The first question is – why even bother with a man, Jim Acosta, whose overall significance is so small? In fact, he’d already begun fading from the scene.
Until, a few days ago, with fanfare, he came out with a book, Enemy of the People, in which he explains his confrontational style of reporting, mainly as CNN’s chief White House Correspondent, where at press briefings with Sarah Huckabee Sanders or President Trump, Acosta made a name for himself as a hero or villain, depending on your politics.
Of all the reporters in the room, each with his or her own beef, Acosta was the most aggressive, and some would say, obnoxious.
For all the high motives he attributes to himself, the book is Acosta’s way of saying, “I am not a jerk.” C-Span gave him an hour last night, Sunday, to make his case, still smug.
Or, it could be argued, still a jerk.
In a word, he became the face of the media, or more to the point, for Trump and his legions, the pied piper of fake news.
That, like it or not, makes him important…and to the next question, what’s wrong with being aggressive…or “showboating” as Michael Goodwin has it in the New York Post? Nothing wrong at all on being critical. It is what we expect from reporters. Except that it never happened under Obama.
They gave him a free ride, and all that pent-up frustration, they saved for Donald Trump.
For failing so miserably to check and balance Obama, and for serving as his cheerleaders, to
their everlasting shame, they pounced on whoever was next, and again it was Trump.
Nobody asked for this Acosta book, which only perpetuates the obvious, that as never before, finds the news media in the business of blinding the public.
Only a few days ago, PBS, our public broadcasting service, featured “Palestine Music Expo.” This was a program that went all out to portray these people as so entirely peace loving, with no word about the terrorism inflicted upon Israel each and every weekend through riots from Hamas/Gaza aimed at destroying Jewish life and property…this past weekend, included.
To learn that our most valued ally in the region faces a generation of arsonists, this, they’d rather we did not know, and so they don’t tell.
We are on our own to seek and find the truth, about Israel, about America, about anything. Help won’t come from Acosta. Nor from his kind.
We go to J. D. Salinger for what he already knew…that around us are “phonies.” That was the fake news, the fake politics, the fake everything of his day…certainly the fake book writing. It is a wake-up call to realize that once upon a time the Salingers, not the Acostas, wrote the bestsellers.
Self-respecting New York publishers, like Harper, generally stayed clear of opportunistic poorly-written trash.
This, so far as we know, is Acosta’s first book, or first attempt.
Journalism is the kid sister to Literature, and so when a journalist steps up into the world of books, he should have something extraordinary to say.
Otherwise he is trampling on precious territory. Books are forever. Books endure. To incoming practitioners in the trade, we ask, did he suffer for his art? Did he pay his dues? Is he worthy to compete? Did he struggle with no end in sight because some day he might, or might not, ever be rewarded?
If not, he is a phony and a fake, and the measure of our times.
Book writing should be no place for quick buck artists, but alas.
(INN)
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
