November 6, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Outrageous!  Fox Caves to the Left on Trump Immigration Ad—And a Little Bit of Shakespeare for Election Day

Friends,

Two themes today: one concerning a decision by Fox News yesterday to pull a Trump ad on illegal immigration, and another concerning what William Shakespeare, the “Bard of Avon,” had one of his famous characters say the night before a momentous battle that would decide the history of England: words that should be our shield-and-buckler on this election day.

First, yesterday Fox News and Fox Business networks joined NBC and pulled an ad—that is, decided to no longer show it—produced by the Trump campaign critical of illegal immigration and, implicitly, of the impending arrival of new illegals in caravans from Honduras and Guatemala. [See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/nbc-pulls-trump-immigration-ad-after-backlash-n931356 And also: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/11/fox-news-caves-pulls-trump-caravan-ad-after-major-backlash/?omhide=true&utm_source=TGP+Communications&utm_campaign=af5da181e0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_11_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b3f16dae4d-af5da181e0-18710873]

The ad, which had aired during an NFL football game this past Sunday, provoked strong protest from the far Left: somehow being against an illegal alien who is also a convicted criminal who murdered two policeman is racist. That was to be expected from the frenzied, frothing-at-the-mouth Left, but—and this is utterly outrageous—also it was the decision of Fox News, in the person of its president for sales, Marianne Gambelli, who decided to likewise pull the ad, that is, to run in abject fear to the “tall grass,” as well. CNN, of course, had refused to run it early on, labeling it, what else, “racist.” Now Fox was doing the very same thing.

The ad runs just thirty seconds, and it can be seen as part of a story which was published by Breitbart News. Here is the link (the video is about half way down): https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2018/11/05/fox-news-will-no-longer-run-trump-caravan-ad/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181105

After viewing the ad, I would like any rational person—and, yes, I recognize that such people are getting rarer in some locales—to explain to me what is racist about the ad. It shows a Mexican, an illegal alien, who had murdered two US policemen bragging that he would like to kill more; then, a quick change to a visual of the caravan, and the implicit question about just how many drug dealers and criminals might be embedded therein.  Not a word about race­­, not a single reference to it…unless you consider showing a visual of an illegal Mexican criminal as somehow “racist.”

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Any time the president or anyone with a point of view contrary to the increasingly dominant vision of the Left about race or gender even dares to offer a slight demurrer, any time someone suggests that this nation—like any other nation—has a right to protect its borders and define, by and for itself, what it means to be a citizen, any time that occurs the hue and cry goes forth from the mainstream media and the political establishment that it simply must be a sign or “racism.” You know, all those “white folks” out in fly-over country, in the boonies, down deep are racists, at least that is what we are being incessantly told.

In fact, the accusation of “racism” has become that fearsome, very effective political and cultural cudgel like the charge of “sexism,” “sexual abuse,” and “misogyny,” which is hurled at men who seem stunned and disoriented by it, like a deer caught in the headlights. (The case of Justice Kavanaugh is just the most recent in a long line of such character assassinations).

And there are a goodly number of pusillanimous Republicans, including far too many in positions of power, in politics, and—disgustingly—in the so-called “conservative” media, who go along to get along, who are literally afraid, scared to death, of being labelled “racists” by the increasingly ideological and fanatical media-academia-entertainment elites.

Fox News’ cave is just the latest, and, sadly, was not unexpected given its inclination towards a Neoconservative desire to accept many of the revolutionary changes foisted off on the American citizenry during the past half century. But that is no excuse…and viewers should make their voices heard, both directly to the network and at the polls.

My second theme: A good friend sent me the other day a copy of the famous peroration of King Henry V, in Shakespeare’s immortal play, Henry V (Act IV, Scene iii), the night prior to the critical battle of Agincourt (in 1415). It is one of the most famous and noteworthy speeches in the Bard of Avon’s corpus.

Like many of you, I imagine, I did not read Henry V while in school. We read Macbeth and then Julius Caesar, and later Romeo and Juliette (I invited a girlfriend to go see the 1968 movie!).  It was only later, after I had seen the marvelous and remarkable Technicolor filming of Henry V starring Sir Laurence Olivier (1944) that I was impelled to go back and read the play for myself. And King Henry’s peroration the night before the battle is one of the finest orations in the English language, a superb example of a summons to patriotism, to duty, to honor, and to love for country; and today, on this critical election day, it reminds us to go forth like those English knights and do our duty to preserve what is left of our country, by rejecting the massed forces of Leftist decay and destruction that would transform the Founder’s dream into a bleak, feculent, totalitarian nightmare, a dystopia where even the memory of what is good and just in our culture would be erased.

We must do our duty, and vote for our country and for the future.

Here is King Henry’s peroration, “On St. Crispin’s Day”:

“If we are mark'd to die, we are enough
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmorland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made, 
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whilest any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”