Tag: media

How Fox can convince Donald Trump

To show up for the Republican debate on their news channel:

Donald Trump will widen a rupture between his supporters and the Republican Party establishment on Thursday when he boycotts a presidential debate in a snub to Fox News only days before the 2016 election season starts in earnest.

The billionaire front-runner for the Republican nomination will instead host his own event in Iowa during the Fox News debate, likely damaging prime time TV ratings of the most powerful media force in Republican politics.

Trump withdrew from the encounter in a spat with network anchor Megyn Kelly who he accuses of treating him unfairly.

“The ‘debate’ tonight will be a total disaster,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday morning. “Low ratings with advertisers and advertising rates dropping like a rock. I hate to see this.”

At this point, this is the only way Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch could convince Trump to show up for the Fox event:

Like. A. Boss.

Trump has Fox and O’Reilly reduced to the state of a teenage girl begging the boyfriend who just dumped her to please, please, please just consider taking her back:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday night lashed out at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in his first appearance on the network since he announced he’d boycott the next GOP debate.

He also refused to reconsider his decision to sit out the network’s Thursday night debate – the last before the Iowa caucuses in five days – and said he’d move forward with his own competing event to raise money for wounded veterans.

Speaking on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Trump continued his long-running feud with Kelly, who he has been criticizing ever since she challenged him on his past derogatory remarks about women at the first GOP debate in August.

“I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly,” Trump said. “I don’t think she’s good at what she does and I think she’s highly overrated. And frankly, she’s a moderator; I thought her question last time was ridiculous.”

Kelly is also set to moderate Thursday night’s debate on Fox News.

Trump is instead holding a rally in Des Moines at the same time as the Republican debate that he says will raise money for wounded veterans.

In the contentious interview with O’Reilly, Trump rebuffed the anchor’s attempts to convince him that he’s making a grave error by skipping the debate.

“I believe personally that you want to improve the country,” O’Reilly said. “By doing this, you miss the opportunity to convince others … that is true.

“You have in this debate format the upper hand — you have sixty seconds off the top to tell the moderator, ‘You’re a pinhead, you’re off the mark and here’s what I want to say’. By walking away from it, you lose the opportunity to persuade people you are a strong leader.”

Yeah, that’s the thing, Bill. By walking away, Donald Trump IS persuading people that he is a strong leader, one who isn’t beholden to the media. Walking away is Alpha. Supplication, especially to a woman, is Delta-Gamma.

Just the fact that Trump is willing to publicly dismiss the overrated Kelly as being “highly overrated” should be enough reason to consider voting for the man. Not even Reagan was that bold in dismissing the media or the progressive sex.

Do you doubt the narrative

As I said, it’s old school versus new school; it’s all about the quarterbacks, or perhaps, what the quarterbacks symbolize.

For Super Bowl, Focus Is on Passing, Perhaps of a Torch

There was a sense of farewell to each conversation. Manning even used the past tense when asked what he had said, answering that he told Brady and Belichick that it had been an honor to compete against them.

It was an interlude that might have summed up an epoch of N.F.L. playoff football, a period that the 39-year-old Manning is about to leave behind.

Manning’s next game, fittingly in the 50th Super Bowl, will be contested in a new pro football era, and the proof of that will be found on the opposite sideline, where his counterpart on the Carolina Panthers will be the new-age quarterback Cam Newton…. The contrasts between the quarterbacks will be the main story line.

“Fittingly.” It’s all about the narrative and the predictive programming, in the end:

“I still don’t get why he has to (be criticized). And maybe there are some people out there who are concerned with who he is, which I think is terrible. I really do.You think in this time, this day and age, it would be more about who he is as an athlete, as a person more than anything else. Hopefully we can get past those things.”

“Hopefully”, the Lacedaemonians said.

Why show when there is nothing to gain?

Mike Cernovich explains why Trump has picked a showdown with Fox over the debate:

Donald Trump isn’t going to show up to the GOP debate, and the same idiots who never saw his rise are losing their minds. As one of only two people who saw Trump’s rise and predicted it, let me explain what Trump is doing.

Would you give your business competitors millions of potential customers?

Before Donald Trump ran for office, the Republican debates were snooze fests. A few people who were bored watched them.

Because of Donald Trump the GOP debates have drawn huge crowds. The latest debate had 13.5 million viewers, a record number.

Those millions of people watch the debate for one reason – Trump.

No one cares about crusty Cruz, sweaty Rubio, or sleepy-eye Jeb Bush.

When Trump shows up, his competitors have a chance to impression millions of people who otherwise wouldn’t care about them.

Trump has built up the personal brands of parasites and losers. He’s given them enough corporate welfare.

Trump did the last debates to prove a point – that he can win them.
Trump has proven his point. He won every debate.

He has nothing to gain by giving ratings to dishonest FoxNews and to share his millions of fans with the other candidates.

I could care less about the debates. But at this point, I sincerely hope Mike is right, that Trump doesn’t show up, and the ratings tank. I have to admit, it would not have occurred to me to find an excuse to blow it off and thereby take the wind out of everyone else’s sails so effortlessly.

As Scott Adams points out, once more, all they’re talking about is Trump. Once more, the only candidate’s actions that matter are Trump’s.

Trump takes on Fox

Naturally, all of the talking heads who feed at the breasts of Mother Media will angrily denounce Trump’s decision not to play along with the enemy and declare his campaign to be self-torpedoed and dead. But it’s foolish to use conventional measures to judge the effectiveness of a distinctly non-conventional campaign:

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump abruptly announced here Tuesday that he would not participate in Thursday’s scheduled debate, escalating his off-and-on feud with Fox News Channel and throwing the GOP campaign into turmoil.

Trump’s assertion, which his campaign manager insisted was irreversible, came less than one week before the kickoff Iowa caucuses. He once again defied the conventional rules of politics, and used his power and prominence to shape the campaign agenda and conversation.

So far, Trump’s untraditional moves have only expanded his support, but his threatened boycott leaves him open to criticism that for all his tough talk he is ducking face-to-face confrontations with his opponents and scrutiny from the Fox moderators.

Given Trump’s past flirtations with boycotting Fox, many will doubt his declaration until they see the other candidates take the debate stage on Thursday night without him.

The Republican debates have become must-see television, in part because of the allure of Trump’s star power and unpredictable candidacy. But he said Tuesday that he thinks Fox and other television networks have been taking advantage of him by selling advertisements for their debates at a high premium…

The debate is scheduled to be in Des Moines on Thursday, and Trump said he would instead host a competing event in the state designed to raise money for wounded veterans.

It would be an unprecedented move if Trump withdrew from the debate at such a consequential moment on the primary calendar.

The media narrative is already stupid; the idea that this is a cowardly move is almost blitheringly out-of-touch; taking on the media directly in this way is far more bold and confrontational than simply showing up on stage again and subjecting oneself to the ridiculous posturing of the moderators.

Trump is actively breaking the power of the institutions and showing them to be paper tigers. Regardless of what his real intentions are, Trump’s high-risk, high-reward actions are marvelous theater and serve as an inspiring example. De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace….

Who but Donald Trump can win a debate by refusing to show up for it?

Lies about the Alt Right

Cathy Young blatantly lies about the etymology of the term “cuckservative”. And that’s just the start:

A few months ago, Trump supporters on the Internet started mocking his
conservative detractors with the bizarre slur “cuckservative.” The word
is an amalgam of “cuckold” and “conservative,” derived from a
pornographic genre in which a man is forced to watch while his wife has
sex with another man (who is often black, while the “cuckold” is white).
To the white nationalist alt-right, the “cuckservative” is a
conservative race traitor who does not prioritize the interests of
whites — who, most important, does not seek to restrict nonwhite
immigration.

As those who have read Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America know, the term does not derive from either pornography or race. That is a lie repeatedly bruited about by cuckservatives and others who fear the rise of the Alt Right.

This is just another attempt by fearful conservatives, who have conserved nothing, to discredit and disqualify. Their cry of “racist, anti-semite, impolite” is their hapless imitation of the SJWs’ “racist, sexist, homophobic, bigot”.

Conservatives are not our allies. They never were. They are surrender monkeys, and as such they are the subservient allies and handmaidens of the Left.

And if they are afraid of the Alt Right, just wait until they encounter the Mil Right….

Mailvox: SJWs in tech media

An anonymous coward provides an update:

I noticed today that someone linked to you on the LWN.net news site, and was banned.  LWN is one of the most respected Linux news websites.  However, the owner is a thoroughly SJW-amenable authority.  There is no benefit to posting there.  The mere use of the phrase SJW there can get you blocked.  Corbet (the owner) says, in all the long history of the site, this is the first time he’s drawn a line in the sand.  He is now deleting comments that discuss or refer to the SJW issue.

The VFM look like they’re doing good work on slashdot, the second most popular Linux site.  Huzzah!

Actually, this is good news as well as an indication of another opportunity. First, since LWN is already converged, that means it is vulnerable to replacement. Something to consider as the cultural war in tech gets hotter.

Second, the fact that the SJW who runs LWN is so concerned about any mention of SJW entryism and convergence that he refuses to permit its discussion, despite it being one of the most important issues in technology at the moment, means that he knows his SJW allies cannot succeed if their efforts are exposed.

National Review risks non-profit status

Justin Raimondo observes that Rich Lowry appears to have committed a serious legal blunder, as well as the obvious political one, with the “Stop Trump” issue:

The publication of a special “Stop Trump” issue of National Review was heralded in a blaze of publicity. Editor Rich Lowry appeared on Fox News and was interviewed by Trump nemesis Megyn Kelly, where he proceeded to denounce The Donald as a threat to the intellectual integrity of the conservative movement….

All well and good: there are plenty of reasons for principled conservatives (and libertarians) to oppose Trump. However, there’s one big problem with this well-publicized blast at The Donald.

In March of last year, Politico reported that National Review was becoming a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, which would enable it to solicit tax-deductible donations: “Since its launch, the magazine has operated as a not-for-profit business, even as it came to rely on more and more donations in recent years. Starting next month, it will become a nonprofit organization, which will make it exempt from federal taxes. National Review also plans to merge with the nonprofit National Review Institute, its sister organization, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.”

Rich Lowry averred that the shift would be good for the magazine, which was fighting a costly lawsuit and had never been profitable anyway. “We’re a mission and a cause, not a profit-making business,” he told Politico. “The advantage of the move is that all the generous people who give us their support every year will now be able to give tax-deductible contributions, and that we will be able to do more fundraising, in keeping with our goal to keep growing in the years ahead.’”

This anti-Trump issue of National Review is, in effect, a campaign pamphlet directed against a political candidate—indeed, the cover proclaims “Against Trump”—and, as such, is in clear violation of IRS statutes regulating nonprofit organizations.

The regulations are quite explicit that nonprofit organizations must “not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

I’m sorry, I have no cogent analysis to offer; I’m not even sure what the article said. I found it hard to pay attention after cracking up when I got to the part about “the intellectual integrity of the conservative movement.”

That’s a good one!

A mysterious change

The most interesting thing is the way that the massive global pro-immigration media blitz of last summer, complete with PICTURES OF DEAD CHILDREN only managed to reduce the German anti-immigration position by three percentage points. Clearly the clueless moderates are more susceptible, as support for immigration briefly jumped six points. Of course, you should never put much credence in polls.

We don’t need to speculate about whether pollsters manipulated their findings, because the pollsters have admitted it themselves. Survation announced the morning after the result that they had decided not to publish their own “final” poll of the campaign because – in the words of company CEO Damian Lyons Lowe – “the results seemed so “out of line” with all the polling conducted by ourselves and our peers – what poll commentators would term an “outlier” – that I “chickened out” of publishing the figures.

The social media war

Mike Cernovich puts what is already happening on Goodreads and Twitter and Facebook into perspective:

Until recently journalists loved social media, social media lined their pockets:

  •     Journalist writes a story.
  •     Readers share and discuss the story.
  •     Websites gets more pages views and journalists set the agenda.

Social media was great until a mindset shift happened.

Readers became writers. Readers began setting the agenda. Social media is the new media. Everyone in media knows this, and everyone is terrified.

This is about control of the information flow. It’s not possible to indoctrinate and propagandize when there is a sufficiently strong countercurrent, and the Alt Right is an increasingly powerful countercurrent. That’s why they are desperate to mute us.

The fight for social media is the fight for democracy.

Most people believe social media is a scrap book for your life, and if Zuckerberg has his way, that’s what Facebook will be for. The rubes and slobs can share memes, but if you share any thoughts that threaten the political establishment, you’re finished.

If Jack Dorsey has his way, the mainstream media will regain its power as gate keepers of information.

The rapefugee crisis will not be reported. The brutal beatings of women will be swept under the rug. Presidential elections will involve two sides of the same globalist coin.

Keep fighting back.

That’s what we’re discussing tonight. There is only ONE way to ensure that they can’t turn off our microphones, and that is to build our own. We need our own information flow, we can’t expect to be permitted to borrow the other side’s indefinitely.

They often talk a techno-libertarian game and proclaim their channels are for everyone, but their actions have repeatedly belied their words. It’s not a coincidence that it is always the voices on the right that are silenced and the memes of the right that are banned while the left is permitted to violate the so-called rules at will.