Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Listen Up, Boomers

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…the backlash has begun:

at the level of public policy and moral leadership, as a generation we have largely failed. The Boomer Progressive Establishment in particular has been a huge disappointment to itself and to the country. The political class slumbered as the entitlement and pension crisis grew to ominous dimensions. Boomer financial leadership was selfish and shortsighted, by and large. Boomer CEOs accelerated the trend toward unlimited greed among corporate elites, and Boomer members of corporate boards sit by and let it happen. Boomer academics created a profoundly dysfunctional system that systemically shovels resources upward from students and adjuncts to overpaid administrators and professors who by and large have not, to say the least, done an outstanding job of transmitting the cultural heritage of the past to future generations. Boomer Hollywood execs created an amoral morass of sludge — and maybe I’m missing something, but nobody spends a lot of time talking about the towering cultural accomplishments of the world historical art geniuses of the Boomer years. Boomer greens enthusiastically bet their movement on the truly idiotic drive for a global carbon treaty; they are now grieving over their failure to make any measurable progress after decades spent and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown away. On the Boomer watch the American family and the American middle class entered major crises; by the time the Boomers have finished with it the health system will be an unaffordable and dysfunctional tangle — perhaps the most complicated, expensive and poorly designed such system in the history of the world.

All of this was done by a generation that never lost its confidence that it was smarter, better educated and more idealistic than its Depression-surviving, World War-winning, segregation-ending, prosperity-building parents. We didn’t need their stinking faith, their stinking morals, or their pathetically conformist codes of moral behavior. We were better than that; after all, we grokked Jefferson Airplane, achieved nirvana on LSD and had a spiritual wealth and sensitivity that our boorish bourgeois forbears could not grasp. They might be doers, builders and achievers — but we Boomers grooved, man, we had sex in the park, we grew our hair long, and we listened to sexy musical lyrics about drugs that those pathetic old losers could not even understand.

I’m largely ashamed of my own generation.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

No, Mr. President

17 Comments

…the problem is not America’s “laziness”:

What this is, is the opening shots in the inevitable decay of a Socialist economy. When productivity starts dropping and there are fewer resources available for redistribution, the leadership notes that the people aren’t working as hard as they used to. The obvious conclusion is that the people have gotten lazy, and the nomenklatura then start on a campaign to get people to work harder and more effectively. Look up some political posters from the USSR of the Twenties and Thirties for examples.

It isn’t true. What’s happening is that people are working more virtuously — in Socialist class-warfare terms.

Once you understand that the president’s world view is essentially Marxist (as he made quite clear in his presidential campaign to anyone who both understands such things and was paying attention), then the policies and actions become clear.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Lessons From The Battle Of BlogCon 2011

14 Comments

The Occumorons deserve derision:

…we learned that their personal hygiene leaves much to be desired – like, well, personal hygiene. We learned that their concept of private property is shaky at best; radio host Tony Katz hilariously schooled one shaggy gentleman on the air at length about who owned a particular chair the Occupier attempted to occupy. And we learned that they wear Guy Fawkes masks not because of any particular affinity for the noted radical Catholic terrorist but because some guy wore it in the movie V For Vendetta and it was apparently a really bitchin’ movie.

These are not deep thinkers.

But the most important lesson is that the Occupiers are a joke; they are nothing but coddled, Potemkin protesters who collapse at the first sign of resistance.

These clowns have been treated with kid gloves by gutless (or even sympathetic) politicians from Zuccotti Park to the Port of Oakland. They’ve been allowed to live in filth, dominate public spaces and generally descend into a festering petri dish of social, criminal and epidemiological pathologies by cowardly mayors and other enablers unwilling to do the most basic job of any government leader and keep order.

The mainstream media adores them, viewing them as advancing their shared left-wing agenda while also recalling the activist Sixties of legend. And, of course, the media helpfully covers up the ever-growing roster of outrages perpetrated by these nimrods. No accountability there. Even the cops are required to treat these geniuses with professional respect.

It’s been all up-twinkles for them – until now.

Not to paint a couple of botched protests as the Battle of Stalingrad, but when these idiots rushed into the midst of the assembled conservative new media folks gathered at BlogCon 2011, it was about the first time anyone ever took these cretins on en masse.

They ran into an impenetrable wall of mockery, and they had no clue what to do. They folded like a house of stinky cards.

The foundation of the success of the Occupiers is the tacit agreement by the elite to treat them with respect, to take their incoherent assemblage of bad ideas seriously, and to ignore the fact that the emperor’s new clothes are dirty, clichéd and have Che’s mug emblazoned on them.

The BlogCon folks didn’t.

They did not play along. They showed no respect. Instead, they went on the offense, kept on the offense, and turned the Occupiers’ strengths against them. It was awesome.

Read the whole report.

[Monday morning update]

“The whole world is laughing.”

[Bumped]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Sell Out Taiwan

5 Comments

…for a trillion bucks? Why stop there?

This is such a stroke of genius that I suggest we extend its logic to other American allies. Let’s give Iran the OK to incinerate Israel in return for all the free oil we could use for the next century. Or why not give Russia the go-ahead to re-occupy Eastern Europe in return for all the vodka we can drink? And then let’s give North Korea permission to conquer South Korea in return for all the kimchi we can eat.

More geopolitical brilliance and smart diplomacy, courtesy of the New York Times.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

I Hate This Phrase

7 Comments

No, NASA is not “hitching a ride” from the Russians. “Hitching a ride” implies that we are getting it for free. We are paying for taxi services, and because they are a monopoly provider, we are paying too much. But the problem isn’t buying rides, it’s that we’re paying too much for them, and not purchasing them from American providers. This is something that could be fixed within three years, but the Congress is cutting the funding to do so so that it can build a giant (in both size and cost) unneeded rocket that won’t fly for at least a decade.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I should note that the headline is probably not Ken Chang’s fault — copy editors come up with headlines. But I do think he should have pointed out that the same Dragon capsule that could start delivering cargo to ISS next year could also be delivering crew in the next three or four years.