Cooper's Eye on the Left: Even the left piling on Hillary

Even left-wing media has snarky advice for former 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Even left-wing media has snarky advice for former 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Vanity Fair called foul

Left-leaning Vanity Fair pleased no liberals last week in a new video that gave former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton six pieces of advice for 2018. In the 63-second video, the magazine's editors were shown sipping wine as they dispensed their wisdom, which was posted as "6 New Year's Resolutions For Hillary Clinton."

Among the suggestions:

-She work on a sequel to her book "What Happened?" with the title "What the h-- happened?"

-She should "disable autofill" on her iPhone so that typing a simple "f" doesn't read out "form exploratory committee."

-She should teach a class on the alternate nostril breathing she discussed in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

-She should take more photos in the woods because "How else are you going to meet unsuspecting hikers?"

-She should put away her voodoo doll of former FBI Director James Comey.

-She should take up new hobbies such as knitting, volunteer work or improv comedy to keep her from running for president in 2020.

"It's a year later and time to move on," one of the staffers concluded.

I'm With Her fans were not amused, with some saying they were canceling their subscription, others saying the magazine owed her an apology and one actually tweeting it was a "cheap shot" at "one of the most accomplished women in the history of the United States."

Vanity Fair eventually realized it had wounded one of its own and told The Washington Post the video was "an attempt at humor and we regret that it missed the mark."

Must it always be racism?

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, has had previous run-ins where she didn't feel she was given the respect due her status, and she found herself in the middle of another kerfuffle just before Christmas on a United Airlines flight.

Passenger Jean-Marie Simon had booked a first-class seat but found once she got to the gate that her seat had been canceled. She denied canceling the seat, accepted an economy section seat and $500 for her trouble and boarded the plane. In her seat was Lee, who had been upgraded. Simon photographed the congresswoman, then returned to her seat at the request of a flight attendant.

Jackson, though, made the issue about her, saying she "did nothing wrong."

"Since this was not any fault of mine," she said via Twitter, "the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African-American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African-American flight attendant who was very, very nice. This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we have to work on to help people."

Simon doesn't exactly fit Lee's profiling. A longtime Democrat, she teaches Spanish (after practicing law) and in the past had traveled to Guatemala to photograph and document war crimes.

If a tree is felled by a conservative

If you read Newsweek's headline last week that first lady "Melania Trump orders removal of the near-200-year-old tree from the White House," you probably thought exactly what Newsweek wanted you to think - that she was an unfeeling twit who didn't give a whit about history, preservation or the environment.

Ah, but there's the rest of the story. Trump did order the Jackson magnolia to be removed, but she did so after specialists told her it should be removed - that it could fall down at any moment.

Eventually, the formerly respected news magazine did update its site and explain how the tree had been held up by poles and wires and would have fallen years before without them.

"Newsweek's bias and disdain for the first lady and our administration [were] on full display when they actively chose to use a false headline instead of practicing responsible journalism," Trump's communications director told Fox News. "This is why Americans' trust and confidence in mass media continues to fall."

The intentional bias even caused journalists from other left-wing media, Huffington Post and NBC, to comment that "there's no excuse for this" and that the headline was "grossly misleading."

Open mouth, spew hate

One of our favorite year-end lists was one by Campus Reform that listed the top five - pick your adjective: outrageous, ridiculous, embarrassing, denigrating - things said in various media in 2017 by college professors. Here are three:

-"I don't believe in instant karma, but this kinda feels like it for Texas," University of Tampa professor Ken Storey tweeted after the state, which had supported now-President Donald Trump in 2016, was hit by Hurricane Harvey in August. "Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesn't care about them."

The professor, Ken Storey, was fired.

-"[House Republicans] should be lined up and shot," Art Institute of Washington professor John Griffin wrote on his Facebook page after House members voted to repeal and replace Obamacare. "That's not hyperbole; blood is on their hands."

-"It is past time for the racially oppressed to do what people who believe themselves to be 'white' will not do, put an end to the vectors of their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. #LetThemF----Die," Trinity College professor Johnny Eric Williams wrote in a Facebook post following the shooting of a congressman at a baseball practice in June.

Williams was placed on leave but will return to teaching this year.

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