During Wednesday's edition of the Cable News Network's New Day morning program, co-host Chris Cuomo took the unusual step of vowing to help Arne Duncan, secretary of education in president Barack Obama's administration, to “go on a shame campaign with Congress to get them to act” on an issue dealing with education.
Cuomo made the remark during an exchange regarding the White House proposal to use the federal government to force taxpayers to cover the costs for two years of “free” community college.
He began the interview by stating:
The pushback on that issue is that, one, we don’t know that college is even the right way to get into the job force anymore, and if you make it too easy for people to get into college, you wind up getting the wrong people go in who don’t want to work for it enough.
If all these other kids are struggling, and they don’t qualify, the wrong kids qualify. Those are the typical points of pushback.
Duncan responded: “The days in which you could just graduate from high school and go get a high-wage job that helps you progress into the middle class” are almost gone.
“It's pretty hard to do that today,” Duncan continued, “and to have young people have access to a community college whether 28-year-olds, whether they're 38-year-olds, or whether they're 58-year-olds coming back to retrain, retool” to obtain “management jobs, high-tech jobs, jobs that relate to the health-care area and advanced manufacturing.”
“When I visit community colleges -- and I’ve been to dozens around the country -- those are some of the most inspiring visits I ever make,” he noted. “These are people across the spectrum coming back to school to gain the skills to enter the middle class.”
Duncan added:
We need to support those efforts and support the partnerships between community colleges and local industry. Many community colleges today are becoming regional economic engines.
They’re driving economic activity, creating jobs in their communities. We have to support that. We want to keep great jobs in our communities and ultimately in our nation.
Cuomo responded: “Secretary, my only advice for you is that you should go on a shame campaign with Congress to get them to act. New Day will help. CNN will help.”
“We wish you good luck, secretary Duncan,” the co-host added. “You’re going to have a lot of challenges in front of you, but the biggest one is to get Washington to do anything.”
“I’ll take you up on that, thank you very much,” Duncan replied.
The co-host concluded: “You've got it, secretary.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, this isn't the first time CNN has thrown its support behind a liberal cause.
In April of 2012, some CNN anchors went so far in their attempts to brand George Zimmerman as a racist for his shooting of Trayvon Martin on February 26 that they used an “enhanced” audio of the Hispanic man making a 911 call in which he supposedly described the black teenager a “f**king coon.”
Eventually, experts on deciphering audio recordings declared that Zimmerman actually used the word “punk” instead.
During the first half of 2013, liberals hoped they could leverage the tragedy of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, to push through their long-sought wish list of new federal gun restrictions, and the media cheered.
Leading the pack was former CNN prime-time host Piers Morgan, who dropped all pretense of objectivity and became an outspoken advocate for gun restrictions, even during his final program on the channel.
The most recent example of CNN's full-throated support of a liberal cause happened in mid-December, when members of a panel on a Saturday afternoon held up their hands to mimic the already-discredited chant of “Hands Up, Don't Shoot.”
That phrase was attributed to black teenager Michael Brown before he was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, by white police officer Darren Wilson.
CNN political analyst Sally Kohn noted the anti-police protests occurring in New York City and Washington, D.C., and proclaimed: “We want you to know that our hearts are out there marching with them.”
While discussing Cuomo's promise, John Nolte of Breitbart.com stated:
This widespread idea in the media that Congress and/or the federal government “acting” automatically equates a virtue is its own kind of bias. Gridlock can also be a virtue. At least when there’s gridlock, my freedoms are safe. The job of Congress is to serve the people, not “act.” And sometimes Congress serves us best by not acting.
The media always want the federal government to “act.” God help us all.
And some people still wonder why the formerly dominant news channel is struggling in the ratings these days.
