Archive for the 'Axis of Drivel — Adventures in Narrative Media' Category
The inmates are in charge of the asylum.
30th December 2017
Newsweek’s Bizarre Ivanka Story Suggests Confederate Flag in Photo Background Is ‘Dogwhistle’ Remember: If you hear the ‘dog whistle’, then you’re the dog.
CNN Correspondent: World Thinks That America Doesn’t Have A ‘Moral Leg To Stand On’ Of course, a CNN correspondent is the expert on what ‘the world thinks’, and ODDLY ENOUGH it matches what most of the ‘correspondents’ at CNN think. What are the odds?
Worst of MSNBC 2017 As you might expect, most of it has to do with Trump.
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30th December 2017
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BuzzFeed is taking heat on social media after publishing a story titled “37 things white people ruined need to stop ruining in 2018″ on Wednesday afternoon.
Included on the list is the argument that white people ruined the United States by voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a 58-37 percent margin.
Other items on Buzzfeed’s list include macaroni and cheese, protests and the national anthem.
On the other hand, if you want to review things that black people ruined this year, check out the murder statistics for any major metropolitan area. I think white people come out pretty good in comparison.
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30th December 2017
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I’ll make a first brush attempt a working definition:
Editorial Narrative: A mandated set of guidelines for the overriding storyline for any news item concerning a specified topic, including required statements, conclusions and intentional slanting towards a particular preferred viewpoint. A statement from the Editors of “How this topic is to be presented.”
…
Celia Dugger thus establishes an Editorial Narrative for the series, and for all health-related journalism at the NY Times, along the lines of;
“The processed food, soda and fast food industries’ increasing focus on markets in the developing world is causing the rise in obesity rates and weight-related illnesses.”
This is not a rare opinion — it is one of the mainstay talking points of anti-corporatists of all stripes. It just doesn’t happen to be supported by any Science — a point which even Dugger at the NY Times admits. It is just an opinion and it is based on simplistic time-coincident correlation.
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When a story — a bit of news, a new journal paper — doesn’t fit the narrative required or desired by the Editors — then there is a problem. If the news is truly Big News and Important — then the journalist has to do his/her best to report it and somehow slip in enough of his/her editor’s narrative to get it accepted and published. We see this a lot in climate stories where the article goes along well enough, reporting some new findings, and then, out of nowhere, comes a line like “Of course, this new study does nothing to cast any doubt about the overwhelming evidence for human-induced climate change which is currently threatening the very existence of our planet.”
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29th December 2017
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28th December 2017
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27th December 2017
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26th December 2017
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26th December 2017

You will notice that the three ‘fail’ grades have nothing to do with technology, but rather with the Social Justice Warrior political agenda.
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24th December 2017
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24th December 2017
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This is a good example of the perennial proglodyte meme ‘As an X, I am therefore entitled to speak for everybody in group X.’ They do this because they think it has some intellectual weight — which it does, for them, but not for Real People.
As a driver, I support making the author of this article pay for my pay-per-mile road pricing along with his own.
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22nd December 2017
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22nd December 2017
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During TNT’s NBA coverage Thursday night, Barkley scoffed at how he’ll use the tax cut he’ll get under the new Republican tax reform law.
Speaking of trickle-down economics, Barkley said he was “gonna trickle my fat ass down to the jewelry store to get me a new Rolex.” He ended his comments saying “Sorry, poor people.”
So he really doesn’t care about poor people at all. That’s just an excuse. Glad we cleared that up.
Hey, rich guy — you see a poor person, you give him some money, you’re so concerned about poor people.
That’s what you want to do with MY money — why not do that with YOUR money?
Put your money where your mouth is … and you better be really rich, because that’s a whole lotta mouth you got there.
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21st December 2017
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21st December 2017
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According to New York Magazine, Taylor Swift isn’t allowed to be happy having a successful year in 2017—or thank fans for wishing her a happy birthday.
“I love you guys so much,” the pop singer shared on Instagram. “I couldn’t have asked for a better year, all thanks to you. Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Can’t wait to see what 28 will be like. See you on tour.”
But because Swift is “a straight, white, multi-millionaire pop star,” New York Magazine had a problem with her post.
Something about Leftists, they were all born with a grimace on their faces and two pointing fingers, and they never get any better. I cannot imagine the kinds of ulcers they get from being hateful and outraged twenty-four hours of ever day.
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20th December 2017
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20th December 2017
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It appears that this refers to the abolition of the Individual Mandate, the provision of Obamacare that depends on forcing young healthy people to buy insurance that they don’t want and don’t need in order to use that money to subsidize health care prices for people who engage in risky behavior … like the LGBTUVWXYZ community.
That’s not what they say, of course. Telling the truth is not part of the Narrative.
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18th December 2017
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18th December 2017
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18th December 2017
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How To Be A Progressive: Take some random noun, add ‘-ism’ and the end, and start whining.
This sharp shift in the age of authority derives from increasingly rapid technological change. In the nineteen-twenties, an engineer’s “half life of knowledge”—the time it took for half of his expertise to become obsolete—was thirty-five years. In the nineteen-sixties, it was a decade. Now it’s five years at most, and, for a software engineer, less than three. Traditionally, you needed decades in coding or engineering to launch a successful startup: William Shockley was forty-five when he established Fairchild Semiconductor, in 1955. But change begets faster change: Larry Page and Sergey Brin were twenty-five when they started Google, in 1998; Mark Zuckerberg was nineteen when he created Facebook, in 2004.
So there’s actually a good reason for preferring young people.
Like the racist and the sexist, the ageist rejects an Other based on a perceived difference.
Well, ol’ Tad has the lingo down, I’ll give him that.
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18th December 2017
Jim Goad is triggered.
I’ll bet you didn’t realize that “Jingle Bells” is an unabashed celebration of white supremacy and that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” inadvertently celebrates the bullying of a closeted homosexual.
What’s worse, I find your willful ignorance on these issues to be highly problematic.
According to the pelican-faced Kyna Hamill of Boston University:
The legacy of ‘Jingle Bells’ is one where its blackface and racist origins have been subtly and systematically removed from its history….Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States.
As far as I can tell, she thinks the song would have been more accurately titled “Slave Bells Ring.” She appears to be arguing that behind every “Jingle Bells” lies Emmett Till’s bloated corpse. Remind me not to buy her a Christmas card.
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17th December 2017
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Today’s exhibit is Hilary Rosen, Democratic Party insider and CNN political commentator. Rosen is best remembered as the DNC shill who, during the 2012 presidential campaign, told us that Ann Romney had never worked a day in her life–an Obama theme that blew up in her face like an exploding cigar.
Yesterday, Rosen went to a basketball game between Georgetown and Syracuse and noticed a kid wearing a coat with a bacon pattern. For some inexplicable reason, she jumped to the conclusion that the bacon outfit was an anti-Semitic slur. I have no idea why she thought this, as most people like bacon for obvious reasons. And if she wanted to go down that road for some reason, why wouldn’t it be an anti-Muslim slur?
Unbelievable.
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16th December 2017
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They just HAD TO, you see!
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16th December 2017
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15th December 2017
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14th December 2017
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On Thursday’s New Day, CNN host Alisyn Camerota presented a group of six Donald Trump voters to discuss, in part, the Alabama Senate special election, and the group somehow managed to exclude voters who actually supported Republican candidate Roy Moore.
Even though the Republican nominee received almost half the vote in a state where Trump won 62 percent — meaning an overwhelming percentage of Trump voters must have supported Moore — all three of the Alabama voters included on the panel voiced their opposition to him.
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14th December 2017
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Left-stream media are so willing to use anyone to bash Republicans that it doesn’t matter a wit to them if their source has an arrest record and a disturbing past. Charles Barkley, a former NBA player and current TNT basketball commentator, bashed GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore and the conservatives in his home state of Alabama, but media lapped up his disdain for the Right without questioning his criminal past.
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13th December 2017
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In November 2015, Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar at The View rudely shut down then-presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, insisting that she was lying when she stated that Planned Parenthood had admitted to harvesting baby parts from aborted fetuses.
On Friday, in a development which is predictably failing to get the media visibility it deserves, Orange County’s district attorney announced a $7.8 million settlement with two California companies accused of “selling fetal-derived cells and tissues” obtained from fetal body parts acquired from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. When will ABC demand that Whoopi and Joy apologize to Fiorina — and to the nation?
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13th December 2017
Roy Moore loses to Doug Jones in humiliating Senate result for Donald Trump Uh, ‘humiliating’? How? Moore lost by a razor-thin margin after serving as a Crustian piñata since his primary win. Trump’s only involvement was to endorse Moore because he was — wait for it — the Republican candidate. If anyone was humiliated it was the Washington establishment, who almost got their asses handed to them. If Trump had not been President, they would have won it walking away.
Trump ‘isn’t fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library’, says USA Today in searing editorial Don’t hold it in, tell us how you really feel.
Roy Moore’s defeat is the biggest sign of hope for Americans wanting to stop Trump Grasping at straws.
Trump poll: ‘Idiot’ most common word used by voters to describe US President And yet he keeps winning. How about that.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza: Is Trump ‘Unaware Of How Words Mean Things?’ Is Chris Cillizza unaware that Trump is living rent-free in his head?
Past Three Months Of Trump Coverage 91 Percent Negative It sure seems like more.
Anderson Cooper says his tweets calling Trump a ‘pathetic loser’ were posted by hacker What makes it effective is that everybody is prepared to believe it.
Meryl Streep: ‘I Don’t Want To Be’ A Political Leader Under Trump Good thing that that’s not likely to happen.
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13th December 2017
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Of course not. He doesn’t want to get shot.
Personally, I can’t think of anything in my life that would be improved by going anywhere near Chicago.
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12th December 2017
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12th December 2017
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This weekend, 25,000 Earth, Sun, and planetary scientists from across the US and abroad flew to New Orleans for the annual American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. These scientists study the impact global warming is having on Earth. Unfortunately, their air travel to and from the meeting will contribute to that warming by emitting around 30,000 tonnes of CO2.
Hey, some pigs are more equal than others.
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11th December 2017
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Oh, I doubt it.
If it did, it would be just one more think that rich Crustian proglodytes can indulge in while denying it to the Dirt People. The optics of that would be pretty bad.
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10th December 2017
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… another instance of fraud perpetrated by global warming alarmists who have charge of data. This time, they are changing sea level measurements to make it appear that sea level is rising abnormally, when it isn’t.
You’ll know that sea levels are actually rising when ocean-front property values start going down rather than up.
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10th December 2017
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10th December 2017
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I am not making this up.
My question is: Since when are ‘intersectional feminists’ interested in ‘dates’?
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9th December 2017
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9th December 2017
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But you have to remember that Trump is a HORRIBLE RACIST who wants to put black people in concentration camps.
Trump says he ‘admired’ Martin Luther King at civil rights museum opening amid boycotts over his attendance
What a white supremacist!
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9th December 2017
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They say that as if it were a bad thing. But it’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing.
If, instead of a ‘uranium firm’, it had been some stick-their-noses-in-everyone-else’s-business NGO, they would be applauding like all getout.
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8th December 2017
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Seems appropriate.
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8th December 2017
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7th December 2017
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7th December 2017
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But of course Trump is the narcissist.
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7th December 2017
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Pretty bad when you can’t even depend on your own propaganda arm.
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6th December 2017
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6th December 2017
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Bloomberg News corrected Wednesday its bombshell report that special counsel Robert Mueller had subpoenaed Deutsche Bank records pertaining to President Donald Trump and his family.
The corrected report said the bank records “pertain to people affiliated” with Trump. Bloomberg had originally reported that Mueller “zeroed in” on Trump.
Never mind!
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6th December 2017
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Unmentioned: All the trouble will be caused by Muslim extremists.
The foundation of all of these complaining articles is ‘Everybody knows that Muslims will go crazy, so we ought not to do it.’ And yet if you actually say that, the finger-pointing and screams of ‘Islamophobia!’ spread like wildfire.
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5th December 2017
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5th December 2017
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It’s not about a crooked Republican, so it’s not a thing.
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