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IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE DOUBLE STANDARDS: They wouldn’t have any standards at all. The Democrats’ legion of allies in the Mainstream Media, that is. Issues & Insights takes on this hypocrisy and makes the fundamental point.

The incivility and demagoguery that has poisoned American politics originated with a TV spot that was only broadcast once during the 1964 campaign. It told voters nuclear catastrophe would result if Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater was elected instead of  LBJ, who succeeded to the Oval Office when JFK was assassinated.

IF NOT FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D  HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: Mainstream media, in the march to demonize Tucker Carlson, howled mercilessly when in 2020 Fox filed court papers in a libel suit saying he was not presenting “factual news, but commentary.”

You Literally Can’t Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox’s LawyersNPR crowed. Business Insider took the same howling path, headlining their story “Fox News won a court case by ‘persuasively’ arguing that no ‘reasonable viewer’ takes Tucker Carlson seriously.” (Note: that publication’s founder is Henry Blodgett. You know, the guy who pleaded guilty to securities fraud. A paragon of virtue and truth, for sure).

No, it’s never a good look for a media defendant to say “I was joking” ot “it’s opinion not fact,” but lawyers are obligated to provide the most zealous defense they can to their clients.

So how is it that those same people forget that a year before the Tucker case, Rachel Maddow, who said on-air that “One America Network literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

I don’t know about you, but the word “literally” means, well, literally. 

OAN sued and you’ll never guess what her lawyers argued…wait for it…No reasonable viewer could conclude that Maddow implied an assertion of objective fact.”

Today we have a replay of the same double standard. CNN’s Jake (rhymes with “fake”) Tapper is, along with CNN, being sued for defamation in Florida to the tune of $1 billion after he and CNN aired a wholly shoddy piece, accusing Zachary Young and his security consulting company, Nemex Enterprises Inc., of illegally profiting when helping people flee Afghanistan during the Biden-Harris administration’s f’ed up military withdrawal from the country in 2021.

The court said “CNN argues it did not intend to harm; its language was either opinion or ambiguous.”

That doesn’t sound much like “The Most Trusted Name in News.”

The facts of that case are stunning, some of which are contained here. CNN’s internal communications are an atomic bomb of Actual Malice.

If I were Young, I wouldn’t settle either.

My question is simple: Don’t any of these people own a mirror?

DOUBLE STANDARDS ARE THE BEST STANDARDS BECAUSE YOU GET TWICE AS MANY: Kamala Harris panned for requiring ID to enter Arizona rally after previously painting voter ID laws as racist.

“I don’t think that we should underestimate what that could mean,” Harris said about allowing voter ID laws. “Because in some people’s mind that means, well, you’re going to have to Xerox or photocopy your ID to send it in to prove you are who you are. Well, there are a whole lot of people, especially people who live in rural communities, who don’t – there’s no Kinko’s, there’s no Office Max near them. People have to understand that when we’re talking about voter ID laws, be clear about who you have in mind and what would be required of them to prove who they are.”

As usual, I have no idea what she’s talking about because she doesn’t, either.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Testified She Was Never Arrested. Court Records and Text Messages Indicate She Was.

Before becoming one of the Justice Department’s top leaders, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke was allegedly involved in a violent domestic dispute, according to court documents, records, and text messages—an incident that ended in her arrest and was ultimately expunged. During her Senate confirmation, Clarke specifically denied ever having been arrested for or accused of committing a violent crime. . . .

Clarke’s ex-husband, Reginald Avery, alleged to the American Accountability Foundation’s Tom Jones in 2021 that Clarke attacked him with a knife, deeply slicing his finger to the bone, on the night of July 4, 2006, while they were married and living in Maryland.

According to messages and documents reviewed by The Daily Signal, police arrested Clarke that night. She did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

She’ll get a pass due to race, skin color, and — particularly — political affiliation.

ALEX BERENSON: Genocide and Jews at Harvard: The double standards and triple speak that have overrun elite academia showed their truest colors yesterday; and the firestorm that has followed may actually matter.

And the universities themselves have made ever-clearer that they don’t care about protecting free speech. They FEAR free speech. They care about protecting minority rights and creating safe spaces.

That’s why misgendering pronouns is “abuse.” That’s why they fell all over themselves to proclaim their solidarity with the George Floyd protests and protestors.

Except when the minority is the Jews.

Then their attackers deserve the fullest possible speech protections.

Then, and only then.

BARI WEISS: On Double Standards and Deafening Silence.

When I was at The New York Times, an op-ed by a Republican senator led to a crisis at the paper, and the longest editor’s note that I could remember. At least until the one that was published yesterday about the Gaza hospital bombing (more about that in a moment).

Let’s stick, for a minute, to the brouhaha of June 2020. Perhaps you’ll remember some of the details, like the fact that hundreds of colleagues signed on to a statement saying that Tom Cotton’s op-ed “put the lives of black NYT staffers in danger.” My boss—and the paper’s former Jerusalem bureau chief, James Bennet—was pushed out after being humiliated in front of the paper’s entire staff. His deputy, Jim Dao, was reassigned and ultimately left the paper. Adam Rubenstein, the talented young editor (and loyal friend of The Free Press) who had a hand in working on the offending piece, was scapegoated and resigned. And you know what happened to me.

I mention all of this because on October 17, The New York Times sent a false report to all of its readers that presented, as fact, Hamas talking points. It claimed that Israel had bombed a hospital, killing 500 people: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”

* * * * * * * *

More fun at The New York Times: Perhaps you’ve noticed the byline Soliman Hijjy in recent days connected to stories out of Gaza. Soliman Hijjy, it turns out, is a fan of Hitler.

“In a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust” he captioned a photo of himself from 2018. In 2012 he wrote “How great you are, Hitler” in Arabic alongside an image of Hitler.

The Times said in a statement: “We reviewed problematic social media posts by Mr. Hijjy when they first came to light in 2022 and took a variety of actions to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards if he wished to do freelance work for us in the future.” We believe that people can change their minds, though we might draw the line at explicit adoration of Hitler.

As Ace notes, “They’ll try to get you fired for making an ‘OK’ sign, but an actual Hitler-lover? That gets you hired on the left. And note, he was hired twice.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I remember when those people told us we should punch Nazis.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: It’s been reported here earlier, but JustTheNews drives home the point.

“Carrying banners blaring the single word “ceasefire,” the demonstrators gathered en masse and staged a sit in […] Critics of the demonstrators characterized the event as an “insurrection” in an apparent reference to an oft-used term for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.”

Hysterical journalists bought the “insurrection” and “treason” narrative hook, line and sinker. If anyone is naïve enough that these Pro-Hamas people will be subjected to the same abuse (denial of due process, in particular) as those involved — or even nearby J6 — you only need to look back at the disruption of the Kavanaugh hearings by fools dressed as “Handmaidens” and their kid-glove treatment.

That wasn’t considered  an “insurrection” or “obstruction of government business” at all. Of course not. Why would they be?

Equal justice for some, more equal justice for others.

**Update: Marjorie Taylor Greene to seek censure of ‘terrorist sympathizer’ Tlaib over Capitol Hill protest.

BUZZED ON COFFEE AND DOUBLE STANDARDS:

Anyway, let’s talk about caffeine, or to be more accurate let’s use caffeine as a way to set up my segue. Esquire has a buzzy article about the dangers of getting too buzzed on coffee. It’s a weird piece on the merits because it focuses on people, literal addicts, who drink a lot of coffee. It opens with a story about a guy who drank the equivalent of 10 cups a day. There’s a scary chart that explains that four cups is the recommended limit for “non-pregnant adults.” Ten cups: “negative symptoms can arise.” And 10-14 cups? We’re told that’s a “fatal dose” next to a picture of a human skull!

The author, John McDermott, writes:

So ubiquitous is caffeine in our culture that it doesn’t even register to people as a drug. Step out of the office for a midafternoon cigarette and people might look at you askance. Get caught doing a bump of coke in the office bathroom as a midday pick-me-up and it’s grounds for immediate termination. But slam a Monster or a quad-shot Americano at work and people will think you’re a go-getter.

To which I say, “Um, duh.”

Now, I’ll skip through most of my other complaints about the article and instead provide just a little perspective. First of all, according to McDermott, 80 percent of Americans consume caffeine. That’s about 265 million people. Meanwhile, a 2018 study found that 92 people died from caffeine overdoses in a given year. Let’s round that up to 100. That means about 0.000037736 percent of Americans die every year from overdoses of this horrible drug hiding in plain sight. Meanwhile, in 2016, 951 people died from contact with a power lawn mower. More than 1,100 people died from falls related to ice skates, skateboards, etc. More than 2,100 died from … constipation. More than 10,000 accidentally died from suffocation or strangulation in bed (and we’re not talking about the David Carradine-style deaths). But be careful fleeing your potentially literal deathbed! Because more than 10,000 people die every year falling out of bed.

And yes, yes, I understand that caffeine abuse surely plays a much more lethal role as a contributing factor to other problems. I mean spaghetti carbonara isn’t lethal, but overdoing it can make other problems worse. But you get the point.

I’m so old, I can remember when Esquire ran articles by Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and Michael Herr. I’d like to think the editors of that era of the magazine would be rolling their eyes at the thought of running an article on the dangers of…caffeine.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL. I think virtually all speech should be protected on campus, but it is utterly impossible to imagine that a non-black professor in 2023 could say “Blacks are so f–ing racist” on Twitter, or even be accused of telling a student in class “It’s not your fault you were born in Africa,” and end up with a university defending them and posting something like this. Colleges should do this (if it’s true), but they won’t. Insult the right groups, though, like white people (in virtually all cases), Jews (in this case) or Asians (in some cases, depending on whether the school is in Stop Asian Hate vs. Stop Asian Admissions mode), and boy do you ever get some serious due process. This unequal treatment is wrong, it’s corrosive, it’s not equal justice, and people are noticing it more and more.