“bias makes you stupid”

CNN and Brianna Keilar Give a Symposium on How the News Media Tries to Rig Elections

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Incredibly and against all odds, the mainstream media is demonstrating that it is even more biased and determined to swing the 2024 election to the Democrats than they were in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. Not only that, but its propagandists are being more obvious about it.

As a case study, let us examine CNN’s handling of the Tim Walz scandal. Walz has been falsely representing himself to the public as a combat veteran for many years and in many ways. In addition, he abandoned the leadership of the troops he had trained with as soon as they were ordered to deploy in Iraq. This isn’t even a matter of serious dispute, yet the Harris ticket’s promoters in the news media, aka “almost all of it,” have been furiously spinning, obfuscating and ignoring inconvenient facts. Under different circumstances (such as, say, a VP nominee on a Republican ticket), the news media would be all over this story like Jaws on Pippin. It would be a daily feeding frenzy.

In the past few days, more of Walz’s former almost-comrades-in-arms have come forward to condemn Walz’s conduct and character. For example, the chaplain of Walz’s field artillery regiment said there was no excuse for the him to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment. “In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told the New York Post. This wasn’t even newsworthy to most news sources: it might take public attention away from the fact that Trump keeps claiming Harris is misrepresenting the sizes of her rally crowds.

CNN’s spin debacle regarding Walz’s “stolen valor” was special, however.

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Ethics Dunce: The Boston Red Sox (and Anyone Who Agrees With What They Just Did)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

As I alluded to in an earlier post today, Boston Red Sox star Jarren Duran was caught on a mic in yesterday’s loss to the Houston Astros snapping at an obnoxious Fenway Park fan who was taunting him at the end of a frustrating game for the outfielder. You won’t learn this from any media covering the incident, but Duran said, “Shut up, you fucking fag.”

There is no question that baseball players say much worse in their private interactions with each other, including on the field, but because this was picked up electronically, and because Duran knew that the Red Sox, maybe even more than the rest of Major League Baseball, are lapdogs to all progressive activist groups, immediately issued an abject apology, saying, “During tonight’s game, I used a truly horrific word when responding to a fan. I feel awful knowing how many people I offended and disappointed,” the grovel continued. “I apologize to the entire Red Sox organization, but more importantly to the entire LGBTQ community. Our young fans are supposed to be able to look up to me as a role model, but tonight I fell far short of that responsibility.”

Then he leaped to his death off of the top of the famous Fenway left field wall. Kidding. “I will use this opportunity to educate myself and my teammates and to grow as a person,” Duran concluded.

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J.D. Vance Demonstrates the Ethical Remedy For Partisan Media Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

J. D. Vance made the rounds of the Sunday morning TV shows, and neatly demonstrated why he will be an asset to the Republican ticket in the exchange above with CNN’s biased dim bulb Dana Bash.

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Stop Making Me Defend the Hypocritical, Lying, Crypto-Totalitarian Democrats!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This post is very close in objective and perspective to this one, but the principle bears emphasizing. There was nothing unconstitutional about President Biden being persuaded, forced, extorted or threatened into taking himself off of the top of the Democratic ticket for the November election. The conservative media persists in saying otherwise, calling it a coup, which is ridiculous, so much so that it undermines the credibility of the pundits making the charge. As I wrote in the post just three days ago,

“That’s politics. Nobody complained that Richard Nixon being persuaded to resign rather than fight through an impeachment was unconstitutional, because it wasn’t. For leaders of the GOP to meet with Nixon and say, “Step down now, for the good of the party, the nation and yourself,” was responsible, and the only course available in a terrible situation. The same was true for Biden.”

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Comment of the Day: “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I have neglected Comments of the Day of late I know, and I am sorry about that. There have been many excellent comments, and also many I have not had time to read carefully: the responses to the “What do you believe?” post alone generated many strong COTD candidates (and they are still coming in).

I might as well start with a comment I said I would post under the designation three weeks ago, and whiffed: Michael R.’s brief arguing that the Secret Service’s epic botch in Pennsylvania that only avoided getting Donald Trump killed by the intervention of moral luck was no accident.

Is the EA post that inspired Michael moot? After all, Kim Cheatle finally resigned after the indignity of having Congress members of both parties tell her to. However, the information that has been drip, drip, dripping out about the near-assassination has not disproved Michael’s thesis; if anything it bolsters his argument.

Ultimately, the question, as it so frequently does in the Age of the Great Stupid, comes down to Hanlon’s Razor: Is it intentional malice, or is it incompetence? The COTD concludes, “To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.”

Maybe, but I will still cling even while admitting that other recent Hanlon’s Razor mysteries that have been popping up (“Did Democrats and the media just miss the fact that Joe Biden was a proto-vegetable because they are lazy, biased and inept, or did they deliberately participate in a conspiracy to deceive the American people ‘to save democracy’?” is one obvious example) demand the malice label.

Here’s Michael R’s Comment on the Day on the post, “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That.”

***

You have to make a lot of hand wringing arguments to state:

(1) They didn’t put snipers on the roof that THEY identified as a threat.

(2) They didn’t secure the building despite the threat of the roof.

(3) They didn’t notice the guy on the roof despite the fact that the crowd had been taking pictures of him for 25+ minutes.

(4) They let a 20 year old kid drive up, unload a ladder, climb onto the roof spread out his blanket, assemble the rifle and take 7 or 8 shots accidentally. That is the most generous assessment. If THEY left the ladder to the roof there for access, it is worse.

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A “Great Stupid” Court Case SO Stupid That It Makes “The Great Stupid” Look Almost Smart…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That crude, ambiguous drawing above got a first grader—we’re talking six-years-old here—suspended. That’s almost all you have to know for your head to explode if it is properly wired.

The Ethics Villains and Dunces are so thick in this fiasco you could use it to lay bricks. I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story, which I first saw at Reason…

In March of 2021, a first grader referred to as “B.B.” ” drew a picture we are told was intended to show people of different races, representing “three classmates and herself holding hands.” (I’d save the money the family was planning on spending on art school for B.B., if that was their intent.) Above the drawing, B.B. wrote “Black Lives Mater” (Latin!) with the words “any life” stuck in-between the slogan and the jelly beans, or whatever they were. B.B. then gave the drawing to a black classmate, as what B.B. testified was intended as a friendly gesture. But the classmate either ratted out B.B. or the principal was told about it by the teacher, or something (because school administrators don’t have anything better to do than to police the political correctness of kids’ drawings).

The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, admonished B.B., saying that the drawing was “inappropriate.” B.B. was ordered to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gov. Walz Doesn’t Believe in the First Amendment

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There is no context that can make that clip anything but vivid evidence of the totalitarian mindset of Harris’s VP pick and the Democratic Party.

Many, many Democrats have made equivalent statements, recently and years ago. So have many of their media allies, though the only one I can think of right now is Chris Cuomo, and to be fair, he’s an idiot.

There is no genuine controversy, not doubt, no question: “hate speech” and “misinformation” are protected under the Bill of Rights. For a Vice-Presidential candidate to think otherwise is disqualifying. Heck, it is disqualifying for a governor, even of a state as ethically addled as Minnesota. It’s disqualifying for a mail carrier. A third grade teacher.

Ironically, Walz’s statement itself is misinformation (Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time?). By his own deluded and anti-American values, Walz shouldn’t be allowed to make it.

I Know It’s Indelicate To Ask Right Now, But What Did The Late Billy Bean Do To Justify The Public Tributes…Or His Job?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

My main awareness of ex-Major League player Billy Bean before I read of his death yesterday was that he was always getting confused with Billy Beane, with an “e,” the Oakland A’s executive credited with inventing “Moneyball” and who was played by Brad Pitt in the movie of the same name. Yesterday I read about No-E Billy dying at 60 of a dread disease:

“Former MLB outfielder Billy Bean, who has served in the commissioner’s office as senior vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as a special assistant to the commissioner, died at his home today following a battle with acute myeloid leukemia per an announcement from the league… Following the end of his playing career, Bean followed in the footsteps of former Dodgers and A’s outfielder Glenn Burke in 1999 to become just the second MLB played in history to publicly come out as gay…After playing 272 games in the majors with three organizations across six years, Bean returned to baseball in 2014 when he was appointed as the league’s first ever ambassador for inclusion by then-commissioner Bud Selig. He continued to serve in the commissioner’s office under Rob Manfred and was eventually promoted to the senior vice president role he held until his death. In his role with the league, Bean worked with all 30 organizations and is credited with instrumental roles in developing education programs and expanding mental health resources available to players all across affiliated ball.

The New York Times obituary in its captive sports publication is no more revealing. This may sound harsh, but it appears that Billy Bean was given a lifetime sinecure with baseball for no other reason than because he had sex with men. After that, MLB could always point to the fact that it had a VP of “inclusion” to show it was properly woke and “with it.”

The previous Commissioner of Baseball, used-car-dealer-to-the core Bud Selig, hired Bean to deflect negative publicity from LGBT activist groups (there was no “Q” then) for no other reason than that Bean had written a briefly sensational book about being a closeted gay in the Major Leagues and was now “out.” The current, marginally less slimy Commissioner, Rob Manfred, naturally had to keep Bean around, and why wouldn’t he, especially as the George Floyd Freakout, DEI Madness and The Great Stupid devoured the land?

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Dalhousie University Medical School, Producing The Next Generation Of Canadian Doctors For “The Great Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Special kudos are due to Canada’s Dalhousie University Medical School. It has gone beyond the at least marginally defensible statue-toppling fad on the U.S. Left that stripped much of the country of past art erected to honor Confederate war heroes and 18th-19th political figures who supported slavery. As a result, Dalhousie has managed to make the American case of The Great Stupid look relatively mild in comparison to our northern neighbors. I’m feeling better already!

The Dalhousie Dean of Medicine David Anderson—I will soon be removing my middle name from my official documents so it doesn’t remind me of this idiot— ordered the removal of the portraits of former deans because they were, not Confederates, not slave-holders, not racists, but old white men. Can’t have that! Ick.

I’m going to post the entirety of his mind-blowing message from last month in all its woke awfulness, because attention should be paid. Here you go, and hold on to your head…

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Stephanopoulos? Chris Cuomo? If You Think U.S. Journalists Have Jettisoned Avoiding Conflicts of Interest As a Foundation of Journalism Ethics, “Good Morning Britain” Says “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The background: There has been violent rioting in Great Britain’s Rotherham, Middlesbrough, Bristol, Bolton and other parts of the country following a stabbing attack in which three children attending a dance class were killed. Rioters have trashed and looted shops, set fire to vehicles and attacked police officers.

ITV, the alternative to the venerable BBC that dominates British television, had an interview with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper about the deepening domestic crisis on its popular morning show, a “Today Show” rip-off, “Good Morning Britain.” And who was the hard-hitting, independent, unbiased journalist given the assignment of handling the interview yesterday?

Why, it was none other than veteran broadcaster, GMB host and former Labour chancellor Ed Balls….Cooper’s husband.

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