Category Archives: Media

UPDATED: That Dog Obama Ate The Media’s Homework

Barack Obama, Bush, Journalism, Media, Propaganda

When it comes to Barack Hussein Obama, media abdicated all responsibility to do journalistic due diligence. It wasn’t only that all stories about the 44th POTUS were spun favorably; but entire issues were submerged entirely. Now two such invertebrates blame their intellectual and ethical deficiencies, spanning years, on the power of the president to mesmerize and misinform.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico are contemptible. They attest that, “Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does. They find his staff needlessly stingy with information and thin-skinned about any tough coverage. [Where? Tell me where?] He gets more-favorable-than-not coverage because many staffers are fearful of talking to reporters, even anonymously, and some reporters inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will decrease if they get in the face of this White House.”

VandeHei and Allen spill pages of pixels in claiming that the Obama administration bamboozled them, with the use of digital technology, aided by some really, really “authentically new techniques”; and with “government creation of content,” blah, blah, blah. (Their prose is diarrheic.) Next they’ll claim to have been subjected to subliminal messages during White House briefings.

The media are a Cult. Cults always blame The Leader for inducing a cult following.

When I saw what Bush was all about, nothing could stop me from exposing his machinations (and likening W’s “Bring ’em on grin” to the grimace “on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis”). Nothing stopped libertarians outside the Beltway from exposing Bush’s illegal and immoral war on Iraq. For doing so throughout the Bush years, I became persona non grata in Republican circles on September 19, 2002.

VandeHei and Allen are whinging castrates. They should make you sick.

UPDATED: “These guys are acting like they’re just innocent dupes,” rages Rush Limbaugh.

Wolf’s Watergate

Journalism, Media, Objectivism, Pop-Culture

When Wolf Blitzer framed one of his upcoming news teases as “Watergate,” this morning, I thought he was being a Smart Alec about Carnival Triumph, the cruise liner whose “propulsion system” was “paralyzed” by a fire in the engine room.

The ocean liner was left “temporarily marooned in the Gulf of Mexico, subject to the whims of wind and sea currents.“

As to the delicate bouquet that is wafting from the Waste Liner:

“…the sanitary situation had already begun to deteriorate on board the Triumph. …the conditions have gotten so bad that they’re asking them to use the restroom in bags, and they were eating onion sandwiches …
Much of the ship’s electrical power went down in the fire, causing widespread malfunctions, including taking out sanitary systems.
Passengers have reported sewage sloshing around in hallways, flooded rooms and trouble getting enough to eat.
“It’s disgusting. It’s the worst thing ever,” passenger Ann Barlow told CNN.

But no. By “Watergate,” Wolf was “absurdly” and perfectly seriously wondering “if Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pausing his State of the Union response for a drink of water would ‘break’ his career. The CNN chyron flashed “Career-ender?”

“So can a drink of water make or break a political career?” Blitzer asked.”

Just as you think that the remaking of “news” had reached an all-time postmodern low …

Messiah Stood Up By Media, Momentarily

Barack Obama, Fascism, Journalism, Law, Media

The saving grace of Big Media’s excruciating blow-by-blow coverage of the stand-off with LAPD of­ficer and Navy veteran Christopher Jordan Dorner is that it made the network nits forget about their date with Barack Obama.

That Obama’s fourth State of the Union extravaganza promises to be excruciatingly boring we already know. One other thing known about this SOTU—also the secret to his success—is that, as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, and “for the [fourth] straight address, the President’s State of the Union message will be written at an eighth-grade level.”

“‘You Can’t Fix Stupid.'” Last year, a “Smart Politics” study seemed to back Ron White’s aphorism.

A “Stalinesque extravaganza” that ought to offend “anyone of a republican (small ‘r’) sensibility” is how National Review’s John Derbyshire has described the annual State of the Union address. “American politics frequently throws up disgusting spectacles. It throws up one most years in January: the State of the Union speech,” writes Derbyshire in “We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism,” in which John (he’s a friend) goes on to detail how “the great man” is announced, how he makes an entrance; the way “the legislators jostle to catch his eye” and receive his favor. (This year, the most repulsive among the representatives staked out aisle seats for themselves, starting early in the morning.)
“On the podium at last, the president offers up preposterously grandiose assurances of protection, provision, and moral guidance from his government, these declarations of benevolent omnipotence punctuated by standing ovations and cheers from legislators” (p. 45). The president of the USA is now “pontiff, in touch with Divinity, to be addressed like the Almighty.”
The razzmatazz includes a display of “Lenny Skutniks” in the royal box. These are “model citizens chosen in order to represent some quality the president will call on us to admire and emulate.” Last year it was the family of the girl who was murdered by the Tucson shooter. This year’s “Lenny Skutnik” was Debbie Bosanek, Warren Buffett’s secretary. Bosanek is supposed to embody the Barf(fett) Rule, described by the Divine One thus: “If you make more than a million dollars a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.”

More about this monarchical, contrived tradition in “Barry Soetoro Frankenstein: Spawn of the State.”

Here’s MSNBC’s “coverage” of Il Duce’s address.

UPDATE II: Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword (Ron Paul Agrees)

Media, Military, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, The State, The Zeitgeist, War

He sculpted a career out of killing for Uncle Sam. A former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling: He “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

Nobody is prepared to say that it is NO astounding accomplishment to have killed so many individuals, in the service of the US state. So consider it said.

Now Kyle is dead, “shot point-blank” by “another soldier who is recovering from post traumatic stress syndrome.” The therapy “sometime involved taking these veterans to the shooting range.”

Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.

UPDATE I: From the Facebook thread:

Kyle (and his kill-for-Uncle Sam supporters) reminds me of a real-life Jack Bauer “Federal Zombie”: “the unstoppable, undead agent who has actually been killed and brought back to life, in service—and in thrall—to the state…”

To be a man is to defend your family and community. Not the empire and its “goals.” Men like Joe Horn are American heroes.

UPDATE II (Feb. 4): Ron Paul agrees, down to the adage, tweeting out, on Monday, 9:05 AM, 4 Feb 13, the following:

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense.

America’s chosen heroes are either killing someone in far away lands, or crying on TV, here at home. Crying—and coming out about private, personal matters—this imbues someone with goodness, even conferring him with the status of a hero.

And always: Be they your grief, your struggles, or your Iraqi culling expeditions—the key to everlasting honor is to be public about it.

I hope you realize that these deformed values are exactly inverted.