CNN is Making a Mistake, I Think

CNN cuts ties with Reza Aslan over anti-Trump tweet: https://t.co/Ob7M7lKWhw pic.twitter.com/8u9omQqdsh

— Slate (@Slate) June 10, 2017

I like Reza Aslan. He is a good writer and scholar. I enjoyed his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and think he contributes a lot to the discussion of how faith/belief intersects with politics. I like him as he is understood on the label--as an opinion correspondent. I do not expect Reza Aslan to be necessarily unbiased.  No person of education can be entirely unbiased. A life of the intellect means opinions have been formed.

The glib and not-informed opinions of American POTUS Donald Trump provoked a profane response from Aslan. I think I understand why it did. Trump responds to terror by reaching back to othering and discriminating against people who are Muslim or from Muslim-majority nations.  Aslan is Iranian-American, and exactly the kind of person Trump's "travel ban" type of bullshit, would discriminate against. He understands, as an American, how what Trump is doing by dividing people against Muslims, is dangerous and damages our discourse by cutting Islam-practitioners out and Arab and Persian ethnicities out. It is divisive by nature and design. What Trump has promoted is profane from his POV (and from mine, actually, as a very blue-eyed and Christian-cultural US-aian).  He shared a berth on CNN with Corey Lewandowski, who assaulted a reporter and somehow was nevertheless hired by a news channel, and Jeffrey Lord (who I have no respect for as an intellect of any kind) and Jack Kingston and Jason Miller and Rick Santorum and Scottie Nell Hughes and...

Really? I don't think I understand CNN's standards. Unless their rule is, hire two conservative jerkwagons for every liberal-leaning or intellectual correspondent you manage to fire. And never vet for quality opinions, just pretend balance.

I don't have cable and get all my news from memes and Twitter links and streaming. Aslan does useful informative good work. Trump is not a literal piece of shit, but is figuratively not a turkey dinner with all the fixin's either. Christ--is a little perspective that difficult? Why must CNN be pulling this PC card all of a sudden?