Category: media and media people

Whistles Blown

whistle, blower, Epstein, crime, informer,

Corey Feldman, former child actor and defender of Hollywood children from sexual abuse by entertainment industry movers and shakers, had given many clues about who his particular abuser was. On the Dr. Oz show, recently, Feldman still wouldn’t name the name, because, he said, he lacked legal representation on this matter.

Dr. Oz nevertheless revealed the name of the man whom Feldman alleges abused him.

Feldman looked awfully uncomfortable for the rest of the interview.

Meanwhile, the corporate press has been very “conscientious” to protect the name of the “whistleblower” on Donald Trump’s call to Ukraine that has spurred impeachment inquiries. The name has been known for a long time, but was recently and at long-last revealed by Donald Trump., Jr..

The man in question appears to be a Democratic partisan, had worked for Vice President Biden, had been sacked from the White House for being a suspected leaker, and had waited until after he had talked with Impeacher-in-Chief Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Cal.) before filing his whistleblowing paperwork.* Special legislation protects him from being fired from his current government job. But not from being named. Yet the mainstream news outlets “valiantly” protected the man’s identity from the public.

Then there’s the Amy Robach story. Ms. Robach had been caught on tape complaining about how ABC had squelched her Jeffrey Epstein story, years ago, robbing her of a scoop. An ABC employee had leaked the tape, and it became news. ABC figured out who had leaked it, and realized they couldn’t fire her because she had moved on to CBS. So ABC asked CBS to fire her.**

Courteously, CBS complied.

The press seems awfully inconsistent in protecting whistleblowers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. And Jeffrey Esptein didn’t kill himself.

* Amazingly, Mark S. Zaid, the whistleblower’s lawyer, had been talking “coup” in 2017 (see discussion by Ben Shapiro).

** I see no reports naming the worker.

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Tags blower, crime, Epstein, informer, whistle

media and media people

Zucker’s Scold

It was in bad taste.

The “meme” — an altered video — depicted extreme, murderous violence. But it was not “weaponized” as incitement to real violence; it was, instead, “memeticized” contempt against the meme’s “victims,” the full panoply of media outlets along with a few iconic politicians.

The video was very popular over the weekend on social media. It took the church massacre scene from the first Kingsman movie, but with President Trump’s head placed over Colin Firth’s visage, crudely in “meme” fashion, and a few other heads put over other actors’, and the logos of major news outlets superimposed over most of the movie’s victims’ heads.

Cartoonish, yes, but done with élan.

Brooke Baldwin, however, is a paid agent of billionaire president of CNN, Jeff Zucker, and she has her marching orders, as revealed this week by a Project Veritas scoop. So she lit into the president in high moral dudgeon: “Mr. President, why is it taking you so long to condemn this video? You tweet all the time. I don’t want to hear from your press secretary . . . who says you strongly condemn the video . . . I want to hear from YOU.”

What Ms. Baldwin and her boss don’t get is that a growing swath of the American populace does not want to hear from a news reporter scolding demands that the president “condemn” things he had nothing to do with.

Trump didn’t make the meme, after all, nor had it made for him.

Brooke Baldwin’s effrontery shows why someone might make a meme like the one in question.

Not because you deserve to be killed, Ms. Baldwin, but because you deserve derision.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags CNN, Donald Trump, media, memes, news, satire, violence

insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Don’t Tempt Her

Scrolling down @realDonaldTrump’s prolific Twitter feed, I cannot help but wonder: when does the president find time to do his job?

I am not the only one to wonder.

Still, as President, Trump sure is a great . . . troll. “I think that Crooked Hillary Clinton should enter the race to try and steal it away from Uber Left Elizabeth Warren,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “Only one condition. The Crooked one must explain all of her high crimes and misdemeanors including how & why she deleted 33,000 Emails AFTER getting ‘C’ Subpoena!”

Mrs. Clinton responded curtly: “Don’t tempt me. Do your job.”

I wonder if she fumed, under her breath, “do my job!”

CNN, in its report on this Twitter exchange — yes, this is our reality, now, this is the news! — recalled Clinton’s assurance, in March, that though she will continue “to keep speaking out” and “is not going anywhere” (heh heh), she definitely will not run again. CNN did not take Trump’s bait about Clintonian corruption, instead mentioning that “Trump’s invocation of Clinton — whom he has attacked repeatedly in his role as President — comes as the Democratic presidential primary ramps up alongside a House impeachment inquiry into the President centered around his interactions with foreign leaders.”

CNN also neglected to mention that the Hillary Clinton campaign had interacted with foreign leaders — including Ukrainian, it appears — for election advantage.

Which I guess is why we need Twitter — to allow the president to push news the press won’t cover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people responsibility

Science Isn’t Morality

“Scientist” — what an abused term! When a journalist needs an authority to write about some nutty, wildly improbable affront to common sense, a “scientist” will do.

Case in point, turn to Newsweek:

“Tanning salons are more likely to be located in U.S. neighborhoods with higher numbers of same-sex male couples,” writes Kashmira Gander, “according to scientists who fear the industry could be targeting the demographic.”

Well, since gay men — for a variety of reasons surely no one will dispute, and which we need not trouble ourselves with — are more likely to use such services than straight men, one might expect marketers to “target” a likely clientele.

But why the “fear”?

Well, don’t panic, but “[t]anning beds are dangerous. They double your risk of skin cancer. Over time, they also cause wrinkles, skin aging, uneven skin texture and dark spots, so even from a cosmetic standpoint, no one should be using them.”

Well, that latter is not a scientific finding. It is up to consumers to decide what acceptable levels of risk they will take to make themselves appealing for the opposite sex, or — in this case — the same sex.

If scientists made fewer moral and political pronouncements, sticking to statements that they can defend with facts and findings, not only would Newsweek and other magazines be easier to bear (I cannot guarantee more subscribers and newsstand sales, alas), but science itself might gain a bit more credibility.

As it is, it is teetering.

Or so some “studies have shown.”

As for me, I’m not gay, but I am married . . . and a former redhead. Tanning salons don’t profitably pitch their services to me.

Not because of science, but . . .

Common Sense. Which this is. I’m Paul Jacob.

Original image by Alexis O’Toole

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Tags economics, risk, science

media and media people political challengers

Twitter Abuse

Donald Trump, twitter, censorship, Kamala Harris threat,

“Look,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris, “let’s be honest. . . .”

When a politician talks about being honest — presumably “for a change” — it’s gonna be a doozy.

President Trump’s “Twitter account should be suspended.”

“What?” the reader will likely object, “Trump’s Twitter account is the second-best thing about the his presidency!”

The reader wouldn’t be wrong.

We may disagree about the actual best thing, but the presidential Twitter account is indeed one of the things that makes the current chaos bearable. Sure, it is the cause of much of the chaos, but, well, we take our chuckles where we can get them. At least Trump’s tweets are not articulated in standard insiderese.

So, what did Trump tweet that so upset the former California prosecutor?

This: he had come to the “conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

Harris publicly called upon Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, to “do something” about the tweet.

He did nothing.

Understandably.

Suspending the account of the United States President because a failing opposition candidate was offended by typical Trumpian hyperbole would br idiotic. Mr. Dorsey has a lot to answer for, sure. But complete and utter idiocy? Not that.

For he knows something: Donald Trump has it within his powers to command every federal agency to cease using Twitter. Trump himself could switch to Gab or Minds or even MeWe — perhaps he should.

The federal government is not required to use a particular social media platform over another, is it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people

The Pumpkinification of Snopes

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 3, 2019
2 Comments on The Pumpkinification of Snopes

Satire exaggerates not just for a laugh, often employing the reductio ad absurdum for cutting effect — casting our attention on human follies and crimes.

While the classic literary satires include Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii — “The Pumpkinification of (the Divine) Claudius” — and Jonathan Swift’s 1729 “Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick,” we nowadays often turn to humor websites, like The Onion.

Or, increasingly, The Babylon Bee.

Last week, as I set out for the Far East, the Bee story that topped the page was “New Genderfluid Dolls Emit Blast Of Pepper Spray, Alert Authorities When Children Use Wrong Pronoun.” On the same date I caught “Man Sure Is Glad He Switched From E-Cigs To Regular, Healthier Cigarettes.”* And laughed until I coughed.

Worthy of The Onion, sure, but better than most recent Onion efforts.

How did the Bee leap to the forefront of modern satire? Well, it’s a Christian site, actually, which seems to help. The Bee’s writers do not accept any dominant strain of contemporary culture as an admirable norm — like today’s “woke comics” must — so it is easier to find the absurdities in this current epoch’s conflicted and contradictory politics and culture.

The Bee so effectively lampoons dominant culture that snopes.com, the progressives’ most popular (putative) fact checking site, warned that the Bee’s great Chick-fil-A satire confused some readers because it “altered some details of a controversial news story.”

Satire is funny. Not getting satire? Priceless.

The Babylon Bee’s biggest competition may not be The Onion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Nick Gillespie of Reason mentions some titles that caught his attention: “‘Trump Is Being Influenced by The Russians, Screams Communist!’ and ‘Woke Polar Bear Apologizes for Being White.’ Classics include ‘Trump Proves He’s Not A Racist By Showing His Rejection Letter From The KKK’ and ‘Local Christian Would Do Anything For Jesus Except Believe Things That Are Unpopular.’”