The Other McCain

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

Police in Canada Arrest #WaxMyBalls Tranny Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv

Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv (@trustednerd on Twitter) has become internationally notorious for his efforts to force women who run waxing services for women to do their thing on his . . . uh, thing.

Because of Canada’s “human rights” recognition of transgenderism, Yaniv has been able to claim he is a victim of illegal discrimination — a warning of what kind of insanity America would unleash if we similarly recognize transgender rights. Yaniv’s sick behavior, and his totalitarian project of silencing critics of transgender activism like Meghan Murphy, are suggestive of a psychopathic personality. There have also been accusations that Yaniv is a pedophile, and at least one young woman says she has reported to police that Yaniv engaged in inappropriate online conversations with her when she was a minor.

Attempts to end the Yaniv menace took an interesting new turn this week when, during an online video conversation with Blaire White, Jonathan/ “Jessica” brandished a stun gun:

Jessica Yaniv, a transgender B.C. woman whose complaints over being refused intimate waxing services sparked wide controversy, was arrested Monday, apparently for brandishing a prohibited weapon during an online debate.
Yaniv said officers showed up at her apartment in Langley, B.C., shortly after the YouTube debate on transgender activism ended. The officers asked her about a stun gun, she said.
“About three minutes after (the broadcast ended), I have RCMP showing up at my door and putting me into cuffs saying I have a prohibited weapon,” she said in an interview. . . .
The RCMP detachment in Langley confirmed an arrest and search of a home in the area but could not confirm specific details, charges, timelines or named individuals, said Cpl. Craig Van Herk.
He said the RCMP received information and based on it officers have “an open investigation, an active and ongoing investigation.”
Van Herk would not confirm or deny the charges or the circumstances behind them or what Yaniv said was the reason for the RCMP’s return to her apartment.
Neighbours of Yaniv confirmed seeing her being taken away in handcuffs Monday and Yaniv did appear that day, side-by-side in a YouTube conversation with Blaire White, a U.S.-based transgender woman whose videos often deal with transgender issues.
During the heated YouTube debate, viewed by the Post, White harshly criticized Yaniv’s tactics, actions and appearance and Yaniv said she faces harassment and threats because of the prominence of her trans activism.
“I have to carry pepper spray with me because people are so freaking violent over here,” Yaniv said during the debate.
She then stood up from her seat in front of her computer, rummaged around inside her apartment for a moment before returning.
“I should not have to literally have something like this,” she said. “I don’t need to be scared in my own house.” She then held up a stun gun and zapped it towards the camera, emitting a flash and a crackle.
“Which is illegal in Canada. Just sayin,” she added.

A contemptuous attitude toward laws — taking pleasure in defying legal restrictions — is typical of sociopaths. Just sayin’ . . .



 

Category: Canada, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 08.07.19 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Welcome To The Panopticon
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #705 (and from last week, Episode #698)
EBL: The Scottish Play
Twitchy: Watch Weasel Joaquin Castro Squirm When MSNBC’s Willie Geist Backs Him Into An Accountability Corner
Louder With Crowder: Democratic Socialists Of America Demonstrate How To Become Human Weiners, also, Alleged Transgender Predator “Jessica” Yaniv Busted by RCMP

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Complete Lack Of Diversity In Downhill Mountain Biking
American Greatness: Trump Supporters Spend A Day Picking Up Trash In West Baltimore, also, Igniting Civil War
American Power: What’s Really Behind The “White Supremacy” Terrorism Scare
American Thinker: Democrats Are The Ones Who Have Been Inciting Violence Against Their Political Opponents
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Bad Advice News
Babalu Blog: Trump Freezes Venezuelan Assets In U.S., Rick Scott Calls For Naval Blockade Of Oil To Cuba
BattleSwarm: The Great Baltimore Cleanup
Camp of the Saints: On Tribes, Identity Politics, & Misfits
CDR Salamander: How Many Votes Does A Military Budget Buy?
Da Tech Guy: Five Unlinked Thoughts Under The Fedora, also, Report From Louisiana – Back To School
Don Surber: ABC Should Drop WSB-TV
Dustbury: Test Failed
First Street Journal: A Neo-Conservative At The Washington Post?
The Geller Report: Crushing Truth – Every American Mass Shooter In 2019, also, CNN’s Jake Tapper Yelps After Rashida Tlaib Rips Into Him
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Interesting Times In Hong Kong
Hollywood In Toto: Paul Rodriguez – A Closet Trump Supporter Who Rejects The Wall
Joe For America: Obama Calls For All-Out Gun Confiscation, Blames “White Supremacist” Trump For Mass Shootings
JustOneMinute: The Uneasy Compromise Of Campaign Finance Disclosure Is Ruptured
Legal Insurrection: Democrats Fundraising Off Dayton & El Paso Shootings, also, David Gibson Accuses Oberlin Of Dragging Out Litigation “Because They Know I’m Dying Of Cancer”
The PanAm Post: Should a College Degree Be Required For Those Wishing To Preside Over A Country?
Power Line: WaPo Glibly Dismisses Mental Illness As Cause Of Mass Shootings, also, A Do-Over At The NYT
Shark Tank: Florida’s Daily Political Read For 8/6
Shot In The Dark: Comrades In Caricature
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Yadda Yadda Yadda
The Political Hat: The Wane of Monoculturalism
This Ain’t Hell: What A Tangled Web – Act II Scene 3, also, US/Uruguay Tit For Tat
Victory Girls: Red Flag Laws & Due Process Concerns
Volokh Conspiracy: Sarah Palin’s Libel Case Against The NY Times Can Go Forward
Weasel Zippers: Leftards Protest At Injured Mitch McConnell’s House, Encourage People To Stab Him In The Heart, also, Kamala Harris Suggests She’d Send Cops To Homes To Confiscate Firearms
Megan McArdle: If Conservatives Want To Keep Their Guns, They’re Going To Have To Find A Way To Stop Mass Shootings
Mark Steyn: Shaving Away Profits

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Category: Linkagery

DaTechGuy 2.0

Posted on | August 7, 2019 | 1 Comment

Longtime blog buddy Pete Da Tech Guy is rattling the tip jar to fund a site upgrade, and I just threw in a few bucks, because I owe him. Pete and I go back nearly 10 years. During the Great LGF Blog War of September 2009, when Charles Johnson decided to “expose” me as a racist — a long, long story — Da Tech Guy came to my defense, even though we’d never met. When you’re in the middle of a fight for survival like that, you can only pray for deliverance and thank God for every shot fired in your defense.

A few months later, when Scott Brown ran for the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, I took a train to Boston and Pete drove down from Fitchburg to pick me up at the station and — ZOOM! — off we went on the campaign trail for the one of the wildest weeks of my life. We ended that week in a ballroom for the Brown victory party, at which Pamela Geller and Ace of Spades joined us in the front row of the press section, with the mainstream media assigned to the rear rows.

It was during that trip that I first began wearing a fedora, borrowing one from Pete, and so I owe him for that sartorial trademark, too.

Anyway, Professor Glenn Reynolds hit Pete’s tip jar last night, and so I felt obliged to do my part in helping fund his upgrade.



 

Category: Da Tech Guy

Dayton Mass Murderer Had More Red Flags Than a May Day Parade in Beijing

Posted on | August 6, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

While the media have spent the past 72 hours screeching about “white supremacy” and blaming Donald Trump for the El Paso massacre, the facts emerging about the mass murderer in Dayton, Ohio, have presented a classic case of missed warning signs of dangerous craziness:

The man who killed nine people Sunday morning in Dayton’s Oregon District was once kicked out of Bellbrook High School for making a list of girls he wanted to kill, the Dayton Daily News learned in interviews with former classmates and school administrators.
Connor Betts, 24, was shot and killed by Dayton police, ending a brief yet deadly rampage in which he killed his sister, eight others and injured 27. . . .
“This isn’t a mystery to me,” said one middle school classmate. “I’m furious.”
The classmate, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the shooter once said he fantasized about tying her up and slitting her throat. The fetish was so macabre that even the shooter admitted he was scared of his thoughts, the woman recalled him saying.
“He knew it wasn’t normal,” the woman said about the decade-old conversation. “He and I talked at length about him getting help.”
The woman said she and her parents told Bellbrook police about the bizarre admission, but the woman said she felt she wasn’t taken seriously, despite the would-be shooter including her on a hit list. . . .
“I think this is less of a hate crime and more of an ‘I hate everybody’ crime,” [former high-school classmate Demoy] Howell said. “I honestly feel more comfortable now knowing that he’s gone.”

More about the killer’s high-school “hit list”:

High school classmates of the gunman who killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, say he was suspended for compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault.
The accounts by two former classmates emerged after police said there was nothing in the background of 24-year-old Connor Betts that would have prevented him from purchasing the .223-caliber rifle with extended ammunition magazines that he used to open fire outside a crowded bar. Police on patrol in the entertainment district fatally shot him less than a minute later.
Both former classmates told The Associated Press that Betts was suspended during their junior year at suburban Bellbrook High School after a hit list was found scrawled in a school bathroom. That followed an earlier suspension after Betts came to school with a list of female students he wanted to sexually assault, according to the two classmates, a man and a woman who are both now 24 and spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern they might face harassment.
“There was a kill list and a rape list, and my name was on the rape list,” said the female classmate.
A former cheerleader, the woman said she didn’t really know Betts and was surprised when a police officer called her cellphone during her freshman year to tell her that her name was included on a list of potential targets.
“The officer said he wouldn’t be at school for a while,” she said. “But after some time passed he was back, walking the halls. They didn’t give us any warning that he was returning to school.” . . .
The discovery of the hit list early in 2012 sparked a police investigation, and roughly one-third of Bellbrook students skipped school out of fear, according to an article in the Dayton Daily News.

More from NBC News:

As investigators attempt to piece together why a 24-year-old man opened fire outside a popular Dayton bar, people from his past point to hit lists, violent threats and a fascination with shootings that they now say were clearly red flags. . . .
“He would have known that his actions were deplorable,” Adelia Johnson, 24, said about the man she dated earlier this year.
The pair met in a psychology class at Sinclair Community College in Dayton and bonded over their shared struggle with mental illness, she said.
They began dating this spring — a brief relationship punctuated by peculiar moments that at first Johnson shrugged off.
On one date, he took her to shoot a rifle. He often brought up mass murders when they spent time together, Johnson told “Today.”
Johnson said that he performed with an extreme heavy metal band known for sexually violent lyrics.
On their first date, she said, he showed her body camera video from a mass shooting at a synagogue. Another time, he asked her to accompany him as he tried to drop off an anonymous letter to an ex-girlfriend. The letter’s message — “You can’t escape your past” — unnerved her, she said.
His fixation on the ex, Johnson said, “was the final red flag.”
“All of the other ones,” she said, “those could be written off as something else.”
She ended the relationship through a text message and said she told friends she was scared by his actions.

Oh, they “bonded over their shared struggle with mental illness.” Because no sane person would have dated this scary weirdo:

The Ohio madman who slaughtered nine people and wounded at least two dozen others in Dayton’s nightlife district had heard menacing voices in his head since he was young, and talked about “dark, evil things,” his ex-girlfriend said.
Connor Betts, 24, was a serious and reserved kid who struggled with hallucinations, Lyndsi Doll, who dated Betts seven years ago, told the Washington Post Monday.
During their high school years, Betts had told Doll he’d long suffered from psychosis and feared developing schizophrenia.
“He would cry to me sometimes,” Doll recalled, “saying how he’s afraid of himself and afraid he was going to hurt someone one day. It’s haunting now.” . . .
Her friends had warned her about his aggressiveness in previous relationships — pushing one ex-girlfriend into a roaring river and screaming at another while pinning her against a wall, she shared.
Despite that, she grew to trust him, and the pair bonded over their shared mental health struggles. Doll had suffered from anxiety and depression, she said.
As time went on, though, Doll started to realize that Betts was in desperate need of professional help, and talked often about “dark, evil” things he was hearing in his head, she told the paper.

So, this makes at least two girls he dated with whom he “bonded over their shared mental health struggles.” Every crazy girl in Dayton, Ohio, was magnetically attracted to this psychotic freak, I guess.

Did I mention he was pro-Antifa and a registered Democrat who expressed support of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

And there are millions of these Bernie voters out there.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.



 

Category: Crime, Ohio, Terrorism

Off the Shelf

Posted on | August 6, 2019 | Comments Off on Off the Shelf

— by Wombat-socho

Cash being a bit low of late, everything that follows is from the Clark County Library (and hopefully in your local library as well) or the Kindle Owners Lending Library, which is another reason to shell out for Amazon Prime if you haven’t already.

Probably the pick of the litter is Brad Torgersen’s second novel, A Star-Wheeled Sky, which is set far in the future after mankind has escaped Earth in STL colony transports, many of which have settled the various planets of the Waywork, an alien relic that permits FTL travel between the various systems it connects. From the colonies, Starstates grow, and two of them – an oligarchy with some freedom and a brutal totalitarian regime – are locked in a war that is slowly grinding the oligarchy down. Suddenly, a new Waypoint appears, and both sides scramble to claim what turns out to be a beautiful new Earthlike world, with an enigmatic alien pyramid, the wreck of a colony transport, and an apparently immortal woman with an ominous message. It’s a fascinating tale well told, with adventure, desperate improvisations, and interesting characters on both sides. Recommended.

It used to be common that most anthologies had a handful of good stories, a lot of filler, and at least a couple of clunkers. I don’t know whether the slow death of SF magazines is the cause, but for some reason, the anthologies I’ve been seeing lately don’t seem to have any clunkers, and for that matter, there’s not as much filler as there used to be. Case in point: The Change, edited by S. M. Stirling and set in the Emberverse series that begins with Dies The Fire. So if you didn’t like those, you won’t like this, and as the late Steven den Beste used to say, DWL.* On the other hand, if you did like the Emberverse stories…well, you probably read this already. Me, I didn’t happen across it until I’d already finished The Sky-Blue Wolves, so The Change gave me a serious feeling of deja vu since I’d already met a lot of the characters in these stories back while I was reading the novels. At any rate, there’s some good stories in here by John Birmingham, John Barnes, and some other folks, and no clunkers.

The other example is Michael Williamson’s Forged In Blood, the tale of a sword forged in ancient Japan and the people who bear it. It’s listed as a book in the Freehold series, which isn’t entirely accurate since the first two-thirds of the stories take place on Earth, not Grainne, but that’s a minor quibble. There are some excellent, excellent stories in here by Larry Correia, Mike Massa (do NOT miss this one, set in the Russo-Japanese War), Tom Kratman, Kacey Ezell, and other outstanding writers from the combat SF subgenre. Good stuff.

I’ve been following the Ring of Fire/Grantsville series by Eric Flint and a cast of thousands** since they came out, skipping a few that didn’t seem interesting and trying my best to stay current. This last month I read two books set in 1636, The Kremlin Games and The Viennese Waltz. The former is about Bernie Zeppi, one of the Grantsville kids who’s at loose ends after 1632’s Battle of the Crapper – he doesn’t really have any useful skills, and he has a mild case of what they used to call “battle fatigue”. Luckily for him, the Tsar of All The Russias wants Grantsville’s tech, and he wants it bad, and that’s how Bernie winds up in Moscow trying to drag Russia into the 19th century when a lot of it isn’t sure it wants to leave the 16th. Hijinkery, war with the Poles, and a revolt by the boyars makes life excessively interesting, but Bernie and the Tsar manage to survive and even light the lamp of freedom in a country mired in serfdom. The latter, on the other hand…well, it makes me wish I hadn’t skipped The Barbie Consortium, because a lot of the main characters in The Viennese Waltz are members of said consortium, and while I like economics porn along with the subplot of trying to force early Renaissance Austria into the Steam Age before the Turks come back, I would have liked to know those characters better. The main problem is that the current Emperor of Austria-Hungary’s dad sold off a lot of patents on uptime tech to nobles, nobody has any faith in Austrian marks despite their being backed by real silver, King Albrecht (Wallenstein) of Bohemia is right next door with his Protestant army, and did I mention the schism in the Catholic Church between the former Cardinal Borja (now an antipope) and Pope Urban VIII? Lots of skulduggery, economic/financial porn, and scandalous uptime fashions having unexpected effects. Fun read.

The war pitting the Four Horsemen mercenary companies (and their handful of alien allies) against the Mercenary Guild led by the Veetanho General Peepo comes to a head in A Pale Dawn and concludes in Alabaster Noon. It’s almost impossible to do a decent plot summery for both of them without spoilers, but I will say that A Pale Dawn, which covers the Four Horsemen invasion (and liberation) of Earth doesn’t quite go as planned, and sets up the final novel in the series in such a way that I skipped the three intervening novels in the series and went right for Alabaster Noon, which made a few things that happened in the final look a bit like dei ex machina. I guess I’ll spend the next three months going back and filling in the gaps.

Finally, I am taking a stab at Tolstoy’s classic War And Peace, which is… yuge. And dense. I expect to be working on this one for a while, but if nothing else the first few chapters have convinced me that Russian culture hasn’t changed a whole lot since the 18th century, except they didn’t speak so much French and German in the 20th century. For those of you who haven’t heard of the book before, it’s a sprawling novel about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, told from the Russian side, and there’s a LOT of detail about how Russian high society was in those days. So far it’s been pretty interesting.

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links last month and/or hit the tip jar. If there’s a book you want me to review, you can loan it to me on Kindle, buy me a copy, or hit the tip jar with a request that I buy and review it. I endeavour to give satisfaction, as Jeeves used to say.

*Don’t Write Letters.
**I know, I know, it’s actually just a dozen or so folks.

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Category: Books

‘Aiyona Hunt’ Is Not a Woman

Posted on | August 6, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

The man calling himself “Aiyona Hunt” (@Aiyonahunt01 on Twitter) has repeatedly succeeded in getting Twitter support staff to suspend the accounts of feminists who have complained about his sick misogynistic behavior. Of course, “Aiyona” (a) enjoys using the women’s restroom, (b) likes wearing high heels and (c) calls himself a “lesbian.” These are symptomatic of perverse fetishism, and yet there are many progressives who want to make such dangerous perversion a basis of “civil rights.”

Notice how “Aiyona” claims that anyone who criticizes his claim to be a lesbian is using “fake facts” and is “utterly wrong”:

 

This kind of behavior is not even about “gender identity.” This is about a deranged pervert trying to exploit “social justice” as a weapon to force unwilling women to participate in his sick sexual fantasies. As you might expect, lesbians are not amused by “Aiyona”:

I genuinely f–king hate these men. I really do. I’m so tired of this s–t. This predatory, fetishistic, f–king freak is so g–damn vile and disgusting and just pure f–king evil and he makes me wanna vomit. People really do hate women. Like, they really really f–king hate women and lesbians so much that this bulls–t has gone this f–king far. I feel like we’re just screaming into the void at this point. And the worst part is, any amount of backlash these f–king freaks get will come back to hurt *us* a thousand times worse than it will ever hurt them. We’re getting blamed for this s–t. Meanwhile we’re the ones they’re hurting the most. I’m so f–king tired, yall. So, so f–king tired.

To which all sane people must say, “Amen.”



 

Category: The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 08.05.19

Posted on | August 5, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.05.19

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Never Underestimate the Power of Human Stupidity
EBL: The Boomtown Rats – “I Don’t Like Mondays”
Twitchy: They Flipped When Trump Called MS-13 Animals. Now They’re Upset he Called Mass Shooters Monsters.
Louder With Crowder: Why Mario Lopez Should Never Apologize, also, Neil DeGrasse Tyson Triggers Gun Grabber Zealots

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Democratic Corruption, Not Racism, Ruined Baltimore, also, The Dream Team Loses To The Nobodies
American Power: Neera Tanden Ripped For Dancing On Bodies, Campaigning For Dems After Mass Shootings, also, 8chan Founder Says “Shut It Down”
American Thinker: Why Democrats Own El Paso, also, When The Left Snatches Our Kids
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Remember When Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Visited Cuba To Learn About Economic Development?, also, Young Americans Embracing Socialism Don’t Know Its History Or Understand Its Disastrous Consequences
Baldilocks: My July 2019 Post Digest For Da Tech Guy Blog
BattleSwarm: Philomena Cunk On Climate Change, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Camp of the Saints: ProteinWisdom.com Is Back!!!
CDR Salamander: The War In Yemen, With Katherine Zimmerman On Midrats
Da Tech Guy: Mayim Bialik Unintentionally Explains The Price Women Have Paid For Feminism, also, Some Mass Shooting Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Shedding Obama, also, Trump Is Arming Black People
Dustbury: Strange Search Engine Queries, also, But Will Boys Eat It?
First Street Journal: Saoirse Kennedy Hill (RIP), also, Tulsi Gabbard Is No Friend Of Conservatives Or Libertarians
The Geller Report: Muslim Who Murdered German On The Street With A Sword Posted Islamic Confession Before The Act, also, NYC Straphangers Take Down Muslim Shouting “Allahu Akbar” After He Pushes Commuter Onto The Tracks
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Dayton, El Paso…And Chicago
Hollywood In Toto: Thirteen Questions The Press Must Ask The Hollywood “Resistance”
Joe For America: Dayton Shooter Was A Satanist Leftist Socialist Supporter Of Sanders, Warren, & Antifa – Media Silent
JustOneMinute: Evolve Or Die! also, Let’s Assault Logic
Legal Insurrection: Dayton Shooter Supported Liz Warren, Hated Trump & ICE, also, Democratic Socialists Of America Won’t Endorse Democratic Nominee If It’s Not Sanders
The PanAm Post: Hackers Steal Military, Diplomatic Intel From Maduro Regime
Power Line: Democratic Socialists Double Down On Crazy, also, Wind Energy Collapsing In Germany
Protein Wisdom: It’s Time To Declare War On Identity Politics
Shot In The Dark: Misery Loves Company
STUMP: Mortality With Meep – Chicago Homicides
The Political Hat: Ohio Vs. The Gaia Cult
This Ain’t Hell: World War I Movie Preview, also, In Our Last Episode…
Victory Girls: Mass Murder is A Societal Problem, also, Is This The Rise Of Joker Terrorism?
Volokh Conspiracy: Everyone Has A Right To Call Politicians Idiots
Weasel Zippers: Breaking – Trump Moving To Impose Total Embargo On Venezuela, also, Volunteers Clean Up Baltimore City Streets After Trump Criticism
Megan McArdle: What Republicans (And Washington) Are Losing With The Departure Of Will Hurd
Mark Steyn: Valley Of The Dolls, also, The Jazz-Handed Proletariat

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Category: Linkagery

‘Revenge of the Nerds,’ IRL?

Posted on | August 5, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Revenge of the Nerds,’ IRL?

 

After our podcast Saturday night, John Hoge and I went out to dinner and he was telling me about his latest engineering project. He does very important work for NASA, but the way he talks about it is so low-key you aren’t likely to realize exactly how important his work is. So we’re sitting there in the restaurant, and he’s talking in a rather nerdy technical way about a project to do maintenance work on satellites using remote-controlled equipment and I’m like: “SPACE ROBOTS!”

This is really exciting stuff, to those of us who aren’t NASA engineers, but to Hoge, “It’s just my job five days a week,” you might say.

So I call the waitress over to our table. Hoge and I have become regulars at this place, so much that the waitress knows our orders by memory, and I point to John and say, “Can you guess what he does for a living?”

“A teacher?” she guesses.

“No — he builds space robots for NASA. Like, C3PO.”

“Actually, more like R2D2,” Hoge corrects me.

 

Because of my own professional experience, I understand that words matter. How you describe something makes a difference in how it is perceived. The whole point of Hunter S. Thompson’s career, a point he made explicitly in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, is how the media create the gap between reality and perception.

Hoge’s tendency to describe his work in a mealy-mouthed way — engineering contractor at Goddard, blah blah blah — is a typical example of this. I spent the early years of my career as a small-town sports writer, where the challenge is to write about the local high-school girls softball team’s tournament victory as if somebody actually cared:

ADAIRSVILLE — Becky Ann Randall slammed a seventh-inning double Saturday to give Red Bud High School a 12-10 victory over Fairmount in the semifinal round of the Early Bird Invitational Softball Tournament, advancing the Lady Cardinals to Sunday’s championship against host Adairsville.
Randall’s two-RBI double was one of three hits for Red Bud’s senior shortstop in Saturday’s semifinal.
“Becky Ann has really stepped us for us as a team leader,” said Lady Cardinals coach Ruth Talley, whose team graduated six players after last year’s 14-7 season. “She’s always been a competitor, and we’re counting on her to make a big difference this year.” . . .

Et cetera, et cetera. You’d illustrate the story with a photo of the “star” player of the game, and give it a headline and subhead that conveyed the idea that this was The Most Important Softball Game Ever, knowing that Becky Ann’s mama was going to buy six copies of the paper, cut out the article, laminate it, and send copies to all her relatives. Beyond this kind of scrapbook memorabilia function, I have no idea if anyone else ever paid attention to the local sports stories I wrote, but the coaches and players (and especially the players’ parents) loved the way I hyped up everything like it was really important. Why did I do it that way? Because I couldn’t see the point of doing it any other way. Like, why am I getting paid to cover these games, if the outcome doesn’t matter? Considering my own work to be valuable, I couldn’t maintain my self-esteem without trying to convince readers that the people and events I was writing about were important. Writing about high-school kids as if they were Athletic Superstars was essential to maintaining my morale as a journalist.

Words matter, and how we talk about ourselves affects how we are perceived by others. John Hoge was entirely honest with his low-key description of himself as an engineering contractor, but it’s also honest — and infinitely more impressive — for him to say he builds space robots.

True story: My son Jim was doing a home-remodeling job in Lynchburg, Virginia, and went out to have a few cold beverages. He got talking to a guy in the bar and when he introduced himself as Jim McCain, the guy said, “Like . .. The Other McCain?” Jim answered, “Yeah, that’s my dad,” and he didn’t have to pay for his drinks the rest of the night.

Oh, I’m just a blogger, in the same way Hoge’s just an engineer, but when I introduce myself to people, I tell them I’m a political correspondent for The American Spectator, which sounds more impressive.

Nobody ever paid serious attention to Santino Legan, Patrick Crusius or Connor Betts before they went on shooting rampages that have made national headlines. Legan killed three people and injured 13 others July 28 at a California food festival before killing himself. Crusius killed 20 people and injured 26 more Saturday in El Paso, Texas, before surrendering to police. Betts killed 9 people and injured 20 others in the wee hours of Sunday morning in Dayton, Ohio, before he was shot to death by police. None of these mass murderers had previous criminal records, and all three were young white men — Legan was 19, Crusius is 21, Betts was 24 — who might be described colloquially as nerds or losers. Politicians and pundits rushed to interpret these atrocities in a political context, but the rise of a genuine terrorist threat from such “lone wolf” killers — misfits or outcasts, filled with feelings of frustration and hopelessness — might better be understood from a sociological or psychological perspective. . . .

Read the whole thing at The American Spectator.



 

Category: American Spectator
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