Archive for the 'Axis of Drivel — Adventures in Narrative Media' Category
The inmates are in charge of the asylum.
20th August 2020
Steve Sailer.
One of the more striking phenomena of recent years is the trend toward making certain news articles duller, vaguer, and more insignificant sounding. Stories used to be written to begin with the five W’s — Who, What, Where, When, and Why — as close to the top as human verbal ingenuity could manage. But lately, many stories are constructed to bore the casual reader into moving on to the next story before he has much of a clue what this one is about.
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19th August 2020
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In the hour leading up to Night Three of the Democrat convention, PBS aired a profile of Biden’s career by reporter Lisa Desjardins, starring liberal-bias legend Nina Totenberg of NPR. Biden was judged positively for beating Robert Bork’s nomination for the Supreme Court in 1987, and negatively for not helping Anita Hill enough to defeat Clarence Thomas in 1991.
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19th August 2020
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19th August 2020
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Donald Trump registered quite the achievement on Wednesday: He managed to make the avowedly feminist New York Times criticize renowned suffragist Susan B. Anthony in “With Eye on Election, Trump Plans to Pardon Women’s Suffrage Icon,” after the president announced he would mark the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote, by pardoning Anthony, who was arrested and fined for voting illegally in 1872.
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19th August 2020
Steve Sailer.
Fanning the flames of racial animosity is only bad when Bad People (i.e., whites) do it.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on NYT: Fanning the Flames of Racial Animosity Lies at the Core of Trump’s Election Strategy
19th August 2020
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Yeah, that’s a real head-scratcher, that is.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Baffled Colbert Wonders Why ‘Old Fashioned’ Republicans Don’t Go for Biden’s ‘Progressive’ Vision
18th August 2020
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17th August 2020
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16th August 2020
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15th August 2020
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It is always amazing to see just how virulent is the liberal media’s addiction to hypocrisy.
This current obsession with race surfaced, but of course, with the selection of California Senator Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden’s vice presidential running mate. As journalists were cheering the Democrat — her mother is from India, her father from Jamaica — a legal scholar raised the question of whether Harris was eligible under the Constitution as a “natural born citizen.” She was born in Oakland, California, which should resolve the question.
This issue has been used against 1964 GOP nominee Senator Barry Goldwater. Why? Because Goldwater was born in Arizona – when it was a territory and not yet a state. In 1968 it was used against GOP Michigan Governor George Romney — father of Mitt — when he ran for the GOP nomination. Why?
Because Romney was the son of Mormon missionaries -who were living in Mexico when Romney was born. Then of course, there was Senator John McCain, said to be ineligible because he was born in Panama when his father was stationed there early in his military career in the US Navy.
Joy Behar declared herself a “Cruz birther.” In 2016, ABC had little outrage about the citizenship attacks on the conservative senator. The New York Times raised the birther issue against McCain.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Media Obsessed With Birther Claims Against Harris, Forget Left’s Attacks on Cruz, McCain
15th August 2020
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15th August 2020
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This week, Pew Research released a study on the use of the non-binary non-word Latinx that confirms what we’ve already known to be true: that the term, despite being shoved down the throat of the Hispanic community, has no acceptance within.
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14th August 2020
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Wouldn’t surprise me.
Recent questionable search results show Google appearing to conflate the opposing terms socialism and capitalism. A Google search for “socialism and racism” shows that Google may be confused about the definition of socialism. When the search is completed, Google includes results for “capitalism and racism” by default, forcing the user to click another link in order to show results only for the initial query, “socialism and racism.” The “including results from” feature is often used when search terms are misspelled. It will include search results for the original term and the suggested alternative by default. This results in a better user experience without the user having to correct the error and start the search over. Several years ago, some users noticed that Google was offering more navigational suggestions using this feature. For example, a search for “face” would include results for “Facebook,” and a search for “pint” would include results for “Pinterest.” It is unclear why Google would choose to include results for “capitalism and racism” when a search is conducted for “socialism and racism.”
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14th August 2020
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13th August 2020
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Trump is going to hammer it up their noses.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on NBC Refuses to Credit Trump for Israel-U.A.E. Peace, CBS Chides It
13th August 2020
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12th August 2020
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12th August 2020
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12th August 2020
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11th August 2020
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11th August 2020
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Uh, no. You’ve got to be conservative first.
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11th August 2020
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CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King is steeped in the Democratic Party. She donates to Democrats. She vacationed with Democrats and has lobbied her Democratic-leaning friend Oprah Winfrey to run for president.
All of that would be fine except for the fact that King is allowed to operate as though she was a real, objective journalist. She has even moderated a 2020 Democratic primary debate. But King isn’t a fair and balanced journalist.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Facts Feared by Leftist Media: Gayle King’s History Of Dem Donations and Vacations With the Obamas
11th August 2020
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During Friday’s edition of CNN Newsroom, co-anchor Poppy Harlow kicked off a contentious interview with Kudlow with negative spin, asking Kudlow: “Does the slowdown worry you and the president?” Kudlow immediately slapped back at that idea: “I don’t know that there’s a slowdown. I mean, these jobs numbers will go up and down.”
Harlow interrupted Kudlow to strangely point out last month’s jobs numbers: “4.8 million jobs were added the prior month.” Kudlow responded: “I think the big story here is this survey was taken in the middle of July, July 12th to July 18th.” He continued: “That was the heart, that was the heart of the hotspot problem, where some states had to pull back in the southwest and so forth. Therefore, we didn’t get hurt near as much as many people feared.” A chyron for CNN’s spin-segment read: “1.8 million jobs added in July, but recovery is losing momentum.”
The ‘chyron’ tells the story: CNN is just a publicity operation for the hate-Trump crowd even if they have to lie about it. Fortunately, Kudlow is a Real Economist and he isn’t buying what they’re selling.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on CNN’s Poppy Harlow Fights Kudlow, Downplays Good Economic News
11th August 2020
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Senator Elizabeth Warren is claiming that “Donald Trump has undermined and corrupted our most popular government agency—the Postal Service.” I was surprised to learn that the postal service is “our most popular government agency.”
Well, it’s certainly more popular than the IRS.
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11th August 2020
New York magazine.
One of the perennial favorite tasls of Lefty ‘journalists’ is explaining ‘conservatism’ to, you know, conservatives (and anybody else who might be listening).
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10th August 2020
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10th August 2020
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A growing response to today’s chaotic information landscape sounds inviting and elegantly simple: Appoint experts to “fact-check” news stories, blogs, speeches, studies, opinions, and political ads. Information they deem to be false is corrected or even removed from public view, in the name of the public good.
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10th August 2020
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Today, the Washington Post’s Sunday “Outlook” section ran a piece in which Lawrence Downes, formerly of the New York Times editorial board, boasts about feeding books by Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and other conservative authors to worms. Downes says he purchases these books on sale from his public library. He then takes them home for “quarantine.” In this way, he prevents people who might want to buy and read the books from doing so.
For extra pleasure, Downes has taken to putting the books in a compost bin along with coffee grounds, potato and carrot peels, etc., and feeding the pages to worms. He seems to believe that doing so is different in nature from burning the books. He’s right. Taking into account the pleasure Downes gets and his desire to write about the experience, it’s sicker.
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9th August 2020
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Could have fooled me.
CNN chief medial reporter Brian Stelter beclowned himself yet again during Sunday’s no-so Reliable Sources. Between raging at right-wing media and talk radio for questioning Joe Biden’s mental lucidity, and claiming left-wing hacks like himself weren’t dedicated to “tearing down” President Trump, Stelter was out to prove that he was willing to lie with impunity. And at one point, a guest floated the idea of weaponizing the Federal Communication Commission to target and presumably shut down right-wing talk radio.
Gaslighting his viewers from the get-go, Stelter hoped they wouldn’t remember how he was among the first in the liberal media to demand the press start questioning Trump’s mental health, as he railed against right-wing media for now questioning Biden’s.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Stelter Claims Left-Wing Media Not Dedicated to ‘Tearing Down Trump’
9th August 2020
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If this was 2012, the liberal media would be worshiping President Obama for using his pen and phone to get around an obstructionist Congress to help hurting Americans during an election year pandemic. But after President Trump signed an executive orders to continue weekly unemployment checks and halt evictions Saturday, ABC’s Good Morning America was up in arms. They siding with Democrats, claimed it was a “game” to Trump, and hyped the legal battle that would delay the aid.
Apparently aid is good only when it comes from Democrats.
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8th August 2020
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8th August 2020
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The New York Times loves the public sector, and it mimics our most dysfunctional governments in one respect: it is just about impossible to get fired.
Consider Times opinion columnists Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, Nick Kristof and Maureen Dowd. They have all been at the Times for something like fifty years, and none of that quartet has had a fresh idea in at least the last decade. Does anyone still read them? I remember as recently as 2006 there were controversies over a number of Dowd columns, and the Krugman Truth Squad catalogued Krugman’s howlers. But no one bothers anymore.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The New York Times Circles the Drain
8th August 2020
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Are American freedom and individualism to blame for the failure to contain the coronavirus? That was one premise of the lead story in Friday’s New York Times by David Leonhardt: “U.S. Is Alone Among Peers In Failing to Contain Virus – 2 Major Causes: Individualist Tradition and Trump Administration Missteps.”
It comes as no surprise that the basic message of any New York Times article is America Sucks.
It also ought to come as no surprise that the cultural Marxists that man (excuse me, person) the Gray Lady are committed to the platform Individualism Bad, Collectivism Good (although how that squares with the dystopia patent on the daily news in the world’s biggest collective society, Red China).
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7th August 2020
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7th August 2020
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6th August 2020
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6th August 2020
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On Wednesday, New York Times White House correspondent and MSNBC contributor Annie Karni sounded the alarm, expressing dismay about the state of press freedoms because….The Daily Signal served as the pool outlet for Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Tampa?
And that’s not a typo. Karni actually wrote a 705-word meltdown about how Daily Signal executive editor, Heritage Foundation VP of communications, and CNS News alum Rob Bluey flew on Air Force Two.
But wait, there’s more! Karni admitted that Bluey’s reports contained “nothing openly partisan,” he only went because no one else had taken the spot, and it “was not the first time someone representing Daily Signal served as a pool reporter” for the President or Vice President.
Not surprisingly, liberal journalists threw fits when Bluey’s colleague Fred Lucas (another CNS News alum) filled in.
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5th August 2020
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5th August 2020
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This is why people don’t believe the ‘news’.
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4th August 2020
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3rd August 2020
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3rd August 2020
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Who are you going to believe, CNN or some professor somewhere?
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2nd August 2020
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1st August 2020
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On the July 31 Real Time with Bill Maher, former New York Times op-ed editor Bari Weiss described her fear of how our nation’s so-called paper of record has now seemingly banned the opinions of half of America from its editorial pages.
…
Weiss said mere criticism is “kosher,” it’s the word that journalists do. “What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment. It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job,” Weiss told Maher. “The writer Jonathan Rauch called it social murder. And I think that’s right.”
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1st August 2020
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1st August 2020
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Friday afternoon, CNN and MSNBC anchors tried to discount Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) after he tried to get Dr. Fauci to say whether or not protests spread coronavirus, during a congressional hearing today. CNN’s Brianna Keilar and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell were not amused by Jordan exposing the double standard placed on left-wing protesters vs. churchgoers, and each tried to discredit him in their own way.
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31st July 2020
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31st July 2020
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So, narrative journalism is basically reporting the news by telling a first-person (usually) narrative about the topic. A narrative is simply “a spoken or written account of connected events; a story.” In narrative journalism, the journalist writes: what’s happening, how I went there, who I talked to, what I saw, how I felt, how the victims and participants in the news felt, what they told me and, for most stories, what I (the journalist) think it all means.
Most ‘jouralists’ today don’t want to report news, they want to tell stories, because it is by telling a story (preferably a tear-jerker) that will get the all-important Pulitzer and a six-figure income
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31st July 2020
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The statue of a Catholic saint who served people with leprosy in Hawaii is an example of colonialism and white supremacy, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested an Instagram story Thursday.
In the video, one of several posted several Instagram stories criticizing the number of white, male figures represented in the U.S. Capitol on Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez refers to the “patriarchy and white supremacist culture” and pans to Hawaii’s statue of Father Damien, a Belgium-born 19th century priest who dedicated his life to a leper colony on the island of Molokai and eventually died with the disease, according to the Architect of the Capitol.
I would have to agree. That’s exactly what white culture looks like.
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30th July 2020
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