Tag: media

The First Lady demonstrates to the defamed and the deplatformed the correct way to respond to a media attack:

Following last Saturday’s (Jan 19) Telegraph magazine cover story “The mystery of Melania”, we have been asked to make clear that the article contained a number of false statements which we accept should not have been published. Mrs Trump’s father was not a fearsome presence and did not control the family.  Mrs Trump did not leave her Design and Architecture course at University relating to the completion of an exam, as alleged in the article, but rather because she wanted to pursue a successful career as a professional model. Mrs Trump was not struggling in her modelling career before she met Mr Trump, and she did not advance in her career due to the assistance of Mr Trump.

We accept that Mrs Trump was a successful professional model in her own right before she met her husband and obtained her own modelling work without his assistance. Mrs Trump met Mr Trump in 1998, not in 1996 as stated in the article. The article also wrongly claimed that Mrs Trump’s mother, father and sister relocated to New York in 2005 to live in buildings owned by Mr Trump.  They did not. The claim that Mrs Trump cried on election night is also false.

We apologise unreservedly to The First Lady and her family for any embarrassment caused by our publication of these allegations.  As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Mrs Trump substantial damages as well as her legal costs.

Do your homework, review the law, and then hit them back hard. Neither the media companies nor the social media companies are protected by the law, and the fact that they are accustomed to getting away with making provably false claims and committing illegal acts does not mean that one has to permit them to do so.

Remember, the law is different in different jurisdictions, and the reach of the Internet will often allow you to take action in a jurisdiction that is considerably less favorable to the libelists and slanderers than the various US states.

Americans are not exactly full of sympathy for unexpectedly unemployed media figures these days:

The arbiters of self-styled cutting edge humor have evolved to reach a higher level of understanding and have come to a realization that there is absolutely nothing funny about homosexuality. Bounding Into Comics helpfully informs us what will, and what will not, henceforth be considered amusing:

Family Guy executive producers have announced that they are going to start phasing out gay jokes from the adult cartoon show.

In an interview with TVLine, which primarily addressed a recent episode of Family Guy where they lampoon President Donald Trump, Executive Producers Alec Sulkin and Rich Appel confirmed they were phasing out gay jokes.

Sulkin told TVLine:

“Kind of, yes. If you look at a show from 2005 or 2006 and put it side by side with a show from 2018 or 2019, they’re going to have a few differences. Some of the things we felt comfortable saying and joking about back then, we now understand is not acceptable.”

As for political jokes, Sulkin indicates they aren’t afraid to “take hard shots all around.”

“We’ve had some episodes in the past that had some left leanings in them, but we take hard shots all around. We’ve made fun of the Clintons and Barack Obama. It’s not like we would avoid anyone because we vote this way or that way. In any time that Family Guy has been on, we’ve pointed out idiots and the dumb things they do. This just happens to be our current person, and it would be no different if a Democrat were doing something idiotic, which they do.”

As of right now, we know that one special interest group appears to be off-limits to the Executive Producers of Family Guy. It’s only a matter of time before more groups get this special treatment.

So brave. Thank you for this. Although to be fair, as far as I could tell from the commercials for it over the years, nothing on Family Guy was ever funny in the first place. At least not to anyone with an IQ over boiling temperature. So it’s not exactly a great loss to the history of human amusement here.

How can you even tell who is supposed to be a comedian anymore? The inadvertent humor is considerably funnier these days than the intentional variety.

To end this troublesome shutdown?

As the longest government shutdown in American history lurches toward its fifth week, a grim but growing consensus has begun to emerge on Capitol Hill: There may be no way out of this mess until something disastrous happens.

This is, of course, not a sentiment lawmakers are eager to share on the record. But in interviews this week with congressional staffers on both sides of the aisle (whom I granted anonymity in exchange for candor), I heard the same morbid idea expressed again and again.

The basic theory—explained to me between weary sighs and defeated shrugs—goes like this: Washington is at an impasse that looks increasingly unbreakable. President Donald Trump is dug in; so is Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Democrats have public opinion on their side, but the president is focused on his conservative base. For a deal to shake loose in this environment, it may require a failure of government so dramatic, so shocking, as to galvanize public outrage and force the two parties back to the negotiating table.

In these interviews, I heard an array of macabre hypotheticals—from airplane crashes to food-safety scares, TSA strikes to terrorist incidents. But the one theme that ran through every conversation was a sense that the current political dynamics won’t change until voters get a lot angrier.

“This is all pageantry,” a Democratic House aide said of the posturing by Trump and Congress. “It’s going to take a big national event to move things. I mean, we’re at a standstill.”

The media is so upset over the shutdown, and especially the American people’s complete lack of concern about it, that they’re all but ready to go out and hire the crisis actors themselves.

Unless, of course, they are owned by Israel. If the Republican Senate gets its way, that would be illegal. In any event, Tucker Carlson is now in the sights of the corporate speech police:

Red Lobster has joined a wave of advertisers that have cut ties with the conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show.

The chain confirmed to Business Insider on Monday that it was no longer advertising during “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Critics had pointed out that the seafood chain was one of the few brands that continued to advertise on the prime-time opinion show after recent controversies.

At least 19 brands have stopped advertising on the show since December.

IHOP did the same thing recently. Unless and until conservatives stop supporting the corporate brands that use their brand power to try to silence conservative views, corporations are going to keep attempting to buy influence over the few pro-American voices in the media.

And this is why conservatives will keep losing.

I lived on the Gulf Coast too long to think that Red Lobster is quality seafood. But where I live now if I don’t go to Red Lobster my only other seafood option is filet-o-fish at McD’s. 

Next time you talk to Vox Day, would you be interested in stress-testing your conflicting opinions of Dennis Prager? Vox not a fan to say the least?

No. because all his points were valid! I like Prager. I mean, Vox doesn’t hate Prager, he just thinks he’s a fake nationalist, which he kind of is, according to the strict definition of what nationalist means. And in this world of nonsense, you’ve kind of got to start, like, words matter! What the word means matters! This whole conflation of state and nation, like a nationalist and a statist, your government is not your nation!

And Vox just is one of those guys that, thankfully, pays very, very close – he’s a fucking book editor! He pays very close attention to the definition of words. And when someone says something like “Judeo-Christian values,” it drives him crazy. Because Judeo-Christian, do you know what Judeo-Christian means, actually? It means a Jew who became Christian. Andrew Klavan is Judeo-Christian. It doesn’t mean Jewish and Christian! That’s fucking insane!

I don’t know. What do you guys think?

The definition of words is the biggest problem we face.

100 percent. I’m going to start saying Judeo-Islam. It’s just as insane. It makes no sense. And people are like, “Jesus was Jewish”. That’s like saying George Washington was British. It’s so intentionally fucking stupid.

No, let me think of a good example of what that would be. Do you guys have any funny examples? Judeo-Buddhist, that’s hysterical. I had a great one earlier when I was doing fence work, I just didn’t write it down.

George Washington was indeed British. 

To say George Washington was British is intentionally fucking with all of history. He was America’s first President. He’s debatably the most American dude ever…. I listened to the whole thing. It didn’t sound like he was trashing Prager. He was just calling out the guy’s vagueness. Like, he’s at least misinformed, if not intentionally doing wizardry. Judeo-Christian is not a word. America was not founded on Judeo-Christian values. There’s a better argument that America was more founded on Masonic values.

Owen is right. I don’t hate my former WND colleague Dennis Prager. I also don’t trust him, nor would I recommend Prager U to anyone who wants an objective and reliable account of history, especially American history. Whatever his various strengths and weaknesses might be, they are colored by the fact that he is not an American, he is a Neo-Palestinian whose primary concern is for the Neo-Palestinian people who are every bit as Palestinian as the people who were there when they arrived, or, in the case of Dennis Prager, didn’t actually ever quite get around to arriving.

Words mean things. And those who obscure, fold, spindle, and mutilate the meaning of words for their own ends are wizards who are pursuing ends and serving masters that they wish to conceal from you.

Later in the stream, Big Bear explains that he’s not afraid of labels, why he’s not afraid to talk to Flat Earthers and others who challenge the current narrative, and how the perception of those who challenge the narrative changes over time.

Vox Day has an actual plan. That motherfucker was so ahead of schedule that people found him terrifying. And now that some of his predictions, decades ago, are coming true, half the population finds him terrifying, and the other half are like, “oh, he’s a really good guy.” It takes balls to go against the narrative. It takes fucking balls.

It has been fascinating to see how much less crazy people seem to think I am now compared to the middle nineties. I am old enough to remember when people denied that the National Security Agency existed, and declared, with much the same self-assurance as the Moonies today, that anyone who believed the Federal government was capturing and recording everyone’s emails and telephone calls was paranoid.

But all I’ve ever done is observe current events and interpret them through the various trends I have learned about from others and personally observed in the written historical record. I do have a Christian filter, because that is the philosophical model I believe makes the most comprehensive sense of everything, but I’m perfectly capable of doing my analyses without utilizing it.

Apparently Bleeding Cool releases its Top 100 Power List for the comics industry every year. While I tend to doubt they would dare to put me on it even if I bought Marvel Comics from Disney and personally authored the top-selling comic of the year, at least we have been provided an objective measure of just how big 2VS is in the comics industry.

Although you’d think I’d get at least a modicum of credit for getting their Editor-in-Chief fired for the mere crime of daring to speak with me.

97. Mark Waid
A major comic book writer, editor and publisher, he is currently the ongoing writer on Doctor Strange. Being sued by Richard Meyer over his involvement, or not, in the decision of Antarctic Press to cancel the Jawbreakers graphic novella, whatever the merits of that suit, demonstrates that some, certainly, see his actions as impactful. Reducing his social media interactions, no longer co-owing a comic store and the mothballing of his Thrillbent digital publisher has seen his listing number drop, but he was able to wrangle a significant portion of the comics industry to back his legal defence.

74. Ethan Van Sciver
Leaving DC Comics after prominent creators refused to work with him anymore, he used the usual mixture of Comicsgate virtue signalling, identity politics and mocking hater videos to raise over half a million dollars on Indiegogo, for his still-upcoming Cyberfrog comic revival. The highest amount raised on crowdfunding by any comic creator in the year, it helps that he can actually draw. This helped him take the position as leading Comicsgate figure as Richard Meyer stepped back, due to his legal case with Mark Waid, and not wanting to give the defence further ammunition.

It’s the metahumor here that is the funniest aspect of this story:

He had launched his new website on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign as a practical joke among friends — a political satire site started by Blair and a few other liberal bloggers who wanted to make fun of what they considered to be extremist ideas spreading throughout the far right. In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.

“Nothing on this page is real,” read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual. What Blair had first conceived of as an elaborate joke was beginning to reveal something darker. “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back,” Blair once wrote, on his own personal Facebook page. “Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

The amusing thing is the way that the guy doesn’t realize that he’s merely replicated the situation that has existed on the Left for decades. They believe literally everything the mainstream media reports, despite the fact that what is generally known as “the news” is a false narrative that has little more than an incidental relationship with the objective truth of what actually happened.

One should also keep in mind that as Owen Benjamin notes, humor is often predictive. The very humor produced by the overstatement tends to come from the discomfort created by the extrapolation of the current trend, which is why his Gay Town is now at least partly real.

Translation: don’t bet on undocumented immigrants not defacing Mount Rushmore in the next ten years or California not recognizing sharia.

I’ll be discussing the caravan and the response to it with Alex Jones at 2 PM EST. You can watch the stream here.