Last week, at several points during the Republican convention, the crowd erupted into chants of “Lock Her Up!” in reference to Hillary Clinton. To say that the media found this distasteful and worthy of stern fingerwagging, would be an understatement. See “The GOP’s new convention theme: ‘Lock her up!’“; “‘Lock her up’ is the chant of a banana republic“; and “Memo to Republicans: Democracies don’t lock up political opponents.” And those were just the headlines at the Washington Post.
It’s hard to decide whether this attack on the GOP was obtuse, simple media bias, or both. The issue isn’t about ginning up false charges to imprison the opposition as might happen in a banana republic; the issue is that America is becoming a banana republic because our leaders are above the law. Anyway, now the Democratic convention is upon us, and guess what’s happening? “Protesters chanted ‘lock her up,” with some wearing ‘Hillary for Prison’ T-shirts, as they marched in Philadelphia the day before the Democratic National Convention,” reports The Hill. These are not Republicans doing this. They’re Sanders supporters.
Last week, the Washington Post editorialized against the ‘lock her up’ chant saying, “When the critique of political opponents becomes so disproportionate and divorced from reality, democracy, which requires goodwill and compromise, cannot function.” In retrospect, I suppose they are right, if unintentionally so. The fact that the center left establishment has spent decades portraying reasonable Republican demands for rule of law as the unhinged ravings of knuckledraggers, is a big reason why frustrated Republicans nominated Trump. And the media acting as the palace guard for the likes of the Clintons has gotten so bad now even elements of the Democratic can’t abide by the dishonesty involved.
Memo to the Washington Post: It’s not those who want to lock up Hillary Clinton that are “divorced from reality” here—it’s the media.
