Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Roy Moore, And The Media

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Many in the media are lamenting the fact that Moore’s support continues in the face of credible allegations of sexual misconduct against him. They’d like to paint this as acceptance of such misconduct, because the alternative (and real reason) is that many people either don’t believe the allegations or (and this is related) have rightly come to find the media hypocritical and despicable, and this is a way of flipping them the bird.

Michael Walsh lays out the reasons:

The media, in the form of the Baby Boomers who have reached its highest echelons and have controlled it for the past quarter century, sold its soul to the Democrat party — first to George McGovern, then (briefly) to Jimmy Carter, and finally and fatally to Bill (but not Hillary) Clinton and Barack Obama. Whereas old-school reporters and editors abjured involvement in politics, they embraced it. Whereas once a reporter left to become a public-relations flack or, worse, to work for a politician, he was finished as a journalist, the Boomers celebrated such experience as a resume builder. In short order, a revolving door appeared, connecting the newsrooms of Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the television networks to the corridors of political power.

David Axelrod, for example, worked at the Chicago Tribune, as the City Hall bureau chief, before moving on to managing campaigns. Several of my Time magazine colleagues segued into Democratic administrations, including Jay Carney (press secretary) and Rick Stengel (State Dept.). In the other direction, Clinton administration hacks and henchmen such as James Carville and George Stephanopoulos smoothly transitioned into plum media gigs. So why should anyone trust the press any more?

Why indeed? As Richard Fernandez has noted, they put the torpedoes in the water to hit Trump, and they’re circling back around toward them. I hope they hit below the water line.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Like Parents, Like Children

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An interesting article on the degree to which your parents’ professions influence your own. These two were sort of outliers, though, in the sense that there is much less demand for the “services” than there is “talent” for it:

Some fields are particularly dynastic, like Hollywood acting or politics.

You don’t say. I’d go beyond “dynastic,” and say nepotistic.

I have a theory that one of the reasons that Hollywood types tend to be “liberal” is guilt over the knowledge that, though there can be a lot of perseverance involved, their success was largely due to dumb luck, or choosing the right parents, and that there are many other people who were just as, or more capable and/or attractive than them. On the politics side, I hope we’ve finally broken the Kennedy, Bush and Clinton dynasties, but the threat of George P. and Chelsea are still out there.

[Early-afternoon update]

Sorry about the missing link; I had a long dentist appointment this morning right after I posted that. Fixed now.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Libya Debacle

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Yes, it is amazing that Hillary got a pass for this foreign-policy and humanitarian disaster. And that’s not even counting the lies and criminal incompetence of Benghazi:

Libya is in a class of its own. In Syria and Yemen, at least, the situation was already bad. Libya, before Clinton got involved, was comparatively stable and no strategic threat to the United States or its allies. Now it’s a shambles, with people literally being sold in slave markets.

Back in the 2012 presidential campaign, former vice president Joe Biden told a group of African Americans that the GOP was going to ”put you all back in chains.” But it turned out that it was Clinton’s policies that led to black people being sold. As some ponder another Hillary Clinton run in 2020, that’s worth pointing out.

Yup.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Being “Caring”

41 Comments

…is a license to be nasty:

There has always been a malicious, vengeful streak in sections of the compassionate new left. Consider how they have always boasted about ‘hating the Tories’, as if hatred is an emotion to be proud of. The far left always talk of ‘smashing’ or ‘fighting’ things, whether it be capitalism, racism or the system. The rhetoric of caring and combat paradoxically go hand-in-hand. As Albert Camus observed in his attack on Sartre in his 1951 L’Homme révolté, the more someone professes to care about humanity, the more they tend to dislike people as human beings.

It’s not even the “new” Left. It’s the way the Left has always been. Including their purloining of the word “liberal” to attempt to fool people into thinking they actually are. And I don’t “hate” Leftists, because I’ve never found hate to be a productive emotion. I simply oppose them and their works with every fiber of my being.

If I ever get around to writing my book about the projection of the Left, this would be a chapter in it.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Linda Tripp

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Her thoughts on the reassessing of Bill Clinton by the Democrats. She was the only person in that whole sorry episode who told the truth.

But the Democrats still refuse to admit that it wasn’t about the sex, or sexual harassment, or sexual assault. It was about the corruption, and obstruction of justice to prevent an innocent woman he’d sexually harassed from getting a fair trial.

Business, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Net Neutrality

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Those protesting the decision are going after the wrong targets:

Fifteen years ago, when I started blogging, it was common to hear that “the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” You don’t hear that so often anymore, because it’s not true. China has proven very effective at censoring the internet, and as market power has consolidated in the tech industry, so have private firms.

Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear, and read.

In other words, we already live in the walled garden that activists worry about, and the walls are getting higher every day. Is this a problem? I think it is.

Yes, it is.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!