The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Somebody Tell Nick Wright That Patrick Mahomes Will Never Be the GOAT

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Somebody Tell Nick Wright That Patrick Mahomes Will Never Be the GOAT

The retirement this week of Tom Brady gives me another excuse (as if I needed one) to rub salt in Nick Wright’s fresh wounds. If you don’t understand why I despise Nick Wright, you can read all about it here, but the main point is that Nick is a shameless homer for the Kansas City Chiefs, which impairs his objectivity vis-a-vis my boy Mac Jones and the New England Patriots. Because of his bias, as a KC native, Wright wants to believe that the Chiefs are poised to become an NFL “dynasty” similar to the Patriots’ two-decade dynasty under Coach Bill Belichick, and that Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes can supplant Tom Brady as the “GOAT” (greatest of all time). But that’s never going to happen.

Brady and Mahomes are two very different types of quarterbacks. Brady is a classic dropback passer, while Mahomes is an improvisational genius whose scrambling ability makes him one of the best running QBs in the league. After four seasons as KC’s starter, Mahomes already has more rushing yards (1,189) than Brady had in his entire 20-year career (1,124).

This fact is the biggest reason why Mahomes is unlikely to replace Brady as the GOAT. Brady won a record seven Super Bowls, and four of those (beginning with Super Bowl XLIX in 2015) he won after he turned 37. In other words, a major reason Brady won more Super Bowls than anyone else is because he lasted longer in the NFL than anyone else, and a quarterback isn’t likely to still be playing in his 40s if he’s always running around the way Mahomes does. Football rules protect a quarterback as long as he’s behind the line of scrimmage passing, but once he runs downfield, he’s just another runner, and that involves a heightened risk of injury. Besides which, even if Mahomes can avoid getting his knees wrecked in one of his wild downfield runs, running ability tends to decline with age. Even the greatest running back in NFL history, Emmitt Smith, only lasted 15 years in the league, and didn’t top 1,000 yards in his last three seasons. Insofar as his mobility and speed make Mahomes exceptional, nobody (not even Nick Wright) could imagine he’s still going to be outrunning linebackers when he’s 35.

Look, I understand the “excitement” factor with Mahomes, who has a seemingly miraculous way of extending plays even after the pocket collapses and all his receivers are covered, but age will take its toll, and there is no way the Chiefs QB, now 26, can keep doing that forever. Bottom line, if Mahomes aspires to win more Super Bowls than Tom Brady, he needs to get his streak rolling now, and not be choking in the playoffs the way he choked Sunday against the Bengals.

Did I mention it’s hard to win Super Bowls? Think of everything that has to happen just right for a team to even make it to a Super Bowl — first, you have to win enough regular season games to qualify for the playoffs (14 out of 32 NFL teams, a 44% chance), but then except for the top seed in each conference, you have to win three games (wild card round, divisional playoffs, conference championship) to reach the Super Bowl. One loss in the playoffs and you’re out, as Nick Wright learned to his everlasting mortification Sunday. Only two of the 32 teams in the league play in the Super Bowl, and only one can win, so that 1/32nd chance is always a long-shot. This is why the fact Tom Brady won it seven times is so amazing. At age 27, Brady had already won three Super Bowls.

Patrick Mahomes has won one Super Bowl, and will turn 27 this September. It’s possible Mahomes might have won another Super Bowl, but he got beat by the GOAT last year. Mahomes didn’t even throw a touchdown pass in that game, which might have been a foreshadowing of how bad he choked in the second half against the Bengals.

Need more salt in that wound, Mr. Wright? Your boy Mahomes is behind the sticks, so to speak, in his drive to beat Brady as the GOAT. If he doesn’t win the Super Bowl next year, he’ll be two behind Brady’s pace. Of course, after winning Super Bowl XXXIX, it took another ten years before Brady won his fourth, as the Patriots beat the Seahawks 28-24 in Super Bowl XLIX. In between those two Super Bowl victories, Brady and the Patriots twice lost the Super Bowl (XLII in 2008 and XLVI in 2012) to Eli Manning’s New York Giants. Those were the only two Super Bowls that Eli Manning won; his brother Peyton Manning also won two (XLI in 2007 with the Colts and L in 2016 with the Broncos). Six other quarterbacks — Bart Starr, Roger Staubach, Bob Griese, Jim Plunkett, John Elway, Ben Roethlisberger — each won two Super Bowls. Troy Aikman won three, while Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana each won four Super Bowls. If Mahomes were to win one more Super Bowl, he would rank among the 12 best quarterbacks in NFL history by that metric. Should Mahomes win a third Super Bowl, he’d be one of the five best quarterbacks in history, and winning four would rank him in the top three all-time. So far, however, Mahomes has won only one Super Bowl, and if he keeps choking the way he choked Sunday against the Bengals — really, that second half was one of the worst choke jobs anyone can remember — he may never win another.

The chances of Patrick Mahomes surpassing Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl victories are so tiny, you might not be able to see them without an electron scanning microscope. Yet that tiny chance is what Nick Wright is betting on, every time he suggests Mahomes could be the new GOAT.

Let’s just hope Nick’s disillusionment is as painful as possible.

You can buy more salt on Amazon, just sayin’ . . .




 

Category: Football

Carjacker Had ‘Ghost Gun,’ Five Outstanding Warrants, Felony Record

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on Carjacker Had ‘Ghost Gun,’ Five Outstanding Warrants, Felony Record

Say hello to Robert Seth Carter, 32, and while you’re at it, you can also say good-bye, because last month he was shot to death by police in San Jose, California. There were no riots. Ben Crump didn’t hold a press conference “demanding justice” for Carter. CNN ignored this police shooting for the obvious reason that Carter is white and was shooting at the cops when they shot back. Had he survived, he would have been charged with a long list of felonies, but there were four cops and they lit him up pretty good, so we may now speak of him in the past tense:

“Carter is prohibited from processing any firearm due to prior felony convictions,” [San Jose Police Chief Anthony] Mata said. “Carter is a San Jose resident, currently had five felony warrants for his arrest and is on probation for battery.”

“Prior felony convictions . . . on probation” — another case of the revolving-door criminal justice system in California, where Democrats have striven to make it nearly impossible to put anybody in prison. Junkies shooting up in public and defecating on the sidewalk? Not a crime in California. Walking out of Walgreens with $900 of stolen merchandise? Not a crime in California. The reason for this leniency is “social justice,” i.e., that if you put all the criminals in prison, too many black and brown people will be locked up. But leniency also benefits white criminals like Carter, who should have been in prison but was instead on a criminal rampage in San Jose:

San Jose police on [Jan. 21] said the suspect in a carjacking who was shot and killed by police earlier this week had a “ghost gun” on him and was wanted on five felony warrants.
Police Chief Anthony Mata identified the man as 32-year-old Robert Seth Carter.
Mata said he drove through downtown East San Jose in a stolen Toyota Camry on Wednesday and then to Santa Clara where he tried to carjack a woman at gunpoint but quickly abandoned that plan.
“He was unsuccessful with that attempted carjacking. But it was very apparent at that scene that he was armed with a gun. So we knew he was armed,” Sgt. Christian Camarillo said earlier.
Police said Carter then sped south, back into San Jose, where he collided with two passengers in another vehicle at Hedding and Park avenues about 6 p.m. where it all came to a violent conclusion.
Carter got out of the stolen car – witnesses say with gun-in-hand – and allegedly opened fire at responding police officers. One officer fired back and hit Carter at least once, Mata said.
Three more officers arrived and saw Carter still holding the gun, according to police. The four police officers fired their weapons at least once, striking Carter multiple times. Carter fell to the ground and the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s K-9 Unit arrived. A police dog bit Carter’s leg to pull him away.
Some of what transpired was captured on video from a helicopter as well as from the officers body-worn cameras.
“Obviously fearing for their lives, they were engaged by gunfire from the suspect, our officers on scene returned fire,” Camarillo said.
Carter was handcuffed by officers, who gave him First Aid. He was then taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead there.
None of the four officers has been identified. All are on paid administrative leave.
Police said Carter was found with a gun still in his hand after police opened fire and they produced a picture of the weapon at a news conference.
The shooting is the first by San Jose police officers this year. Last year, officers were involved in two on-duty shootings, both of which were fatal.

The whole purpose of that Jan. 21 press conference was to prove to the public that Carter deserved to be shot by cops, and they had screenshots from the aerial surveillance video to prove Carter was armed and pointing his gun at officers. One aspect of the post-George Floyd environment is that police departments everywhere are now doing this “transparency” thing, which I wholly endorse because it creates a mountain of public evidence proving what we already knew, i.e., that police are almost always justified in the use of deadly force. The “bad shoots” are a rarity, and the available evidence — which, as I say, is now piling up in public as a result of press conferences like this one in San Diego — absolutely contradicts the “social justice” narrative of trigger-happy racist police killing unarmed black suspects. The fact that the suspect in this case was white is sort of icing on the cake, reminding the world that cops kill white criminals, too, and white people don’t have a problem with that.

Where does the “ghost gun” aspect of this story fit in the narrative? Well, criminals have all kinds of ways to get guns — stealing them, to cite one obvious example — but they can’t get guns (“ghost” or otherwise) if they’re in prison, which is where they would be if it weren’t for the lenient policies demanded by the “social justice” crowd. Put the criminals in prison, and then they won’t be carjacking you, or getting shot by the cops.




 

Category: California, Crime

In The Mailbox: 02.03.22

Posted on | February 4, 2022 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.03.22

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

Meanwhile in Ottawa

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Shoot First & Ask Questions Never
EBL: Year Of The Tiger, also, Reacher 
Twitchy: “This Is Like Alex Jones Territory”, also, “If Masks Work, Why Don’t They?”
Louder With Crowder: CNN Insiders Call For Network To Step Up And Fire Brian Stelter
Vox Popoli: Warning From The Farm, Satan’s Servant Attacks Xi, and Diversity Time Bombs
Stoic Observations: Racialists!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Ranty McRantface
American Conservative: The Truckers Fighting Dystopia
American Greatness: Russian Appeasement Was A Left-Wing Monopoly, also, Johns Hopkins Study Confirms Lockdowns Did Nothing To Prevent COVID Deaths
American Power: Whoopi Goldberg “Apologizes” For Comments On The View, Then Doubles Down On Colbert’s Show
American Thinker: The COVID Narrative Is Falling Apart, also, Why Trump Should NOT Be The Republican Nominee
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Manchin News, Animal’s Hump Day News, and Animal’s Daily Inflation News
Babalu Blog: Nearly 300 Anti-Government Protests In Cuba During January, also, Ted Turner – “It Has Never Been Proven That Castro Killed Anyone”
BattleSwarm: Federal Judge Revokes Oil & Gas Leases, also, Another Cold Front Due Today (Plus Cheap Prepping Supplies Revisited)
Behind The Black: NM Legislature Dumps Space Tourism Tax, Today’s Blacklisted American, and Another SLS Delay
Cafe Hayek: “We Have For Two Years Endured A Pandemic Of Coercion And Compliance”
CDR Salamander: Keeping An Eye On The Long Game, Part XCII
Da Tech Guy: Report From Louisiana – Fun At The Grocery Store, “American Pie” Turns 50, and The Real Scandal In The Brian Flores Story
Don Surber: Biden Doesn’t Trust The Vaccine, Letter From A Fired Hershey Worker, and W Will Save Liz Cheney From The Voters
First Street Journal: Left Coasters Just Don’t Understand American Politics, also, Big Brother Will Be Watching You!
Gates Of Vienna: Beware The Jabberwock!, The Irritating Functionaries Of BionTech, and Cultural Enrichment In The Netherlands
The Geller Report: Watch AZ Gov Candidate Kari Lake Utterly Destroy ABC Reporter Attempting Hit Job, also, SUNY Prof Defends Pedophilia
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, I’m Not Making This Up You Know, and Correction To The Correction To The Correction
Hollywood In Toto: New Fiction Publisher Fights Silent Censorship, also, Janet Jackson – The American Dream In Closeup
The Lid: Daniel Pearl Was Murdered 20 Years Ago But We Still Haven’t Learned The Key Lesson
Legal Insurrection: Convoy To DC 2022 Gains Momentum As Truckers Get Organized, Tulsi Gabbard Blasts Biden For Using “Identity Politics” To Choose SCOTUS Nominee, and Documents Show Biden Was Completely Unprepared For Afghan Withdrawal
Michelle Malkin: Why AirBnB Banned Me (And My Hubby)
Nebraska Energy Observer: O Canada! also, Deliberate Observation – Continued
Outkick: ESPN Won’t Comment On Bomani Jones’ Racist Rant, Dolphins Owner Denies Brian Flores Allegations – “Malicious & Defamatory”, and Lawsuit Claims NFL Has A Racism Problem – It Actually Has A Moron Problem
Power Line: In Free Lunch Fraud, The Friends Of Ilhan Omar, Notes On The Election Of 1876, and A School Shooting You Won’t Be Hearing About
Shark Tank: New Poll Shows Biden & Democrats Struggling In Midterms
Shot In The Dark: I Hope HenryArthur Miller Will Remember, also,  Berg’s Eighth Law Never Sleeps
STUMP: Suicide – Trends From 1968-2020 & Provisional Counts Through June 2021
The Political Hat: What Is A Woman?, Sooner Or Later You WILL Choose Sides, and Education Is A Madhouse And The Lunatics Are In Charge
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesdays With The Libs Of TikTok, Fake Female Combat Vet, and Interview With James Mattis
Transterrestrial Musings: In Support Of Ilya Shapiro, Public Health, and 19 Years On
Victory Girls: Canada Is A Hot Mess, also, Jeff Zucker Resigns Because THIS Is CNN
Volokh Conspiracy: Magistrate Rules Insults To Cop On Facebook Not Protected By First Amendment, also, Should Judge Be Censured For Posting Nude Pics On “Dating Site For Couples”?
Weasel Zippers: Bad Orange Woman Claims Democrats Are NOT Soft On Crime, California Democrats Caught Maskless Even As Mandates On Toddlers Continue, and Far-Left “Squad” Spends Half A Million On Personal Security While Promoting “Defund The Police”
The Federalist: Baseball Writers Have Broken The Hall Of Fame, The Left Doesn’t Just Want More Criminals On The Streets, and Five Inconvenient Truths For Democrats Who Want To Raid Medicare Again
Mark Steyn: Rock-A-Hula Baby, The Truck Stops Here, and Whoopi & Justin

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Crime Is a People Problem, Which Is Why You Can’t Expect Democrats to Solve It

Posted on | February 3, 2022 | Comments Off on Crime Is a People Problem, Which Is Why You Can’t Expect Democrats to Solve It

Joe Biden went to New York City today and gave a speech which was billed in advance as addressing the unprecedented crime wave in America’s cities but was instead an attack on the Second Amendment:

Across the country, police departments reported sharp increases in the number of ghost guns found at crime scenes. That’s why, today, the department is launching an intes- — an intensified National Ghost Gun Enforcement Initiative to determine and deter criminals from using those weapons to cover their tracks.
If you commit a crime [with a] ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well.
We’ve also created a strike force to crack down on illegal gun trafficking across state lines. As the mayor said, as he pointed out, guns that are used to kill people in New York City, they aren’t made in New York City, they aren’t sold in New York City. They are sold in other places.
Today, the Attorney General directed all U.S. attorneys in the United States to prioritize combating gun trafficking across state lines and city boundaries.
The Justice Department is sending additional prosecutorial resources to help shut down what’s referred to, as you all know, as the “Iron Pipeline” that funnels guns from shops in states like Georgia to crime scenes in Baltimore and Philadelphia and New York and so many other places. . . .
I’ll keep doing everything in my power to make sure that communities are safer. But Congress needs to do its part too: pass universal background checks, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, close loopholes, and keep out of the hands of domestic abusers — weapons, repeal the liability shield for gun manufacturers.
Imagine had we had a liability — they’re the only industry in America that is exempted from being able to be sued by the public. The only one. Imagine had that been the way with cigarette manufacturers. Where the hell would we — where the heck would we be? We’d be in tough shape.
Why gun manufacturers? Because of the power of their lobbying ability. It’s got to end. End. They’ve got to be held responsible for the things that they do that are irresponsible.
And, folks, you know, it’s the only industry in America, as I said, that’s exempt from being sued. And I think — I find it to be outrageous.

You see that he’s portraying Democrat-run cities — New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, etc. — as victims of “shops” selling guns “in states like Georgia,” and of the “lobbying” by “gun manufacturers,” as if this were the explanation of why crime is out of control in places where Democrats are pursuing a “social justice” agenda of turning criminals loose in the streets. Everything could be solved, Biden implies, if only Congress would enact the laws he wants. The speech Biden gave was merely a distraction from the actual cause of this crime wave:

Crime is a people problem. It’s not a drug problem. It’s not a poverty problem or a gun problem. Crime is caused by bad people — criminals — who will commit crime more or less continuously unless they’re put behind bars. The only way you can reduce crime is to identify the criminals, arrest them, and send them to prison. It doesn’t really matter what they’re arrested and convicted for — burglary, assault, drug possession, car theft, whatever — what matters is that you convict them of something, and get them off the streets. Put enough thugs in prison, and the would-be thugs on the street will be discouraged from following in their footsteps. 

That’s what I wrote Monday about a “running gun battle” in Polk County, Florida and you may ask, “If this is so obvious, why doesn’t anyone in the Biden administration see it that way?” Because everyone in the Biden administration is a Democrat, and Democrats are the Party of Crime, elected to office by criminals. The people who elect Democrats are very bad people — dishonest, violent, drug-addicted perverts, the vilest scum of humanity — and they are concentrated in the communities where criminal activity is so prevalent as to be a way of life. A policy of sending thieves, burglars, pimps, rapists and drug dealers to prison will be opposed by Democratic officials, because these crimes are part of the habitual lifestyle of the voters who elect Democrats.

Try this sometime: Google “mall arrest shooting.” Who is typically involved in shootings at shopping malls? Hint: Not Republican voters.

Teens arrested in Brooklyn mall
shooting that left two injured
Three reputed gang members have been charged with allegedly shooting two teens at a Brooklyn mall — a midday melee that sent 10 rounds flying in a sneaker shop, cops and law enforcement sources said Tuesday.
Timothy Briggs, 19, allegedly pulled a gun during the dispute at 2:30 p.m. Monday inside Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Mill Basin, firing roughly 10 shots at six young men, striking two of them, ages 14 and 16, authorities said. . . .
Briggs, a reputed member of the Blood Hound Brims gang, and two other teens have been charged in the shooting — which sources say is believed to be gang related.
Briggs was charged with two counts each of attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a loaded firearm, criminal use of a firearm and four counts of reckless endangerment, authorities said.
The teen was arrested last November in Brooklyn and charged with criminal possession of a weapon after officers allegedly found two Glock pistols on him following a car chase, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
Bail in that case, which is still pending, had been set at $25,000 but Briggs posted $2,500 bond — and was out at the time of Monday’s shooting, according to the Office of Court Administration.
“Here he is in Kings Plaza, armed with another gun, firing shots in a mall, which is open,” Chief Michael Kemper, commanding officer of Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, told reporters at a Monday press briefing.
Jaheim Covington, 19, was also hit with multiple raps in connection to the shooting, authorities said. Sources said he’s an alleged member of the Depend on Nobody gang.

Was it a “ghost gun”? Was the gun used by Timothy Briggs sold in a Georgia gun shop and smuggled to New York via the “Iron Pipeline”? Would changing laws — universal background checks, etc. — have prevented Briggs from shooting up the mall? No, nothing that Biden has proposed would have prevented this crime. What would have prevented it would be (a) not to let this teenage monster out on bail, and (b) send him to prison for a long time. By the way, who bailed Briggs out of jail when he was caught with two guns in November? Did his mama just happen to have a spare $2,500 lying around the house? Or is it more likely, as I suspect, that the bail money came from the proceeds of Briggs’s drug trafficking? What do you think these people do for cash, anyway?

They’re Democrats. It’s not like they work honest jobs. And because they vote Democrat, they’re protected by Democrats, so that they are essentially exempt from the law in Democrat-controlled New York.

Joe Biden is not going to do anything about this problem. He would not be president, were it not for the enthusiastic support of criminals.




 

Category: Crime, Joe Biden, New York

‘Complicit in Oppression’

Posted on | February 3, 2022 | Comments Off on ‘Complicit in Oppression’

Sarah Hoyt called attention to this take on the Whoopi Goldberg incident:

It wasn’t enough to talk about black people’s oppression. White people – all of them, every single one – had to be demonized. And it couldn’t matter that some individual white people had even joined in the historic struggle against discrimination of blacks. They were oppressors too.
The root of much of this is the Marxist idea that people are marked solely by their membership in certain groups, that the individual actions don’t really matter to that designation because it’s all about groups, and that there is always an oppressor group (or groups) and always a victim group (or groups), and that the former are bad and the latter good no matter what they actually do, either as individuals or together.

We tried to tell you it wouldn’t stop at Confederate generals, but because you didn’t want to defend Confederate generals, you now see how far it has gone, and can estimate how much further it’s likely to go.

One imagines a sort of time-travel science-fiction plot in which someone from 2022 goes back to 1992 and warns well-meaning moderates: “You must defend the Confederate flag. Trust me on this one.”

A quote from a 2018 academic journal article:

Over the past twenty years or so, in American scholarship on racism, with ever growing intensity, it has become fashionable and even mainstream to assert that Jews are white, that is, that they belong to the dominant majority. This means, that as a collective, due to embedded racialized structures in society, they benefit from their dominant position and are complicit in oppression.

In other words, if “whiteness” is synonymous with social dominance, and if everyone who is non-white is an oppressed victim of white domination, then “systemic racism” makes individual action irrelevant to either domination or victimhood, which are determined on a collective basis, according to the position of one’s group. It’s the “one-drop rule” approach to social justice, and these soi-disant critical theorists are arguably more dogmatic about racial categories than Jefferson Davis.

And honestly, I’m happy we’ve reached this cul-de-sac, where everyone is either a Hutu or a Tutsi, so to speak, and our choice is either to fight to the death or, as I would prefer, decide to drop the subject altogether.

Either you follow the totalitarian logic to its conclusion — revolutionary genocide, to liquidate the oppressors — or else, realizing that this logic can lead to nothing less than bellum omnium contra omnes, you abandon the utopian fantasy of “equality” that inspires the totalitarian project.




 

Category: Racism

On The Road

Posted on | February 3, 2022 | Comments Off on On The Road

— compiled by Wombat-socho

FROM THE OTHER MCCAIN’S WESTERN COMMAND TEMPORARY HQ:
I am currently in Reno, helping out at a severely understaffed office here (as in, they lost three tax pros in the off-season) but I’m heading for Las Vegas tomorrow for a Friday eye appointment before coming back on Saturday because I’m on the schedule for Sunday. As if that weren’t enough, the wireless keyboard’s batteries went toes-up yesterday, and I can’t afford to replace them until I get paid tomorrow. So, since typing on the Dell’s keyboard is literally painful, you get abbreviated linkagery. On a couple of completely unrelated topics, I am in decent health; also, if you want to give me a taste of that Amazon commission goodness, you need to click on the links & banners at the bottom of my posts. Thanks to everyone that bought stuff through my links & banners last month!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

357 Magnum: Stalking Is Still Ignored By The System, also, Georgia Governor Calls For Constitutional Carry
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1616
Reclaim The Net: Facebook Bans Trucker Convoy Group

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Malignant Dwarf Jeff Zucker Forced to Resign From CNN Over Sleazy Sex Affair

Posted on | February 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Malignant Dwarf Jeff Zucker Forced to Resign From CNN Over Sleazy Sex Affair

In his landmark 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, economist Friedrich Hayek included a chapter entitled “Why the Worst Get on Top,” explaining why collectivist regimes are always run by evil people.

What Hayek said of 20th-century totalitarian systems could be applied to dishonest propaganda operations like CNN, i.e., that to “be a useful assistant” in such an organization, someone must “be prepared actively to break every moral rule he has ever known . . . they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of everything.” When the basic purpose of an organization — its raison d’être — is to deceive people, no honest person is likely to seek employment there, and those who advance to the leadership of the organization are sure to be notorious liars, who would be considered unworthy of trust by all decent and moral people. Such was self-evidently the case with CNN and Jeff Zucker:

CNN’s top boss, Jeff Zucker, resigned from the network Wednesday after he didn’t disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the company that’s long been considered the worst kept secret in television.
Zucker, who has helmed the cable network for nine years, told colleagues in a memo that his relationship with CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer Allison Gollust came up during a probe into Chris Cuomo’s alleged sexual misconduct.
“As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years,” Zucker wrote in the memo, shared on Twitter by CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
“I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years,” he wrote. “I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”
Gollust, who previously worked as former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s communications director, released a statement confirming the relationship.
“Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years. Recently our relationship changed during COVID,” said Gollust, who is staying with the network.
“I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time. I’m incredibly proud of my time at CNN and look forward to continuing the great work we do everyday.” . . .
Rumors about Zucker, 56, and Gollust’s affair have been circulating in the media world for years, but the pair have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied they were in a relationship when asked numerous times by Page Six.
Zucker was allegedly so brazen about his relationship with Gollust, he moved her into the same Upper East Side building where he lived with his then-wife of 21 years Caryn Zucker before the two divorced, sources said.

Everybody knew about this “worst kept secret”:

Female employees at CNN are furious that chief spokesperson Allison Gollust is keeping her job after “lying” about her affair with newly resigned CEO Jeff Zucker “for years,” sources told The Post.
“Why is she allowed to keep her job?” a CNN insider railed.
“CNN is supposed to be a transparent news network. How does she get away with lying about their affair for so long?”
Early Wednesday, Zucker sent a memo to colleagues announcing he’d be retiring after his relationship with Gollust came to light during CNN’s probe into Chris Cuomo. He called the relationship “consensual” and told staff that he wished he’d disclosed it sooner.
Gollust released a statement shortly after saying that she and Zucker had been professional colleagues for over 20 years but their relationship “changed during COVID.”
One insider called the comments “a total lie.”
“They’ve been together for years,” the source dished.
“And she’s still lying about it today — the statement she made that ‘recently our relationship changed during COVID’ is a total lie.”

Do you see how Hayek’s observation about totalitarianism applies? The people now complaining about Gollust getting to keep her job were themselves implicated in covering up the Zucker-Gollust affair — if everybody knew it had been going on “for years,” why didn’t they say anything? Or, perhaps more to the point, if they felt Zucker’s behavior was unethical, why didn’t they quit and go work somewhere else?

But that’s just it, you see — everybody at CNN wanted to work at CNN. They wanted to work for Jeff Zucker, an unethical man running an unethical organization, which was staffed by unethical employees. The entire organization is corrupt, from top to bottom.

CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota said Wednesday on “Newsroom” that the undisclosed relationship between CNN chief Jeff Zucker and Executive Vice President Allison Gollust is between “two consenting adults,” so it should not have caused Zucker to step down.
Camerota said, “I want to say something personal for a moment. I feel it deeply personally, but I think I speak for all of us and our colleagues. This is an incredible loss. It’s an incredible loss. Jeff is a remarkable person and an incredible leader. He has this uncanny ability to make, I think, every one of us feel special and valuable in our own way even though he is managing an international news organization of thousands of people. I just know he had this unique ability to make us feel special. I don’t think that comes around all the time. I think, again, it’s an incredible loss. I just think it’s so regrettable how it happened. If what you are reporting is true, these are two consenting adults who are both executives. That they can’t have a private relationship feels wrong on some level.”

You may ask yourself why Camerota is engaging in this shameless toadying toward Zucker, even after he’s no longer her boss. But you see that toadying up to Zucker was a prerequisite to employment at CNN, and everyone there was in a sort of ass-kissing competition, to see who could most be more obsequious toward their loathsome boss. The habit of heaping undeserved praise on Zucker was so deeply trained into Camerota that she can’t break it now, as Ace says of Brian Stelter, “They say that if you take the chain off a dog that’s been chained for ten years, it still won’t walk more than a chain’s length from the stake.”

CNN was a cult of personality, like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany or Mao’s Communist China. Total loyalty to Zucker was the only condition of employment; ability counted for very little, and as for integrity — well, no one with integrity would ever work at CNN.




 

Category: CNN

I (Still) Hate Illinois Nazis

Posted on | February 1, 2022 | Comments Off on I (Still) Hate Illinois Nazis

In case you missed it, Whoopi Goldberg (née Caryn Elaine Johnson) surprised everyone who thought she’d already reached the nadir of ignorance, boldly going where no one had gone before, and doing it on live TV:

GOLDBERG: Well also, if we’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it because the Holocaust isn’t about race.
HAINES: No.
GOLDBERG: No. It’s not about race.
[Crosstalk]
BEHAR: They considered Jews a different race.
GOLDBERG: It’s not about race. It’s not about race.
BEHAR: What is it about?
GOLDBERG: It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about.
ANA NAVARRO: But it’s about white supremacy.
[Crosstalk]
NAVARRO: It’s about going after Jews and Gypsies and Romas
[Crosstalk]
GOLDBERG: But these are two white groups of people. How do we —
BEHAR: Well, they went after black people too.
HAINES: They did not see them as white though.
GOLDBERG: But you’re missing the point! You’re missing the point. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white because black, white, Jews, Italians, everybody eats each other.
So is it — if you are uncomfortable if you hear about Maus, should you be worried — should your child say, oh my god, I wonder if that’s me? No. That’s not what they’re going to say. They’re going to say, I don’t want to be like that.

Everybody has weighed in on this, and Whoopi (who is not, and never has been Jewish, whatever her stage name might lead anyone to imagine) is reportedly in “deep s**t” at ABC because of her remarks. But this was not really the most stupid or offensive thing she’d ever said on The View, it just so happened that her stupidity in this case was offensive to Jews and — oh, boy! — you don’t want to do that at ABC. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that all media organizations are controlled by the worldwide Zionist cabal, but I think some would say ABC more than most. (If I’m wrong, you’ll excuse me for not being up-to-date on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, but I’ve been busy lately.) What’s interesting in all this is how someone like Whoopi could think she was adding something helpful to the discussion (about a Tennessee school district removing the children’s book Maus from its curriculum) by saying what she said. “I’ve watched this three times and have no idea what she’s getting at,” says Allahpundit. Oh, but I have some idea.

Whoopi grew up in New York City, where there are more Jews than any other place except Israel. And, from the perspective of a black person from New York, Jews are just another group of white people who nevertheless tend to think of themselves as victims of discrimination. And that annoys the hell out of the kind of black person (e.g., Al Sharpton) who makes a career of exploiting claims of victimhood. Sharpton was able to exploit the black resentment of Jews which emerged in the wake of the success of the 1960s civil rights movement. Most people don’t realize how active Jews were in the civil rights struggle, and know nothing of the aftermath, when “Black Power” radicals like Stokely Carmichael took over SNCC and kicked out all the white people.

Many years ago, I interviewed a woman (the wife of a prominent black politician in Atlanta) who had participated in SNCC’s sit-in protests, and she cited this period — the “Black Power” takeover circa 1965-66 — as the moment when race relations in America went wrong. This gave rise to a far-left tendency that led many black radicals to side with the Arabs against Israel in 1967 and beyond, becoming de facto allies of Yasser Arafat’s Jew-hating PLO, with consequences that are still with us.

Having boiled down a lot of complex social history into two paragraphs, I’ll leave it at that, except to note that Whoopi still doesn’t seem to understand exactly why her comments were so offensive to Jews.

Whoopi Doubles Down On Holocaust
Remarks — Despite Apology: ‘They Had
Issues With Ethnicity, Not With Race’

Look, I’ve found myself in trouble in situations where what I said did not properly convey what I meant, and had to cope with being branded a “white supremacist” on the basis of such a misunderstanding, but was persuaded to take heed of Denis Healey’s First Law of Holes. Yeah, maybe there was some nuance in what you said that you feel like has been missed in the controversy, but your attempt to “clarify” your meaning is not likely to help you in the midst of a firestorm. Whoopi wants it to be understood that she was trying to highlight differences between the historic experiences of blacks and Jews — and how racism in America is different than what was going on with Hitler in Europe — but she’s not doing a good job of it, apparently because like so many Americans her knowledge of European history is almost non-existent.

This is something I’ve tried to explain to the sort of “white supremacists” who think they’re going to usher in some kind of Fourth Reich here in America. The particular historic conditions that made possible Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s simply don’t exist here, but good luck explaining that to the kind of idiots who think they’re going to win over the masses by flying swastika flags and shouting, “Sieg Heil!”

Besides neo-Nazis, the only people who think such a thing is possible are liberal Jews, which is why the Democratic Party and its media allies devote so much effort to depicting Republicans as would-be Hitlers. Why do you think Ana Navarro kept trying to interrupt Whoopi by talking about “white supremacy”? That particular phrase has connotations of anti-Semitism that the word “racist” doesn’t have, which is why liberal Jews who might roll their eyes at accusations of “racism” will take the accusation of “white supremacy” more seriously. Democrats know this!

Whoopi Goldberg’s gaffe completely screws up this narrative, which is why she’s in so much trouble at ABC now. And as I was enjoying the spectacle of her twisting in the wind, I couldn’t help but think of that classic scene in The Blues Brothers, where Henry Gibson plays the neo-Nazi leader speaking through a megaphone to an angry mob:

“The Jew is using the black as muscle against you, and you are left there, helpless. Well, what are you going to do about it, whitey?”

Alas, there are actually people who think that way, who see crafty Jews as the secretive sinister force behind everything, and I wonder what they’ll say if Whoopi Goldberg actually does get canned by ABC? At the same time, the executives at ABC must realize how bad it would look — I mean, not just in terms of confirming anti-Semitic conspiracy theories — to fire Whoopi for this, when she has such a long track record of saying stupid and offensive things, some arguably even worse than this.

As for me, well, there’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark out, and we’re wearing sunglasses.

 

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)




 

Category: Celebrities, Racism
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