Category: Media

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I am sure there are more awful human beings than Alex Jones but, as far as I can see, they have the good sense to keep their mouths shut to hide how awful they are. Unfortunately Alex Jones is an asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut . So here is Alex Jones, even after losing law suits where he questions the shootings at the Sandy Hook School, spouting the same unsubstantiated garbage about it being a false flag operation from anti-gun rights organization. He is doing this even after changing his story in court and saying that Sandy Hook shootings did happen as the police claimed. Doesn’t this make him an admitted liar.

Never mind. Now, since he is losing his empire to pay the Sandy Hook parents for his lies, he is going back to spreading his lies about Sandy Hook. Yes, he is accusing 20 sets of parents of willingly sacrificing their first grader in order that their deaths would galvanize sympathy for anti-gun legislation. I don’t know about you but I don’t know of many, if any, parents who make such a bargain — much less 20 sets.

And it gets worse, because Alex Jones so passionately spread these vile lies, his listeners believed him and began to harass the grieving parents of these children in order to get at the truth. Parents who lost their children had to listen to people telling them that they are lying about how their child died. Who would encourage people to behave like that. Oh, that’s right, Alex Jones.

I only wished I believed in Hell because I would surely love to see him rotting there. If anyone deserves an eternity of the flaming fires of Hell, it is surely Alex Jones.

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I am torn between being amused or horrified by this Huffington Post article about whether you should engage in sexual intercourse in front of your dog. Wow. This is something I haven’t given much thought to.

I am mostly amused because the idea that your dog thinks about anything about your sex life is funny.

Why is Spot starring at us while we canoodle? What is Spot thinking? Is this causing Spot irreparable damage? Perhaps Spot views this like we view a nature film — so this is how they have sex, interesting.

On the other hand, it is so empty a subject that half of the space is taken up with discussion of dogs licking other dogs genitals. There is not much there there. The idea that Spot is so concerned with his owner that he has feelings regarding his owner’s sexual trysts is the height of narcissism. I must know what Spot is thinking while he watches me have sex. I suspect other than keep it down I am trying to sleep. Spot isn’t think much at all about you having sex.

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I saw the following post from Stephen Green on Instapundit, a Conservative/Libertarian Blog. A man asking why do women who write disparaging headlines about conservatives “always” look like this (see woman in circle). When you are reduced to commenting about somebody’s looks, it says an awful lot about your argument. You don’t have one. Scott Adams did make racist’s comments and lost most of the distribution for his highly successful cartoon. Disgraced seems like the appropriate word here. But then Green wasn’t saying there was anything wrong with the headline he was going after the woman’s looks.

Or was he? Green is just coy enough in his words to be able to shrug his shoulders and say you were the one assuming I was making a negative comment about the woman’s looks. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with the woman’s looks. I was just saying why do they always look like this and posting her picture for you to see. What an asshole.

I would prefer to link directly to the post but Instapundit doesn’t give me the ability to this. You will find this on the Instapundit blog for January 13 posts made after 2:40PM.

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Quentin Tarantino bad mouthing Paul Dano bothered me for some reason. Tarantino has every right to criticize someone’s work. It is part of the risk artist takes. Critical feedback is a gauge of how effective the artist is so I am not opposed to criticism per se. Tarantino’s criticism, however, was unnecessarily mean spirited. He sounded like he wanted to hurt Dano more than let a colleague know how to improve his work.

More worrisome is this has become the environment we live in. I disagree with you has become more than a difference in opinion or taste. If I didn’t like your performance, you didn’t get it wrong, you are a bad actor. Or a stupid person. Or an evil person. The press eggs this on because it loves a disagreement and have a gleeful willingness to spread the absolute worst thoughts that people have to their readers and viewers. So if a famous person burns another famous person, you can bet your house that there will be a reporter sticking a microphone into the burn victim’s face asking for his response. Retaliation is inevitable.

I wish I was above it all but, I have to confess, I am right in there slinging mud with the best of them. I try to be conscious about it but I fail. Almost all of the time, I fail. A simple a thing as a Trump supporter with a misspelled protest sign is enough for me to forward to Facebook and Instagram so everyone can see how Trump supporter’s are so dumb. I am laughing at one person’s mistake and implying that all Trump supporters are the same which means they all potentially are bad spellers. Uneducated and stupid, right?

The problem is that in a few minutes, I will receive a post from a someone showing a misspelled sign from a left winger. Am I supposed to make the same sweeping assumption about all left wingers based on the one left winger who can’t spell? Of course not. It is just one person’s mistake. The question, for me, then what was I hoping people would think when I sent the post about the bad spelling Trump supporters? It was unfair of me to provide this false depiction of Trump supporters.

Making fun of people is all a lot of fun when you are speaking with people who agree with you but, in the social media world we live in, we no longer have this luxury. Everyone, including the people we are making fun of, can read your thoughts and know what you really think of them. People rarely change their minds if you are calling them stupid. Yet we keep calling each other stupid. Quite loudly at that. How then can we expect people to listen?

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I love Bill Maher’s response to Karoline Leavitt’s defense of Trump calling a reporter piggy. Leavitt thinks it is good that Trump is so honest and frank with reporters. Maher took her up on her defense of being honest and frank and called her a bitch. Good for him.

Trump is nearly 80 year old man. He knows that he crossed a line when he called a woman he has a professional relationship piggy. Anyone, as Trump has been, involved in the business world of the last 50 years knows it. The woman deserves an apology but won’t get one because Trump, in that warped little mind of his, thinks that apologizing is some form of weakness and he is so worried about being perceived as weak that he will never deign to apologize to anyone.

This isn’t really the worst problem this little foot-in-mouth incident exposes. Getting an apology is between Trump and the reporter. What is troubling is that Leavitt and other Trump lackeys aren’t willing to call him out for it. No one is willing to remind him of the hard truths of living in the 21st century and how he should conduct himself in his professional relationships.

Yes, she wants to keep her job but this would seem like a good opportunity to help the boss out. An apology would end this relatively minor dust up. Now he looks like an asshole when he could look like less of asshole, sorry he will always be an asshole in my eyes, with a simple I’m sorry. Since Leavitt isn’t saying that an apology is order, it speaks volumes about Trump’s management style. You can’t speak honestly with him even when the stakes are low.

This is a terrible person to be in charge of a business and potentially disastrous person to be running a country. But hey ho at least those Commie Democrats aren’t in charge.

The good news is I think every reporter in the White House pool should feel free to address him as President Fatso. I mean just to be honest and frank with him. He clearly values that kind of honesty.

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The above question is the problem. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Compromise, or at least as I understand the word compromise, requires that both sides give a little and take a little. Both sides get something out of the deal. That’s why they call it compromise.

The nightly breathless reporting of who is winning and who is losing the shutdown makes compromising extremely difficult particularly in the present circumstances. Trump needs to look like a winner and the Democrats are trying to look like fighters. Neither wants to look like a loser so all pretense of looking for a compromise has been abandoned because there is a battle going on and somebody has to win.

American democracy, unlike most other democratic countries, depends greatly on compromise due to the cumbersome federal system our forefathers created. There has to be a general agreement across an executive, two legislature bodies (one of which requires a supra majority) and the Supreme Court. It is extremely difficult to get things done through this system even in the best of times. These are not the best of times.

It is clear that it isn’t in the best interest of the press for there to be a compromise between the two parties. Indeed compromise is decidedly boring and unlikely to engage the press who prefer mudslinging, name calling and they particularly like winners and losers. Because the press needs to have winners and losers, they are framing the present struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats in the most unhelpful way. The press wants one side to succumb to a more powerful winning side who will then stand on the loser’s lifeless body and gloat for even more good press. All anybody wants to know who is winning the shutdown

Well, sadly — no one.

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By the time I finish writing this blog, I might have changed my mind but right now I have to say Peter Falk as Columbo is my favorite television character. The show dates from the 1970’s and has aged surprisingly well. Unlike most detective shows where the trick is to figure out who the murderer is, the audience knows who the murderer is but how Columbo figures out who the murderer is.

The murderer is almost always some rich and powerful person who thinks they are smarter than the bumbling appearing Columbo who stumbles into their lives . Because they think they are smarter than Columbo, they fall into his trap of giving too much information that they inadvertently give away important details, seemingly innocuous information, that seals their fate later in the show.

Falk and the writers gives Columbo an array of distinctive quirks. His rumbled rain coat that he is always wearing and he can’t bring himself to rid himself of even after his wife buys him a snazzy new one, his ever present cigar, his scratching head when confused, his car — a barely functional vintage Peugeot convertible, his sad sack and barely functional pet dog, his never on screen wife who he calls Mrs. Columbo and who is full of good advice, and his saying “just one more thing” as he his leaving the suspect which tricks a usually exasperated person into giving some seemingly unimportant detail that really is at the heart of what Columbo is looking for.

You can’t help but root for Columbo as he manages to manipulate these arrogant assholes into prison. He plays into their egos, letting them think he is a bumbler while finding out everything he needs to know. Part of Falk’s charm is he manages to ingratiate his suspects into helping him and working with him to help him catch the killer while actually setting a trap for the unsuspecting guilty party. It is particularly fun when the suspect catches on to Columbo’s game but have gone too far to save themselves from falling into one of his traps. Their disdain for him throughout the show and their disbelief that this idiot outwitted them is the best revenge.

So if you are looking for a good detective show and you have exhausted everything you know, you might revisit Columbo as I think you will find it a rewarding experience.

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Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, in case you can’t keep track with the rapid turnaround in that position, revealed that he and his 16 year old son have a porn accountability device on their electronic devices. So what? Is this really anybody’s business? He made a deal with his son about keeping themselves honest about viewing pornography. I don’t think this is in any way controversial or, for that matter, news worthy.

Yet some how this made the headlines. It is an incredible waste of space. It adds nothing to what we know about Mike Johnson as we already knew he was a fundamentalist Christian. It isn’t particularly surprising for him to have such a device and that he monitors his son’s viewing. It is his business.

So why the headlines. Now I would hate to say anything bad about the media but I think the only reason this is here is that it involves pornography and a public figure. It makes for a catchy headline. Speaker of the House, Pornography. The boys and girls in the Fourth Estate must have already had this typed and published before realizing what a snooze fest this was.

But given that there isn’t much going on now, what with the war in the Middle East, the war in the Ukraine, the Trump trials, questions about the economy and Taylor Swift’s dating Travis Kelce they had so much space that they had to fill it with something and this is what they decided to fill it. Empty space filling more empty space.

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Newt Gingrich believes that Former President Barack Obama is running the Biden Presidency behind the scenes. Just in case you didn’t hear it, and I am sure because she wants to keep the American public informed on all the scuttlebutt in Washington, Megan Kelley passes along this little tidbit in a discussion she was having with another reporter. Neither one provided a bit of evidence that this was indeed what was happening. Never mind, it is vitally important to feed conspiracies to the hungry Right-Wing mob. They have difficulty holding up their pitchforks without a daily does of conspiracy.

Since they are purposefully vague about what Obama is actually doing, I am trying to identify what the actual problem is. If they mean that Biden is appointing the same people Obama worked with in his term. So what? Isn’t that standard operating procedures here? A new Democratic President will obviously use experienced Democratic operatives from a previous Democratic President in their appointments. If they are saying that Obama secretly jumps the White House fence every night so he can run the government while Biden sits drooling in his wheelchair, then I think they need to provide some details backing this speculation.

This innocent passing along of speculation because it it important for the public to know is just bull shit. The media loves it and, of course, will pass the scoop along with nary a second thought. They love controversy and if people provide them with controversies, they will publish it. Why, if people are talking about it, then it is news and it would be an absolute disservice to the American Public to keep such important information from them.

I don’t know about you but I am not sure passing along gossip counts as meaningful dialogue or responsible behavior. Perhaps one of the reasons that the American public holds the press and the government in such low regard is their questionable behavior in supplying the American Public with evidence about what they are saying.

For the record, I have absolutely no facts to back up what I am saying but I think it is really important to get this unsubstantiated information out there because it might be true and it is vitally important that the American Public weigh in on my idle speculation. It could be important or it could light a fuse to a keg of dynamite, who am I to judge, I am just telling you what I’ve heard.

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I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. For me, though, a little evidence is required for me to take the bait and don my aluminum foil hat. This doesn’t seem to bother Vivek Ramaswamy, extremely long shot Republican candidate for President. He doubts the 9-11 Commissions findings. He wants to know how many armed US government officials were on board the planes that crashed into the twin towers. He admits he doesn’t have any idea or any information about how many were on board. Facts don’t matter. He has questions and damn it they must be answered.

The 9-11 commission admits to one government official being on board and he did not carry a gun. This isn’t good enough for Ramaswamy though, he needs another commission to confirm this fact. Now, I would think, and I am just guessing here, but in the spreading conspiracy theory world that’s all you need really, an inkling and nothing more, so I am going to go out on a limb here, that if there was any government official with a gun on board that day, they would have used it to stop the high jackers who only had box cutters. That this new commission is unlikely to discover anything new is besides the point. Coming from a candidate who claims fiscal responsibility is important to him this seems odd but then the similarly fiscally minded Republicans wanted 10 investigations into Benghazi even though each commission had remarkably similar findings.

Now Newt Gingrich, and, of course, another person who absolutely wants to rein in government spending on wasteful projects, claims that Former President Barack Obama is actually in charge of the government and not Joe Biden. Given that the Republicans claim that Biden is a doddering old man who should be in an old age home and not the White House, you would think they would take some comfort that Obama, a much younger and vigorous man, was actually in charge but no the nefarious Obama, partnered with the always evil Hillary Clinton, are up to no good. This is Gingrich’s theory, all gut instincts and no facts, and it needs investigating.

What bothers me about these obvious attempts to grab the media’s attention is that the media willingly just gives it to them. It is a remarkably easy method. Just say something outrageous and if you are half way famous person — the media will go out of their way to spread whatever bullshit conspiracy the person is talking about. I don’t blame Ramaswamy and Gingrich. They want attention and they know what they have to do to get it.

The media’s behavior is disappointing to say the least and belies the Republican argument that the media is against them. The media isn’t for or against anyone or anything. All they want to do is to sell papers. They are devoid of positions for the most part. So if anyone wants attention, all they have to do is say something outrageous and the media will do the rest. And you see where this takes us — Donald Trump, who, by the way, is out of office, gets 24/7/365 day coverage while the environment burns. There is not stop coverage of trans children which affects less than 1% of the students in public education because Governor DeSantis thinks it is the number one problem for American Education. It is all a diversion from what really matters. But never mind, I understand that there are some problems with deck chairs sliding on the Titanic. The good news is the passengers all have free ice.