In the interest of time—mine—I’m going to list the relevant developments and my observations as bullet points, with the full knowledge that I will be posting on this again, and probably soon. So here we go, into the wreckage…
Journalism & Media
Addendum to “Enough Trivia and Silly Stuff: This Is Incompetence That Can’t Be Ignored”: Conservative Media Integrity and Competence Test Ahead…[Updated and Corrected]
So far (7:25 pm, March 24), there is not a peep about this disturbing story at the Citizens Free Press or at PJ Media, including Instapundit. Not a good look.
Naturally the usual Axis media, anti-Trump news sources are all over the story, as they should be, perhaps with a little less glee, but still. Among conservative publications, I see it at the New York Post, the Boston Herald, and the Washington Examiner. The Daily Caller has the story, if a bit late. Fox News carried it, though their pundits tonight have been mum so far.
Citizens Free Press and PJ Media better catch up quick. If they stall much longer, they deserve no credibility and are ethically estopped from complaining about the “legacy media” burying stories uncomfortable for Democrats. There is no excuse for this.
The Associated Press Generously Demonstates Why It Should Be Kicked Out of White House Briefings
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Associated Press has withdrawn its story about U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard saying President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “are very good friends.” Gabbard was talking about Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The AP will publish a corrected version of the story.”
Oh. WHAT???
How in the world does a news organization get the Prime Minister of India mixed up with Putin?
Why, it does this when that news organization is so eager to publish negative stories, rumors and gossip about President Trump to undermine his Presidency and the will of the electorate that it doesn’t bother to check and verify such a tale that they view as just what they are looking for— an item that will be quickly gobbled up, regurgitated and spread all over social media by the Trump Deranged to show that, as Stephen Colbert so eloquently (and, to the intended audience, humorously) put it, President Trump is Putin’s “cock-holster.”
The Associated Press is suing the White House, you may recall, arguing that stopping this persistently partisan hack news organization from being guaranteed one of the limited numbers of seats in the White House press room constitutes a First Amendment violation. After this latest fiasco, AP’s victory in the case would justify The Babylon Bee, The National Enquirer and the Weekly World News—you know, these guys…
…being guaranteed places as well.
Ethics Short Takes
[I could and probably should do full posts on all three of these, but I still haven’t finished my promised Musk Derangement post, and I fear these items will be left neglected if I don’t cover them right away.]
1. President Trump signed an order beginning the process of eliminating the Dept. of Education and folding its essential functions back into other departments. Good. An act of Congress will be necessary to complete the dismantling, but if there is anyone with an honest, rational, statistically sound argument for why this Department should not go away, I haven’t heard or read it yet. The data is pretty damning: U.S. kids are doing much worse now than when the department was begun under President Carter. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that, but still, it’s hard to argue that a federal department overseeing an area that has deteriorated under its watch over almost 50 years has a case for continuing. Never mind. The Axis is freaking out anyway. Someone really ought to tell them that occasionally admitting that the President has done something responsible and justified might do wonders for their credibility.
The Last “Snow White” Post (I Promise)
Why is the Cognitive Dissonance Scale the graphic I chose for the final word on Disney’s “live-action” remake of Walt’s biggest and most important hit, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”? (For some perspective, realize that we have the same relationship on the timeline to that film that it had to the Presidency of Millard Fillmore.) It is clear that this cultural ethics train wreck, which EA has been dutifully covering (here, here, here, here here, and here), is now stuck inextricably in cognitive dissonance territory. For most viewers, what they think about the movie will be influenced far more by their biases and what they associate with the movie than the movie itself.
That’s how the scale works, as I keep explaining ad nauseam. If Disney is generally a plus-5 on a ticket-buyer’s scale (once upon a time, Disney would have been a plus-10 or higher on everyone’s scale) and the movie in a vacuum would be at “Meh”-level Zero, Disney would pull the film into positive territory. If Disney is in negative territory already for a different viewer, the film begins with an anchor chained to its metaphorical ankles.
Thus it is hardly surprising to see this as the early returns on the film (which doesn’t officially open in theaters until tomorrow):
Now that’s polarization!
What’s going on here? Well, a lot…
An Ugly “Lookism”-Kings Pass Hybrid
Above is a photo of then-high school pole-vaulter Allison Stokke. Stokke was made into an involuntary pin-up when the photo was posted in 2008 to a sports blog, along with the caption: “Meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke… Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.” The image went “viral” making her an instant celebrity, and sex symbol. As I wrote in 2021, “Oh, Allison did just fine: she became a model and married a pro-golfer. But that’s moral luck. Her photo might have triggered an obsession by a sheik who had her kidnapped and brought to his harem as a sex slave. You never know.”
This is just one of the ugly pathologies social media has inflicted on us. Even more people than before the internet are obsessed with appearances, particularly since the culture now actively cultivates narcissism. (I will never take a selfie to my dying day.) A particularly nauseating example occurred this week, when University of Georgia student Lily Stewart was arrested on March 8 for speeding, Morgan County Crime shared Stewart’s mugshot with her arrest information, and the photo went “viral” to the extent that the British tabloid The Daily Mail treated it as a news story.
Seeking Accountability For Giving Anti-White, Anti-American Talking Heads Broadcast Platforms
The recent head-exploding statement by (finally) fired MSNBC racist Joy Reid would be an Unethical Quote of the Day if it were spewed out of the mouth of most people. Reid constantly said such disgusting things and I reflexively put her racist comments in the Julie Principle files long ago. But what she said in a conversation with fellow racist Ta-Nehisi Coates at a program at Xavier University in New Orleans raises another, broader ethics issue.
Reid said, “When my mother came from Guyana, she realized it is not a land of opportunity for people like us.” That claim, coming from someone with the American experience Joy Reid has enjoyed, is beyond insulting and false on its face: it is also incredibly stupid, even for Reid. When she was finally let go, Reid was making $3 million a year, and had been pulling down a seven figure salary for at least a decade. Her life is powerful evidence that the U.S. is a “land of opportunity” for people like her, meaning, as she did, black people. (It is also obviously a land of opportunity for America-hating, anti-white bigots who will make self-evidently false claims designed to divide the country.)
Why Is So Much of the Public Ignorant, Badly Informed, Confused and Stupid? THIS….
I had several other posts on the runway (including a Kennedy Center Symphony crowd booing J.D. Vance: stay classy, you patrons of the arts!, but with the developing theme today of The Great Stupid, I couldn’t resist this one. We began with a moronic “influencer,” proceeded to a state-appointed adviser who thinks she’s a reptile, and now an apparently respected black journalist named Karen Hunter.
For some ridiculous reason (that’s the second time I’ve used that intro: it’s a quote from “The Pirates of Penzance”), I was sent an email by SiriusXM about “host SiriusXM host Karen Hunter’s podcast today.” It featured loudmouthed, race-obsessed sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who because he always drags politics into everything, is now being treated like an expert on politics.
What follows is the exchange during the podcast that was sent to entice me into becoming a follower, springing from Hunter’s questions about “buzz” around Smith being a possible Presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. To his credit, he said that the idea was absurd, but I’m more concerned with what this radio host said:
Observations on a Jobs Graph
That provocative graph above is brought to you by Apollo Global Management.
It purports to reveal what proportion of new jobs added each year since 2016 were in the private and public sectors. I have no way of telling whether the numbers are accurate, whether the manner of presenting them is fair, and whether Apollo has an agenda in presenting them this way. I guess that’s the first ethics observation. It is now impossible to trust news accounts, statistics, analysis, surveys, studies and data, no matter where it comes from. We can add this to the fact that photographs, films, recordings and videos are also untrustworthy.
But here are some more observations on the off chance that the numbers are correct and can be trusted:
Today’s Unethical (and Stupid) Headline of the Day: “Ten Year-Old American With Brain Cancer Deported Because She Fell Out of the Wrong Vagina”
To be fair, that headline is supposed to be funny: it is the work of the humorous news aggregator and satire site “Fark,” which posts links to stories that can support snarky, sarcastic, vulgar or wise-ass headings. I don’t find that headline anything but obnoxious, however, especially since a large number of “Think of the children!” saps and pro-open borders activists will be shaking their heads sadly after reading it.
The linked story is by NBC News which sports the only slightly less obnoxious header, “U.S. citizen child recovering from brain cancer deported to Mexico with undocumented parents.”
A fair, un-biased headline would read, “Illegal immigrant couple deported, along with their children.” That’s what happened. The fact that one of those children has a medical condition is irrelevant. (That’s the girl above. I would think her blurry face problem is at least as serious as her brain tumor…). The implication that the child was the focus of the action rather than her parents is deliberately misleading (that’s deceit, by definition). And the parents aren’t “undocumented,” they were here illegally. The use of “undocumented” is always a tell: anyone who uses it it trying to glide over the illegal status of someone who has no ground to complain if they are sent back to their nation of origin.
Ethics Alarms 