Former CNN personality Jim Acosta watched workers scrape President Trump's name off the Kennedy Center on Saturday and declared it was "very much like watching the Berlin Wall coming down." That's right — a nameplate removal along the Potomac River is now apparently on par with the liberation of millions from communist oppression.
Someone get this man a history book. Or a mirror. Either one would be helpful at this point.
Acosta delivered the comparison with the kind of breathless sincerity that made him famous at CNN — and unemployable everywhere else. "This is very much like watching the Berlin Wall coming down," he said. "It is a sign that humankind can stand up against tyranny." Humankind. Standing up against tyranny. Because a sign came down off a building. The people of East Berlin who risked bullets to cross that wall would be thrilled to know their sacrifice is now equivalent to a Saturday afternoon arts-district renovation.
Here's the backstory. Back in December, President Trump ordered his name added to the Kennedy Center. Obama-appointed federal judge Christopher Cooper ruled the addition was illegal, arguing that only Congress has the authority to alter the building's name. So down it came — and several hundred people gathered since Friday afternoon to watch the removal like it was some kind of freedom festival.
Among the crowd was Mary Foltz, a nurse from Northern Virginia, who offered a slightly more grounded take. "Like, there's lack of transparency, and that's just the epitome of it," Foltz told reporters. "This is a meme." Give that woman a medal for being the only honest person within a mile of the Potomac that day.
But let's get back to our hero, Jim Acosta, because this moment really does tell you everything about the state of American media. This is a man who spent years at CNN pretending every Trump press conference was Tiananmen Square. A man who turned grandstanding into performance art. And now, in what should have been a forgettable local-news segment about building maintenance, he managed to invoke the single most iconic moment of Cold War liberation.
The Berlin Wall separated families for 28 years. People were shot trying to cross it. Its fall signaled the collapse of Soviet communism across an entire continent. But sure, Jim — removing some lettering from a performing arts center in Washington, D.C., is basically the same thing.
This is why nobody takes the media or journalists seriously anymore. They live in a bubble so thick that scrubbing a president's name off a concert hall feels like a world-historical event to them. The rest of us see a building. They see Checkpoint Charlie.
I'll say this for Acosta — the man commits to the bit. Most people would have paused, reconsidered, maybe dialed it back to "Bastille Day" or something slightly less absurd. Not Jim. He went straight to the top shelf. Berlin Wall. Full send.
If removing a nameplate is the fall of the Berlin Wall, what's next? Renaming a post office is D-Day? Changing the WiFi password at the DNC headquarters is the storming of the Bastille? We're running out of historical events to cheapen here, folks.
The real story isn't the Kennedy Center. It's that an Obama-appointed judge made a ruling, workers followed through, and a crowd showed up to celebrate like they'd just liberated Paris. Meanwhile, the rest of America is worried about grocery prices, the border, and whether their 401(k) will survive the next round of government spending.
But by all means, Jim — tear down that wall. Or whatever it is you think happened.