Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall mocked media coverage of the Virginia gubernatorial by invoking the natural pairing of former President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan and a seminal album by legendary rap group Public Enemy.
On Tuesday night’s edition of News Nation’s On Balance with Leland Vittert, host Leland Vittert convened a panel with Hall and Axios’ Lachlan Markay to discuss the race between Democratic candidate and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin.
After covering the political angles of the race, Vittert introduced the media angle by playing clips of a Fox & Friends segment featuring a GOP activist planted by producers — whose son was later used as a prop to claim that he felt “attacked” by “woke videos” — and MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle challenging DNC Chair Jaime Harrison over their strategy of running every race against Trump, whether he’s involved in those races or not.
Asked for his analysis, Hall described the dueling narratives in the race as “a proxy battle between ‘Fear of a Woke Planet from the Republican side, versus ‘Make America Great Again, Again.”
You’ll see, on both sides of the media, that narrative sort of being exploited. For example, that first clip that you showed from Fox and Friends, that was a woman at a diner talking about how her fear of how parents don’t have control over their kid’s curriculum. What they didn’
t reveal was that she’s a GOP activist that just happened to be at that diner. So, it’s very expedient for conservative media to present that language.On the other side, I think you see that story in terms of curriculum, critical race theory, largely being ignored by more traditional cable news outlets, mainstream media. And instead, you see how Youngkin is ostensibly trying to co-opt some of the MAGA principles, but at the same time, do it at arm’s distance. And that’s the coverage that you see him.As you said, kudos to Steph Ruhle for calling out Jaime Harrison and saying, What’s up? Trump’s not really involved in this. Why are you trying to label all of our candidates that way? And his answer really should be ‘Because it works.’
Hall’s reference was a play on the Public Enemy album title Fear of a Black Planet, a canny bit of wordplay that also served to illustrate the coding that many observers read in between the lines of the “woke” discourse.
Vittert appreciated the quip as well, telling Hall “Fear of a woke planet. I wrote that down because I’m going to steal it. It’s a great way of describing the talking point.”
Watch above via News Nation.