Category Archives: Journalism

Leftists Are ILLIBERAL

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Reason

Hillary Clinton and the things she says should be properly dubbed illiberal. Clinton’s express “inspiration” as a future president is to “ensure that granddaughter Charlotte and her generation are provided equal opportunities to live up to their potential.”

How do you think that will be achieved, if not by the use of every illiberal power-tool in the leftist toolbox? Taking by force from some to give to others, creating new, unelected, oppressive agencies to carry out the new potentate’s plans, raising armies to march on uncompliant nations, on and on.

Clinton and the things she aspires to should be properly dubbed illiberal. Leftists, after all, stole the “liberal” label from us classical liberals.

CNN bimbos and beaus fawn over every irrational, idiotic utterance made by leftists. Why, one particular CNN tart called Poppy Harlow referred to Clinton’s putative inspiration for a presidential bid—her infant granddaughter—as a “rationale” for running.

To say you want to be president for the good of your granddaughter’s generations is of a peace with the standard statement made by the low IQ beauty queen: “I want to make the world a better place.” Except that a peaceful, pretty girl, with no ship-of-state to steer, is much more likely to make people happy than a power-hungry, illiberal, murderous statist like Hillary Clinton.

Poppy Harlow’s slobbering act and name reminded me, for some reason, of the wicked wit of Margot Asquith, “Scottish-born socialite and author, married to the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith.” .

Mrs. Asquith corrected American actress Jean Harlow’s pronunciation of Margot, with this quick retort: “The t is silent, as in Harlow.”

Loathe Brian Williams; Love Lester Holt

Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Race

He’s a card-carrying member of the “media circle jerk.” So it goes without saying that, as part of his left-liberal, media bona fides, disgraced NBC anchor Brian Williams would have suppressed stories “that would hurt President Obama.” Reveals the Washington Free Beacons:

… former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones. He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obama­care.
Frustrated, Myers posted the article on NBC’s website,where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. “He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive,” a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories.

As an “Investigation Discovery” addict–I love these gory, real-life homicide investigations—I see host Lester Holt almost nightly. He’s handsome, unassuming, polished and highly professional, without the peccadilloes that will continue to plague the Williams man.

With Mr. Holt you get the sense that it’s about the story, not himself.

Why not settle the no-news, Brian Williams story for once and for all, and give Lester Holt the job Brian Williams held? If NBC fails to give the job of managing editor and anchor of NBC Nightly News to the deserving Mr. Holt, we, the right-thinking media, should squeal “racism”; give NBC some of its own medicine.

UPDATED: Brian Williams: Member Of Media Circle Jerk (There We Go Again)

Ethics, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Morality

“Brian Williams: Member Of Media Circle Jerk” is the current column, now on Britain’s Libertarian Alliance blog. An excerpt:

… Not for nothing have his colleagues, left and right, formed a protective barricade around Williams. With few exceptions, the media-complex within which Gilded Ones like Williams slither so effortlessly is mired in corruption—the kind this scribe did not encounter in the structurally more conservative Canadian industry. It is anathema in Europe too, I am told.

Conflict of interest is at every turn. Major anchors—the gifted and gorgeous Megyn Kelly too, sadly—beaver at sculpting a celebrity persona. They hangout on late-night shows. They hobnob with the hosts to curry favor with them, “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central being their professional Shangri-La.

Over and over again do the celebrity journos, then, relive their moments of glory with their own fans, holding out hope for the next invitation. Lovingly—self-love being the operative word—do they track their media appearances from their respective network seats. The better-looking flaunt their assets over fashion spreads in high-gloss magazines.

Almost all—your favorite opinionators, too—attend the annual Sycophant’s Supper, where they cozy up to Kim Kardashian and Beyoncé Knowles. (Kudos to the few, such as former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who’ve excoriated the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or who’ve refused to attend, irrespective of the political affiliation of the man ensconced in the White House.)

The annual White House Sycophants’ Dinner is where the most pretentious people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us in Rome’s provinces.

Those gathered at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, or its Christmas party, are not the country’s natural aristocracy, but its authentic Idiocracy. The events and the invited say a great deal about the press, its ethics and code of conduct.

Like nothing else, the Sycophant’s Supper is a mark of a corrupt politics and press, as the un-watchful dogs of the media have no business frolicking with the president and his minions. This co-optation, however, is the hallmark of the celebrity press, in general. The days following these glitzy events, the Gilded Ones spend genuflecting to … themselves.

What else? Celebrity journalists marry their sources and hop right back into their roles as reporters. Their colleagues in this circle jerk are none the wiser. Examples: CNN and ABC’s Claire Shipman who wed Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney. Campbell Brown, formerly of CNN, is hitched to Romney adviser Dan Senor. “Meet the Press’” Chuck Todd is married to and gives an occasional shout-out to Democratic strategist Kristian Denny Todd.

The presstitutes straddle the fleshpots of D.C. with the skill of a Department of Justice that bestrides the roles of defender in court of the Infernal Revenue Service, as well as the agency charged with investigating the tax collector. All of them ride us like the asses we are. …

Read the rest. “Brian Williams: Member Of Media Circle Jerk” is now on Britain’s Libertarian Alliance blog.

UPDATED (2/13): THERE WE GO AGAIN. Just as this column went to press, Megyn Kelly (who I like a lot) put into practice, again, the improper habit of using her perch to help peddle the product of a friend, a wife of a colleague, etc. Formerly of CNN, Kyra Phillips is married to John Roberts of Fox News. Kelly ended last night’s show with this shout-out to Phillips:

John Stossel has promoted the book of Scott Stossel (his nephew) on his Fox Business broadcast. I think his son—is it Max?—was on dad’s show too to hawk his business.

Unseemly.

What Faith Sanctions Instant, No-Effort Forgiveness? Only Pop Religion

Christianity, Ethics, Journalism, Judaism & Jews, Morality

Of the banal New York Times columnist David Brooks it has been said that he is “the sort of conservative pundit that liberals like.” Not being a conservative (or a left-liberal), I find him consistently wishy–washy and inane. There is not a controversial or interesting thought in that head of his.

True to type, Brooks gushes banalities about NBC’s Brian Williams. Suspended for six months, the iconic managing editor and anchor of NBC Nightly News, it would appear, lied a lot about the events he covered during his limelight-seeking career.

Although it comes close, Brooks’ latest, “Act of Rigorous Forgiving,” is not a complete dog’s breakfast of a column. The aspect of the Brooks column that piqued this scribe’s curiosity is that of forgiveness.

But first, “Williams’ troubles,” as chronicled by The Daily Beast, “began with his false account of a March 2003 helicopter ride during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which he told, with dramatic variations, on David Letterman’s late-night talk show and Alec Baldwin’s radio show in March 2013, and repeated on his own Jan. 30 newscast—only to recant it and apologize five days later after Stars and Stripes blew it out of the sky. Now he’s also facing scrutiny for stories of possibly untrue exploits during his 2005 coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and even whether, as a volunteer teenage firefighter in Middletown, New Jersey, he saved one (or maybe it was two) puppies from a burning house.”

Brooks’ trouble is that the public has not even received a full account of Williams’ transgressions. Yet Brooks has shifted to a discussion of forgiveness. Is this not premature? Brooks, moreover, is preachy and sanctimonious—almost as though writing with himself in mind (along the lines of, “What if the Williams fate befalls me?”). Brooks is also plain wrong. He claims that transgressors are treated barbarically when they “violate a public trust.” Nonsense on stilts. In a culture steeped in moral relativism, this is simply untrue. Paris Hilton debuted her public life with a self-adoring pornographic video. It only increased her profile. Likewise Kim Kardashian, who has been bottoms-up ever since that maiden performance. Her sister, almost as bad, has visited the White House. Barack Obama lied intentionally when he vowed, “You can keep your healthcare if you want to,” but all was forgiven and forgotten. Ditto Genghis Bush on the matter of WMD. On and on.

In any event, boilerplate Brooks is tempered by some good points about the necessity to perform penitence before being granted clemency:

… the offender has to get out in front of the process, being more self-critical than anyone else around him. He has to probe down to the root of his error, offer a confession more complete than expected. He has to put public reputation and career on the back burner and come up with a course that will move him toward his own emotional and spiritual recovery, to become strongest in the weakest places.

… It’s also an occasion to investigate each unique circumstance, the nature of each sin that was committed and the implied remedy to that sin. Some sins, like anger and lust, are like wild beasts. They have to be fought through habits of restraint. Some sins like bigotry are like stains. They can only be expunged by apology and cleansing. Some like stealing are like a debt. They can only be rectified by repaying. Some, like adultery, are more like treason than like crime; they can only be rectified by slowly reweaving relationships. Some sins like vanity — Williams’s sin — can only be treated by extreme self-abasement.

Indeed penitence, especially in the case of a sustained pattern of abuse, can “only be [achieved] by slowly reweaving relationships.”

To simply demand forgiveness because one has said sorry without convincingly and consistently acting sorry, and to proceed further to conduct one’s self like a victim because the victim has failed to extend an instant pardon: This is despicable. To shift the guilt onto the injured party for not granting that minute-made (or is it “minute-maid”?) clemency: That too is beyond the pale.

Jews too, it would appear, have moved into the realm of pop religion. “According to the Talmud,” I was recently instructed, “a person who repents is forgiven his past and stands in a place of righteousness.”

No mention was made of the hard, lengthy work of “slowly reweaving relationships.” The demand was for forgiveness in a New York minute.

My guess is that instant expiation flows more from the values of the 1960s than from any doctrinal Christian or Jewish values. Whichever is the case, the corollary of the current practice of no-effort forgiveness is that “it not only abolishes the necessity of repentance; it abolishes sin itself,” to quote Ted and Virginia Byfield.