Category Archives: Media

In The Media, It’s All About The Angle, The Spin

Anti-Semitism, Europe, Islam, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Media, Reason

You ought to take note of the media’s meta-narrative on the issues, by which is meant the overarching theme that infests each and every news story. You’ll discover that there’s an angle, a spin. Thus, bimbo Brooke Baldwin (transcript not up yet), a CNN anchorette, framed a perfectly logical statement made by ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU as “controversial,” in Baldwin’s words. Said Bibi:

“I would like to tell all of the European Jews, and all Jews wherever you are, Israel is the home of every Jew.”

Because the thought process of the ubiquitous bimbo is so obtuse (blunt, not sharp); it’s hard to discern what is meant by such utterances. In other words, why is what Bibi said controversial? This is unclear to the rational individual.

The truth is that the subordinate satellites states that make up Europe refuse—and no longer have the power—to properly and vigorously defend their innocent citizens, Jewish and Christian, from an identifiable threat:

… the Monster State is inherently both stupid and evil. Like a primitive organism, it answers to nobody and nothing but its reflexive need to grow.

To wit, the Monster State refuses to protect its people from plagues. It welcomes high-risk travelers from the Ebola hot-zones. Simultaneously, it quarantines aspiring fighters for Jihad here at home, in the West, so the homeland is the only arena in which they can act-out.

The nightwatchman state of classical liberalism would keep killers out of the country, not in the country.

What Bibi said follows from an irremediable reality articulated in “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN.”

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.

Muslims Are Targets; Jews ‘Random’ Victims

Anti-Semitism, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Media

CNN’s Brooke Baldwin is reliable and unremarkable in channeling her network’s all-too predictable double standards. Yesterday, before an investigation into the motive for their murders had been concluded—Brooke was celebrating the lives of 23-year-old Deah Barakat, his wife, 21- year-old Yusor Mohammad; and her sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad, while also privileging the theory of a hate crime.

The three young Muslim students had been “shot and killed” in the Chapel Hill, North Carolina, area, over what seems to be a dispute over a parking bay.

One of the biggest questions here, as this man has been taken into custody, and one of the questions is, was this a hate crime. We’re they targeted based on their culture and their religion? They father of these young women seems to think so based upon a number of instances in the past with this individual you’re looking at on the screen.

AND:

KHAN: You know, we live in a time of intense individualism [prick] and consumerism and these three served as shining examples to youth all over the world of the hearts that they have, the importance of serving others. They lived for something greater than themselves.

I met Deah many years ago. Him and his wife, Yusor, helped launch the United Muslim Relief Triangle Chapter. The younger sister, Razan, was a current officer in our chapter at the UMR Triangle Chapter in Raleigh/Chapel Hill and Durham. And her job was monthly feedings for the homeless. And she would set up feedings where our students and young volunteers would go out every month and serve the people of Raleigh. And that should tell you everything you need to know about the characters of these people. These were the best of the best. These are the kind of people, characters, the kind of children that every parent dreams for. And it’s a tragic, tragic loss for the community.

BALDWIN: I’m so glad you pointed out the monthly homeless feedings. I’ve seen pictures on the Internet. I mean it’s not just that Deah was going to go to Turkey this summer, but this is something they did daily, weekly, monthly. Can you talk to me a little bit more about Deah’s trip, though, to Turkey this summer? I mean why was this so important to him?

KHAN: You know, Deah was following in his brother’s footsteps also. His brother, Fatis (ph), served with us and served Syrian refugees in Turkey before. This is a family that has inspired many people in the community. It’s not just – it wasn’t just Deah. It was the brother and the sister. And what Deah was doing was getting together — help to get dental – meet the dental needs of Syrian refugees. And this is something that no one really discusses or talks about. It’s really, really hard to inspire people to get them involved for something like dental relief, but it’s something that’s so important that we don’t realize. And he picked up something that was so tough and went after it and did a great job. And if you – and I really hope this mission continues and it will be fulfilled. And we’re going to do our best to hopefully support them and make sure that this is recorded on his good deeds.

BALDWIN: The – I read a quote a moment ago from “The Raleigh News and Observer,” from the two women’s father saying that he feels absolutely that the three of them were attacked because of their religion, because of their culture. And when you look at the suspect’s FaceBook page, and I’m not wasting anyone’s time reading any of it, but it’s clearly very anti-religion. And I’ll just leave it there. I was looking at Deah’s Twitter feed and one of the tweets I just

At first, it sounded as if the students, who were fine kids, had been singled out for their faith, the giveaway being the women’s attire. However, from his Facebook postings (so many know-nothings; so many unabashed opinions) it would appear that the perpetrator was an atheist zealot who hated religion with a passion and often defended Muslims with reference to Christian hypocrisy.

What I would like to know is where are Baldwin’s eulogies and accolades for “Yoav Hattab, son of Tunisian chief rabbi,” who was incidental collateral, if one is to believe Barack Obama, in the attack in Paris on “a Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket?

The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability

Britain, Crime, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Islam, Jihad, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media

“The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Disaffected, disadvantaged, disenfranchised is how progressives prefer to depict the Muslim murderers in their midst. After all, progressives hail from the school of therapeutic “thought” that considers crime to have been caused, not committed. Misbehavior is either medicalized and outsourced to state-approved experts, or reduced to the fault of the amorphous thing called society.

The most famous advocate of the-Camel-Ate-My Homework theory of criminal culpability is Barack Obama. Obama’s flabby assumption has it that the poor barbarians of France’s burbs have been deprived of fraternité. “Europe needs to better integrate its Muslim communities,” lectured the president.

Also guilty of a social determinism that flouts their philosophy of individual freedom are libertarians. For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society and libertarian saddle the state: U.S. foreign policy, in particular. A war of aggression, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and torture are thus “principal catalysts for this kind of non-state terrorism,” argued Ray McGovern.

“The-state-made-me-do-it” argumentation apes that of the left’s “society-made-me-do-it” argumentation. Both philosophical factions, left and blowback-libertarian, are social determinists, in as much as they implicate forces outside the individual for individual dysfunction.

Myself, I despise U.S. foreign policy as deeply as any Muslim. But it would never-ever occur to me to take it out on my American countrymen.

In the context of free will, and in a week in which we remember the Holocaust, Viktor E. Frankl rates a mention.

Dr. Frankl came out of Auschwitz to found the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The philosopher and distinguished psychiatrist said this of his experience in the industrial killing complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau: “In the camps one lost everything, except the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

To plagiarize another Jews (myself): “You can see why liberals have always preferred Freud to Frankl [my family included]. They retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian fiction that traumatic toilet training is destiny.”

Dr. Frankl lost his beloved young wife in Auschwitz, yet told poignantly of finding her, if figuratively, in a tiny bird that flitted close by. If this man was able to discovered the reality of free will and human agency in a laboratory like Auschwitz; so too can Muslims find the will to respond adaptively to events that enrage them and are indeed unjust: Western foreign policy.

The idea that the Brothers Kouachi and thousands of their coreligionists in the West who’ve joined ISIS were driven by “disaffection” to do their diabolic deeds conjures a skit from the “Life of Brian,” John Cleese’s parody of Judea under Rome. …

The complete column is “The-Camel-Ate-My Homework Theory Of Culpability.” Read the rest on WND.