Journalism & Media

On Jarren Duran, T-Shirts, LGBTG Bullies, and My Dead College Room Mate

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In an earlier post that few people read (it was about baseball, see) I pointed out the excessive, virtue-signaling punishment handed down by the team on Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. His unforgivable offense was calling an abusive fan a “fucking fag” in a moment of temper during a game. The fan had apparent been ragging on him for the entire game from behind home plate, and the slur was picked up by the Red Sox game broadcast microphones and was audible to viewers. Duran apologized (immediately and well), but was fined and suspended for two games, which, given his status as arguably its best player, harmed everyone on the team while the Sox battle for a play-off slot. I have seen no indication that the fan taunting Duran was in fact gay, so the use of the slur “fag” was apparently just a random insult, but never mind: we are now in the world of censorship, word- taboos and hate speech hypersensitivity. I was called a fag once. I remember my response: “Is that the best you can do?” (It was.)

Duram served his two game suspension, but now he is on the LGBTQ Mafia’s hit list. In The Athletic today, “out” Boston sportswriter Steve Buckley goes after Duran again (no vendetta there!) because he wore the T-shirt above while being interviewed about the incident. You know, because sportswriters never use or hear the word “fuck,” and somehow the T-shirt’s legend means that Duran doesn’t take his outburst that employed a taboo word seriously enough.

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About That Tim Walz DUI…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In 1995, when he was 31, Tim Walz, then a high school football coach and teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, was pulled over by a Nebraska state trooper for driving 96 miles per hour in a 55 m.p.h. zone. There was alcohol on the future Minnesota governor’s and pandemic Nazi’s breath and after Walz failed a field sobriety test and breath test, he was arrested and charged with speeding and driving while intoxicated.

Does it matter? Not the arrest or the drunk driving, in my view, not a single incident so many decades ago. I don’t know anyone who could not have been charged with driving while over the alcohol limit at one point in their lives or another: whether someone gets caught at this frequent violation is largely a matter of moral luck. Tempting fate repeatedly this way—moral luck can also get people killed—and driving while intoxicated when one is in a position of trust and authority is another matter.

By all accounts, Walz was properly accountable and remorseful. He agreed to plead to a reduced charge of reckless driving, a misdemeanor, and paid a $200 fine. He duly reported the incident to his Alliance High School principal, quit his extracurricular activities including the coaching, and offered to resign from his teaching job.

All good. The story just “resurfaced” as they say now, and “Republicans pounced.” I can’t blame them: the tale of George W. Bush’s DUI was held and played by the Democrats as an October Surprise-in-the-hole, and may have cost Bush the popular vote majority in the 2000 Presidential election. Nonetheless, the verdict here is that Walz’s DUI incident itself is irrelevant to his fitness as a potential Vice-President.

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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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Comment of the Day: “The Totalitarian Left’s Reaction To Trump’s Interview With Elon Musk Should Tell Voters All They Need To Know About ‘What’s Going On Here’”

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

I usually don’t elevate to Comment of the Day status comments that illustrate common fallacies and lack of perception. I’ve done it a few times: I know it can seem mean. But Cici’s Comment of the Day so exemplifies the abysmal level of comprehension and critical thought so many of our fellow citizens suffer from, thus making them prime targets of misdirection in this election year, that I felt attention should be paid.

Here was Cici’s comment, one of many she offered, on the post about the foreign and domestic Left arguing that a U.S. Presidential candidate should not be allowed free rein to say whatever he chose to in a discussion with Elon Musk, who owns the platform where the discussion was taking place:

“Third parties decide what you read and hear all the time. And I’m not even arguing for that so I’m not sure where you got that from. I trust that people in charge of these platforms are able to factcheck properly.

I don’t share in your mistrust of “institutions.” I think that leads to people not knowing what’s even true or not. You’re free to disagree with that notion.”

Analysis:

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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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Ethics Quiz: The Border Humanitarian

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I am having a hard time with this one.

This week the New York Times and other publications gave a hero’s send-off to Eddie Canales, who died on July 30 at the age of 76. No doubt about it, he was a caring, selfless, compassionate man.

Unfortunately, his caring and compassion were applied to assist those seeking to break U.S. law. From the Times obituary:

For over a decade, Mr. Canales placed dozens of water stations — giant blue plastic barrels marked “Agua” filled with gallon water jugs — along the region’s routes for migrants evading a checkpoint on U.S. Route 281, about 70 miles north of the border with Mexico. The migrants, who are usually led (and sometimes abandoned) by smugglers, known as “coyotes,” leave the main road and undertake a perilous journey through featureless scrub and bush to evade the Border Patrol.

Some don’t make it. Those who fail succumb to severe dehydration, hunger and exposure to the unforgiving elements in a semi-desert where temperatures can easily reach 100 degrees in the summer and drop below freezing during the winter. Mr. Canales led a campaign to recover, identify and ensure proper burials for the migrants’ remains. The mission required forcefulness and tact. The land is private and belongs to South Texas ranchers, many indifferent or hostile. Some have created armed posses dressed in military gear to hunt up the migrants and turn them over to the authorities, as shown in a trenchant 2021 documentary about Mr. Canales’s work, “Missing in Brooks County.”

…Mr. Canales successfully placed more than 170 water stations across seven counties, the outposts recognizable from afar by flags with a red cross flown high….

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is it ethical to honor someone for intentionally facilitating the efforts of others to violate U.S. law?

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Weekend Ethics Update, 8/10/24: Paul Harvey and Other Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

That’s a famous segment from Paul Harvey’s radio show, unearthed by Citizens Free Press. It’s fascinating in retrospect and worthy of reflection no matter what your political orientation may be. I place it in the same category as “A Clockwork Orange” and “Network,” commentaries that seemed dystopian and extreme when they first appeared, but that when viewed now are disquietly familiar. The date makes Harvey’s commentary particularly interesting, for 1964 was the cusp of the Sixties, right before its tornado winds blew traditional values and American respect for its institutions into tiny pieces, never again to be assembled quite as securely again.

Harvey was a proud conservative, of course: many of his beliefs today are considered Cro-Magnon. He was not responsible for the video, which engages in several cheap shots; the gay couple from “Modern Family,” for example, don’t deserve their appearance here: it was a loving same sex marriage between two kind men who were loving parents (and the least strange characters in the show). Nevertheless, Harvey was prescient in many ways, unfortunately for all of us.

1. How do PolitFact’s partisan hacks look at themselves in the mirror? The most biased and dishonest of all the factchecking organizations—and that’s quite a distinction—was at it again this week as it joined the effort to pretend Kamala Harris isn’t what she is.

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Democracy! The Biden Administration Tagged Biden Critic Tulsi Gabbard As a Potential Terrorist

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Yesterday Matt Taibbi, the red-pilled former “Rolling Stone” reporter who turned against the Axis (that’s the Axis of Unethical Conduct, or AUC: “the resistance,” the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media) when he realized he was working for the bad guys, revealed what should be a “Holy crap!” story about former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

She has been targeted by the Biden Administration as a potential terrorist, placed on a no-fly list, and harassed at multiple airports. Coincidentally <cough> this came just a few weeks after Gabbard again criticized the current regime’s conduct and rhetoric.

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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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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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