Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Media

  • Milo and the Publishing Industry

    In December of last year, Simon & Schuster, one of the large traditional publishing houses known in the industry as the “Big Five” ( formerly Six, announced the upcoming publication of “Dangerous, an autobiography by “alt-right leader” “professional agitator” whatever, you know who he is Milo Yiannopoulos. The publishing world immediately proceeded to lose its damn mind. From preachy virtue signaling from literary review magazines to preachy virtue signaling from bestselling authors to preachy virtue signaling from Simon & Schuster’s own U.K. division, the last two months in the Publishing World have been nonstop outrage, boycotts, Twitter rants, and general hysteria.

    Undoubtedly, the bigwigs at Simon & Schuster were very relieved when they were given an easy out for severing ties with Milo after The Pederasty Incident. But now that his book deal has been canceled, the question is: Where will Milo go? And what does his choice mean for the publishing industry?

    It’s entirely possible that he will decide to just shelve Dangerous. But if he decides he wants to continue to pursue publication, he has two choices—try to court another traditional publisher, or self-publish his book. And which route he takes could have long-term effects on the industry as a whole.

    To better understand the implications of what direction Dangerous takes to publication, it’s important to understand the nature of the modern-day publishing industry. Until about ten years ago, publication via a traditional publishing house was considered the only legitimate means of publishing a book. Though the stigma of self-publishing has lessened slightly with the explosion of ebooks and hugely successful self-published authors like Andy Weir and Hugh Howey, for the most part, traditional publishing is still considered by the elites to be the only “true” form of publication. The Big Five have a stranglehold on brick-and-mortar bookstores, on libraries, on literary awards*, and even on bestseller lists (which by no means reflect a straightforward measure of sales). Everything about the industry is designed to give legacy publishers an advantage over digital imprints and independent authors who try to skirt the gatekeepers.

    Not unlike the Fourth Estate, publishing is suffering from the changes in consumer expectations brought on by the digital age. However, market analysis shows that despite predictions to the contrary, the digital age hasn’t killed traditional publishing just yet. But ebooks aren’t its only threat. An arguably bigger problem that may ultimately hasten the traditional houses’ demise is the disproportionate influence on the industry held by the progressive factions of what is colloquially known as “Book Twitter.”

    “Book Twitter” is an extremely vocal faction of readers, authors, editors, agents, small publishing houses,
    and others involved in the publishing industry that skew overwhelmingly left. They exist in an echo chamber, where each reverberating talking point bounces back and gets louder and louder. One refrain that became deafening over the last year is that all writing is inherently political, and as True Artists we have a Sacred Duty to preach Rightthink in any and every aspect of our lives. Thus, previously non-political, bestselling authors have been chiming in almost incessantly, contributing to the industry’s pronounced and rapid shift leftward.

    So what does this mean for Dangerous? It means that, regardless of the fact that the book hit #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list twice while still in preorder—despite the fact that there may (and undoubtedly will) be a huge consumer demand for his book— Dangerous is likely going to be a very tough sell for other traditional publishers, particularly any of the remaining four major houses. They saw what happened to Simon & Schuster over the last two months, and my prediction is that their desire to avoid controversy and save face with the insiders of their industry will outweigh any concerns for freedom of speech, and likely even the prospect of the monetary gain that could come from publishing his book.**

    Achtung! Those frosted tips are sharpWhich leaves self-publishing.

    If Milo chooses to self-publish Dangerous, it could be the first sign of a changing tide. The backlash that Simon & Schuster experienced over signing a deal with Milo is likely to continue with future book deals with other authors. Despite their exclamations to the contrary, considering their track record, it is almost certain that the rage machine will continue to work its way down the list of authors who are conservative, libertarian, or anywhere to the political right of Karl Marx (or at least Bernie Sanders), targeting them as proponents of hate speech who must be silenced for the good of society. And as long as the echo chamber continues to consist of prominent members of the traditional publishing industry, the Big Five will continue to be puppets to their whims.

    This means that as the traditional publishing industry grows increasingly leftist in nature, it seems likely that conservative and libertarian voices may start to shift towards an independent/self-publishing model. The implications this could have for the industry are multifold. First, it would likely mean that the slight increase in legitimacy that self-publishing has gained over the last few years will abruptly decrease, at least for the purposes of the gatekeepers (the aforementioned professional reviewers, brick-and-mortar bookstores/libraries and, of course, lists and awards). But additionally, as in the case of the declining legacy media, it would likely lead to a simultaneous increase in the market share of self-published books—particularly in nonfiction, a genre previously dominated by the Big Five. And as their sales dwindle, no amount of Rightthink will be able to keep them afloat. It will be Trump’s election all over again.

    The rage brigade of “Book Twitter” think they are saving traditional publishing by silencing voices they don’t agree with. But more than likely, they are hastening its decline.

    ———

    * I won’t go into the Rabid/Sad Puppies vs. Hugos drama, as that would be enough for another article entirely, and it’s already been covered in other places.

    ** The exception to this would be if there is an independent/small press that caters to a specifically conservative or right-wing audience that doesn’t mind the blowback from Pedophilia-gate. Which there may well be. I’ll be interested to see what comes out of the woodwork over the next few months.

  • Dean Obeidallah Is An Insufferable Prick

    Dean Obeidallah is an insufferable prick.

    Itbah al-Yahud!

    On Monday, CNN published a strident op-ed by the failed lawyer, turned failed stand-up comic, turned C-list media pundit condemning Bill Maher for having Milo Yiannopoulos as a guest on his  HBO show. Now, I wholeheartedly agree with libertarian sex goddess Lucy Steigerwald that Milo Yiannopoulous merely is a stupid man’s version of Christopher Hitchens, but the mendaciousness on display when Obeidallah lists the litany of supposed sins committed by Yiannopoulos is breathtaking and warrants comment.

    In Obeidallah’s spit-flecked and stentorian denunciation, he charges Maher with failing to “ask [Yiannopoulous] about his anti-Semitic comment that ‘Jews run the media,’ … [ask] why Yiannopoulos wore a Nazi Iron Cross when he was younger … [and inquire about] his demonization of transgender people as, in essence, sexual predators?” Never mind the fact that the first and third charge are merely Obeidallah presenting intentionally provocative statements intended as shock humor out of context, is he not cognizant of the fact that labeling every instance of a symbol that has represented Germany since 1813, (as well as having been appropriated as a fairly innocuous symbol in surfer culture) as “Neo-Nazi” is equivalent to labeling all people wearing fashion keffiyeh as radical Islamist Hamas sympathizers?

    Ironically, only a day later, CNN would include the following graphic accompanying its latest attempt to foment a moral panic:

    Surf Nazis Must Die! (Source: CNN.com)

    Context is key, indeed!

    Obeidallah’s sanctimonious posturing is particularly galling considering the fact that in December of 2013, while a guest on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show, he cracked a series of tasteless jokes mocking the fact that Mitt Romeny’s adoptive grandson, Kieran Romney, is ethnically African-American. When challenged over the racially-charged humor, while Harris-Perry delivered what appeared to be a sincere and heartfelt apology, all Obeidallah could muster up was a self-defensive non-apology, in which he managed to portray himself as the victim of false outrage by conservative “wing-nuts” who, in not having the super-secret decoder ring issued to all progressives, failed to realize that humor stemming from an observation that Kieran was essentially and forever different from the rest of his adoptive family due to his race was in fact a wry political statement as to the “lack of racial diversity we see at the Republican National Convention.” Which is why, of course, he referred the child as a “prop” in a mock apology to Kieran for comments made during the broadcast.

    You know who else made jokes about white women with black children? (Source:@MittRomney)

    As I mentioned earlier, Dean Obeidallah is an insufferable prick.

    In further evidence of his martyrdom at the feet of humorless conservative scolds, in his 2013 article for the Daily Beast, Obeidallah wrote:

    Here’s the thing: As a comedian, I always try to be funny. It doesn’t always work and I have told jokes that offended people. And I can assure you that in the future I will offend even more people even though that was not my intention.  Not only is comedy subjective, but so are sensibilities about when a comedian has “crossed the line.”
    In fact, being attacked by right-wing publications for my jokes is nothing new to me. I even wrote an article about that just a few months ago for The Daily Beast titled “The Tea Party’s War on Comedy” about right-wing media outlets lashing out a joke I tweeted. But here’s the reality: We can expect to see even more of this outrage by both the left and the right going forward.  Our collective self-righteous anger keeps escalating. Perhaps it’s because of the hyper-partisan times we live in.  Or maybe it’s due to social media or the media’s desperate need for content.  Perhaps it’s just payback by each side for the last time one of their own was attacked. Regardless of the reason, in time, it will only get worse.

    Pictured: Dean Obeidallah – Live at the Improv

    Despite Obeidallah’s 2013 attempt at ‘a pox on both your houses’ appeal to ethos, in 2017, we see no such attempt at nuance, no such reminders of the inherent subjectivity of comedy when Yiannopolous appeared, along with another comedian (Larry Wilmore), on an intentionally comedic political talk-show hosted by a comedian (Maher). Instead, Obeidallah waxed stentorian when he proclaimed:

    [S]tunningly, at the end of the interview, Maher seemed to be doing his best to make Yiannopoulos’ hateful views more acceptable. Maher concluded the interview by reading “provocative” jokes the late comedian Joan Rivers had made and saying she was still considered a “national treasure.”

    His point appeared to be that if some people gave another comedian a pass, then why shouldn’t we do the same with Yiannopoulos? Well, the reasons are obvious: Rivers was actually a comedian, while Yiannopoulos is a political pundit who writes for Bretitbart.com

    Did you get that? Obeidallah and Rivers have permission to be provocative, as they are card-carrying comedians, but humorist and raconteur Yiannopoulos doesn’t as he is a mere “political pundit” for Badthink.com.

    Are you fucking kidding me, you insufferable prick?

    The amount of cognitive dissonance possessed by Obeidallah to claim that only comedians who meet certain unnamed criteria can make jokes about sensitive topics but Yiannopoulus cannot as he writes op-eds for Brietbart surpasses Graham’s Number in magnitude. One has to marvel that the fact that Obeidallah’s sneer as he wrote the term “political pundit” is so evident that, like the the Greenhouses of Almería, it can be seen from space. When typing out those sentences, did Obeidallah forget that his day job is working the cable TV news circuit as a token progressive Muslim talking-head? Did Obeidallah forget that he was writing an op-ed for CNN? Did Obeidallah forget that he has his own political talk radio show on SiriusXM? The hypocrisy astounds. Yet, there is a simple explanation for it. It is the same reason that Yiannopoulus is currently being castigated for saying the same things that Allen Ginsberg said decades ago:

    GINSBERG: Well, then you must excuse me if I don’t adopt the submissive attitude you wish. I got on the air and said that when I was young I was approached by an older man and I don’t think it did me any harm. And that I like younger boys and I think that probably almost everybody has an inclination that is erotic toward younger people, including younger boys.

    LOFTON: How young were the boys?

    GINSBERG: In my case, I’d say fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

    LOFTON: That you had sex with?

    GINSBERG: No, unfortunately I haven’t had the chance. [laughs] No, I’m talking about my desires. I’m being frank and candid. And I’m also saying that if anyone was frank and candid, you’d probably find that in anybody’s breast. (Harpers, “When Worlds Collide” Jan, 1990)

    Four years after this interview, Ginsberg wrote an essay explaining that he became a card-carrying member of the pedophile advocacy group NAMBLA, “in defense of free speech.” An agitator acting and speaking outrageously “in defense of free speech” sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But the simple fact remains that Yiannopoulus was recently forced to fall upon his own sword whereas Ginsberg remains in the American imagination as a Puckish merry trickster whose poems (“I saw the best minds of my generation … who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication”) are treated with reverence by the academy is because Ginsberg was a communist sympathizer cum progressive leftist and Yiannopoulus isn’t. In the minds of individuals like Obeidallah, it’s a very simple calculus: his progressive compatriots are to be forgiven all failings as their intentions are righteous and pure, whereas, conservatives, libertarians, etc. are always assumed to be acting and speaking in bad faith as their intentions are evil and corrupt. One wonders how Obeidallah rationalizes Joan Rivers’ interview of Reza Farahan, full of frank humor about race, religion, and homosexuality, where Melissa Rivers described her mother as a “fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican.” In what way does Rivers’ status as a comedian allow Obeidallah to forgive her jokes like “[I’m a Republican] because I work very hard for my money and I don’t care if you’ve got 19 children – use condoms! I’ll pay for your first four children, that’s it!”? In Obeidallah’s Manichean worldview, didn’t Rivers play for the same “team” that Yiannopoulus represents? At the end of his 2013 article, despite spilling some token digital ink bemoaning the negative effect these “hyper-partisan times we live in” have upon humor, Obeidallah ended with this utterly obnoxious cri de coeur:

    And let me also be clear to the self-appointed right-wing pundits: I will never stop calling out the wrongs and hypocrisy of the right.  Be it citing Jesus’ name to justify slashing programs that help the less fortunate, demonizing Muslims or gays for political gain, or trying to disenfranchise minority voters with voter ID laws. And for those jokes and comments, I can assure you, I will never apologize.

    Remember, this came only 2 paragraphs after he wrote “We can expect to see even more of this outrage by both the left and the right going forward.  Our collective self-righteous anger keeps escalating.  Perhaps it’s because of the hyper-partisan times we live in.” How dull one must be to not grasp the conflict between these two sentiments! Indeed, taking into account all of Obeidallah’s self-contradictory statements, one is forced to conclude that either he suffers from early dementia or that he is utterly without any sort of intellectual honesty or moral scruples.

    Milo Cross
    Neo-Nazi or just a shitty accessory appealing to Milo’s notoriously gaudy taste?

    So we are left with the spectacle of Yiannopoulus being pilloried for the same sins of both Ginsburg and Obeidallah. It’s not even the blatant double-standard of how Yiannopoulus has been treated so poorly due to his perceived political views that rankles so much; it’s the complete and all-consuming self-righteousness of progressives like Obeidallah and his ilk as they bemoan their treatment at the hands of “humorless” conservatives, yet still deign to deliver angry philipics when someone who is not a progressive leftist attempts to do as they did. You see, in Obeidallah’s worldview, only people with the proper views can be certified comedians, and thus, given license to poke at sacred cows. Thus, Yiannopoulus is a filthy pedophile, whereas, George Takei merely has wickedly mischevious sense of humor. In Obediallah’s worldview, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is a vicious anti-Semite, but Trevor Noah merely makes wry observations on “Zionism.”  In Obediallah’s worldview, taking style tips from an anti-Semitic mass murderer and pedophile is merely fashion, but wearing a surfer’s necklace is irrefutable evidence that Yiannopoulus hold allegiance to an ideology that would see him placed in a death camp with both a pink and yellow triangle sewn to his blue and white striped prisoner’s pyjamas.

    Dean, if you do perchance come across this article, I recommend that after reading it you enter your bathroom. I would ask that you take the time to look at yourself in the mirror. Really look at yourself. After marveling over your close resemblance to Casey Kasem, I want you to look yourself in the eyes and come to the acceptance that you are the reason Donald J. Trump is President of the United States. I want you to know, deep down in your bones, that it is an incontrovertible truth that it was the sublime hypocrisy displayed by you and your fellow progressive hatchet-men in the media that drove this nation to elect an amoral demagogue. I want you to see your face as the realization creeps across it that the current political situation is a result of the utter contempt that you have expressed towards those whom you’ve deemed as evil merely because they do not subscribe to your economic and societal views. I want you to see your eyes mist and your brow furrow in anguish as it dawns upon you that the zealous self-righteousness of you and your fellow progressives, in which you believe it acceptable to slander a perceived ideological enemy through hyperbolic sound-bites disseminated through a compliant, yet mercurial, media, has produced an equal and opposite reaction to which you now find your most beloved shibboleths tossed on the trash-heap. And, finally, when you accept that the state of affairs is over in which one could be excused of even the most vile behavior if they were your ideological kinsmen, while even the most milquetoast of peccadilloes of others were excoriated with a fury that rivaled anything found in Johnathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, if you have even a modicum of self-dignity, you will reach for your medicine cabinet, take your DOVO, pause for a moment as the cold steel is pressed against the flesh of your neck, and slide the blade from left to right.

    And you’ll have no one to blame but yourself, you insufferable prick.

  • The Traditional Media Is Waging War

    While cleaning out my nursery closet, I was stopped in my tracks while passively listening to a phenomenal video by Sargon of Akkad.  If you have a half hour to spare, I highly recommend a look or listen.  The video, which is partially about the recent Wall Street Journal hit piece of PewDiePie, is more broadly about the war being waged on alternative media.

    The alternative media has grown to such a colossal size partly due to the changing preferences of younger demographics, but mostly due to the narrowing of allowable views by traditional media, the combination of which has created a monster that they are now attempting to slay.

    Although the difference between those who follow either tend to be generational (for example: Ken’s teen aged children tend to watch almost exclusively YouTube, Ken watches predominantly cable and Netflix, while I, being between the two in age, watch a combination of all), there has been a massive growth of older generations tuning out as well.  This is due to the traditional media’s narrowing of allowable views.  As more people feel disenfranchised, alternative media grows by welcoming people with open arms.  Instead of successfully indoctrinating more people to their views, they inject growth hormones into an already massively large creature.

    I was one of the few people in my circles that predicted a Trump win.  Following the alternative media, it was obvious to me.  The massive amount of support for the man hidden in plain sight was surprising , yet almost refreshing to see.  To those who don’t follow traditional media at all, like Ken’s 17 year old son, it was obvious he was going to win.  Yet, to those residing in the traditional media bubble, the idea of him winning was ludacris..  So the mental breakdown of those who have been residing in the traditional media bubble is understandable.  They were not living in reality and it came around hit them like a sledgehammer.

    With the recent attacks on PewDiePie and Milo, social media tightening control of their user base, and the hilarious backfiring of the creation of the phrase “Fake News” it is becoming quite apparent that traditional media is now waging war against the monster that they unknowingly helped create.

     

  • Reclaiming the Language

    “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Much has been waxed, wroth and poetic, about that phrase since it was first penned by Edwin Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. At first blush, it is a sterling statement as to the power of the written word; to entertain, to persuade, to transport the minds of men into other shoes and allow them to walk roads previously unknown and unknowable.

    I still prefer my laptop.

    At second blush – and second blushes are best blushes, since they are so unexpected – it is a testament to the ability to control. The sword can only kill a man; the pen can make him into something fit to make his mother cringe in horror.

     

    Words are thought. Language makes up so much of who we are and how our brains work that a native language can be expressed with not merely a linguistic accent, but also a physical accent. Blind humans who have never seen the common body language of the speakers of their native language, will both use physical gestures to communicate and will also use similar gestures as those who can see them. Words are not merely things of our lips and tongue; they go down to the bone.

    The ability to control the words of others is a blueprint to change their very thoughts. Society is rife with examples of altering what words mean or which words must be used in an effort to steer the conversation. Gun “safety”.  Pretty much all of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign. The loss of perfectly functional terminology and colloquialisms: “-splainin’”, racist, fascist, liberal, feminist, Nazi.

    Remember the push to stop calling people illegal aliens? It doesn’t matter which word one uses as much these days, as it’s all been lumped under the broad tent of immigration, of which one is either for or against. And being against immigrants makes the Statue of Liberty cry. You meanie.

    We’re not banning homeless people, gods bless you sir, no! We’re just banning urban camping. Nothing to see here. Move along.

    Insidious propaganda is insidious.

     

    When words have been altered, taken – molded, primped, shoved into a tight dress and forced to pimp themselves on the streets for their masters – there often comes a push-back. Satire, mocking and Poe’s Law come into play. Frequently, the objects of this linguistic assault retake the word by embracing it and celebrating it. Pick the derogatory demographic slur, activists and cultural music will use it in earnest if given time.

    This is not always as effective as intended. If in doing so we accept the new interpretation foisted upon us by those who seek to control the conservation, embracing a slur as a badge of honor is to win the battle but lose the war

    Remember, the good football tackle doesn’t aim for the shoulders. Aim for the knees.

     

    The first return for nationalism offers a definition as patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts. Wikipedia first line on it is: Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with one’s nation. Dictionary.com’s first two definitions are 1) spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation 2) devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism. Merriam-Webster dubs it thusly: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially :  a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

    Excuse me, I have bad news for you.

    Google Trends shows that searches for nationalism have followed an identifiable pattern since 2004. Searches peak in November-ish and again in the spring before falling to an apathetic doldrum by summer. Searches have been trending upward since the summer of 2012, and sharply upward since spring of 2016.

    You know what else follows that pattern? Election coverage in the MSM. And maybe searches for the weather too, sometimes the pattern isn’t as important as first blushes imply.

    It would make sense that the language of the nation is particularly captured by nationalism when electing its national leaders. For the concept described in the aforementioned definitions, one can find it culturally expressed by the immortal Lee Greenwood, and no wonder politicians are so fond of borrowing nationalism’s evocative imagery.

    What a surprise it must have been to the average voter to find the word in the media as a derogatory slur. Being a nationalist was bad and basically like Nazis. (TW: Scare quote abuse. It’s brutal.) Nationalism is gonna getchoo. It’s quite confusing, because sometimes it might not be bad? Context and qualifiers are key to understanding, since white nationalism is… well, you’d think it would be nationalists who are also white but let’s see what Wikipedia has to say this time.

     

    White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity. Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.

     

    Well, that escalated quickly.

     

    When everything is Hitler, nothing is.

    As a propaganda tool, it couldn’t have a worse basis in logic. Every redneck, pool player, bar rowdy and biker who ever closed out Karaoke Night with a communal Greenwood sign-along for all those left standing hears the message loud and clear: Look, nationalism is bad enough, but if you’re white and a nationalist, you’re this guy.

    Say it insistently and often enough, and what’s the logical reaction? A hue and cry of white Americans shouting as one diversity-approved voice, “No! And we say again – no! We reject our heritage and traditional ideals, and the very familiarity bias with which all humans are afflicted, if the only other option is to be that guy!”

    My word. It is to laugh. Some of them will just shrug and say, “I guess, sure, if that’s what it means now, then I must be a white nationalist.” In a linguistic climate which seeks to normalize the idea that being born pale says all it needs about the content of one’s character, whites have been called worse and it’s exhausting to try to correct the barrage. Plenty attempt to argue, but true thinkers know that this is just the rationalization of lesser minds at work and pay no heed. Heeding would be actively harmful, in fact, since the white voice is over-used and the construct of whiteness is complicit in oppression.

     

    Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive. It likely would have been more accurate and fostered proper communication to describe Richard Spencer et al. as white-nationists. That might not have served the correct interests, however, and branding white nationalism dove-tails so handily with the efforts to cultivate racism as an actual significant problem, useful to those who would control us all.

     

    Reject it. This land is our land, and those words are our words. It’s a fucked-up land, to be sure; like an old broken-in boot – comfortable, ugly as sin but still bringing a sigh to your lips when the worn leather molds around you knowingly, as few things can. We’ve stepped in shit more than we meant to. These things happen to us all, we’re only human. The soles are sturdy yet, though, and there’s life left in the good leather and craftsmanship.

     

    We’re not the greatest country in the world… but we could be.

    Globalism is a fine concept when it comes to marketplaces. When it comes to ethereal communal ties, telling people they aren’t allowed to enjoy particularly the land of their birth is akin to an announcement that following any one NFL team is discriminatory and verboten. Good luck with that strategy. Let us know how it works out. American society is highly and vehemently tribalized. It’s astonishing that people can be reliant on tribal ties in virtually every aspect of society, from politics to clothes and wine, and yet a familiarity bias for the country we were trained to pledge allegiance to is the one tie it ought to be unthinkable to feel.

    Unthinkable? It’s practically reflexive. Are we trying to give people a complex?

     

    Much like immigration is now a broad subject one can only be for or against, nationalism is being used as a linguistic tool, a buzzword to steer the conversation. White-nationists such as Richard Spencer have been vaulted to the limelight as the media cries wolf about scary racists/nationalist for their own ends. This is how easily we are distracted from the real work at hand. We cannot do what we should be doing, we cannot talk about what needs to be addressed, because we are too busy discussing the will-o’-the-wisps the mainstream media and politicians would have us chasing. Just because someone has offered you poison, doesn’t mean you have to drink it.

     

  • The Fourth Estate’s Decline Signals the Rise of Freedom of the Press

    The story of our times is a faint signal obscured by a great deal of noise. Every once in a while a tiny glimmer of truth peeks out. Consider the following article published in The Atlantic: The Mark Zuckerberg Manifesto Is a Blueprint for Destroying Journalism. The article lays out a case that Facebook stands poised to deal the death blow to the so-called Fourth Estate, the media apparatus that purports to keep us all informed. Adrienne LaFrance writes:

    Zuckerberg uses abstract language in his memo—he wants Facebook to develop “the social infrastructure for community,” he writes—but what he’s really describing is building a media company with classic journalistic goals: The Facebook of the future, he writes, will be “for keeping us safe, for informing us, for civic engagement, and for inclusion of all.”

    These functions are, of course, believed to be firmly in the purview of traditional journalism. Everything must be interpreted before consumption. The masses are not smart enough to make up their own minds about what is being said. Journalists are the educated, the connected, the nucleus of society for what is moral and ethical. The edifice creates the civic engagement needed to hold politicians accountable. Even if one commands an empire whose subscriber base is approximately a quarter of the population of the planet, respect must be given. In fact, respect can be demanded unabashedly even from the President of the United States.

    It’s also not Zuckerberg’s responsibility to solve a broken business model in journalism.

    It is not a problem with journalism in general that is causing papers to fail, it’s just that the traditional revenue stream was captured by usurpers like Facebook.

    Is it any wonder that the elite of the Western world are bucking a rising tide of populism? The Internet put every one of us in contact with a great many ideas and the dynamic shifted. No longer do we need to wait until the morning paper is delivered to our door or for film at 11. Old media was slow to adapt and had few enough scruples. New media has practically no scruples whatsoever. The media clamors for recognition, rallying around near-mythical icons of integrity, such as Edward R. Murrow. This is what we were, and still are, or so it goes. It shouts this while the Internet picks all the locks of the gates they’ve long kept, often giving the lie to the narratives that have been constructed. “Information wants to be free” goes the familiar credo in hacker culture.

    While the media loses its collective mind over President Trump’s supposedly unfair treatment of it, one ought to take note of his favored tactics. Instead of delivering a carefully constructed speech penned by a team of expert writers, he takes questions unfiltered. Instead of giving the White House press corps an inside track, he uses Twitter to speak to the public directly. Rather than commit solely to edited video interviews, he holds rallies and speaks directly to the people, going so far as to offer the microphone in a symbolic gesture to a random supporter completely unafraid of what the man might say having been given the platform.

    Donald Trump is an enemy of the First Amendment, or so we’re told. But that narrative is shattered by simple observation.

    Well, do you?
    Do you have a license for that, sirs?

    It’s a trick of language that “the press” referred to by that Amendment has ceased to evoke the image of literal printing presses, which anyone could own, and came to mean the journalistic establishment. In reality, “the press” is the people. It is to be found in the spirit of Ben Franklin’s publishing shop, and in the rogue presses of several other founders, often writing under pen names chosen purely because they believed the ideas were more important than the people speaking them. The press is any one of us daring enough to put thought to paper. LaFrance wrings her hands at the notion that Facebook is going to destroy the press, while failing to acknowledge that Facebook is the press and it always has been. It is, of course, not the only press, nor should it be.

    By taking his message directly to the people, President Trump is proving that at some basic level that he understands freedom of the press better than the media establishment who have co-opted the term to refer to themselves. It should not need to be said that this recognition is an endorsement of all of Trump’s views or policies. Alas, in a world gone mad, one must disclaim that engaging with an idea is not the same as accepting it. Each time the journalistic establishment blares, “This is not representative of America”, be sure to answer that audacity with whatever platform you can find. Maybe it’s not, but America can speak for itself, thank you.

     

    Corrected to include omitted lines from original

  • Trump’s Charming, Surprising, Patriotic Naïveté

    The Trump press conference from Thursday, February, 16, 2017, revealed a surprising truth:  Trump, for all of his instincts and obvious intelligence, is charmingly and patriotically naïve about the nature of the United States Government and the Media.  Trump’s revelation about the Media and its willingness to report anything, even if it is counter to the interests of the country , illuminated that Trump was initially ingenuous regarding the nature of the Political Press.  In that same thought, Trump realizes there are parties within the United States Government itself willing to leak information, even if it sets off diplomatic skirmishes, heightens tensions or even sparks wars, for their own personal gain or to further their own petty ends.

    I was shocked because all this equipment, all this incredible phone equipment — when I was called out on Mexico, I was — honestly, I was really, really surprised.

    But I said “you know, it doesn’t make sense. That won’t happen” but that wasn’t that important a call, it was fine, I could show it to the world and he could show it to the world, the president who’s a very fine man, by the way. Same thing with Australia. I said “that’s terrible that it was leaked” but it wasn’t that important. But then I said to myself “what happens when I’m dealing with the problem of North Korea?”

    What happens when I’m dealing with the problems in the Middle East? Are you folks going to be reporting all of that very, very confidential information, very important, very — you know, I mean at the highest level? Are you going to be reporting about that too?

    Even though it would be patently against the interests of the country for the Media to publish Trump’s detailed plans (by way of example) on handling potential North Korean belligerence, in this age of Media as shit-flinging Opposition Monkeys, is there any doubt it would be published anyway?  For Trump, however, he assumed even the Media would not be so debased.  He expected what we used to be able to expect of most Citizens:  despite our political differences, we are all still Americans who want what is best for the country and you are an American first and a journalist second.  Trump optimistically assumes even journalists have a sense of civic responsibility.  At least, he did.  I doubt he feels that way any longer.

    The second revelation is found in Trump’s open wonderment of, “you know, it doesn’t make sense.  That won’t happen.”  What the President is saying is he’s “honestly…really, really surprised” that members of the Deep State would leak private and classified phone calls to the press. Or, to put it more bluntly, the members of the Deep State would commit felonies in open insubordination of their new Executive.  I believe it genuinely shocked Trump to learn that not every member of the Deep State would blanch at acting against the interests of their (nominal) boss, the President of the United States.   Even for the most cynical among us, it is at least surprising that the Intelligence Community, bequeathed with special privileges under the guise of “national security”, used surreptitiously obtained information to put out a political hit on someone they simply did not care for.  That is why Trump is right, and the Media and the Left (but I repeat myself) are wrong:  the big story here is the leaker or leakers, who are abusing their power and taking advantage of a trusting polity to actively subvert a peaceful, lawful election.

    Trump was akin to the squishy centrist Soccer Parent one encounters on Facebook who says things like, “the government is just there to help us” and “they would never use your information to do THAT!”  I sincerely hope he has been disabused of that notion and ruthlessly removes the leakers from any levers of power and, if appropriate, sends them to prison.

    I now humbly submit myself to the Commentariat for evisceration.

  • What This Feels Like For Us

  • Deconstructing the ‘Liberal Campus’ Cliche?

    (Image from Google Image Search)

    From The Atlantic: Deconstructing the ‘Liberal Campus’ Cliche

    The author, Jason Blakely, start with admitting that yes, there might be a problem:

    Are American universities now spaces where democratic free expression is in decline, where insecurity, fear, and an obsessive, self-preening political correctness make open dialogue impossible? This was a view voiced by many at the start of the month, after the University of California, Berkeley, canceled a speech by the right-wing provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, when a demonstration against his appearance spun out of control. Yiannopoulos had been invited to speak by campus Republicans, but headlines the next morning were dominated by images of 100 to 150 protesters wearing black masks, hurling rocks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails en route to doing $100,000 dollars of damage to a student center named after the great icon of pacifist civil disobedience, Martin Luther King, Jr.

    But you see it’s all just part of a false narrative:

    Such reports have in turn reinforced a longstanding political narrative, which seeks to demean America’s universities as ideologically narrow, morally slack, hypersensitive, and out of touch. For example, commentators like the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat have argued that America’s “university system” is “genuinely corrupt” in relying on “rote appeals to … left-wing pieties to cloak its utter lack of higher purpose.”

    But does this widespread portrait of universities as morally weak and anti-democratic—circulating at least since the time of Allan Bloom—really hold true? This vision of American universities is largely inadequate in at least two ways. First, it incorrectly blames increased fragility exclusively on the university system itself and, second, it relies on a reductive caricature of America’s institutions of higher learning.

    And then starts with numerous hand-waving and deflections.  And leaves the question unanswered: is the “conservative-identity” group merely responding in kind because of the left?

    Identity politics places individual and group notions of selfhood at the center of politics. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has argued at length, the main goal of identity politics is “recognition” or validation of a given identity by others in society. I have written elsewhere about how identity politics (normally associated with American liberalism) is actually a major engine fueling the rise of Trump. The categories of left and right often distort the ways in which cultural trends, like those associated with identity politics, are far more widely shared across American life. While some left-wing groups on campus are guilty of retreating from open dialogue, a conservative-identity movement has likewise tried to buffer students from having to hear ideas that upset them.

    And a summation:

    Any society that routinely attacks and undermines the institutions that support its greatest minds is caught up in an act of either extravagantly naïve or profoundly sinister self-sabotage. America’s college campuses remain places of astounding diversity in which democratic exchange of the highest kind still routinely takes place. The country’s university system remains, with all its imperfections, the best school for American democracy.

    If the United States is to flourish in the coming generation in the way it did in the prior century, it will need to embrace and even learn from the diversity and dialogue of its universities—not destroy them through simplistic grabs for popular power.

    It’s been over two decades since I’ve been in college, and yes, there were both liberal and conservative groups on campus.  But neither were rioting; that was for after the homecoming game when the student body burned sofas and overturned cars.  Now that was a honored tradition!

    Today one doesn’t see right-wing or moderates shaking their fists, chanting, or throwing stones in response to someone from the left visiting campus.  Instead we have a “progressive” movement that not only riots when someone they don’t like visits, but also expects the universities to enforce their limited belief system.  And very often they do.

    Mr. Blakely fails to address the First Amendment issues and also the growing concern that higher education are hardening into leftist enclaves.  If we truly want the country to flourish, then free inquiry and freedom of speech are a necessity, not an option.

  • Trump Derangement Of The Day

    As if there was some shortage of derangement and a refill was needed.

    Sally Kohn outdoes herself.

    H/T to Grand Moff Serious Man, who digs around in places I dare not go.

  • Geraldo Rivera Causes Meltdown On Social Media Over Yale Step-down

    Who wants a mustache ride?
    Geraldo Rivera

    In a move against political correctness run amok, Geraldo Rivera, who made his name unlocking the secrets of the Al Capone vault and giving away US troop positions in Iraq has decided to step down as an Associate Fellow at Yale University’s (soon to be renamed) Calhoun College.

    As anticipated by anybody with a pulse, his twitter feed went completely insane with people calling him everything under the sun.

     

    I wonder how many of those accusing him of everything from slavery apologia to outright hatred of blacks realizes that Yale will remain named after an actual slave trader even after the name of the slave-owning seventh Vice President of the United States is removed from campus buildings.