Buh-Bye Chris Cillizza

 

We're sorry not sorry to see you go:

CNN’s Politics Reporter and Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza has reportedly been let go from the network, where he has worked since 2017 after a long stint as a political commentator at the Washington Post.

At CNN, Cillizza’s “reporting lives under the brand, ‘The Point with Chris Cillizza,’ and includes a nightly newsletter and weekday Amazon Echo and Google Home flash briefings. He also hosts CNN Audio’s ‘Downside Up’ podcast.”

Parker Molloy had this assessment of Cillizza in 2020:

You know how in movies like Freaky Friday, 13 Going on 30, and Big, there are always those scenes where the main character has to learn how to be an adult? They go to an office, they don’t know how anything works, and they generally fumble through the day, ordering things like jelly beans and chocolate milk for lunch while spinning around on a swivel chair? Well, the difference between those scenes and CNN analyst Chris Cillizza’s career is that at least the children in the movies eventually learn to do their job with some level of competence.

Cillizza is, at best, an overpriced embarrassment CNN has chained itself to. He treats politics like a game played for his entertainment, rather than something that affects the lives of everyone in the country. His Twitter feed is a mess of played-out memes that make his reaction to any given event as predictable as a talking doll with a pull string. Though he’s treated as an expert on the American political establishment, his analysis comes with the naivete of a newborn child.  [snip]

The real shame of Cillizza’s success -- during a time when journalism is one of the only checks on power we have left -- is that there are so many talented, hard-working, fact-based journalists who’ve lost work in recent years. Columbia Journalism Review reported in December that 3,160 journalists were laid off in 2019. As we view Trump’s scandals and impeachment through Cillizza’s warped lens, it’s worth wondering how different things would be in our media and our democracy if news organizations rejected the sort of lighthearted hackery he peddles, instead of making it a highly sought commodity...

He was Hillary Clinton- phobic, and was instrumental in puffing up the Republican bullshit narrative about her emails(!).   He was terrible.  Now he's gone.  Please don't come back. 

BONUS: A quick look at a few of Cillizza's errant hot takes.

BONUS II:  😂 --

 

In the Cillizza kitchen, it was a morning tradition: fire up Twitter on the old iPhone over a cup of joe, make baseless, pithy comments about serious matters, then cash a check for millions. But now, the woke mob has taken all that away.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) December 2, 2022

(Image:  cause for rejoicing)

Tweets Of The Day - Wedge Issue

Republican- wired CNN hack Chris "Lizard" Cillizza had his usual hot "Democrats in disarray" take before the votes started rolling in yesterday:

Happy Election Day! Are Democrats blowing it?https://t.co/7VpSw1nbW7

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) November 7, 2017

This, in response, was priceless:

Well, that didn’t age well, did it, you wedge.

— 🇨🇦ynoT🇨🇦 (@CrtvPrdx) November 8, 2017

Wedge?

Simplest of the tools.

— 🇨🇦ynoT🇨🇦 (@CrtvPrdx) November 8, 2017

We love Canadians! 

Today's Tweet, Counter Tweets

One of the most toxic exemplars of Beltway politics- as- horserace conventional wisdom is the Washington Post's Chris "Lizard" Cillizza.  Relying on his "insider" network of party hacks and hangers- on for their latest self- serving spin, Lizard has built his career on regurgitating that spin into his "The Fix" columns, often in the form of "hot takes" and listicles ("The top ten reasons Republicans are awesome!" -- just kidding sort of).  Apparently he's been on the receiving end of another hot take from (oxymoron alert) a "smart" Republican.  The responses were smarter:

From a smart GOP source on what Trump needs to do  in debate: "EMAILS, FOUNDATION, FAILED RECORD.  EMAILS, FOUNDATION, FAILED RECORD."

— Chris Cillizza (@TheFix) October 18, 2016

And that's the smart one.

"Exactly what hasn't worked until now, ONLY IN CAPS." https://t.co/HYJmRNqIEY

— quinn cummings (@quinncy) October 18, 2016

Your smart source is actually not smart. https://t.co/ADIFanCsSP

— Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) October 18, 2016

Here's the problem: Trump did this in the second debate. Rs said he won. He slid in the polls. https://t.co/hCYvxaB0BF

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) October 18, 2016

Cillizza's also busy mis-stating the facts in the latest Clinton e-mail nothingburger to synch with Republican talking points.  Douchenozzle.

Worst Year In Washington? Narrative Pundits Like Chris Cillizza

Hunter, at Daily Kos, turns the tables on the "narrative pundits" who come up with lists like "Worst Year in Washington," like, um, say Republican- wired Chris "Lizard" Cillizza.  Cillizza, who thinks covering politics like a horse race is the best use of his time, just dropped his "Worst Year" deuce on us:  it's J.E.B.! and (wait for it) Hillary Clinton (!).  Because... both sides?  In this excerpt, Hunter gives us the short version of Cillizza's opus, then gives us his take on who had the Worst Year in Washington: 

... Short version: She was too snippy in defending herself and in pointing out that her email policy was both accepted practice at the time and legal and that her predecessors had done the same thing for the same reasons. She came off as "angry and legalistic" in her observations that not a damn speck of it was wrong. And this enforced The Narrative, which is the longstanding, decades-old notion that Hillary Clinton is malevolent and hiding something, promoted exclusively by Republicans Who Say So and pundits who Write That Down, and so Hillary Clinton has had the Worst Year in Washington because Republicans keep attacking her and she faces, in the primary, a single formidable opponent.  [snip]

Who had the Worst Year in Washington? I would say any of us who were looking to the press to tell us who was honest, rather than just mulling over which lies were told with the most conviction. Any of us who were looking for a knowledgable free press to winnow through the scandals and tell us which were real and which were invented, or anyone reading a paper who wanted to know if this or that pronouncement from one of our national leaders was accurate, rather than immediately wandering off to a sentence about how some other fellow on the opposing sporting team didn't think highly of it.  (our emphasis)

Amen to all that.

Let this be Exhibit (infinity) of how our puerile corporate media has gone along with and, by their cowardice and abdication of journalistic ethics and responsibility, abetted the tectonic shift of the Republican Party farther and farther to the right and into the swamps of neo- fascism over the past 40- plus years.

Oh, and Chris Cillizza is a douchnozzle.

Politicizing Gun Deaths - Speaker Boehner's Admission

(click on image to enlarge)

(Clay Jones, www.claytoonz.com)

From the New York Times, via Daily Kos:

Senior Republican officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing confidential conversations, said that Mr. Boehner had long been suspicious of the administration’s handling of the attacks and that Mrs. Clinton’s emails gave him a way to keep the issue alive and to cause political problems for her campaign. But he thought that the task was too delicate to entrust to others and that it should remain with Mr. Gowdy, the former prosecutor.

Of course, just as this and this didn't do it, this nugget buried deep in the Times article won't stop the Republicans' politicization of the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi!!! or cause this on- going fiasco to be righteously hammered in the media.  No, Republicans are too invested, and there are too many Republican- wired folks in the media who are also depending on it to continue.  Exhibit A is the ever- awful Chris Cillizza, political horse race tout of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle, who is positively goading Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley or somebody, please! to bring up the email "controversy" =cough= bullshit =cough= in tomorrow night's Democratic candidate debate:

The important question in this debate is one that is out of her hands. How hard do any of her opponents go after her, and on what? Does the controversy over her e-mail server come up? If so, who does the attacking, and how negative (if at all) does Clinton go in return?

This fool, emblematic of our puerile, superficial media, will be watching for attacks on Hillary Clinton, who'll "go after her, and on what." Yes, that's truly the "important question in this debate."  Hopefully the cast of Democratic debaters will disappoint him and the other shit- stirrers in the media and their Republican Party handlers by refusing to be sidetracked by this concocted "controversy."

Meanwhile, the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and tens of thousands of others due to gun violence every year in America continues to be dishonored by these despicable, amoral clowns.

Chris Cillizza Thinks Discrimination Is "Religious Freedom"

The once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle's Republican-wired politics- as- horse- race tout, Chris "Lizard" Cillizza, graces us with his periodic ranking of Republican presidential candidates.  Today, he ranks the laughable- to- anyone- but- Cillizza Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, with this revealing description:

9. Bobby Jindal: The Louisiana governor feels like the “me too” candidate in the field. He’s right there — always — advocating for conservatives to stand on principle but never really getting any credit for it. Take the religious-freedom fight in Indiana. Jindal was everywhere supporting the need for just those sorts of laws to protect Christians from discrimination. But he got roughly zero credit or attention for it.

Really.  That's odd. We thought the Indiana fight was about businesses using "religion" to justify discrimination toward LGBT people.  The "laws to protect Christians from discrimination" that Cillizza mentions?  Even Cillizza's own paper warned against "embracing intolerance under the guise of protecting people of faith."

So why is this puerile douchenozzle still employed? 

BONUS:  Laura Clawson has more on this whiny "Beltway media Heather."

(Image:   "Ooooh, get away from my 'religious freedom' with your nasty gay parts!")