Archive for the ‘media’ Category

“For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

Luke 6:38

Today at both Twitchy & Powerline the attempt to have the president’s tweets concerning the Lori Klausutis deleted.  Her husband appeal to have it pulled gave the story further legs and now the AP, via the Star Tribune has weighted in:

No one in Klausutis’ family would talk about Trump’s tweets for this article, fearing retaliation by online trolls of the type who went after parents of the Sandy Hook massacre victims. Their grief has been disrupted by conspiracy theories before — not only over the past few years from the White House, but from some liberals who at the time of her death sought to portray then-conservative Republican congressman Scarborough as a potential villain.

“There’s a lot we would love to say, but we can’t,” said Colin Kelly, who was Klausutis’ brother-in-law.

Scarborough, who was 900 miles away in Washington, D.C., on the day Klausutis died, and his co-host and wife, Mika Brzezinski, have both expressed outrage on the air in recent days — saying that Trump’s false accusations were most hurtful to Klausutis’ family. Brzezinski called Trump a “cruel, sick, disgusting person” and said he was using the episode to distract from the pandemic.

emphasis mine

That throw away line in the piece is actually the key to this case. as I brought up last week here:

Does anyone think for one moment that the mainstream media, still angry over the Bush victory and the Clinton Impeachment (that Scarborough voted for) would not have jumped all over this story and made it national news (particularly given Scarborough’s Sept 5th resignation) and a talking point to hit Republicans over? After all here you have a GOP congressman representing one of the most republican districts in his state, A republican who voted for Slick Billy’s impeachment with a dead female intern in his office. It would be a Godsend for the left Would this have not lead on CNN or MSNBC? Would not the New York Times and Washington Post used this as a club asking every GOP member of congress or the cabinet with devastating effect? Would they not when that congressman resigned seven weeks later suggest it was proof that something was up? Would this not be made a campaign issue in the special congressional election with demands that GOP candidate call for a fuller and deeper investigation?

You bet your ass they would!

And remember this was BEFORE he transformed himself into the type of Republican that Democrats like the most, the type willing to attack the GOP.

bold in original

in a long twitter thread that started here: a sample

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And even on my livestream podcast:

This is the argument to kill this entire thing, but it’s not a argument that anyone on the left wants to make because said argument could concede the media bias that even today they pretend doesn’t exist.

I suspect Joe Scarborough, who certainly doesn’t need this, wishes he could use this point, but instead they are stuck with the “conspiracy theory” card. Powerline notes a tad of irony:

This is an example of the kind of dumb thing I wish President Trump wouldn’t do. I assume there is no reason to think that Joe Scarborough had anything to do with Ms. Klausutis’s death. But isn’t there a larger point here? What has Joe Scarborough done for the last 3 1/2 years but spread “debunked conspiracy theories” about Donald Trump–most notably, but by no means limited to, the Russia hoax–“speculated without evidence” about the Russia hoax, the Ukraine kerfuffle and other matters, and “unleashed a torrent of false allegations, mischaracterizations and baseless rumors” about the president? That sounds like Scarborough’s job description at MSNBC.

And what about the Washington Post? Despite its high and mighty tone in describing the president’s “spread[ing a] debunked conspiracy theory,” hasn’t that been the Post’s own stock in trade for years, when it comes to Donald Trump? Speculating without evidence, spreading conspiracy theories that turn out to be false, and unleashing a torrent of false allegations, mischaracterizations and baseless rumors sums up very well the Post’s coverage of the Donald Trump campaign, and of his presidency since January 2017.

So, while I am critical of tweets like the ones the Post is complaining about, I have a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for Joe Scarborough, and I can’t read the Post’s self-righteous account with anything but derision.

I think this is worthy of critique but “dumb” is not the word here. Trump understands that every cry of “conspiracy theory” by the media, given what we saw over the last three years make the left look ridiculous , even to some who dislike the President, and of course if they speak the obvious truth that I’ve laid out here they confirm all the President has said about them which is even worse for the left.

POTUS can’t lose here that’s why he picked this fight. He is a Jacksonian whose entire philosophy can be summed up by this sentence written nearly twenty years ago by the late great Steven Den Beste one of the greatest bloggers who ever lived

The whole point of Jacksonianism is “You leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. You play fair with me and I’ll play fair with you. But if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you.”

That’s Trump all over.

Update: Instalanche thanks Ed. If you like this post tune in tomorrow for a post on how Steve Den Bestie back in 2002 accidentally laid out how Trump would govern. Don’t miss our livestream podcast every Friday morning at 9:30 AM EST You can watch the latest edition on Judge Jackson,US foes buying US Universities (the last of the Monday 12:35 AM Edition ones) here.

Update 2: I was reading the comments at Instapundit I was shocked to read at least one person say it was unclear if the media jumped on this at the time or not. While I can’t see how someone would not figure it out from this post let me say explicitally that they did not and again refer to DaTechGuy’s 4th law of Media Outrage which states:

The degree of media exposure of the corruption or illegality committed by any individual or organization under investigation is directly proportional to its distance from the media’s ideology.

If this had happened in 2018 involving NEVERTRUMP Scarborough I could see the MSM ignoring it as they did, but it happened in 2001 involving conservative GOP Scarborough no chance they don’t jump on it if there was any there there.

Update 3: Quick FYI I work 3:30 to Midnight and don’t have a cell so I’m offline during that time and all comments are moderated so I apologize to anyone who had to wait for their comment to be approved.

Update 4: The sequel to this post is titled The Late Steven Den Beste on Trump (Accidentally)

Gregory:  Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?

Sherlock Holmes:  To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.

Gregory:  The dog did nothing in the night-time.

Sherlock Holmes:  That was the curious incident

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sliverblaze

I have a bit of a soft spot) for Mika Brzezinski I saw that she was willing to make arguments, hear the other side, be content to be a handsome woman putting on a pound or two rather than trying to outbombshell younger rivals, liked the way she and co-host (now husband) Joe Scarborough treated their fans at personal appearance and unlike many of her contemporaries was always unabashed about admitting her biases.

She has however since the rise of Trump, retreated into the bubble of Trump Deranged left, emerging only briefly for her Biden interview, and because of this TDS she has made an elementary mistake, one that she didn’t make when the show quietly passed over the Jeffrey Epstein business during the last campaign, loudly insisting that Twitter take action against Trump after he alluded to an event concerning a female intern who was found dead in her now husband’s office two decades ago.

Brzezinski went on to call on Twitter to censor Trump, and said the Silicon Valley company would be “hearing” from her.

“But the germs you’re spreading on Twitter — first of all, Twitter? You shouldn’t be allowing this. And you should be taking these tweets down. And you should be ashamed of yourself – you’ll be hearing from me on this, because this is BS.”

“But Donald, you’re a sick person,” said Brzezinski, continuing her rant. “You’re really a cruel, sick, disgusting person. And you can keep tweeting about Joe, but you’re just hurting other people. And of course, you’re hurting yourself.”

Brzezinski continued her pressure campaign on Twitter, calling on the CEO, Jack Dorsey, to take down President Trump’s tweets, saying it would make the world “safer.”

Now while it’s never good when the President tweets out a story that one prefers remains forgotten if such a thing is going to happen, the best time for it is during a national crisis where there are plenty of other things to distract people from it. Thus even though the story might be painful and damaging it was likely to fade away pretty quick.

Alas when you live in bubble world such considerations don’t enter into one’s reasoning and Mika decided to make a very public counter which is likely to have a bad effect as explained in this excellent twitter thread.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

You see a lot of folks on your side of the fence likely was not aware of Joe Situation and likely may not have even seen the Trump tweet on the subject, but your decision to bring it up means that folks will ask questions and given the cynicism of the age such people are more, rather than less likely, to draw a conclusion you and Joe don’t want made.

Now frankly if you lived outside of the bubble you would have realized that silence was the 2nd best defense here and would have employed it, but because you’ve chosen that quarantine within the NeverTrump world that obvious choice is lost on you and because of this you risk the reputation of your husband not with Trump fans ( who don’t like him anyways) but with your own crowd.

Kinda sad really.

Closing thought: Readers might have noticed I called silence the 2nd best defense. There is an obvious better defense based on DaTechGuy’s 4th law of media outrage which states:

The degree of media exposure of the corruption or illegality committed by any individual or organization under investigation is directly proportional to its distance from the media’s ideology.

On July 20, 2001 the day intern Lori Klausutis was found dead in congressmen Joe Scarborough’s office the left was still reeling from George W. Bush’s victory and deep into the Bush Derangement Syndrome that would not dissipate until 53 days later when Al Qaeda would change the subject. This leads to the obvious question:

Does anyone think for one moment that the mainstream media, still angry over the Bush victory and the Clinton Impeachment (that Scarborough voted for) would not have jumped all over this story and made it national news (particularly given Scarborough’s Sept 5th resignation) and a talking point to hit Republicans over? After all here you have a GOP congressman representing one of the most republican districts in his state, A republican who voted for Slick Billy’s impeachment with a dead female intern in his office. It would be a Godsend for the left Would this have not lead on CNN or MSNBC? Would not the New York Times and Washington Post used this as a club asking every GOP member of congress or the cabinet with devastating effect? Would they not when that congressman resigned seven weeks later suggest it was proof that something was up? Would this not be made a campaign issue in the special congressional election with demands that GOP candidate call for a fuller and deeper investigation?

You bet your ass they would!

And remember this was BEFORE he transformed himself into the type of Republican that Democrats like the most, the type willing to attack the GOP.

That more than anything else tells me there is no “there” there.

This would be the obvious 1st defense to make however to make this defense one has to concede the media as Democrat operatives with bylines and while I’m sure Mika loves her husband even she doesn’t dare use this defense aloud.

Yesterday I sent out the following tweet

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

So what do Stephen Sanders, Rickey King III, Calvin Munerlyn, Cornelius Bruce, Kimberly McCubbin, Darrin White, Carlos Brown, Helle Jae O’Regan, Charles Edward Lewis III, Tina Louise Maldonado and Keyon Rogers have in common with each other.

Like Ahmaud Arbery all of these people are or I should say, were, members of “protected” groups, black, hispanic, women, Transgender women, yet because, their killers were did not fit the profile of the media’s desired narrative, their murders, unlike Ahmaud Arberry’s are not considered worthy of national outrage.

Cue DaTechGuy’s 3rd Law of Media Outrage:

The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.

And Stacy McCain:

A 1960s radical once said: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” Whenever the Left seizes on some incident like the Arbery shooting, they do so to advance their agenda, and the role of supposedly “objective” journalists in assisting this project is what we need to focus on

Personally I think that a great question to those outraged over the Arberry case would be to insert any of those name I have listed above and ask why Stephen Sanders, Rickey King III, Calvin Munerlyn, Cornelius Bruce, Kimberly McCubbin, Darrin White, Carlos Brown, Helle Jae O’Regan, Charles Edward Lewis III, Tina Louise Maldonado and Keyon Rogers murders are not worthy of their attention or outrage.

And if you get sick of those names you can go here for a comprehensive list of People murdered in Baltimore or here for a comprehensive list of those murdered in LA (both searchable by race and gender) and find plenty of new one.

Alas I suspect that since these lists grow pretty fast you will have plenty of new names to add to your question by the time the media find their next shooting with the right combination of killer and victim to promote to national prominence.

Closing Thought: Can you think of words to describe a media that only considers the murders of blacks, Hispanics, transgenders and women uninteresting unless they can be someone used to attack their enemies? I can, the word is Racist and sexist!

Last week I mentioned DaTechGuys’ Laws of media outrage which dictate how the media/left will act in any circumstance. This week we saw a story that applied both sides of DaTechguy’s 3rd law of media outrage which states:

The MSM’s elevation and continued classification of any story as Nationally Newsworthy rather than only of local interest is in direct correlation to said story’s current ability to affirm any current Democrat/Liberal/Media meme/talking point, particularly on the subject of race or sexuality.

The story? The murder of Calvin Munerlyn.

Calvin Munerlyn, a guard at a dollar store in Flint Michigan was shot to death when confronting a customer concerning wearing wearing a facemask. This would seemingly be a local story but it was suddenly elevated by those on the left as Stacy McCain reports:

“This is another Trump inspired murder,” one Twitter user declared. “This is what the rabid hosts on Fox and Trump have done,” said another. “A direct result of Trump’s cry to ‘liberate’ Michigan,” said yet another as the torrent of Trump-hating messages spewed forth.

And the critique was not confined to those without a blue check as Fred Guttenberg declared:

.@realdonaldtrump remember your crazy tweet to liberate Michigan? You and your incitement of your unstable base are responsible for this murder.

So you had a killing that was ready to be promoted to a national story as a Biden supporting blue check was on it, but you might note that rather than the tweet itself I have a quote of the original tweet which is now gone?

Why is that tweet gone? This photo from the abc12 story about the shooting is the big clue:

Larry Teague Jr., Ramonyea Bishop 

From the abc 12 story:

Three people are charged with the murder of a Family Dollar security guard in Flint, who was enforcing the store’s policy requiring face masks.

Two men remain at large while a woman has been arrested and is awaiting arraignment in the Genesee County Jail.

The male suspects are 44-year-old Larry Edward Teague and 23-year-old Ramonyea Bishop. Teague’s wife and Bishop’s mother, 45-year-old Sharmel Teague, has been arrested.

All three suspects are facing a charge of first-degree premeditated murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole if they are convicted.

If ONLY Mr. Munerlyn was killed by the right kind of people, say Trump supporting activists protesting the Governor of Michigan, then the left would make his name would be a household word in America and sympathy would be pouring in from all corners of the country.

But alas he was not so as predicted by DaTechGuy’s 3rd law of media outrage, the story remains a local one and those who once purported to care decided that Mr. Munerlyn murder was not worth their time, outrage or sympathy.

Unexpectedly of course.