Category: media and media people

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media and media people national politics & policies

The Infanticide Doctor and the Uneasy Silence

Rare events often define our view of society and government. The regular slog of life we habitually forget and everyday crimes we let pass as if unnoticed. But a massacre, an assassination, or a big storm — these get a lot of coverage. And exercise our political imaginations.

Often unduly.

Yet, presently a rare-​event story certainly qualifies as “newsworthy,” though almost no one talks about, and almost no media outlet covers: the serial infanticides of the abortion doctor currently on trial, Dr. Kermit Gosnell.

While media folks and political activists continue to publicize the Sandy Hooks shooting, on Gosnell’s bloody tale they remain silent. As Ed Krayewski notes at Reason​.com, just as a rare shooting has served a political cause, so too could Gosnell’s grisly crimes. But from the president, no grand “it’s not about me” speeches. From his followers, no demands for instant action.

Why?

The question doesn’t need to be asked. It’s politically inconvenient for “pro-​choicers” to confront the grotesque crimes of a doctor engaged in late-​term abortions that often became postpartum infanticide. And grisly ones at that.

The pro-​choice movement typically responds to abortion in the same fashion they accuse those at the NRA: give no inch. Abortion rights activists defend late-​term abortions and argue that bringing up the killing of infants is just so “off-​point.” But after reading about the Gosnell case, it’s not off-​point at all.

Certainly, Dr. Gosnell’s alleged infanticide should be mentioned for the same reason that any big story deserves coverage. Should it lead to immediate calls for more government regulation of abortion? That’s debatable. Should it inform the debate?

Yes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people

Apple Abjectly Apologizes for Arrogance

Apple is a huge company, selling gadgets around the world. One of its biggest markets turns out to be China, which is also a supplier of many components. And working within a quasi-​capitalist/​quasi-​post-​communist dictatorship does have its problems.

Yesterday we learned that Apple’s head honcho, Tim Cook, has openly apologized to Chinese consumers.

He did it under pressure … from China’s state-​run media.

The non-​paranoid way of looking at this is that Apple has fallen down on the job of Chinese consumer support. The company’s 17,000 outlets, including eleven Apple-​branded stores, just do not service consumer complaints well enough.

This may be true.

But the pile-​on by the media looks a little different than, say, the piling-​on by America’s media against successful companies here. It has the odor of concerted plan, “commandment from on high.”

And it is well known that China — which tries to plan its economy as much as humanly possible, with the iron fist of totalitarian law — when it gets really serious, gets serious indeed.

So, Tim Cook’s abject apology echoes not so much Apple’s rare apologies in America, but the apologies made by targets of China’s Cultural Revolution, a generation or two ago, at least if the BBC has it right:

State broadcaster CCTV and the state’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, had portrayed Apple as the latest Western company to exploit Chinese citizens.

Last week the paper ran an editorial headlined: “Strike down Apple’s incomparable arrogance.”

Even Apple’s (or Microsoft’s) critics in the West don’t sound that strident.

For the record, I have complaints with all gadgets, all systems, all suppliers. I can truly be nonpartisan on this.

And this is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Bloomberg’s Megaphone

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not breaking his term limits pledge like a dictator, he’s outlawing soft drinks like a nanny.

Now he’s trying to undermine our Second Amendment rights, spending $12 million of his reported $27 billion net worth to run television spots in 13 states. Those advertisements aim to rile up the public and encourage folks to pressure their U.S. Senators into supporting gun control legislation.

Hey, da mayor’s just not my kind of guy. Except in one respect: His spending of $12 million … of his own money.

I admire that.

And, even with his $27 billion set against my … well, er … I’m not scared of his wealth advantage. I welcome his speech. Because my best chance to prevail politically is for all voices to be free to speak.

Plus, as National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre ably put it last Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Bloomberg “can’t buy America.”

In fact, I don’t think the mayor harbors any such illusions. Bloomberg’s savvy enough to know that his rented megaphone won’t necessarily convince Americans … who are not mindless automatons programmed by 30-​second television ads.

We make up our own minds.

Too bad he doesn’t extend this notion across the board. You know, to soda drinks and such.

So, regardless of Bloomberg’s inconsistencies and indecencies, let’s welcome folks like him who finance causes they believe in. They provide the venture capital for informed citizen decision-making.

We could use a few more billionaires giving on the side of freedom and responsibility, though. Any takers? I mean, givers?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people video

Video: Stossel and Bad News

Take a step back, and view the news media as entertainment, of a particular sort. John Stossel sorts out the sort.

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media and media people national politics & policies tax policy

The Muppet Is Right

Anti-​tax activist Grover Norquist is being mocked by oh-​so-​funny lefty pundit Matthew Dowd because Dowd dislikes the anti-​higher-​tax-​rate pledge Norquist invites politicians to sign.

Some long-​serving Republicans have renounced the commitment they made to their constituents to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/​or businesses.” Senator Saxby Chambliss says he cares “more about the country than … about a 20-​year-​old pledge.” Co-​Republican and co-​pledge-​signer Senator Lindsey Graham agrees.

“Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing,” Dowd said on This Week, ABC’s Sunday morning talking-​head program. “The only good thing about Grover Norquist is, he’s named after a character from Sesame Street. ”

Welcome to sound-​bite alley. Lucky for Norquist his first name isn’t Elmo or Snuffleupagus, eh?

Expanding on the theme of Norquist’s putative irrelevancy, Time’s Joe Klein says Norquist has passed his “sell-​by date.”

Let me interject a question neither about muppets nor sour milk: What is “good governing”?

Does it require stripping the wallets of taxpayers to fund every conceivable government program concocted by those who would run every aspect of our lives?

Those who most eagerly wish to loot the rest of us seem, at the moment, to have the upper hand. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us should supinely wait to be rolled over. The fight for freedom is always relevant. So is keeping one’s word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

The A‑Word

The n‑word got dropped on MSNBC’s The Cycle this week. The show’s co-​host [No First Name] Touré called Mitt Romney’s use of the word “angry” to describe some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House as “the ‘niggerization’ of Obama”:

“You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.”

Naturally this led to a battle between Touré and conservative co-​host S.E. Cupp. She took particular issue with the fact that Touré admitted that VP Joe Biden‘s “chains” comments were divisive, but is now calling Romney a “racist” for saying the Obama campaign is “angry.”

“Do you see how dishonest that is?” she asked.

Good question. But here’s a better one: Doesn’t talk of race and code-​words obscure the real issue here, anger?

Romney shouldn’t be calling for the Obama administration to be less angry. He should be angry himself, and castigating the president and his crew for being angry at the wrong things.

We should be angry at the continuation of wars, foreign (the Middle East) and domestic (on psychoactive drug use), to the detriment of fiscal stability as well as our civil liberties.

We should be angry that the nation’s pension system has been systematically stripped of its surpluses for 77 years — by politicians in Washington.

We should be angry that federal (along with state) policy has interfered with medicine to such an extent that the most idiotic ideas around — nationalization/​socialization — almost seemed plausible to a sizable minority of Americans.

We should be angry that the Democrats pushed through yet another expensive entitlement, “Obamacare,” while the rest of the federal government sunk further into insolvency.

And yes, we should be angry that our leaders can’t stick to decent issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.