Category Archives: Media

Privacy For Some Gun Owners (State Workers), But Not For Others (The People)

Constitution, Federalism, Free Speech, GUNS, Individual Rights, Journalism, Media, States' Rights

It’s old news that will not be getting old anytime soon. A shitty rag, The Journal News, published “an interactive map containing the names and addresses of pistol-permit holders in New York’s Westchester and Putnam counties.”

In response, there has been a great deal of special pleading from conservative quarters. A lot of the gun owners whose names and addresses were mapped are “first responders,” conservatives have been lamenting. “We can’t expose our [sainted] first responders to any dangers.”

The Bill or Rights was meant to protect individuals against the state. It defends the people from the government; not the obverse. But trust conservatives to elevate the “oink sector,” in the debate over the right of gun owners to privacy.

If anything, “first responders,” and other members of the oink sector—having sold their souls to the state—need to accept the risks that go with exercising ultimate decision-making powers in society, to use Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s term.

Government workers–the special interests—are expected to live with the risk of the job. They accept the perks and the pensions, don’t they?

I’m reminded here of the special pleading the same Fox News folks made in the case of the Transportation Security Administration’s illicit searches at the airports.

On Mr. Hannity’s Great American Panel, Noel Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategists who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh [by TSA goons] as they scurry to their important appointments.

This evening, Sean Hannity provided a forum for some very impressive gun owners, all of whom had been “outed” by the The Journal News. These were highly intelligent people, more than capable of articulating the essence of the freedoms they were exercising.

Still, sympathy is all “conservatives” like Mr. Hannity are able to offer to these exposed individuals. Sympathy and an appeal to the decency of the media (laughable, I know).

Republicans have no leg to stand on in objecting to the publication of gun-owner addresses, as they argue from the positive law. And the positive law, defended by all so-called “reasonable” conservatives, compels all law-abiding individuals to register with the state when purchasing a fire arm. (To this registration, libertarians like myself would object.)

Information thus collated and centralized is accessible to all.

An appeal to the sympathy and decency of the liberal establishment: That’s all statist “conservatives” have to offer in the case of The Journal News Vs. the gun owners of Westchester and Putnam counties.

UPDATED: Meanness Shines Through The Shock

America, Etiquette, Family, Media, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

This is one of those things one gets into trouble for noticing and pointing out. So I’ll go ahead and point it out, ’cause—boy!—did I notice it.

Gene Rosen, “a 69-year-old retired psychologist… took … four girls and two boys” from the Sandy Hook Elementary school into his home near the school, shortly after the shooting.

Rosen said he had heard the staccato sound of gunfire about 15 minutes earlier but dismissed it as an obnoxious hunter in the nearby woods.
“I had no idea what had happened,” Rosen said. “I couldn’t take that in.”
He walked the children past his small goldfish pond with its running waterfall, and the garden he made with his two grandchildren, into the small yellow house he shares with his wife.
He ran upstairs and grabbed an armful of stuffed animals. He gave those to the children, along with some fruit juice, and sat with them as the two boys described seeing their teacher being shot.

But this good Samaritan’s offering did not quite meet the standards of one of his small guests. The boy responded with a comment Rosen thought so adorable, he “wanted to tell him, `I love you. I love you.'”

“This little boy turns around, and composes himself, and he looks at me like he had just removed himself from the carnage and he says, `Just saying, your house is very small.'”

Is that not a rude and unkind quip?

Just saying.

UPDATE (1/11): Everyone on Facebook ducked the issue of how badly behaved kids have become. Myron Pauli at least responded by changing the subject. But pretending the problem doesn’t exist is becoming harder. Fox and experts are catching up with a topic I’ve been covering since the early 2000s and before. “We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists.”

UPDATED: No Country For Old, White Men

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Critique, Democrats, Elections, Feminism, Media, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Republicans, The West, The Zeitgeist, War, Welfare

“No Country For Old, White Men” is the current column, now on WND. Here’s an excerpt:

“…Romney was booed when he wooed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Enough to provoke the ire of blacks, Latinos, ladies of all hues, the halt and the lame was the mere hint that the too-white-to-like Romney would slow down the gravy train. Lickspittle Republicans were as eager as the Democratic representatives of these identity groups to lambaste Mr. Romney for being too attractive, too macho, too white, too Christian, and too rich.

No one could have failed to notice that Mitt Romney resembles the “Mad Man” played by Jon Hamm, in the eponymous AMC series. Both men are tall, dark and handsome, with the kind of picture-perfect, quintessential American good looks. Both hide their feelings and are spare with their emotions. When they show their softer side–it actually means something. Each is dutiful and dependable.

Such qualities, once considered desirable in a man, now offend the dominatrixes who run the nation’s newsrooms.

“He’s a very private man; and that’s a liability.” “How can you get me to vote for him, if I don’t like him?” “He needs to humanize himself.” And, “Can he [even] be humanized?” demanded one CNN ghoul by the name of Gloria Borger on the eve of Halloween. Mitt Romney was inhuman: That, very plainly, was the premise of this harridan’s rhetorical question.

“Ann Romney’s job, and she’s been pushing for this in the campaign, is to kind of humanize him,” noodled the banal Ms. Borger over and over again, for the campaign’s duration.

This was the menstrually inspired miasma that emanated from TV studios countrywide.

Thus did Mitt Romney come to embody elements in Aristotle’s definition of a tragic figure: …”

The complete column is “No Country For Old, White Men,” now on WND.

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UPDATE: VIA JACK KERWICK:

You are absolutely correct for noting the unmistakable racial subtext of this election and people’s reaction to Romney. … MR and his wife are straight out of 1950’s America, the Dark Ages when blacks, women, and homosexuals were oppressed, the days before the Enlightened ’60’s. Romney is ‘Father Knows Best,’ Ward Cleaver. Obama, in contrast, is the symbol of the new, multicultural America.

The Multiple Obamagasim Award (Given By GOP Groupies)

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Democrats, Ethics, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Among the mindless monolith that is our media some are more mindless than others.

At MichelleMalkin.com, Doug Powers reports on the Media Research Center’s Obamagasm Awards.

The winner is no other than MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, for, as Doug put it, achieving “simultaneous Obamagasms with his guests.”

In my 2010 take, I credited Matthews’ for his prolonged state of heightened arousal over BHO (multiple Obamagasims):

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has more street cred than most. The host of “Hardball” spent the first two years of the Obama presidency in a state of delirium bordering on the sexual. Famous for experiencing something akin to a (daytime) nocturnal emission during Obama’s coronation — “thrill up the leg” Matthews called the incident — Chris later begged Barack to be his “Enforcer,” in the matter of sacking Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Understand: when a liberal like the president shows a bit of that manly magic, “girlie boys” like Chris get giddy.
Given Chris’s well-known carnal affections for Barack Obama, it is unfortunate that the op-ed segment with which he ends the “Hardball” program daily is called “Let Me Finish.”

Chris certainly attained climactic levels of devotion to the Dear Leader.

“Tingles” deserves a life-time award in Obama adulation.

There’s a caveat. Easily as odious is the bunch dishing out the Obamagasim Awards. Where were these establishment Republicans—these “LETHAL WEAPONS and NEOCON GROUPIES”—during The Decider’s dictatorship (aka Genghis Bush)?

These Republican knaves were on their knees, “TUNED-OUT, TURNED-ON, AND HOT FOR WAR.”