Category: Press Bias

Intemperate Speech a Cause for Concern

Posted on | by hr | 1 Comment on Intemperate Speech a Cause for Concern

I wish our President were a little more self-controlled in his speech, but it seems to me that there is a significant difference between, on the one hand, a man — even a President — who is prone to spouting off ungraciously, and, on the other hand, virtually an entire national press and punditry united in making scurrilous and unfounded accusations against the duly elected President.

One intemperate man is an unfortunate demonstration of flawed character. The nation’s press engaging in a concerted effort to promote a false narrative is something else, and, for those who actually value the idea of democracy, something much more significant. (After all, if the Russians’ modest efforts to influence the election are a serious concern, how much more serious must be concern about the influence of a grossly biased and inaccurate — or even deceptive — mainstream press?)

It is the fashion to erupt in righteous fury with every clumsy, inarticulate, or just plain rude comment from our President. I’m still waiting for the expressions of outrage from the public, and contrition from the press, that should follow two years of false accusations of treasonous complicity with a hostile foreign power.

We strain at boorish gnats, while swallowing the mendacious machinations of a corrupt Fourth Estate. Trump will be gone in five years. The smugly corrupt press and opinion-making elite will still be with us. That is a legitimate reason for some righteous fury.

The Mueller Report: A Damning Indictment of… Something

Posted on | by hr | 2 Comments on The Mueller Report: A Damning Indictment of… Something

As we wait more or less breathlessly for the release of the Mueller Report, the assumption appears to be growing that it will be, in the eloquent words of Secretary Clinton, a “nothing-burger.”

But it will not be a nothing-burger, even if it reports no evidence of collusion. Because we’ve spent more than two years obsessing over this, driven by a press that pronounced almost daily the beginning of the end for the Trump administration. If there always was no there there, then someone has some explaining to do. Because many of us thought this was pretty obviously cooked up from the start, to hide either Clinton campaign embarrassment or, worse, Clinton/Obama collusion to undermine the 2016 Trump campaign. And if that’s true, then it should not have been the big story for the last two years.

The ladies and gentlemen of the press fancy themselves the guardians of democracy, the bulwark against ignorance and tyranny. If it turns out, as I suspect it will, that they have wasted most of their time and energy and resources, and our attention, over the past many months on a trumped-up non-story, an improbable bit of misdirection foisted on us by a failed candidate with the assistance of a corrupt former administration, then they have made a further mockery of the fourth estate. Democracy dies in darkness — or by being run over by the mainstream media clown car.

If the whole Russian collusion story is without a basis in fact, America’s journalistic “professionals” should consider finding a job they can do without embarrassing themselves.

VDH and The Bulwark

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on VDH and The Bulwark

I have a great deal of respect for Victor Davis Hanson. I’ve read and listened to him extensively, and he has always impressed me with his thoughtfulness, decency, humility, breadth of knowledge, and quiet sanity.

The Bulwark, this new anti-Trump publication staffed by Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, and other people whose narrow-minded smug superiority I find impossible to stomach, has placed Hanson on its list of sell-outs, dupes, and traitors to the conservative cause, and set its sights on discrediting him and others who hold his, to me, quite sensible views.

It has long been true that I would like Trump a lot less if I liked his enemies more. Folks like those at the Bulwark are much of the reason I refrain from criticizing the President more than I do. I’m not much of a joiner, but I’d rather have Hanson on my team than any number of these others.

[Update: I wrote this post not knowing that Victor Davis Hanson has a new book coming out. The Case for Trump will be released this week.]

Waiting for Mueller

Posted on | by hr | 2 Comments on Waiting for Mueller

At the beginning of this long investigation I wrote that if convincing evidence is presented that candidate Trump colluded with Russians — that is, that he knowingly participated in or otherwise facilitated illegal Russian interference in the 2016 election — then I would call for his impeachment.

I also wrote that I think the entire charge is a fabrication of the embarrassed and almost pathologically mendacious candidate Clinton, and that in fact it’s largely a projection of her campaign’s own shady dealings with Russia via the Steele dossier and related nonsense. That is still my belief.

However, if Mueller provides that convincing evidence, I will admit my mistake and call for the President’s resignation or removal.

But if he does not, then I will call for the resignation of most of the nation’s press, as these clowns will have, in typical print-first-ask-questions-never fashion, poisoned the national discourse for years with their relentless and baseless claims, and given comfort to the posse of corrupt and scheming apparatchiks who, until recently, ran much of our federal law enforcement.

So let’s wait and see.

PS No, I don’t expect the press to accept its responsibility. I don’t even expect them to significantly change their message, when and if Mueller’s report exonerates the President. Most of the press supports Democrats, the more left-leaning the better, and that isn’t about to change.

Smollett as Metaphor

Posted on | by hr | 3 Comments on Smollett as Metaphor

If you aren’t familiar with the purported assault on a young man named Jussie Smollett, you can read a pretty good account of it here. But, basically, this young gay black male actor (details which are relevant) claimed that he was attacked while walking in Chicago late at night at the end of January. He claimed his assailants were Trump supporters who committed various obviously racially-motivated offenses against him, and then fled the scene. His claims were met with expressions of outrage and support from celebrities and politicians, often accompanied by editorial comments about racism in America, the President, etc.

It now seems almost certain that Mr. Smollett staged the entire event, with the assistance of two friends whom he paid for their participation.

People do foolish and desperate things for all sorts of reasons. One rumor has it that Mr. Smollett was being dropped from a program he was on, and so was seeking some extra attention and visibility. I have no idea what else might have been going on in his life to prompt him to do something as ugly and dishonest as this, and I don’t care: he’s one individual among billions and, as I’ve said any number of times, there will always be someone doing something stupid — and, if it’s gaudy enough, someone will report it. People love drama when it doesn’t impact them.

Whatever his motivation, Mr. Smollett has done a disservice to those who are or will be victims of actual violence, and to everyone who cares about truth and justice.

But Mr. Smollett is hardly alone in fabricating injustice, nor even the worst offender. There is an entire industry in America devoted to promulgating the mistaken idea that America is a racist country — that is, that racism is a deep, widespread, and essential quality of our nation.

That’s nonsense. There are racist people; it could be argued that most people — black, white, brown, or otherwise — have some racial bias, preferences, or misconceptions. But to argue that America, a nation that has long demanded full legal equality regardless of race, that has elected all kinds of minorities to the highest offices, that is self-consciously obsessed with avoiding even the semblance of racism, and that considers a charge of “racist” to be the most damning epithet, is in any significant sense a “racist country” is both unfair and absurd.

Like Mr. Smollett, proponents of the racist America theory have had to fabricate evidence, misinterpret statistics, and impute bad intent where more prosaic explanations are readily available. And, like Mr. Smollett, they do injury both to the truth and to the victims of true racism — most significantly, victims of the racism they create with their misguided prescriptions for social justice: with their low expectations and preferential treatment, their outrage and their excuse-making.

Mr. Smollett sought to create division where there was none. Everyone who beats the racist America drum is doing the same, regardless of how well-intended, or not, their motives. Racism will diminish when, and not until, those most obsessed with it stop seeing it where it isn’t, in every disparity and imagined micro-aggression.

Slamming the “Overton Window”

Posted on | by hr | 2 Comments on Slamming the “Overton Window”

The Overton window, as most people probably know, is a term used to describe the range of ideas that are considered serious and worthy of, or acceptable for, public discussion and debate. As the window moves, ideas that would previously have been entertained become unacceptable, and ideas that previously would have seemed too outrageous for consideration enter the realm of legitimate discourse.

Slamming describes an illegitimate business practice that was popular after deregulation of the telecommunication industry in the 1980s. When competition was allowed in telephone service and new telephone companies began competing with AT&T, some customers would have their service switched from AT&T to a competitor without their knowledge or consent. This technique of stealing customers, known as slamming, was relatively easy to do given the procedures imposed by the government during the breakup.

The Overton window is being slammed. It is being pushed, by a hyper-activist progressive movement and an ideologically homogeneous press, far beyond anything the American people consider sensible or acceptable. The purpose of pushing the Overton window is to shift the public’s perception of which views are and aren’t legitimate and debatable. This strategy works, but it has its limits, and the new wave of recklessly progressive Democrats have gone beyond those limits, attempting to shift the public’s perceptions too far and too quickly.

We saw a bit of this excess during the Obama administration, when the President made demands about who could and couldn’t use the ladies’ room. That overreach garnered ridicule and outrage, and quite possibly contributed to a Republican presidential victory in 2016.

I think we are seeing the same kind of ideological overreach now on abortion, economic policy, environmental policy, and sexual identity. Moving the Overton window so far to the left that abortion-until-birth, socialism, the economic takeover of the United States required by the so-called Green New Deal, and the abolition of the concepts of man and woman are things that normal people are suddenly talking about strikes me as profoundly unwise, from a political standpoint. It’s too much, too fast, and too outrageous.

It’s also the consequence of a left that has given up any pretense of rigor or analysis in its thinking. When you are fueled by rage and obsessed with a fundamentally negative political ideology — one of identity/victimization, environmental apocalypse, economic envy, and an inexplicable but unquenchable passion for terminating pregnancies — it’s easy to believe that the nation will catch fire along with you — that revolution is afoot and nothing is too outrageous.

But the progressive bubble isn’t as big as the new hard-left thinks it is. They are introducing extremist ideas too fast, ideas that are not going to play well with a majority of Americans and that the left is going to somehow have to run from as we approach the 2020 elections. It will be interesting to watch the Democratic candidates try to distance themselves from an increasingly demanding and unhinged base.

Where Do You Keep YOUR Crazies?

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on Where Do You Keep YOUR Crazies?

The political spectrum runs the gamut from crazy-on-the-left to crazy-on-the-right, but most of us are somewhere between those extremes. Most human qualities are distributed on something resembling a bell curve, fat in the middle and tapering to points at each side. Political views are no exception: most of us, Republican or Democrat, left or right, conservative or liberal, are closer to the middle than to either end.

It’s easy to buy into a caricature of the great American divide, an exaggerated portrayal that casts one or both sides as extremists who subscribe to the views of the tiny little fringe down at either end of the opinion curve. This is hardly surprising: whether you’re selling advertising (the press, Hollywood), trying to claim the virtuous high ground (Hollywood, politicians), or trying to push your preferred policy (politicians, advocates), it’s useful to portray your opponent as an idiot or a monster — in short, as an extremist.

Pick your topic. Abortion? One extreme would ban it completely; another would allow it right up to the moment of birth — or, possibly, just a little bit longer. The environment? One extreme wants to outlaw private transportation and impose astronomical energy costs on the nation; another would… well, I’m not exactly sure what an environmental extremist on the other end looks like, but I’m sure there are a few of them out there.

On immigration, one extreme wants to expel every illegal alien from the country and stop immigration entirely; the other wants to abolish ICE and throw open the borders. The economy? At one extreme, people call for outright socialism, a centrally planned and managed economy, and the de facto abolition of markets; at another extreme, radical anarcho-capitalists want to get rid of government and laws, keeping only the free market.

Sex? One extreme maintains that all men are rapists and all sex is rape; another, that women should have legal rights inferior to those of men. Race? One extreme says that America is systematically targeting black people for destruction, and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation; another extreme says that non-whites are inferior to whites — and that blacks and whites should each have their own nation. (Sometimes supposedly opposite extremes resemble each other more than one might expect.)

Etc., etc.

The vast majority of us are reasonably sane, and reject the extremes. We aren’t caricatures. We’re normal people living normal lives, seeking sensible compromises, getting along with people who don’t agree with us about some things but who are, nonetheless, still decent and sensible people. Most of us don’t know many people at the extremes, though we hear about them all the time on television and in social media. This is true whether we tend to think of ourselves as right or left, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.

But here’s an odd thing. It’s hard to find respected voices on the right calling for crazy things. People on the right don’t like craziness, even when it’s coming from their own side. But it’s fairly easy to find respected voices on the left calling for things that sound nutty to most of us: abortion-until-birth (NY, Virginia, Vermont, etc.), black/white separatism (Black Lives Matter, Nation of Islam), socialism (Bernie, Acasio-Cortez, etc.), radical environmentalism, radical views about sexuality and identity, open borders, etc.

I won’t deny that there are crazy people on the right. But folks on the right try to keep them tucked away, out of sight. We don’t want to hear from them any more than the left does, and we sure don’t want them thinking they represent us. Because they don’t.

I don’t know why my friends on the left put up with the prominent extremists who claim to represent them. Partly I suspect it’s because our culture tilts left, and so left-wing extremism doesn’t stand out quite as much as right-wing extremism does: we’re all a little bit accustomed to nutty leftists. But partly, I’m pretty sure, it’s because leftist extremism is just more exciting, just feels better. Socialism sounds cool, never mind that it makes people poor and corrupt and mean and hungry. It sounds kind of romantic, in spite of its dismal record in the real world. And any claim of victimhood is going to be appealing, because we all respond to injustice, real and imagined.

So I guess it’s understandable why people who lean left tolerate prominent crazy people speaking on their behalf. But it’s a mistake: almost no one wants to live in the world the extremists would create. It would be good for all of us if their supporters would let the extremists know that crazy isn’t on the menu, and that they have to dial it back. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that the nuttiest people are going to be calling the tunes for the rest of us.

Learn To Code?

Posted on | by hr | 1 Comment on Learn To Code?

“Learn to code.”

Familiar with the phrase? It’s a rather insensitive shorthand way of suggesting that someone enhance his commercial opportunities by acquiring new skills. That can be sincere advice — Walter Brooke encouraging a young Dustin Hoffman to pursue a future in “plastics.” It can be a practical career choice, as demonstrated by a handful of out-of-work Kentucky coal miners who successfully made the transition from working bituminous mines to agile coding techniques.

Most recently — as in last week — “learn to code” is a snarky rebuke to displaced print and internet journalists, and in particular to people recently let go by Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post, and the Gannett media giant. In part, the comment is intended to be karmic, alluding to an attitude that prevailed during President Obama’s tenure when his administration bragged of shutting down entire industries (coal mining, for example) and some in the media glibly suggested the displaced workers upgrade their skills and go get good jobs — in short, “learn to code.”

I code. I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for a long time, far longer than the average Buzzfeed journalist has been alive, I suspect. I know a thing or two about writing software, and so I want to offer some advice to the young journalists recently of Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post who might be considering a foray into the verdant pastures of my industry.

Software isn’t what you’re used to. Software is the real world.

We all have a pretty good idea — or, at least, a strong suspicion — about what goes on in the modern newsroom. We understand that most everyone thinks pretty much the same way, supports pretty much the same causes, tilts the news in pretty much the same direction. (That’s to the left, in case anyone isn’t clear on that.)

We know that standards are pretty low, particularly at Buzzfeed but pretty much everywhere else as well. (See Convington for a glaring recent instance, but examples abound.) We know that there’s a tendency to pick the news that fits the preferred narrative, and to studiously ignore inconvenient truths. Some of it — most of it, probably — is innocent, the simple consequence of living inside a bubble and breathing the same righteous atmosphere as everyone around you. It’s understandable, and even forgivable. But it isn’t real.

Software is real. Computers are remarkably unforgiving things, completely disinterested in your view of the world, your sense of what should be. Computers don’t care about your groupthink, your consensus, your so-called settled science. They simply do as they’re told — exactly as they’re told. They do it quickly, reliably, relentlessly, inflexibly, and mercilessly.

You can’t sweep software details under the carpet. You can’t ignore exceptions that don’t conform to your hopes and beliefs. You can’t make computational reality real by wishing it so, by telling others it’s so, and by agreeing with all of your peers that it’s so.

By all means, learn to code. It’s a wonderful business, a rewarding and often lucrative activity, and a lot of fun. But it’s going to require something new from you: a commitment to reality, to comprehensive analysis, to an open-minded consideration of the various sides and aspects of a problem. Approach it that way and you may be successful.

But business as usual? No, you’re going to have to up your game if you want to succeed in the real world.

[At Least] Two Americas

Posted on | by hr | Leave a Comment on [At Least] Two Americas

In one America, people are online and informed. Whether they’re well and accurately informed is another matter entirely: journalistic standards appear to be all but nonexistent, and social media and the internet in general are a swirling maelstrom of confirmation bias and venomous hostility. Left-wing opinion writers masquerade as dispassionate reporters; radicals dominate our universities; and activists of every stripe parade across the country’s stage with their claims of increasingly implausible grievances.

In this America, the anger and the outrage and the offense are ubiquitous, inescapable: no claim is too outlandish, no evidence too inadequate, to render it unworthy of reporting — if the right (i.e., right) ox is gored. This is an angry, divided America.

The other America is substantially larger, and substantially less informed about the offense du jour. Sure, that America knows the President is a monster: that truth is in the air and water by now, along with the certain knowledge that he is a Russian… something… bent on repealing the First Amendment. Everyone knows, thanks to media saturation and pop-cultural osmosis, that these things must be true. But, honestly, it’s such a bore, the way some people go on endlessly about it, the way it creeps into their Facebook feeds and dominates late-night television.

This America knows it’s divided. How can it not — it hears it every day. People in this America figure, sensibly enough, that somewhere out there a civil war must be raging. It isn’t here, not where they live. Where they live, everyone seems to get along pretty well: there are no masked antifa freedom-fighters breaking shop windows, no loudmouth activists shouting down dangerously conservative speakers, no riots of any sort. People just go on living, earning and spending money, changing jobs (which is a lot easier than it used to be, by the way), raising their kids, and watching blockbuster super-hero movies.

The country is in a civil war, this America is told. Hard to believe, its people think — but they made the mistake of popping onto Twitter once, so they know the mayhem and bloodshed is real.

On the other hand, they think, Friends is on Netflix, and — peaking out the front window into the empty streets — things seem peaceful enough. And the kids are upstairs sleeping…. Maybe, it sometimes occurs to people in this America, they aren’t the crazy ones.