[guest post by Dana]

Suspended indefinitely…

On Friday night I posted about NBC Saturday Night Live writer Katie Rich, who made an ugly Twitter attack on 10 year old Barron Trump. After the internet got very angry with her for her intolerable behavior, Rich locked her Twitter account.

Today, there is a report that NBC has suspended Rich indefinitely:

She was suspended immediately after her tweet, and her suspension is indefinite, according to someone familiar with the plans at “S.N.L.,” who was not authorized by NBC to comment on personnel matters.

That tweet on Friday, during Mr. Trump’s inauguration ceremony, drew widespread condemnation, and Ms. Rich subsequently deleted the post (which said “Barron will be this country’s first homeschool shooter”) and deactivated her Twitter account. Her name did not appear in the closing credits of “Saturday Night Live” in its broadcast on Saturday.

Rich opened her Twitter account today to apologize, not directly to President and Mrs. Trump, nor to Barron, but just a general, generic apology:

“I sincerely apologize for the insensitive tweet. I deeply regret my actions & offensive words. It was inexcusable & I’m so sorry.”

It’s interesting that the report claims she was suspended immediately after posting her foul tweet on Friday at 12:07 pm, and yet it took three days for her to apologize. I guess a loss of income and work can do that to a person, if not a troubled conscience. But hey, maybe it’s possible that Rich wasn’t able to tweet her apology until today because she was still recovering from marching in “solidarity with our… children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families” on Saturday…

With that, a comedienne named Nikki Glaser, whose show I have never watched, had this reaction to Rich’s suspension:

I realize this isn’t nearly the biggest news of the day, but it’s an interesting question of whether people should be suspended from, or lose their jobs because the righteously angry got out their pitchforks and made some noise about it.

–Dana

In case you missed it, over the weekend I announced a new (and more civil) blog comments section. Details here.

Before you read any further, do me a favor and answer this question. I don’t want to prejudice your answers through any analysis that follows.

It’s a question a reader raised recently, and I think it’s an interesting one.

There are competing theories at play here.

The argument I see for the primacy of draining the government swamp goes something like this: the media can’t put you in jail. They can’t confiscate your hard-earned money through taxation, or take your property through eminent domain. Unless you move out of the country, you don’t get a choice as to which government rules you. (Sure, there is a theoretical collective choice, but that is not the same thing as a real personal choice. Your single vote will never decide a national election. But your singular decision to switch the channel or navigate to a new Web page can decide which media outlet you follow at any given moment.) Draining the government swamp is more important because it changes something over which you have no choice, which directly affects your life.

The argument I see for the primacy of draining the media swamp goes something like this: Despite the low approval numbers of all different types of media, the message put out by the media still has an outsized influence on what most Americans think and on how they vote. If you can change the media’s message, and undo the cozy backroom relationships they have with their favored politicians (who are always from the left), you can change who is elected. The election of Donald Trump does not prove the media is now weak; indeed, with the billions in free earned media they showered on him, you could say the media made Trump president. Moreover, more fundamentally, politics is downstream of culture. Change the media and you change the culture, which changes the politics — since our political choices inevitably reflect our collective personal opinions in the end. Draining the media swamp is more important because if you drain the media swamp, the government swamp will follow.

It’s an interesting debate. I’ll be interested to see what people say, even though this is obviously not a scientific poll.

I have cross-posted this at RedState, with the same question phrased the same way but in a different poll, so I can track the differences between the answers of the readerships of both blogs.

I have also cross-posted it at The Jury Talks Back, where we are running an experiment (described here) of ensuring that commentary follows the rules you might follow if you were a guest in my living room. Since many people will be entering The Jury from this post, and will have already taken the poll before going there, I did not think much would be revealed by having a separate poll there. To comment at the Jury version, go here.