Category: Media Assholes

“Losing”?

Gummint, Law and Order, Media Assholes, Military

I yield to no man in terms of my respect for Victor Davis Hanson, but I’m afraid the worthy professor is extremely late to this party.

Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization
Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America.
Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies — especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.
Not so much anymore.

He then enumerates said institutions:  the FBI, the military (senior officers), Big Tech / Woke journalism, federal health agencies, and the criminal justice system in general.

I will admit that the above are relative newcomers to the conservatives’ hall of shame, but as we all know, we’ve always loathed and distrusted the alphabet soups of the IRS, ATF and DHS, as well as Cabinet departments like the EPA, Energy, Interior and Education — to name but a few.

Wake up, VDH:  they’re all on the shit list.  They are very close to being — and in some cases very much already — not the “pillars of our civilization”, but active destroyers thereof.

And if you Readers want proof of this, ask yourself this question:  would you rather deal with your local law enforcement, or the FBI?  Your county tax office or the IRS?

Q.E.D.

Snake-Pits and Tarbabies

Media Assholes

Back when I was in the client service business, we had an expression for accounts in which things could never go right — where problems would occur on a frequent basis, systems would fail, communications get misinterpreted and attempts to fix problems would just make the original problem even worse.

We used to refer to them as “snake-pit” accounts:  where no matter what you did, you’d just step on another snake.  Others in the trade termed them “tarbaby” accounts, where no matter how you tried to shake the problems off, you’d just get stickier and stickier.

Which leads us to this:

A crew member winding down production of Rust faces losing his arm after being bitten by a venomous spider, just weeks after Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed the movie’s cinematographer.

While I think we all agree that it would be more fitting if Baldwin had been bitten by the spider, you have to feel a little sorry for not only this crew member, but the entire crew (including the dead one, of course) because after all, they were all just working stiffs trying to make a movie together, albeit for a loathsome reptile like Baldwin.

All in all, this production certainly qualifies as a snake-pit operation.

Quote Of The Day

Media Assholes, QOTD

From Jim Treacher:

“By the time I learn enough about a breaking news story to realize I don’t care, it turns out to be bullshit anyway.”

Nowadays, I seldom bother even to learn about a “breaking” news story.  I prefer to look in on it a week later, to save myself the irritation.

Note:   Treacher’s words have been uncensored, because on this website, you can say what you say without fear thereof.

Not The Same Old

Media Assholes

All this might have made a difference to me, were it not for the fact that other than the occasional Victor Davis Hanson piece, I haven’t read anything in National Review   for nearly ten years.

Audio recordings obtained by Wired reveal that Google cooperates with and funds a range of establishment conservatives in D.C. that help it fend off scrutiny and oversight from politicians. The organizations named in Wired’s report are the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and the Cato Institute.
…
It looks like conservative mag National Review was taking Google cash too. To suppress conservative speech on social media. Was this something that @NRO donors & contributors knew was taking place?

I had to laugh that the once-amusing and now-hysterical Jonah Goldberg sat in the heart of all this.

But Emerald’s best shot comes near the end:

In any culture war, Rich Lowry and the gang have always been the first to stand athwart history, crying: “We surrender first!” They’ve been so weak and defeatist during the Trump years that a year’s subscription to the magazine could be marketed as an estrogen supplement.

And the proof of our disillusionment with this bunch of pantywaists lies in NatRev‘s  financial statement and vanishing subscriber list.

And an aside:  as usual, I am so far behind the curve that it appears as flat as the horizon, because I’d never heard of Emerald Robinson before the above link from Insty (thankee, Squire).  Here she is:

…and here’s something she did.

Cuts Both Ways, Assholes

Media Assholes, Politics, Resistance, Two-Minute Hate

Apparently, we conservatives are Beyond The Pale.  Saith Jennifer Rubin:

There is no way to “understand” MAGA voters, nor is there is any possibility of reaching political agreement with them. They are beyond the bounds of rational political debate.

Hey, Jen:  substitute “socialist voters” for “MAGA voters”, and you’ll have an idea of what we think of you lot.  The only thing you need to understand about us is that we hate your putrid political philosophy and your criminal voting practices.

And then some other Lenin-lickspittle chimes in with:

There is no longer any reason to try to “understand” these people. Nor should there be any compunction about doing whatever we can to read them out of American politics…

…by any means available, you mean?

Noted.