Category: media and media people

Categories
media and media people

Twitter’s Election Interference

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Twitter, censorship,

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube . . . they sucked us in by pretending to be non-biased platforms for everybody, yet now suppress content that chiefly rubs against one set of clients, supporters of the Democratic Party.

The current case regards the water-damaged computer of (reportedly) Hunter Biden, the content of which reached the New York Post by way of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But the bigger story is that Twitter won’t allow links to the Post’s reporting, going so far as to lock the Post’s primary account; Facebook has also tried to suppress the story. 

Now it’s blowing up everywhere.

It’s bad for the Bidens: emails suggest the former Vice-President played more of a role than previously claimed in what has always looked improper — no, corrupt — except to most mainstream media.*

No wonder, then, that we hear calls for government regulation of social media.

Shivers down my spine.

But what I have not heard? Giving Democrats a dish of what they love: federal campaign finance law.

Does not social media’s clearly uneven content suppression amount to material support for one set of political candidates over others? Why not stick Democrats with their own beloved regime?

But great minds think alike: while proofreading the above, I found a tweet by Lee Spieckerman, a Texas media specialist: “The @TheJusticeDept should immediately begin investigating @jack [Twitter’s CEO] for illegal in-kind campaign contribution to @JoeBiden.”

While I oppose campaign finance regulation, we must not** let such regulations only be used by one side against the other. 

Yet maybe if we make the threat, social media will come to its senses, and Democrats will see the error of McCain-Feingold.

Too crazy? Or the right amount of 2020 crazy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* A state-connected Chinese bank and a well-connected Russian woman lathered Hunter up with millions and billions of dollars for only one plausible reason: his father’s position in our government. Hunter Biden joined that Ukrainian oil company board after Joe Biden became point-man for our country’s Ukrainian policy.

 ** In the past, I have addressed this notion of applying bad regulations equally, including campaign finance laws specifically.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
media and media people

Running from “Riot”

War is Peace, doublespeak, Orwell, riot, language, propaganda

Whenever it got started — ancient Sumer, maybe — doublespeak is linguistic legerdemain, a sad sign of modern times.

Consider the Associated Press’s recent pronouncement about the word “riot.” Use the meeker word “unrest,” the stylebook editors suggest. “Unrest is a vaguer, milder and less emotional term for a condition of angry discontent and protest verging on revolt.”

Nothing like vagueness and timidity to make reporting as crisp and specific as possible.

The AP adds: “Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used . . . to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice, going back to the urban uprisings of the 1960s.”

Why the new recommendation? 

Well, all that . . . rioting by the swaths of rioters raises the question — if you regard the rioting as politically inconvenient — how not to report it.

Of course, one could consistently say both that “policing and the law should be reformed in such-and-such a way” and that “people should not destroy the property and lives of others.” Moreover, violating the rights of others should have a social cost. Criminal activity should be stigmatized. There is a major difference between protesting injustice and committing injustice.

Orwell defined doublethink, the method and goal of doublespeak, as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

Whether a mind can actually do this is debatable. But disguising from oneself and others what we can all see is one way people try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

Train or Dumpster?

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Presidential, Debate

If you sent Trump into a meeting with Xi Jinping, you’d worry that Trump might say something that maybe he shouldn’t. But you wouldn’t have to worry that China’s warlord would go “Wo-ho-ho! Would you sign this? And drink this?!?!” 

With Biden, well, you would worry, no?

That’s my prime takeaway of Tuesday’s terrible debate, which is near-universally described as a “train wreck” or “dumpster fire.” 

My “meta” take is that the debate format itself was doomed to derail or blow up in flames (depending on metaphor).

It started out with a reasonable “two minutes for you; two minutes for you” method, and then lurched into a free-for-all, with far too many interruptions and back-and-forth. 

You can tell when a moderator lacks control: he talks all the time. 

Chris Wallace talked too much. 

Did you notice that both debaters attempted to answer questions before they had been fully formulated? Once, twice, thrice . . . at first you wonder, “Hey guys, can you calm down a bit?” 

Of course,

  • it is hard to calm down in those situations, and
  • at a certain point you realize the problem lies with the person asking the questions.

Why, pray tell, is there a 62-part interrogative barrage?

To allow the questioner to sneak in something tangential but of a “gotcha” nature, of course — an element of some media-spun controversy. 

Must we select the moderator by sortition?

More structure seems a good idea. And gain the ability to turn off microphones.

Or do the opposite: Put both men in a studio all alone* with live mics and let’s see if they could negotiate the 90 minutes like adults. They might learn something.

And so might we.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Maybe a couple security guards, too, just in case.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
folly media and media people national politics & policies

“Despacito” Desperation

Joe Biden, election, pander

When Hillary Clinton talked about carrying hot sauce around in her handbag, on the popular Breakfast Club show featuring the annoyingly monickered Charlemagne Tha God, did anyone believe her? It was such an obvious and shameless ploy to get African-Americans to see her as “relatable.” For Mrs. Clinton, however, that was ‘a bridge too far.’

Now Joe Biden provides the cringe.

“I just have one thing to say,” Biden informed his audience at an event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Looking down at his phone, he struggled for a moment. “Hang on here.”

And then he played a song. “Despacito,” which means “Slowly.”

Try not to think too much about this, for the song is a little sexually suggestive. The Daily Wire reprints a translation of the lyrics, for your disgust or delectation. 

First element of cringe: It was an obvious play for Latino sympathy. The song itself had nothing to do with anything other than that it was a popular song from “the community”  When you are this pandering, this patronizing, this transparent about your play to the cliché, what kind of respect do you hope to get?

Second element: It’s such a desperation move — with the Florida Spanish-speaking vote in jeopardy. Cuban-Americans, especially, are turned off by the Democrats’ move further left, having themselves left Cuba to come to American freedom. And the generally woke-socialist mindset of the Biden-Harris team (or is it Harris-Biden?) is a bit hard to take for the generally culturally conservative folks hailing from the south.

When will Democrats try authenticity again?

Third element: Assuming riots and conflagrations aren’t precisely that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Disney’s Mickey Mouse Boycott Policies

Disney, China, Mulan, Uyghur Muslims

The state of Georgia and the country of China differ. The policies of one are much worse than those of the other.

Thus, the Walt Disney Company seriously mulled refusing to do business in Georgia but was eager to film in China, near internment camps used to imprison Uyghur Muslims.

Last year, Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger threatened to suspend Disney’s film work in Georgia if the state’s new restriction on abortion went into effect. The law would have prohibited abortion when a heartbeat could be detected in the fetus. Before the law was struck down, Iger said that Disney would likely leave Georgia if it survived challenge, because “many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes….”

Journalists and others have been excluded from the Xinjiang region. But satellite images and the accounts of victims and witnesses provide evidence that perhaps two million Uyghurs and others have been imprisoned in the camps there, where many have died. Others have been forcibly sterilized.

In addition to getting permission to film in Xinjiang for its new movie “Mulan,” a few years back Disney got the go-ahead to open a Disneyland in Shanghai.

In the film, Disney expressly thanks a propaganda arm of the CCP, the “publicity department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomy Region Committee.” 

Disney’s conduct seems reprehensible. 

But let’s remember: the government of China is not exactly the government of Georgia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. In previous episodes of Common Sense with Paul Jacob, the people here identified as “Uyghur” — following the spelling used by Disney — were spelled as “Uighur.”

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies

Insincerely Simulated Insanity

The Washington Post, war game, election, Trump

“What’s the worst that could happen?” 

That question, splashed across the lead opinion offering in Sunday’s Outlook section of The Washington Post, was answered by the sub-heading: “The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis.”

Happy Labor Day!

Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, authored the commentary about a group of political insiders — “some of the most accomplished Republicans, Democrats, civil servants, media experts, pollsters and strategists around” — she assembled for “a series of war games” about “a range of election and transition scenarios.”

The group “explored” four different simulations: “a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win . . .; a Trump win with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty” as the country witnessed following the 2000 election.*

“Over and over, Team Biden urged calm, national unity and a fair vote count,” explained Brooks, “while Team Trump issued barely disguised calls for violence and intimidation against ballot-counting officials and Biden electors.”

Team Biden participants included John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair; Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s 2000 presidential the campaign chair; and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

“Team Biden repeatedly called for peaceful protests, while Team Trump encouraged provocateurs to incite violence,” she added, “then used the resulting chaos to justify sending federalized Guard units or active-duty military personnel into American cities to ‘restore order,’ leading to still more violence.”

“In each scenario, Team Trump — the players assigned to simulate the Trump campaign and its elected and appointed allies — was ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate,” informed the professor.  

Wait . . . who were these Team Trump “players”? 

Conservative Bill Kristol, a longtime #NeverTrumper and “one of President Trump’s most vocal opponents,” was one. Another was former RNC chairman Michael Steele, who has not only endorsed Biden, but serves as a senior advisor to The Lincoln Project, now spending millions on attack ads against the president.

Shamefully unfair and intellectually dishonest by Professor Brooks — and the ‘dying in partisan darkness’ Washington Post. 

But here’s the rest of the story . . . 

Even with Bidenites played as angels and Trumpians as devils, both Biden victory scenarios nonetheless resulted in peace by Inauguration Day. 

Not so for a Trump win . . . which “the Left” is not projected to peacefully accept.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Obviously not considered was Trump winning a solid majority of the vote. Not likely according to today’s polls, but if polls had been accurate in 2016, Trump wouldn’t be president.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
international affairs media and media people

Defying China . . . for Now

China, Hong Kong, Big Tech, censorship, surveillance,

According to a New York Times report, “American Internet giants are struggling to respond” to China’s recent crackdown on Hong Kong.

For now, the outcome of the struggle is that Facebook, Twitter, and Google have stopped sharing data with Hong Kong officials. Doing so has become tantamount to sharing data with the Chinese government.

If this wasn’t clear before China’s repressive new “national security” laws in Hong Kong, it’s clear now. The Chinese government is systematically working to muzzle and punish anyone who threatens “national security” by openly criticizing the Chinese government.

Yahoo has changed its policies as well, so that users are now governed in their dealings with Yahoo by American law, not local Hong Kong law (rapidly becoming synonymous with the mainland’s edicts).

So far, so good. 

Worrying, though, is how inconsistent the tech giants have been. Yahoo once helped the Chinese government to identify and imprison two dissidents, claiming it had “no choice” but to turn over the info. Google and others have worked with China to censor information that the Chinese government doesn’t want its citizens to see.

These companies should never — in no way, shape, or form — help China go after dissidents. 

They should never cooperate, rationalize, compromise. 

It would be better to pack up their services and leave Hong Kong altogether than to “struggle” to find a middle way that “sort of” cooperates with China’s repression — and “sort of” leaves Hong Kongers in the lurch.

To bolster these companies’ new backbones, we had best leverage our power as customers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Discussion versus Intimidation

newspaper, New York Times, dogma, propaganda

“My boss got fired for running an op-ed by a sitting U.S. senator,” says Bari Weiss, former opinion editor for The New York Times, in a recent TV interview.

Cotton argued for sending troops to quell rioters who “have plunged many American cities into anarchy.” Unnerved by furious criticism not only of the op-ed but of the paper’s temerity in publishing it, The Times now prefaces Cotton’s piece with an abject and silly apology.

In her public letter of resignation, Weiss reports being hired in 2016 “with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives. . . .”

By the time she quit, “intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking” had become “a liability at The Times. . . . If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. . . . Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril.”

Weiss says the country is becoming “retribalized,” with politics amounting to undebatable religious dogma, revelation rather than ratiocination. The sort of government that becomes possible when politics is a religion is total government. Totalitarianism.

Old-timers like me can recall a Times editorial page that featured plenty of horrific opinions (not very diligently vetted, one suspects) but that also had room for the William Safires of the day.

Does the current dread of reasoned debate at The New York Times represents a mere temporary spasm of appeasement?

The signs (of the Times) aren’t good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Authority Derangement Syndrome

Atlantic Magazine, propaganda, media, journalism

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has taken a huge toll on America. One doesn’t need to be a Trump supporter to see it. 

One only needs to read The Atlantic.

There are days when nearly every article ballyhooed in the rag’s promotional email is about how awful the president is.

There is a lot of awful in Washington, though, not just Trump. Where’s the rest of the news? 

Of course, this isn’t just about Trump. The Atlantic was once a liberal journal. No more. Now it is relentlessly progressive.

Take a recent article on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

“The governor has demonstrated a willingness to defer to the president instead of his own constituents,” writes Amanda Mull, in “America’s Authoritarian Governor,” begging the question of which constituents.

They are, last I checked, not in total agreement. 

Ms. Mull contends that Kemp’s deference to Trump (TDS Alert) sacrifices — yes, she uses the word “sacrifice” — “Georgians’ safety to snipe at his political foes, and shore up his own power at the expense of democracy. In short, Kemp is a wannabe authoritarian, and millions of Georgians have suffered as a result, with no end in sight.”

No end — er, except the 2022 election. 

And how is Kemp an “authoritarian”? Mull objects to the governor not shutting down commerce quickly enough, hard enough, thoroughly enough, according to the scientists she selects.

Though epidemiologists are not of one mind on how to deal with the current contagion, somehow politicians who reject the advice of her “authorities” — well, they are “the authoritarians.”

The fact that shutting down commerce is itself something we expect from the most authoritarian of regimes . . . did it not cross the reporter’s mind?

Worse than mere TDS.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Violence Against Objective Reporting

violence, journalism, reporting, news, facts

Facts matter. As do their honest expression. But given the “reporting” in recent months about “mostly peaceful protests,” you may wonder whether reporters agree.

Some do. Here’s the Charleston Post and Courier: “Brooms and dustpans replaced rocks and spray paint Sunday as an army of volunteers descended on Charleston to clean up the demoralizing mess left by an angry mob that smashed, burned and pillaged much of the city’s central business district.”

“Hundreds of New York City Businesses Were Damaged, Looted in Recent Unrest,” according to a Wall Street Journal headline. An article in the Minneapolis StarTribune tells us: “Buildings damaged in Minneapolis, St. Paul after riots.” Riots. There’s a word.

Reporters have reported (i.e., done their jobs) on rioters destroying small businesses around the country, and even killing people.

But too many supposed news-hounds shy away from honest reporting. Recently, U.S. Attorney Bill Williams of Oregon chastised a TV reporter for refusing to name openly criminal behavior . . . in this case, that of Portland rioters trying to destroy a courthouse.

The newsperson sought to blandify the thuggery as “late-night demonstrations” or “late-night activity.” Williams stressed the difference between “lawful, constitutionally protected protest” and criminal conduct. “This is just mindless violence, and anyone who defends the violence is enabling this to continue.”

The reporter wasn’t swayed. “I’m not a police officer, I don’t get to distinguish that. . . .”

The assumption being that such determinations are up to . . . police and courts? 

But legal culpability is not at issue. 

What is? Facts: a window was broken; a fire started; property vandalized; person assaulted.

If you feel disallowed from imparting evident facts to the public, a profession requiring you to do so all the time isn’t for you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts