The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall
The video immediately went viral. Ellen DeGeneres explaining why she was sitting next to former President George W. Bush at the game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers last weekend was widely praised by people across the political spectrum. Well, almost all the way across the political spectrum. Far left activists were still upset because, well, that’s where they live. Everyone else was happy to see someone stand up for getting along with people you disagree with politically. At least for the moment. Then the moment passed, and those on the left returned to doing what they always do – ruining everything.
One thing to notice about the “controversy” surrounding the two political opposites getting along like adults at a public event was where the outrage was coming from in the first place. Progressive activists were beside themselves with anger that DeGeneres, someone who not only is a lesbian but is also on their team as far as politics goes, would sit next to one of “history’s greatest monsters” and not attack him physically, apparently.
Ellen’s rebuke was a nice change from the usual apologies that flow when the liberal mob targets someone for not being pure enough, but the necessity of it is more telling than that. While there was a lot of rage directed at Ellen for laughing with the former Republican president, there was no rage at the former Republican President for laughing with Ellen.
Conservatives didn’t care. Two people with differing political beliefs getting along is a sin on the left, but it is a non-event on the right. We simply don’t have the purity tests leftists do to exist in our circle of friends and family.
We all know people, whether we’re related to them or choose to associate with them, who support Democrats. It’s no big deal. It is grounds for excommunication on the left.
Still, the video was nice to see, if only to remind people that human decency was still possible. That’s when CNN’s Chris Cillizza came along.
Cillizza’s column had an innocuous enough title, “What the friendship of Ellen DeGeneres and George W. Bush should teach us.” OK, maybe not that innocuous. Adults should be mature enough to not care about anyone’s politics when it comes to friendship. But Cillizza is a man of the left, and CNN’s audience is the left, and they need reminders of basic human decency every now and then, like after calling for a politician’s death in front of their house in the middle of the night or while screaming at someone who dared be a conservative in a restaurant. But that wasn’t what Cillizza did.
After recounting the event, Chris wrote, “What DeGeneres is advocating there is sort of anti-Trumpism in its purest form. Because what this President represents, more than any issue stance or policy position, is the idea that people who disagree with you are to be mocked, to be villainized, to be bullied. If you disagree with Trump on, well, anything, you are his enemy. The only way to be in his good graces -- and therefore, in the good graces of those who support him -- is to agree with him on absolutely everything.”
Cillizza suffers from a raging case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and he simply couldn’t control himself.
Not only was it the exact opposite of everything DeGeneres was criticizing in her viral video, it’s everything the left does on a daily basis.
It’s not the right that is shouting down speakers on college campuses. It’s not the right demanding people be de-platformed for holding views we don’t like. It’s not the right calling for boycotts and people to be fired for daring to stray from progressive orthodoxy. It not only is the political left, it’s CNN in all these cases, with the exception of campus speeches. And all of it pre-dated Donald Trump’s ride down the escalator in June of 2015.
What Cillizza either doesn’t know or doesn’t want his readers to know, is division is the coin of the realm of the left.
Democrats divide people based on their income, their skin color, their sexuality, their gender, their ethnicity, whatever you got. They work to convince people they’re victims, and you can’t have a victim without there being a perp.
Listen to any 2020 Democrat speak and it’s all about how there is this nebulous group of “others” fighting hard to oppress everyone else, and their liberal policies are the only hope for overcoming that “systemic” oppression. Ask the citizens of Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, or anywhere else the left has had absolute generational control over the levers of power how the “help” the left is offering worked out for them.
Cillizza is no different than the Twitter trolls attacking DeGeneres for being friends with Bush, only he turned his focus to the current president.
Many liberals don’t seem to realize how nasty and full of hatred they are because their worlds are pure. Cillizza lives in the CNN ecosystem, where hatred for Republicans is the key to more facetime on TV. Even their “conservative commentators” overflow with bile at the mention of the president’s name.
But the president doesn’t take it lying down. The old Republican response to being punched in the face was to apologize for hurting the hand of the Democrat who punched them. Donald Trump doesn’t play that game, he hits back (and if you look at the “attacks” from the president that cause Democrats to clutch their pearls, he’s always punching back, never attacking people out of the blue). Liberals aren’t used to that.
If someone is used to walking all over a person, treating them like garbage for years, then suddenly that person stands up for themselves and refuses to take the abuse anymore, the abuser always feels like a shocked victim. “Can you believe what they called me?” said the abuser, is not uncommon.
Far-left progressives are the problem, people who think Ellen DeGeneres and George W. Bush being friends is somehow extraordinary are the problem, because it’s not extraordinary. It’s very ordinary to be friends with someone who has wildly different political views from you, even on important issues. Well, ordinary everywhere except far-left places like CNN, where someone like an Ana Navarro is your frame of reference for what constitutes a conservative.
If you want to know what Ellen and George’s friendship should teach us, Chris, it’s not that Donald Trump is a meanie, it’s that you’re a hypocrite. It’s not that people from different ends of the political spectrum CAN get along, it’s that they DO get along all the time. That that fact is news or, in your words, “really important” to anyone is more of a reflection on you than it is on society.