More Thematic, Media Spin From CNN

Critique, Europe, Free Speech, Islam, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

A previous post, “In The Media, It’s All About The Angle, The Spin,” alerted you to the need to be aware of the overarching themes that generally infest each and every news story in mainstream media. This is the media’s meta-narrative. Be hip to it.

To add to the example given in the post I offer up another story with a particular “angle,” spun by CNN retard Fredricka Witless (whose intellectual prowess I chronicled in “Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism”). Ms. Witless asks leading questions of a man she introduces as “controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks” (who in a free society, would never be considered controversial for harming no one in the fulfillment of the requirements of his benign profession).

… He survived Saturday’s deadly shooting at a Denmark forum on freedom of expression. Vilks is no stranger to threats. He has survived two previous attempts on his life after his controversial sketch depicting the prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog in 2007. Al-Qaeda placed him on their most wanted poster, and since then, Vilks has had to travel with bodyguards and check his car for bombs. I spoke to him exclusively about the attacks in Denmark.

Essentially, Witless wants to know if this innocent cartoonist feels responsible for crimes perpetrated by others, in response to his drawings.

WHITFIELD: And I realize as an artist, your drawing of the prophet Muhammad was many years ago in 2007, and there are other artists who have rendered pictures of the prophet Muhammad and angered many in the Muslim community. There are authors, Salman Rushdie among them, and then of course, the most recent with Charlie Hebdo being targeted as a result of the same sentiment. Do you feel responsible or do you feel that you have contributed to the sentiment that have inspired some people to resort to violence, to express their anger about how the prophet Muhammad has been depicted?

MORE Witless.

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.”

Meanwhile, In ‘Liberated’ Libya

Hillary Clinton, Islam, Jihad, Terrorism, War

“Whence ISIS?” and “Don’t Know Shiite From Shinola” detail the genesis of ISIS in Iraq. In Libya, ISIS was liberated to act with barbarity and impunity by the 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton and her soul sisters.

“The war in Libya was Hilary’s special project. As in Greek mythology, it all began with three Gorgon sisters. Medusa’s posse included Samantha Power (special assistant to the president and member of his National Security Council), and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. The women devised the casus belli for this war, and cultivated the ‘angels and demons’ Disney production, which starred an evil dictator who was killing his noble people, and three amazon warriors, who—high on estrogen-driven paternalism—rode to the rescue.” (See “Murder on Her Mind.”)

Libya was “a war of the womb; a product of the romantic minds of women who fantasize about an Arab awakening. It was estrogen-driven paternalism on steroids.” (MORE)

Pursuant to the release by Islamic State of “a video on Sunday that appeared to show the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya,” scholar of Islam Robert Spencer clarifies the meaning of the attendant ISIS statement, to the effect that, “Safety for you crusaders is something you can only wish for”:

Note that the Islamic State is here referring to Egyptian Christians — the indigenous people of Egypt — as “Crusaders.” Their ignorance of history is in service of their claim that Christians have no place in the Middle East. Their fanatical adherence to Islamic law has made them aggressive, violent, and supremacist — but no one wants to face the implications of that.

Huckabee, ‘Forrest Gump’ Of The GOP

Conservatism, Constitution, Elections, Neoconservatism, Republicans

A “confidence trickster worthy of a P.T. Barnum circus” was how this column captured Mike Huckabee’s appeal. It must be conceded that Charles C. W. Cooke of National Review captures even better the forced and contrived, “cornpone” appeal of the man who will be vying to stand as the Republican’s nominee for the presidency. While I reject the writer’s crass, almost bereft of principle pragmatism; and although unable to tell whether Cooke prefers Mark Levin’s worldview to that of Calvin Coolidge—perhaps our only libertarian president—I liked his depiction of The Huckster:

Among the panoply of rightward-leaning politicians who are currently flirting with running for the presidency is one Mike Huckabee, a former pastor, governor, television host, and author who has of late been preparing for office by converting himself into Larry the Cable Guy. Huckabee is touring the breadth and width of the country in support of his new book — the alliteratively titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy — the purpose of which seems to be to establish its author as the unparalleled down-home candidate within the 2016 primary. Unlike so many in Washington, Huckabee claims, he is firmly on the side of “Bubbaville” rather than “Bubbleville”; of the “catfish and cornbread crowd” rather than “the crepes and caviar set”; and of those who “come home tired at the end of the day” rather than those who “burn tires in the street.” Are you tired of the incumbent set? he seems to ask. Then you know what to do.

By taking this approach, Huckabee is essentially attempting to become to the Right what the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson have become to the Left: namely, a proxy figure who can be used as shorthand by the lazy and the lost to signify their allegiance to a set of cherished cultural values. “We like the simple life,” Huckabee announces in his book. “Status is a Ford 150 truck; luxury is crawfish étouffée and slaw on your pulled-pork sandwich; and privilege is front-row seats at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.” And unlike those “misfortunate” souls in “Manhattan, the Washington Beltway, or in Beverly Hills,” we know the joy that one can get from wading “in chest-deep water to hunt mallards.” Insofar as it goes, there is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, I like many of these things too. But the self-conscious spinning of local tradition into a national political aesthetic is invariably irritating, and, typically, electorally counterproductive. There are many wonderful things about the world Huckabee is attempting to represent. But surely, just surely, it is possible for a southerner to run for high office without dressing up as Forrest Gump? …

… Whatever cultural renaissance Mike Huckabee might believe is necessary in the United States, it will be up to civil society and not to the political classes to bring it about. Unless conservatives wish to join the Left in its Wilsonian quest to glue politics to absolutely everything, our would-be emissaries really need to make up their minds …

MORE.