Archive for the ‘media’ Category

Under the Fedora: Stein’s Sin, Mayor Pete’s Dodge, MSNBC holds the line, as does Twitter, but the pros do it best

Posted: October 21, 2019 by datechguy in media, politics, primaries, under the fedora
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I was rather shocked when I saw this from Jill Stein:

You know, you can’t just slander people. You have to present some basis and fact.

I’m shocked SHOCKED as must be many regular CNN viewers who watched this at the concept that you have to actually have a basis of fact to accuse people of things. That’s contrary to the entire gameplan of Democrats and their media allies for decades.

How DARE she invade the CNN safe space and suggest such a thing!

If this wasn’t bad enough Jake Tapper pressed Mayor Pete Buttgieg on the same network on the question of Tulsi Gabbard in the same context:

“Right. But do you think Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset?” Tapper pressed again, asking directly.


“I don’t know what the basis is for that,” Buttigieg sidestepped again. “But I consider her to be a competitor. I respect her service and have very different views than she does on foreign policy and I would prefer to have that argument in terms of debates and going forward.”


Tapper pushed back, asking why Democrats defended people when Trump smeared them but didn’t seem motivated to defend Gabbard from similar attacks from other Democrats, no matter how wild.

Not only do we have the spectacle of CNN viewers having the sacred concept of Democrats smearing opponents challenged twice in one week but you have an interviewer directly challenging a liberal gay man running for high office on his position. Unthinkable!

Maybe these O’Keefe CNN videos are having an effect after all.

Of course if you are a liberal snowflake and unable to cope with this kind of direct challenge to the liberal smear machine you till have MSNBC

A panel on MSNBC Live mocked Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard for not explicitly denying Hillary Clinton’s accusation that she is a Russian asset.
Clinton, 71, said that the Hawaii congresswoman is being groomed by Moscow to run as a third-party spoiler candidate in 2020 to help President Trump win reelection. Gabbard has since hit back at the 2016 presidential candidate.
“One thing that was interesting about Tulsi Gabbard’s response, I mean she went after Hillary Clinton strong, she said she wasn’t going to run as a third party candidate, she never denied being a Russian asset,” Kimberly Atkins of WBUR said while beginning to laugh on the show Saturday morning. “That was the one aspect that was missing from her response, which you think that would be in the first line or two. It was not there.”

At least the traditions and standards of the left’s attack machine are still sacrosanct somewhere.

I should also note said liberal standards are being held up by Twitter as well:

Maybe it was this next post that did him in. Everyone knows you’re not allowed to challenge the new gender theology. “These are both me. Sometimes I like looking like and androgynous emaciated albino space vampire. Sometimes I like looking like a strung out 90’s computer hacker. Sometimes I feel more gay vampire, sometimes I feel more sk8r boi. Guess what? That doesn’t make me my own special gender.”

That’s gay writer and model Mike Harlow before being permanently banned from twitter supposedly for “harassment” but more likely for being part of the #walkaway movement. Some think this is an attack on gays thinking for themselves but I object to that characterization:

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

There are plenty of straight folks that Twitter has banned for thinking for themselves, but generally it’s not so much a question of them thinking for themselves but for having the potential to influence others to do so as well.

Finally when it comes to seeing how properly repressing speech one doesn’t like is done you have to go to the pros:

A Facebook post that criticized Islam’s Prophet Muhammad sparked a riot in southern Bangladesh on Sunday that left at least four people dead.
Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets in the town of Borhanuddin, 195 kilometers (120 miles) from the capital Dhaka, to protest the offensive social media post allegedly written by a Hindu man.
A local official said a meeting was held on Sunday to try to defuse the tensions that began Friday as the Facebook post gained traction.

But the angry protesters started attacking security officials, prompting them to retaliate.

Now in fairness to the left’s minor league Rasputins with Islam becoming more and more a force in the Democrat party the day will likely come when posts like this are the excuse for Democrats to riot become the norm

Of course you have to disarm the targets of your violence first.

Why doesn’t the left cheer when they’re wrong about bad things too?

Posted: October 20, 2019 by datechguy in culture, dablog, education, media, News/opinion, Uncomfortable Truths

A few days ago I lead with a post about some apparent insanity in a school district in NH that I had seen at a site I frequent. Turns out the info in question was incorrect & I missed an email warning me of same so the post in question went up as scheduled.

When I saw the email I added an update as follows:

Update: Got a heads up that suggests there might be less to this than meets the eye, While that might be embarrassing for me it would be delightful as it would indicate that insanity does not reign at the school in question and that’s more important that a post getting hits. I don’t believe in pulling posts as it changes the record so for now I’m going to put the base post under a “more” tag until I get more data. For now we’ll wait and see and if a correction is warranted I’ll update the post with it.

Long story short the info was incorrect the author apologized to the people in question. I provided a 2nd update joining in said apology and rejoicing that the school in question was not in fact insane. As it’s likely who saw the 1st post but might never check it again a fresh post linking to the mea culpa was the proper and honorable thing to do which was the primary reason for this post.

Then it hit me. The reason why I wrote the base post was I don’t want public schools to be acting insane and the purpose of said post was to hold up a light to such behavior to stop this school & others from acting that way.

Thus when it turned out this school wasn’t doing so I was very happy regardless of any embarrassment from an erroneous post because my primary goal is schools not acting insane.

This is not the case with the Democrat/left media. Think about it for a second

  • The media/left went all in on the idea of a Supreme Court Nominee being a sexual predator, then the evidence showed the accusations were not credible
  • The media/left went all in on the idea that the President of the United State was colluding with Russia to steal an election, and even with an independent council, a staff full of partisans, the assistant AG working against the president it turned out their suspicions were unfounded.
  • The media/left went all in as various colleges being bastions of “rape culture with claims that as many as 25% of the women attending were assaulted but it turned out that the methodology of the studies and the definitions of assault were so stretched as to be meaningless.
  • The media/left went all in on various race hoaxes being furious that various individuals, some involving celebs, particularly at colleges were a bunch of racists and white supremacists, yet over and over these turned out to be hoaxes.

Now supposedly the left and media and the guests they brought in did this because they didn’t want a serial sexual predator on the supreme courts or a President conspiring with Russia, colleges being bastions of rape, gay black TV starts threatened with nooses or racist acts being committed all over the nation. That being the case all of these things turning out to be false should be cause for celebration for the left who can breathe a sigh of relief that none of these things that they considered beyond the pale had happened.

Yet instead their reaction has been at best been too ignore when such hoaxes are exposed as such or at worst to continue to insist they are true despite evidence to the contrary.

Now if you work under the assumption that the goal of the media/left is to prevent such behavior then you might be utterly confused at this reaction as it makes no logical sense.

However if you work from the assumption that the primary goal of the left/media is POWER and or WEALTH and that in search of said power & wealth the events and actions that they supposedly deplore are used to generate both the funds to gain them and the means to retain them, well it makes perfect sense.

To them the the only “crisis” in government is when they don’t control it and the only “abuse” of power is if it not in their hands. Work under that assumption and all the left/media does and you will never be shocked or surprised by anything they do ever again.

Fake news and me

Posted: October 15, 2019 by chrisharper in media
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One of my daughter’s colleagues recently asked me if I worked as a journalist.

“No,” I replied. “Neither am I a mass murderer.”

It wasn’t exactly like Peter denying Christ three times. But I am no longer proud of the job I did for more than 20 years and have taught students to do for nearly 25 years.

Although I have had a variety of difficulties with the mainstream media in recent years, I hadn’t jumped completely on the fake news bandwagon until the Ukrainian phone call and impeachment. The media in American have become so shrill–a partisan press without a purpose other than to attack Trump. That doesn’t apply to all reporters and editors, but I think it applies to a significant number, particularly among the media elite.

As a result, journalism has fallen on hard times in the eyes of the public. It’s been a long time since journalists have been held in high esteem, but many people looked to the news media to provide some insight into the issues of the day.

Every morning, I start my day by reading several websites, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. I’ll usually check CNN and Fox News and may listen to the radio talk shows for 30 minutes or so.

I don’t read many opinion pieces because I find the analysis wanting, particularly from DaTimes and DaPost. It seems like all they want to do launch a new screed against Donald Trump.

Over the past decade or so, I have been advocating a change in how news organizations go about their business. The old standards of fairness, balance, objectivity, and a few others have been long gone from what I see.

In my view, the tenets should emphasize accuracy, transparency, and professionalism.

Transparency is one that sticks in the craw of most journalists. I want their political views, campaign contributions, past history of advocacy, and even tax records available to readers and viewers—much of which reporters and editors ask of politicians.

Michael Schudson, the noted analyst of journalism, wrote recently in The Columbia Journalism Review, that the issues transcend the current battle between the press and Trump.

“[T]he old days of ritually objective news reporting (he said/she said) are not gone but have been reduced in importance from the 1970s on, as mainstream outlets have increasingly emphasized analysis in news coverage—not quite so much ‘who, what, when, where’ as ‘why.’ There has been a profound cultural shift in journalism during this period. The limitations of straitjacketed objectivity came to be understood and journalism began to embrace the necessity of interpretation, as both quantitative studies and journalists’ recollections attest,” Schudson wrote.

“News organizations should have to explain themselves—to communicate the difference between the news department and the editorial page (more than a quarter of Americans do not understand the distinction); to show how they gather their news; to clarify why they sometimes cannot divulge their sources,” he added.

I hope journalists will listen to Schudson because I have failed in my mission to convince my former and current colleagues.

Whatever the case, I am no longer proud to call myself a journalist. I don’t think I am alone.

Review: Season 5 of Peaky Blinders

Posted: October 13, 2019 by John Ruberry in Always look at the bright side of Trump, culture, entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

Earlier this month Season 5 of Peaky Blinders arrived on Netflix. If you haven’t heard of the BBC show, it centers on a Gypsy organized crime gang from Birmingham, England.

The Peaky Blinders are named for the razor blades the actual hoodlums,-they were an 1890s gang–wore in their flat caps.

The television Peaky Blinders, who usually refer to themselves as the Shelby Company, Ltd., are led by Thomas “Tommy” Shelby (Cillian Murphy), a World War I veteran. The first season takes place in 1919, Season 5 begins in the auspicious year of 1929.

Tommy, at the end of Season 4, is elected to Parliament as a member of the Labour Party.

A new season of course brings a new primary villain, this time it’s Sir Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a minor member of the British nobility who also sits in the House of Commons. If you are American, it’s likely that you’ve never heard of Mosley, but he’s one of the most notorious figures of 20th century Great Britain. He didn’t go as far as Benedict Arnold did during the American Revolution, but had the Nazis defeated Britain in World War II, it’s probable that Mosley would have been prime minister—with Edward VIII restored to the throne. A 2005 poll of British historians determined that Mosley was the Worst Briton of the 20th century. Jack the Ripper took the title for the 19th. Mosley not surprisingly was a virulent anti-Semite.

Sir Oswald pursues Tommy as an ally while Winston Churchill (Neil Maskew) does the same. Maskew is the third actor to portray Churchill in this series. What’s up with that?

The Black Tuesday Wall Street Crash puts pressure on the rest of the Blinders, particularly Michael Gray (Finn Cole), who in the first episode of the season awakens from a stupor in Detroit to learn that the Shelby Company money he invested in America has evaporated. He wants a bigger say in the family business, as does his American wife (Anya Taylor-Joy). The family matriarch, Polly Gray (Helen McCrory), Michael’s mother, continues to struggle to keep the family from tearing itself apart, and their battles now directly effect her lover, Aberama Gold (Aidan Gillen). Tommy’s older brother, Arthur, continues to battle his “animal inside me.” While Tommy and Mosley, politically speaking, court each other, the Peaky Blinders face a new foe, the Billy Boys, a Scottish Protestant gang, who joyously sing their fight song, which is based on the melody of “Marching Through Georgia.” The Billy Boys hate Gypsies and Catholics–the Shelbys are both.

Peaky Blinders has always played loose with history. Lighten up, though, it’s fiction!

On the other hand…

As 1929 winds down, Mosely announces the formation of a new political party, the British Union of Fascists. But after leaving Labour, the real Mosley first formed another new party, called, well, the New Party. After that came his fascist party. I bring this up because in his introductory speech as leader of the BUF, Mosley, complaining about Indian competition forcing the closing of British textile mills, sounds a bit like Donald Trump, with a dash of UK Independence Party founder Nigel Farage thrown in. I’m not a fan of historical parallels with the present, particularly when it comes to individuals. And I get it, many people believe in “Orange Man Bad.” But sheesh, can TV scriptwriters give us a break from that for once?

I see Season 5, quality wise, as a step back for Peaky Blinders, but better than the Russian sinkhole two seasons back. But a Season 6 apparently is in the works, and maybe even a seventh. And perhaps we will see a couple of other men portray Churchill. The 1930s offers many plotlines as the world marches again to war. Still, even a below-par Peaky Blinders is worth your time.

Peaky Blinders is rated MA. It contains graphic violence, drug use, and overt sexual activity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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