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MEDIA

Media Chickens of the Frankfurt School Have Come Home to Roost By Michael Walsh

This week’s press conference featuring the White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, ostensibly was about President Trump’s health. In reality, it was a physical and mental check-up on the White House press corps, whose jejunity, mental impairment, and ideological blindness bespoke a dangerous warning sign for both the White House and the nation. These people are sick, and getting sicker. And until they’re all in quarantine, we’re all in danger of catching what’s obviously now a deadly communicable disease.

According to Dr. Jackson, the president’s health is excellent, especially for a 71-year-old man who subsists on little sleep and an old-fashioned American diet. But that wasn’t what the media was there to hear. In fact, they weren’t there to hear much of anything at all, or indeed even to listen (since they had already mentally discounted anything the doctor was going to say). Rather they had come to speak, using Dr. Jackson as the foil for “questions” that stated and restated the same Leftist-narrative talking point: that Trump is physically and mentally unfit to lead the nation that elected him—much to their shock and anger—fifteen months ago.

You can watch the whole thing here. But do note a few things going in, including the relative youth of the media folk, especially the women—who seem to be, like the Eloi in The Time Machine, chosen for their freshness and beauty rather than the penetrating quality of their minds. The men, meanwhile, skew slightly older, although no less primped and blow-dried.

Their “questions”—which were not phrased to elicit information but to score political points—almost all contained an underlying premise: that the president is manifestly unsuited to his high office, and the burden of proof is on the doctor to prove otherwise. Even when he stated in unequivocal terms that there is nothing physically or mentally wrong with Trump, the press corps practically sneered in his face, like small children demanding to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the sun will, in fact, rise in the east tomorrow. “Some people just have great genes,” said Dr. Jackson. But in the mechanistic world-view of “progressivism,” there can be no mysteries; everything must have a cause and effect, tied directly to diet, exercise, sex, race, and climate change. Things cannot simply just be.

The Trillion-Dollar Chameleon Big Tech is hiding in plain sight. By Victor Davis Hanson

Twenty years ago, no one had heard of either Facebook or Google, neither of which existed yet. For that matter, no one knew much about social media or search engines in general.

Cell phones were still simply mobile, small, and expensive telephones. There was no concept of a phone as a handheld computer.

Today, five companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) — have a collective worth of more than $3 trillion. Yet such transnational companies remain mostly exempt from the sort of regulations and accountability faced by most other industries.

Major corporations understandably fear product-liability laws. Oil companies are hectored by class-action lawsuits and headline-grabbing attorneys badgering them to pay up for supposed climate change brought on by commuters filling up each week. Tobacco companies have paid out billions of dollars due to cigarettes’ contribution to lung cancer. Pharmaceutical corporations are often forced to pay millions in fines when their prescription drugs cause dangerous side effects.

Yet every year, nearly a half-million Americans are injured in traffic accidents due to distracted driving involving a cell phone. No one knows how many millions of people worldwide are addicted to the apps on their smartphones — a habit that can be harder to break than an opiate addiction and can leave addicted users in a similar zombie-like condition. Yet unlike Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Tobacco, Big Tech is rarely held responsible for the deleterious effects of its products on millions the world over.

In most states, public boards and commissions regulate companies that provide public utilities. The theory is that such corporations use public spaces — from power poles to underground pipelines — to serve a captive public domain and provide an essential need. Radio and television stations are likewise regulated by the federal government on the similar assumption that the airwaves are not private property.

President Trump Releases ‘Fake News Awards,’ GOP Website Crashes By Tyler O’Neil

At 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, President Donald Trump tweeted the winners of his “FAKE NEWS Awards.” His tweet directed followers to a page on the Republican Party website (GOP.com), and the page crashed shortly after.

Here is the list:
1. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman

“The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover,” the article, written by the GOP team, reported. Trump’s victory was not a “landslide.” He won 304 votes in the Electoral College to Clinton’s 227 votes, and he took key states by razor-thin margins. Clinton won the popular vote 48.2 percent to Trump’s 46.1 percent, but Trump still won fair and square, by the rules of the game.

As for the economy, it did not take a hit from Trump’s win, so Krugman’s prediction was “fake news.”
2. ABC News’ Brian Ross

“ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report,” the GOP team reported. Ross gave his report on December 1, saying that retired General Michael Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with the Russians about foreign policy while he was still a candidate.

Indeed, the Dow Industrial Average dipped shortly after Ross’s report, until it was proven false.
3. CNN

What? CNN in third place? Now, that’s “fake news.” The network won the bronze trophy for “FALSELY” reporting “that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.”

Indeed, CNN reported that Donald Trump Jr. received an email with links to the WikiLeaks archive from the hack on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on September 4, 2016 — before WikiLeaks published the emails. In reality, the email was sent on September 14, after the story went public. A well-deserved “fake news” award.

MARILYN PENN: IT’S THE CULTURE STUPID!

In her op-ed column in Wednesday’s Times, Bari Weiss, staff editor and writer for that section, reacts angrily to a recent addition to the #metoo complaint catalog, an account of someone’s hookup with Aziz Ansari. The young woman who posted her grievance objected to the comedian’s ignoring her non-verbal cues and her discomfort with his advances. There was no molestation, no assault, just a young woman with some unsatisfactory sex. Bari Weiss objects to the fact that the woman didn’t act on her own feelings, that she relinquished her own agency and then was blaming someone else. Surprisingly, Ms. Weiss doesn’t mention an article that preceded this one in the Sunday Times entitled, “For a Hookup, Just Use Your Words” by Gabrielle Ulubay, a writer who recently graduated from college. Here, the author is not offended at being used just for sex since she herself had invited the man over only for that purpose – her discontent is that he confused her with his disarming compliments such as calling her “smart, funny, creative and the girl of his dreams.” He told her that he’d see her later but never called again. This naive young woman is is asking not for better sex or more intimacy but less flattery and ghosting (disappearing without explanation). How someone can be comfortable with the zipless sex first described by Erica Jong (Fear of Flying) but hypersensitive to the eternal lack of truth in seduction is a by-product of the message with which young women have been indoctrinated since the 70’s.

Neither Bari Weiss nor Gabrielle Ulubay is concerned with the essential problem of today’s hookup culture. Originating in the 70’s on campuses which had begun to offer co-ed dorms and bathrooms and heralded by the Women’s Movement which viewed casual sex as another entitlement affording girls the same freedoms that boys had, hooking up has been a disaster for both sexes. Obama’s imposition of Title IX university sex patrols tied to eligibility for government aid only added to the fiasco, creating a default system in which women were absolved of responsibility for engaging in unwanted sex. Only males were held responsible in situations where both individuals were drunk, and males were presumed guilty in situations where sex between the two had occurred before but where the woman claimed not to have given consent on this occasion. The message was loud and clear: women are not required to take care of themselves – they have the school watching over them in loco parentis and they could get blotto to their heart’s content and still blame someone else for unwelcome consequences.

This is CNN . . . in 1945 By Victor Davis Hanson

What if something like CNN and modern communications were around in early 1945? What if the rules of presidential news coverage were then as they are now? And what if such a mythical CNN hated Franklin Delano Roosevelt as much as it despises Donald Trump, then as right-wing as it is now hard left? How would the daily news in a mythical 1945 treat a now-iconic FDR? What would the country have thought of its president?

In the manner that we’ve learned that Donald Trump supposedly eats double servings of fast food and gulps down a dozen diet sodas a day, we instead might hear similar CNN “exclusives” about presidential diet and health, either from “unknown” sources in the White House or “fake news” exaggerations of rumor and innuendo.

Wolf Blitzer might give us a news bulletin something like this: “CNN in an exclusive report has learned that President Roosevelt is a sick, maybe dying, man. But the true nature of his health has long been covered up, most notably in last year’s election and is even now more dishonesty hidden. CNN has learned that the conspiracy of silence among the president’s family, his staff, and his doctors is long-standing, scandalous—and, in this reporter’s view, dangerous.”

“Sources tell me that the president’s blood pressure routinely hits 240 over 140. He has lost 40 pounds. Some sources tell CNN that the president suffers from chronic sinus and urinary infections. He may be battling skin cancer. CNN is now learning that the president could never walk or even stand up on his own.”

“That image of a robust president was also inaccurate—the fiction of collusion that for years has hidden the true extent of the president’s paralysis from the American people. CNN has also learned that President Roosevelt has been absent from the White House for weeks at a time and has been too ill to work at his desk. Yet he continues to chain smoke and drink a series of stiff drinks each evening, a habit dating back to Prohibition before he was president.”

Facebook: Championing Blasphemy Laws by Judith Bergman

What is “harmful content” according to the new Facebook guide for Muslims? “Islamophobia, anti-Muslim hatred, far right extremism and terrorist inspired violent extremist content”.

The guide does not mention Islamic incitement to violence, which is rampant on social media and — unlike the other content mentioned — has deadly and tragic consequences in the real world. Most of those who perpetrate terrorist attacks in the real world are Muslims — not “Islamophobes,” anti-Muslims or right wing extremists.

Lakin v. Facebook is a lawsuit, representing 20,000 Israeli plaintiffs, which aims to stop Facebook from “continuing to facilitate terrorist activity directed at” Israelis.

Khan convened a special meeting of Muslim ambassadors to discuss how effectively to “raise the voice of the entire Muslim world against the madness unleashed against Islam and holy personalities in the name of freedom of expression”. — Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.

Facebook, in cooperation with a British Muslim group, Faith Associates, recently launched a new “guide” developed especially for Muslims: “Keeping Muslims Safe Online: Tackling Hate and Bigotry”.

The launch of the guide was hosted on November 29 at the British Parliament, where Karim Palant, Facebook’s UK Public Policy manager, acknowledged “the partnership of Facebook with Faith Associates and said this was a first step in a line of activities being planned to protect the Facebook family”. Simon Milner, Head of Policy UK at Facebook, stated:

“We’re proud to be supporting Faith Associates in the development of their online safety guide. Facebook welcomes all communities, and there is no place for hate on the platform”.

It is curious that of all the groups Facebook could have chosen to “protect” — if one is to believe that Facebook intends to “protect” other groups as well — it chose Muslims. Are Muslims the most targeted group in the world today? In Canada, according to fresh statistics, hate crimes against Muslims have fallen while hate crimes against Jews have risen. In the United States, according to Gatestone’s A. Z. Mohamed:

“Since 1992… anti-Semitic incidents have been higher than those perpetrated against other groups… To this day, the greatest number of reported religion-based hate crimes have been directed at Jews, and the second greatest against Muslims… in 2015… there was a sharp rise in religion-based hate crimes, particularly against Islam and Muslims. Yet even then, Jews were 2.38 times more likely than Muslims to become victims of a hate crime.”

Facebook Bans Bestselling Author over ‘The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama’ By Megan Fox

Bestselling conservative author Matt Margolis has a new book coming out that is already banned on Facebook. Margolis’s first book, The Worst President in History, which detailed the failures of the Obama administration, was an instant hit last fall. Margolis used social media to market his presidential biography to #1 on Amazon. When he tried to market his latest, The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama, he was banned from Facebook groups for six days with no explanation. This is the ad Margolis created and posted.Shockingly, Margolis paid for this ad to be “boosted” throughout Facebook using the advertiser program they offer. Facebook had no problem taking his money for this ad but banned him directly after he posted it to several groups. The groups he sent it to were all conservative-friendly groups that normally welcome such announcements and buy conservative books.

When Margolis attempted to appeal the ban, he was unable to. This is suspicious timing considering that James O’Keefe just released videos of Twitter executives admitting to “shadow banning” conservative content creators and even those who are associated with conservative sites.

Bridget Johnson, PJ Media’s D.C. editor and terrorism expert has been banned from Twitter since November, and just the other day Facebook admitted they censored conservative author Jon Del Arroz by “mistake.” PJM reached out to Facebook and Twitter about the bannings in light of the scandalous undercover tapes of Big Tech admitting to censoring conservatives — or, as they call us, “sh**ty people.” Twitter did not respond.CONTINUE AT SITE

Google’s New ‘Fact-Checker’ Is Partisan Garbage The tech giant is dishonestly manipulating perceptions about conservative sites before people even read them.By David Harsanyi

In the midst of the “fake news” hysteria last year, Google launched a project to help curate reliable information for its readers by identifying articles and sites that need fact-checking. And this may come as a surprise to some of you, but it looks like the tech giant’s truth project is imbued with a tiny bit of ideological and political bias.

Eric Lieberman at The Daily Caller recently found that the fact checks displayed in Google’s search engine results are targeted almost exclusively at conservative publications. You can test it out yourself.

Now, you may believe that conservatives are hopeless liars in need of relentless correcting, so I’ll concede the point for argument’s sake. Even then, you’d have to admit it’s a small miracle that, according to Google’s search engine, not a single prominent liberal or mainstream site in the entire universe has ever uttered a dubious or questionable claim.

Luckily for us, there are methods available to analyze the veracity of Google’s project. One way, for example, is to take a “reviewed claim” made against The Federalist, the site I happen to know best, and contrast it to the coverage of other sites.

Consider the case of a woman named Eileen Wellstone. Out of many thousands of pieces published by The Federalist over the past four years, a single one mentions the name Eileen Wellstone. That article, detailing the sordid history of Bill Clinton, mentions her name exactly once: “Another woman, Eileen Wellstone, claimed Clinton raped her while he was at Oxford University in the late 1960s.”

For some reason, in this “reviewed claim” against The Federalist, Google sends the reader to a Snopes fact-check that argues that Clinton wasn’t expelled from Oxford over this alleged rape — a point I concede sounds completely accurate and is also an assertion that no one has ever made in this publication.

So the question is, does Google tag every article that relays accusations of sexual misconduct or rape as “unproven,” or just the ones against Bill Clinton? Or is the mention of Wellstone specifically worthy of a claim? The Wellstone case has not only been cited in all types of publications (and not in efforts to debunk it, either; 1,2,3,4,5, and so on) but by The Washington Post’s own fact-checker.

In a 2016 article detailing allegations against Bill Clinton that might be brought up by then-candidate Donald Trump, WaPo notes, “Eileen Wellstone says she was assaulted by Clinton when he was a student at Oxford University in 1969.” There is virtually no difference between that statement and the one published in The Federalist. Not that Google search engines users would know this when they search for the influential newspaper.

Why is Teen Vogue Sexualizing a 9-Year-Old Boy? by Sarah Rumpf

It’s hard to stay woke these days. The rules keep changing. And for the many conservatives like me who are supportive of gay rights, the activist left seems determined to make things as complicated and stressful as possible.

The latest eyebrow-raising story comes from Teen Vogue, in the form of a nine-year-old boy named Nemis Quinn Mélançon Golden they describe as “impressive and magical.”

You might be asking yourself, what could a 9-year-old boy do that a magazine geared towards teens would call “magical”?

Well, Golden is a drag queen who has gone by the name “Queen Lactatia” since he was seven:

When he was seven, this pint-size boy — who had a habit of wearing his sister’s tutus and princess costumes when he was two — officially transformed into a queen called Lactatia. Now he’s a miniature fixture on the Montreal drag scene. “I was always a drag queen, but I never knew it until my sister showed me RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Nemis explains. Drag, the subversive art of deconstructing gender through over-the-top aesthetics and performances, has become Nemis’s main source of empowerment and pride.

“All hail Queen Lactatia!” the short article declares triumphantly as it invites the reader to peruse a slideshow of Golden in various outfits.

Hang on just a minute here.

“Lactatia”? As in “lactating”? Why is a child being publicly paraded with a nickname related to breastfeeding?

Why is a child being publicly paraded like this at all?

Specifically, why is this child wearing makeup and costumes that are designed to be sexually attractive when worn by adults?

When a little six-year-old girl named JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her family home in 1996, a significant portion of the media attention and public debate centered around her participation in child beauty pageants.

Were the makeup, costumes, and song-and-dance routines too sexualized to be proper for a child? Did they make her attractive to a pedophile, and is that why she was killed?

Haberman: Wolff Creates A Narrative That Is Notionally True, “The Details Are Often Wrong” Posted By Ian Schwartz (???????)

Maggie Haberman, New York Times columnist and White House reporter, appeared on CNN’s New Day Friday to talk about author Michael Wolff, his non-journalistic methods, and how he misreported events and quotes in his new book Fire and Fury.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN: All right, so President Trump is slamming this new behind- the-scenes book as phony and full of lies. And the accuracy of some of the author, Michael Wolff’s, reporting is in question. So let’s talk about that.

Joining us now is CNN political analyst and White House correspondent for “The New York Times,” Maggie Haberman. Maggie has interviewed the president numerous times and her reporting is mentioned in the book.

Maggie, we also want to mention, you contributed to a new report about the Trump administration and the Russia inquiry, but we will get to all of that obstruction of justice talk at the top of the hour if you’ll stick around. If we don’t scare you away.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I’ll wait. I’ll just do this one.

CUOMO: One drama at a time, if you please.

CAMEROTA: One drama, yes.

HABERMAN: Yes. OK.

CAMEROTA: Don’t rush us.

HABERMAN: OK. It’s very early. We’ve got time.

CAMEROTA: Listen, you are a reporter with great sources in the White House and great access. So when you read Michael Wolff’s book, do you believe it?

HABERMAN: I believe parts of it. And then there are other parts that are factually wrong. I mean the thing about Michael Wolff and his style, which apparently nobody in the White House appears to have done a cursory Google search on him and sort of what his M.O. is, but he believes in larger truths and narratives. So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true. The details are often wrong. And I can — I can see several places in the book that are wrong.