Category Archives: Critique

The TV Tarts’ Reign of Terror

Critique, Culture, Donald Trump, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, Media

NEW COLUMN is “The TV Tarts’ Reign of Terror.” It’s exclusive to The Agonist.

Excerpt:

The particular CNN segment I was watching concerned Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. It was meant to help terminate the controversial anchor’s career. I recognized the sourpuss, dressed in marigold yellow, who was presiding over the seek-and-destroy mission, targeting the ultra-conservative Mr. Carlson. She was no other than Poppy Harlow.

“TV’s empaneled witches and their housebroken, domesticated boys are guided more by the spirit of Madame Defarge than by Lady Justice.”

It transpires that years back, Carlson had routinely called into a Howard-Stern-like shock-jock radio show and made naughty comments, some about women. Women were “extremely primitive,” he had quipped. Yet to watch the countless, indistinguishable, ruthless, atavistic women empaneled on CNN, MSNBC, even Fox News—one cannot but agree as to the nature and caliber of the women privileged and elevated in our democracy, and by mass society, in general.

They are certainly not women with the intellect and wit of Margot Asquith—countess of Oxford, author and socialite (1864-1945). Would that women like Mrs. Asquith were permitted to put lesser “ladies” like CNN’s Ms. Harlow in their proper place!

When asked by American actress Jean Harlow how she pronounces her first name, Margot Asquith shot back, “The ‘t’ is silent, as in Harlow.” Naturally, you’d have to have a facility with the English language to know what a “harlot” is. You’d certainly need an education, as opposed to a degree, to recognize the next character referenced.

TV’s empaneled witches and their housebroken, domesticated boys are guided more by the spirit of Madame Defarge than by Lady Justice. If parents saw to it that children got an education, not merely a degree, the brats would know who Madam Defarge was. But our uneducated ignoramuses no longer seek out the greatest literature ever. This is because most of the best books were penned by the pale, patriarchal penile people. Given this self-inflicted ignorance, few younger readers will know this most loathsome of literary icons, from “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens…

… READ THE REST.  “The TV Tarts’ Reign of Terror” is on The Agonist.

 

 

UPDATED (4/7/019): How To Lose To The Left On Immigration

Argument, Critique, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

If Tucker Carlson’s producers were serious about immigration—they would not continue to give such a formidable platform to Enrique Acevedo. Enough with the Left’s facile case for eradicating America. By definition, that position lacks seriousness.

Patience with puerile nonsense is not a serious meta-perspective.

To answer the contention that TV hosts “have to show the opposing view”—Yes and no. There comes a time when you have to quit congratulating yourself sanctimoniously on your perfect impartiality. “Jolly good old chap. Don’t forget, when your ship is sinking, the band must play on. And the conductor must conduct.”

There comes a time to fight evil with the best of minds. Acevedo is nothing but a pretty face.

Puhleeze. Give me a break.

UPDATE (4/7/019): Blue Texas

Going, going, gone! Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is a 28-year-old immigrant; a progressive, whose victory in November put her in charge of governing Texas’ most populous county.

UPDATET (4/2/019): NEW COLUMN: TV Tarts: Cringe Factor Ad Infinitum (Part 2)

Critique, Culture, Feminism, Gender, Ilana Mercer, Media

NEW COLUMN is “TV Tarts: Cringe Factor Ad Infinitum (Part 2).” It’s on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Excerpt:

It takes a foreign correspondent planted amid our White House Press Corps to highlight the latter’s dysfunction. During a presser with “Trump of the Tropics”—Brazil’s visiting prime minister, Jair Bolsonaro—a Brazilian lass distinguished herself by focusing exclusively on … hefty matters. When this foreign correspondent asked President Trump about the “OECD,” the furrows on the sloping brows who make up the American press scrum deepened.

To these presstitutes, it mattered not whether America was going to put in a good word for Brazil at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, when there was one overriding, life-or-death matter to tackle:

Trump’s irredeemable, unrelenting, absolute awfulness, which not even an exoneration by the sainted Mr. Mueller has ameliorated.

Yes, Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia in the 2016 election. This has altered not a bit the hyperventilating done by the harridans on the ubiquitous television panels.

Let me be clear. When I allude to the women of TV, I include those with the Y Chromosome.

However, other than a few “men”—Don Lemon and his CNN sideshow, Chris Cuomo, come to mind—the housebroken boys on the typical TV panel are tamer than the tarts. Some of the “men” might even be pretending to be temperamentally unhinged in order to hook-up with good-looking girls in the Green Room.

Brooke Baldwin of CNN and Stephanie Ruhle of MSNBC continue to spit out Trump news in CAPS, just so you know HOW EACH ONE FEELS DEEP DOWN INSIDE, AND WHO ARE THE ANGELS AND THE DEMONS IN THE STORY. (Donald and his Deplorables are never angels, if you get the drift.)

Not coincidentally, the asphyxiating hysteria matches the vapid vocabulary. TV’s women rob the English language blind, deploying breathy figures of speech to fit a simpleton’s febrile, emotionally overwrought state-of-mind: “Unbelievable, incredibly embarrassing, amazing, OMG!”

This piss-poor, teenybopper English comes with sound effects. TV’s tarts all speak in insufferable, grating, staccato, tart tones. At least, that’s how I’ve always described the gravelly voice of the tele-ditz. Believe it or not, such a depiction is no longer politically proper. The voices from hell have been dignified. Explains the Economist,

Two vocal features are associated with young women: vocal fry and uptalk. Uptalk, as the name suggests, is the rising intonation that makes statements sound like questions? And vocal fry—often said to be typical of Kim Kardashian, an American celebrity—happens at the ends of words and phrases when a speaker’s vocal chords relax, giving the voice a kind of creaky quality.

Mandatory elocution lessons might ease the viewer’s pain.

Bad English and bad thinking are intertwined. By logical extension, the “ladies” resort reflexively to ad hominen attack. If Trump expresses an opinion, it’s not because he sincerely thinks it or believes it, but because he’s narcissistic, isn’t nice, makes them sad.

As befits the pedestrian minds described, our pig-ignorant panelists (with apologies to pigs) are incapable of grasping the role of government.

TV’s tele-tarts focus not on the role of government, but on the tone of government. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “TV Tarts: Cringe Factor Ad Infinitum (Part 2),” is on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Previously: “The TV Tarts’ Reign Of Terror, Part 1.”

LETTERS:

Is MERCER a man?

I read both ‘Tart’ articles and assumed a man wrote them,” writes an Unz Review reader: “It did not occur to me that a woman would write so cogently, albeit negatively, about other women.”

This is not an uncommon reaction to what my friend, Dr. Chris Sciabarra, called “muscular writing.” See Raves and Reviews.

Writes Blenda Richter:

Next time don’t hold anything back and let it go, Mercer. Great column. I was happy to see the insufferable Marie Harf (‘barf’ lol!) and the irrational Jessica Tarlov lead your long list. Invective and caustic wit at its best. A modern Mencken. “Bomb China with American bimbos.

Related: “MERCER’S Like A Man …”

Writes Kerry Crowel: “That’s an insult, the modern man doesn’t have near the guts that you do Ilana.”

UPDATE (4/2/019):

NEW COLUMN: Lara Logan: ‘Conservative’ Media’s Latest Blond Ambition

Celebrity, Conservatism, Critique, Gender, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

NEW COLUMN is “Lara Logan: ‘Conservative’ Media’s Latest Blond Ambition.” It’s currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

In 2018, Lara Logan left her perch as foreign correspondent for CBS’s “highest-rated, most profitable and best-known program, ‘60 Minutes.’”

She is currently doing the rounds, assuaging “conservative” media’s appetite for celebrity. The latter have a Uriah-Heep like propensity to fawn over swamp-based, defecting, big-name media celebs.

It’s as though Logan is job hunting, on a blond-ambition tour—for she certainly has no news to impart other than a few banal catchphrases. Logan has “revealed,” first to Breitbart podcaster Mike Ritland, that—OMG! —the media are “mostly liberal.”

Yes, Logan has been pontificating about the tritest of truths: the media are liberal.

Ever in search of defecting celebrities around whom to create buzz, the pack dogs of “conservative” media picked up Logan’s scent and gave chase. Mission accomplished.

In a lovey-dovey, public tête-à-tête, Fox News’ Sean Hannity hinted to his higherups at Fox that they should hire Logan. One wishes they’d do this self-congratulatory cable-news porn behind closed doors. Like we don’t already suffer an abundance of Fake News, No-News and salacious news.

Most remarkable was how quick cons were to decorate Logan with a journalistic purple heart for stating-the-obvious-while-filthy-rich—“a hero, she’s committing professional suicide” went their hyperbole.

Again: Logan left CBS in 2018. She always ran with the intellectual herd. It’s now time to reinvent herself after, likely, blowing up one too many roads.

Is it not obvious that Logan is hoping to fill Megyn Kelly’s stilettoes at Fox News? For there is no way in which she could aspire to emulate old-school journalists like Sharyl Attkisson and Sarah Carter for whom Logan offered plaudits on “Hannity.”

Indeed, it would appear that Logan’s blond-ambition tour is to make herself over in the image of women reporters who’ve always embodied a conservative ethos by doing their work with great refinement. For Attkisson and Carter, it’s about the story; not the cleavage.

Not so with Logan, whose career has been marred by a showy exhibitionism as good as Kelly’s—except that Logan is far and away the less brainy of the two celebrity journalists and the more scandal prone (not that scandal would deter “conservatives,” who’ve practically capitulated to the elastic moral standards of the liberals).

In 2008, the former swimwear model made headlines for her role as … “home-wrecker.” Logan had become embroiled in an affair with a married man, while carrying on simultaneously with talented war correspondent Michael Ware (“just a one-night stand”). Her CBS  employers knew the drill: They relocated their wayward correspondent from Baghdad to Washington.

As implied, “the drill” had been rehearsed …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “Lara Logan: ‘Conservative’ Media’s Latest Blond Ambition,” is currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

UPDATE (2/22):

About the Lara Logan expose, Bill Meyer, brilliant radio man out of Oregon, commented at WND (scroll down): "Ilana, THIS…

Posted by Ilana Mercer on Friday, February 22, 2019