Category Archives: Media

Language Patriotism & The ‘Shangri-La Of Socratic Disinterest’

I’m forever surprised as to which of my columns will appeal to readers. Much to my surprise, “Killing English by Bill O’Reilly” went down well. I believe the coda clinched it. Or, maybe it was the change of pace and the break from the political cesspool that endeared this column.

The title, incidentally, alludes to Bill’s many “Killing This; Killing That,” “co-authored” books.

The “Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest” is how Canadian commentator Rex Murphy deliciously dubbed Mr. O’Reilly’s method of inquiry.

Wrote (another) Bill:

Dear Ms. Mercer,

I am a confirmed liberal, but need to keep track of the ‘opposition’, so often read your columns at WND.

I am enchanted, if you will, by your latest. One of the current usages now in vogue among sportscasters is “verse” rather than versus….makes me crazy…willful ignorance.

Thanks so much,
Bill W.

This from JOSEPH W.:

You wrote: “The brilliant Richard Burton exulted in his love of English. ‘I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman,’ exclaimed the great actor.”

Ilana: I love English so much that I REFUSE to learn any other language; object to the teaching of other languages in school.
English is the most commonly spoken language on earth; more people speak it as a first or second tongue than any other. English has a speacial status as the international language of commerce, of freedom, of democracy.
Come to the country my ancestors settled in 1642 and learn English…that’s what we speak here.
English is all I need, if someone wants to learn a foreign language, let them take it up like other people take up a hobbie or craft. At least O’Reilly presents so new words to listeners … even if better educated folks like yourself have to correct him!
Thanks for being a champion of our native tongue!

Joseph R. W. II

And from my kind editor at Quarterly Review, a superb writer himself:

Brilliant writing Ilana
Leslie

UPDATED: Masada on Mount Sinjar (ISIS Crisis Continued)

Ancient History, Europe, History, Iraq, Israel, Jihad, Media, States' Rights

“Masada on Mount Sinjar” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Purportedly, forty thousand refugees, among them 25,000 children, were said to be stranded on the parched terrains of the Sinjar, in scorching heat, without sustenance. That is until Barack Obama broke up the gathering. Overnight. “That’s enough, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over.” Yes, the president and his minions have pronounced the catastrophe on the Sinjar Mountains over. However, just because the Obama machine declares it so, does not make it so. I would point BHO believers to Channel 4 veteran reporter Jonathan Rugman, who questions—even mocks—the administration’s rapid, fact-finding methodology:

Crisis, what crisis? The Americans have ruled out a military airlift of Yazidis stranded on Mount Sinjar on the grounds that the situation is not as bad as previously thought. … Are the Americans saying that the refugees are not spread out any more but have either been shepherded or moved into a concentrated area where they can be counted?

Let us, then, stick with Mr. Rugman’s findings, shall we? As the courageous correspondent has discovered, the Kurd-coordinated airdrops are executed by only four helicopters (one has since crashed), allotted by Baghdad. Emergency supplies are available in abundance at various nodal points; not so the means to deliver them. Priorities set by the central government do not include “rescuing a little known Yazidi minority in Kurdistan, a region which wants to break away from Iraq and become its own country.”

The Kurds assisting those marooned on the mountains would like to secede from the morass that is Iraq. Alas, the master puppeteers in Washington have hitherto been wedded to a unified (at the point of a gun) Iraq, dominated by a strong (sectarian and corrupt) central authority. This White House, and the one before it, fetishizes Iraqi national unity. It believes that to succeed, Iraqis should be like Americans, forever imprisoned in an arranged, unhappy political marriage. …

… Read the complete column. “Masada on Mount Sinjar” is now on WND.

UPDATE (8/15): If there is one constant you can trust it is that he lies. They all lie. “Break it up, Yazidis. Go home, now. The crisis is over,” Obama announced to the world, Thursday. I guess the president was attempting to will a new reality with words. The American media bought it and scattered. I was quite comfortable that “Masada on Mount Sinjar” was closer to the truth than Obama’s agitprop, even though it was submitted before his “Yazidis disperse” injunction.

Indeed, the ISIS crisis continues. Thirty miles from Sinjar, on Friday afternoon, reports BBCNews, “Militants in northern Iraq … massacred at least 80 men from the Yazidi faith in a village and abducted women and children.”

MORE.

UPDATED: When Cretins ‘Confront’ Creep-In-Chief

Barack Obama, Christianity, Constitution, Founding Fathers, IMMIGRATION, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Regulation

In the age of illiteracy and ignorance, newspaper transcripts are obsolete. So rely on memory I must in relaying what one can take away from Obama’s “presser at the conclusion of the Africa Summit.” And it is, chiefly, that the media, whose duty it is to keep the president on his toes, is really really dim.

Again, Obama called Congress a do-nothing Congress (if only this were true), when the Founding Fathers put in place a constitutional scheme that was intended to gridlock, so as to prevent usurpation of power belonging to the people. That the system failed to preserve freedom is beside the point. Obama still gets away with disgorging misleading dross about the constitutional system’s workings.

Just the other day, the creep-in-chief declared that there was no money to protect the border from tidal waves of central-American juveniles. (That too was the fault of a “do-nothing Congress.”) Today, this interloper found plenty taxpayer money to give to “Africa” so that it could unleash the potential of its women, press, medical men (or witchdoctors, as they are called on that continent), civil institutions, on and on. I’d say this was tantamount to throwing good money after bad, if there was any real money to throw about.

The American media, like the army, is internationalist. They like to present themselves as humanitarians, whose sympathies lie with the world’s poor (unless they personally have to step up, whereupon these left-liberals metamorphose into NIMBYs).

Why, one feeble-minded female demanded, was an Ebola drug, developed in the US and still not approved for use due to Food and Drug Administration regs—yes, regulation can indirectly kill—why was it not being provided to “Africa”? (I don’t think American journos understand that “Africa,” like Europe before the European Union, is made up of many countries.) And was it ethical to test the compound on the infected Christian missionaries—Americans all—who contracted the disease when ministering to the sick and afflicted on the continent.

If they could, the journos would take the ZMapp drug away from these saints who deserve a cure. The selfless saints serving the Lord in Africa would probably agree.

UPDATED (8/7): Partial transcript courtesy of CNN.

The Tyrant’s Warring Factions

Constitution, Crime, Founding Fathers, John McCain, Media

I’m not quite convinced ordinary individuals should share the nation-wide outrage over the dispute between Congress, on the one hand, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the other.

What’s it about? Explains AMY GOODMAN of “Democracy Now!”:

The Central Intelligence Agency has admitted its officials spied on a Senate panel probing the agency’s torture and rendition program. An internal probe found 10 CIA employees monitored Senate staffers’ computers. This development comes days after another revelation of CIAspying on Congress emerged. According to McClatchy, the agency has also been spying on emails from whistleblower officials and Congress, triggering fears the CIA has been intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.

This CIA infraction is said to “violate the constitutional separation of powers and may also have been a violation of a federal computer fraud.”

McMussolini is upset. He doesn’t much appreciate any upset in the balance of his power.

Seriously, separation of powers has become nothing but a slogan. Very little remains of the Founder’s constitutional scheme. The people who were supposed to benefit from the dispersion of power inherent in that scheme, now labor under a centralized power.

Isn’t it curious how much fuss is generated by the media-congressional faction when their rights and privileges are messed with? Forgotten in the self-serving din is the spying that goes on against the people. The people themselves forget and become distracted by the whining of those in power.

For all I care, the CIA and Congress can devour each other.