Category: media
Only the beginning
We live in an age when the sensible notion of separating the person from their ideas is now treated as reactionary. However, those who today sit in harsh judgment of the past will themselves be harshly judged by the future.
It is more difficult to cancel intellectuals than celebrities.
Fascinating that media fixate on Steele and the p** tape rather than the FSB-Wikileaks hack of the DNC server. Probably because the latter implicates celebrity hacktavist and alleged journalist Jules Assange.
Tumbleweed
Hyperbole around continuity in history is bad history. Anyone who thinks nothing has changed since 1619 is an unreliable narrator of history. The problem is today’s continuity historians have a neurotic attachment to “bad stuff.” A citational compulsion is also a compulsion to repeat.
Like feudalism, life in the old Soviet bloc is an historical curiosity now.
Labor journalists once were working class. Today’s labor journalists come from a haute bourgeois background, with credentials from the Ivies or some posh J-school, collect 300K per annum for their “content,” and another 100K from monetized substacks. They share nothing with the proles.
While America continues to suffer from GOP carnage, boutique pundits clutch pearls about Democrats, who have sent $1.7 Trillion USD and $1.2 Trillion USD to the American people, and have to go back 50 years to find fault.
This is the clown show of US media.
The “labor movement” died for several reasons, none controlled by Democrats: deindustrialization, labor (let’s be honest, “labor” is a euphemism for “white working class”) defection to GOP after 1965 for racist reasons, Reagan’s destruction of the ATC, & right-to-work statutes.
The two most dangerous places in the US are elementary schools and christian churches.
Before Big Bird, there was…
Thoughts on a grey day
At this point, Dave Chappelle can only make neanderthals laugh.
It’s rare, but nice, to see a well-fed bodega cat.
Religious freedom/liberty has been instrumentalized by illiberal and anti-liberal groups to deny equality before the law to other groups. The abuse, and misuse, of this principle for craven, political ends erodes its credibility.
Media and other over-exposed pundits say Democrats are failing. Let’s look at reality. People say the Senate is 50-50 with the VP as tiebreaker. In reality, among the 50 “Democrats” are three non-Democrats: Sinema, Manchin, and Sanders. So in fact “Democrats” are not in control of the fate of Biden’s legislative priorities. Ignoring this reality, media and punditocracy blame the Democrats while remaining silent on the fact that 50 Republicans vote “no” on everything; because they are beholden to a lazy narrative about Democrats.
One can speak of physical violence and symbolic violence (which can take the form of speech). They are not identical, but there is evidence that language, images, etc. are not neutral with respect to power. Acknowledging this fact doesn’t mean the end of “free speech.” First Amendment Absolutists fail to realize that freedom of speech means one is subject to the free speech of others, which can be critical of what one says. They don’t like the criticism and to ward it off they call it “censorship.” I don’t support banning words, films, and the pseudo-politics of today’s outrage culture. I support counter-speech as a resource that can/should be more equally distributed.
Days of plague 8
Megyn Kelly’s journalistic reputation lies somewhere between that of Judith Miller and John Barron.
At this point, all Trump can do is shore up his racist base. The name Obama is political meth to this demographic.
In their obsession with owning the libs, so-called left, so-called independent journalists have become openly MAGAts.
I try to imagine wanting to own the libs so badly that I’d be willing to destroy my own reputation by pimping the lies of a chronic liar. Then I imagine I’m Ryan Grim.
Uranium has a half-life of 4+ billion years. The only things with a longer half-life are former Sanders campaign staff and journalistic hangers-on.
The family of Warren Harding will be eternally grateful for the Trump Presidency.
I’d like to put you in a trance
Incompetence starts at the top of the campaign, meaning with Bernie. It trickles down, permeating the campaign.
When the oppo research finally hits Sanders, it will bern. The other campaigns have been treating him with kid gloves so far.
Oddly, using Zephyr Teachout’s own standards, Bloomberg is the only non-corrupt candidate.
Only extremely online twitter cares about funding. Indeed, the other candidates play themselves by soaking proles for $2.70 they can’t afford to spend on losing campaigns, while Trump shakes down the superrich and Russian oligarchs.
Play to win.
Again. Bern should run as an independent. He’ll never win the Dem nomination. He’ll just play the spoiler role again for Trump. If he had any real convictions and believed in his revolution, he’d run as an independent. If there really is a mass movement for his candidacy, it should defeat Democrats and Republicans handily.
There’s no reason for Warren to be complicit with misogyny just to score a few points with red rose twitter that despises her. But there she is, playing along with Bern’s Biden smear.
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Funny how people who hate the NY Times follow it so closely.
The NY Times’ endorsement should end the media’s Klobuchar blackout.
Almost immediately following the endorsement, a Bern surrogate recycled the story about Klobuchar the abusive boss, forgetting that “women are abusive bosses” had been hashed out as typical sexism towards women in positions of authority. Not something Bern’s campaign can afford to be associated with.
Station to station
“Fake drape” is serious camp shade Rand Paul threw at Lindsey Graham.
According to Jacobin magazine, philanthropy just delays the immiseration that is necessary to propel the proles fully into class struggle.
I told them it is best to use the wealthy to finance the revolution and then, when the dictatorship of the proles is in effect, declare the superrich class enemies, kulaks or whatever, and subject them to collectivization and shock work.
Tucker Carlson could quite easily be a Jacobin contributor.
Now that the Sussexes have de-royaled, the stumblebum Markle father must be bereft that his cash flow will be crimped.
Trump’s visible disability during today’s podium performance shocked Republican Senators.
As I wrote in real time, “CLOTUS is drugged, could barely keep his right eyelid open. Shuffling, sniffling, slurring junkie.”
Obama makes Trump bleed from his wherever.
Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore are eating a big platter of crow. Sarandon put some nonsense on tape about Trump the Peacemaker that will live in eternity.
Basically, Mar-a-Lago is the biggest whorehouse in Florida.
The Jonah
Re Michael Moore: Clinton collected 3+ million more votes than Trump in 2016.
Moore declined to endorse Clinton.
HRC was labeled a “centrist.” She excited the base enough to receive 3+million more votes than her opponent. Which puts a hole in Moore’s claim that only a “progressive” would do this. Or she was in fact a progressive after all, who excited the base.
Obviously, Moore is not sophisticated enough to know that turnout in specific states matters.
Revolutionary twitter has done nothing but give itself a nosebleed from hatred of Biden.
Take Rob Delaney, for example. Basically says he prefers Trump over Biden if Sanders doesn’t win the nomination.
Silly man.
Fortunately, we have a Tea Party for the Left now (Justice Democrats).
There’s probably a faint correlation between Elizabeth Warren’s aping of Bern’s anti-billionaire/class war rhetoric and her wine cave fiasco, and a decline in fundraising.
Build a bigger wine cave, Senator!
Don Imus’ demise should be a warning to any Cenk-like podcasters.
Imus was like an extension of Trump’s Id.
Et cetera 