She wasn’t weeping over an empty parking lot; she was lachrymose over an empty road, you haters.
I guess it was the lack of children to cry about that was making her cry.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
“Rapid Fire Bullet Delivery Systems”
I just saw this tweet:
It reminded me of this old post I wrote in the early aughts. Here is the original, with comments at the time.
Kevin Williamson
Has not been silenced:
I hear this line of criticism fairly often from people who are not very bright or well-informed; in truth, I have never complained of “being silenced.” As I have written and said probably 200 times, the mob-mentality culture of conformism and homogeneity is a relatively minor problem for people like me — people who are in the controversy business, for whom this sort of thing is only a vexing professional hazard — but it is a very large problem for people who are not employed in writing and speaking about public affairs but nonetheless threatened with educational or employment sanctions for holding unpopular views. You hear about people like me because we are media figures, but the people who really have to worry about this sort of thing are Starbucks managers in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley nerds who are dumb enough to believe that the bosses at Google mean it when they ask them for their opinions.
Which brings us to the problem of trying to have a productive conversation with people who are caught up in the vast sprawling electronic apparatus of self-moronization. It does not matter what anybody actually has said or written. The rage-monkeys have an idea about what it is they want you to have said, or what people like you are supposed to think about x or y. I cannot count how many times I have had some person respond to something critical I’ve written about some lefty fruitcake with “What about Trump, huh?” When I point out that, among other things, I wrote a little book called The Case against Trump, the response is: “Well, Republicans . . .” And then when I point out that I am not one of those, either, the retreat into ever-vaguer generality continues incrementally.
Yes, I get this sort of idiocy a lot, too. I’m always amused when morons assume that (a functional atheist) am a Young-Earth creationist, or a Christian, or Republican, because I’m skeptical about hyperbolic climate claims.
I should say, though, that at least when it comes to Professor Mann, I have in fact been somewhat silenced (which is ironic, given that prior to the time he sued me, I’d hardly ever discussed him).
The Ideological Divide
This is interesting (and partially confirms Haidt’s thesis).
The survey asked Democrats: “How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?” Democrats guessed 50%. It’s actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe “most police are bad people”. Republicans estimated half; it’s really 15%.
The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study’s findings: the wilder a person’s guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.
This much we might guess. But what’s startling is the further finding that higher education does not improve a person’s perceptions – and sometimes even hurts it. In their survey answers, highly educated Republicans were no more accurate in their ideas about Democratic opinion than poorly educated Republicans. For Democrats, the education effect was even worse: the more educated a Democrat is, according to the study, the less he or she understands the Republican worldview.
“This effect,” the report says, “is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree.” And the more politically engaged a person is, the greater the distortion.
This strengthens my long-standing thesis that either there is no strong correlation between “education” and knowledge, or that in many cases it’s negative. Non-STEM academia is a national disaster.
The Next Fifty Years On The Moon
An interesting essay, but it has a few problems. First…
And they repeatedly use the phrase “lunar soil.” In fact we just update Evoloterra this weekend to fix this ourselves.
Finally, we have this comment, which seems gratuitous and almost a non sequitur in the context of this article:
Comey
As the Democrat operatives with bylines were wont to say about Trump for months, the “walls are closing in” on him. I hope that the Horowitz report is worth the wait. It was supposed to have been out by now, but Sperry is now saying September.
Apollo And The Treasure Fleets
Gary Oleson has a good op-ed over at Space News. A lot of space enthusiasts misinterpret the lesson of the Ming Dynasty. I wrote a similar piece seventeen years ago. As with most of my old space commentary, I’m always surprised at how well it holds up.
Speaking of old space commentary, I just read this for the first time, written by my former editor at The New Atlantis, in 2003. This was about the time that we first met, probably as a result of a comment I had at my blog about a post of his at National Review. I wrote my first essay for him about a year later.
[Update a few minutes later]
In searching for that blog post, I discovered something funny; it was based on that piece, so it wasn’t the first time I’d read it — I’d just forgotten, it was so long ago. I think what happened is that someone at The Corner commented about my blog post, which caused Adam to engage, and later call me to talk. The rest is history.
The original post, with comments, is here.
Blood Pressure
This isn’t news to me. I’ve always been concerned (to the degree that I am concerned) about both, and in fact, I worry more about diastolic than systolic. I’m trying to get it down with 20 mg of Lisinopril, but it’s still 150/100 on waking. Fortunately, I’ve never had a cardiovascular event, despite having lost both parents relatively young to heart attacks. I think I have a much healthier lifestyle, though. They were both life-long smokers, and overweight (partly as a result of horrible nutrition advice from the government).
Chappaquiddick
Half a century later, still covering for the Kennedy’s.
The media cover up was aided by the fact that it happened during the moon landing.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Fifty years later, the media continues to whitewash Chappaqiddick.
“[The Lion of the Senate] was Kennedy’s nickname. He was like a lion, in the sense that he mated without limit and killed without remorse.”
Heh.
I disagree though, on one of his movie recommendations. There are many better documentaries of how we got to the moon than First Man, which was about Neil Armstrong, not Apollo per se. The best I’ve seen (and I saw it in IMAX at the NASM a few weeks ago) is Apollo 11. The most surprising thing about it, considering how good it is, is that it was produced by CNN. I recorded it a few days ago to watch tomorrow with friends.
Ilhan Omar
She happened because the media chose to lie to you.
I wonder how much longer they’ll be able to cover this up?
[Update a few minutes later]
Tying up loose threads in the curious case. The media must hate that Trump brought it up, because it makes it harder to ignore.
[Update a few more minutes later]
First link is fixed now, sorry.