The Other McCain

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

Why Is Breitbart #Winning?

Posted on | December 26, 2019 | Comments Off on Why Is Breitbart #Winning?

 

More than 3,000 journalists lost their jobs this year. Liberals are mystified why a conservative news site is defying the trend:

Breitbart News Network’s Facebook page has captured more engagement than several of the largest corporate news outlets combined amid the ongoing impeachment battle, a VICE News report revealed Monday.
VICE News reports:

With just 4 million followers, Breitbart’s page racked up more likes, comments, and shares since Sept. 1 (57.8 million) than The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today combined (42.6 million). It outpaced each of the broadcast news networks, MSNBC, and CNN. CNN Spokesman Matt Dornic rejected the comparison in a statement to VICE News.

Despite Dornic’s objection to the report, engagement data via analytics firm CrowdTangle are undeniable. CrowdTangle found Breitbart News has received more likes, comments, and shares than CNN’s primary Facebook page over the last three months.
“We’ve been dominating in our neck of the woods,” Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow told VICE News.
In addition to engaging news stories, Marlow credited Breitbart News’ success on Facebook to its use of content that fosters community interaction, with each post garnering thousands of likes, comments, and shares.
“It’s a bigger win if they’re going straight to the website,” he explained. “But we do look at it as a more holistic approach for developing the brand.”

The obvious explanation is this: Liberal bias saturates “mainstream” news organizations and thus stamps a certain boring conformity on most journalism. Anyone looking for something different — something exciting, not molded to fit the contours of political correctness — will find that Breitbart News offers what they seek. By consistently delivering the desired commodity, Breitbart builds “brand loyalty” in its readers.

So while liberals bemoan the “2019 Media Apocalypse,” readers continue flocking to alternative (i.e., not liberal) news sources.



 

Category: Andrew Breitbart, Journalism, Media Bias

The Men Who Subsidize Feminism

Posted on | December 25, 2019 | 2 Comments

 

Wendy “Wednesday” Martin is the second wife of New York lawyer Joel Moser, and the author of several popular books. In 2015, she published Primates of Park Avenue, a memoir described as “a well-heeled combination of the Real Housewives and Sex and the City.” Martin, who has a Ph.D. from Yale, did a sort of anthropological study of women like herself — the wives of wealthy men on the ultra-affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan. While any rational observer would view such women as the most fortunate humans on the planet, Martin argues that “these seemingly privileged women are fundamentally powerless” because their lifestyles are “dependent on a husband’s earnings.” Martin contends that this explains, among other things, why these women are obsessed with fitness and fashion, because maintaining their beauty is necessary to prevent their wealthy husbands from dumping them.

Considering that she was herself a replacement for the first Mrs. Moser (a tale told in her 2009 book Stepmonster), Martin seems to have internalized the message of her own status as a replaceable commodity, but rather than questioning the atheistic culture in which marriage vows mean nothing, instead she takes this for granted. She inhabits a world in which there is no god but money, and no meaning to life except the pursuit of pleasure, and evidently cannot imagine any other world. Martin criticizes her peers as afflicted with false consciousness:

These are women who have disempowered themselves relative to their husbands not only by family-prioritizing choice but as a form and marker of achievement. . . .
If you’re a wealthy woman, you feel virtually compelled to stay home with your children. You may think you’re making a choice, but it’s a false choice.

Question: If any mother had the option to stay home with her children — whether because of her husband’s high earnings or any other economic subsidy — why wouldn’t she do so? She might not be able to afford to live like Wednesday Martin, in the poshest Manhattan neighborhood (with a weekend place in the Hamptons), but if a woman could so arrange her life as to avoid the necessity of working outside her home to pay the bills, wouldn’t she prefer this to any other arrangement?

Certainly, my wife would be happier if my career were more lucrative, so that she could count on all the bills being paid without her having to worry about a job, and when our children were younger, we arranged our lives so that this was (almost) possible. There was never a time when my wife didn’t do something to help with the finances — selling baked goods or babysitting other people’s children — and eventually what had begun as a part-time job became a full-time food service career, but if I’d been making really big bucks, I wouldn’t have expected her to do anything more than the (very demanding) job of being a mom.

This devaluing of motherhood, sneering at the woman who is “just a mom,” is what has always offended me most about feminism. Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this because (a) I so deeply appreciate my wife’s maternal excellence, and (b) my own mother died when I was 16. Unless you have lost your mother, you can’t really understand what a valuable resource a mother’s love is, and being forced to deal with the finality of death has a way of making you appreciate the value of life. One of the benefits of middle-class life in a modern industrial democracy is the tremendous sense of security that makes death a distant thing, something that usually only happens to old people in nursing homes. Prior to the development of such medical advances as antibiotics, death was a much nearer danger, and the proximity of the Grim Reaper instilled in young people a greater sense of gratitude for such small blessings as they had. But I digress . . .

Wednesday Martin’s portrayal of the wealthy wives of Manhattan as “disempowered” — hey, ladies, would you feel “disempowered” if your husband was a multimillionaire? — became a New York Times bestseller, and what did her husband think of this? We don’t know. The men who marry feminists are expected to remain silent, and if Joel Moser ever expressed an opinion about his wife’s feminist ideology, I couldn’t find it. Whatever the royalties on Martin’s books may be, however, they aren’t enough to pay for a $3.7 million co-op apartment, a place in the Hamptons and private schools for their children. In other words, Moser’s wealth is subsidizing his wife’s career as a feminist author, even while she proclaims her enthusiasm for “Smashing the Patriarchy.”

One of the things wealth can buy is the kind of arrogance necessary to think you’re invincible, and Joel Moser might imagine that he can never suffer any real harm from his wife’s anti-male ideology. How else to explain why he keeps paying the bills while she writes stuff like this?

 

That article, from the September 2018 print edition of Cosmopolitan (which is apparently not available online), begins:

“You should have an affair if you want,” my husband of 17 years said with a yawn, as we were getting ready for bed one night, “for your research.”
He was referring to the work I’d been doing for my book about female infidelity. . . .
I’ve come to believe that all couples should talk more openly about their craving for sex outside the relationship. Why? Well, for starters, despite the fact that the accepted cultural norm is monogamy, our society has a sky-high rate of undisclosed infidelity. . . . If monogamy is so damn hard, why do we keep trying to pull it off?

Thus did Joel Moser’s wife admit she has a “craving for sex outside the relationship” and, in a remarkable feat of psychological projection, asserts that this is a problem of the inclusive “we,” affecting “all couples” in “our society,” contrary to “the accepted cultural norm.” In other words, if you say you’re happy in your marriage and have no interest in cheating, Wednesday Martin is calling you a liar and a hypocrite.

At risk of unnecessarily elongating a post that’s already more than 1,000 words, let me briefly reiterate a point I’ve made before: There is reason some things are called “fantasies,” because if you tried to do them in real life, bad things would happen. Yes, a man might fondly imagine having his own private island populated by nubile sex slaves willing to satisfy his carnal cravings, but even if he had the money to make that fantasy come true, he would be prosecuted on federal sex-trafficking charges and, it should not be necessary to add, Epstein did not kill himself.

Every time I read headlines about some polygamist cult leader — David Koresh, Keith Raniere, various “fundamentalist Mormon” types — I think to myself, yeah, that might be cool, except for such downsides as having to arm yourself with AK-47s and dying in a fire at your cult compound. Besides which, cult leaders are always described as “charismatic,” and I’ve always suffered from a charisma deficiency. Even while acknowledging the appeal of polygamy as a fantasy, you see, objective analysis leads me to consider it impractical in real life, even if I cared nothing about the moral considerations involved.

Joel Moser and his wife evidently have no moral objection to adultery, which is why Wednesday Martin wrote an entire book to justify it, Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free.

The essence of her argument in this book is that women are naturally lustful seekers of sexual adventure, and that marriage is a patriarchal prison, created by men seeking to deprive women of their right to fulfill their their needs. This is just a reiteration of every “pro-sex” feminist argument, dressed up with “New Science” claims. Ever since the 1960s, feminists have been denouncing marriage as a sexist institution that benefits men and oppresses women, and you might think that decades of such argumentation would separate women into two categories:

  1. Women who want husbands and children;
    and
  2. Feminists, who believe all babies should be aborted.

Alas, there are some women who don’t understand why feminist ideology can never be reconciled with marriage and motherhood, and some men who can’t understand why they should avoid feminists.

All of that, however, is preamble to this:

 

Christmas is a time for tradition — bringing a tree into the house, midnight mass, giving gifts… and being repeatedly encouraged to cheat on your husband by a respected, small-c conservative national newspaper.
This is a tradition in the sense that 2019 is the second festive season in a row where British broadsheet newspaper the Daily Telegraph — which enjoys a strong legacy reputation as being the standard-bearer for the intelligent, conservative right in the United Kingdom — has bombarded its male social media followers with messages to encourage their wives to cheat on them as a Christmas present.
The December 2018 article Why men should give their wives a cheat pass this Christmas was ridiculed on social media when it was first published over a year ago as being so apparently totally out of character with the newspaper. Essentially an extended advertisement for a book whose author’s quotes on freeing women from their husbands makes up the majority of the copy, the article also cites societal decline as proof of the central thesis of the work. . . .
Perhaps the most mystifying thing about Why men should give their wives a cheat pass this Christmas is the Telegraph’s loyal and dogged promotion of it, apparently out of all proportion for a humble book-plug and of all times, especially around Christmas. Having originally fired this ode to polyamory into the Twittersphere on December 7th 2018, the experiment was repeated again on December 11th of that year.
Apparently not satisfied that London Christmas cocktail parties last year hadn’t descended into unending orgies of other people’s wives, whoever runs the Telegraph social media accounts gave it another swing this year, with Tweets promoting the story with a variety of pro-infidelity messages cropping up on November 2nd 2019, November 7th, November 16th, and finally December 16th.

The article being promoted is an enthusiastic feature interview with Wednesday Martin about her pro-adultery book and the Telegraph was actually paying Twitter for this promotion. Why?

Immoral people always encourage immorality. Perverts are never satisfied with merely having liberty to pursue their perversion. Instead, they seek to normalize their sexual abnormality, which is why Wednesday Martin would have us believe “we” are all complicit in her adulterous desires. The problem is not her, but “our society.” It is wrong, according to Martin, to expect people to keep their marriage vows, because she experiences “craving for sex outside the relationship.” It should be acceptable for her to seek fulfillment for her craving — no one should condemn her adulterous lust — and, therefore, we must make it normal for married people to cheat on their spouses. Everybody should become “swingers,” in order to make Wednesday Martin feel OK.

Are we to believe that Joel Moser is not embarrassed by the obvious implication of his wife’s argument? It would be fair for any intelligent reader to assume that Moser is not exactly Mister Excitement in the bedroom. How else to explain his wife’s sexual dissatisfaction? Contrary to what Wednesday Martin argues at length, any observant person will perceive that, in general, male demand for sex exceeds the female supply. After all, any reasonably attractive young woman can earn hundreds of dollars a day as a prostitute, whereas male prostitution is rare, and the clientele are gay men. If women have such a “craving” for sex, why aren’t they willing to pay for it? What is true in the macroeconomic sense is usually replicated at the level of individual relationships, i.e., husbands generally want sex more often than do their wives, and one entirely predictable challenges of married life is finding some way to reconcile this typical imbalance of desire. Personally, I would suspect a man must have some kind of problem if his wife were complaining she’s not getting enough sex. So what are we to assume about the Moser-Martin marriage?

Does Joel Moser not understand the damage his feminist wife’s writing inflicts on his reputation? Or does he simply not care? It is difficult for me to imagine why any man would endure such insulting treatment, much less pay for it, but kinky is as kinky does, I suppose.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 12.25.19

Posted on | December 25, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who hit the tip jar overnight and made this post necessary. 😉
Enjoy this seasonally appropriate pic of Shouko Komi.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Rare Earth Elements
EBL: Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLaughlin – God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Twitchy: President Trump Retweets Article About Second Amendment Sanctuaries
Vox Popoli: Merry Christmas From Arkhaven, also, A Son Is Given

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: All Hail The Patriarchy
American Greatness: What Christianity Today‘s Editor Doesn’t Understand
American Power: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
American Thinker: The Christmas Truce Of 1914
Animal Magnetism: Merry Christmas!
Babalu Blog: Spending Christmas Under A Totalitarian Socialist Dictatorship
BattleSwarm: Merry Christmas!
Cafe Hayek: Quotation Of The Day
CDR Salamander: Merry Christmas
Da Tech Guy: The Reason For The Season
Don Surber: Democrats Got Lumps Of Coal
The Geller Report: Look What Happened To The Christians Of Bethlehem, also, Israel’s Christian Population Grows To 177,000
Hogewash: Peanuts & Space Pilots, also, Christmas Traditions
Legal Insurrection: To Democrats’ Dismay, Christmas Brings YUGE Economic Wins For Trump, also, Boris Johnson’s Most Excellent Hanukkah Message
The PanAm Post: New Peronist Economic Plan Will Lead To Argentina’s Downfall
Power Line: At Christmas, Remembering The Battle Of The Bulge, also, Netanyahu’s “Merry Christmas”
Shark Tank: Tulsi Gabbard Excluded From Democrats’ “Unity” Video
STUMP: Merry Christmas! Have New Public Pension Projections!
This Ain’t Hell: For Today…, also, Christmas FGS
Victory Girls: Remembering A Christmas Past – Valley Forge
Volokh Conspiracy: Today In Supreme Court History
Weasel Zippers: Dershowitz Says Senate Doesn’t Need to Wait On House Before Doing Impeachment Trial, also, Secret Santas Make A Difference
Mark Steyn: Imagine Christmas, also, Christmas Day With Mark & Friends

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 12.24.19 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | December 24, 2019 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 12.24.19 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Not going to lie, I’m ambivalent about taking tomorrow off. On the one hand, I don’t want to hang around the barracks all day waiting for Christmas dinner, but on the other hand, just about everything’s going to be closed, so I’ll have to schlep to the other side of the Strip if I want to do any posting. On the gripping hand, hanging out at McDonald’s by the Outlet Mall banging on the keyboard is going to take gas and some pocket change. So bribe me. If I get $20 in the tip jar tomorrow, I’ll get rolling and post links. If not, well, one must obey the will of the commentariat, up to a point. While I’m at it, thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links this month. It has clearly been a good month for buying stuff!

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: The Cats Movie May Be The New Showgirls
Twitchy: Yale History Prof Claims McConnell Has No Power To Shape The Impeachment Trial
Louder With Crowder: Trump’s Top Five Twitter Moments & Burns Of 2019

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Gone Hunting, also, She Must Be Afraid To Not Appease You
American Conservative: When Will The Afghan War Architects Be Held Responsible?
American Greatness: Giuliani – “Saint” Marie Yovanovich Quashed Ukraine Probe Into Missing $5.3 Billion In Foreign Aid
American Power: Evangelical Newspaper War
American Thinker: The Destructiveness Of The Liberal Child Mind
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Christmas Eve News
Babalu Blog: U.S. Reportedly Revokes Visa Of Cuban Regime’s TV Spokesman
BattleSwarm: The Battle Of The Bulge – A Helmet Full Of Beer, also, Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes Roundup
Cafe Hayek: He Was A Man Of System
CDR Salamander: Carrier Aviation – Personne N’est Corrige; Personne N’a Su Ni Rien Oublier Ni Rien Apprendre, also, Navalists Are Getting Coal In Their Stockings
Da Tech Guy: Sweet Sound, also, Patriots & Other NFL Thoughts Under The Fedora
Don Surber: A Billionaire Can’t Beat Trump
First Street Journal: After Labour’s Crushing Defeat Under Most Leftist Leader Ever, Leftist Says Corbyn Should Have Run Harder To The Left
The Geller Report: Boris Johnson – “Britain Wouldn’t Be Britain Without Its Jews”, also, Occasional Cortex Declares America  “Not An Advanced Society…It Is Fascism”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Blognet
Hollywood In Toto: How Regulation Challenges Our Left/Right Divide, also, Seven Killer Quotes From Free Speech Hero Ricky Gervais
JustOneMinute: A Christmas Eve Story
Legal Insurrection: Trump As Human Shield, also, Gingrich – Democrats Delaying On Impeachment “To See If They Can Make Up More Evidence”
The PanAm Post: Guaido Rejects Need For Military Intervention In Venezuela
Power Line: Will A White Supremacist Please Step Forward? also, We Now Know – Devin Nunes Reflects
Shark Tank: DeSantis Scores Again
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Taxmas Eve Edition
The Political Hat: Twelve Posts Of Christmas (Day 11) (Day 12)
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesday FGS, also, Paul Redmon, Fake Recon Marine
Victory Girls: Gun Grabs – Virginia, Idaho Ground Zero In Fight Against The Left
Volokh Conspiracy: The Case For Creating “Constitutional Small Claims Courts”
Weasel Zippers: MSNBC – Evangelicals “Giving Full Loyalty” To Trump, Not God, also, Former NFL Player/Obama Fundraiser Says Trump Will Get 20% Of Black Vote
Mark Steyn: Baby, It’s Cold Outside, also, If An Impeach Tree Falls In The Forest

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 12.24.19 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | December 24, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Statistics Are Racist
EBL: The Narrator That Ruined Christmas, also, The Aeronauts
Twitchy: This Delightful Woman Hopes You Take Her Advice For Sticking It To “Your Christian Co-Workers” This Christmas
Louder With Crowder: Top Five Liberal Morons Of 2019

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #130 – The Lessons From Conan Episode
American Conservative: Learning Nothing From The Ghost Of Congress Past
American Greatness: Donald Trump, American Hero
American Power: GPA vs. SAT – Which Better Predicts College Success?
American Thinker: He’s My President, Not My Pastor
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Lifestyles Of The Rich & Communist
Baldilocks: Most Popular Posts Of 2019
BattleSwarm: Wokeness Vs. The Working Class, also, Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update
Cafe Hayek: “Laissez Faire Is The Best Medicine”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Pelosi Plays Her Role, also, I’m Old Enough To Remember When “Is The Pope Catholic?” Was A Rhetorical Question
Don Surber: The Rest of The Christianity Today Story
First Street Journal: I Thought Chicago Had Strict Gun Control!
The Geller Report: AG Barr Blasts Soros For His Hand In Promoting Anti-Police Sentiment, also, “The Queen Is The Enemy Of Islam And Must Die”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, Interesting Giving
Hollywood In Toto: Killer Tomatoes Is Worse Than You Remember, also, Rambo: Last Blood – Not Racist, Just Rushed & Raw
JustOneMinute: Truth Bombs From Cocaine Mitch
Legal Insurrection: Low Ratings For Last Debate Suggest America May have Tuned Out 2020 Democrats, also, The Democrat Beating Trump In The Polls Isn’t Running…Yet
The PanAm Post: Argentina Needs A Real Alternative To Peronism, also, Why Feminism Needs Men
Power Line: The NYT’s Hate America Project, also, Coming In 2020 – A Nightmare Year For The Left?
Shark Tank: Rooney’s Would-Be Successors Mostly Running As Trump Supporters
Shot In The Dark: City Slickers
The Political Hat: The Twelve Posts Of Christmas (Day 9) (Day 10)
This Ain’t Hell: Tennessee Man Arrested For Stolen Valor, also, Barking At The Moon
Victory Girls: Rep. Debbie Dingell & The Glory Of Inherited Privilege
Volokh Conspiracy: The First Amendment Doesn’t Protect A Right To Smoke
Weasel Zippers: Christianity Today Editor Backs Off, also, Former Dem Rep Jeff Van Drew – Dems Told Me To “Obey” And Vote For Impeachment
Megan McArdle: This Christmas, Let’s Be Thankful For The Gifts Of Innovation & Trade – Also, Cake
Mark Steyn: The Mark Steyn Christmas Show, also, A Walk On The Wilder Side

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Category: Linkagery

The CIA and Conspiracy Theories

Posted on | December 24, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

For most of my adult life, the Central Intelligence Agency featured prominently in the paranoid worldview of the Left. After all, it is a matter of fact that the CIA fomented coups against pro-Communist governments in various Third World countries, so why shouldn’t the Left — which during the Cold War was always supportive of America’s Communist enemies — fear the shadowy influence of the CIA everywhere?

During the 1970s, for example, some radical feminists cited the fact that Gloria Steinem had once been involved in a CIA “front” group as evidence that the Women’s Liberation Movement had been “infiltrated” by government agents. That kind of Nixon-era paranoia persisted into the Reagan/Bush years, because hadn’t Bush the Elder once been CIA director? Also, “Skull and Bones” at Yale? And what about Cointelpro, huh? Remember Fred Hampton! Free Huey Newton!

The paranoid tendencies of the Left have, however, taken a different turn lately, and now they are convinced the CIA is their friend:

Ever since the impeachment bandwagon got rolling in September, anything said in defense of President Trump is automatically dismissed by Democrats and their media allies as either (a) “Republican talking points,” (b) “Russian propaganda” or (c) a “conspiracy theory.” The self-evident purpose of this rhetoric is to delegitimize the president’s defenders as either dishonest partisans, agents of a foreign enemy, or purveyors of paranoid delusions. It is impermissible, by the rules of the game as played on CNN and in other “mainstream” media outlets, to ask whether such accusations are more properly directed at Democrats. Are they never guilty of partisanship? Didn’t Democrats spend three years promoting a “collusion” conspiracy theory? And why is it that Russia is the only foreign power whose influence deserves our vigilance?
The near-universal loathing of Trump in the N.Y./D.C. media axis has made it difficult to get a fair hearing for the evidence that points to the role of the so-called “Deep State” in creating the circumstances that have led us to this impeachment circus. With few exceptions — notable among them Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone — journalists on the Left have completely abandoned their traditional skepticism toward our national security apparatus and the foreign-policy elites in Washington. Some of us are old enough to remember the 1970s and ’80s, when left-leaning media sought to expose the shadowy machinations of the State Department, the CIA, and the FBI. Now that opposition to Trump has become the media’s idée fixe, however, every journalist is expected to celebrate former FBI Director James Comey’s honesty and patriotism, and none of them seem interested in asking questions about why former CIA Director John Brennan’s fingerprints seem to be everywhere on the effort to destroy Trump. . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.



 

Category: Democrats

The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

Posted on | December 23, 2019 | Comments Off on The Strange Career of Eric Boehlert

 

Over the weekend, Breitbart News editor Alex Marlowe gave a speech at a Turning Point USA conference in which he invoked the memory of the late Andrew Breitbart. Coincidentally, I happened to be present at the 2007 Young America’s Foundation conference where Andrew first met Alex, who was then a student at UC-Berkeley, but I digress . . .

At the TPUSA event, Marlowe played a video clip for the attendees — most of them too young to remember Andrew in his heyday — in which Breitbart expressed his populist contempt for the elite media. And if you remember how Andrew operated on Twitter, one of his frequent targets was Eric Boehlert of Media Matters for America.

 

You may recall the notorious paranoia of MMfA’s David Brock, and may even remember Brock’s ugly lawsuit against his ex-boyfriend, but surely the kids at TPUSA don’t understand the history of MMfA, which is basically this: During the presidency of George W. Bush, progressives became quite desperate to defeat what they saw as the success of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (to use Hillary Clinton’s phrase) in shaping the media environment. In particular, they hated the influence of Fox News, and feared that “mainstream” journalists were being too friendly to Republicans. With money from George Soros, among others, MMfA was created as an attack machine, compiling dossiers on “right-wing” figures in the media, in an effort to discredit anyone who disagreed with the Democrats’ left-wing agenda. Boehlert, who had previously worked for Salon-dot-com after getting his start in print media covering entertainment at Billboard and Rolling Stone, joined MMfA in 2006 and worked there for more than a decade. But in the past two years, Boehlert left MMfA and, since December 2018, has been blogging at DailyKos.

 

Excuse me? How does a veteran journalist go from a full-time position at a major left-wing 501(c)3 to doing a free DailyKos blog? Was there some kind of scandal or perhaps a falling-out with David Brock?

At one point, Boehlert was calling himself an employee of ShareBlue Media (an attempt by Brock “to build the left’s answer to Breitbart News,” which has since morphed into The American Independent) but it would seem that Boehlert left that gig sometime in late 2018.

There’s been no explanation of Boehlert’s career change, but he continues to pound away at his favorite themes in his DailyKos blog:

The press doesn’t have — or won’t use
— the proper language to describe
today’s radical Republican Party
— Dec. 8

Media pushes ‘Dems in disarray’
over impeachment — again
— Dec. 15

The New York Times’ impeachment coverage
devolves into Republican talking points
— Dec. 16

Media fail: The press keeps
covering impeachment through
the eyes of the Republican Party
— Dec. 18

Boehlert is a one-trick pony, endlessly repeating the same argument, that the liberal “mainstream” media is too nice to Republicans. You really have to be living in an alternative universe to believe, for example, that the New York Times is publishing “Republican talking points,” but in Boehlert’s mind, the only acceptable media coverage of politics would be nothing but press releases from the DNC. Boehlert denounces any “mainstream” news organization that ever treats Republicans as representing a legitimate point of view. Boehlert clearly desires to exercise the authority of a commissar in a totalitarian Ministry of Truth.

Boehlert’s weird worldview was on display Sunday morning:

MSNBC guest Eric Boehlert said the media’s focus on white working-class voters is “dangerous” and “racist” during an appearance on AM Joy.
“This obsession, and it goes back to the day after he was inaugurated, this obsession with interviewing white, Midwestern Trump voters and asking them what they think about Trump, it is a dangerous, it is a racist message,” Boehlert said. “Because the message is, white Republicans are who matter in this country. Their opinions are what really matter. The press invented this beat out of whole cloth after Trump was elected.”
Boehlert said that the opinions of white working-class voters are not news.
“After impeachment, article after article: ‘Trump voters, what did you think of impeachment?’ What’s the point? That’s not news,” he said. “That’s just not news. And again, I think it’s dangerous and I think it’s frankly racist.”

 

Could it be that Boehlert’s monomaniacal obsession has made him unemployable? Has he become so paranoid that nobody wants to hire him? Or maybe that “vast right-wing conspiracy” is to blame . . .

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)



 

Category: Media Bias

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and They’re All Using Online Dating Apps Now)

Posted on | December 23, 2019 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous (and They’re All Using Online Dating Apps Now)

 

See if you can’t spot the red-flag warning here:

A Melbourne woman who met a man using an online dating app, invited him over for sex and then strangled him in bed has been found guilty of manslaughter.
Jamie Lee Dolheguy was charged with murder over the death of Indian student Maulin Rathod at a Sunbury house in July 2018.
But a Supreme Court jury instead found she was guilty of manslaughter.
It was never disputed that Dolheguy killed Mr Rathod but her barrister questioned whether she had “murderous intent”.
She was 18 when she met her victim via the online dating app Plenty of Fish and they exchanged brief messages before agreeing to meet up.
Her online profile indicated she was dating for the first time, had borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation and extreme fetishes, including bondage.
“We’ll do whatever you want,” Mr Rathod told Dolheguy via text before he drove over to her house.
While Mr Rathod, 24, was on his way, the teenager went online and searched “I’m going to kill someone tonight for fun” and “I will kill someone tonight, I want to commit murder”.

If she tells you she’s crazy, believe her.

When my brother Kirby told me about this story, I Googled “Plenty of Fish murder” and guess what? Online dating is a good way to get killed:

Mom of 3 killed in apparent murder-suicide
by man she met on dating app, family says
— KDFW-TV, July 19, 2019

Christine Wood met accused killer
on Plenty of Fish dating site, court told
— CBC, April 30, 2019

Ohio woman, 24, ‘shot dead man, 27, she met
on dating site Plenty Of Fish and robbed him’
— Daily Mail, Feb. 14, 2019

Suspected serial killer hunted victims
on Tinder and Plenty of Fish as survivors
reveal he was a ‘cool guy’ until he ‘flipped’
— UK Sun, July 31, 2018

Man jailed for life after murdering
woman he met on Plenty of Fish
— UK Independent, March 21, 2018

Parolee Met Woman On Plenty Of Fish;
He’s Accused Of Killing Her
— Patch.com, Feb. 15, 2018

Florida dad killed after woman
he meets on online dating site PlentyOfFish
sets him up to be robbed
— NY Daily News, Aug. 23, 2016

Violent fantasist who killed young teacher
on their first date after meeting her
on Plenty of fish is jailed for life
— Daily Mail, June 3, 2016

Seems to be kind of pattern here, you might say. And what have I been telling you for years? Online dating is for losers. The mere fact that someone is on a dating app tells you that nobody who knows them in real life wants to date them — an automatic red-flag warning. And coincidentally, you may remember this case:

 

Ayoola Ajayi, 31, was charged in June with murdering 23-year-old University of Utah student Mackenzie Lueck. There was a related development in the case last week:

The man accused of killing 23-year-old University of Utah student MacKenzie Lueck is one step closer to a trial for unrelated charges alleging he kidnapped and sexually abused another woman in March 2018.
Ayoola Ajayi, facing four felony counts, is accused of abusing a woman he met on the Latter-day Saint dating app Mutual. After hearing testimony and arguments from attorneys, 3rd District Judge Vernice Trease determined Friday that there was enough evidence for the case to move forward to trial.
Ajayi pleaded not guilty Friday to aggravated kidnapping and three charges of forcible sexual abuse. A trial has been set for February.
In that case, prosecutors allege that Ajayi invited a woman to his home to cook her dinner on March 10, 2018, and that while they watched TV on his couch, he started “intensely” kissing her and trying to touch her inappropriately and forcefully.
When the woman attempted to get away, Ajayi allegedly pinned her down and bit her at least three times, “causing her significant pain, and left bruising and bite marks,” the charges said.
The woman came forward to police after Ajayi was arrested for allegedly killing Lueck in June.
He faces charges of aggravated murder, aggravated kidnapping, obstruction of justice and abuse or desecration of a human body in connection with Lueck’s slaying. . . .
Investigators have searched Lueck and Ajayi’s social media profiles and online activity, and have said evidence showed the two were texting the night Lueck disappeared. But police have not disclosed how they first met.

We may never learn the details in the Lueck case. Ask yourself why prosecutors are bringing Ajayi to trial first on this earlier sexual assault case, and the obvious answer is that they want to convict him of this felony before they move forward with the murder case. Once he is convicted in the sexual assault case, Ajayi will be a prison inmate and there will be no chance of him making bail. Then the prosecution will have more leverage to get Ajayi to accept a plea bargain. They want him to plead guilty, I suspect, because they want to spare Mackenzie’s family the ordeal of learning exactly why it was their daughter agreed to meet a complete stranger at 3 a.m. She was reportedly meeting men through “sugar baby” sites, which isn’t exactly prostitution, but close enough.



 

Category: Crime
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