Liberal media? What liberal media?

Posts : 6988

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-maga-hat-is-not-a-statement-of-policy-its-an-inflammatory-declaration-of-identity/2019/01/23/9fe84bc0-1f39-11e9-8e21-59a09ff1e2a1_story.html?utm_term=.4cd7f12888c2

The MAGA hat is not a statement of policy. It’s an inflammatory declaration of identity.

By Robin Givhan
Fashion critic
January 24

The bright red Make America Great Again baseball cap entered the popular culture as candidate Donald Trump’s political swag. It has transformed into an open wound, a firestorm of hate and a marker of societal atavism.
An aesthetically benign baseball cap is a 21st-century grotesquerie.
Has there been in recent memory any other item of clothing — so specific in design and color — that pits neighbors against each other, causes classroom altercations, sparks both rage and fear, and ultimately alludes to little more than a mirage?
Fashion has upset the populace before. Miniskirts were an affront to tradition and decorum. Baggy jeans and hoodies riled the establishment. “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts and pink pussy hats were created to send a message of political protest.
But the Make America Great Again hat is not a statement of policy. It’s a declaration of identity.
The MAGA hat. The acronym reads like a guttural cry. An angry roar. MAA-GAA! It calls out to a time — back in some sepia-tinged period — when America was greater than it is now, which for a lot of Americans means a time when this country still had a lot of work to do before it was even tolerant of — let alone welcoming to — them and their kind. Some see an era of single-income families, picket fences and unlocked doors. Others see little more than the heartbreak of redlining, walkers and beards, and the “problem that has no name.”
Native American elder Nathan Phillips, teen Nick Sandmann give versions of encounter
The past was not greater; it is simply the past. It’s only the soft-focus, judicious edit that looks so perfect and sweet.
In the beginning, the MAGA hat had multiple meanings and nuance. It could reasonably be argued that it was about foreign policy or tax cuts, social conservatism, the working class or a celebration of small-town life. But the definition has evolved. The rosy nostalgia has turned specious and rank. There’s nothing banal or benign about the hat, no matter its wearer’s intent. It was weaponized by the punch-throwing Trump rallygoers, the Charlottesville white supremacists, Trump’s nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Kanye West and proponents of the wall, the wall, the wall.

The hat has become a symbol of us vs. them, of exclusion and suspicion, of garrulous narcissism, of white male privilege, of violence and hate. For minorities and the disenfranchised, it can spark a kind of gut-level disgust that brings ancestral ghosts to the fore. And here, in 2019, their painful past is present.
The MAGA hat speaks to America’s greatness with lies of omission and contortion. To wear a MAGA hat is to wrap oneself in a Confederate flag. The look may be more modern and the fit more precise, but it’s just as woeful and ugly.
To wear the hat is to take on history and divisiveness. Because whatever personal meaning might be attached to the hat, the new broader cultural meaning overrides. It is too late to save the hat from this fate. And it’s too soon to try to reclaim it and give it new life.
The hat figured prominently in the viral video of young Nick Sandmann’s eye-to-eye encounter with the more senior Native American drummer Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial. Sandmann stood his ground. He had every right to remain there, the high schooler said during an interview on “Today.” Sandmann did not seem to consider whether it was actually the right thing to do.
How drastically his appearance changed from the fateful moment on the Mall to his appearance on national television. The world met Sandmann when he was wearing a red MAGA hat and a quilted parka. His mouth was turned up in a thin, wide smile that occasionally expanded into a toothy one. When he appeared on television to defend himself against accusations of racism and disrespect, he wore a heather gray zip-front pullover and a button-down shirt. His short brown hair was shiny. His large eyes rarely blinked. His voice was flat. The MAGA hat was gone.
Journalist Savannah Guthrie asked him whether he thought the public outrage over his behavior might have been different were it not for the hat. “That’s possible,” Sandmann said, which was his most self-aware utterance of the interview.Last year, Kanye West knew that he was tossing a hand grenade into the social media universe when he tweeted a photograph of himself wearing a MAGA hat. It was a contrarian moment, an attempt to get a rise out of people — and, of course, he did.
The hat is a provocation. Is its corrosiveness too much for high school students to understand? No. They have studied American history. They can sort through complex issues related to the Second Amendment, climate change and abortion to not only have an opinion but also organize to change the opinion of others. They are digital natives who understand the power of images. Armed with so much knowledge, it is, perhaps, a more jolting loss, a graver reality, when youth is wrecked by the acid hatred symbolized by a hat.
To deny the hat’s message is to be in denial — not about a misunderstanding or an unfortunate incident, but a familiar, festering truth.

Well, Ms. Givhan - if you have placed yourself in the running for Krazy Kunt of 2019, you have my vote.
(And it's only January.)

Posts : 3520

happy jack wrote:: No, my query about your tits being in an uproar was not aimed at the topic about which I was posting, but rather aimed at why you are so concerned about the particular link I chose to post, considering that it doesn't contain anything vastly different from the many other links that were contemporarily available.[/b]

So... my "tits are in an uproar" anytime I respond to any post on a discussion forum?

via GIPHY

Posts : 2141

Heretic wrote:

happy jack wrote:: No, my query about your tits being in an uproar was not aimed at the topic about which I was posting, but rather aimed at why you are so concerned about the particular link I chose to post, considering that it doesn't contain anything vastly different from the many other links that were contemporarily available.[/b]

So... my "tits are in an uproar" anytime I respond to any post on a discussion forum?

via GIPHY

Hey, Jack... Do you have a MAGA hat?

Posts : 6988

Scorpion wrote:: Hey, Jack... Do you have a MAGA hat?

No, but I'm seriously considering getting one, just to see what would happen in various situations. As I've said a few times, if Trump (and anyone and anything even vaguely associated with him) has done nothing else, he has brought out the true colors in people who really should know better, and those people have embarrassed themselves time and again, personal acquaintances included. This Covington joke is only the latest in a series of displays of pure overreaction and idiocy, and I foresee it getting worse before it gets better.
Take a look around when you're out sometime and count the number of Trump yard signs or bumper stickers. I have essentially seen zero, which is very unusual compared to the paraphernalia I've seen displayed touting other politicians. I would venture that, in any given neighborhood, a car or house with a Trump decal or poster would be subject to an act of vandalism within a week, if not sooner. And that, to me, says a lot about the true colors of these people. I would put a bumper sticker on my own car as an experiment, but I don't relish forking out $ for a new paint job or windshield.

Posts : 6988

Having seen several different videos from the D.C. incident, shot by different people from different angles and perspectives, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing this boy did 'wrong' was to wear a hat that offended a lot of overly-sensitive whiners.

Posts : 6988

We really gotta do something about that damned acronym before anyone else gets hurt.
Perhaps a 5-day waiting period before using it?

https://www.conservativereview.com/news/malkin-manure-spreaders-media-sensationalism/

Malkin: The manure-spreaders of media sensationalism

Michelle Malkin · January 30, 2019

Here we go again. If you think the manure-spreaders of sensationalism who masquerade as ethical practitioners of journalism learned anything from last week’s MAGA-bashing Covington Catholic High School hoax, I have three words for you:
Ha, ha, ha.
On Tuesday morning, uncorroborated claims by actor Jussie Smollett that he was the victim of a “brutal” hate crime by Trump supporters in Chicago went viral across social media. Entertainment rag TMZ.com first splashed “exclusive” headlines that the “Empire” cast member was “beaten by MAGA backers” in a “homophobic attack” at around 2 a.m. in Chicago. If you have no idea what “Empire” is or who Smollett is, join the club. The TV star is apparently a vocal critic of Trump and attacked “45 and all his white hooded cohorts” on Instagram last week.
But I digress.
Within minutes, the gossip site’s squib on the TV star’s alleged victimization trended on Twitter and rocketed up to USA Today, Variety, CBS, CNN and The New York Times. The Fishwrap of Record breathlessly reported lurid details of two people who “wrapped rope around his neck,” which multiple outlets characterized as a “noose.” A police statement providing incident background stated that “the offenders began to batter the victim with their hands about the face and poured an unknown chemical substance on the victim,” according to Smollett. Multiple websites reported that the substance was bleach.
This is truly horrible, if true. But color me cautious and skeptical. TMZ initially reported that Smollett had exited a Subway chain restaurant near his luxury apartment when accosted by the racist, homophobic assailants, who allegedly recognized him from his work on “Empire.” Allegedly, Smollett received a hate mail with the word “MAGA” on it addressed to him and sent to his studio in Chicago last week. If this was a premeditated attack, the FBI should get to the bottom of it.
But oddities and discrepancies abound:
TMZ quoted one of the “MAGA country” attackers who allegedly hurled epithets at Smollett: “Aren’t you that f—-t ‘Empire’ n—–?”
Question: How many racist homophobic menaces wander around the upscale Streeterville neighborhood of liberal Chicago at 2 a.m. carrying rope and bleach, yelling about “MAGA country”?
Question: How many racist homophobic menaces have ever heard of “Empire,” could recognize Jussie Smollett, or know or care anything about his sexuality?
Despite TMZ’s claim that Smollett had the “hell beat outta him” and attackers “broke his ribs” plus subjected him to a chemical attack, an ambulance was not called and he instead “self-transported” to the hospital. CWB Chicago, a local public safety watchdog site, reported on police dispatch records documenting that Smollett’s friend “Frank” refused EMS services for Smollett; no mention of bleach was made; “no or minor injury” was observed; and “officers never sent a ‘flash’ message with offender descriptions to field units.”
Weird.
Another assertion not included in the CPD’s initial press release on the incident: Any mention of “MAGA supporters” or any mention of the race of the alleged assailants. Police clarified that they had not received any official information backing TMZ reporter Charles Latibeaudiere’s claim, which he attributed to sources close to Smollett, that the alleged attackers shouted, “This is MAGA country.”
Nor had the police corroborated that the attackers were white, since Smollett had told them their faces and hands were both covered. After launching a search for surveillance video and potential witnesses, the police department reported late Tuesday that “thus far we have not found anything to be able to put out a description.”
I was told that public records requests for the incident report may take “weeks” to be approved. I was also told the Chicago police remain in charge of investigating the alleged incident, while the FBI probe of the alleged hate mail remains separate
CPD’s public information office also told me late Tuesday that when police responded to the 911 call regarding the incident, Smollett gave them no details about where it occurred or what the attackers looked like. None. They were reportedly on scene for an hour with Smollett. When I asked again how the claims about white “MAGA attackers” were disseminated in the press, the PIO replied:
“We have no idea where that came from.”
Minutes after I hung up the phone with her, a local Chicago reporter tweeted that Smollett did mention the “MAGA” angle in a “follow-up, supplemental interview.” Which is it?
Despite all the holes, contradictions and unanswered questions, the MAGA hate crime narrative has already calcified. (Sound familiar?) By 5 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, a search for “MAGA” and “Smollett” on Google yielded 3,520,000 results. And TMZ ended its day of social justice pot-stirring with the Rev. Al Sharpton calling for President Donald Trump to “denounce Jussie Smollett’s MAGA attackers” who have yet to be identified.
Classic manufactured “news:” Report on an uncorroborated hate crime. Plant unverified details. Repeatedly blame white male Trump supporters. Stoke Hollywood outrage. Enlist the godfather of hate crime hoaxes to call on the president to denounce phantom attackers. Reap clicks and publicity. Indict all skeptics as racists and haters. Repeat.
Smears first. Facts later. How much deader can American journalism get?
COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

Posts : 2141

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:: Hey, Jack... Do you have a MAGA hat?

No, but I'm seriously considering getting one, just to see what would happen in various situations.

May as well try wearing a dunce cap. Associating yourself with a first class idiot like Trump is not something to go around advertising, at least IMHO. Whatever floats your boat, I guess...

Posts : 6988

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:: Hey, Jack... Do you have a MAGA hat?

No, but I'm seriously considering getting one, just to see what would happen in various situations.

May as well try wearing a dunce cap. Associating yourself with a first class idiot like Trump is not something to go around advertising, at least IMHO. Whatever floats your boat, I guess...

As I've said numerous times in reference to Trump: what floats my boat is that he has been single-handedly squeezing the true colors out of this country's self-proclaimed 'tolerant' and 'woke' idiots.

Posts : 2141

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:: Hey, Jack... Do you have a MAGA hat?

No, but I'm seriously considering getting one, just to see what would happen in various situations.

May as well try wearing a dunce cap. Associating yourself with a first class idiot like Trump is not something to go around advertising, at least IMHO. Whatever floats your boat, I guess...

As I've said numerous times in reference to Trump: what floats my boat is that he has been single-handedly squeezing the true colors out of this country's self-proclaimed 'tolerant' and 'woke' idiots.

Yeah, I know how you get your "tits in an uproar" over the identity stuff...

Posts : 6988

Just glad that Gladys Knight stood her ground and, very eloquently and politely, essentially told the woke idiots to fuck off.
Below: The Empress of Soul meets the stupidest man in TV.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2019/02/04/cnns-lemon-gladys-knight-singing-anthem-could-hurt-your-career

CNN’s Lemon Warns Gladys Knight: Anthem Could Hurt Your Career

Before music legend Gladys Knight sang the national anthem at Super Bowl LIII on Sunday evening, Don Lemon -- host of the weeknight CNN Tonight program -- told her that another performer “basically lost her career” for singing at President Trump’s inauguration in January of 2017 and asked whether she was running the same risk.
Knight replied that “nothing good comes easy” and asked that listeners remember the “many people” in the country -- and her family -- who have died or are still standing for America. “We have fought hard for a long time, and not just in wars,” she stated.
Lemon began the segment by noting: “A number of artists have reportedly declined invitations to sing at the Super Bowl this year” in Atlanta.
He then played a clip of Mark Geragos, the attorney for former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who said that anyone who performs at this year’s game would take “a lot of heat, and I think rightfully so.”
Geragos added: “The idea that you're going to basically cross a picket line because that's what they’re doing, crossing an intellectual picket line.”
“They are saying to themselves: ‘I care more about my career than I do about whether what I'm doing is right,’” he continued. “That's taking the short money, so to speak.”
Knight, who is also known as the “Empress of Soul,” responded: “People are going to have their opinions, you know, about whatever.”
She noted:
All I can deal with right now is what my heart says, OK? I believe in fairness. I believe in truth. I believe in all of those things, and as far as this is concerned, I grew up with the national anthem.
We used to sing it in school before school started. We used to say prayers in school before school started.
“And we just don't have that anymore,” Knight continued. “And I'm just -- I'm just hoping that it will be about our country and how we treat each other and being the great country that we are.”
Not surprisingly, Lemon then took the discussion in a negative direction.
“I don't know if you remember the controversy during the inauguration when Chrisette Michele sang at the inauguration and just read an article in the New York Times how she basically lost her career for doing so,” he stated.
“You have a much longer history and resume, right? A legend in this business,” Lemon continued. “Is that a concern for you at all given the controversy surrounding this?”
Knight responded: “You know what, nothing good comes easy.”
“For me, it's just for me about respect,” she added before noting:
.I mean, if we just start denying the anthem, there are so many people that have died for our country and there are so many people in my family that are still part of, you know, just standing for the country.
{T}hey are in the services and that kind of thing, and just to not say that if you really listen to the lyrics of the beginning, you'll understand that. We have fought hard for a long time and not just in wars.
As NewsBusters previously reported, the 74-year-old Atlanta native joined the fray over NFL players kneeling during the playing of the national anthem in mid-January.
At the time, she posted: “Atlanta, I’m coming home!”
“It is unfortunate,” Knight continued, “that our national anthem has been dragged into this debate when the distinctive senses of the national anthem and fighting for justice should each stand alone.”
“I am here today and on Sunday, Feb. 3, to give the anthem back its voice, to stand for that historic choice of words, the way it unites us when we hear it and to free it from the same prejudices and struggles I have fought long and hard for all my life.”

Posts : 2141

happy jack wrote:: Just glad that Gladys Knight stood her ground and, very eloquently and politely, essentially told the woke idiots to fuck off.
Below: The Empress of Soul meets the stupidest man in TV.

Yeah. Well for the record, the term "woke" is just so 2017...

Posts : 6988

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:: Just glad that Gladys Knight stood her ground and, very eloquently and politely, essentially told the woke idiots to fuck off.
Below: The Empress of Soul meets the stupidest man in TV.

Yeah. Well for the record, the term "woke" is just so 2017...

How embarrassing!
So I don't humiliate myself in the future, what is the proper way to refer to the idiots formerly known as woke (TIFKAW)?

Posts : 6988

Assholes.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/435552-apologies-to-president-trump

Apologies to President Trump
By Sharyl Attkisson, opinion contributor — 03/25/19 09:30 AM EDT

With the conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe now known to a significant degree, it seems apologies are in order.
However, judging by the recent past, apologies are not likely forthcoming from the responsible parties.
In this context, it matters not whether one is a supporter or a critic of President Trump.
Whatever his supposed flaws, the rampant accusations and speculation that shrouded Trump’s presidency, even before it began, ultimately have proven unfounded. Just as Trump said all along.
Yet, each time Trump said so, some of us in the media lampooned him. We treated any words he spoke in his own defense as if they were automatically to be disbelieved because he had uttered them. Some even declared his words to be “lies,” although they had no evidence to back up their claims.
We in the media allowed unproven charges and false accusations to dominate the news landscape for more than two years, in a way that was wildly unbalanced and disproportionate to the evidence.
We did a poor job of tracking down leaks of false information. We failed to reasonably weigh the motives of anonymous sources and those claiming to have secret, special evidence of Trump’s “treason.”
As such, we reported a tremendous amount of false information, always to Trump’s detriment.
And when we corrected our mistakes, we often doubled down more than we apologized. We may have been technically wrong on that tiny point, we would acknowledge. But, in the same breath, we would insist that Trump was so obviously guilty of being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet that the technical details hardly mattered.
So, a round of apologies seem in order.
Apologies to Trump on behalf of those in the U.S. intelligence community, including the Department of Justice and the FBI, which allowed the weaponization of sensitive, intrusive intelligence tools against innocent citizens such as Carter Page, an adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Apologies also to Page himself, to Jerome Corsi, Donald Trump Jr., and other citizens whose rights were violated or who were unfairly caught up in surveillance or the heated pursuit of charges based on little more than false, unproven opposition research paid for by Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Apologies for the stress on their jobs and to their families, the damage to their reputations, the money they had to spend to hire legal representation and defend themselves from charges for crimes they did not commit.
Apologies on behalf of those in the intelligence community who leaked true information out of context to make Trump look guilty, and who sometimes leaked false information to try to implicate or frame him.
Apologies from those in the chain of command at the FBI and the Department of Justice who were supposed to make sure all information presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is verified but did not do so.
Apologies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court judges who are supposed to serve as one of the few checks and balances to prevent the FBI from wiretapping innocent Americans. Whether because of blind trust in the FBI or out of ignorance or even malfeasance, they failed at this important job.
Apologies to the American people who did not receive the full attention of their government while political points were being scored; who were not told about some important world events because they were crowded out of the news by the persistent insistence that Trump was working for Russia.
Apologies all the way around.
And now, with those apologies handled — are more than apologies due?
Should we try to learn more about those supposed Russian sources who provided false “intel” contained in the “dossier” against Trump, Page and others? Should we learn how these sources came to the attention of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who built the dossier and claimed that some of the sources were close to Putin?
When and where did Steele meet with these high-level Russian sources who provided the apparently false information?
Are these the people who actually took proven, concrete steps to interfere in the 2016 election and sabotage Trump’s presidency, beginning in its earliest days?
Just who conspired to put the “dossier” into the hands of the FBI? Who, within our intel community, dropped the ball on verifying the information and, instead, leaked it to the press and presented it to the FISC as if legitimate?
“Sorry” hardly seems to be enough.
Will anyone be held accountable?

Posts : 6988

You have absolutely no idea or experience - none - as to what it means to be a member of an 'oppressed media', you pathetic, self-pitying, self-serving, whiny little fuck.

https://news.grabien.com/story-lieu-comedy-whcd-opens-dark-sermon-trump-endangering-journal

In Lieu of Comedy, WHCD Opens with Dark Sermon on Trump Endangering Journalists

‘My son asked me, “Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?”‘

Apr 27, 2019 9:59 PM
By Tom Elliott

For the first time in recent memory, the White House Correspondents Dinner did not have a comedian emcee its annual dinner. Instead, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, Olivier Knox, delivered a solemn address to open up the usually jubilant evening.
Knox focused his remarks on the threat he said the White House is putting journalists under.
“I don’t want to dwell on the president,” Knox said while discussing President Trump. “This is not his dinner. It’s ours, and it should stay ours. But I do want to say this. In nearly 23 years as a reporter I’ve been physically assaulted by Republicans and Democrats, spat on, shoved, had crap thrown at me. I’ve been told I will never work in Washington again by both major parties.”
“And yet I still separate my career to before February 2017 and what came after,” Know continued. “And February 2017 is when the president called us the enemy of the people. A few days later my son asked me, ‘Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?” At the end of a family trip to Mexico he mused if the president tried to keep me out of the country, at least Uncle Josh is a good lawyer and will get you home.”
Journalists in the Trump era are under physical threat, Knox said somberly.
“I’ve had to tell my family not to touch packages on our stoop,” he told the crowd. “My name is on a statement criticizing the president for celebrating a congressman’s criminal assault on a reporter. I’ve had death threats, including one this week. Too many of us have. It shouldn’t need to be said in a room full of people who understand the power of words but fake news and enemies of the people are not punch lines, pet names or presidential. And we should reject politically expedient assaults on the men and women whose hard work makes it possible to hold the powerful to account."

Posts : 6988

https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/chick-fil-as-popular-chicken-sandwich-contains-a-controversial-ingredient/ar-AACuRTH?ocid=spartandhp

Chick-fil-A’s popular chicken sandwich contains a controversial ingredient

This alleged 'journalist' highlights and headlines this ingredient as being "controversial" for one reason, and one reason only - the owners of Chick-fil-A refuse to bow before the gods of same-sex marriage.
And please don't bother trying to tell me otherwise.

Posts : 6988

So Joe Biden apparently was cozy with segregationists back in the 70's, or whenever, and we're just hearing about it now?
Is there any reason anyone can think of why we didn't hear about this when he first became Barry's running mate?
Anyone?
Couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the media were neck-deep in the tank for Barry, with their collective lips planted firmly on Barry's messianic ass, could it?

Posts : 3520

happy jack wrote:: Couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the media were neck-deep in the tank for Barry, with their collective lips planted firmly on Barry's messianic ass, could it?

Not sure. What did the repeated exposes from the totally woke Fox News have to say on this topic?

Posts : 6988

Heretic wrote:

happy jack wrote:: Couldn't have had anything to do with the fact that the media were neck-deep in the tank for Barry, with their collective lips planted firmly on Barry's messianic ass, could it?

Not sure. What did the repeated exposes from the totally woke Fox News have to say on this topic?

Couldn't tell you - don't watch Fox News.

Incidentally, I happened upon a forum where you and yours might feel a little more comfortable:

https://www.liberalforum.org/topic/231752-rules-for-liberals-only-room-newcomers-please-read/

Posted May 12, 2018

Liberals Only" Room

Room about current news and not-so-current events. Liberals, including Progressives, Leftists, Greens, Democrats, etc. debate today's most pressing issues. Right wingers and Communists should not post in this room.
Rules for LO

×
Welcome to Liberals only forum

No conservatives allowed
Post respectfully, personal attacks will not be tolerated
No more than five new threads a day
No trash talking about members and their kids
No porn, or links to porn
No gore pictures
No cursing in thread titles
No, 'outing' of members or their families; names, addresses, phone numbers, SSNs, etc.
No linking to other political forums
No solicitations

None of that silly allowance for alternate viewpoints, so you can go to bed every night feeling really smart.

Posts : 6988

Liberal media notwithstanding, this headline seems kinda racist toward Asians.

Rice cookers shut down NYC subway station

https://nypost.com/2019/08/16/pair-of-pressure-cookers-shut-down-lower-manhattan-subway-station/

Posts : 6988

In other words:
Shut up, you with whom we liberals disagree!!!!

https://www.salon.com/2019/08/18/pat-buchanan-back-on-pbs-really-why-we-dont-need-a-mclaughlin-group-revival-now/

Pat Buchanan back on PBS, really? Why we don't need a "McLaughlin Group" revival now

"The McLaughlin Group" set a standard for shouty, "newsy" debate shows. We don't need it or Buchanan back on PBS

Melanie McFarland
August 18, 2019 7:30PM (UTC)August 18, 2019 7:30PM (UTC)

One thing our reboot and revival culture fails to account for is that many of yesteryear’s cultural stalwarts don’t withstand the test of time. Pick a year — 1982, for example — and you’ll find “Blade Runner,” “The Dark Crystal,” “Conan the Barbarian,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Tron” on that year’s list of releases, all titles that either influence modern TV shows or films, have been remade or revived, or will be.
To my knowledge there hasn’t been much clamoring for a remake of “Porky’s,” which ranked fifth on the list of top domestic box office earners in 1982, making it far and away more popular than any of the films listed in the prior paragraph. Times have changed, and that flick has not aged well in the 37 years since its initial release.

It should go without saying that a similar rule applies to television news and public affairs programming that was once considered central to the nation’s political and social dialogue. Newscasts are somewhat more immune to passage of time than other formats, but our means of digesting and analyzing politics has transformed as drastically as media landscape itself.
In 1982, PBS stations made “The McLaughlin Group” a core political affairs program of the Ronald Reagan era. Surely there were similarly themed public affairs programs in local markets, but only John McLaughlin's political roundtable was brash and grumpy enough to be worth parodying on “Saturday Night Live.”

Many Gen Xers probably remember Dana Carvey’s impression of McLaughlin more than any specifics about the host he was imitating other than his signature bellow of “Wrong!” when he disagreed with one of panelists — the core group consisting of Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Clarence Page and Tom Rogan — or wanted to transition to the next topic of debate.
It is possible that a number of middle-aged conservatives grew up with him, given that the series aired for 34 years until McLaughlin’s death three years ago, with the final episode recorded on August 12, 2016.
And if you didn’t realize that the show aired consistently for those 34 years, that’s probably because “Crossfire,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews,“ “Hannity & Colmes,” then just “Hannity,” “Tucker,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” “The Five,” “The Kelly File,” “The Ingraham Angle,” and a number of other shouty shows on down to “The View” have come and gone or are here to stay.

We’re swamped with so-called debate shows across cable, and on Sunday morning talk shows on broadcast. We probably don’t need another, and I can’t think of anyone campaigning for public television to exhume the grandfather of paleoconservative debate series, dust it off and put it back on the air.
Naturally this means that “The McLaughlin Group” minus McLaughlin is returning to TV.

For this, send your thanks to Maryland Public Television. The revived “McLaughlin” is hosted by Washington Examiner columnist and McLaughlin’s mentee Tom Rogan, who will be joined by the original panelist team of Page, Clift and yes, Buchanan.
Rogan’s resurrected “McLaughlin” stirred to life on Sinclair Broadcasting-owned WJLA-TV in Washington, where it aired for a few months on Sundays in 2018 before going online-only. The MPT-produced version begins airing in Maryland and Washington, D.C., area starting on September 6. As of January 2020, American Public Television will make it available to PBS member stations across the country.

At the moment the main point of contention with the program’s return is that Buchanan is coming back. Any person still in touch with their conscience should have a problem with that, given Buchanan’s long history of being a segregationist, an anti-Semite, a sexist and a homophobe, to list some of his finer qualities.
Media Matters for America, which sounded the alarm on Buchanan’s return to public television, reached out to Maryland Public Television and received the following statement: “Public media provides a big tent for the expression of many points of view. The McLaughlin Group has been a long-time staple on public TV. It’s a program series viewers appreciate for its wide range of views and perspectives, as well as the lively debate on issues that takes place among its panelists.”
The media has had many opportunities to deny Buchanan a platform, and yet he’s been a consistent presence on television more or less ever since “The McLaughlin Group” first premiered. When he wasn’t making unsuccessful runs for office, he was popping up as a cable news contributor.

And the host of CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper" succinctly explained why this is the case. “In between his racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic and anti-Semitic rhetorical outbursts, Buchanan speaks cogently and with conviction about a number of subjects -- including trade, abortion and foreign policy -- that clearly resonate with voters,” Tapper explained.
In fact, Tapper wrote that paragraph in the publication you’re reading right now, 20 years ago. But the fact that he could believably have said it yesterday indicates not merely why Buchanan shouldn’t be further normalized by a regular platform on PBS, but why PBS member stations’ audiences aren’t particularly served well by a return of “The McLaughlin Group” in general. The short answer is, we don’t need it.
In 2019 consumers have numerous choices from which to obtain fact-based reporting or misinformation, or opinion and partisan hackery masquerading as point-counterpoint debate. Entire networks devote their schedules to biased ringmasters and political propagandists spouting erroneous data or fearmongering talking points to a public that would rather be validated than informed.

Often these men and women are pitted against legitimate journalists and accredited researchers strenuously attempting to fact check their erroneous, harmful statements, and the outlets in question assure themselves and their audience that this false balance is their effort to be fair.
Fox News, MSNBC and CNN all engage in their versions of political argument theater, with Fox far and away being the prime practitioner, giving viewers far too many options to watch talking heads of every partisan stripe (or on Fox, right wing versus extremely right wing) yell at each other.
What’s lacking is a venue for reasonable discourse about the social, cultural and political issues. The new “The McLaughlin Group” may declare that reasonable discourse is its intent, but the original never adequately served that purpose. It was always a more polite but stodgier version of “Crossfire” — a cancelled format co-created by Buchanan.
And while the Buchanan of the ‘80s and ‘90s might have been excused as a Nixonian paleoconservative who went against Republican party orthodoxy, today his views are completely in line with the white nationalism has become the conservative brand. His strain of conservatism is incapable of honest, illuminative, useful debate. A few years ago I would have called his rhetoric dangerous, but now it’s dangerously mainstream, completely in-step with the administration’s stated views and goals, which means “The McLaughlin Group” probably won’t be offering anything different than what’s on cable news.

Beyond its indistinctness, and its employment of Buchanan (an indistinct factor in itself, depressing as that may be), a greater point of objection is that a show like this isn’t a necessity for PBS.
Between “PBS NewsHour,” “Frontline” and its resilient documentary programming, the Public Television Service consistently ranks among the least biased of major news outlets in journalism surveys, one of the most recent being the Gallup and Knight Foundation’s 2017 Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy released in 2018.
And PBS is doing its part to stay attuned to the times, evidenced in its launch of the tongue-in-cheek “Retro Report” this coming October, a show that places current events in the context of history to reveal to viewers the roots of why a particular issue has become a flashpoint.
At a time when our memory of how we got to this place is so fragile, and our amnesia so prevalent that we can’t remember when the last terrible thing that happened actually occurred, this type of program is a true service. It proves that gazing back in time really can be enough to understand why certain things repeat on their own, with little to no urging. That the past is left in the past, and not everything needs to be brought back — in part because they’ve never actually left, they’ve simply proliferated.

Posts : 6988

Kinda sucks for you that other people are now playing by the rules of the game that you invented.
The shoe seems to be on the other foot, doesn't it?
Happy now, you motherfuckers?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-allies-target-journalists-over-coverage-deemed-hostile-to-white-house/ar-AAGjq3C

Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House

WASHINGTON — A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.
It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.
The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.

Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said. Only a fraction of what the network claims to have uncovered has been made public, the people said, with more to be disclosed as the 2020 election heats up. The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president.

It is not possible to independently assess the claims about the quantity or potential significance of the material the pro-Trump network has assembled. Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.
But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.
It is clear from the cases to date that among the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.
Those familiar with the campaign described it as meant to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of mainstream news outlets that have covered the president’s inflammatory language regarding race.
“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”
The information unearthed by the operation has been commented on and spread by officials inside the Trump administration and re-election campaign, as well as conservative activists and right-wing news outlets such as Breitbart News. In the case of the Times editor, the news was first published by Breitbart, immediately amplified on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and, among others, Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and quickly became the subject of a Breitbart interview with Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary and communications director.

The White House press office said that neither the president nor anyone in the White House was involved in or aware of the operation, and that neither the White House nor the Republican National Committee was involved in funding it.
The Trump campaign said it was unaware of, and not involved in, the effort, but suggested that it served a worthy purpose. “We know nothing about this, but it’s clear that the media has a lot of work to do to clean up its own house,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.
The campaign is consistent with Mr. Trump’s long-running effort to delegitimize critical reporting and brand the news media as an “enemy of the people.” The president has relentlessly sought to diminish the credibility of news organizations and cast them as politically motivated opponents.
Journalism, he said in a tweet last week, is “nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party.”
The operation has compiled social media posts from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and stored images of the posts that can be publicized even if the user deletes them, said the people familiar with the effort. One claimed that the operation had unearthed potentially “fireable” information on “several hundred” people.
“I am sure there will be more scalps,” said Sam Nunberg, a former aide to Mr. Trump who is a friend of Mr. Schwartz.
Mr. Nunberg and others who are familiar with the campaign described it as meant to expose what they see as the hypocrisy of mainstream news outlets that have reported on the president’s inflammatory language regarding race.
“Two can play at this game,” he said. “The media has long targeted Republicans with deep dives into their social media, looking to caricature all conservatives and Trump voters as racists.”
But using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power.
“If it’s clearly retaliatory, it’s clearly an attack, it’s clearly not journalism,” said Leonard Downie Jr., who was the executive editor of The Post from 1991 to 2008. Tension between a president and the news media that covers him is nothing new, Mr. Downie added. But an organized, wide-scale political effort to intentionally humiliate journalists and others who work for media outlets is.
“It’s one thing for Spiro Agnew to call everyone in the press ‘nattering nabobs of negativism,’” he said, referring to the former vice president’s famous critique of how journalists covered President Richard M. Nixon. “And another thing to investigate individuals in order to embarrass them publicly and jeopardize their employment.”
A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.
“They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”
In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”
The operation is targeting the news media by using one of the most effective weapons of political combat — deep and laborious research into the public records of opponents to find contradictions, controversial opinions or toxic affiliations. The liberal group Media Matters for America helped pioneer close scrutiny of public statements by conservative media personalities.
The conservative operative James O’Keefe has twisted that concept in ways inconsistent with traditional journalistic ethics, using false identities, elaborate cover stories and undercover videos to entrap journalists and publicize embarrassing statements, often in misleading ways, to undercut the credibility of what he considers news media biased in favor of liberals.
In the case of the pro-Trump network, research into journalists is being deployed for the political benefit of the White House. It is targeting not only high-profile journalists who challenge the administration, but also anyone who works for any news organization that members of the network see as hostile to Mr. Trump, no matter how tangential that job may be to the coverage of his presidency. And it is being used explicitly as retribution for coverage.
Some reporters have been warned that they or their news organizations could be targets, creating the impression that the campaign intended in part to deter them from aggressive coverage as well as to inflict punishment after an article has been published.
Trained as a lawyer, Mr. Schwartz has endeared himself to members of the president’s family by becoming one of their most aggressive defenders, known for badgering and threatening reporters and others he believes have wronged the Trumps.
He has publicly gone after Republicans he views as disloyal, including the former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, about whom he admitted spreading an unsubstantiated rumor. He has called himself a “troll on Twitter,” which is where he has boasted of being aware of, or having access to, damaging information on dozens of journalists at CNN and The Times that could be deployed if those outlets ran afoul of Mr. Trump or his allies.
The operation’s tactics were on display last week, seemingly in response to two pieces in The Times that angered Mr. Trump’s allies. The paper’s editorial board published an editorial on Wednesday accusing Mr. Trump of fomenting anti-Semitism, and the newsroom published a profile on Thursday morning of Ms. Grisham, the new White House press secretary, which included unflattering details about her employment history.
One person involved in the effort said the pro-Trump forces, aware ahead of time about the coverage of Ms. Grisham, were prepared to respond. Early Thursday morning, soon after the profile appeared online, Breitbart News published an article that documented anti-Semitic and racist tweets written a decade ago by Tom Wright-Piersanti, who was in college at the time and has since become an editor on the Times’ politics desk. The Times said it was reviewing the matter and considered the posts “a clear violation of our standards.”
Mr. Schwartz tweeted a link to the Breitbart piece before 7 a.m., which Donald Trump Jr. retweeted to his 3.8 million followers — the first of about two dozen times that the president’s son shared the article or its contents. Other prominent Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, joined in highlighting the report.
Breitbart’s article quoted several people or groups with close ties to Mr. Schwartz, including Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany, and the Zionist Organization of America. It was written by the site’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, whose relationship with Mr. Schwartz started when Mr. Bannon ran the website.
Mr. Boyle’s article included a reference to the Times profile of Ms. Grisham, which it characterized as “attacking White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham.” Mr. Wright-Piersanti was uninvolved in the editing of the article about Ms. Grisham.
The tweets revealed in the Breitbart article quickly spread to other conservative outlets favored by the president and his allies, including the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.
Mr. Wright-Piersanti apologized on Twitter on Thursday morning and deleted offensive tweets. Mr. Schwartz then issued his warning that he had further damaging information about Times employees.
Mr. Wright-Piersanti, 32, said the tweets, posted when he was a college student with a Twitter following consisting mostly of personal acquaintances, were “my lame attempts at edgy humor to try to get a rise out of my friends.”
But he said “they’re not funny, they’re clearly offensive,” adding, “I feel deep shame for them, and I am truly, honestly sorry that I wrote these.”He said he had forgotten about the tweets as he started a career in journalism.
“For my generation, the generation that came of age in the internet, all the youthful mistakes that you made get preserved in digital amber, and no matter how much you change and mature and grow up, it’s always out there, waiting to be discovered,” Mr. Wright-Piersanti said.
Like Mr. Wright-Piersanti, other targets of the pro-Trump network have been young people who grew up with social media and wrote the posts in question when they were in their teens or early 20s, in most cases before they became professional journalists.
A week after a White House reporter for CNN sparred with Mr. Trump during a news conference, Mr. Schwartz highlighted a tweet by the reporter from 2011, when the reporter was in college, that used an anti-gay slur. Other similar tweets quickly surfaced, and the reporter apologized, though Mr. Schwartz has continued to antagonize the reporter on Twitter.
In recent months, Mr. Schwartz highlighted a nearly decade-old tweet in which a reporter for The Post had repeated in an ambiguous manner a slur used by a politician.
In March, Mr. Schwartz tweeted a link to an article from Breitbart, written by Mr. Boyle, about a reporter from Business Insider whose Instagram account included anti-Trump references and a photograph of the reporter demonstrating against the president.
In July, around the time CNN published an article exposing old posts by a Trump appointee spreading suggestions that Barack Obama was a Muslim whose loyalty to the United States was in question, Mr. Schwartz resurfaced anti-Semitic tweets from 2011 by a CNN photo editor. Mr. Schwartz suggested that a CNN reporter who specializes in unearthing problematic archival content should “look into the social media activities of your employees.”
The tweets became the basis for several articles in conservative news outlets and hundreds of tweets from conservatives targeting the photo editor, Mohammed Elshamy, which did not stop even after he resigned under pressure from CNN and apologized.
“It felt like a coordinated attack,” said Mr. Elshamy, who said he had received death threats. “It was overwhelming.”
Mr. Elshamy, who is now 25, said he posted the tweets when he was 15 and 16 years old, growing up in Egypt, when he was still learning English and did not fully grasp the meaning of the words.
“I was repeating slogans heard on the streets during a highly emotional time in my nation’s history,” he said. “I believe that my subsequent work and views over the years redeems for the mistakes I made as a kid.”
While he said he understands “the severity and harm of my comments,” he questioned the motivation of the campaign that cost him his job. “It is a very dirty tactic that they are using to cause as much harm as they can to anyone who is affiliated with these media outlets,” he said. “It actually feels like a competition and every termination or vilification is a point for them.”
Mr. Bannon, at the time the head of Breitbart, oversaw the site’s efforts in 2015 to attack Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, after she called out Mr. Trump for tweets disparaging women as “fat pigs,” “dogs” and “slobs.” In an interview, he said the work that Mr. Schwartz was undertaking should be seen as a sign that Mr. Trump’s supporters were committed to executing a frontal assault on news media they considered adversarial.
“A culture war is a war,” he said. “There are casualties in war. And that’s what you’re seeing.”

Posts : 2141

happy jack wrote:: Kinda sucks for you that other people are now playing by the rules of the game that you invented.
The shoe seems to be on the other foot, doesn't it?
Happy now, you motherfuckers?

What the hell are you going on about?

Posts : 6988

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:: Kinda sucks for you that other people are now playing by the rules of the game that you invented.
The shoe seems to be on the other foot, doesn't it?
Happy now, you motherfuckers?

What the hell are you going on about?

What the hell am I going on about?
I am going on about the media ruining peoples' lives over things that they did not even do (Kavanaugh, the Covington Catholic school students, Officer Darren Wilson, etc., etc., etc.), and who now have the nerve to complain that someone would even dare to tell the truth about what some members of the media have actually done.

From the article:

But the material publicized so far, while in some cases stripped of context or presented in misleading ways, has proved authentic, and much of it has been professionally harmful to its targets.

Is that fucking clear enough?
Or would you prefer to walk around with earplugs and a box over your head in order to ignore what the media have done, and are continuing to do?
Jesus H. - how dishonest do you want to be about this?
With Artie out of the picture, do you feel the need to pick up the slack?

Posts : 2141

Kavanaugh? Seriously? So now you're blaming the media for the Kavanaugh debacle?

Posts : 6988

Scorpion wrote:: Kavanaugh? Seriously? So now you're blaming the media for the Kavanaugh debacle?

Yes, I am.
If not for the media, who do you think was responsible for propagating the clearly false and nonsensical allegations against him (other than, of course, Christine Ballsy Fjord, Michael Avenatti, et. al.)?

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