Tag: media

The end of National Review

I quit reading National Review when they canned John Derbyshire for the crime of telling the truth about race. Now that it has come out out of the marital closet, I expect considerably more people on the Right to follow suit. It is readily apparent that the difference between the liberal media and the so-called conservative media is about 20 years. And, like all homogamists, he openly lies about the way in which it utterly destroys the institution of marriage:

Finally, a word on the oft-heard claim that if we recognize same-sex marriages we’ll also have to marry siblings, and groups of a hundred and three, and adults to children, and humans to invertebrates, and so on.

Members of group relationships, whatever we may think of them, manifestly have not made the same kind of choice as have those in exclusive commitments, and so there is no equal-treatment basis for their inclusion in marriage. Remember, the equal-treatment argument we outlined above does not assert that marriage is about any kind of romantic love. It asserts that marriage is about a particular form of such love — faithfulness and exclusivity subsequent to a vow of permanent commitment — that is already partially included under traditional marriage laws. (Let us note in passing the ridiculousness of speaking of an “orientation to polygamy,” as traditionalists sometimes do, unless this means trivially that anyone might feel more than one attraction at a time, in which case we are presumably all so oriented.)

There is a sense in which the other types of relationships traditionalists scare us with, even if they were exclusive, would also not involve the same kind of choice as does a romantic commitment of two unrelated adults: They would fall short, for one or both parties, of being chosen in full freedom. In the case of family members, for example, an irrevocable and unchosen bond between the two already exists, and in that sense they cannot really give themselves to each other. That is why we see incest as a perversion of a preexisting relationship. As for a child, it does not possess a sufficiently developed mind and will with which to give consent to a sexual relationship. That is why we think such a relationship is exploitative. The specific ways in which these relationships fall short of full freedom — along with the unique intensity of sexual intimacy — in turn explain the primary harms that they intrinsically risk causing (for example, by undermining impartiality and stability within families, or by psychologically damaging children).

In any case, if you want to account for the special opprobrium we reserve for such things, you will have to offer some explanation of what is specifically wrong with them.

It’s bitterly amusing to see how a nation-in-decline congratulates itself with every step it descends into Hell and the inevitable dustbin of history. But those who refuse to learn from history are usually destined to repeat its more unpleasant lessons. Or rather, their children and grandchildren are.

SCIENCE is not science

Whatever happened to the idea that science is self-correcting?

Over the past few days a scandal has begun to plague political science. A UCLA graduate student, Michael LaCour, appears to have faked a data set that was the basis for an article that he published in the highly prestigious journal Science. I have examined a second paper by LaCour. As I’ll explain, I’m convinced that it also is the product of faked results.

The Science article purportedly showed that personalized, door-to-door canvassing is effective at changing political views. LaCour and his co-author, Don Green of Columbia University, enlisted members of an LGBT organization at UCLA to contact voters who had earlier indicated on a survey that they opposed gay marriage. The article shows, based on follow-up surveys, that the LGBT door-to-door canvassing had a significant effect in shifting voters toward pro-gay-marriage views.

Two graduate students at UC Berkeley, however, had significant difficulties in replicating the study. They called the private firm that LaCour had supposedly enlisted to conduct his survey. The firm, however, said that it did not conduct such a survey. LaCour had also reported to the grad students the name of an employee of the survey firm with whom he worked. The firm, however, said that it had no records of such an employee ever working at the firm.

After confronting his coauthor, Green requested that Science retract the article. LaCour still stands by his results. Science, faced with this dilemma, has not (yet) retracted the paper.

That pretty much settles the question of whether Science concerns scientody – the scientific method – or scientistry – the scientific profession. An “editorial expression of concern” is not sufficient. The study could not be replicated and there is evidence that the first study was not legitimate. Therefore, a reputable publication that was actually dedicated to scientody would retract the study immediately pending further evidence of its replicability. Science is observably not such a publication.

Especially when the man who developed the method that researcher utilized has come out very strongly against the legitimacy of LaCour’s work:

I think the bulk of the evidence suggests that LaCour faked at least some of the results of this second paper. Not only would I be willing to bet on this conclusion, I would be willing to give 10:1 odds on it. Still, I’m not certain, and I would be hesitant to give 100:1 odds. And I would refuse to give 1,000:1 odds.

Regardless, I am certain that LaCour faked the results of the original paper—the one published in Science. I predict that UCLA will refuse to award him a PhD, and I predict that Princeton will retract the assistant professorship that it offered him. I predict that UCLA or Princeton or both will conduct an investigation. I suspect that they will find that LaCour faked results in a few papers, not just one.

But the most damning thing, as far as the credibility of Science goes, is this observation, “It is very rare for political scientists to have our results mentioned alongside results from the “hard” sciences.” So why, then, was this apparently fraudulent paper selected for such unusual publication in the first place?

Good riddance

The death of the print media in America. It’s pretty astonishing, but having grown up reading the Star Tribune, aka “the Red Star”, it’s good to see them collapsing in such a dramatic manner. At this rate, many of them should be gone altogether by 2023.

And it is a very healthy sign, I think, for a one-way monopolistic medium to be replaced by a two-way medium with literally thousands of options. I expect the conventional publishing world to follow suit in reasonably short order once Barnes & Noble goes out of business.

The SJWs are losing

So are their allies in the media:

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, then these people went out of their way to prove that social justice is the last refuge of bullies and cowards.

But real life is not high school, and now the worm has turned. Like clockwork, nearly every alleged “victim” put forward with oozing crocodile tears by these journalistic reptiles has been discredited. Their narrative that sexism dominates Silicon Valley has been crushed under a judge’s gavel. Their claim that depraved captains of tech exploit rape culture to ravish the vulnerable appear to have been exposed as rank opportunism at best. Their allegations that rape has swept America’s college campuses now look like the fabrications of pathological liars and jealous exes. The allegedly “sexist” and “violent” #Gamergate has braved a bomb threat without incident, while its media critics have either been fired, lost millions of dollars for alienating their core audience, or have simply revealed their extremism too publicly to be taken seriously. An army of science fiction fans determined to see merit returned to the criteria used for awarding the prestigious Hugo Awards have stormed the leftist bastille that is Worldcon and reduced their opponents to (ironically) suddenly discovering that an uncritically “inclusive” space might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

And if that wasn’t enough, this week, the Society of Professional Journalists has agreed to hear the case made by #Gamergate supporters that the entire field of gaming journalism has been turned into a hotbed of cronyism and ideologically motivated deceit. This mark of legitimacy was sensibly conferred after a particularly conscientious member of the SPJ quite reasonably pointed out that an accusation of unethical behavior deserves a hearing, no matter how unfashionable its exponents.

This didn’t start overnight. It won’t end overnight. But we’re winning our Lexington and Concord.

The media litmus tests

A New York Times reporter fact-checks ethnic identity:

A Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, David McCleary, wrote to me this week with a complaint about being subjected to what he called “a Jewish litmus test” during a Times interview.

The interview (conducted by a Times stringer, or regular freelancer, who is not on the full-time staff) was done for an article that eventually appeared on the front page, “Campus Debates on Israel Drive a Wedge Between Jews and Minorities.” It took up efforts on college campuses to pressure Israel over its policies toward Palestinians and its occupation of the West Bank.

Mr. McCleary, who is Jewish, said that the reporter, Ronnie Cohen, asked him “insulting and demeaning questions,” including whether he “looked Jewish,” after telling him that his name didn’t sound Jewish and asking if he had been bar mitzvahed. He also said that after talking with the reporter for more than an hour, he was displeased to find that none of that interview made its way into the article, and that no other Jewish student who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was quoted or represented in the story….

After speaking to Ms. Cohen, who confirmed, in general terms, the nature
of the questions to Mr. McCleary, Ms. Mitchell told me, “If she indeed
pursued that line of questioning, it was inappropriate.”

These litmus tests are the way SJWs in the media and elsewhere attempt to shoehorn people into their anti-white narrative. You’ve probably noticed that they absolutely hate to admit that I am a Native American, because that blows their “white supremacist” angle to Hell. You can tell they don’t really care about Hispanics because they have no similar problem admitting that I am Mexican… except for the few who were trying to raciss-DISQUALIFY on the basis of my statements against open immigration.

In the case of the intrepid Ms Cohen, it’s obvious that she didn’t like the fact that a Jewish man was taking what she believed to be the wrong position, ergo she tried to DISQUALIFY him as a Jew. This is one of the many inevitable consequences of identity-based ideology. As one professor objected:

I am distressed about the lack of evidence in the piece to support the authors’ assertions about this deeply sensitive and volatile issue. Divestment is supported by a large group of individuals — some of them members of minority groups, and some Jews. (I, incidentally, do not support the movement). To make this into a “Minority vs. Jewish” question, without supplying evidence, is to distort the issue.

Of course, distorting the issue is the main objective. But this story of ethics in ethnic journalism also points to something more important. When talking to the media, ALWAYS record them. It’s clear that the national editor doesn’t want to fire Ms Cohen, hence the statement “If she indeed
pursued that line of questioning”. Since Mr. McCleary probably didn’t record his conversation with the reporter, he probably can’t prove it and she’ll get away with it.

So, I repeat: when speaking with the media, ALWAYS record your conversation. This prevents them from playing their usual game of attempting to spin what you said even as they deny what they did and said.

Men don’t matter to SJWs

Nero observes the uneven and sexist reaction to acts of violence in A GAME OF THRONES:

    D&D are trash bags go back to the sewerage where you belong
    — ziggy (@foxfeuer) May 18, 2015

    D&D are so gross I hope they burn in hell.
    — stevebucky asun (@mybaabyblue) May 18, 2015

    I AM FUCKING FURIOUS I WANT D&D TO DIE THOSE PIECES OF SHIT
    — JUSTICE FOR SANSA (@sansaslady) May 18, 2015

“D&D” refers to the show’s creators, Daniel Benioff and Daniel Weiss.

If any other group were caught making tweets like this, they would probably be labelled a hate group. But that can’t happen to feminists, so publications like Vox instead blamed the show’s creators for “provoking the ire of the internet”. It’s hardly surprising, of course. These are the same people who had nothing to say about #killallmen.

This isn’t the first time that violence against female characters in Game of Thrones has attracted attention. The first was over the graphic murder of a prostitute by the sadistic King Joffrey. Then people were upset when Robb Stark’s pregnant wife was stabbed in the belly. Robb himself was impaled with a sword before his corpse was decapitated and paraded around with a wolf’s head stuck on his neck, but no one minded so much about that.

But the latest outrage has surpassed all the others, with odious, risible “geek feminist” blog The Mary Sue announcing that they would no longer promote the series.

    Here’s our new policy re: @GameOfThrones. http://t.co/OkqrSawZaI #GameOfThrones

    — The Mary Sue (@TheMarySue) May 19, 2015

If these aggrieved Tumblrinas took a minute to think, they might figure out why violence against female characters seems so shocking: it’s because on-screen violence against men is so common that it doesn’t surprise us, and that in turn makes on-screen violence against women stand out.

It’s no different in games. Remember all the protests against GTA because you COULD kill prostitutes in a game where you MUST kill copious men in a broad variety of ways just in order to play. Meanwhile, an SJW-approved version of A GAME OF THRONES is suggested:

Daenerys Targaryean withdraws from marrying Khal Drogo after realizing she’s a strong independent Khaleesi that don’t need no Dothraki. Daenrys still takes the dragon eggs that were a wedding gift. As she never burns though the eggs never hatch.

Sansa cuts her long red hair short and dyes it rainbow colours. Starts a social media raven campaign for the awareness of how tough the daughters of Lords have it. Spends the rest of her time telling peasant boys to check their privilege.

I’ve previously pointed out how the basic story of A GAME OF THRONES isn’t even possible if the author had been properly feminist, and how a single change to a single character in A Song of Ice and Fire
would have eviscerated the entire series and eliminated the
greater part of its plot.  Consider the consequences of changing Cersei
Lannister from an oppressed woman used as a dynastic piece by her father
to a strong and independent warrior woman of the sort that is presently
ubiquitous in third-generation fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal
fiction.

  1. Cersei doesn’t marry Robert Baratheon.  She’s strong and independent like her twin, not a royal brood mare!
  2. House Lannister’s ambitions are reduced from establishing a royal line to finding a wife for Tyrion.
  3. Cersei’s children are not bastards.  Robert’s heirs have black hair.
  4. Jon Arryn isn’t murdered to keep a nonexistent secret.  Ned Stark isn’t named to replace him.
  5. Robert doesn’t have a hunting accident arranged by the Lannisters, who don’t dominate the court and will not benefit from his fall.
  6. Robert’s heirs being legitimate, Stannis and Renly Baratheon remain loyal.
  7. The Starks never come south and never revolt against King’s
    Landing.  Theon Greyjoy goes home to the Ironborn and never returns to
    Winterfell.  Jon Snow still goes to the Wall, but Arya remains home and
    learns to become a lady, not an assassin, whether she wants to or not.

So, what was a war of five kings that spans five continents abruptly
becomes a minor debate over whether Robert Baratheon’s black-haired son
and heir marries Sansa Stark, a princess of Dorne, or Danerys
Targaryen.

“the most despised man in science fiction”

Despised, feared, it’s pretty much all the same, isn’t it? The Wall Street Journal takes note of the Hugo Awards, with an article entitled “The Culture Wars Invade Science Fiction Online campaigners are pushing to give SF’s annual Hugo Awards to popular space yarns, not more literary fiction or tales of diversity”. It’s not entirely negative despite the reporter feeling the need to get the opinion of two writers, John Scalzi and George Martin, who don’t know a damn thing about what the Puppies are doing. But regardless, the main thing is that the reporter correctly grasped that this is a new front in the cultural war and not a self-serving attempt to pick up meaningless trophies.

Theodore Beale had a big day when the nominations for science fiction’s annual Hugo Awards were announced last month: He received two nominations for his editing work, and nine stories and books from Castalia House, the tiny publisher where he is lead editor, won nominations.

Quite a feat, since Mr. Beale—better known in the science-fiction world by his pen name, Vox Day—is probably now the most despised man in science fiction. In 2013, he was expelled from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America after he used the group’s Twitter feed to link to his criticisms of a black female writer as an “ignorant half-savage.” He has called women’s rights “a disease” and homosexuality a “birth defect.”

So why are he and the Castalia House authors being honored? Because two online campaigns by self-styled conservatives, one led by Mr. Beale, flooded the Hugo ballot box

The two groups—which call themselves the “Sad Puppies” and the “Rabid Puppies”—urged the science-fiction fans who vote for the awards to nominate slates of books and authors that the Puppies say have been ignored by the Hugos. The Puppies’ supporters contend that the awards are clique-ridden and biased, rewarding liberal perspectives and self-consciously “literary” fiction rather than traditional, popular tales of space battles and fantasy quests.

The Puppies succeeded wildly…. “This is an important symbol in one particular area of the culture war, and so we took it away from the other side,” said Mr. Beale, who headed the “Rabid Puppies” campaign.

Let them hear us howl… and be afraid. Next stop, Fox News. I thought it was about as balanced an article as one can reasonably expect from the mainstream media, but I did send the reporter the following corrections.

  1. I wasn’t expelled
    from SFWA. The SFWA Board voted unanimously to expel me, but the
    membership never voted as required by the bylaws and Massachusetts
    state law. Note that SFWA has never stated that I was expelled, for the obvious
    reason that I was not. 
  2. The feed concerned
    isn’t the group’s Twitter feed, which is @SFWA, but an unofficial feed called @SFWAauthors.
  3. “probably”? Come on, who else is there?

Of course, I’m not a conservative either, nor are many of you, but in my opinion, that’s within the reasonable margin of error. We’re certainly “conservative” in comparison with the SJW freaks in science fiction. All that really matters is that he got the cultural war aspect right.

As for the black hat, I don’t mind it at all. Let’s face it, I look pretty damn good in black. Let them open up their hate and let it flow into me.

Bad news for Boston

Tom Brady is going to be suspended by the NFL and Bill Simmons is going to be fired by ESPN.

Tom Brady will be the highest-profile player ever suspended in the 96-year history of the NFL. Roger Goodell’s decision is expected to be announced next week, and it is no longer a matter of if the NFL commissioner will suspend Brady, but for how long he will suspend him. In conversations I’ve had with several key sources who always have a good sense of what goes on at 345 Park Ave., there is little doubt that Goodell considers Brady’s role in DeflateGate a serious violation.

The NFL is convinced, according to sources, that connecting all the
dots of the evidence supplied by Ted Wells leads to one conclusion: Brady cheated.

Peter King made a good point about the fact that most of the evidence of Brady’s guilt is circumstantial: ex-Patriot Aaron Hernandez was recently found guilty of murder and convicted to life in prison on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Speaking of Roger Goodell, one imagines that he might have had a little something to do with ESPN’s otherwise inexplicable decision to rid themselves of The Sports Guy:

When Bill Simmons learned on Friday morning that his nearly 15-year-old relationship with ESPN was over, he responded with something uncharacteristic: silence. He
said nothing to his 3.7 million followers on Twitter. He did not pick
up the phone or answer requests for comment. His agent and publicist
followed his sounds of silence.

Simmons’s
decision not to respond to the announcement by John Skipper, the
president of ESPN, that his contract was not being renewed was
surprising. He had built an empire on having his voice heard, often
quite loudly, in a variety of roles: columnist, podcaster, editor in
chief of the website Grantland, television analyst, and one of the
creators of the “30 for 30” documentary series.

Simmons
seemed to have been blindsided by the timing of ESPN’s decision, which
came more than four months before his contract is to expire, at the end
of September. An ESPN executive, who was not authorized to speak
publicly, said Skipper had told Simmons’s agent, James Dixon, that a
decision had been made to end the relationship and that an announcement
was coming. But Skipper did not call Simmons before going public, the
ESPN executive said.

In an interview Friday morning, Skipper said: “I’ve decided that I’m not
going to renew his contract. We’ve been talking to Bill, and it was
clear that we weren’t going to get to the terms, so we were better off
focusing on transition.”

 I’m actually glad to see Simmons leaving ESPN. He’ll not only do fine without them, I expect him to be more interesting again once he’s free of the corporate leash. Don’t fear freedom, Bill!

UPDATE: This is apparently the phrase that sealed Simmons’s fate.

 I think it’s pathetic. Roger Goodell has handled so many things so
poorly that it’s reached a point now where you have something like this,
where it’s taken four months to release the report, and he knew
everything that was in it. He knows the results before the report is
released to the public, and yet doesn’t have the testicular fortitude to
do anything about it until he gauges the public reaction.

I’m wondering if it was less the criticism of Goodell and more the reference to manhood being a positive thing that more offended the ESPN executives who cut him loose. One thing is clear. They did NOT like him: “Ding Dong the witch is dead.” (That’s how one ESPN staffer describes the vibe in Bristol.) And it is perfectly clear that while his politics lean left, he is no SJW.

We’re #98

The Right Wing News lists the top 100 conservative sites:

88) Daily Paul: 66,851
89) Bill O’Reilly: 67,480
90) GOP.com: 67,749
91) Canada Free Press: 68,023
92) Human Events Online: 68,967
93) Jewish World Review: 76,215
94) GOPUSA: 71,293
95) Ricochet: 71,358
96) Day by Day: 73,755
97) Numbers USA: 76,280
98) Vox Day: 76,816

The numbers are largely bogus of course, being based on Alexa rank. How do I know? Because last year, with 625,476 fewer monthly pageviews, VP was ranked at #52, just ahead of the Von Mises Institute.

But that 76,816 number reminds me of something. Oh, yes, I believe Johnny Con said something about his Alexa rank being higher than mine. Let’s see what they are today:

Vox Popoli
76,643 Global
15,411 USA

Whatever
80,320 Global
15,679 USA

Sound the horn! Br-br-br-BRAAAAP! First traffic, then Alexa rank… I wonder which comes next, “bestseller” lists or Twitter impressions?