Category: Media

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Joe Rogan wants to add Mexico to the Trump land grab which made me laugh because well isn’t this the same Mexico that Trump is building a wall for the specific purpose of keeping Mexicans out of the USA. Talk about your crossed wires here. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of building the wall in the first place? It would be easier to let the Mexicans that want in to the USA in and leave the rest of them in peace.

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There is nothing more annoying than a white man whining about how badly white men are treated. So I don’t encourage reading Matt Walsh’s cri de coeur about how people should be thanking white men for all the good that they have brought to the world. But, if you must, the rundown can be found below:

” I am proud to be a white man. I think that if anyone’s writing an article singling out white men, it should be to thank us. After all, as I said recently, this country could not exist without white men.”

“The vast majority of the greatest pioneers, inventors, thinkers, leaders in the history of Western civilization have been white men.”

Isn’t that a mouthful of bullshit? There are so many juicy targets here, I don’t know where to begin. His basic premise is both wrong. All you have to do is google inventions by Blacks, then change Blacks to Asian, then change Asian to women, and you will find significant inventions from members of all these groups. So what exactly does he mean when he writes “Nearly every good thing you have in your life — everything that makes your life safer, more comfortable, more enjoyable — was given to you by a white man.” Walsh has written a tricky sentence here both allowing him to acknowledge that non-white men may have contributed something to civilization while, also, allowing him to repeat his false assertion of “everything.”

Then there is White Men tend to tell stories that make White Men the heroes. So, when he talks, for instance, of the pioneers he is failing to acknowledge that these White Men followed paths that the Native American population already travelled and, in some cases, they were assisted by a Native American guide. This changes the story significantly. Lewis and Clark didn’t just wander into the woods and find Oregon. Non-Whites told them where to go. But Lewis and Clark got to tell their story in a way that it looks very much like White Men found the pathway across the continent when they were traveling paths used for centuries by non-Whites.

Most importantly, since White Men have been the most powerful people these past few centuries, it also stands to reason that they are responsible for every bad thing that has happened too — like industrial pollution, World War I, World War II, Racial Prejudice, and the subordination of Women. When you are in charge you have to take the good with the bad. Walsh wants you to thank white men for the good while ignoring the bad. It is a much more complicated legacy than Walsh would have you believe.

Which makes his whining so irritating. Poor White Men. No one appreciates them. Get out your handkerchiefs.

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Furious Spain Flood Survivors Hurl Mud At King, Queen And Top Government Officials.

I had read the above Huffington Post headline three or four times before I realized it was just bad grammar. It should read Furious Spanish Flood Survivors. The first couple of reads, I thought why is Spain flooding survivors and hurling mud at the King and Queen. Now you may claim I am being nit picky here but this seems really basic here. Spain is a noun which is doing something while Spanish is an adjective describing the survivors.

It is confusing and makes for difficult reading.

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I know I am little late in commenting on this but I feel this is a great example of how wrong headed the media has become.

First, I want to apologize to Aaron Rodgers before going any further. I have to mention something that he was reported to have done which is in essence passing on the information that I feel is unworthy of news coverage. I have made my peace with it in that so many major news outlets have reported it and my very low subscriber list is certainly no match for these networks, I am fairly certain that this is not news to anyone who would read an article about Aaron Rodgers. It also shows the bigger problem, I stopped to read this article over say what is going on in the Ukraine or the Middle East.

Any way, here is the gist of the report — Aaron Rodgers eats boogers. That’s right, a man who has a camera focused on him for much of his life, was, maybe, caught doing something human. That it is so important to point this out to the world beggars belief. So what? Nobody needs to know this. NOBODY.

Rodgers denies it and I can’t blame him it because it is embarrassing, but I think a better response would be to mind your own fucking business. What person on this earth, if they were under the same scrutiny, wouldn’t sometime lapse into some gross behavior which is entirely human? Blowing my nose without a handkerchief? Spitting? Picking their nose? Smelling their arm pits to check on their oder?

What value did this story bring to the reading public? All it really does is embarrass Rodgers which, I admit, is pretty fun because Rodgers is a bit of an asshole and deserves a little embarrassment. This, however, was the wrong tool to bring him down. Some in the media will say that they were forced to report on it when social media began to go wild with reports of Rodgers booger eating. It, then, became necessary for people to know about it and for Rodgers to address it.

How disingenuous. This means some crazy person can gaze hour after hour at a famous person sitting on a bench and report about any of the things he does there just because he is famous. Once the asshole finds the booger eating and then spreads his discovery onto social meeting, the media has to investigate because the public is talking about it. Let them talk about it. The media is under no such compunction. It isn’t news. Celebrities are human beings whose bodies function much like other mere mortals. If it annoyed Rodgers enough to rebut, he can talk about it but I see no reason for any responsible media operation to say anything about the topic.

More importantly, it is a distraction from a million more important things that could be reported on. Why waste the short attention of the public with something so insignificant, and, hey, I am admitting I one of the public here because I zipped right on to the booger eating controversy. The sports media might focus on something like the Jet’s abysmal record this season and how Rodgers might change this continuing disaster? Now that is something worth talking about. .

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Bill Maher walked out of a hotel with Noor Alfallah and the media goes wild reporting it.

This headline appeared in the Daily Beast, a serious news site, I read every day, when I stumbled upon a headline talking about Maher’s exit from the Chateau Marmont. Who, other than Bill Maher, Noor Alfallah (the woman Maher walked out with), and Al Pacino (Alfallah’s boyfriend), cares. Why did the Daily Beast give it an all important Top Cheats headline that directs people to read it? Wait, why did they put it into their site at all?

Here is the bit that caught my attention, “Paparazzi mobbed the duo early as they left together in the same car, Page Six reported. It is unclear what the duo were doing at the establishment together, and representatives for both have not commented on the appearance. Just hours earlier, Alfallah was snapped alongside Pacino at another Los Angeles restaurant, Chez Mia, in West Hollywood.”

OK it is gossip. People love to read gossip. But way too much time and energy was spent on this particular bit of gossip. The Paparazzi mobbed the duo. Mobbed. Dear God, how many photographers spent hours of their day waiting for Maher and Alfallah to leave the hotel? One would be one too many. This also means that some news outlet is willing to pay for photographs of the couple leaving a hotel. Keep in mind that is all they were caught doing is leaving the hotel. No one knows what went on in the hotel nor are the two explaining.

To be fair to the couple, there isn’t anything about their actions that suggests that their meeting was even good gossip. A man goes into a hotel and later leaves with a woman. Yes, it could mean that they were sleeping together but it also could mean that nothing went on at all other than he picked her up at a hotel. I have picked up many a woman from their hotel rooms without sleeping with them. So if someone were to ask me later what I was doing with that woman in her hotel room, I would gleefully reply none of your fucking business.

Think about it.There is a presidential election campaign going on, a war in the Middle East, a war in the Ukraine, a hurricane disaster with over 200 people dead and still counting, and another hurricane on its way to Florida. For a supposedly serious news site to spend any time on speculating who Bill Maher is shagging is a total waste of space. I repeat and in caps to emphasize my outrage — BILL fucking MAHER.

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The other day I posted a blog about Roger Kimball’s “What the Right Gets Wrong About Art. For some reason, I was having a difficult time finishing the post. Every time I worked on this post I found myself trying to cover too much ground and I was having trouble connecting all that I wanted to say. At the time, I decided to post what I had (see here) and return to the part I was having trouble with.

Kimball’s larger point was that because the Right abandoned culture, the Left took over and this was why Art is all crap now. You know the sad old song — things used to be better in the good old days. Within this criticism, he referred to a troubling quote about race from the Australian Philosopher David Stove. David Stove writes:

Western Europe found that its anti-academy had become its academy ‘even in the twinkling of an eye.’ The galleries were suddenly full of the art of African societies formerly the most despised. Victorian architecture was all at once the object of a universal detestation, or rather horror. Black music began its long and excruciating revenge on the white man. The Jazz Age, in short, had arrived.

Kimball is being provocative without context. What does this mean in Kimball’s larger argumen? He fails to incorporates what Stove is saying into his argument. So it lies there like a big old sore that everybody can see but everyone is too polite to talk about. There is clearly a racist wack here at African Art and Black Music.

Maybe Kimball thought his readers should be able to connect the dots without his help but I fear then that I am being dragged into an argument of my making and not Kimball’s. Ignoring it however is allowing such a comment to go unchallenged. It’s like letting old people get away with using the N Word. They are too old to change and you want to keep the old fellow calm in case you cause a heart attack. This maybe true but then Grandpa gets the idea that he can spew his racist’s thinking with impunity.

The question, I have, is does he agree with Stove? If African art was previously despised why was it despised and what is his opinion on it. Even if he is talking about primitive art, which isn’t clear at all, what does this art have to do with the Left or Right wing. If the art predates the present political divisions, how can the Right abandoning culture have anything to do with the Art these people produced. Also, if the primitive nature of the art is setting him off, how does he feel about the art of early homo sapiens drawn in the caves. It is hardly beautiful by present standards, but it is definitely art. Why is Jazz (or as Stove puts it black music) the revenge of the black man on the white man? These are volatile statements that require more explanation. Kimball just drops it in and never mentions it again. I can only, then, assume that he agrees with Stove’s racist sentiments.

The real problem here is the limits of Kimball’s definition of art — it has to have a universal agreement about beauty. Everyone, everywhere has to agree that it is beautiful. Which is an impossible standard. Why not just good (art I like) and bad (art I don’t like). Kimball admits that most art is bad art. If he would have left it at that, I could have gotten on board with him. A lot of modern is crap but then there are very few pieces of great. Which makes sense. This is the whole reason critics point out what they think is good. They are trying to differentiate it from the every day piece of art.

I am not sure why he abandons the bad art/good art distinction for art has to be beautiful. He has a political agenda here that is blinding him to this much easier standard. But he hates the art he sees as Left Wing statements that he will not even dignify it with the art designation. Then he adds barely formed racial animus to his equation that leaves me wondering — what is really upset about.

Kimball seems to harken back to the days when art was the Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare. An Art that had very limited reach until the 20th century. Confined to the elites of Europe and North America, Art was strictly defined by this class because they were the only ones who really knew anything about art. But regular people all over the globe had very little contact. The technological advances of the 20th century brought art to an enormous number of people. Unfortunately for Kimball and company, their reaction to this was different than these elites had hoped. Instead of wanting to perpetuate these old ideas of art, they used them as a stepping stone for something completely new.

It is perfectly fine not to like it but to say it doesn’t even pass the muster of art is ridiculous. Who gave you the deciding vote? The better approach would be for the Right to start creating Art that the world might want to see. No one is stopping them. Why isn’t it happening instead of whining about what gets passed off as art these days.

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I read Right Wing writers from time to time just in case lightening strikes and there is something valuable there. More often than not though it is a lot of whining about how the world used to be a better place before the modern world intruded on it. Roger Kimball represents this type of Right Wing writer.

Kimball knows what he is talking about. Some might even call him an intellectual. He has read all the right books, seen all the right art which enables him to throw the great names out with the best of them — Nietzsche, Marx, Van Gogh, Duchamp, Warhol and on and on. Dada that, Avant-Garde this. He gives the impression of someone who knows what he is talking about. But when all is said and done it is still whining and he reaches a shrill filled pitch in What the Right Gets Wrong About Art.

I provide the link above but don’t feel compelled to read it. It is difficult reading. He overwhelms the reader with his knowledge about art, history and philosophy. You might know a few things about art but he knows a lot of things. And I mean a lot but it rarely helps his argument. He is just rolling off facts at a rapid clip that I sometimes forgo what exactly was he talking abou. You can’t really argue with him which I think is the point. So be warned, don’t get too bogged down on reading this article, it will only make you crazy.

What I learned was that he truly hates modern art. He hates the artists who produce them. He hates the institutions who support them. He hates the politics the art is associated with. Modern Art is ugly. Furthermore, the art critic is unable to assess art as art because art is also political. The critic should only have to look at the canvas, the brush strokes, the colors and not consider anything about what might be going on in the artist’s life to make him paint this particular piece of art.

By this standard then Kimball would have you look at the statue of David without knowing any of the biblical history regarding David. In Kimball’s view, a person can be completely ignorant of the story of David and still be able to appreciate the art. Probably But that isn’t how it happens, is it? Most people who see the statue also know the story of David. Kimball acts as if artists before 1900 were simply creating beautiful art straight out of their heads instead of producing art that their benefactors wanted to see and, more importantly, buy.

From the title of his article, I was expecting a call to arms for right wingers to get out their paint brushes and canvases and start painting. Instead it really is a tirade against modern art without the context of how this is important and why a right wing movement in art would improve both culture and then politics. Kimball gives a weak analysis of why right wingers surrendered culture and art to the left. Apparently Right wingers don’t take art seriously because it isn’t necessary for life, not like business and science. Then, what is Kimball’s idea for changing this?

If Art is a luxury in the minds of the Right, an idea that Kimball obviously disagrees with, how does he propose changing what appears to be a very fixed idea among Right Wing people. Kimball offers the idea of beauty that art brings to life. The beauty of art gives human beings a glimpse at something greater than ordinary life. So why aren’t Right Wingers willing to give up on numbers and embrace beauty? Not a clue. More importantly, how does this change. Kimball has no ideas on how to change this dynamic.

I suspect Kimball sees the futility of his situation. The Right just isn’t interested in Culture. They are interested in Business and, to a lesser degree, Religion. They want a society committed to Capitalism and Christianity and have little interest beyond that which puts Kimball in a difficult position. The Left disagrees with him and the Right doesn’t care.

The truth is that there is nothing stopping Right Wingers from getting out their paintbrushes and having a go at it. As Kimball admits, it was the Right who abandoned culture, what then needs to happen is for the right to try and reclaim it and stop this awful whining. This also means that if politics is downstream from culture then Kimball is in big trouble trying to change anything until Right Wingers get out of the pews and the board room and into the art studio.

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I want to make some additional comments about Donald Trump, in private, calling Kamala Harris a bitch making the headlines. The more I think about it the madder I get. This is a ridiculous waste of space. Is there anyone on this planet who doesn’t think that Trump, in private, calls Harris a bitch? I can’t see that it is in any way shocking behavior. I would be more shocked if he wasn’t calling her a bitch. It is the whinny cry of the class tattletale who the teacher can no longer stand because the student has absolutely no discretion on what is valuable information and worthless information. Like I said previously, so what. He should be able to say anything he wants in private. Now the people hearing this should tell him to not talk like this but I am inclined to believe that they kept their mouths tightly shut. I guess confirmation might be helpful to the very few doubters out there but it is hardly Watergate reporting.

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The other day I was getting worked up over Oklahoma requiring Bibles in every classroom. Then, I began to think why. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a bad idea and we should try to stop it. On the other hand, as bad ideas go, it is far down the list on what is important. Some religious people think that the mere presence of the Bible in the classroom will somehow magically change the children forced to sit in a room with it into Christians.

I am betting this won’t happen. If I seriously thought that these proponents of the Bible in the classroom could create an effective educational program that incorporated the Bible I might be worried. They really have no ideas beyond prayer and patriotism and if they tried to do anything more they would begin to fight among themselves. Christians, if you recall, have violently argued with one another for centuries about Christian Doctrine. Indeed, this was the main reason why the Founding Fathers wanted a religious neutral government — Christian sects have a tendency to rumble if it is possible to get an upper hand with another Christian sect.

So why is this meaningless gesture getting me so worked up? Because it is headline news. The press is only interested in controversy. Controversy brings in readers which brings in ad revenue and so the press will search for controversial issues to feed to the American public. They aren’t feeding the public anything that is particularly nutritious either. It is more like a table filled with desserts that we can’t help but pile onto our plates and finish them off in one sitting. Until we make ourselves sick.

It is an easy enough bon bon to make too. Anything to do with religion in public schools was sure to piss of every secular humanist in the country while getting the full fledge support of fundamental Christians. Some editor somewhere decided to fed this particular controversy to the American public because they knew their readers would lap it up and then raise their fists ready for battle. Sadly, they were correct.

What is so annoying is that I know this is the game. Sensationalism is the only consistent menu item and I keep falling for it. There is a good chance that the Bibles in every classroom will never happen or it will be slowed down in the courts for years to come and, after a few years of squabbling over this, and realizing that it is way too difficult to make it happen, the combatants will move on to something new to argue about.

More worrisome, is it illustrates the Media’s focus on divisive topics. Anyone looking at education would think that the most important topic in American education is the treatment of Trans children because a lot of people are talking about it. In reality, there are 73,000,000 people in the USA under the age of 18.. Of those 73,000,000, 42,000 of them have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and only 4,200 of these children have started hormone therapy. This means that when people are talking about this, they are talking about .00005 % of the student population.

The treatment of Trans children in public schools and religion in the public schools need to be addressed but that it dominates any discussion regarding education in the 2024 campaign is out of all proportion to how it affects the vast majority of public school students. It is there only to instill rage and division which is all really great fun for the Press but does very little to improve public schools.

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Donald Trump apparently calls Kamala Harris a bitch. In private. So what? Why is this a headline? Why is this shocking?

  1. It is private behavior. He can say what ever wants to say in private including calling Kamala Harris a bitch.
  2. Donald Trump has a history of bad mouthing almost everybody including members of his own party. Is it really that shocking to discover that he calls a political opponent who is presently besting him a bitch? And, least we forget, he did it in private.
  3. What are people supposed to do with this information? So Trump calls Harris a bitch? Yes it is sexist but so what? Bitch sometimes is the right word. I mean would bastard be better? If I am mad at someone, I might call them a bitch. I find it hard to condemn a man for doing something that I might do particularly if it is done in private.

The only interesting thing about this little tidbit is that someone close to Trump wants to screw him over and they are talking to the press. Now that is interesting to me.