Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

What A Difference A President Makes

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Thoughts on the new rush to war:

Just pointing out the obvious –

Like the comments in the BBC news section right now where you’d think no one had ever tried to put together a coalition of western democracies to depose an Arab tyrant who was abusing his population. And this one hasn’t even bothered to invade anyone recently.

From those comments one thing is clear – that was one well deserved Peace Prize!

Did these people never hear of Saddam gassing the Kurds, running over Shia with tanks to quell their uprising, or throwing his opponents in chippers?

Guess not.

I suppose that means my support for getting Saddam was “blood for oil” but my support for “Lyberation” is virtuous.

I just can’t figure myself out sometimes.

They told me if I voted for John McCain, we’d be bombing Arab countries while the supporters of the bombing promised that we’d be greeted as liberators. And they were right!

Yup.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

“Overpowering Horror”

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Some thoughts on what it takes to slit the throat of a baby:

…to live under the rule of Jews! This is a matter of great shame, an “overpowering horror” that justifies baby-killing in the minds of many (I’d wager most) Palestinians to expiate that shame. I suspect that part of the loathing other Arabs feel for the Palestinians stems from their view that the Jews made the Palestinians their bitches, to be vulgar about it, and no Muslim worthy of the name would permit such an inversion of the natural order to happen. The very notion that a Jew should command and a Muslim obey, that a Jew should ride while a Muslim walks, that a Jew should be armed while a Muslim is weaponless is simply an abomination — an “overpowering horror.”

Not that most would be able to do such a thing — human beings are hard-wired to recoil from slitting throats of three-month-old babies. But while in other circumstances the inability to kill babies would be seen as a good thing, in this case those Palestinians who can’t bring themselves to do that see it as a weakness — they wish they could muster the courage to murder Jewish babies, but unfortunately they can’t. So the second best is to lionize those heroes who do have the cojones to wipe away the shame of being subject to Jewish overlordship.

We underestimate the cultural war in which we are engaged at our extreme peril. I’m not sure I agree that it’s “most,” but it’s enough that it’s as big a problem as the Nazis were, in terms of having to break the back of a racist totalitarian ideology. And we’re not doing much along those lines. Instead, we pretend it doesn’t exist, or that it’s just a few “extremists,” and that we should give equal time to the KKK and murderers of abortion providers.

Media Criticism, Space, War Commentary

Iran Lies About Its Space Program

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…and the AP buys it uncritically:

Iran says it has sent the country’s first space capsule that is able to sustain life into orbit as a test for a future mission that may carry a live animal.

The state IRNA news agency says the capsule was carried by a rocket dubbed Kavoshgar-4 – or Explorer-4 in Farsi – some 75 miles (120 kilometers) into orbit.

There is no such thing as a 75-mile orbit. That’s barely into space (the official altitude is a hundred kilometers, or about 63 miles), and there is too much drag to sustain it. If they have enough velocity to get to orbit, they’d also have enough to get to a decent altitude (at least a hundred fifty miles or so). This was probably a suborbit. If there was a launch at all.

I wonder if they bothered to confirm with the JSPOC? Maybe I will.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“The Path Ahead Is Cloudy”

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A. B. Stoddard is not sanguine about the prospects for the president’s reelection:

As the Republican race begins in earnest, and Obama kicks off his own reelection campaign, it is increasingly clear that the path to an Obama victory is anything but clear. Stubborn joblessness, soaring gas prices, the still-rising cost of healthcare insurance, the apathy of Obama supporters, the erosion of support from white working-class and suburban voters and the considerable sums of secret money conservatives promise to pour into the campaign all pose challenges to his plan to win again. Taken together, they might be insurmountable.

What’s encouraging to me (as someone who looks forward with great eagerness to a new resident in the White House in less than two years) is that their political ear remains as tin as ever. It should be getting more and more clear that the Obama people were never the vaunted political genii that the bien pensant proclaimed them to be in 2008. They were just in the right place, at the right time. With a candidate with the right skin color.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Maybe They Actually Looked At His Record

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For some reason, awarding the transparency award to President Obama has been delayed.

Maybe the Nobel Committee should have waited a while, too.

[Update a few minutes later]

Heh. A report from shortly before they had second thoughts:

President Obama’s only event at the White House that isn’t closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he’ll accept an award for being open to the press.

But why would they be having second thoughts? Maybe this?

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”

The Obama administration has developed a reputation for ruthlessly prosecuting whistleblowers for leaks to the press. The heavy-handed approach has prompted concern about a “chilling effect” that could discourage future government transparency.

But other than that, it’s the most transparent administration in history.

Will there ever be a point at which the media starts to point out what Bravo Sierra artists these people are?

[Update a while later]

The adminstration’s “openness” is a transparent lie.

Does this remind anyone else (anyone old enough to remember, that is) of the Clinton administration’s promise to be “the most ethical administration in history”? Complete with aides who tell Congress under oath that they lied to their own diary?

Issa’s hearings today should prove interesting, if appropriately uncomfortable for witnesses.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

He Can Dish It Out, But…

Thoughts from James Taranto on the hot-house whining from leftists in both academia and journalism, and defense of free speech:

The reason we find Leiter’s comments amusing rather than disgusting is that we, unlike Althouse, are not part of academia and thus have no personal investment in the ideal of disinterested and honest scholarship. Rather than offend our ideals, Leiter reinforces our stereotype of academia as being filled with fools and knaves. You can see why this would bother Althouse, a scholar who does not fit the disparaging stereotype.

Althouse’s emotional reaction to Leiter’s comments is similar to ours when the New York Times publishes blatantly slanted stories on its news pages or outright lies on its opinion pages. Those are our professional standards the Times is transgressing. Some of our readers thought our outrage at the Times naive; we would say that, like Althouse’s disgust with Leiter, it was merely idealistic. It is possible to be knowing without being cynical.

To return to John Benjamin’s letter, we certainly agree that it is better if “foolish, crazy or hostile ideas” do not survive, or at least do not thrive. A good deal of our work is devoted to combating them with the weapons of logic and mockery. As the disgusted Althouse demonstrates, shaming can also be an effective tactic.

Look at Leiter’s defensive updates to his initial blog post. He accuses Althouse of an “inflammatory hatchet job” and us of a “drive-by smear.” He answers by asserting that “I did not, and do not, call for political violence”–technically an accurate statement, as explained above, but a curious claim for him to deny since neither Althouse nor this column ever made it. Leiter wouldn’t be acting like such a crybaby if he weren’t losing this argument.

I think that Harry Truman said something about heat and kitchens.