The Other McCain

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

Chuck Berry, R.I.P.

Posted on | March 18, 2017 | 1 Comment

Generations of teenage boys in garages everywhere learned to play the classics by the man who arguably invented rock-and-roll, who died this weekend at age 90: The New York Times obituary is a piece of crap, evidently written by a pretentious fool who never played a guitar, so that I’ll have to say that what Chuck Berry did was to recognize the mainstream commercial potential of what was known in the 1950s as rhythm and blues. Berry was also familiar with the idiom of country-and-western music, and shrewdly recognized that there was money to be made with upbeat rhythmic songs about cars and girls and dancing. Chuck Berry was a clever songwriter and an engaging performer. His lyrics were humorous, his guitar skills were excellent, and he was a natural-born showman. Here’s a video of him playing his 1958 smash hit, “Sweet Little Sixteen”:

 

They’re really rockin’ Boston,
In Pittsburgh, P.A.,
Deep in the heart of Texas
And ’round the Frisco Bay,
All over St. Louis
And down in New Orleans,
All the cats want to dance with
Sweet little sixteen.

The Chuck Berry song that every teenage guitarist knew back when I was banging around in garage bands was “Johnny B. Goode”:

 

Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans,
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens,
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood,
Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode,
Who never ever learned to read or write so well,
But he could play the guitar just like a ringing a bell.

If you didn’t click and watch that video, friends, you missed a real show. Chuck Berry was arguably the most influential guitarist in rock history. There never would have been a Jimmy Page or an Eric Clapton if there had not first been Chuck Berry, and of course, The Beatles were huge fans. “If you had to give rock ‘n’ roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.” John Lennon once said. The Beattles memorably covered Berry’s hit “Roll Over Beethoven,” with George Harrison singing lead:

 

I’m gonna write a little letter,
Gonna mail it to my local DJ.
It’s a rockin’ rhythm record
I want my jockey to play.
Roll over Beethoven, I gotta hear it again today.

He was an American original who made history with his guitar, playing that crazy beat that made all the kids dance. Chuck Berry, R.I.P.

Hail, hail rock’n’roll!
Deliver me from the days of old.
Long live rock’n’roll!
The beat of the drum is loud and bold.
Rock rock rock’n’roll!
The feelin’ is there body and soul.

 

Category: History, Music

Comic Genius @AceOfSpadesHQ: Funnier Than @AmySchumer (and Not as Fat)

Posted on | March 17, 2017 | Comments Off on Comic Genius @AceOfSpadesHQ: Funnier Than @AmySchumer (and Not as Fat)

 

You probably forgot that Vogue put Amy Schumer on its cover in July 2016, which was one of those many signs that the entire media establishment — fashion magazines included — had gone all-in on the Hillary Clinton presidential bandwagon. This massive propaganda blitz on behalf of the Feminist™ brand began cranking up in early 2014. By the summer of 2016 the fever was raging like Ella Dawson’s herpes infection. Striving to create a sense of historic destiny on behalf of the First Woman President, it became the habit of journalists interviewing female celebrities to solicit their opinions on feminism. “Are you a feminism? What does feminism mean to you?” Well, why did it matter?

Someone should go back and scrutinize how many sitcom starlets and pop singer barely out of their teens were solicited for their opinions on feminism between, say, June 2014 and November 2016. It was like the HUAC hearings from 1951 or something: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the feminist movement?” All of this hype for the Feminist™ brand was transparently a media effort to help Hillary overcome the negative perceptions of her as the ultimate example of what everybody hates about feminists — angry, vindictive, selfish, etc.

 

The editors at Vogue made Amy Schumer their cover girl in July 2016 not because she was glamorous or widely admired, but because she is deliberately and defiantly obnoxious. This is how you fight the patriarchy, see? Be rude, crude and chubby because . . . empowerment!

Likability has become something of a dirty word for modern-day feminists, as if a woman’s daily routine should include being eternally vigilant about whether she presents as pleasant and appealing. Amy Schumer is not the least bit concerned with being likable, which, oddly enough, has made millions love her — although she does have more than her fair share of haters and trolls, she says, mostly men who “don’t like my disgusting feminism. The feedback that reaches me is so equal in appreciation and outrage that it doesn’t feel overwhelming in either direction.” . . .
In her act, she jokes about how if you’re a woman in Hollywood who weighs more than 140 pounds, it, “like, hurts people’s eyes.” Women’s being judged on how they present themselves alone is one of those issues that have endeared her to Hillary Clinton. Schumer is with her: an unequivocal supporter. (“She does all this f–king work,” she says, “and she’s just trying to do good, and people are like, Pearls? To that event?”) Indeed, Schumer seems to have fully embraced the idea that she can be an activist and still be funny. . . .

Remember, this is in Vogue magazine, a publication that earns revenue by selling advertising to vendors of cosmetics, clothing, jewelry and other female-specific products. When did partisan politics and radical ideology become fodder for fashion magazines? But I digress . . .

Ace of Spades has got jokes like Ella Dawson has herpes lesions, and insofar as I have a blogging hero, Ace is it. Ten years ago, when I was trapped in a desk job at The Washington Times, I’d read AOSHQ and say to myself, “That’s the life!” Perhaps a diligent researcher at the SPLC could dig around in Ace’s comments circa 2007 and find me commenting as “Chuck Norris’s Left Testicle” or something like that. Ace and his merry band of morons were having fun, while I was stuck editing wire-service reports and arguing with our Capitol Hill reporters over the wording of articles about long-since-forgotten congressional controversies. When I finally got my chance to eject from print journalism in early 2008, I swiftly made the transition to blogger and discovered . . . uh, well, it is genuinely fun at times, but ain’t nobody getting rich at it, or else Glenn Reynolds would have quit his day job as a university professor by now. However, I have no cause to complain, and thus have many reasons to be grateful to Ace of Spades for his inspiration. Not to get too meta here, but Ace has an idiosyncratic style — it’s his personality that is the selling-point. Everybody’s got an opinion on politics, and so it is a mistake to think that the secret of success in political blogging is to have The Correct Opinion, to imagine yourself to be a sort of official arbiter of political righteousness, and to expect people to sit still while you tutor them.

What Ace does . . . well, I’m already past the 700-word mark now, so I won’t bore you with trying to explain what he does, except to say that he’s extraordinarily good at doing it, which is why he’s been doing it successfully for nearly 15 years now. And at least half my blog shtick was stolen from Ace, including the idea that you can get away with writing really long blog posts. All the so-called “experts” tell you that there is an ideal length of a blog post — 300 or 400 words — and that it’s bad business to write long stuff, but some of the best stuff Ace has done over the years has been extended riffs, and why not? If you’re really cranking, if the good stuff is just pouring out effortlessly, just keep going until the thing reaches its own natural stopping point. Speaking of which .. . .

Amy Schumer blames “alt-right trolls” for the bad reviews of her latest comedy special on Netflix. Never mind that critics at such mainstream publications as Newsday and the Los Angeles Times also panned Schumer’s show — no, it’s those dastardly Trump-loving “trolls” who are to blame for her flop! Ace points out that Schumer has also been accused of stealing other comics’ material. Ace kind of goes easy on Schumer, admitting that he himself may have accidentally “stolen” a joke from an old David Spade SNL routine: “I didn’t write this joke. I just remembered it, without realizing it was a memory rather than an invention.”

Happens to the best of us, I guess, but Ace’s best is still awesome, like this brutal takedown of Evan McMullin’s latest venture, which is even funnier if you know the people it’s aimed at. But what Ace is most proud of these days is his GAINZ. He’s gotten into some kind of diet/exercise health kick that he blogs about regularly. When I was at CPAC, I ran into Ace’s girlfriend and asked, “Is Ace here?” She said he wasn’t — Ace was never much for big crowd scenes — and I said I was disappointed.

“I wanted to see him now that he’s made all these GAINZ, but I’m afraid I might not recognize him, all pumped up like Hans and Franz.”

She assured me that Ace won’t be competing for the Mr. Olympia title, but she is very proud that he’s getting healthy, rather than turning into a bloated blimp of a washed-up joke-thief like Amy Schumer.

Gotta keep Ace healthy, so he can live long enough to write the obituary when Amy Schumer chokes to death on a slice of pizza.

 

Category: Ace of Spades, Celebrities

The Patriarchy Is Paying to Smash Itself

Posted on | March 17, 2017 | 1 Comment

Darcy Vescio (left) and Brianna Davey (right) of the Carlton Blues.

Who pays for feminism? (Hint: Not them.) The agenda of “equality” requires redistribution of resources, transferring wealth from males to females, which is what liberal social welfare states have been doing as a matter of public policy for many decades now. Here in the United States, the federal government’s Title IX has deliberately imposed a disadvantage on male students in order to create “equality” for female students. Jonah Goldberg’s wife, Jessica Gavora, wrote an excellent book called Tilting the Playing Field: Schools, Sports, Sex and Title IX which explains how men’s athletic teams in non-revenue sports (track, wrestling, golf, etc.) were destroyed to impose “equality” as interpreted by federal law.

To summarize briefly what’s wrong with Title IX, everything. More recently, the federal law has been made an excuse to deny due-process right to students accused of sexual assault and, as Ms. Gavora herself has noted, even to suppress First Amendment rights on campus.

What must be understood is that feminism’s destructive machinery is driven by the power of extortion. The potential threat of a “discrimination” charge is never far from the minds of university administrators or corporate managers. All that is necessary to ruin an executive’s day is for a female employee to claim that she’s been treated unfairly. A young man who plans to make his career in the white-collar workforce must learn never to do or say anything that any of his female co-workers might find offensive. Woe be unto him if, by any chance, he accidentally gives ammunition to the disgruntled woman looking to file a lawsuit or an EEOC complaint. Ask around among managers and corporate attorneys about how little it takes to get sued nowadays, and how often employers find themselves compelled to pay the kind of settlement known as “go-away money.” Tort lawyers are Satan’s disciples.

Feminists learned this extortion racket from soi-disant “civil rights” racketeers like Jesse Jackson, who specialized in using accusations of racism to squeeze money out of major corporations. (Kenneth Timmerman’s book Shakedown was an in-depth exposé of Jackson’s corrupt hustle.) Corporations don’t want to get dragged into court or suffer damage to their reputations, so when a charge of “discrimination” arises, the accusers are inviting the accused to a negotiation: “We can arrange to make your problem go away, for the right price.” Which brings us, roundabout, to discuss a situation in Australia.

The other day, during my research on feminism, I happened upon an odd item: A young female Australian athlete posted to Instagram a boast about how she and her teammates were “gonna smash the patriarchy.” This boast was seized upon by a fan who turned it into a T-shirt slogan.

 

Curious as to what this was about, I started Googling and pretty quickly discovered a rather remarkable story about feminism Down Under:

Under pressure from feminists, the Australian Football League (AFL) last year agreed to subsidize a league for women, to be known as AFLW. There had previously been amateur women’s teams playing this unique Australian hybrid sport, but no professional teams. The reason was simply that there weren’t enough spectators or corporate sponsors to pay the bills. . . .
If there had been an enormous market demand for women’s football in Australia, economists might predict that some shrewd capitalist would have organized a women’s professional league and cashed in by selling tickets to fans and reaping revenue from advertisers, broadcasters and corporate sponsorship. Because that did not happen, we may conclude that market demand is insufficient to justify the AFLW, which is why the women’s league is being subsidized with money earned by the profit-making men’s league. . . .

Read the whole thing at The Patriarch Tree on Medium. Feminists are destroying our civilization, and making men pay them to do it.

UPDATE: You might want to read Mark Webster’s article at Return of Kings, “How Social Justice Warriors Ruined Australian Football”:

The AFL is a microcosm of Australia, which has become a seething pit of self-loathing and political correctness. A truly masculine activity like Australian Football was the final frontier for SJWs, who are thrilled that so many people in Australia now seem to hate themselves and play the victim card as much as they do. What the f–k happened? . . .

Social justice warriors ruin everything.



 

 

Category: Australia, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 03.17.17

Posted on | March 17, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.17.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: I Like Scrooge McTrump
Twitchy: FBI Confirms Arrest Of Man Accused Of Trolling Kurt Eichenwald With Animated GIF
Louder With Crowder: Hawaii To Ignore Travel Ban – But They Weren’t Taking Refugees Anyway
According To Hoyt: Say Goodbye To The State Of Fear
Monster Hunter Nation: Updates, Writing Projects, Mountain Fortresses, And More
Vox Popoli: The Fake Intellectual


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #40 – The Self-Help Industry Is Bollocks Edition, also, Friday Links And Resident Hawtness
American Power: Dutch Election Shows Extreme Political Fragmentation
American Thinker: The Colossally Dishonest Swamp Attack On Dr. Sebastian Gorka’s First-Rate Scholarship
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Energy Finds Friday
Bring The HEAT: Donald Trump’s Tax Returns
Da Tech Guy: JD Rucker – Nancy Pelosi Says Trump’s Budget Is “A Slap In The Face”. Good.
Don Surber: Goodbye, Appalachian Regional Commission
Dustbury: The Miraculous Notwithstanding
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: Georgia Muslim Used Scissors To Perform FGM On Two-Year-Old Daughter
Hogewash: Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?
Joe For America: Obama’s DOJ Gets Bad News – Lynch Isn’t Safe Yet!
JustOneMinute: T-Rex On North Korea – “The Policy Of Strategic Patience Has Ended”
Power Line: Hawaii Judge’s Ruling Could Lead To Constitutional Crisis
Shark Tank: Gov. Scott Ousts Soros-Supported State Attorney From Cop-Killer Case
Shot In The Dark: Starting Decade Five
STUMP: Pensions Catchup Week – Connecticut Trying To Fix A Hole, also, Friday Trumpery
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – He Persisted!, also, Shocking News! NPR Are Russian Spies!
The Political Hat: Euthanasia No Longer A Choice In The Netherlands, also, Wannabe Space Alien Has Come For Our Children
This Ain’t Hell: Ashlee Bigsbee Sentenced For Stealing Weapons, also, Zinke On The Job While DC Hunkers Down For Snow
War Is Boring: Combat Vets Expose Military Sexual Harassment, also, Navy Officers Allegedly Traded Favors For Orgy In Douglas MacArthur’s Relic Room
Weasel Zippers: Coal Mining Town Hazard KY Making Comeback Under Trump, also, WaPo Changes Headline To Conceal That Illegal Immigrants Are Getting Welfare
Megan McArdle: Republicans Keep Repeating The Same Tax Mistake
Mark Steyn: The Interrogator, also, Reflections On The Revolution In Europe…And America


Today’s Digital Deals

Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 03.16.17

Posted on | March 16, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.16.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
BattleSwarm: Pat Condell On Feminism And Muslim Rape Culture, also, Scenes From Securing The Border
EBL: So What Really Happened To The Mark Steyn Show?
Michelle Malkin: The Dirty Dem Dogs Of Disruption
Twitchy: Vox Just Busted Lib Narrative That Voter ID Laws Hurt Minorities And Turnout
Louder With Crowder: SXSW Anti-Free Speech Panel Crashed By Crowder


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Feelings Trump Free Speech
American Power: Campuses Becoming Unsafe Spaces For Conservative Students
American Thinker: Seattle Leads The Nation In Robbing Landlords Of Basic Rights, also, Rogue IRS Felons Vindicate Trump
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Nutballery News
Bring The HEAT: World of Warships – LT Nelson Unleashes The Kraken!
Da Tech Guy: Fausta – If You’re Not Worried About Leaked Tax Returns, You’re Not Paying Attention, also, Jon Fournier – RyanCare: There Is No Good, Just Bad And Ugly
Don Surber: Why Am I Paying For This Junk?
Dustbury: When One’s Gears Are Ground, also, Down To Get The Friction On, Or Off
Fred On Everything: Time And The Tidewater – Thoughts And Remembrance
The Geller Report: EUROPE TERROR CACHE SEIZED – Over 10,000 Weapons Including Howitzers, Machine Guns, And Grenades, also, Patriotic Revolution Continues As Wilders Party Emerges As Second-Largest In Netherlands
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, That’s No Space Station…
Jammie Wearing Fools: Yoga Pants Are Destroying The Earth
Joe For America: Trump Signs Order To Reduce Federal Bureaucracy, also, Stacy’s Crazy Cousin John Accuses Rand Paul Of Working For Putin On Senate Floor
Power Line: A Liberal Coup Is In Process, also, The Rich Are The Party of The Left
Shark Tank: Florida Lawmakers Revisit Bill That Punishes Sanctuary City Officials
Shot In The Dark: My Obamacare Debate With Nearly Every Democrat
STUMP: Public Finance – Illinois Wants To TAX ALL THE THINGS!
The Jawa Report: Where’s Dr. Rusty? This Is Japan Edition, also, Sandcrawler PSA – Chinese Democracy
The Political Hat: Euthanasia In Nevada – Life Coming Up Snake Eyes, also, The Ides Of March
This Ain’t Hell: West Palm Beach VA Hospital Won’t Hang Trump’s Portrait, also, Military Chaplains Protest At Weinstein’s HQ
War Is Boring: Say It Again, Strongly – It’s Time To Audit The Pentagon
Weasel Zippers: Trump Paid Taxes At Higher Rate Than Obama, Comcast, And Bernie Sanders, also, Obama Aides Spread Climate Change Money Across Government To Evade Budget Cuts
Megan McArdle: Obamacare Isn’t Going To Fix Itself
Mark Steyn: Born Free, also, Feline Rushy


Today’s Digital Deals
H&R Block Tax Software With Refund Bonus
The Ides of March – Vehicle

Category: Linkagery

Brett Kimberlin Re-Surfaces in Connection With ‘Fake News’ Anti-Trump Forgery

Posted on | March 15, 2017 | 2 Comments

 

John Hoge noticed that the pipsqueak pro se perjuring pipe-bomber Brett Kimberlin has made news again, and I’ve got $20 here that says Neal Rauhauser is also involved. Seems there were some Italian criminals peddling forged documents that claimed to show a billion-dollar conspiracy involving Exxon, Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson. Somehow, a former Israeli diplomat and a Democrat activist got wind of these documents and, believing them to be authentic, were willing to pay money for them. This is where the diminutive felon enters the story:

Ariel recalled that he contacted Kimberlin, who then arranged for him to travel to Washington. Ariel had been sounding alarm bells about Russia’s meddling in the presidential campaign so, he said, Kimberlin wanted him to meet people on Capitol Hill. Kimberlin covered the cost of the trip, according to Ariel.
Ariel had not yet seen the documents at that time, but what he did know about them seemed like exactly the sort of thing Kimberlin was interested in digging up. When told about them, Kimberlin quickly agreed to finance Ariel’s efforts to acquire them, according to Ariel and two people with knowledge of the arrangement.
Kimberlin ultimately covered the costs for Ariel to travel to Rome three times, Ariel said. On the first trip, just before Christmas, Pasetti showed him portions of the documents; on the second trip, a price was negotiated; and on the last one Ariel actually purchased the documents. The $9,000 payment was also covered by Kimberlin, according to Ariel and the two people familiar with the arrangement.
Reached Sunday evening at his home in Maryland, Kimberlin declined to discuss the documents or his relationship with Ariel.
“I don’t want to be part of this story. It has nothing to do with me. I have nothing to say,” Kimberlin said.
On January 22, a political activist who works closely with Kimberlin reached out to a BuzzFeed News reporter, offering up what seemed like a lead on an important scoop.
“This isn’t some internet rumor, person has been to Rome to examine bank documents, copies of passports, etc,” an encrypted email read. “Let me know if you want to take a closer look.”
A subsequent email said that the Department of Justice and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations had been informed about the alleged wire transfers earlier in the month. . . .
Ariel and a person close to Kimberlin originally said that reporters from Bloomberg News had also been given the documents and allegedly thought they looked good; to date, the news organization has not published anything. Subsequently, they said that the Washington Post had been shown the documents as well, but decided by mid-February that they were forgeries.

My $20 says that “person close to Kimberlin” is the notorious sociopath Neal Rauhauser and, while I’m not sure that anything described here constitutes a crime, I’d also bet that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to have some of his guys take a look-see, just in case.

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Violence Against Women: FBI Investigating Georgia Sex-Slavery Case

Posted on | March 15, 2017 | Comments Off on Violence Against Women: FBI Investigating Georgia Sex-Slavery Case

 

Police say Kenndric Roberts used so-called “sugar daddy” websites and an Instagram page to lure eight women to the million-dollar mansion north of Atlanta where he operated a sexual slavery ring:

A man in Sandy Springs was arrested after police said he held eight women against their will in a nearly $1 million home.
Just before 8 a.m.[March 7], officers responded to a 911 call from a woman who asked for help leaving a residence in the 100 block of Strauss Lane, Sgt. Sam Worsham said . . .
When they got to the 6,806-square-foot home, officers assisted the women in leaving the residence, Worsham said. It was not immediately clear how long they had been in the house.
“I’m in a very bad situation, and I need to get help,” the caller told the police dispatcher.
The FBI and Sandy Springs investigators arrested 33-year-old Kenndric Roberts on Wednesday on charges of false imprisonment and trafficking of persons for labor, Worsham said. . . .
The woman who called police said she met Roberts through the website seekingarrangement.com. , , ,
According to Fulton County property records, the $976,300 residence has five bedrooms and five-and-a-half bathrooms.
The house was rented, according to Mark Feinberg, president of the homeowners association.

Police say the eight women, ages 19 to 22, were forced to work as strippers and give all their earnings to Roberts. Warrants in the case say Roberts boasted of his affiliation with the notorious Gangster Disciples. He promoted himself through an Instagram page called “Live Star Nation” where the motto was “Loyalty Over Pride.” This was encoded as a tattoo on the arms of the women who called him “boss.”

 

“L.O.P” (Loyalty Over Pride) and the numerical equivalents: 12 for L, 15 for O, 16 for P and 14 for N, the last letter standing for “Nation.” Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA-TV reported that the women “were sent to work at the Pink Pony, Mardi Gras, Oasis, nearby strip clubs.” At least one of the women Roberts called his “Diamond Kitties” was flown to the Dominican Republic where Roberts paid for her to get breast augmentation surgery:

Upon her return from the Dominican Republic, her phone and ID were taken and she was given a “company phone.” Her assignment was to start working at Flashers, another strip club located in Sandy Springs.
She and the other women, she recounted, were not allowed to speak to any black men at the clubs, and that Roberts had people staked out, watching them at the clubs while they worked. She said that she was also prohibited from talking to any of her friends from before her time at the mansion.
And threats were made often, she said.
With an AK47 on him at all times, Roberts, she said, told her that he was going to pay someone to slice open her chest, remove her implants and then chop her up. Among the many threats to her, she said, he also threatened to hurt the other women’s families.
He kept cameras rolling in the house to keep a close eye on everything that happened.
All of the women in the house were having sex with Roberts, she said. And while she didn’t feel forced to have sex, she didn’t believe that saying, “no” to him was an option.

Roberts also faces federal charges of possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and the FBI believes there may be more victims.

As with other recent cases of violence against women — in Cleveland, in Houston, in Florida, etc. — feminists have not yet commented on this Atlanta case, for some reason . . .



 

Category: Crime, Violence Against Women

Rachel @Maddow’s Big Nothing Story: Fear and Loathing on MSNBC

Posted on | March 15, 2017 | Comments Off on Rachel @Maddow’s Big Nothing Story: Fear and Loathing on MSNBC

 

Tuesday afternoon, Rachel Maddow claimed a “BREAKING” exclusive: “We’ve got Trump tax returns.” And this turned out to be the biggest flop since Geraldo Rivera’s trip to Al Capone’s vault. Maddow spent an entire hour talking about a two-page summary of President Trump’s 2005 federal income tax filing, which showed he paid $38 million in taxes on $150 million income — a rate of nearly 25%. Nothing illegal, nothing scandalous, just nothing — no news value whatsoever.

 

She was reporting nothing, but she had an entire hour to report it, so she began with a sort of journalistic strip-tease, a lengthy monologue followed by — wait for it — a commercial break. After finally “reporting” the numbers, Maddow then filled the extra time with a lot of blabber — wild speculation about what sinister secrets might be hidden behind those opaque numbers. She suggested there could be debts owed to shady foreign entities (Russians, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) who could thereby influence Trump’s policies. While it is of course possible that such things could be true, speculation is not news, or else I could win a Pulitzer Prize for my seven-part series speculating that Rachel Maddow could be having a secret affair with Mika Brzezinski. Because, hey, why not?

The circular logic of Maddow’s “investigative journalism”:

  1. Donald Trump is a Republican;
  2. Republicans are evil;
    therefore
  3. Somewhere, there must be evidence of how evil Trump is.

Really, that’s all she’s got — a belief in Trump’s evil, which permits her (and every other liberal journalist) to constantly locate mountainous “scandals” where anyone with common sense sees only a molehill. Ever since Hillary lost the election, the media have been dogpiling every possible variation on the Russians-hacked-the-election conspiracy theory, because that’s what their core audience of disappointed Democrat voters want to believe. To those of us old enough to remember the early 1990s, this is much like The Clinton Chronicles, the 1994 conspiracy-theory video that suggested that during Bill Clinton’s years in Arkansas, people had been killed to protect a drug-smuggling operation based at Mena Airport.

 

Well, Vince Foster could not be reached for comment, if you get my drift — nudge, nudge, wink, wink — but whatever shadowy secrets were concealed by the allegedly massive cover-up of Clinton’s Arkansas crimes, there was no smoking-gun proof. The really big scoop that emerged from Little Rock involved something more prosaic, namely Clinton’s predatory extramarital sexual habits, which led to the Jones v. Clinton federal lawsuit, which exposed the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which resulted in Clinton’s impeachment for perjuring himself under oath.

Could there be some Big Dark Secret in Donald Trump’s past that will destroy his presidency? We cannot rule it out, but rummaging around in his old tax records isn’t likely to locate that smoking gun, which is why Rachel Maddow’s “BREAKING” story was such a big nothing.

Anyone who has spent 20 or 30 years closely following politics ought to understand why attempts to manufacture Watergate-sized scandal stories so often lead to embarrassing journalistic failure. The White House issued a statement that denounced Maddow’s story as a “desperate” bid for ratings by “the dishonest media” in pursuit of an “agenda.”

Professor William Jacobson says Maddow committed career suicide Tuesday night, but he’s wrong. Think about how Alex Jones managed to turn his own paranoid 9/11 Truther fantasies into a lucrative career. Nowadays, his InfoWars site can be a valuable source for news — they’re especially good at covering Muslim immigration issues in Europe — but the reader must have the ability to distinguish between (a) the actual facts reported, and (b) any conspiratorial interpretation which might be overlaid onto these facts. So if Rachel Maddow is the left-wing Alex Jones of network news, she could conceivably continue hyping up “fake news” for many years, and getting paid $7 million a year to do it.

Meanwhile, of course, the Pulitzer Prize committee will be eagerly awaiting my seven-part investigative series about rumors of Rachel Maddow’s affair with Mika Brzezinski, which could conceivably be true, in the same way that it could be true that Donald Trump has a secret deal with Vladimir Putin and Webb Hubbell is Chelsea Clinton’s real father.

Journalists must learn to be skeptical about any story that seems too good to be true, but Rachel Maddow has never been a journalist. She’s never done the kind of prosaic work of covering the local school board or reporting on a tornado or anything like that. She began her broadcast career doing left-wing talk radio in Massachusetts, parlayed that into a show on the now-defunct Air America network, and then turned that into a TV career. Maddow is actually the best journalist on MSNBC, but that’s like saying Heike Drechsler was the cutest member of the East German women’s track and field team in the 1984 Olympics, IYKWIMAITYD.



 

 

Category: Donald Trump, MSNBC
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