If we can’t be honest and realistic about the threat our civilization faces, we cannot win.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Explaining Away Mass Murder
Charles Krauthammer, on the deulsional and suicidal impulse of the media in its aversion to ever associate terrorism with Islam.
Joe Klein’s Latest Tantrum
Some thoughts from David Bernstein. What I actually find more interesting is the comments, in which it is once again displayed what a useless word “neocon” has become (if indeed it was ever useful).
Strength
…through dithering:
OK, I get that the political piece is vitally important, and for Eikenberry, up to his armpits in scheming warlords and bureaucrats in Kabul with his frontline diplomats daily engaged in pitched and desperate note-passing against an entrenched corruptancy, the light at the top of his own well probably is awfully dim and far away. This is a highly complex situation. Thinking outside the box, maybe it does make sense to put the cart ahead of the horse. It is intriguing, though, that in the middle of a hot war in which a determined, murderous enemy is making gains, there are ”options beyond military planning” that are so pressing that they actually trump military planning. Sounds like the president, in a show of resolve, wants to signal more firmly to Karzai and the scheming warlords that the United States is prepared to hold its breath until the Afghan people turn blue, or that the United States might even take its bat and ball and go home. Also, to signal to the United States military that he won’t be pushed around if it kills them.
One bright spot, in the Vietnam avoidance agenda. Remember how they accused LBJ of picking targets from the Oval Office? Can’t accuse Obama of that. He’s actively not picking targets from the Oval Office.
Amazing.
This Is Like A Bad Joke
Time has named the Ares-I the “Invention of the Year“:
TIME’s best invention of the year may send Americans back to the Moon and put the first human on Mars.
Do they even know that it can’t deliver people beyond earth orbit? On the other hand, it is really tall…
This kind of technological illiteracy is pathetic, but it’s what I’ve come to expect from the likes of Time.
[Mid-morning update]
From a reader:
My company was selected for a Time “Invention of the Year.” Hooray, we thought. Then the phone calls from Time started. A bored 20-something with a false Valley girl accent called to talk to the inventor of the thing we had been nominated for. We responded that there was no one person, it was a company-wide effort. It took, and I do not exaggerate, at least 30 minutes to get it through her head that “company” meant “more than one person.” Then the so-called fact checker wanted to know how the one person got the idea for the invention. We patiently explained that it was the company’s job to make such products and that more than one person had contributed to the idea and the building of our nifty little gadget. The fact checker did not know the difference between a pound and a kilogram, had no knowledge of basic chemistry, had never heard of the founders in our field, and didn’t even know what our gadget looked like. Subsequent calls did not remove the impression of careless indifference. Time never did get the story right.
Since that day I have never trusted a single story from Time. Not one. If the writers and editors can’t understand the difference between a pound and a kilogram, what else are they missing?
A lot. It’s a lot easier to just grab a press release from NASA PAO than to have to actually understand what the hell you’re talking about..
[Mid-afternoon update]
More thoughts on the cluelessness of this from Keith Cowing.
It Wasn’t A Tragedy
Victor Davis Hanson says that we must stop using that word to describe a simple act of treason. 911 wasn’t a tragedy either. Words mean things.
I Never Believed The Letters In Penthouse
…until it happened to me. An amusing publishing tale by Claire Berlinsky. I loved this:
I wrote the article, along with a sidebar about Sifu Emin’s top ten tips for defending yourself in hand-to-hand combat. It was a great assignment. I got to call people like Bob Wall and Chuck Norris to ask them who, in their view, was the most lethal man in the world.
Actually, to be honest, I couldn’t get through to Chuck Norris. I tried, but his secretary got frosty on me when I said I was writing for Penthouse. “Chuck,” she said sniffily, “is a conservative.”
Now, when I heard this, I was a bit surprised. I’m not really used to the insinuation that there might be a problem with my commitment to conservatism. “Ma’am,” I said finally, “I’m a conservative, too. In fact, I think my conservative credentials will impress him. Please let him know that I’m Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, okay? Really, I’m on his side.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m the author of ‘Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.’ In fact, I’m more conservative than Chuck.”
“Well” (doubtful). “I’ll give him the message.”
“I have a subscription to National Review, for God’s sake.”
“I’ll let him know.”
“Seriously, Ma’am, I make Chuck look pink.”
I think my tone probably put her off, though; she refused to put me through. Probably for the best. I mean, who wants to deal with Chuck Norris’s socialist nonsense?
Read all.
What Happened To The Cold War?
Younger people can be easily forgiven for not understanding the significance of what happened in Berlin two decades ago, both because they have little personal memory of what it was like to live under the nuclear threat, and because the teaching of history in public schools is so appalling. But Walter Shapiro remembers. It’s well worth reading for those who don’t realize how close we came to Armageddon on multiple occasions through those decades.
The president, of course, has no such excuse. He was born at the height of the war. Unfortunately, he was raised by people on the other side.
Fort Hood Media Roundup
…from Iowahawk, natch:
Investigation: Ft. Hood Killer Had Access to Fox, Talk Radio, Right-Wing Blogs
Receipts show killer’s apartment had cable
‘03 Nissan registered to Hassan had AM radio
Napolitano: “I told you so”
Sources: Despite 17 citations as Countdown’s ‘Worst Person In The World,’ FBI failed to detain Limbaugh
Defiant Palin rejects calls to apologize
The guy was probably a secret Christianist. After all, no Muslim would do such a thing — it’s a Religion of Peace™.
Military Base Shootings
Why there will be more. If we couldn’t fix all of this suicidal multi-culturalism and political correctness in the military during the Bush administration, it’s hard to be very optimistic about doing it now. There was reportedly an interview by a CNN reporter who asked a military wife how she felt about her husband being deployed to Afghanistan. “At least he’ll be safe there, and able to shoot back,” she said.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Whatever happened to “connecting the dots“? If this is the best we’re willing to do, prepare for another 911.
[Update early afternoon]
I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he has this spot on — The National Rush To Therapy:
There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility. He didn’t have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
It’s sadly ironic and amusing, as always, that such sentiments come from people who delude themselves that they’re part of the “reality-based community.” A culture that won’t defend its values or itself is doomed to lose to one that will.