Category: media and media people

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Vasily Goloborodko for President?

Putin, Trump, VEEP, collusion. NPC,

Vladimir Putin may not be as powerful as feared.

Not only does he apparently not pull the strings of the much-accused-of/now-cleared-of-collusion “Trump Puppet,” Putin also does not write comic lines for the “acting” president of Ukraine.

You see, a few days ago Ukrainians held a run-off election to choose a new leader, and the man who won — Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky — is, like the U.S. president, a celebrated entertainer. 

In 2015, he began playing the role of Vasily Goloborodko in the TV show, Servant of the People. His character is a high-school history teacher who rants in class against government corruption. Soon a video of his extemporaneous tirade goes viral, and, voila, Goloborodko ascends to the presidency! 

Zelensky’s actual transit to the real presidency may be less funny but is just as remarkable.

A Kiev teacher quoted by the Los Angeles Times admitted the election was rather crazy. “But at least we have a choice. They don’t have that in Russia.” In the Times’ lede, Putin is identified as “by far the biggest loser of the night.” The anti-Russia trajectory of Ukrainian politics is reported to be steadfast. 

The anti-corruption movement, however, may be a bit iffier. 

Meanwhile, the eighth season of HBO’s political satire Veep is underway, and I am told it is as chillingly accurate as ever. Last week the anti-heroine Selina Meyer, played by Julia-Luis Dreyfuss, again stumbled her way into political success, this time by “accidentally” “colluding” with the Chinese Government.

Is this meant as a nod to Russiagate or a pointed Hillary Clinton commentary?*

Seems a lot like Ukrainian politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Two decades ago the “Chinagate” scandal roiled the second term of the Bill & Hillary Clinton Administration.

Putin, Trump, VEEP, collusion. NPC,

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The Real Scandal Continues

Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Russia, julian assange,

The Mueller Report goes public today, and though some hope to find within it a splinter of kindling upon which to light the bier for President Trump, odds are high for a fizzle, a wet firecracker on a Fifth of July morning. 

Still, the whole Russiagate issue has not lacked for entertainment value. 

As comedy.

Little wonder that some of the best commentary on the left has included the incredulous coverage of the brouhaha by a professional comic.

Jimmy Dore, late of The Young Turks, has from the beginning been a skeptic of the modern conspiracy theory about Trump’s alleged Russian Collusion. Now he gloats. Earlier this week, on his podcast The Jimmy Dore Show, he came out swinging, insisting that the Hillary Clinton campaign actually did what the Donald Trump campaign was accused of doing. But, he laments, “accountability is not coming” — no journalist will be fired, nor the worst fake news stories even be retracted.

Mr. Dore also points to Tucker Carlson as a surprising purveyor of the truth about Julian Assange — that the Wikileaks guy, recently nabbed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, is not guilty of the crimes he is accused of. But Assange has humiliated nearly everyone in the political class. Dore wonders why Carlson can get this story right, but the major talking heads at CNN and MSNBC — all to the left — cannot.

Yes, why? 

Why is journalism now so lockstep in line with the corporatist Deep State and its major political operators?

I probably disagree with Dore on the answer. He thinks the Deep State’s main goal is to keep progressives out of power.

But the question is at least worth asking.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jimmy Dore, Tucker Carlson, Russia, julian assange,

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Accountability media and media people

Fair Share Unpaid

Donna Brazile, Fox, corruption

The CNN onscreen contributor who snuck debate questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign in advance of the 2016 presidential debates is now a talking head on Fox News.

“I am excited by the opportunity to share my perspective and views with the Fox News audience and to help shape the dialogue at this important juncture in our history,” wrote Donna Brazile last month. “More importantly, I’m eager to learn from the experience.”

Not a big Fox News fan, me; I don’t keep up with personnel changes. Her head just appeared — as a surprise! — onscreen in a Fox News video in my YouTube feed, covering a Bernie Sanders event. She was apparently hired for her campaign expertise — not for her journalism or ethics.

“Everything we believe in as Americans will be examined and, in essence, ratified by our votes,” she explained. “But it concerns me, as it does the majority of good Americans, that our national debate has become hostile and disrespectful. We no longer simply agree to disagree. Too often we demonize the intentions of others. Our lines of communication are frayed, if not broken.”

Well, one reason for these frayed lines of communication has been all the political and media corruption.

As Brazile demonstrated at CNN in 2016. 

She cops, obliquely, to her “fair share of mistakes” in her past career as an activist. “Some would argue I’ve made more than my fair share,” she confessed.

Interesting how insiders in Washington never pay for their mistakes.

Their unfair share.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Donna Brazile, Fox, corruption

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Morning Mind-Probe

Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, Donald Trump, Russia,

There’s news reporting, done well or not, and opinion, with which one can agree or disagree. But on MSNBC’s Morning Joe you get something even more illuminating: mind-reading.

Yesterday, the show addressed U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s testimony the previous day before a Senate subcommittee. Viewers were shown The Washington Post’s succinct front-page headline: “Barr thinks U.S. spied on Trump.”

 And heard the Attorney General tell Senators that he wanted to “explore” and “make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance” of the Donald Trump for President campaign. “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he added.

“You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?” asked Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

“I think spying did occur,” Barr replied, “yes.” Barr defined “spying” as “unauthorized surveillance.”

“Someone’s been Trumped!” co-host Mika Brzezinski exasperatedly declared as the footage ended. Co-host and husband Joe Scarborough then took over, likewise uninterested in any such inquiry.

“[Barr] knows that what he’s saying is unbelievably reckless,” the clairvoyant former congressman informed. “And you can almost see in his mind, Barr going, ‘How do I answer this question so that Trump doesn’t tweet at me, so that I keep my job, but still not make a jackass of myself for lying?’”

As on-set bobbleheads nodded, Mike Barnacle vouched for Joe’s telepathic veracity, sharing a tale that “two people who have known Bill Barr for 30 years” were “stunned.” These unnamed sources are known only to Mr. Barnacle, the disgraced former Boston Globe columnist, a plagiarist and fabricator of stories, once described accurately as “cynically churning out fiction clothed as journalism.”

“I want to satisfy myself that there were no abuse of law enforcement and intelligence powers,” Barr told the committee. “I think that is one of the principal roles of the attorney general.”

I agree . . . but you read my mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Joe Scarborough, Morning Joe, Donald Trump, Russia,

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folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard Popular

Systemic Refocusing

white privilege, Jussie Smollett, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal

Everyone comes into this world with advantages and disadvantages. 

In the last century, public morality focused on the disadvantaged. Government policy changed dramatically, aiming to help those lacking many obvious advantages. But that focus got fuzzier and fuzzier as the ranks of disadvantaged people remained, even grew larger. Progress was made on several fronts, sure, but not on all — especially not on the ones most targeted.

We even “lost ground.”

Maybe because of this, the political focus shifted to “privilege” — which often merely means “advantaged” and sometimes means a special license granted by custom or law, which is said to be “systemic.” 

White males, we are told, have the most of it. 

So they must be attacked.

But does “white [heterosexual male] privilege” really exist?

Sure, in some contexts. But so do other “privileges.” Here is a better question: Are there privileges so built in that people try to horn in on them?

When there really was white privilege, “passing for white” was a thing. Now, we see other directions of racial “passing.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 99 and 44/100ths pure white, for example. If white privilege were really systemic, would she have pretended to be a native American? 

If white privilege were significantly at play in the academic world, the issue of Asian students qualifying for (and being accepted into) the country’s most prestigious universities wouldn’t even come up.

And if white people actually enforced their privilege, would the charges against Jussie Smollett for perpetrating a fake racial/ideological hate crime have been dropped? 

Seems unlikely.

If the results of focusing on advantage and privilege have been so dismal and dismaying, maybe it’s time for a refocus: on simple justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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white priviledge, Jussie Smollett, Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal

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ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies Popular

The Anti-Orange Man Cult

Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

How do you know you are in an end-time cult?

When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.

So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.

What did the cultists do?

Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.

But no. I am not talking about that, not directly. 

I refer to the Mueller Report.

“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”

Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.

To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

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