Tag: media

Ben Shapiro is glad you hate him

Or at least he would like you to think so. After all, he must maintain his pose as a brave conservative culture warrior, or people might figure out that he’s a fraud.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
My readers really hate @benshapiro.

“Chickenhawk does not even BEGIN to describe this supercilious neo-con asshole.”


Ben Shapiro ‏@benshapiro
Good.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
You’ve always been a fraud, Ben. I still have your emails to me when you were full of self-doubt about being a little parrot.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
I told you to strike out and become your own man. Instead, you chickenhawked and went media whore. It was a foolish call.

Supreme Dark Lord@voxday
Your problem is that you’re a puppet and you know it. Here’s the thing. So do we.

What many of you probably don’t know is that Ben and I used to be colleagues of a sort at WND. My columns were much more popular, as I was reliably the number three most-read, behind Ann Coulter and Pat Buchanan. Ben’s readership was never more than about one-tenth of mine, but he was a smart little kid and did a good job of parroting the usual Republican boilerplate.

We corresponded a few times and were on friendly, if distant, terms. I mean, what do you talk about with a little kid whose idea of a good time is launching obvious rhetorical attacks at liberals? As he matured, he gradually began to question the ideas he was parroting, and reached the point where he considered quitting the media game.

I’ll have to dig out the emails to figure out exactly what I told him, but if I recall correctly, I encouraged him to resist the temptation to become a media whore. I understood the allure, as it was a poisoned apple that was also offered to me, but perhaps it was easier for me to turn it down since I was living in Europe and already established in the game development world.

Ben, unfortunately, couldn’t resist the apple, or the easy way forward, writing whatever his backers told him to write. I haven’t read him much since he wrote those dreadful, chickenshit columns in 2005, so I don’t know how much of what he writes he genuinely believes now and how much he is still parroting. Of course, the human mind being the incredible rationalizing machine that it is, it’s entirely possible that he has come to believe what he’s been told to say.

What I found most amusing is the way that the Littlest Chickenhawk’s supporters alternate between crowing about what a formidable debater he is, and trying to excuse the way he ran away from a proposed debate on free trade with me.

Gone Fishing
LOL! All these Ben haters. You guys wouldn’t stand a chance in hell vs him in a debate on social issues. #CryMeAriver

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
Shapiro kicks the ass of real decision makers in this country in debates. He does with facts not feelings.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
I will debate Ben on any topic. He’s already run away from me on a proposed free trade debate.

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
 ????! Yeah, he totally ran away from you. I mean, you’re the SUPREME DARK LORD! There’s no way he could beat you, right?

 Valerie ‏@vpak77
yes, you two are definitely not in the same league. That is true.

ryedog™
Totally, it’d be a complete waste of Ben’s time.

Gone Fishing ‏@jgfleet661
He has to run. He’s busy debating important people on major news networks all over the country. #PuttingInWork

Some things never change.

The Littlest Chickenhawk clucks again

This time, he’s foolishly taking aim at Mike Cernovich.

The cucks are getting nervous. Their gravy train is rapidly coming to an end, because no one believes anything they say anymore. And the Alt Right is far more interesting, because we actually deal in societal reality, not cultural programming.

Look, it’s a matter of public record that I had (((Ben Shapiro)))’s number back in 2005. He’s not pro-American, he’s not a nationalist, he’s just another nominal Jewish “conservative” who is a professional member of the mainstream media’s Potemkin opposition and more devoted to fighting racism than big government.

And he’s a chickenhawk who went to law school instead of serving in the US military after declaring that the need for sacrifices in “the great battle of our time”.

Most of us realize that during wartime, sacrifices must be made … But taking such a stand requires common sense and the knowledge that we are in the midst of the great battle of our time.
– Benjamin Shapiro, WorldNetDaily, July 28, 2005

As for the idea that a cable network can grant anyone credibility or legitimacy, well, how seriously do you take any of their talking heads? How much legitimacy does the Littlest Chickenhawk have Meanwhile, he cries out in emotional pain as he rhetorically strikes out at the #AltRight.

I’ve experienced more pure, unadulterated anti-Semitism since coming out against Trump’s candidacy than at any other time in my political career. Trump supporters have threatened me and other Jews who hold my viewpoint. They’ve blown up my e-mail inbox with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They greeted the birth of my second child by calling for me, my wife, and two children to be thrown into a gas chamber…. Why are the droogs of the alt-right desperate for sexual congress with The Combover?

A much better question is this: why do you prefer the gas chamber for you, your wife, and your two children to Israel, Ben?

Ben, you publicly demanded the sacrifice of young American lives to your interests, a sacrifice you were unwilling to make yourself. So, why should Americans hesitate to sacrifice the lives of you, your wife, and your two children if they happen to believe it serves their interests?

An admission by urgent action

The Washington Post rushes – and I mean RUSHES – to try to defuse the troubling issue of Hillary Clinton’s increasingly obvious health problems:

The first week of August was a rough one for Donald Trump’s campaign; by coincidence, it was also a busy one for Trump supporters, who see a media coverup protecting Hillary Clinton. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign released a Web ad that mocked Clinton’s admission that she “short-circuited” by giving a misleading answer about the investigation into her emails.

“She took a short-circuit in the brain,” Trump said at a Saturday night rally. “She’s got problems. Honestly, I don’t think she’s all there.”

At the same time, the Drudge Report, WorldNetDaily and a small army of would-be Twitter sleuths tried to build the case that the Democratic nominee for president has serious health issues and only they had noticed. Clinton’s age and health had been subject to parody by some conservative media, but the new speculation was completely serious.

None of the evidence, often shared (or sent to reporters) with the hashtag #HillarysHealth, held up. In every case, a Clinton moment that had been captured by the media was reinterpreted and wrenched out of context….

Indeed, for other websites critical of Clinton, the “stairs” photo was just one part of a #HillarysHealth mosaic. It gave WorldNetDaily a hook to resurrect “a July 21 video posted on YouTube [which] shows Clinton’s head suddenly turning and shaking vigorously for several seconds.” That video, titled “Hillary Clinton has seizure/convulsions – tries to play it off making fun of seizures,” was also robbed of its context. Two clips of Clinton bobbing her head had been looped and slowed down, as ominous music and voice-overs played behind them — a combination that helped the clip score 1.4 million views.

The clip wasn’t from July 21, and (as the scrum of media should have indicated) it wasn’t rescued from pro-Clinton censors. It was from June 10, when Clinton, fresh off a series of wins that effectively locked up the Democratic nomination, held a few events ahead of the District of Columbia’s primary. Beat reporters followed Clinton to a coffee shop in the Shaw neighborhood; CNN’s Dan Merica, to her left, asked her about the breaking news of President Obama’s official endorsement. Then, to her right, the Associated Press’s Lisa Lerer asked a question about Elizabeth Warren, whom Clinton had met with as vice presidential speculation swirled.

The reporters, who had covered Clinton for a year, interpreted her exaggerated head-bobbing as a joke at how she’d been suddenly surrounded — and as a successful attempt at ending the scrum. It did not occur to them that it would become seen as evidence of a “seizure,” as people suffering from seizures do not typically laugh and continue to hold cups of coffee.

In WorldNetDaily’s coverage, the evidence that Clinton’s bobble-head moment resembled a seizure is that bloggers said it did. At InfoWars, the conspiracy news site founded by Alex Jones, the investor Martin Shkreli explained that Clinton was revealing a “cardinal symptom of Parkinson’s disease.”

Even when Clinton remained controlled, steady and unsmiling, #HillarysHealth sleuths were ready. Mike Cernovich, a self-help author best known as the attorney for a central figure in the “Gamergate” saga, seized on the speculation about Clinton to ask if Clinton traveled with a private doctor. “Remember when you thought famous people like Michael Jackson and Elvis had good medical care?” he asked. “What’s Clinton on?”

Cernovich’s speculation started with an incident from last week, when Clinton was campaigning in Las Vegas. Mid-speech, she paused and narrowed her eyes to look at protesters. Secret Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge Todd Madison rushed to her side, telling her that the situation was under control, and that she could keep talking.

And now we have a name: Secret Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge Todd Madison. It should be interesting to see how long he’s been with the Secret Service and learn what his medical qualifications are.

What we’re seeing this year is the mainstream media finally taking off the mask and the rise of an alternative media that is going to replace them, at least in part. The mainstream media is no longer able to completely control the narrative, as the alternative media is now driving it.

Remember, the mainstream media is known to have colluded to hide the debilitating health issues of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Kennedy. There is little doubt that they are doing the same thing for Hillary Clinton now.

UPDATE: SJWs always lie and so does the mainstream media. I suspected the “Todd Madison” angle was a point of vulnerability for the cover-up, and, sure enough, The Ralph Retort is on it.

Does anyone honestly think that the Washington Post would actually publish the real name of a Secret Service agent, who has been known to be extremely close to Hillary, at almost all times she’s in public? And because we know that Secret Service often use fake names, it just doesn’t make sense for the WaPo to have endangered the life of Hillary by giving ISIS the full name of her closest and most trusted personnel — it’s far more likely that the guys name is not Todd Madison, at all.

So what might his real name be? The Conservative Tree house thinks they may have found the true identity of Clinton’s handler, and located his medical practice.

Allegedly, his name is Dr. Oladotun Okunola, and he is a neurologist.

The cost of SJW convergence

ESPN is paying it, having lost 4 million subscribers and $350 million in the last year:

In the past five years ESPN has lost 11,346,000 subscribers according to Nielsen data.

If you combine that with ESPN2 and ESPNU subscriber losses this means that ESPN has lost over a billion dollars in cable and satellite revenue just in the past five years, an average of $200 million each year. That total of a billion dollars hits ESPN in the pocketbook not just on a yearly basis, but for every year going forward.

It’s gone forever.

That’s not just bad, this is downright cataclysmic.

And it’s getting worse.

In the past year ESPN lost 4.159 million subscribers, that’s another $350 million in lost revenue across the ESPN family of networks.

Now, tell me again how all the cultural programming and SJWfication and ideological propaganda in the entertainment media and the advertising industry is just business. Tell me again how it’s not driven by ideological fanatics, but hard-nosed businessmen just ruthlessly chasing a buck the best way they know how.

And then I’ll explain to you, very slowly and in words of not more than five syllables, that those hard-nosed, buck-chasing “businessmen” are observably losing literal billions as they continue to tear away at the foundations of Western Civilization: Christianity, the family, the rule of law, and the white race in the name of Tolerance, Equality, Progress, Inclusiveness, and Diversity.

Mike Cernovich’s best advice

Mike Cernovich explains how to build up your brand.

As I’ve become one of the 10 most influential voices this election season, media figures look on with jealousy. That’s a scarcity mindset. My own success does not preclude anyone else from being successful. (Vox Day gets far more blog traffic than I do. Stefan Molyneux has a far larger podcast. Their success does not detract from mine.)

Here is how you can become your own Mike Cernovich, Inc.


Focus on your fans/readers. End the pundit circle jerk.

How often do you see me butt kissing anyone on Twitter? I don’t kiss up to pundits with hopes they will write about me. There are many reasons for this, some personal and some practical.

I dislike dishonest people, and pundits are frauds. Pretending to like vile people for a reach-around is how you destroy your soul. I also ignore them because it’s bad for business.

Imagine a pundit writes about me in an article. (That’s not hard to imagine. There are hundreds of articles about me. Everyone from Gawker to Politifact has tried to take me down, with the end result being us laughing in their faces.)

No one reads an article about me and buys my book. Throw-away quotes are of no value to me. Even a byline on a big site like the Hoaxington Post is garbage. How do I know this? Book sales data tells the truth….

If you want to build your own brand, here’s some advice:

Talk to “nobodies” who @ tweet you.

I don’t view anyone as a nobody, because we are all human and there’s no reason to think highly of yourself, and also because there are a lot of nobodies who are stealth somebodies. (You never know who you’re talking to.)

Write for readers, not editors and pundits.


Who cares if your work is cited by some dork? Being cited by Vox* or Gawker or BuzzFeed won’t build your brand up. Writing for readers will.

I can attest that since I met Cernovich last August, and since I began putting his advice about looking to help others into action, both the blog readerships and the Twitter following have increased dramatically. More importantly, I learned how important it was to allow others to get involved, to volunteer, and to help themselves by helping me, which has had a profound effect on Castalia, DevGame, Big Fork, and [REDACTED], among other things.

It was perfect synchronicity that I was interrupted by a phone call from one of my more important allies as I was posting this, as he was calling to discuss how Castalia can be of assistance to one of his projects, which assistance we are quite happy to provide. As per Cernovich, what we decided may turn out to be to Castalia’s advantage down the road, but if so, that’s just a bonus. Our only serious goal is to help an ally meet his objective.

What goes around comes around, and in ways one cannot reasonably anticipate. So, always actively look for ways to help your friends, your allies, and your supporters. Don’t be threatened by their success, celebrate it and cheer them on! We can’t all be number one in everything, but we can all be winners.

*In case it isn’t obvious, he means Vox the lame SJW site, not me.

Mailvox: it’s just the media narrative

MJ is suspicious about the so-called “Trump Implosion” and rightfully so:

With all of the talk I’ve been seeing over the past week in regards to the mainstream news of Trump “imploding”, is it just me, or are the various factions of the diminishing hordes of establishment supporters getting more and more outlandish in their barbs against the campaign? How much longer will these types continue to deny the inevitable truth before they have to pivot to attempt to save their ignorant asses?

To wit:

– Yes, Trump has a concern about taking things personally. I see that more as a positive than a negative. The current occupant of the Office has too much of an “I don’t give a damn” attitude, and I think that’s part of the issue we’re running into in terms of leadership.

– The whole Khan issue. The reason it hasn’t gone away isn’t because Trump is keeping on it, it’s that the establishment handlers keep thrusting Khan back out into the spotlight to force Trump to respond. I heard a piece of an interview between Khan and Anderson Cooper from the other day, and it was clear to me that the man had no clue what he was talking about in terms of his constitutional claims. I literally felt dumber after hearing the man speak, it was that bad. The only reason Khan is even remotely relevant is that his son died in action during OIF, and that was an action supported by the D nominee, not Trump. I personally find it repulsive that they would use that status for such actions (it’s not surprising to me, however).

– The enthusiasm gap. Last weekend, there was supposedly a big bus trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio for the D ticket. It was so huge that they had to pay people to show up in western PA, and they ended up canceling the appearance in Cleveland, both cases due to lack of interest. Meanwhile, Trump and his campaign were upset that fire marshals were capping entry to venues far below the posted capacity limits. And where he’s not being capped, they’re turning people away. It’s night and day in terms of what is being reported by the establishment versus what the ground truth is.

I’m registered as unaffiliated where I live. I chose to be unaffiliated because the two-party system here is horribly, irrevocably broken. I understand that a lot of this traffic is meant for me to influence me into supporting the D nominee. I hate to say it, but I’m rather insulted by this attitude and approach. It’s not working. There’s nothing there for the D nominee to offer, and the choice of running mate is also a personal affront to me as an active, practicing Roman Catholic.

I will be honest, I’m not 100% behind Trump, but it’s not for any reason from the establishment. There is a legitimate unknown with him, and that’s probably due more to my healthy skepticism of someone who is naturally outside the overall process. This is another of those once in a generation occurrences where the truth is so obvious that one would have to be a complete idiot to ignore it.

The conclusion I’m running into is this: Trump is the catalyst for a completely new paradigm in both American and international politics, something that we sort of started to see with the Brexit vote, even though that was focused on the UK. The opportunity his election presents is huge in terms of how things can at least attempt to rectify themselves, and that’s what gives me hope.

I agree with the consensus that the Trumpslide is coming, especially since there’s still 95 days of campaigning to go, including 3 debates.

My take: everyone needs to relax about the “Trump implosion” and the purported Republican revolt. The media is full of SJWs. And what do SJWs do? Exactly!

This is what a full-fledged feeding frenzy looks like.

With Donald Trump facing the roughest stretch of his candidacy, the media have moved from questioning his sanity to depicting a campaign in disarray and top Republicans still wondering whether they can dump the nominee.

That won’t happen, of course, but it’s an indication of the toxic nature of the coverage and the flood of anti-Trump leaks now washing across the media landscape.

There’s a natural piling-on effect when campaigns go off the rails: The polls dip, the critics step up their rhetoric, staffers start pointing fingers, and the press keeps the vicious cycle going.

But I’ve never seen anything like this.

Things reached the point yesterday morning that CNBC’s John Harwood tweeted: “Longtime ally of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager: ‘Manafort not challenging Trump anymore. Mailing it in. Staff suicidal.'”

And there was this from CNN: “A source tells @DanaBashCNN that some Trump campaign staff are frustrated w/ candidate lately, ‘feel like they are wasting their time.’”

I am told by knowledgeable campaign sources that Manafort is not going anywhere and believes that Trump will be getting back on message.

I am further told that reports of a planned “intervention” with the candidate, led by Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, are false.

And the sources also say that, contrary to media reports, party chairman Reince Priebus is not furious with Trump, though he is disappointed with the nominee’s refusal to endorse Paul Ryan.

The Khan/Implosion narrative nothing more than the Democratic hasbara that we’ve been seeing on this blog and others, writ large. As for the polls, I remind you of my previous assessment: they don’t mean ANYTHING until 30 days after the end of the second convention.

If there is no discernible Trump trend by then, it MIGHT be time to start considering the possibility of a Hillary win. In the meantime, pay no attention to the media’s attempt to establish a false narrative. Remember, they are trying to shape reality, they are not honestly reporting it.

Let’s look at this rationally. If the media was genuinely convinced that Hillary Clinton was going to win, do you really think they would engage in this sort of mass narrative-shaping instead of triumphantly slinging insults at Republicans while victory-dancing?

As to how long it will be before they pivot, I would say one week after the polls start showing Trump within striking distance of Hillary again. Which should be in about one month.

UPDATE: from the comments: “Ricky Vaughn 99 has suggested for months that it all starts with one push from Labor Day. He has said Trump does pushes and retreats in waves.”

I have noticed this too. Remember there were similar lulls around the time Michelle Fields was raped, murdered, and dismembered at a Trump rally and again after the Ohio loss cost Trump the Republican nomination.

As an experienced developer, Trump understands that you can’t mindlessly push all the time. You need to take the time to reload, gather your strength, and recover before launching another offensive. I assumed that’s what he’s been doing since the end of the Republican nomination.

An intellectual empire sans clothes

Steve Sailer explains why Donald Trump is simultaneously accused of stupidity due to his verbal simplicity even as he punctures the absurd pieties of the media Narrative:

Seven hundred years ago an English friar named William of Ockham gave his name to the traditional Western prejudice that the simplest feasible explanation is most likely to be true.

Six and a half centuries later we went to the moon.

Lately, however, we haven’t really felt all that inclined to figure out how the world works. It’s more important to demonstrate our mastery of socially preferred locutions.

For example, one pressing public-policy question of the day is: What are the main causes of Muslim terrorism? Now, an Ockhamite might surmise that one useful answer is:

Muslims.

But the respectable answer in 2016 isn’t supposed to be anything that blunt. In particular, any acceptable explanation must include the six-syllable word “Islamophobia.”

Logically, Islamophobia sounds like it would be an effect of Islamic terrorism rather than a cause.

But logic hasn’t been the goal in 21st-century America. Status is. Repeating the word “Islamophobia” demonstrates that you have been to college, or at least that you watch talking heads on TV who have been to college.

And that’s what really counts.

In summary, Trump has been able to galvanize American politics by telling so many unfashionable truths because the reigning dogmas of our day are smart in form yet stupid in content.

It’s more than a bit ironic that someone so famous for exaggerating should prove to be more fundamentally truthful than all the fact-checkers and media pedants who scrupulously report that which is technically accurate in order to mislead and deceive.

But no nation is ever likely to suicide itself, as the American nation has done, without being told, and accepting, many lies.

We live in a society that is every bit as dishonest with itself as the Soviet Union ever was. The USA is now the Evil Empire, and like its predecessor, it will collapse in disarray due to the increasing weight of those lies.

The content censors

Instagram shuts down street artist’s account:

There is an interesting free speech controversy in Melbourne and on the Internet. Melbourne street artist, Lushsux, has not only been told by a city council to remove a parody mural of Hillary Clinton but his Instagram account has been shut down. Once again, the concern is that there remains a overt liberal bias in the sanctioning of comments or images on the Internet.

Lushsux had more than 100,000 Instagram followers who enjoy his paintings and images — work that extends almost two decades. He noted that “It’s fine to go on and do a mural on Trump, but when I go and do one on Hillary Clinton, my account is gone.”

Notably, there are plenty of suggestive murals splashed across Melbourne’s street-scape, including murals featuring Republican nominee Donald Trump and a topless Melania Trump emblazoned with the Mrs Clinton’s campaign catchphrase, “I’m With Her.”

You know, I didn’t sweat it when Goodreads banned me and a few others over being Rabid Puppies. And while Milo didn’t deserve to get banned from Twitter, it wasn’t exactly shocking considering the way he’d been actively baiting them. But things are really starting to get very creepy and 1984 fast.

The SJW left controls the social media high ground and they are making no bones about their complete willingness to abuse their position in order to further their political agenda. Keep that in mind once the alternatives begin to present themselves.

Speaking of social media censors, Facebook has suspended Michael Savage:

Facebook has temporarily blocked talk-radio host Michael Savage from posting stories to his page after he put up a link to a story about a Muslim migrant killing a pregnant woman in Germany.

A message from the social media giant on Savage’s page said: “You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked from using this feature.”

The message then refers the user to Facebook’s “Community Standards” and states the block will be active for 21 hours.