We Are Outraged Over the Outrage About the Outrage

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

I don’t know. No matter what we say, maybe we all like having a reality-TV president:

What’s this all about? Well, you remember the dumb video that Donald Trump posted on Sunday? The one where he’s body slamming a wrestler whose head has been replaced by the CNN logo? We all decided to get outraged over that. This was dumbness level 1.

Then we tracked down the origin of the video. It came from someone named HanAssholeSolo on the alt-right reddit sewer r/The_Donald. It turned out that Han had also posted some inane anti-semitic memes, so we all decided to get outraged over that. This was dumbness level 2.

Then CNN tracked down the actual person behind HanAssholeSolo. Unsurprisingly, it turned out to be some dude who had been acting out and was terrified at the prospect of becoming national news just because our president was stupid enough to retweet his stuff. So CNN decided not to publish his name “because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again.”

However, CNN also said it “reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.” This sounded like a threat, so we all decided to get outraged over that. This was dumbness level 3.

Is there anything we won’t use as an excuse to get outraged? Trump’s tweet was puerile, but it was just a joke, not a call to violence. HanAssholeSolo is an idiot, but he’s just one of millions of individual idiots, not someone with any power or influence unless we give it to him. And under anything but the most hostile reading, CNN obviously wasn’t threatening anyone. They were just covering themselves: If it turned out that Han was playing them, they were under no obligation to maintain his anonymity.

Not that it matters. If CNN can track this guy down, so can someone else. He’ll be viral on Twitter before long no matter how abjectly he’s apologized.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate