Protect me from insults, Obama doll!!

Last week, word broke that former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson carries around in her purse a little voodoo doll/icon/pseudo-rabbit’s foot statue of former President Barack Obama because “you have to take comfort where you can find it in Donald Trump’s America,” she said.

Um…ok. A tad creepy, but whatever.

However, given this predilection, maybe tell your colleagues not to clutch their pearls so much when it’s suggested that the huge “non-partisan” media conglomerates are just as in-the-tank for their preferred candidates as any of the smaller, less reputable, overtly partisan media outlets (and at least the water carriers like Breitbart are honest about it).

In any event, after that odd bit of news came today’s revelation from NBC’s Chuck Todd — lately the object of President Donald Trump’s ire when he referred to Todd as a “sleeping sonofab***h” at a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday — that the cable news anchor doesn’t let his kids speak ill of any president.

NBC's Chuck Todd: "I bring my kids up to respect the office of the presidency & the president. I don’t allow them to say anything negative, ever, about the president." More in my story on his response to POTUS's "He's a sleepy son of a bitch" comment here: https://t.co/wdZZiCbKNd

— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) March 12, 2018

The linked story goes into greater detail.

“I bring my kids up to respect the office of the presidency and the president,” Todd, the moderator of “Meet the Press,” told News4 in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. “I don’t allow them to say anything negative, ever, about the president.”

“It creates a challenge to all parents when he uses vulgarities like that,” he added.

Todd has two children, ages 14 and 11.

His response comes after Trump took aim at Todd on Saturday  at a Pennsylvania campaign rally ahead of a special congressional election in the state’s 18th District.

“I’m on ‘Meet the Press,’ a show now headed by sleepy-eyes Chuck Todd,” Trump said to laughter from the crowd. “He’s a sleeping son of a b***h.”

If this is true, it’s very admirable.

Maybe.

No, never mind. It’s not.

Because it’s teaching kids to hold back expressing what they really think about a president that their father certainly isn’t fond of and one who doesn’t hold back making his own feelings known on the subject.

The point is not to keep children — who will later become civic-minded adults — from expressing negative opinions. Negative opinions are what leads to change. It’s teaching them HOW to express those opinions so that they aren’t counter-productive or insulting, and that they might ultimately be used to produce something positive. Keeping quiet is like hiding your little Obama statue in your purse and stroking it in secret every time you reach in to get your credit card to pay for brunch.

It’s healthy to express opinions, even strong ones; repressing them leads to garbage outbursts of the kind we’re all used to seeing now on Twitter.

If you want to go high, Chuck Todd — and I suspect that’s what you’re getting at — use your words. And teach your kids to use theirs.

But make sure you have a better argument than the one you used here (which is the reason Trump felt free enough to say what he did in front of an audience full of steelworkers Saturday):

In an interview with a combative Chuck Todd, Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworks, praised the effect of President Trump’s newly proclaimed tariffs would have on the U.S. steel market. Gerard praised Trump for making it clear he is going to “tackle trade deficits” which he called a “wealth transfer” because they are “taking good jobs away.”

Gerard said Trump was able to “see the steelworker agenda” and “he’s going to have a major impact on our members” with what he has done.

…

NBC’s Chuck Todd argued that while there are some countries where there is trade deficits but there is a “national security component” because “we’re exporting values” like democracy to make a financial ally. Gerard said he doesn’t understand his point because these countries aren’t dumping unemployment on the economy when they dump steel in the U.S.

Let me break this Chuck Todd thing down for you people. Chuck was not so nice and, frankly, was more than a little condescending to Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers. Steelworkers get angry… Trump calls Chuck Todd a "sleepy-eyed son of a bitch" and… steelworkers laugh. Get it?

— Peoples_Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) March 11, 2018