Anti-Trump Bias: Pretending Not To Understand Sarcasm: Kate Bolduan / Jeffrey Lord Edition

Yeah, yeah--I just flipped CNN on while I was eating a sandwich the other day. So sue me...

   I also realize that it's kinda nutty do be complaining about this stuff while Trump has accidentally started a possibly-nuclear confrontation with the world's craziest state.

   But it's already absurd enough that Jeffrey Lord allegedly got fired from CNN for sarcastically tweeting 'sieg heil' to someone... But I saw Kate Bolduan interviewing somebody I should have known, but didn't. She asked him about the tweet, and he basically pointed out that it was sarcasm...as if this would have to be explained to anyone regarding the incident honestly. She very clearly expressed incredulity and I could not, for the life of me, figure out to what degree it was sincere and to what extent calculated.

   It reminded me a bit of that event during the election in which Trump said, of the Russians and the Dem emails (roughly) if they've got any more, I hope they release them. This was misrepresented by the other side as Trump revealing his ties to the Russians by seriously calling on them to release more emails. 

   Such things aren't that consequential on their own. But this sort of thing is obvious bullshit, and it's part of a general current of anti-Trump bias, and such nonsense is pretty rare against more favored candidates. 

   And, of course: even if you don't care about fairness and reason, maybe you care that this kind of bullshit helps Trump. There's very little chance that it's going to convince any objective, neutral party. And it's very likely to piss off people pissed off by CNN's bias even more.

   And, of course, there's the related but distinct phenomenon of, in effect, accusing Lord of some kind of Nazi sympathies for using one of the most common anti-authoritarian idioms (or whatever you'd call it) in existence. 

   Sarkasmus ist verboten!

   It's not exactly provoking NK into nuking Guam...but it's some bullshit alright.