Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

A Little Blind

3 Comments

The liberal Democrat Obama-supporting rabbi who’s been getting death threats for accidentally outing Helen Thomas as the nasty piece of work she’s always been has been mugged by reality:

KURTZ: Well, let me interrupt you. What do you mean when you say “hate media”? I mean, obviously, you find yourself in the middle of this firestorm. Do you feel that journalists, programs, commentators have been personally unfair to you? And can you explain how?

NESENOFF: You know, I find that people that don’t cover the story or people that cover the story are so upset that they don’t know what to do, so they have to attack me, maybe we’ll say he did something on purpose or he filmed it a certain way, or we’ll find out what he did in his past. I mean, they don’t know what to do with it, but why don’t they actually ask me and find out maybe I liked Helen Thomas and I was actually for the fact that she went ahead and spoke to President Bush and said watch it with the Iraq War, although now I understand – and we have to reevaluate – that maybe when she was protesting the Iraq War, I was saying that because I didn’t want our soldiers to be in harm’s way. It turns out she didn’t want the Iraqis to be in harm’s way. So we have to, kind of, I have to really reevaluate liberal and conservative and really find out where I stand because I think I’ve been a little blind.

I think he’s discovering that they’re not for peace — they’re just on the other side.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Ignorant Bigotry

30 Comments

…of Tavis Smiley. I was amazed when I hear that the only actual example he had of Christian violence was Columbine. In fact, the killers offered to spare the life of one of the students if she would renounce her faith in God (though I doubt if they’d have kept the promise if she’d done so). She refused, and they shot her.

Of course, this moron probably believes that Tim McVeigh was a Christian, too. I know that if I were a Christian I would be ashamed to hear Tavis Smiley declare himself one.

Oh, and slightly related: memo to Helen Thomas — the Jews in Israel are already home.

Media Criticism, Social Commentary, Space

Negligent Parents?

52 Comments

I don’t have a problem with the sailing attempt — I think that today’s children are far too coddled and infantilized (all the way to age 26, thanks to ObamaCare). I don’t see anything particularly magic about eighteen, either. Different people mature at different rates. There are many people who would never be able to do this at any age (most people, I’d say). What I’m looking forward to is the youngest (or even first) person to sail around the moon.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

At It Again

22 Comments

Karl Grossman is continuing his ignorant jeremiad against nuclear power in space, including RTGs:

Last month, Japan launched what it called its “space yacht” which is now heading to Venus propelled by solar sails utilizing ionized particles emitted by the Sun.

When he writes stuff like this (light sails are propelled by photons, not “ionized particles”), why should we take anything else he writes (like all of the people who died of radiation poisoning from the SNAP 9A entry) seriously? He’s just a journalism professor.

I have to admit, though, it’s kind of amusing that this will be one more thing for the Left to be disappointed about in Obama.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Helen Thomas And The Liberation

5 Comments

…of Israel:

…all this may have a strangely liberating effect on Israel. We know now that whatever it does, the world, or at least its prominent political and media figures, is going to damn it. Its longtime patron, the United States, now sees not much difference between Israel ’s democratic achievement and the autocracies around it, which we are now either subsidizing or courting. As a result, the global censors have lost leverage with Israel, since they have proven to be such laughable adjudicators of right and wrong when Israel is involved.

Israelis should assume by now that whether they act tentatively or strongly, the negative reaction will be the same. Therefore why not project the image of a strong, unapologetic country to a world that has completely lost its moral bearings, and is more likely to respect Israel’s strength than its past concern for meeting an impossible global standard?

I don’t think that she and the other Jew haters realize how much they’ve actually helped their despised Zionist entity.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The President Said What, Now?

6 Comments

Thoughts from Lileks on the KeisterKicker-in-Chief:

“He didn’t mean donkey,” she said, this being the only possible explanation. I shook my head. It will now be difficult to tell her not to use that word; it will now be a matter of time before my wife says, “Well, your daughter was sounding presidential today,” and it won’t be a reference to mankind’s universal aspirations. Unless you include the desire to kick BP’s tuckus, which seems fairly widespread.

I don’t know if I’ve written this, but I’ve certainly thought it. When I heard the president, my first response was, “Who is he kidding?” My second one was, “Gee, and here I thought that the purpose of getting people together to assay the facts was to determine what effective action to take. How Chicago of him to think that the only effective action is to take one’s boot off the throat of the country long enough to bury it in the appropriate fundament.”

And I, for one, haven’t been complaining about the president not emoting enough. I’ve never been interested in a president that “felt my pain.” All I’ve ever wanted is one that isn’t the cause of it.

No, my complaint is that he’s incompetent. So the all the talk about the asskickery isn’t very impressive to me. Usually, I’m glad that he’s incompetent, because most of the things he wants to do are awful, and I want them to fail at them, but this is a case where I wish that he could actually get it right.

[Update a while later]

Rich Lowry agrees with me: Mr. President, please don’t feel our pain.”

Was it Bill Clinton who started this infantilization of the American people?

[Update a few minutes later]

Jonah Goldberg isn’t impressed, either:

It’s like a Tonight Show joke.

Leno: “The president is so dorky . . . ”

Audience: “How dorky is he?”

“He’s so dorky, when he gets angry he convenes a panel of experts to tell him whose ass to kick.”

And speaking of The Tonight Show, let me reassure both editors and readers of family newspapers everywhere about my use of the word “ass.” Historian Steven Hayward reminds me that in 1979, Jimmy Carter responded to Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge by declaring he would “whip his ass.” It was one of those moments of presidential lameness that conjures the same bile of pity, schadenfreude, and heebie-jeebies one feels upon seeing a middle-aged balding dude with a long gray ponytail dancing at a rave.

As John Stewart said, the president is going to have to kick himself. In fact, if he had sufficient self awareness, he’d know that there are many reasons to do so.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The Democrats can’t put the blame genie back in the bottle. This is the kind of situation for which the Bard came up with the expression, “hoist onwith his own petard.”

[Update a while later]

Three reasons that the president should be kicking himself.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

I Have A Weird Empathy

41 Comments

…with this woman:

I…know a Gentile lady who wishes to go to Israel if things “completely go to hell there,” just because she thinks if bombs fall on them, they should fall on her, too. She thinks if humanity lets the Jews go down, humanity is lost.

She is more motivated and braver, and firmer in her convictions than I, but I completely understand the impulse. And I am ashamed of many American Jews who, once again, as in the thirties, don’t see it coming, and continue to support those who not will only allow it to happen, but encourage it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Space

My Sidebar For Popular Mechanics

19 Comments

…didn’t run, so I’ll run it here.

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Pasztor reported that SpaceX’s CEO, Elon Musk, has claimed that it will cost a billion dollars to develop the launch escape system for the Dragon capsule needed to allow it to carry crew. This would be twice the amount that it has cost to develop both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets, and the Dragon itself, from scratch, and seemed quite improbable to many who have read it.

Mr. Musk notes in an email:

“I definitely didn’t tell Pasztor that our LES would cost $1B. He is off by a factor of ten! All I told him is that there is no way it would cost us more than $1B to demonstrate crew transport. That includes development, testing and certification to the most stringent NASA standards of everything needed for a seven-crew vehicle. I’ve also said that our price per person would be $20M, assuming the seven-person configuration and minimum of four flights per year. This compares to $30B for Ares I/Orion and a per person cost of ~$250M.”

In a follow up, he noted that the billion (if it goes that high) will include two abort flight tests (one on the pad, one high altitude) and a demonstration flight to and from ISS. Sounds like a bargain to me.