A little trip through the media elite's Instagram accounts can remind you which side of the culture wars they take. The other day, NBC business reporter/MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle posted a picture with her son Reese and the Hustler magazine owner Larry Flynt. Flynt is an atheist best known for beating a lawsuit from the Rev. Jerry Falwell after a parody in which he joked Falwell lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. He's all class.
Ruhle captioned the picture "Happy Birthday to this hustler". She must mean her son, since Flynt's birthday is November 1. Perhaps Reese was encouraged to check out Barely Legal, Flynt's porn magazine of teenage models who must be 18, but don't necessarily look it.
MSNBC personality Donny Deutsch added his enthusiasm to the post: "This is why I love you!"
On her Instagram, former NBC Today star and CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric was celebrating the life of Larry Kramer, radical AIDS activist and vicious anti-religious bigot. Her tribute began:
Larry Kramer, the author, playwright, outspoken AIDS activist, and “one of America’s most valuable troublemakers,” according to Susan Sontag, has died at the age of 84.
Larry was a founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first service organization for HIV positive people in 1981. He was kicked out a year later by his fellow directors for his aggressive approach - which he said made them “a sad organization of sissies.” Larry went on to found a more militant group, @actupny (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) whose street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severly [sic] disrupted the operations of government offices, Wall Strees [sic], and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
For example, on December 10, 1989, ACT UP threw a nasty protest that caused pandemonium inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in the middle of Mass, including one man descrating the Holy Eucharist by ripping it up and stamping on it. In 1991, PBS honored this hateful act with a supportive documentary titled Stop the Church.
As Scott Whitlock noted, the network morning shows celebrated Kramer as a trailblazer, but not as an extremist, but "militant" and "outspoken" and not hateful, despite his comparison of Ronald Reagan to Hitler. CBS, like Couric, noted Sontag's "most valuable troublemaker" tribute.
