Category Archives: Media

Beavis (Obama) & Butthead (Steve Inskeep) Do National Public Radio (NPR)

Barack Obama, Critique, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

Steve Inskeep of National Public Radio “interviewed” President Obama in the Oval Office. Inskeep’s interview is really a non-probing, lighthearted quiz that can be paraphrased as follows:

* So glad you were able to pass two major executive actions. Did the fact that elections had just passed liberate you to perform so liberating a service?

* I hope you continue to do the things you want to do, Mr. president. I’m with you, Bro.

* Pretend the following is a question, when in fact it is but a way for me to “cleverly” show you the degree to which I’m down with you. Here goes: Bloody Congress! How do you, Great Leader, intend to get those rube-hicks on board with your enlightened executive orders?

* Republicans are nativists. I’m so smart. We both are. (The two laugh like Beavis and Butthead.)

* Finally, and before I suggest my own flattering explanation of how wickedly smart your foreign policy is—outwitting enemies with empathy—I’m going to get really tough and give you a chance to convince me America has not been further divided racially by yourself.

* Have I told you how awesome you are for bringing the price of oil down? Consider it said.

Each and every question posed by Steve Inskeep suggests its own, most-flattering reply.

Repulsive.

Read with vomit bag handy.

The Fourth Estate (Media) Moving Country Into Third Dimension

Hollywood, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Objectivism, Technology

Being part of major US media—the Fourth Estate—means moving into a Third Dimension of your own making and taking the country with you. What was it that the Bush neoconservative Karl Rove once asserted at the heights of that regime’s manipulation of reality?

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

As was suggested over these pixelated pages, the “Hollywood hack hysteria” was a media event, not a journalistic investigation, as all news reporting should be. Accordingly, “the moron media shared speculations but not much credible evidence as to the source of the hack.”

It was left to an unconventional citizen-journalist-cum-blogger using conventional journalistic methods to uncover Jonathan Gruber’s utterances. Ditto the Sony hack attack. A blog called North Korea Tech by Martyn Williams did the digging. It

details inconsistencies in the Sony attack and past attacks by North Korea.
“Computers at Sony displayed a message threatening the release of internal documents if undisclosed demands were not met. North Korean hackers have never made such public demands,” Williams writes.
He also notes that little is known about Guardians of Peace, the group that claimed responsibility for the attack. No group has claimed credit in past North Korean hacks.
Williams said that the hackers stole sensitive information about movie stars, staff, and Sony management. In an apparently personal attack, the hackers posted a message on the Twitter accounts of Sony employees. This gives credence to the growing theory that the attack was an inside job.
Tommy Stiansen, the chief technology officer for Norse, a hacker-tracking company, told Bloomberg that he plans to approach the FBI and Mandiant, the private company researching the attack, with information that implicates a disgruntled Sony employee in Japan in the attack.

MORE.

The Dynamics Of Media Moral Inversion

Media, Morality, Propaganda, Race, Racism

On the one hand, there’s Brooke Baldwin. She’s a CNN bimbo, not as bad as a Fox News issue—the spandex swaddled Gretchen Carlson comes to mind—but nevertheless a prototype airhead, on the air for her looks. Brooke’s brief at CNN is the enforcement of progressivism, the deconstruction of conventional news broadcasting and morality.

On the other hand, you have Charles Barkley, “basketball analyst for Turner Sports and former NBA great.” He’s no philosopher king, but high concentrations of cutaneous melanin have qualified him to be a philosopher king in contemporary America.

Barkley called the Ferguson rioters “scumbags,” a perfectly reasonable descriptive for “the rioters who set buildings and police cars on fire in Ferguson,” not to mention murdered a cracker or two.

In the universe Brooke brings to her CNN viewers, berating black looters and murderers is controversial, a position that requires “defending,” or so she framed here interview with Barkley:

“Charles Barkley defends calling Ferguson rioters ‘scumbags.’”

Dr. Ben Carson, a self-made man who has never relied on race to excel, has no problem articulating immutable moral truth: “The Community Has to Recognize That a Thug Is a Thug.”

On Michael Brown, Libertarians Line-Up Like Mainstream

Crime, libertarianism, Media, Paleolibertarianism

With the exception of Professor Walter E. Block, libertarians, lite and hard-core, have lined-up like a monolith—much as mainstream media has—on the side of conspiracy and counteract, in the matter of Michael Brown’s shooting by Darren Wilson. (At least Reason.com has been willing to entertain differences of opinion.) Broad patterns of police transgression exist. However, each “cop killing” must be decided on the merits of the facts. Regrettably, this libertarian column had also expressed the opinion that Brown was the victim of “murder-by-cop.” I was wrong and have corrected myself.

Mentor and friend Walter Block did not fall in lockstep. Here’s the lovely comment received after the publication of “Ferguson: Thankful for Founding Fathers’ Legal Legacy”:

Dear Ilana:

Yet another eloquent, beautifully argued, magnificently written article, greatly informed by a libertarian sense of justice. Congratulations once again.

Best regards,

Walter

Walter E. Block, Ph.D.
Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics
Joseph A. Butt, S.J. College of Business
Loyola University New Orleans