Category Archives: Journalism

UPDATED: A Toilet Flushed; Kim Kardashian Flashed a Smile

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Hollywood, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist

In a spoof on the president’s hot-mic malfunctions, BHO engages in weak banter with an aide in the next room. A toilet flushes, and it becomes clear that Barack Obama was supposed to have been relieving himself during the “witty” repartee, which was overheard by the rapt crowd attending the 2012 annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.

A repulsive sequence, befitting a revolting crowd: Jimmy Kimmel was seated with the First Couple; porn star Kardashian crowed in the crowd. The press itself is minimizing the cringe factor. After all, practically every anchor person on the networks began his broadcast by brandishing a personalized gold-embossed invitation. “See what a top dog I am?”

During the sickening specter, some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country—in politics, journalism and entertainment—get together to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the rest of us. The annual pimping of the office is nothing new. This low culture has been cultivated by successive administrations

Those gathered at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner are not the country’s natural aristocracy. Rather, this is a bunch of people who make their living pretending to be something they are not. Poseurs and parasites all.

Granted, actors do not coerce the citizenry to patronize their (mostly) lousy flicks. However, when they use their celebrity to push unconstitutional, naturally unlawful policies—then they are acting as enemies of the people. (Every time I turn around a “celebrity” is preaching and propagandizing for the leftist cause du jour.)

Like nothing else, the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner is a mark of corrupt politics. The un-watchful dogs of the media have no business frolicking with the president and his minions. This is co-optation. And when did the phonies of Hollywood become a fixture in this event?

The toxic “tradition” began in 1920, and, as far as I know, is sponsored by THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS’ ASSOCIATION, which was formed in 1914 as a liaison between the press and the president.”

The event and the invited tell a great deal about the Association, its ethics and code of conduct.

UPDATE: Some of Kimmel’s jokes were really good. He was not as offensive as Wanda Sykes, who, in 2009, began her routine with some good material and then descended into vulgarity and sheer spite.

Hispanic Hero

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Journalism, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Racism

Big media’s poster boy for a bad-ass white boy appeared in court yesterday. The tards of TV had nothing but bad things to say about the placid, polite, Hispanic young man called George Zimmerman. Unburdened by brains, CNN’s Erin Burnett entertained a body-language expert to decipher Zimmerman’s demeanor. This Western equivalent of an African shaman threw her ancestor’s bones and concluded that the manifestly demure Zimmerman was seething with rage.

Alan Dershowitz, the famed civil libertarian from Harvard Law School, never ceases to impress in the apolitical stands he takes. Dershowitz denounced the prosecution’s case, which I had found suspect when, a week ago, Special prosecutor Corey opted to dismiss the Grand-Jury option.

“Dershowitz Blasts Zimmerman Prosecution: ‘Not Only Immoral, But Stupid,'” reported Breitbart.com (which continues to do good reporting):

With ABC News’ release of the George Zimmerman photo showing blood flowing freely from his head, the question becomes whether Angela Corey, the prosecutor in the case, had access to the photo before charging Zimmerman with second-degree murder.
The arrest affidavit did not mention the photograph, or the bleeding, gashes, and bruises on Zimmermans’ head. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School stated upon release of the arrest affidavit that it was “so thin that it won’t make it past a judge on a second degree murder charge … everything in the affidavit is completely consistent with a defense of self-defense.”

Bimbo Burnett’s choice of experts countered facts with feelings—and in favor of the cause of Trayvon Martin. One was a black woman with orange hair and peacock-blue eye shadow. She turned out to be a former Florida Judge. The other was the weeping, stammering Judge who presided over the investigation into the death of Anna Nicole Smith.

On March 30, I wrote that “The facts of the case should be reviewed impartially, and the identity of the aggressor in the altercation that left Martin dead determined. The issue, of course, hinges not on who was armed, but on who was first to aggress.”

The image of “Zimmerman’s head bloody, bruised, battered” the media had delayed publishing despite threats to Zimmerman’s life. It is convincing. The neighborhood watchman had been a victim of an assault by Martin, whose memory and innocence the corporate media had cultivated by airing only pictures of an angelic-looking Trayvon, aged 12.

UPDATE II: National Review Eunuchs (‘Why Come You Don’t Have a Tattoo?”)

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Free Speech, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media, Race, Reason

The following is from “National Review Eunuchs,” my latest column:

In an interview with Brian Sack on GBTV, columnist and author John Derbyshire inadvertently anticipated his future in commenting about the dismissal from mainstream of another iconoclast, Patrick J. Buchanan:

“MSNBC is a private company. They can hire and fire who they like. But Buchanan is a serious guy who talks in a serious way about serious issues. Yet he is out of the national conversation. That’s bad.”

Not long after, Derbyshire was dismissed from National Review, where he freelanced. The “girlie boys” of NR had taken offense to “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” a column Derbyshire published at Taki’s Magazine. …

… National Review used to be conservatism’s flagship publication. These days its ideology reflects “Modern Republicanism’s” “dime store New Deal” proclivities (Barry Goldwater’s characterization). Launching oxymoronic attacks on Obamacare for “endangering Medicare”: that’s the extent of NR’s fight to free minds and markets.

… Tons of pixels have since been spilt in response to Derbyshire’s article and subsequent dismissal. The dimwitted discourse reflects a polemical landscape from which the Derbs of this world have been uprooted. None of John’s critics can write or reason as he does. None has his “range of historical and literary allusion,” as Mark Steyn observed. John Derbyshire’s is pellucid prose at its best.

A staff writer at The Atlantic epitomizes this fluffy, unfocused, Meghan McCain-like waffle (punctuated with a lot of, “I feel”) that lands you a job at a top publication. “As someone who places a high value on both robust public discourse and the fact that racism is now taboo,” he whimpered, “I won’t even try to mediate between these two except to say that Derbyshire’s piece was wrongheaded.”

That’s it? A feeble, frightened assertion is a substitute for an argument?

Such cyber-ejaculate gushed from other similar androgynous androids, possessors of the Y chromosome. The volume of bad writers safely ensconced in high places, and their voluminous, vapid output strengthened this conviction:

More so than enforcing conformity—ousting John was about safeguarding the future of mediocrity. …

… Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about.

The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.

Conservatism once had the genius of James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Chodorov, and Felix Morley; now the brand boasts S. E. Cupp, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Rich Lowry, and their editorial enablers. (Perhaps NR will recruit Jedediah [sic] Bila in place of Derb?) …

Read the complete column, “National Review Eunuchs.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.

UPDATE I: “Why Come You Don’t Have a Tattoo?”

About “those androgynous androids, possessors of the Y chromosome,” mentioned in the column on John Derbyshire’s firing. Here is a typical example. His name is Alexander Nazaryan. he writes for the New York Daily News:

“Please, Lord, tell me that this is a joke. Please, please tell me that a human being did not actually think these things and, worse yet, think to write them down.”

Reading Meghan McCain has just about inoculated me to the above form of writing (for it is not a style in any recognizable way).

It conjures the scene in Mike Judge’s genius of a satire “Idiocracy.” To be precise, the dialogue Joe Bauer, the protagonist, conducted with the “‘tarded” doctor character, who discovers Bauer doesn’t have the identifying, state tattoo (listen to it HERE):

Doctor: “And if you could just go ahead and, like, put your tattoo in that shit.”
Joe: “That’s weird. This thing has the same misprint as that magazine. What are the odds of–”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo? Tattoo? Why don’t you have this?”
Joe: “Oh, god!”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo?”
Joe: “Oh, my god.”
Doctor: “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”

Doctor: “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”

[SNIP]

You want to slap this Nazaryan man in the face. “Settle down. Stop it man. Quit the hysterical hyperbole. Stop the overwrought outrage. Calm down and write a simple sentence countering the Derb column.”

UPDATE II: To the ladies, Jeniffer and Scherie: Saddling the state solely for the dysfunction of a segment of the population is a form of determinism. According to this formula, free will and individual agency get short shrift. For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and hard-core libertarians, who are also determinist, saddle the state. “The State made me do it” is how such social determinism can be summed-up.

By the way, according to Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, white, middle America is in big trouble too. It isn’t as criminal as black America, but it is shot through with illegitimacy, laziness, unemployment, family and marital disintegration, etc.

A Genuine Journalist in MSM: Jack Tapper (Vs. Jay Carney)

Barack Obama, Fascism, Journalism, Media

Jake Tapper of ABC News is an unusual journalist; he has questioned the Obama administration, and, in particular, on the matter of the suppression of journalistic freedoms stateside.

Via Media(somethingoranother):

At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney praised the journalists (Marie Colvin, Rémi Ochlik and Anthony Shadid) recently killed covering the violent unrest in Syria. ABC News’ Jake Tapper then asked Carney about the discrepancy between how the Obama administration treats journalism internationally versus domestically.
The White House “keeps praising these journalists who’ve been killed,” Tapper said, but that is inconsistent with the administration’s actions within the U.S. He asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?”
Tapper went on to detail how “this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States.” Previously, the act had only been used three times in history.
Plainly, Tapper stated, “There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.”

Tapper has a history of “subversion.”