Archive for the ‘media’ Category

The Realties of Portland, Sodomy, Media, Lemon and Sen Whitehouse Under the Fedora.

Posted: June 23, 2021 by datechguy in media, News/opinion
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Yesterday I talked about the ads that Ted Wheeler ran in the NYT about coming to Portland and noting that times readers just might be dumb enough to buy what he’s selling.

But the LPGA isn’t:

The LPGA moved the Portland Classic to a suburb for the first time in 50 years due to safety concerns in the city.

The event usually takes place at the Columbia Edgewater Country Club in Northeast Portland.

Reality doesn’t care what the left’s meme of the day is.

Speaking of reality Joy Behar is apparently in trouble for making a joke about the reality of what being “Gay” is and I don’t see what the problem is myself:

I thought this entire month was supposed to be dedicated to how wonderful Sodomy is and how proud we are supposed to be of those who practice it and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot. Why it’s almost as if reminding people what it actually is and actually entails might actually cause them to have a viscreal reaction that could change their mind about it.

It reminded me of when years ago the left did all they could to keep a broadcast of an abortion off the air because it’s hard to sell the idea that a baby isn’t a baby at 14 weeks when you see it dismembered.

Speaking of reality the left has done all it can to keep the American people in a liberal echo chamber but something jumped out from citizen free press which is a spot I visit daily for news:

The earliest date I could find for Citizen Free Press in the Wayback Machine was June 3rd of 2017 which means in that in four years they have outstripped ABC, NBC & the LA times and is on the verge of passing the Hill in monthly page views to break into the top 10 on this list. That’s without any cross promotion from any major media which does all it can to suppress what they cover.

The echo chamber may resonate but the reality is that millions every month are getting the information they are trying to suppress and the more the MSM remains an echo chamber the more likely alternate sites like Citizen free press will be sought out and grow.

Speaking of reality we keep hearing about how racist America is from places like CNN in general and from people like Don Lemon in particular to wit:

Lemon declared in a recent Washington Post interview that former President Donald Trump was “the necessary wake-up for America to realize just how racist it is.” Lemon, who recently penned a book, “This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism,” fancies himself an authority on the subject. 

It will come as no surprise however that he chooses to live in a town that is 3% black far away from the the various black lives matters protest that he has supported over the last several years and the violence of the communities that he downplays. I suspect that’s because reality doesn’t care about the rhetoric from a millionaire who talks about being oppressed when it comes to black lives mattering he’s referring to his own.

Finally I’m got a message for the American Thinker who used the title Sheldon Whitehouse has a racism problem. He does not. Yeah he’s a racist but it’s not a problem at least not for him. Anyone on the right who thinks that the Sheldon Whitehouse story is going to generate any outrage or traction from the left is fooling themselves.

Think for a second, if they didn’t follow thorough on Ralph “Blackface” Northam if it risked an election in Virginia and had no problem putting congressman Eric Swalwell back on the intelligence committee in the house when he’s banging a Chinese Spy what on earth would make anyone think that the left/media/democrat complex would say boo to Sheldon Whitehouse when he is the 50th vote for them in the Senate

The reality is that Marxists are always about power, ALWAYS.

A good man gone too soon

Posted: June 22, 2021 by chrisharper in media
Tags: ,

By Christopher Harper 

I lost a former colleague and good friend last week. 

Jim Sicile worked as a cameraman for many news outlets, particularly ABC, covering many of the most significant national and international events over the past 30 years. See https://www.yahoo.com/gma/abc-news-photographer-jim-sicile-175104719.html 

Jim started in the ABC News mailroom at the age of 18 and worked his way up to become a well-respected cameraman. He covered everything from the World Trade Center attacks and Hurricane Katrina to the Haiti earthquake and the Olympics. He interviewed world leaders and covered every president from Nixon to Biden, which was his final assignment that stopped abruptly because of illness. 

Jim was compassionate. At his funeral, ABC news anchor John Quinones recalled how Jim called one time about an ethical question. Jim had interviewed a man who had lost his job and his home because of the pandemic. Jim took some cash out of his wallet and handed the man the money. 

A bit later, Jim called Quinones to ensure he hadn’t violated some network rule to give the man the cash.  

I worked with Jim for nearly a decade at 20/20. In fact, he was there for my first segment for the broadcast in 1986. The shoot had been complicated, involving a helicopter, a speedboat, and an ill reporter. 

In the end, Jim, a bona fide foodie, remarked on only one facet of the seven-day extravaganza. He loved the huevos rancheros at a nearby San Diego diner! 

His taste buds became renowned. For example, he created a line of hot pepper sauces. Moreover, the prayer card at Jim’s funeral included a background of his famed peppers.

His family organized a bevy of food trucks from jerk barbeque to crepes for a “celebration of his life” after the funeral. A rock ‘n’ roll band played Jim’s favorites from Elton John and Billy Joel.  

But there’s also a maddening part of Jim’s death. During the pandemic, his doctors focused on COVID-19 and misdiagnosed his illness. During several conversations with Jim, an incredibly patient man, he told me about his frustration with his doctors.  

It turned out that Jim, who had never smoked, did not have COVID. Instead, he had lung cancer. It is unclear whether the several months of misdiagnosis would have made any difference, but I bet it would have given Jim some more time.  

Before he died, Jim told his family and friends: “People say I am stronger than the cancer. The cancer didn’t take my sense of humor from me, I am still a good husband and a good father and friend. In those ways, yes, I am stronger. The cancer did not win.”

At 66, a good man was gone much too soon!  

Crime pays as NYC DAs drop most post-death-of-George Floyd looting and rioting charges

Posted: June 20, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
North Michigan Avenue in Chicago last summer after rioting

By John Ruberry

A bit more than a year ago most large American cities were struck by widespread rioting and looting after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. 

Of course for the most part the rioting was termed “unrest” by the mainstream media. In case you think reporters forgot what the word “riot” means, the “R” word was front in center in January news coverage after a pro-Donald Trump mob stormed the US Capitol. 

Local television reporters across the country–who are generally more credible than their dead-tree media counterparts–brought viewers many scenes of unmasked people emptying out stores. Some of the looters even posted their crimes on social media.

Were these outrages open-and-shut case for prosecutors? Yes, but not in the way you think. 

From NBC New York:

NYPD data reviewed by the NBC New York I-Team shows 118 arrests were made in the Bronx during the worst of the looting in early June. 

Since then, the NYPD says the Bronx DA and the courts have dismissed most of those cases – 73 in all. Eighteen cases remain open and there have been 19 convictions for mostly lesser counts like trespassing, counts which carry no jail time. 

Jessica Betancourt owns an eyeglass shop that was looted and destroyed along Burnside Avenue in the Bronx last June.

Those numbers, to be honest with you, is [sic] disgusting,” Betancourt said when told of the few cases being prosecuted.

According to the NBC New York, prosecutors are claiming that there is a backlog of cases because of the COVID-19 epidemic. “If they are so overworked that they can’t handle the mission that they’re hired for, then maybe they should find another line of work,” says former NYPD Chief of Patrol Wilbur Chapman.  True, that.

There is a similar pattern of prosecutorial malpractice in Manhattan too. The DA in Manhattan is Cyrus Vance Jr, the leftist zealot who is on a Captain Ahab-like quest to charge Donald Trump with crimes.

The primary focus of any prosecutor should be to protect the public. But are prosecutors subject to the “CSI Effect” that plagues trials? That is, short of videotaped confessions of criminals, there is always room for a scintilla of doubt–because cases laid out perfectly when presented in a television drama.

Maybe. But instead I suspect there is an even worse possibility.

During the rioting last summer in Chicago I watched live coverage on WGN-TV of a couple of women calmly loading their car with what must have been looted goods. The license plate of their car was readable. Locating the criminals should have been quite easy. I wonder if Cook County’s state’s attorney, the woke Kim Foxx who of course dropped the hoax charges against Jussie Smollett–since reinstated with a special prosecutor in charge–botherered to investigate those two looters?

Yes, I had to bring up Smollett. As a black man and a gay man–that’s a two-fer–the former Empire actor is automatically a double-victim. And since many of the looters were minorities, they are victims too. Not of course the owners of stores that were looted last year even though many of those shop owners were minorities too. The criminals are the victims here, it’s not the other way around. If this quasi-reasoning makes sense to you then I recommend that you watch less CNN and MSNBC–and cancel your subscription to The Atlantic.

Some in the dead-tree media have called these riots and outbreaks of looting an uprising. Here and here, for instance. Meanwhile, the investigation of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters, which The Media Elect is calling either a riot or an insurrection–is being aggressively pursued by federal prosecutors, and the allegd perpetatrors are being charged with low-level crimes such as tresspassing. Yes, they should be prosecuted. But to call the Capitol Riot, in the words some federal prosecutors, an “existential threat” to the republic is a gross exaggeration. And some of those alleged rioters are being held in solitary confinement in Gitmo-like conditions, including the moron who put his on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and the so-called QAnon Shaman. Yeah, I get it, the feds have jurisdiction over the Capitol attack, not New York or Chicago prosecutors. But the message to the public should be clear here.

Then there is Antifa, which for weeks was violently attacking nearly every night the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon. Where is the dogged federal investigation of those riots? 

But I fear some in prosecutorial circles sympathize with Antifa, as I strongly suspect they do in regards to the George Floyd “uprising.”

It seems that prosecutors are taking sides. And that in the right circumstances crime pays well for the criminals. 

But civil society cannot survive such a mindset. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Tapper Media Trap

Posted: June 6, 2021 by datechguy in culture, media, News/opinion
Tags: , , , ,
I am the Editor

Cardinal Richelieu: [whispered to the King] I am the state, Your Majesty. Let us say it now, privately, so that we never have need to discuss it in public. I am France, Louis. I am the state. These men have set themselves above me, and it is I, Louis, and not you who sit in judgment. I render that judgment now.

The Three Musketeers 1948

One might wonder why Jake Tapper of CNN would put him self out there with a virtue signaling claim to the NYT that was so easily disproved by the people he was trying to appear superior to.

The first thought of course is given he was talking to the NYT he presumed that the audience there would never see the evidence to expose the lie since they live in a media bubble that will not report or acknowledge this evidence and to some degree this is likely correct but there is another factor to play here.

Fifteen, Ten or even Five years ago Jake Tapper was in a position where just about any media network would jump at him if available and he would be able to command a solid seven figure salary and bring in ratings and a reputation constant with such a pay.

Now however the law of diminishing returns is in play. CNN in general and Mr. Tapper in particular are now speaking to a dwindling audience which is more and more resembling a cult seeking affirmation rather that people seeking information.

Furthermore his employers whose corporates masters are dependent on the market that China provides and are thus requiring a narrative that supports such a message are not likely to be shy about enforcing that orthodoxly.

It’s easy to say: “I’m not going to sell myself.” But I don’t know what he has out for loans, or college debts for his kids or his mortgage situation or anything else and the bottom line is that there are plenty of people in his diminishing industry who would happily take over his seat at a tenth of the price he is currently commanding.

And if he finds himself off too far off the reservation it’s not just the CNN gig, it’s the prospect of book deals, or speaking engagements or all the other things that supplement his income that could suddenly vanish. Cure Henry Hill:

Henry Hill: And that’s the hardest part. Today everything is different; there’s no action… have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food – right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody… get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.

Good Fellas 1990

That’s the thing that I suspect restrains Jake Tapper in particular and prominent members of the media in general fear. Foot wrong and the same media companies that made them can toss them back into the mass of the people to live their lives as normal people. Without perks, without reputation, having to rebuild a living an an audience on one’s own merit.

This above all else is why the left has done all it can to create a post Judeo-Christian culture. Courage is one of the greatest virtues and fruits that comes from faith because when faced with such a situation we realize we are not alone.

Older Entries
Newer Entries