Category Archives: Media

Steve Jobs & The Paramountcy Of Privacy

Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Conservatism, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, Technology, The Zeitgeist

THE PARAMOUNTCY OF PRIVACY. I’m not particularly familiar or enamored of the new gadgets, although I fully appreciate their contribution to humans and to humanity. I tend to stick with CDs (for the best in sound), books for reading, and the Internet and email for communicating.

Still, as a capitalist and a communicator, I admired Steve Jobs greatly. I particularly liked the precision and sophistication with which he used language. I appreciated the amalgamation of drama and simplicity in the Job’s message. Jobs was never a blabber mouth.

But most of all, I identified with Steve Jobs’ acute sense of privacy. He was a very private man.

For one of the most recognizable men on earth, Steve Jobs was quite elusive. To me, that is paramount—and the very essence of greatness. Privacy is what made Jobs a conservative persona. The fact that Jobs knew the importance of boundaries between what a person shared with the world and what he kept to himself gave him the bearing of a champion. Only a private man, in my view, can strive to true greatness.

When Jobs died I was wrapping up a WND column about yet another repulsive character that is about to join the pantheon of American exhibitionists—liars, cheats, whores (not the good kind), and worse—who’ve shared (or will share) a couch with that vulgarizer, Oprah. What a study in contrasts!

In Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.” The heroic and creative inner struggle is what brings out the best in man. I repeat myself, I know: My heroes are in the Greek tradition: silent, stoic, principled yet private. That is what I saw in Steve Jobs.

UPDATED: Fox News-Google GOP 2012 Debate: Perry’s Bushisms (Mitt’s Manners)

Bush, Elections, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Politics, Relatives, Republicans

The debate was good; well-put together with interesting information culled from the Google meta-media. The Republican “thrust and Perry” in Tampa, Florida, earlier this month, set a good standard. You know me: I want words—textual red meat to sink my teeth into. I was worried at first that, true to character, Fox News would stick with visuals and stiff the written or pixelated word. (Here’s a slide show of the debaters! Oy!) But—hooray!— Fox came through with a rush transcript. Well-done!

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN had the opportunity to salvage the question Jon Huntsman flubbed in the previous, Tea-Party debate: “Out of every dollar I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?” “It’s all yours,” she replied, but we still have to send something back for the government. A contradiction, of course.

FORMER Utah Governor Jon Huntsman solidified his standing as a committed statist, having “told the New Hampshire Union Leader [that] as president [he] would subsidize the natural gas industry.” Huntsman just can’t keep his sticky fingers out of the meddling business. The industry doesn’t need help; it needs to be left alone. (The industry is currently making its case to the public via tremendous ads that explain the safeguards with respect to fracking.)

However, as in the previous debate, Huntsman managed to distill, better than the rest, a foreign-policy vision: “… as the only one on stage with any hands-on foreign policy experience, having served — having lived overseas four different times, we’re at a critical juncture in our country. We don’t have a foreign policy, and we don’t project the goodness of this country in terms of liberty, democracy, open markets, and human rights, with a weak core. And right now in this country, our core, our economy, is broken. And we don’t shine that light today. We’re 25 percent of the world’s GDP. The world is a better place when the United States is strong [I understood him to mean strong economically]. So guiding anything that we talk about from a foreign policy standpoint needs to be fixing our core. But, second of all, I believe that, you know, after 10 years of fighting the war on terror, people are ready to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, Rick.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry sounds more and more like a slightly less stupid W, which is still plenty stupid and cunning to boot.

Here Perry is losing control over the words, as W used to:

PERRY:

I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment?
Was it — was before he was before the social programs, from the standpoint of he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against Roe v. Wade? He was for Race to the Top, he’s for Obamacare, and now he’s against it. I mean, we’ll wait until tomorrow and — and — and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight.

Now that’s a Bushism. Shudder.

Garry Johnson had a good joke: “My next-door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.”

Even better was Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, invoking Ronald Reagan’s lines:

“When your brother-in-law is unemployed, it’s a recession. When you’re unemployed, it’s a depression. When Jimmy Carter’s unemployed, it’s a recovery. Nothing — nothing will turn America around more than Election Night, when Barack Obama loses decisively.”

NOW, SOMEONE PRAY TELL, why do all these candidates say “Sosal Security”? In English it’s pronounced Soshial Security.”

UPDATE (Sept. 23): MITT’S MANNERS. Hours after this site singled out Perry’s pathetic Bushisms, mainstream media is doing the same. Almost a full day after the debate, Perry’s word-salad is being reluctantly reported by Fox News.

However, what other sources see as a dismal lack of command of issues of foreign affairs, Fox News described as Perry’s “show of some chops, flashing knowledge about the Haqqani Network and Indian diplomacy.”

I’m with Alan Schroeder of the HuffPo:

Yet on matters of substance, Perry remains startlingly unprepared. Asked a theoretical question about Pakistan losing control of its nuclear weapons, the governor gave an incoherent response that amounted to a pile of steaming dung. It is remarkable that a man so obviously lacking in foreign policy credentials does not make a greater effort to bone up; in this regard he is more Sarah Palin than Ronald Reagan.

Over to Schroeder again:

Romney the debater is crisp, businesslike, in command of his material, and as bloodlessly efficient as a German luxury sedan. Perry the debater is sloppy, sentimental, uncertain of his facts, and brimming with the sort of down-home folksiness that makes Republican audiences go weak in the knees.

Freedom Fighters Vs. Freedom Deniers; Truth Vs. Untruth

Conservatism, Journalism, libertarianism, Liberty, Media, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Pseudo-intellectualism

If economic historian Tom Woods and XM radio host Mike Church made it onto Freedom Watch’s often-misnamed Freedom-Fighters panel, I would be inclined to tune in more often. These men have fidelity to truth and reality. It was on display during an appearance on Judge Napoliaton’s Fox Business show.

More often than not, I switch off. Sure, the occasional freedom fighter finds his way onto the segment, but the Freedom Fighters Panel is set-up, in general, in the mold followed by every other cable and network show. It’s positively postmodernist. Present the public with two competing “perspectives” or worldviews. By doing so, you mislead Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber into thinking that indeed there are two realities, and that he may decide which one is more compelling.

The truth is that truth is immutable; it is not relative. There is, moreover, too little truth in media. Truth cannot afford to be diluted or presented by its adherents as dueling with untruth.

Gasbag Gasparino/Nancy Skinner/Caroline Heldman/Tara Dowdell/—these Fox News fixtures no more represent truth or promote it than does your average Holocaust denier.

Except, that—although I know nothing about the Dewey Decimal Classification—I believe that in a library, Holocaust denying literature would not be classified under history. If I am correct in this last assumption, why classify the reality defying bunk spewed by the likes of Nancy Skinner, Caroline Heldman, Tara Dowdell, Carl Jeffers, Joe Sibila, Erika Payne, “Charlie” Rangel, and other assorted TV mouths, as versions of the truth? For that is what the panel format suggests.

Naturally, the dueling “perspectives,” political-panel format is quite compatible with the aims of CNN, MSNBC, and other progressive media outlets.

UPDATED: Mañana: Manna Will Fall From DC Heavens (Bunk Obama)

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Journalism, Media, Political Philosophy, Regulation

Streamed into American living rooms, almost hourly, is an ad with MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow. In the ad, Maddow, whose version of a tinfoil hat is the hardhat, has taken up a position at the foot of the Hoover Dam. Face turned upwards, with childlike faith, she seems to be expressing hope that money will fall like manna from the DC heavens, and that the government will build another such giant dam. Rumor has it that the Messiah will deliver. Mañana.

More to the point, the American cognoscenti, monetary movers-and shakers included, are agreed: The make-work projects of a bankrupt government can cure a country’s economy. Perhaps they don’t know that the money to make work is either stolen (taxed), printed (theft by stealth), or borrowed (fraud if you can’t pay it back).

Among these people a consensus exists: National bankruptcy could never befall the US, because it has a printing press—a paper Pantheon where magic money is manufactured. And we are all expected to believe, based on the divination of the animal spirits, that an abundance of paper, and not production, will produce prosperity.

No less a moocher than the Greek Finance Minister seems to understand that to fix his country’s finances he must privatize industries, cut public-sector wages, and implement a range of labor-market reforms.

He gets it, but not Rachel Maddow. She’s waiting for BHO to deliver. Tomorrow.

UPDATE (Sept. 8): BUNK OBAMA. Please don’t expect a run-down of Zero’s latest plan to spend more money without incurring any more debt. That’s the administration’s claim for its latest political shenanigans.

I’ll be bunking Barack’s speech.

“Illinois Republican Rep. Joe Walsh was the first to announce his intentional absence last week, saying he didn’t want to act as a ‘prop’ for Obama’s speech.” Others have followed, including Ron Paul, who had set the precedent for skipping presidential extravaganzas.

How low have we fallen: The White House is touting
an enhanced live stream with charts, graphs, and quick stats at WhiteHouse.gov/live.” Yippee. ONLY NEXT WEEK will the president divulge how he intends to pay for the purported $400 billion in deficit-spending he will be proposing, shortly.

If the guy meant business, he’d repeal ObamaCare and all the thousands of pages of other regulation he has signed into law since his pox-full presidency began. He’d adopt flat, very LOW, corporate and individual tax rates. And he’d stop stimulating his package in public. It’s obscene.