Category: media and media people

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ideological culture media and media people

Defending Groupthink?

groupthink, Covid, OBEY

The Atlantic is a beautiful magazine, expertly designed and printed, lovely to behold: an excellent showpiece for your coffee table . . . but marred by absurdities. 

Currently, consider David Merritt Johns’s article “MAHA’s Blinkered War on ‘Groupthink’” — and when I shift to reader mode, a second title appears: “In Defense of ‘Groupthink.’”

Of course The Atlantic defends groupthink! It’s been working mightily to shore up totalitarian mob-think, woke half-think, for years!

“More than 1,300 academic papers and dozens of books have been published on” the target concept, groupthink, Mr. Johns explains. “Even after all of this time and effort, the evidence is wanting. In fact, most experts now believe that the old story of groupthink being a prime cause of bad decision making is wrong. Some don’t think that the phenomenon is even real.” 

All this is to attack the Make America Healthy Again movement — without ever addressing any (yes, any) actual argument Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has actually made about “the jab” (various innovative coronavirus treatments from Pfizer, Moderna, etc.) in particular or the full panoply of vaccines in the various government-stamped vaccine schedules more generally (much less the disturbing rise, in America, of autism, auto-immune disorders, and obesity).

The entire essay is an elaborate evasion . . . to defend the thinking of a very large group of tax-paid/regulator-defended professionals.

“Our nation’s thinking isn’t broken,” Johns concludes, “and this administration shouldn’t try to fix it.”

The opposite is true: American political and bureaucratic culture has been corrupt and delusional for decades, at the very least.

And we should all be trying to fix it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies partisanship

Independent of the Box

Karine Jean-Pierre, Democratic Party, media, news, outside the box

Today, Karine Jean-Pierre’s “long-awaited” Independent, a book on her recent transformation into an “independent” political activist/theorist/shill, hits the bookstores, with Amazon promising to deliver the tome on the 24th.

I write about it now hoping never to have to write about it later. You guessed it: I’m not planning on reading the thing.

I did, however, cover her turn-of-coat re-alignment/what-have-you in June. “I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes,” I quoted her in “Rats-a-Jumpin’.” 

Whatever else, she had certainly not resisted cliché!

But can we be sure of her sincerity? It’s hard to imagine a paid fibber writing a book and expecting it to be taken at face value. Still, the story is her story, not the full story, so there may be some truth in it.

“The Democratic Party had defined my life, my career,” The Epoch Times quotes her in apparent sincere mode. “Everything I’d done to make people’s lives better had been connected to it. The party was the vehicle that allowed me not just to have a front seat to history, working first on [President Barack] Obama’s presidential campaign then in his administration, but also to make some history of my own as the first Black woman and openly queer person to ever be a White House press secretary. Never had I considered leaving the party until now.”

This may possibly be seen as galling to long-term independents: much ado about a latecomer’s anguish.

Tellingly, there’s no mention, in the pre-publication buzz, of Russiagate or the Epstein case — that is, something that might make the book worthwhile. Only her in-the-box account of Biden’s competence provides any interest at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment media and media people

Antifa in Popular Ontology

Jimmy Kimmel, Antifa

What do Jimmy Kimmel and the late J. Edgar Hoover have in common?

A kink for women’s dresswear?

Nope. Both denied the existence of major criminal organizations. 

Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 to 1972, refused to affirm that the Mafia crime syndicate existed. Repeatedly, over the years.

Rumors that he was being blackmailed by the Mafia itself, over his own cross-dressing kinks (the mob allegedly had photos), is not affirmed by major historians, who say his denial-of-the-facts was just politics. 

So when we encounter those rejecting the reality of Antifa, take them with a grain of salt. Truth is, Antifa has a long history. It had a beginning; it spread; it fell into disarray; it was revived (or mimicked) by young radicals wanting an excuse to commit violence against “fascists” — which proved, of course, to be anyone they disagree with. We see them today on the streets of major cities at night, black masks and their proclivity to beat up heretics to their variant of communism/anarchism/nihilism.

But comedian and ABC talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel derides such observations. 

“There is no Antifa. This is an entirely imaginary organization,” he cackled, likening any claim for Antifa’s existence to announcing the capture of fictional creatures such as the Decepticons or the Chupacabra.

But Chupacabra didn’t beat Andy Ngo within an inch of his life; Decepticons have not been caught on camera throwing bricks.

Many other talking heads have made similar denials — despite the demonstrated fact that Antifa is well funded and that funding is directed by somebody.

Even a “grassroots” organization informally managed counts as an existing entity; just because a group looks more like a network than a corporate entity with an HR department doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

Philosophers might call these denials “ontic negative claims” — “ontic” as in ontology as in the Philosophy of Being. While I’m uncertain of many things, I am certain of this: Antifa exists and Jimmy Kimmel is no ontologist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people regulation

Cancel Kimmel Culture

Reverse cancel culture is here, so to speak.

For years, leftists hounded any and all offenders against politicalcorrectness — meaning they’d root out anyone they disagreed with, including for saying anodyne things like “women are adult female humans and men are adult male humans” — directing hysterical online mobs against offenders’ employers, advertisers, and even ISPs.

Now it appears rightists are doing the same. People have lost their jobs for saying horrific — tasteless, hateful — things regarding the killing of Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel just lost his high-profile late-night “comedy show” with ABC.

He’s literally been cancelled.

What happened? The Sinclair and Nexstar affiliate groups announced they will not (barring some apology) air Kimmel’s show anymore, and the two, together, own over 70 ABC affiliates — suggesting a substantial hit to the network’s bottom line.

“‘Jimmy Kimmel Live will be pre-empted indefinitely,’ a spokesperson for the Disney-owned network said in a statement,” reports the BBC. 

The offense? “In his Monday night monologue, Kimmel said: ‘The Maga Gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.’”

One could nitpick. 

It has, after all, been embarrassing to watch the anti-MAGA folks desperately try to pin the accused shooter’s motive on some bizarre theory about “groyper” culture and “furry” larping; truth is, after an obviously political assassination, nearly everyone will aim to “score political points.” Kimmel one-sidedly points only to his opponents.

Missing in the back-and-forth? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which regulates broadcast TV in the first place. 

The FCC actually has a case that what Kimmel said was offensive and not “in the public interest.” But why should that count for anything? Were the broadcast spectrum privately owned — slots sold to the highest bidder, getting government out of any regulatory role whatsoever over media outlets — then, maybe, ABC wouldstand by its divisive host to satisfy only their core audience of partisan MAGA-haters.

And keep losing money . . . as is its right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people social media

Horrors Made Visible

Nearly all major Democratic elected officials publicly expressed their sorrow over the death of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday. They condemned the shooting and declared that political violence has no place in a democracy.

But to anyone who’s looked online at the cruel comments, jubilation, and sick jokes about the murder and about Mr. Kirk, the idea that Democrats are of one mind about the corrosiveness and injustice of killing ideological opponents just because you disagree with them falls to pieces. One popular thread included jokes of the sound the victim made after being shot in the neck, a lot of talk about Kirk’s gun control opposition (and the “irony” of him being shot), and the like — but when I went back to look, the posts had been taken down.

Thankfully (?), the UK’s Daily Mail collected some of the most egregious:

  • One wrote: ‘I don’t know I think getting killed by your favorite thing in the world is sweet. It [is] a nice gesture.’
  • Others mocked Mr. Kirk’s steadfast commitment to open debate and exchange of ideas: ‘Why didn’t Charlie Kirk just debate the bullet? he would have easily deflected.’
  • ‘Hollow Point USA,’ said another, parodying the organization Kirk devoted his life to.

People have always been like this, I remind myself: partisan hatred and mockery are as old as politics. Yet, on the Internet folks too often don’t even hesitate to shout their darkest thoughts as if they were gems of wit and righteousness. This leads to . . . well, “Violence leads to more violence,” as respectable Democrats said.

Too many activists and “influencers” seem heedless of the consequences of ideological brinksmanship, of taking the nastiness in their minds and spewing it to the masses.

It’s horrific, but maybe we, as individuals in a culture at a perilous moment in history, should acknowledge what horrors always hide in the dark. Now made visible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Cultural Erasure

Cracker Barrel

Once upon a time, I didn’t think “culture war” issues were important. Give me liberty or — at least lower taxes and allow better representation in Washington.

But in recent years, as the left went woke and the right went MAGA, a number of cultural issues became . . . salient. Unavoidable. Key, even.

In “The Corporate Logo That Broke the Internet,” David French — late editor of National Review and now token rightist for The New York Times — defends the Cracker Barrel logo rebranding effort, where the image of an old man (Uncle Herschel, in Cracker Barrel lore) leaning against a barrel,” as French describes it, was removed.

Also removed? The tagline on the old logo: “Old Country Store.” All that was left was “Cracker Barrel” on a yellow field.

O, the uproar! And from the right! 

Mr. French thinks it all very stupid. “Right-wing activists did the same thing that they mocked the left for in the [Sydney] Sweeney [American Eagle ad] affair. They looked at a completely normal, innocuous marketing effort, deemed it to be deeply politically coded and then lashed out.”

He contends that the protesting “voices never really explained how a plain logo with the restaurant’s name was woke,” yet the explanation is right before us, staring us in the face everywhere we go.

It was “woke” for corporations to remove beloved commercial icons such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben (now “Ben’s Original”), and “Mia,” the Land O’Lakes Indian maiden. In each of these logos the supposedly “offensive” and “stereotypical” images were removed ostensibly to avoid offending the easily offended. Leaving customers with blank, unoriginal, uninspiring and non-comforting signage.

Exactly what happened when the corporate bigwigs took out the iconography from the Cracker Barrel logo: All nostalgia liquidated.

Cultural erasure used to be a leftist theme, but thanks to today’s enlightened corporations, it has become universal, as the soullessness of modish symbology has become painfully obvious. 

Define woke as erasure in the name of non-erasure. Opposing erasure generally is the defense of culture. That’s not a manufactured “outrage,” or a form of “bullying,” as French asserts.

It’s just Common Sense! I’m Paul Jacob. 

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Propaganda Shoved Where?

PBS, NPR, public broadcasting, socialism, Democratic Party, propaganda, censorship

The continued existence of “public radio” and “public television” is out of place in these United States. Not because it’s partisan — all news vendors tend to toe some partisan line — but because it’s partisan and taxpayer subsidized.

Though NPR aficionados tend to downplay the subsidies to NPR and PBS, what public media boosters have more consistently done is deny the partisanship. 

They have no standing any longer — if the evidence of our senses weren’t enough. 

In “The Bell Finally Tolls for National Public Radio,” Matt Taibbi explains how the media behemoth’s CEO Katherine Maher admitted NPR’s and PBS’s partisanship in her defense of it.

That won’t help her case in Congress, though, notes Mr. Taibbi. 

While the New York Times insists that tax-funded “public” media “improves the lives of millions of Americans” and “strengthens American interests” (presumably by being relentlessly progressive), it has no defense to Taibbi’s indictment: the branches of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have taken “the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-income audiences micro-dosing on Marx and Kendi.”

Taibbi makes clear just how annoying the dish served by CPB/NPR/PBS is, the entities seeing no “problem with taking funds from a huge plurality or even a majority of citizens and pursuing a nakedly politicized, ear-splitting propaganda project in opposition to the views of those people. NPR is the vegetables we refuse to eat, administered up a different entrance for our own good.”

I was thinking about the blight upon our eyes and ears and reason, but point taken.

De-fund National Public Propaganda immediately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Rats A-Jumpin’

rats, sinking ship

When the ship starts sinking, the rats start jumping.

In politics, when a party or movement is soundly demolished at the polls, you can expect to see stalwarts flake off and go the way of the opposition, or “their own way.”

But the honorable time to do that is before the insider position becomes untenable. Not after. 

Late timing smacks of opportunism.

Case in point: Karine Jean-Pierre, former Press Secretary to President Joe Biden.

Ms. Jean-Pierre was the African-American woman hired to obfuscate for the Democrat cabal who ran the federal government’s executive wing while the Man Sworn In was out — to lunch.

Now she’s formally left the Democratic Party and is shilling a book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines, scheduled for publication this fall. It sports a great cover.

Like CNN’s Jake Tapper, Jean-Pierre focuses on a critical period in Joe Biden’s administration. “She takes us through the three weeks that led to Biden’s abandoning his bid for a second term and the betrayal by the Democratic Party that led to his decision,” her publisher blurbles.

Also like Tapper, she has no standing to preach any virtuous sermons on verity or clarity or even non-insularity. She was absolutely in the thick of Democratic insider corruption.

Her spin is in her title: she’s going independent, not switching sides. 

“I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes,” she posts on Instagram, “and not be so partisan.”

Now that her PR for her president’s party has been repudiated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies

Trump = Bad

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden

“In an extraordinary stretch of just over two weeks,” Naftali Bendavid reports in The Washington Post, “three former presidents have taken to the public stage to sound the alarm against the current occupant of the White House, despite the tradition that former presidents generally refrain from publicly criticizing their successors.”

It turns out that “Obama, Biden and Clinton did not explicitly name Trump,” admits the Post’s senior national political correspondent, though he argues “their message was unmistakable.”

Wait. The three former opposition party presidents bravely took on President Donald Trump but not one has enough courage to mention him by name?

Bad communication skills — no wonder why Trump is president.

“The three Democrats said, as much by their presence as their words,” writes Bendavid, “that these are unusual times for American democracy, that norms are being disregarded and extraordinary measures are required.”

Today’s Washington journalist! 

More a psychic diviner of the deep inner meaning of a former president’s mere presence than mere observer. 

Bendavid failed, however, to detail any specifics from the former commanders in chief as to the “extraordinary measures” that are somehow now “required.”

“Think of [former presidents] as a sort of advisory council to the people of the United States,” he quotes a historian from Columbia University. “And when the advisory council sounds the alarm, the people should listen.”

Wake up, people! Your former leaders have spoken: Trump = bad. 

Thus we witness the national press corps continuing to miss the point. The people are not moved by these ex-presidents — at least not in their direction. 

From political heavy-weights to legacy media newsmen, the more the DC establishment attacks President Trump, the more a sizable group of voters like him. 

Trump is validated as the outsider. 

The more popular outsider. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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SuperPressPAC Problem?

leftist, media bias, propaganda, Trump, fake news, lies

Who wouldn’t want the media behind them — air-brushing the public images of their candidates; telling stories to dramatize the political agenda items they’re running on? 

Back in November 2015, I agreed with then-Senator and presidential candidate (now Secretary of State) Marco Rubio’s characterization of the national news media as a “SuperPAC” for national Democrats. 

How to even place a monetary value on the relentlessly one-sidedly progressive news coverage on network TV and in print outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post?

But is there a downside? Could this Super-est of all SuperPACs possibly be, on balance, less than helpful?

Let me posit that (a) the Washington press corps is ideologically to the left of the Democratic Party and, accordingly, (b) the national news media lures liberal Dems to far-out leftist positions that they’d otherwise never dare entertain — all because there exists this massive supportive left-wing echo chamber.

Then, on Election Day, national Democrats discover quite abruptly that, unlike DC’s editors and reporters, regular folks don’t like high gas prices or men winning women’s sporting events or releasing violent illegal migrants to commit more crimes. And, doggone it, they cast a lot more votes than the Beltway’s fifth column, er, Fourth Estate.  

Take, for example, the current controversy regarding former President Biden’s cognitive abilities; consider, also, the decisions made by Mr. Biden and auto-pen possessing handlers. 

Would a Republican president and his White House advisors ever think for a second that they could get away with keeping the press away from the commander-in-chief of the Free World, holding only heavily staged public events? For months? Forever? 

I don’t think so. The mainstream media would — rightly! — question, berate, harangue and bloviate until the cognitive functionality of the POTUS had been popularly established. 

But the Washington media did not hold a Democrat president to that (any?) standard.

Thus enabled, Biden kept going. 

Costing Democrats!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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