Eric Boehlert: Defending Cancun Cruz, GOP media suddenly claim optics don't matter

[babylonsister]

https://pressrun.media/p/defending-cancun-ted-cruz-gop-media

Defending Cancun Cruz, GOP media suddenly claim optics don’t matter
Olympic hypocrisy
Eric Boehlert
2 hr ago

snip//

It's certainly one of the most stunning, self-inflicted public relations wounds seen in recent years. It's not possible to defend Cruz's brazen actions. But lots of right-wing media players tried to downplay it by adopting a remarkable talking point — it didn’t matter! It didn't matter that Cruz went to Cancun because, as a U.S. senator, it wasn't like he could get power restored on the ground in Texas. In other words, while trying to shield the senator, conservatives insisted that optics don't matter in politics.

snip//

To say this defense represents a stunning reversal from GOP media's long held worldview would be a Herculean understatement. Optics have been the protein fueling the conservative movement for decades, and with the advent of Fox News it blossomed into an even more powerful entity — Phony Outrage, which serves as a right-wing cottage industry. Murdoch’s cable network makes a pile of profits each year by overreacting to imagined Democratic slights, while Shapiro's entire career revolves around it.

Concocting things to be outraged about isn't just a by-product of the conservative press, it's become the entire purpose of the right-wing, victimized media. For them to now say Cruz's trip was no big deal because optics don't matters, represents an Olympic bout of hypocrisy.

Just this month, Fox News tried to create a controversy over the fact that President Joe Biden was scheduled to fly to his home in Delaware. Pointing to CDC guidelines which urge Americans not to travel, Fox News suggested hypocrisy was in play — it just doesn’t look good! Spoiler: Americans are urged not to travel in order to avoid crowded airports and planes, which isn't exactly a problem when traveling on Air Force One.

And remember when Nancy Pelosi's fancy freezer full of ice cream became a days-long Phony Outrage news event last spring?

"It's not the ice cream in her fridge, it's the fact that she's standing behind giant refrigerators, multiple ones that cost $24,000 each, and you're right -- politicians are wealthy, Trump is wealthy, but I think in this specific moment, optics are narratives," Meghan McCain announced on The View. "I don't make the rules of politics, this is just how it works."

The GOP media’s library of Phony Outrages is truly endless. The volumes follow the same plot and they're all supposed to represent glimpses into the souls of crooked Democrats. But today, Cruz deserves a pass for walking away from a crisis and high tailing it to a luxury hotel in Cancun?

As the old song goes, “Mexico, it sounds so simple I just gotta go.”

[ret5hd]

1. Remember the "tan suit" incident?

[TheBlackAdder]

3. NOT THE TAN SUIT INCIDENT!

.

There are hundreds of thousands of Republicans still in therapy over that!

.

[NCjack]

5. Remember Michelle with no sleeves?

[11 Bravo]

11. I remember Melania with no pants.

Curiously, Repubs were not upset. Go figure.

[Walleye]

2. Cruz thought that people shouldn't get 400 a week for unemployment.

But there he is yukking it up about spending $309 a night at a luxury resort while his fellow Texans are suffering the worst crisis in at least a decade. Don’t give $400 unemployment because it might “disincentive” people from working.🤬

[TigressDem]

7. Don't elect reThuglicans.... it might "disincentivise" them from working.

If you can GET elected, you don't have to work any more in the reTHUG party.

Just keep whining about how the gov doesn't work and keep proving it by REFUSING to DO Anything that would MAKE the government work. Self fulfilling prophesy that.

[Walleye]

9. True all of that

The Texas government really has gotten small enough to drown in a bathtub especially with a broken water main overhead

[Cirque du So-What]

4. Perhaps they have a point

RepuQs live in a post-GAF world, exemplified by you-know-who and his claim that none of his deplorable supporters would GAF if he shot someone on 5th Avenue.

[Laelth]

6. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[TigressDem]

8. K&R K& R K&R K&R K& R K&R K&R K& R K&R

[Midnight Writer]

10. Karl Rove is a champion of optics.

He knew that people would look at a picture and absorb the information on it more readily than they would read a news article or policy proposal.

Just like the days of Boss Tweed and the Teapot Dome Scandal, which was propelled by cartoons. People didn't understand the details of the scam, but they understood the cartoons.