Curiouser and Curiouser

Desperate Leftists Make Mistakes as Indictment Details Emerge

When the InJustice Department indicted Donald Trump on 37 counts of federal crimes, it sent the leftist media into paroxysms of joy. As details of the charges emerge, however, it seems more and more likely our Marxist friends celebrated too soon. Despite, and in fact because of, the clearly political nature of the case, Trump remains the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner. His poll numbers are up and he raised almost 7 million dollars almost overnight.

The more we learn about the case the more it looks, as Alice said, "Curiouser and curiouser!" In particular, the indictment accuses Trump of failing to comply with demands to return classified documents, including plans for a retaliatory attack on an unnamed foreign power. For those of us paying attention, that sounds suspiciously like Trump may have held onto Pentagon plans to invade Iran, formulated in a virtual act of mutiny, when the president and their commander-in-chief had expressly forbidden the military from attacking Iran. 

I'm pretty sure the guys that former president Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex are having a hissy fit lest their treasonous plot to get us into another expensive and unnecessary Mideast war be exposed. Just kidding!  Of course the honorable corporate barons and their toadies in the Pentagon would NEVER do such a thing. They've got all those gold stars on their collars, presumably for good behavior.

And if you believe that, I'm selling lakefront acreage on Mars at Elon Musk's "Olympus Mons Woods." These stunning lots include hot and cold running sand with a beautiful view of the Great Face. Hurry, though. These deals won't last long.

© 2013 by Tom King

ESPN Catches a Lot of Karma

The face of ESPN - 2015 ESPY winner Caitlyn Jenner

Business Rule #1 - Do Not Offend Your Customers

You wonder if today's ESPN sports journalists attended the same leftist university journalism schools as the rest of the mainstream media and never met any actual sports fans before taking up sports reporting. Let me 'splain. You see, sports fans, the kind who burrow down into statistics and player lives and the mechanics of professional sports, the raison d'etre for ESPN's very existence in the first place, tend to lean hard to starboard. That's nautical-speak meaning "to the right" for ESPN reporters who don't cover the America's Cup. 

ESPN laid off a hundred people the other day. Many more are expected to follow. ESPN boss,  and all their PR guys attribute ESPN's massive employee layoffs to a "changing media landscape" and other high-sounding marketing jargon laden excuses. I suspect what ESPN is experiencing is what liberal's who embrace Eastern mysticism call "karma". 

Interesting that ESPN doesn't credit the past year or so worth of increasingly leftist reporting and conservative bashing by the sports network as having anything to do with the staggering loss of conservative ESPN viewers. Turns out a lot of sports fans tend to be conservative, a demographic data point ESPN's marketing people seem to have missed. Not many mainstream news outlets are talking about the possibility that the recent shift to the leftward at ESPN may have fueled the loss of 621,000 subscribers in October 2016 and a full 7.2 million since.

ESPN tries to spin the layoffs as "not my fault" and some sort of cagey business decision. They should have seen the handwriting on the wall when they took back dismal Marxist Keith Olbermann from MSNBC and then had to explain why they fired him again with the usual "taking a different direction" excuse for his abysmal ratings. Since failing with Olbermann's in-your-face leftism, ESPN has allowed it's mainline reporters much more latitude in expressing their political opinions and disdain for all things conservative and Republican, perhaps expecting sports fans to accept their Marxism in smaller doses and not noticing it. The It has hurt them in ways I do not think they expected. In the process they discovered that sports fans are not sheep to be led about by the good shepherd ESPN.

Then came the Arthur Ashe Courage Award this year being given to Caitlyn Jenner. Again ESPN mis-underestimated the cringe factor that would come with that pit of political flag-waving. Fans tuned out in droves.

Another under-reported fact about ESPN's declining fortunes is just what the statistics of viewer vs subscriber losses say about fan disenchantment with the network. It is significant that ESPN has lost more far more viewers than subscribers in the past year.  While 7.2 million lost subscribers may be a relatively small percentage of ESPN's subscribers list, the loss of viewers says much more about viewer revolt, especially if you happen to be an ESPN advertiser. This disparity between subscriber and viewer loss is largely due to the fact that to "unsubscribe from ESPN" you often have to dump your entire cable package. ESPN is included in many basic cable/satellite subscriber packages or in special sports packages. To lose ESPN means you lose the other stuff as well.  As a result, many viewer have not dumped the network. Many sports fans just quit watching ESPN altogether and shifted over to Fox Sports or other less political sports news sources.

This Newsbuster story is a fair treatment of the consequences of ESPN's going hard left and viewers not liking it. They go into the numbers in more detail than I want to get into. The mainstream media have remained relatively quiet about ESPN's troubles, generally accepting the self-proclaimed World Leader in Sports' spin on the problem. One wonders whether the folk at ESPN will actually hear the message or is their political ideology so important that they will cling to it and content themselves with a smaller left-wing sports fan base.

Karma, as they say, is an angry female canine.

© 2017 by Tom King

Hypocrites calling Hypocrites Hypocrites

The Descent of Political Discourse

Good cow! Now the Democrats and the Leftist Media are accusing Donald Trump of a "lack of transparency." Really? After the Obama administrations stunningly consistent opaque presidency, perhaps the least transparent in history, the hypocrisy is incredible. If it weren't for the odd open microphone we'd never have known Obama intended to sell us out to the Russians in his second term. If it wasn't for nosy cameras we'd never have seen him bowing to emperors, Saudi kings and assorted other potentates with titles. His signature legislation, Obamacare, was passed famously "before we could know what was in it." Not terribly transparent given that we discovered after it was passed that our health insurance would become more rather than less expensive and that we weren't going to be allowed to keep our doctors and health plans as promised.

I've so far been polite in my responses to most of my liberal friends and not accused them of things not in evidence. And yet, because I like some things Trump has done, I'm accused of Trump hero worship. So I will repeat what I have already said before. Trump is no hero of mine and I never have said he was. On the contrary. I've said I distrust him all along and that I will watch his actions with proper skepticism and set up a howl if he does something I don't like, although it will probably cause Democrats to cheer when he does some such thing.

Democrats are responsible for Trump anyway. They queered the Republican primary by some 12 million crossing over to vote for him and force the nomination, despite strong conservative opposition including mine. They didn't think he could beat Hillary. Unfortunately, they are not as smart as they think they are. Democrats really missed how much Americans disliked Mrs. Clinton.

Trump's their boy at heart. Even his repeal of Obamacare isn't really a repeal at all. Trumpcare is being sold as a better brand of Obamacare. It reminds me of Hitler claiming that Nazism was a better form of Marxism. Trump is obviously no politician. The fact that he hasn't been a politician is one of the few things in his favor as far as I am concerned. He's so inept at politics that the liberal press has their noses more deeply into dark places than they have for the past eight years. They are actually doing their job for a change which is kind of refreshing.

Trump's actions thus far (the official ones, not his tweets and the unimportant things the liberal press keeps harping on) have been heartening, and more than a little entertaining as liberal hair spontaneously combusts every time he sends out a tweet. One liberal friend complained about my use of past historical events, my "written words, sentences and paragraphs" that I used in responding to accusations against the President. What did they want. Should I hum a little tune to soothe their hurt feelings? I could play a little tune on my homemade banjo - a lullaby perhaps? Barring that, I have nothing with which to respond other than words, sentences and paragraphs.

That's the problem with us conservatives, my friends. We read history and we remember some lessons from it. Someone once said, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history." Two things I have learned from history that apply to my friendly debates with my buddies on the distaff side of the aisle. 

1. Socialism and centralized government power, whether it's held by kings, emperors, commissars, politburos or presidents. It inevitably never works out well for the proletariat. 
2. Socialists do not learn by experience. They keep trying the same thing over and over again, hoping it will turn out better this time.

Sadly, the left, I have discovered, only believe in free speech for themselves. They prefer not to hear opposing opinions that challenge the unearned sense of moral superiority that they gain from believing the "correct" ideology. They tend to want to silence anyone who presents words, sentences and paragraphs which make sense but disagree with the assumptions of their Marxist progressivism and which do not feed the sense of moral superiority that comes with belonging to the special ideological elite who will run things once the progressive agenda is accomplished.

The trouble with Democrats, said Ronald Reagan once, is that so much of what they know just ain't so. I think it's why they don't want to hear from people like me. Instead when I point out the hypocrisy of the left for criticizing their boy Trump for the same things that their boy Obama did during his reign, they tend to stick their fingers in their ears and go "La, la, la, la." No kidding, I heard a reporter refer to Obama's presidency as his "reign" once. It was more than a little disturbing and rather revealing.

Leftist judges have blocked Trump's immigration and travel restrictions from the very same countries that former president Obama identified as threats. The most recent judge actually said that if Obama had done the same thing as Trump it would have been okay, but because of things Trump said, it's not legal. In other words, judges have now created "thought crimes" which they can lay at the president's door.

Well, it's going along just about like I thought it would. It looks like "1984" may take an additional 40 years, but it appears that Orwell's scary state is still coming with it's government altering of history, language and culture for the purposes of creating the proper sort of proletariat that will subsume it's will to the dictates of the collective and, of course, it's elite intellectual leaders, who will, of course, live in luxurious country dachas with servants and security as a reward for being smarter than the rest of us stupid cattle.

As I've said before, I believe that Jesus is loading up the bus to come and get us. I'm not worried about the Marxists. Their idea of creating a man-made Utopia is doomed to fail in a big messy way. I hope to leave on the bus before I am killed in the collapse. If that happens, I'm not worried. I know where I'm going and I am at peace with that.

Just sayin'

© 2017 by Tom King

Cedric Richmond (D) - Oh the Hypocrisy!

 

@CedricRichmond: "Y'all seen that photo of Kellyanne
on couch? She looks familiar in that position."

The Trump-bots are all atwitter over Louisiana Democrat Cedric Richmond's crude shot at Kellyanne Conway's picture kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office during a visit to President Trump by presidents of a number of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). 

And I don't blame them. 

If a Republican Congressman (or any Republican for that matter) had made the same comment (even if it had been about Monica Lewinsky about whom the joke would have been true) the press would have crucified said Republican. Later Congressman Richmond tried to explain that his "joke" wasn't crude. Apparently it just wasn't funny the way he meant it to be. Here's what Richmond said.

• “I decided to use that joke due to the large social media backlash over her inappropriate posture considering there were more than 60 HBCU Presidents in the room.”

And it's exactly what I thought it was when this started up days ago. Once again it's about race. How dare a white woman kneel on a sofa in the presence of all those black men. (I guess she should have knelt on the floor or something.) If there had been 60 white guys or Asian guys or Indo-European guys in there, Conway would not have been expected to genuflect in their presence. But because she did not show the proper obeisance in front of 60 black men, she therefore deserved to have Cedric suggest that she was familiar with that position (i.e. familiar with doing sexual favors for Trump). There was no other way to interpret Richmond's "joke". And by the way, It didn't look like 60 guys in that picture, but I'll give Cedric the benefit of the doubt. It doesn't matter anyway. Kellyanne was working and apparently not overly awed by the gathered crowd of "men". Should a very competent working woman have to bow to these people, especially as this was not an official photo, but a candid caught before the official photos were taken? I'm sure the photographer was looking for something controversial.

A liberal woman would have been applauded if she'd assumed the same posture with a group of 60 white world leaders. Feminiists would have praised her for showing that women were not intimidated by males no matter how important they think they are. Democrats would have defended her to the hilt, but only if she were a Democrat, of course. If we are going to have women in the workplace, it looks to me like we should allow women to be actual women. Women tuck their legs under them on sofas. They've done it since time immemorial (except possibly during the Victorian era when they wore corsets, whalebone and a stick up their backs).  So since Cedric ain't gonna do it, I will say it!

Way to show 'em you aren't intimidated by their race, creed, color or gender, Kellyanne!

You know I really like this lady more and more every day. And you can tell she's getting to them. They're already into creating a fake furor over nothing-burger* incidents. Next there will be books and movies out in which a woman in her position, working for the president is assassinated or causes a scandal or overdoses on drugs or something. Liberals are such hopeless dreamers!

© 2017 by Tom King

*By the way, Ted Cruz, thanks for that new term. I hadn't heard it before, but I like it. I hope you don't mind me stealing it.

Dan Rather - Teacher of Journalistic Integrity?

I finally found time to watch Trump's State of the Union Speech. As my regular readers know, I was not a Trump supporter during the election and don't trust him farther than I could toss him with my two bad knees and galloping arthritis. But I found the speech laudable and found nothing troubling in it. A CNN guy said the speech was full of big words that Trump didn't understand, but in listening to it, I found his language very simple. In fact, if you stumble over any of Trump's word, you probably are not reading at a fifth grade level.  

I didn't agree with every policy in the speech, but even when he talked about things I oppose in principle, I had to agree with him when he talked about how he'd execute the solutions. Whatever you think of Trump, the big thing was that he delivered a clear message. What was funny was the Dan Rather commercial for his "journalistic Integrity" online course (which he is teaching). He said this last election convinced him that journalist integrity was threatened and that he should teach an ethics course for young journalists to save journalism.

If you remember, Dan Rather was forced to resign from Walter Cronkite's old job as evening news anchor because he made up a story about George W. Bush's National Guard Service using forged documents. That Rather would be whinging about journalistic integrity is monumentally laughable. One wonders if he realizes how silly it looks for him to be teaching ethics to journalists given his history.

© 2017 by Tom King

MSNBC Reporterette Makes Freudian Slip

The other day MSNBC reporterette Mika Brzezinski made a Freudian slip. In her comments about Trump's rough-handling of the media, makes it clear how she and other reporters think of themselves and their job. It's more than a little troubling. First she lamented that Trump might "undermine" the message that the economy is going to collapse and poor people will starve. Apparently, the media, at least MSNBC, have already decided that the economy is going to collapse and poor people will starve. Interesting that they're so sure what the message is going to be ahead of time.

Mika continues her lamentation by expressing her fear that Donald Trump might be able to "control exactly what people think."  Apparently Mika and the gang believe that it is the job of the media to tell people exactly what to think.

Man, somebody has a low opinion of "people" Sounds to me like somebody has also confused George Orwell's cautionary tale, "1984" with a liberal instruction manual. I think that's why this carefully orchestrated run-up to the past election went so badly wrong for them. The Democrat-Media complex pushed the worst Republican candidate possible and got him successfully nominated. Then they over-estimated their ability to cover Hillary's corrupt hindquarters and lost the election.

Now they are totally freaked out. Even though I voted for neither Trump nor Hillary, the results of this election may actually be entertaining as Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop approach to governance blows up the system in their face. It may end badly, but it will be interesting. But a word of caution...

There is an ancient Chinese curse that goes, "May you live in interesting times."

And it is getting very interesting out there.

© 2017 by Tom King

Democrat NY Assembly Speaker Arrested - Press Shrugs

Contrast this photo of Speaker Silver on his way to his arrest looking vaguely
like Boss Tweed with the pics in most of the mainstream press this morning.

(1-22-2015) Both Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan both described attempts to appease your enemy as "Feeding the crocodile, hoping it will eat you last." It may have been "alligator". I've heard it both ways. At any rate, New York State Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) was arrested in New York City, adding some credence to that notion. The crocodiles definitely smell blood in the water, though some of them are holding back a little, apparently hoping not to damage him too much in case he hasn't run out of croc-o-treats quite yet.

I first got news of the Speaker's arrest in an email flash from Fox News. I can't say I was surprised, but I got to wondering if anyone else had it. My first sweep didn't find much besides Fox's report. Around 10:00 am PST the reporting went like this: 

Fox Business News had a pretty straightforward report, predictably without a lot of puffy praise for the Speaker's past accomplishments. The story didn't dwell on his being a Democrat in the headalines, but did indicate in the lead picture that Silver was (D-Manhattan).

Fox News didn't lead with the story but it gave the link to the Fox Business News Story at the top of it's "Latest News" ticker.
 
CNN didn't have a story at all when I searched the site this morning, the day after the arrest. Perhaps they're holding back to see whether this is a "real" story or not.

ABC News never directly said that Silver was a Democrat, but talked about how Democrats reacted to the arrest, obliquely suggesting that Silver was their leader. ABC talked about the Democrats needing to change leadership and then quoted a prominent Democrat, Daniel O'Donnell as saying there was "no chance of that." The article ended with praise for Silver's work over the years, making him sound like a warrior in a noble cause, then admitted there had been signs of scandal in the past that the Speaker had dismissed as "...having been handled by the ethics committee."

NBC News didn't have the story listed as a leading story and a search turned up nothing this morning.

CBS News, one of the better "which way the wind is blowing" members of the media did post the story with the headline - Sheldon Silver, powerful New York Democrat, arrested by FBI. The link was well down toward the bottom of the page, but at least they covered it. They also posted a recent picture showing Silver looking like a craggy old white guy in the back of a limo - the sort of perp walk picture you'd expect under a headline like the one above. The reporter did use the same text clip that ABC used about the Dems contemplating no changes in leadership by Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell (D-Manhattan) though they did add this extra line from O'Donnell's quote - "It's "a sad day considering" all the work Silver and the conference have done protecting New York's poor and others."

MSNBC, perhaps hoping to avoid charges of one-sided reporting, listed the story well down at number nine in its top ten stories. The story is surprisingly up-front about the charges and the fact that Silver is a Democrat. Then, it waxes poetical....

"Silver, 70, was elected in 1976 and named Speaker in 1994, where he took a key role negotiating bills and hammering out budgets with the Senate majority leader and governor in back rooms. He earned a reputation as an unmovable force in the capital, while governors came and went and other legislators were felled by political blunders.  Silver’s office has not yet commented on details of the arrest. Investigators declined to comment on proceedings to NBC News. State lawmakers are legally allowed to serve during investigation and even after an arrest, but if they are convicted of felony charges they must leave office."

Good news that. Silver won't have to leave office till they actually convict him, huh? Also MSNBC's picture of the Speaker was of him when he was younger and less "old craggy white guy".

The Huffington Post to its credit placed the story third down on both it's front page and politics page and included a very nice picture of him (though the picture was probably a few years old). The headlines were Sheldon Silver Arrested By FBI On Corruption Charges and Top NY Lawmaker Arrested By FBI On Corruption Charges. The story was quick and straightforward without a lot of puff. It ended by quoting Silver, as he was quoted by the NY Times, saying, "I hope I'll be vindicated," as he entered the FBI building in New York to surrender. The story was surrounded by Huff-Po's usual collection of gleefully anti-Republican front-pagers.

Imagine if Silver had been a Republican. Given that he's also an Orthodox Jew, I really doubt the liberal press would have granted him as much of a "by" on this one, especially given the anti-semitic tone of reporting coming from the left of late. The headline in all the news media certainly would NOT have been about under-inflated footballs.

© 2014 by Tom King

Building Sidewalks

Sidewalks don't need to be this fancy or expensive
nor require a federal grant or expensive "program".
Just build the danged sidewalk!

Community "Issues" Aren't Always What the Community Organizers Tell You They Are

One forgets sometimes how insular is the life of many a pundit, reporter, editor and publisher that we rely on for information and opinion in our daily news consumption. I saw a case in point this morning in an email from Ruth McCambridge, editor of The Nonprofit Quarterly. She was announcing the addition of a new cadre of on-the-ground reporters to broaden the coverage of nonprofit activities in the Good Old U.S. of A. and explained a bit about what she saw as their role in the new and improved NPQ.

• We believe in the intelligence of those who are doing and negotiating the grounded work in communities. You are the ones who have to understand the patterns of your operating environments—what it will mean if this philanthropic leader leaves her post, or if that organization embarrasses itself, or if such and such city decides that the CDBG money is needed for sidewalk repair instead of housing. You watch all of these interconnected dynamics, and if you are worth your salt, sometimes you understand what that will mean for the work you do. 

Ruth has an excellent point. The only thing dangerous is in listening to only one of those on-the-ground voices. I suspect that, given the left lean of NPQ, that the editorial staff may jump on reporting by on-the-ground voices which echo their own sentiments before they accept opposing voices. They may not even hear opposing voices, I suspect, as many of those on-the-ground voices don't even read NPQ or know that they are looking to hear such voices.

To be fair, NPQ has attempted to report opposing viewpoints. They've even published articles by me (unpaid, of course), so they can claim to include views from both sides of the political spectrum – me being unabashedly conservative and all. Even then, there is a danger of getting things wrong. That's why reporters who really do want to get their facts straight and unbiased should probably, almost always, do a part 2 to any controversial article in which they do follow up investigation with reference to the criticism their first article received in the comments section. That's how I'd do it if I were the editor.

Case in point: McCambridge mentions an issue in which the city decides that Community Development Block Grant money is used for sidewalk repair instead of housing. CDBG is a federal block grant for cities. Cities have relatively broad latitude so far as what to do with CDBG funds. Housing is one of the areas CDBG goes for. Transportation is another. Infrastructure repair and upgrade is another. While a lot of community activists might get their hackles up if money were diverted to sidewalk building and repair instead of housing and let out a howl, it would be wise for any reporter tempted to wax critical of the city to stop and take a deep breath and TALK TO SOMEBODY ELSE.

I worked as a transportation activist in a small urban center where this issue came up. The city was originally laid out along old trails and cowpaths. Roads were narrow and, as it was Texas, house lots were large. As cars came along, roads were widened, but there was a limit to how far you could widen them. In the oldest part of town, there were sidewalks that connected the neighborhoods that surrounded the city center to the old Interurban trolley stops. Citizens who wanted to go anywhere, walked to the trolley stop on sidewalks that kept them up out of the horse manure and mud. Once the Interurbans were shut down and everyone began to drive cars, roads and new suburban neighborhoods went up. No one thought much about poverty and disability during the oil boom years because it wasn't much of an issue. No one needed sidewalks because they drove cars, so sidewalks were deemed an expensive luxury that nobody would use.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Jogging is popular. Twenty-five percent of the adult population cannot drive because they are elderly or disabled. More people live through accidents with disabilities thanks to modern medicine. They can get motorized chairs and scooters, city buses are accessible, but people with disabilities have to drive their scooters in the street to get to the bus stops because there are no sidewalks or curb cuts throughout most of the city. While all city buses are wheelchair accessible, the bus stops are miles away from many older neighborhoods and accessible bus service is expensive. In my town, housing was important and the housing advocates shouted down any idea of improving the sidewalks or worse building new ones.

It was hard to make people see that $2000 worth of asphalted trails or concrete sidewalks could, in time, save the city many more thousands of dollars annually by creating a safe path for elderly, low-income and disabled individuals to get to the bus routes without having to call for expensive para-transit buses. In addition, the sidewalk network would mean that instead of waiting for the city to build expensive accessible housing for seniors and people with disabilities, a majority of them could remain in their own homes and access goods and services they need by sidewalk and bus at very low cost to both the users and the city. I hope that NPQ and other news agencies who report on community issues and activities will take the time to think outside the usual liberal activist box. Sometimes there are other ways to do things than simply by squabbling over who gets what federal funds. Communities often come up with very powerful solutions all on their own without any advice at all from the graybeards in Washington DC.

My friend Darrel, for instance, lived in a small East Texas town with lots of old people living around the area. Most were on fixed incomes. Many were fast losing the ability to drive. Darrel got busy, rounded up some old school buses and with the help of the local churches, began running a twice a month "trip to town" for retirees on the dates that social security and VA checks came out. They'd pick them up early in the morning. Walmart would host a bingo tournament in the McDonald's providing the game callers and even some prizes. The bank inside the Walmart had a bank location, a beauty salon, a pharmacy and Walmart's wide selection of grocery and retail goods. If the folk wanted to visit downtown or any other stores, the volunteer driver's were very flexible. They even rigged one of the buses to be wheelchair accessible. The thing ran until Darrel's death and I think may be running yet. They didn't get any federal money. Each church adopted and shared a bus. They didn’t charge a thing to passengers. Drivers were all volunteers. They did things that the "official" rural transit system refused to do or claimed was impossible.

Those are the "Little Engine That Could" kind of stories I'd like to see NPQ and other media report on. The only thing is that most of such organizations that do what Darrel (not his real name) did don't want the publicity lest some activist spot them and report them for not doing it the "right" way. What they usually mean by that is the way that brings in federal or state dollars that they can control. Forgive me for being a cynic, but 40 years in the nonprofit sector has taught me that.

As a member of the local disability issues review board in my town, I once suggested what I thought was a clever and economical solution to a disability issue we were discussing. The other members, more seasoned fellows than myself, told me it would never work.

 "Why?" I asked

 "Because," they answered, "It makes too much sense."

 Which is why I've changed my status from that of nonprofit professional to nonprofit amateur.

© 2014 by Tom King

Are Bloggers Journalists?

(c) 2012 by Tom King


(c) Some rights reserved by Andrew Currie

You know, I kind of resent that question.  I'm kind of tired of journalist trying to get themselves up in white robes and to masquerade as some sorts of informational holy men.

The idea that journalists are unbiased news priests, delivering information without opinion is absolute balderdash. If you are a person you have an opinion. Merriam-Webster says a journalist is a "person engaged in journalism, especially a writer or editor for a news medium. Webster also says "a writer who aims at a mass audience" is a journalist.

By that second definition, bloggers are definitely journalists. Surely, Americans with our long history of freedom of the press, are sophisticated enough to realize that every journalist out there is pitching the news according to his own conscience, editing information to tell a story he or she wants to tell. That's Journalism 101. Sure they tell you to be unbiased and then propagandize you shamelessly, usually with leftist opinions, though there are a few conservative and moderate journalism professors out there who have managed to keep their jobs, if not to actually gain tenure.

The fiction that all true journalists are unbiased is just that - fiction! A journalist is a writer of news - that is all. Even if you choose to be "fair and balanced", choose to show an even-handed look at the news as best you can, all that means is that you believe in making news as moderate or independent as you can. It is still your opinion that this is the best way to present the news.

Even journalism icon, Walter Cronkite was obviously and unapologetically progressive in his leanings, though he did his best to appear neutral when he was sitting in the anchor's chair at CBS news. Everybody knew what Uncle Walter thought by how he selected the news clips he presented. It was as much what he didn't say as what he did say. He was brilliant and while I disagreed with him on many fundamental issues, you had to respect the guy's integrity.  He never took his talking points from the DNC or the RNC. No political icon was immune if Uncle Walter thought said politico was doing wrong as poor old LBJ found out to his utter dismay. Cronkite's opinion was always his own.

The belief that you should present an unbiased opinion differs not a whit in moral superiority from Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews who believe news should be interpreted from a liberal/progressive viewpoint or from Sean Hannity or John Stossel, who believe that a conservative interpretation is the correct way to spin it. Whether the journalist is a liberal, conservative or so-called "unbiased" moderate; whether he or she is a reporter, editor, blogger or a TV news anchor, what you receive from these folk, never forget, is information molded by an opinionated journalist to suit his personal value system or that of the folk that write his or her paycheck. Given that....

Opinion is damned well too journalism!

And bloggers are damned well too journalists!

Beyond that, it's just a matter of quality.

Just one blogger's opinion....

Tom King

30



NP Quarterly Takes a Swipe at Another Conservative Philanthropist

Got my Nonprofit Quarterly today and found an article entitled, "Art Pope, Bankroller of North Carolina's Republican Agenda, Tells All" by Jeff Cohen. I read it with interest, thinking to hear Mr. Pope's side of the issue. Instead I was directed to a New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer that did everything BUT give Mr. Pope's side of the issue.



Art Pope during his days as a NC Legislator

 Mr. Cohen meanwhile suggested the New Yorker piece would tell you what made Art Pope "tick". It doesn't. Mr. Cohen tried to sound fair, but he did manage to get in a couple of comparison's to the Koch Brothers and used perjorative words like "secretive" and "tea party" (at least tea party is perjorative to liberals, many of whom apparently subscribe to NPQ).  Interesting that Mr. Cohen never touches on the overwhelming contributions by individual liberal cause-funders, many of whom dwarf what conservatives like Pope or the Kochs spend.

In a Newsobserver.com story by Rob Christensen about Mr. Pope, Christensen quotes veteran Raleigh political analyst, John Davis. "The Democrats have always had the ability to win the close races because they outspend the Republicans 3-1, 4-1, 5-1. That disparity has been eliminated by the new independent expenditure laws," Davis said. "I know the Democrats are frustrated by the fact that they can no longer run over Republicans with their financial advantage, but frankly they have had an undue influence over the legislative politics of this state for decades because they were able to get extraordinary financial advantage."

Davis adds, "Money flows to power, and Democrats have always had the power - the president pro tem of the Senate, the speaker of the House and the governor," Davis goes on to say. "There has never been anyone to stand up to the union support for the Democratic Party and the business support for the Democratic Party,"

Pope, himself, says. "Part of my decision to give more than usual is to try to offset the advantages that the Democratic Party has."

Pope believes his political contributions should be seen in the context of his family's larger philanthropy on a wide range of community projects such as $1 million for a new hospice building and $1 million to help move the new Campbell University law school to downtown Raleigh. His family also gives to local universities, food banks and indigent health care.

"What we give politically," Pope points out, "Is a fraction of what we give to charity,"

The New Yorker story is typically pro-Democrat and basically spends its ink whining because Pope, a North Carolinian with experience as an elected North Carolina legislator, is spending money to help break the hold of Democrats on power in North Carolina.

It's ironic that those who claim to believe so strongly in "diversity", object so strongly to a publicly expressed second opinion when it comes to politics.

Cohen, in the Nonprofit Quarterly article, of course, gets in a shot at the evil Koch brothers who actually have donated to Democrats and to organizations with liberal leanings. He fails, however, to touch on the obvious other side of the coin, avoiding mention of pro-liberal agenda philanthropists like conservative bugbear George Soros, whose charitable contributions are almost entirely about driving a political agenda. Soros and other big name billionaires spend folk like the Koch brothers and Art Pope under the table on political agenda driving.

So, why don't we hear any complaints about attempts by progressives to "buy the government", especially in a publication that bills itself as the Harvard Business Review of the nonprofit world and is supposed to be politically neutral?

The simple answer is, because folk like Jane Mayer and Jeff Cohen approve of money driving agendas, so long as the agenda is one with which they agree - specifically larger government. Since the objective of the conservative groups the Pope Family is funding is limited government, Pope draws the wrath of those who currently have a huge stake in growing their political power. Pope has further angered liberal media pundits and North Carolina Democrats by helping organize and sponsor Tea Party rallies and meetings around the state. (Insert gasp here!)

In the meantime, I don't suppose the nonprofits that are receiving Pope checks are complaining that the Pope family are driving a pro-education/pro-healthcare/anti-poverty agenda with their funding of hospital indigent care programs, hospices, universities and food banks.
Democrats claim Pope supports candidates that are "bad for North Carolina". While it's true that more elected Republicans might certainly be bad for North Carolina Democrats, others, Pope among them, cite the recent record of Democratic rule as one of failure - including corruption cases, a broken probation system, a troubled mental health system, a high school dropout rate, a recent tax hike, and budget problems.

As Pope points out, two senate candidates in recent years Democratic Senate candidates John Edwards and Erskine Bowles each spent far more of their own money on their campaigns than Art Pope has put into North Carolina conservative political groups.  If Art Pope is buying the state, as Ms. Mayer claims, he's going to have to come up with far more than he has so far, because his political adversaries are still out-spending him and have been for a very, very long time.

None of the article I read were by conservatives. The Newsobserver article was at least balanced and gave both sides of the story, allowing the reader to decide what to believe about Art Pope. The American system allows for dissent by American citizens. Perhaps, in recommending an article like the one Cohen gushes over in the New Yorker, Nonprofit Quarterly should also include a link to something that at least gives the other side of the story. Pope may be bad for Dems, but he apparently is generous with nonprofits. The question I'd ask?  Is Nonprofit Quarterly about what's good for a liberal political agenda or what's good for funding our nonprofits?

If it's about funding worthy causes, the Pope Family Foundation certainly deserves a pat on the back for its stewardship whatever you think of its politics.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Why We Aren't Any Good at Limited War

Paul Gleiser's commentary this week on our local news/talk radio station, KTBB was called "The Unbearable Cost of Discount War".  He made the point that "half wars" are far too expensive.  He has a point. It's hard for Christian people to wage all out war. There must be a clearly defined and "evil" enemy. In WWI and prior, the news media gave sanitized coverage of the war that over-exaggerated how evil the enemy we were fighting was.  People bought their papers and believed what they were reading.  Even the hostile anti-war members of the press in those days didn't have damning film to back up their criticisms of the war.  It was easier to wage total war without the film coverage. Nowadays, you can get lots of exciting film that makes us look bad, but no one shows the really horrible stuff the bad guys do. Nothing makes people turn off the TV faster than acres of rotting nerve gassed corpses. They'll run shots of piles of naked "live" Iraqis next to foolish grinning soldiers till we're sick of it and angry at our own soldiers.  They won't show you the live television beheading of an American engineer or a young soldier or piles of naked dead Iraqis in a ditch where they have been machine-gunned by their own government.  Is it any wonder so many have lost interest in fighting a war where we're being portrayed as the bad guys night after night because it's the only film that doesn't make people turn off the television and spoil CNN's ratings.

Film coverage began in WWII and it was still highly sanitized, but traumatizing. One wonders what Americans would have done had they been able to see the film of the real atrocities. When an American magazine published pictures of dead Americans on a beach in the South Pacific, it cost the government a great deal of public support for the war.  Even though they couldn't show the pictures at the time, General Eisenhower made his historians and embedded reporters photograph everything at the death camps as did MacArthur in the POW camps. It helped us later, when we were distanced somewhat from the carnage to come to terms with WWII and the havoc we wreaked on Japan and Germany to see the evil that we had been fighting up close.  Who can forget the heaps of naked, dead Jews and emaciated POW's and the acres of murdered Chinese. When we understood the enemy we had fought, we supported the total effort we had to make to defeat them. We didn't even blame the Germans and the Japanese, preferring to think it was only the leaders who participated and we rebuilt those two nations into powerful allies.

Like the Jews, however, we still shrink from waging war Jehovah style and it comes back to haunt us. Sadly, with war, it's all or nothing. Limited war is too expensive, too invisible to the people who pay the bills and too far away from their own concerns for people to care very much.

We also have the problem that the media views war through its own peculiar prism, forged by decades of leftist university journalism professors. If one were to tell the stories of what we put an end to in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, the American public would have little trouble supporting an effort to end that war.

But for every journalist who tells the story of villagers nerved gassed (a most hideous chemical form of Saddam's so-called nonexistent WMDs), villagers lined up and machine-gunned, then bull-dozed into a ditch or fathers and mothers and even children tortured brutally in the prisons of Abu Graib, there are ten who tell stories of Americans committing atrocities, soldiers dying pointlessly (according to the commentator) or corrupt leaders profiteering off the war.

Oddly, for some reason Americans would prefer to believe we are being bullies and thugs than they would to believe that such horror could be going on somewhere. It seems an easy solution to bring our boys home and stop fighting wars altogether.  Then we would be guiltless.  - that's easy so long as we disbelieve the "jingoist" reports of what sort of truly evil stuff is going on in those nations.

For if we believe those things are going on, our Christian upbringing tells us we must do something to stop it. But that would be hard and risky and no one is hurting our families here in the states.  We don't want to know what's going on beyond the walls. It's too painful to look at, so we tune in the media that tells us the local gossip and focuses on our own problems.

We can't help the soldier children in Africa or the tribes being starved and tortured in the Middle-East. We just don't want to know about it so we can sleep at night in our fluffy beds.

9/11 shook us up. That's why we went to Afghanistan and Iraq. They hit us at home. They killed American mothers, fathers, grandparents and children.  Osama bin Laden is a very poor strategic tactician. If he'd just kept hitting us outside of our own borders, he could have systematically discouraged us and induced us to abandon our friends and allies in the world.

If he'd not made that colossal mistake, he'd be far closer to the Caliphate the Muslim fanatics dream of and the American people would never have allowed us to go to war to stop him. If he can just restrain himself from attacking us again, he still has a chance at victory. The mainstream media certainly won't cover that war as closely and Americans will ignore it until one day we look up and discover an angry, armed and hostile Middle Eastern superpower that has been made proud of their "technological contributions" to civilization by our NASA goodwill outreach program and they will be pointing some very nasty "technological contributions" right at us.  Only, unlike the Cold War, there will be truly insane madmen with their fingers on those triggers.

Poetic Justice - Helen Thomas Vacates - Fox Movin' on Up!

According to "The Hill" today, the press corps has formally decided who gets Helen Thomas' old seat on the front row in the White House press room.  NPR wanted it. Liberal lobbyists pressed their support for NPR. Bloomberg wanted it, but FOX got the seat taking AP's old front row seat when AP shifted over.  The Associated Press moves to the center I suppose in deference to its being a traditional newswire service that's probably as near to expiring as Helen Thomas herself.

We'll all miss the lovable Ms. Thomas who has represented UPI till it was bought by the Reverend Myung Sung Moon. She quit UPI and became a columnist for the Hearst newspaper syndicate. She joined the White House press corps in 1961 when she followed John Kennedy all the way into the White House as a UPI reporter. From there, she put down roots and moved to the center seat by virtue of outliving all the competition. When asked about who should take her place front and center, Thomas said it would be "unfortunate" if Fox News got her old spot.

With Fox burying the competition for news ratings, liberal lobbyists and Journolist hacks calling it a "facist propaganda bureau", I was a bit surprised the press corps voted to move Fox up to the hallowed front row at all.  I can only think of a couple of reasons why they would have voted Fox to the front row.

1. Their own media organizations are dying and they're hoping they can get a job with Fox like Mike Wallace did.
2. They are hoping Fox will send Meghan Kelly over to take Helen Thomas' old UPI seat on the front row in case AP sends someone really unpleasant looking to take Helen's spot. That way the back row news boys can watch from behind as Meghan slowly stands up and walks away after the press conferences. 

The Hill got the story a bit wrong.  What happened was this.  Apparently, AP gets Thomas' old center front row seat (they always get the first question at press conferences by tradition - no one is sure why).

The reporters gave Helen Thomas' old front row seat to Fox News.  So AP moves to the center seat Thomas held by dint of long service and Fox moves up to the front, giving its second row seat to NPR. The libs are very unhappy. If Fox sends Meghan Kelly to the White House even just once in a while, however, the male reporters at least are likely to be quite comfortable with the new enhanced Fox presence.

And I promise you, Meghan Kelly will look way less scary when she's 89.

Whatever happens, with Fox finally acknowledged as one of the big boys, press conferences should be even more fun.

I'm just sayin' that's all.

Tom
*I actually do hope they send Meghan Kelly. After the smackdown last week of Kirsten Powers, I'd love to see her pitch a few hard balls to the prez!

9/11 - Media Reluctance to Use the "T" Word is Nothing New

I stumbled on an archive file of video clips of the news coverage on the morning of 9/11. It was stunning how long some of the mainstream news media avoided using the "T" word.  CNN and NBC kept trying to suggest that the FAA had some sort of malfunction or something. You have to hand it to Fox News in Washington and Charlie Gibson on ABC. Fox mentioned the potential that it was a terrorist attack and confirmed it when the second plane hit.  Charlie called it an attack. I was watching Charlie and you could here him square his shoulders just before he called it an attack. Diane stumbled a bit, but followed his lead. I'm sure the producer wet his pants at about that point, but to his credit, he kept the clips coming in.  Even after the second plane hit, you could here the CNN reporter still pushing almost desperately for the "FAA malfunction" explanation and they still hadn't used the "T" word.

You want to know where Fox News Network came from. It was the the way CNN botched the 9/11 coverage by refusing to call it what it was until way after their audience had figured it out and were collectively shouting "It's a terrorist attack you moron!" at their TV sets..

Much of the confusion was the product of serious wishful thinking on the part of news media. President Bush came on quickly and called the act what it was - terrorism.  Then he called for a moment of silent prayer for the victims and then said an amen for all of us.

Internationally, the most rattled news reporter was the Russian news anchor who was hyperventilating during his entire report. Can't blame him.  Someone had just hit the largest nuclear power in the world and he was sitting on ground zero if we thought it was them.  This guy knew what it would mean if it had been his own country attacked - in terms of retaliation. The guy was probably hoping Putin was on the phone going, "It wasn't us! It wasn't us!"  The Chinese reporter was almost perky - it was kind of weird, like "Look what's happening to those crazy Americans now!"  The Canadian reporter just stopped talking when the second tower came down and mentioned later that the Canadians were taking security precautions just in case.  The Iraqi report mentioned Kuwait and showed bits of a downed Navy jet. I couldn't understand a word, but it seemed like cautious gloating to me. The reporter guy looked nervous (turned out with good reason). BBC was typically restrained, but did mention terrorism early on. Within hours they released a special report that sounded like an Alistaire Cooke documentary.

The Japanese had the best high-quality photographs and video - way better than the other guys early on and much of it shot at street level.  Of course there were probably 10,000 Japanese tourists in New York at the time with 30,000 or so top of the line cameras strung round their necks.


Our media had a hard time reporting it.  Matt Lauer and Katy Couric were eerily calm, but confused like they couldn't believe this was happening.  Frankly everybody did that at first, but they never quite got over it. 

When you don't believe in evil, you naturally want to look away when you see it happening right in front of you. Military and ex-military guys figured out it was an attack early on.  The more liberal the news media outlet, the longer they took to use the "T" word even after it was obvious that we were under attack.  The Fox Station in New York nailed what was going on from the moment they came on the air with the report.  The "T" word was used in the first 60 seconds.

What I found really interesting was how so many stations cut to commercial before coming on with the news.  The Fox locals just broke straight to the story.  At one time news in this country, when something like that happened, Walter Cronkite would cut in.....

"We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to bring your this breaking news story!"

Now, it's more like "What?, uh, we have, a uh............We'll be right back after this commercial break"

Just watching the coverage, however, will take you right back to the day it happened and help you remember the magnitude of what was done to us. Next time someone tells you about how wrong the war is or how we had no reason to wage it, send them to this archive page and spend an hour or two remembering.

Oh, and God bless George Bush. Watch his announcement of the attacks.  He calls a spade a spade. The man had more leadership in his pinky finger than the entire bunch of goobers that run the current administration.  Can you imagine Al Gore handling the announcement?

"Uh, we have, uh, experienced a tragic, uh, event this morning. First reports indicate that these terrible plane crashes were the, uh, result of American caused global warming and the justifiable anger of the Muslim people over our exploitation of their resources, our abuse of the planet, the polar bears and our attacks upon the culture of the middle-east. Oh, and our support of the Israeli oppressor.  Pray for the souls of the brave, but misguided patriots who were driven to do this terrible, but understandable thing to us.............I'll be in my bunker. And you all take care of yourselves."

(Sorry I keep promising I won't do that anymore.......")

Tom