those in our own tribes, because that means we’ll have Supreme Court justices making fools of themselves on the bench, and obsequious media analysts touting their brilliance.

I could have had this debate on Twitter, but since someone blocked me, I decided to write another column.  I wonder if Brian subscribes 😉?