I Mean, Sorry, But This ‘CNN Sucks’ Song Has a Point and I Kind of Like It

A small band comprised of four teens and their father, activist Randall Terry, have made the rounds in the news and on social media in the last few days after a video of their performance outside the CNN Democratic Debate was shared online by reporters. The song by The Terry Train that caught everyone’s attention? “CNN Sucks.”

The clip above shows a portion of their performance this week, and we’ve included some of the lyrics to the song. (Full song with lyrics is below.) Those lyrics, of course, are what make the song resonate, so to speak, and brought the attention of both MAGA fans and the press. It is the distillation of one of the most basic and widely-held points of view in MAGA circles, and it is not entirely undue.

Far be it from me to let a small blip on the social media radar go by without trying to extrapolate from it to reiterate my own criticisms. Because passing oddity or not, the fact that this exists and made any news at all is, in fact, indicative of larger issues.

The enmity between President Donald Trump and CNN is obviously well-established now. The network’s coverage is devoted mainly to criticism of Trump, something former CNN host Larry King recently exposed. And although the network has scores of competent and professional reporters, anchors, and hosts, (I am in general still surprised when conservatives object to the very even-handed Jake Tapper), it is also an inescapable reality that the network’s overall opinion and analysis more than skew against Trump specifically and Republicans generally, and toward Democrats and in favor of ideas and individuals who are progressive liberals. Some say that simply reporting the truth means reporting negatively about Trump, but that’s obviously overly simplistic, and it misses a number of points that would require a separate article to address.

What is not debatable is that exists now an almost unbridgeable chasm of distrust between the network and, not just hard-core Trumpists, but the broader Republican coalition overall. What’s more, and which in an honest debate would be a given, is that the particular editorial bent at CNN has caused more than one seriously bad judgment call in reporting or presentation, about many of which we have written extensively here at Mediaite. So, again, the song’s title is not an entirely undue critique.

Some of the errors in judgment or reporting that prompt this rift are brought up by the bands teen members — they are Justin, Randy, Michael, and Killian Terry — when they speak to the press or to supporters, including the coverage of the Covington kids, the Mueller investigation and so on. You could add coverage of the Kavanaugh hearing to the list, for my money. There are, among conservatives and Republicans, hundreds of other criticisms that could be added here.

The Washington Post’s Eric Wemple wrote about this relatively minor cultural moment in an article on Thursday that gives an air of detached analysis, punctuated with some disdain (referring to band dad Randall Terry as a “self-proclaimed musician,” for example) and a sort of “conservatives in the mist” vibe that is itself not entirely undue.

Wemple, in keeping with a sort of “What’s the Matter With Kansas” theming that has permeated Democratic media as 2020 approaches, offers a polite nod to the idea that the children are being manipulated, not just by their father by Trump himself. (It is a given between reader and writer that CNN does not actually suck, so the question isn’t addressed.)

“So successful are Trump’s nonstop attacks on CNN,” says the article, “that a group of teenagers find their groove in attacking not clueless parents, or cops, or vacuous classmates, but rather: Erin Burnett!”

It is simply Trump’s attacks, nothing CNN has ever done, goes the premise.

But, again, the disdainful vibe isn’t undue. Randall Terry, to whose website one is redirected if attempting to donate to the band, is nearly the prototype for what a Washington Post or CNN reporter likely conjures in their mind when they think of MAGA. An anti-abortion activist, Terry has on his site a video announcing his “Christ, Cuomo, and Satan Tour” in New York. He has an RV wrapped in graphics about abortion, sin, Jesus, and Democrats, and below the clip showing it, the first line of text reads “Andrew Cuomo…a god-hating, left-wing baby-killer”

On the band’s site, in addition to “CNN Sucks” you can find the song “Year of the Hag”, including this description:

There’s no denying that 2018 was the year of the hag. We saw evil women run for president and lead the left in the murder of innocent babies. This one is written especially for Ms. Clinton, the leader of the hags.

There is a song that is not included on their website, and that is no longer on YouTube, which Christian Newswire posted a release for in October of last year. It was attributed to the band and offered with “full permission” of Terry. The song was titled “Uncle Tom Don Lemon,” and the release says it “pokes fun at Don Lemon, by pointing out that he is trying to keep Kanye West on the Democrat plantation.”

The Washington Post article says “In today’s America” in the headline, obviously offering the sort of exasperated what a world take with which so many of us are familiar and perhaps sympathize. In this case, with CNN’s implacable dedication to hysterical overreach parodied somewhat popularly by a group of teenagers and a dad given to his own extremist reaction, it’s hard not to throw your hands up.

You know, throw them up in the music sense, and also in the “everything is stupid and this timeline is what sucks” sense.

The full CNN song with lyrics, via the Terry Train YouTube page.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.