Category Archives: Journalism

UPDATED: Rotten Journalism On Fox News About Ugly Americans Abroad

America, Crime, Ethics, Etiquette, Journalism, Sport

The TV had been on for an hour, and Fox News journalist Martha McCullum had yet to recount the “The Five Ws” of journalism vis-a-vis the case of “American swimmer Ryan Lochte being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro.”

What happened?
Who did that?
When did it take place?
Where did it take place?
Why did that happen?

Then McCullum, (still infinitely superior to the put-upon Gretchen Carlson) and her Fox New friends, proceeded to make light of the alleged behavior engaged in by US athletes while representing their country abroad, at the Olympic games in Rio.

Boys will be boys was the angle. At 32, Lochte is considered a boy.

How libertine.

The alleged facts via the AP:

A Brazilian police official told The Associated Press that American swimmer Ryan Lochte fabricated a story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro.

The official, who has direct knowledge of the investigation, spoke on the condition of anonymity Thursday because he was not authorized to speak about an ongoing probe.

He said that around 6 a.m. on Sunday, Lochte, along with fellow swimmers Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, stopped at a gas station in Barra da Tijuca, a suburb of Rio where many Olympic venues are located. One of the swimmers tried but failed to open the door of an outside bathroom.

A few of the swimmers then pushed on the door and broke it. A security guard appeared and confronted them, the official said.

The official says the guard was armed with a pistol, but he never took it out or pointed it at the swimmers.

According to the official, the gas station manager then arrived. Using a customer to translate, the manager asked the swimmers to pay for the broken door. After a discussion, they did pay him an unknown amount of money and then left.

The official says that swimmers Conger and Bentz, who were pulled off a plane going back to the United States late Wednesday, told police that the robbery story had been fabricated.

Lochte first lied about the robbery to his mother, Ileana Lochte, who spoke with reporters, the police official said. That led to news coverage of the incident and prompted police attention. …

UPDATE (8/18): The New York Post catches up with me:

Ryan Lochte open his mouth. And when you hear what comes tumbling out, it all makes perfect sense. … That’s the worst part of what Lochte and his stable of stumble-bumbling swimmer pals have done the past few days, now that it’s apparent that whatever might have happened to them late one night — actually, early one morning — in Rio, it wasn’t exactly the way Lochte described it the first time around. In fact, it seems apparent that Lochte and his cohorts in chaos — Jack Conger, Gunnar Bentz and Jimmy Feigen, all swimmers representing the US in a decidedly different way than Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps did — were using the old “robbed-at-gunpoint” chestnut as cover for what was apparently a gas station encounter with a security guard and, quite hilariously, a bathroom door. …

MAD Media In Throes Of Death, We Hope

Donald Trump, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Republicans

On a tip from their Republican friends, CNN liberals have been running away with speculations that Donald Trump will quit, drop out of the race. CNN’s man with a chalkboard pointer was scouring the Banana Republican’s rule book for a “rule” to invoke to void the people’s choice. In “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” I describe this as “wish-fulfillment,” and deconstruct the dynamics of this ongoing media frothy with predictive precision:

The … sprawling political apparatus that makes up the D.C. Comitatus [is] now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster in the throes of death.—ilana

Americans No Longer Have The Money, But Brexiter Brits Still Have The Brains

Britain, English, EU, Europe, Free Markets, Ilana Mercer, Intelligence, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood

The new book, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” is available on Amazon. The new column, “Americans No Longer Have ‘the Money,’ But Brexiter Brits Still Have ‘the Brains,’” is excerpted below:

During the Bretton Woods Conference, in 1944, Lord Halifax is said to have “whispered to Lord Keynes: ‘It’s true: they have the money bags but we have all the brains.’” By “they,” Halifax meant the Americans.

His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today. As odious as Britain’s elites are; boy, are they cleverer than ours. Take the impromptu interview, on June 28, which Richard Quest, CNN’s imported British broadcast journalist, conducted with Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.

Farage had emerged exhilarated from the coven that is the European Parliament, where he had shared some home truths with the ponces leeching off Britain.

Other than to mouth formulaically about “small government, big military, balanced budgets and the penny plan”—America’s chattering class and ruling elites seem incapable of expressing the principles undergirding freedom. And members of this political Idiocracy dissolve into a puddle if their cue cards disappear.

Farage, however, spoke to some difficult ideas with ease, and without notes.

The act of secession, the quests for sovereignty, decentralization and regional autonomy from a second tier of tyrants—the first being the national, British government—involve comprehending complicated ideas.

About this, Milton Friedman forewarned in the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” Whereas “the argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument.” “The argument for individualism” and freedom, on the other hand, “is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

Put differently: If you can’t express the principles of liberty, can you properly pursue them? Will you not forgo them?

It’s difficult for dummies to understand liberty, let alone defend it, a problem the scintillating, cerebral Mr. Farage doesn’t have.

“You as a political project are in denial,” he told the grumbling laggards in the EU chamber. The EU had, “by stealth by deception, and without ever telling the truth to the British and European people, imposed political union upon them.”

Not to be trusted, EU advocate Segolene Royal, French environment minister and former socialist candidate for the French presidency, praised this coerced union, calling it a “family.” “The family is supposed to have a say in when a member leaves,” she griped to BBC’s tough talker, Stephen Sackur.

The sort of family Royal describes is known as La Familia, a crime family that knee caps you if you leave.

Heckling Eurocrats were reminded by Farage that when, in 2005, the people of the Netherlands and France said adieu to an enforced political union—the Eurocrats had “ignored them and brought in the Lisbon Treaty through the backdoor.” Indeed, the last refuge of a Brussels scoundrel is the bureaucracy. When voters scuttled the EU Constitution in that referenda; the rogues being upbraided by Farage dissolved one illegitimate political structure and constituted another.

“You’re in denial,” continued Farage, “about Mrs. Merkel’s invitation to any and all to cross the Mediterranean and enter the EU, all of which has led to massive divisions between and within countries.”

What the little people did, what the ordinary people did, what the people who’ve been oppressed have done is to reject the multinationals, reject the merchant banks, reject Big Politics, and demand their country back, their fishing waters back, their borders back. We want to be an independent self-governing nation. [If anything], we offer a beacon of hope. The UK will not be the last member state to leave the EU.

A series of similar watersheds would follow, predicted Farage.

Fleetingly, at least, Farage’s fluency with the ideas of freedom took effect. The blank faces flanking UKIP’s leader looked somewhat animated. Fewer jeered; some even clapped and cheered as Farage went on to submit that no stalling would be tolerated. The will of the British people would be heeded forthwith. Called for was “a grown-up and sensible attitude” toward executing popular—in this case, naturally licit—wishes.

Mr. Farage was not done, …

… Read the complete column, “Americans No Longer Have ‘the Money,’ But Brexiter Brits Still Have ‘the Brains,’” on the Unz Review. The book, “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed,” you’ll need to purchase.

‘Mateen.’ ‘Mateen.’ ‘Omar Mateen.’ There. I Said It. Media Should Too.

Ethics, Etiquette, Journalism, Media, Morality, Terrorism

Petulant, petty media keep announcing they won’s say the name of the Muslim mass murderer of 49 Pulse patrons in Orlando, last week. Not to say the name of a killer is a silly and infantile gesture, or habit oft repeated by the sanctimonious, self-important sorts in media. It conjures the person who covers his ears and hums loudly, so as not to hear bad news. Reality is reality. Facts are facts. Deal. Media are not in a morality contest. Media are meant to function as chroniclers, entrusted with relaying events, not transmitting subliminal messages.

Omar Mateen. Omar Mateen. Omar Mateen. There. I said it.