LESSONS FROM TIANANMEN.
Archive for 2023
June 4, 2023
OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves as usual.
OUT ON A LIMB: CNN lost trust over COVID coverage, internal report found.
The network won multiple prizes for its coverage of Covid-19, including the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Cronkite/Jackson Prize, which was awarded to Dr. Sanjay Gupta for his coverage “correcting Covid-19 misinformation.”
But Licht’s criticism was drawn from CNN’s own research.
Last year, CNN commissioned a survey examining viewer trust and the places where CNN was succeeding and falling short with viewers across the ideological spectrum. According to a partial copy of the report, which hasn’t been revealed before, CNN’s coverage of Covid-19 was the third leading cause of distrust in the network behind liberal bias and “the Chris Cuomo situation.”
Survey respondents of all ideological stripes criticized the network’s “overly dramatic and sensational”* and “dire” reporting, the report said.
Sanay Gupta, you say? Flashback: Joe Rogan’s Dust-Up With CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta Exposes the Narrative:
Rogan continued to ask why the network would lie about a Nobel prize-winning drug that had cured blindness due to a parasitic infection in millions of people, suggesting it was only used in animals. Rogan asked, “Does it bother you the news network you work for out and out lied? Just outright lied about me taking horse dewormer?” Gupta responded, “They shouldn’t have said that.”
That’s what Gupta told Rogan while in his studio. The following day, however: CNN’s Effort to Clean up the Gupta Train Wreck Interview Proves Joe Rogan’s Point:
CNN’s [Don Lemon]: “It is not a lie to say that [Ivermectin] is used as a horse de-wormer. I think that’s important. And it is not approved for Covid.”
[Gupta]: “Correct … If you look at the data, there is no evidence that it really works [against Covid].”
This is CNN. “But that’s the problem with CNN in a nutshell, and it’s the point that Rogan was making,” Red State’s Nick Arama writes. “They don’t care about the truth; it’s all about narrative.”
“Overly dramatic and sensational,” you say? Flashback: ‘It’s Good TV:’ CNN’s High-Drama Coverage of the Pandemic Hits Close to Home: “But another current CNN employee who spoke with THR criticized Cuomo’s appearances, particularly the dramatic moment last Monday when he was filmed leaving the basement where he was quarantined to reunite with his family, as ‘reality TV.’ ‘Him coming out of the quarantine with the cameras there, that’s all Jeff Zucker reality TV, and that screams Zucker,’ the person says, referring to the network president who brought The Apprentice to NBC and helped make Trump a star.”
Related: Explosive Report Details CNN CEO Chris Licht’s Time At the Left-Wing Network.
I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: Dutch Survey Data Shows Significant Increase In Memory And Concentration Problems Among Adults Since Start Of Covid-19 Pandemic. “The possible causes of the increase in memory and concentration problems are unclear. A plausible explanation is that the isolation brought about by Covid-19 restrictions contributed to accelerated cognitive decline among people who were already starting to have problems with memory and concentration.”
Related: COVID-19 lockdowns had same effect on memory as serving jail time: study.
CHANGE IN POLICY: “I’m guessing the key words are ‘other U.S. elections.’ Too hard to treat 2020 as different from 2016 and 2004 and 2000 and whatever may be about to happen in 2024. It’s crazy to say people can’t talk about it, but that is what YouTube has been doing.”
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: Exercise soon after prolapse surgery is safe, study shows. “It may not be necessary for people who have prolapse surgery for pelvic floor disorders to wait to get started exercising again. A new study challenges standard restrictions, finding that those who resume exercising soon after the procedure do just as well as those who wait several weeks.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN OUTREACH: Biden’s State Department Launches Multimillion Dollar Push To Fight Climate Change, Teach Gender Studies in Iraq.
The Biden administration is prepared to shell out up to $12 million to teach Iraqis how to fight climate change and appreciate “gender diversity,” an effort it says will help strengthen democracy in the Middle Eastern nation.
President Joe Biden’s State Department on May 15 posted a grant solicitation offering three universities in Iraq up to $4 million each to develop programs to help fight climate change and advance gender equity. Recipients must develop “fields of study, course offerings, and/or majors” centered on “gender issues” and “the adaptation to and mitigation of the impacts of climate change,” the grant offering shows. Additionally, the State Department wants Iraqi universities to develop recruitment programs for students who will work toward advancing “greenhouse gas reduction” and “other areas of study related to climate change.”
Programs approved for funding must also have “progressive curricula” and “strengthen the diversity of the student body of American-style Iraqi institutions of higher education.”
Will the works of Marcel Duchamp also be studied in Iraq?
CLAIRE LEHMANN ON THE GREAT TRANS ERASURE: The sinkhole of vagueness Orwell described has now swallowed up the word “woman.”
HMM: Jet fighters chase small plane in Washington D.C. area before it crashes. “U.S. authorities scrambled jet fighters in a high-speed chase of a light aircraft that violated airspace in the Washington D.C. area and later crashed into mountainous terrain in southwest Virginia, U.S. officials said. The jet fighters caused a sonic boom over the U.S. capital as they raced to catch up with the Cessna Citation, which can carry between seven to 12 passengers, officials said. The Federal Aviation Administration said a Cessna aircraft crashed into mountainous terrain in southwest Virginia around the time the sonic boom was heard in the capital. A U.S. official said the jet fighters did not cause the crash. A source familiar with the matter said the Cessna was believed to be on autopilot and did not respond to authorities. It was not immediately clear why the pilot was unresponsive. While rare, incidents involving unresponsive pilots are not unprecedented. Golfer Payne Stewart died in 1999 along with four others after the aircraft he was in streaked across thousands of miles with the pilot and passengers unresponsive. The plane eventually crashed in South Dakota with no survivors.”
BACKWARDS RAN SAN FRANCISCO UNTIL REELED THE MIND; WHERE IT WILL ALL END KNOWS GOD: In 2021, PJM’s Victoria Taft referred to San Francisco as “Baghdad by the Bay.” The beleaguered city is quickly regressing even further: Immigrant store owner begs San Francisco for help after losing $100K to burglars: ‘Worse than Afghanistan.’
Why does it keep having such unexpected bad luck?
(Classical allusion in headline.)
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Privileged Cuomo could write ‘If I Did It’ about nursing-home deaths and still face zero consequences.
He’s part of the Protected Class. They’re never punished for their misdeeds, except occasionally when the Party needs to get rid of them.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: CNN’s Kirsten Powers Hilariously Leveled When She Talks About Censoring Republicans.
Leaving this here: 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/claSYFWInM
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 3, 2023
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND: Non-binary ex-Biden official Sam Brinton arrested for yet another baggage theft. Brinton is being charged with grand larceny in third airport baggage theft case.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Due To High Crime, Mafia Closes Its Chicago Office.
IT’S A RIGHT TO ARMS, NOT JUST A RIGHT TO GUNS: Knife Rights Sues to Overturn Federal Switchblade Act Under the Supreme Court’s Bruen Decision.
READER FAVORITE: Sun Joe SWJ803E 10 inch 8.0 Amp Electric Multi-Angle Pole Chain Saw. #CommissionEarned
THE SECURITY STATE TURNS INWARD: “These are intelligence agencies rigging domestic elections just as they have done in so many foreign countries.”
ROBIN HANSON: Gender And Status:
I agree that men are over-represented in the high tail of status, but this seems to me less due to women being associated with children, and more to men just having higher variance, which seems a consistent pattern. Men also seem to be over-represented at the low tail of status, a fact that will matter more to low status people, but less to the high status folks who dominate these discussions.
I’m happy to join Perry in trying to raise the status of mothers, in part because that could help promote higher fertility. But I’m not sure how much we can really control this. If status is a shared judgment on individual virtue, and if men actually do have higher variance in virtuous features, with the two genders typically having similar medians, then top men really do deserve their overall top status. Just as bottom men deserve their overall bottom status.
All I know is that we hear a lot more about the imbalance between male and female CEOs, and not much at all about the difference between male and female homeless, or prison inmates.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I ‘married’ the perfect man without ‘baggage’ — he’s completely virtual.
Related: AI and the Screwfly Succession. What if love really does conquer all?
MUSCLES ARE IN: Buff billionaires are latest sign that bulk is now beautiful for male body image.
Mark Rippetoe smiles. Though it’s more of a bodybuilder than a powerlifter look, really. These guys are pretty much all on various peptide/hormone anti-aging cocktails that that also boost muscle, but they’re also clearly lifting to get that look, which you don’t get just from drugs alone. I saw Arnold a while back boasting that he, and Pumping Iron, changed the aesthetic for men’s bodies around the world, and I think that’s basically right. Even the buffest stars of 50 years ago looked nothing like the actors of today. Or even twenty years ago: “As the health writer Sarah Berry has pointed out, Hugh Jackman’s 2000 Wolverine was a lot less ripped than his most recent portrayal of the character: ‘Over the years Jackman’s physique changed so much that his original Wolverine seems nothing short of doughy now.'”
Related: This article from when Salon was actually readable. Coincidentally, also from over 20 years ago.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: “Mediocrity, after all, Matt, is the safest place to be, especially when the cops are out, you know?”